Transhumanism vs. a Conservative Death Ethos


Ed Hudgins

Recommended Posts

Transhumanism vs. a Conservative Death Ethos

By Edward Hudgins

August 20, 2014 -- Zoltan Istvan, author of the provocative novel The Transhumanist Wager (I’ll review it soon), recently suggested in Wired that individuals be required to secure a government license before having a child. I disagree with Istvan. So does Wesley Smith, who pens the Human Exceptionalism column forNational Review. But Smith disagrees because Istvan rejects the morality of individual self-sacrifice. Istvan’s rejection is, in fact, a good reason for anyone who loves life to consider the bright future that the Transhumanist enterprise can offer.2001-A-Space-Odyssey-screenshot-1920x108

Transhumanists seek to develop and apply technologies to greatly enhance human physical and mental capacities. Centers like Singularity University, founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil and space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, are facilitating major advances toward this goal.

Too many people?

Istvan and many other Transhumanists argue that in a few decades technology and breakthroughs in biology and genetics will literally allow humans to live forever. But with thousands of children starving to death in our world every day, Istvan believes the situation will be even worse with a growing, undying population. This is one reason why he “cautiously endorse the idea of licensing parents” and that “applicants who are deemed unworthy—perhaps because they are homeless, or have drug problems, or are violent criminals, or have no resources to raise a child properly and keep it from going hungry—would not be allowed until they could demonstrate they were suitable parents.”

But for two centuries technology has dispelled the myth of resource depletion and allowed billions of human to live long and prosper. Continued abject poverty and starvation is mostly due to a lack of free markets and property rights.

Self-refuting

But Istvan himself recognizes objections that, I would argue, require us to reject his proposal.

He says “Telling a person when and how many children they can have violates just about every core value we possess in a free society.” Precisely! Individual have a right to their own lives and deserve the liberty to pursue their own happiness as long as they accord equal liberty to others.

Further, Istvan rightly asks, “who wants the government handling human breeding when it can't do basic things like balance its own budgets and stay out of wars?” His suggestion that a United Nations agency handle the matter is laughable. Further, Istvan’s description of irresponsible parents describes the behavior of most politicians, only they ruin entire countries, not just their own children. Do you really want to hand these dangerous authoritarians power to control the most intimate aspects of our lives?

Dying for love?

But while Istvan is wrong, his conservative critics are even worse. Wesley Smith objects to Istvan’s entire enterprise because “Transhumanism is selfish, all about me-me, I-I. It’s [sic] goal is immortality for those currently alive, and the right to radically remake themselves and their progeny in their own image.”

Yes, exactly! The essence of morality is “I.” Ethics exists to allow individuals to pursue their own happiness, flourishing, and fulfillment in life. To achieve these goals, we must use reason to guide our lives. We must pursue productive achievements. And we should accord to others the equal right to pursue their own happiness.

And what of our progeny? Smith offers the words of Leon Kass: “In perpetuation, we send forth not just the seed of our bodies, but also the bearer of our hopes… If our children are to flower, we need to sow them well and nurture them, cultivate them in rich and wholesome soil, clothe them in fine and decent opinions and mores, and direct them toward the highest light.”

Okay, fine. But here’s the zinger. “If they are truly to flower, we must go to seed; we must wither and give ground.”

What? If parents love their children they must die? My parents are 82 years old. I love them and want them to be around as long as possible. Damned selfish of me? And I’m an older father of very young fraternal twin girls. I want to live to see them graduate college, grow in careers, perhaps make me a grandfather, and much more.

The future is now

Transhumanists today strive to be such achievers. Through their efforts our progeny could live in a world without Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s, clinical depression, dementia, diabetes, and cancer, a world in which lives are not only longer—perhaps never-ending—but healthier.

Smith reveals a fundamental moral error when he declares that “we owe duties to our posterity and not just ourselves.” But Transhumanists do offer incalculable goods for future generations.

Economist Walter Williams once quipped, “What have tomorrow's Americans done for today's Americans?” This witticism gets to the fact that each of us must pursue our own values and happiness in order to create the greatest meaning in our own lives. Out of love we help our children as best we can but they, too, will need to find their own meaning.

There are still many serious discussions to have concerning the Transhumanist enterprise. For example, does that enterprise take away from current human exceptionalism and dignity? I say “No.”

But for love of self as well as love of our children and of what the future offers, we should embrace the Transhumanist goals.
---
Hudgins is director of advocacy and a senior scholar at The Atlas Society.

For further information:

*Edward Hudgins, “Book Review: Abundance: The Future Is Better Than You Think, by Peter Diamandis and Steven Kotler.” ISkeptic, April 24, 2013.

*William Thomas, Transhumanism: How Does it Relate to Objectivism?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Vernor Vinge's theory of exponential advance of technology and the possibility of a singularity does not imply eternal life (for humans).

If you read Ray Kurzweil's Age of Spiritual Machines (or the Singularity is near) you'll find that he never solves the problem of whether the individual can continue life after uploading the mind.

Objectivists should have no trouble understanding that since mind and body are integrated (or rather are two plains of the same thing) then there is no way to either upload your mind to a new body, or replace your body progressively but entirely, without losing either, and thus your identity/life.

Uploading your mind can be close to a reality. People have children. Some Intellectual people write books instead of having children.

People are beginning to upload all their life experiences to social media sites, or just to sites, eventually creating a compilation akin to a Pharaoh's pyramid that will survive the individual's death.

The event of the singularity sounds like the Rapture. Eschatological religion is a very American form of Christianity and it does not surprise me that the idea has found its way into the most sophisticated intelligentsia. Ray Kurzweil, whom I admire, is a Unitarian.

On the bright side, this could be seen from the point of view of evolution.

People who have the most children, or reproduce at all, are usually poor or religious, in any case closer to the Animal stage of Humans, if you make an effort to understand what I mean.

People want to be rich and we know this is within reach.

Rich people are more free to pursue other interests, for instance their self interest and not their genes' commands.

The last generations of humans might create a technological infrastructure to augment wealth, health, and happiness that can take a life of its own.

A new non carbon-based life form that utilises energy more efficiently might arise, saturate Earth and colonise space (a lot more easily than humans for whom space is not suited). This new life form might inherit our human pyramids and might consider itself a form of Human, much like we consider ourselves a type of Ape.

This would explain the apparent irony that when a country becomes developed it stops growing on its own and requires immigrants or robots (as in our idealised version of Japan).

This would also explain Human Exceptionalism: The first species to use non-genetic lasting information is the transitional one between Earth and Carbon-based life and Universal(?) and non-carbon based life, or mode of continuing the great and seemingly pointless labor of building extropy in defiance to the laws of the universe (but perhaps in accordance to some system of the Multiverse?)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Transhumanists seek to develop and apply technologies to greatly enhance human physical and mental capacities. Centers like Singularity University, founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil and space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, are facilitating major advances toward this goal.

Thanks, Ed! You can find intersections where Objectivists became transhumanists (and back again). Poker player Frank R. Wallace called it "neo-tech." The ideas are interesting.

Extropy's warning is not to be ignored. If the mind and body are integrated, "uploading" your mind will be something other than a continuation of your self. (But, then, so is a Band-aid strip, so I have no answer; but I do recognize the question.)

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Transhumanists seek to develop and apply technologies to greatly enhance human physical and mental capacities. Centers like Singularity University, founded by futurist Ray Kurzweil and space entrepreneur Peter Diamandis, are facilitating major advances toward this goal.

Thanks, Ed! You can find intersections where Objectivists became transhumanists (and back again). Poker player Frank R. Wallace called it "neo-tech." The ideas are interesting.

Extropy's warning is not to be ignored. If the mind and body are integrated, "uploading" your mind will be something other than a continuation of your self. (But, then, so is a Band-aid strip, so I have no answer; but I do recognize the question.)

MIchael:

Your link is broken. Can you retool it?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Ed:

I like yoru article, but it isn't the article sort of "punching below your weight class"? Or grabbing some low hanging fruit from the tree of NR?

Nobody worth paying attention to and/or in their right mind would take the NR goofball's comments seriously.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Poker player Frank R. Wallace called it "neo-tech." The ideas are interesting.

Extropy's warning is not to be ignored. If the mind and body are integrated, "uploading" your mind will be something other than a continuation of your self. (But, then, so is a Band-aid strip, so I have no answer; but I do recognize the question.)

MIchael:

Your link is broken. Can you retool it?

I fixed the problem. It was a link to the Wikipedia biography of "Frank R. Wallace" (Wallace Ward) here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_R._Wallace

But I see that Frank R. Wallace's "neo-tech" may be very far from both transhumanism and Objectivism. This is from the BuildFreedom site which purports to continue the work of the late Frank R. Wallace (Wallace Ward):

http://www.buildfreedom.com/neo-tech/what_is_neo-tech.html

Here is a very Objectivist condemnation of neo-tech from Luke Setzer:

http://attitudeadjustment.tripod.com/Books/Neo-Tech.htm

That article includes this link at the bottom http://www.neo-tech.com/index.php but that page is nothing but testimonials and no new information from the creator(s) of the Zonpower neo-tech method. However, Luke does have more to say on Rebirth of Reason.

http://rebirthofreason.com/Articles/Setzer/From_Objectivism_to_Neo-Tech_and_Back.shtml

Neo-tech apparently died with its creator, though one "Mark Hamilton," the biological son of Wallace Ward, seems to be continuing the effort. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Hamilton_(writer)

I see that article link redirects to another Wikipedia article "Integrated Management Associates". It is interesting because it mentions Carl Watner, someone I knew from the Libertarian Connection (see below), a student of Robert Lefevre, and a co-author with Wendy McElroy who used to sleep with George O. Smith. Apparently, we live in a finite universe.

For myself, I read The Advanced Concepts of Poker by Frank R. Wallace on the recommendation of Michael J. Hoy of Loompanics. (I wrote two books, about a hundred book reviews, and six or eight essays on computers and the information revolution for Loompanics.) I compiled and sold an index to the first 50 issues of The Libertarian Connection; Frank R. Wallace bought one. The bottom line is that transhumanism is about applying science and technology to real limitations of health and lifespan, while neo-tech is about controlling other people for your own benefit.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Kurztweil is a crakpot. A wonderful technician and inventor but a crackpot never the less. He is in good company. Tesla was a crackpot too.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Over on RoR, in this topic, I said: "Remember that Ed Hudgins wrote in opposition to Leon Richard Kass, the Bush science advisor who is opposed to all of this. And he is not alone. Not just on the conservative right, of course, are all those progressives opposed to anything "unnatural" like genetically modified foods. They will be the same people who want to prevent "the rich" from enjoying enhancements and improvements not available to everyone. Some could claim consistent with their logic that no one should be allowed such modifications. It is not just conservatives who have a death ethos."

The metaphysical problem of whether "you" continue after "you" are computerly uploaded or startrekly transported is not immediate. The problem of people designing and engaging their own enhancements, and selling them to others, is. A firm, 23andme, was prevented from selling to people their own DNA scans. See their blog and website here http://blog.23andme.com/news/23andme-provides-an-update-regarding-fdas-review/

and the Fortune story here

http://www.forbes.com/sites/roberthof/2014/06/20/seven-months-after-fda-slapdown-23andme-returns-with-new-health-report-submission/

This technology is within your reach now, just as machine tooling from 100 years ago is available to the garage mechanic. IceDynamo ( http://icedynamo.blogspot.com/ ) is a blog from a new Ph.D. (2 years to complete undergrad at UCLA) who is both a "prepper" and knows the works of Ayn Rand. Her blog now runs a build-up to making penicillin in your kitchen.

"Biohacker Kay Aull’s father was found to have hemochromatosis: his body absorbs too much iron. It is a genetic defect. She carries the gene, also. Kay Aull verified this by building her own laboratory test in her kitchen for under $100."

Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack the Software of Life by Marcus Wohlsen (Current Penguin, 2011)

http://necessaryfacts.blogspot.com/2012/10/biohackers.html

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now