Would you give up your immortality to ensure the success of a posthuman world?

Answering hard questions at the World Transhumanist conference

Ronald Bailey | July 27, 2007

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The final speaker was inventor and self-acknowledged transhumanist Ray Kurzweil, who argues that "The Singularity is Near." The singularity is a metaphorical social event horizon in which accelerating technological trends so change society that it is impossible to forecast what the world will really be like. Kurzweill believes that humanity will accelerate itself to utopia (immortality, ubiquitous AI, nanotech abundance) in the next 20 to 30 years. For example, he noted that average life expectancy increases by about 3 months every year. Kurzweil then claimed that longevity trends are accelerating so fast that the life expectancy will increase more than one year for each year that passes in about 15 years. In other words, if you can hang on another 15 years, your life expectancy could be indefinitely long. He projects that by 2030, AI will be ubiquitous, and most humans will be physically melded to information and other technologies. Kurzweil argued that we must reject the fundamentalist desire to define humanity by its limitations. "We are the species that goes beyond our limitations," he declared.

That's it from Transvision 2007. Next week, I will be sending in dispatches from the World Future Society's annual meeting in Minneapolis, where I will also be giving a keynote talk on "The Great Ecological Restoration of the 21^st Century."

Ronald Bailey is Reason's science correspondent. His book Liberation Biology: The Scientific and Moral Case for the Biotech Revolution is now available from Prometheus Books.

Comments

Zach|7.27.07 @ 6:05PM|#

I think living inside of a videogame would be cool at first, then it would get boring after awhile as you get killed and then respawn, killed and respawn...unless if you die in the matrix you die in real life?

Thomas Stevens|7.27.07 @ 6:45PM|#

Zach: I find the prospect of dying and respawning a lot more appealing than just dying. I don't see how the prospect of a final death sweetens the deal.

|7.27.07 @ 6:45PM|#

He projects that by 2030, AI will be ubiquitous, and most humans will be physically melded to information and other technologies.

I find it eerie that the speaker right after Capt. Kirk describes humanity's next step as becoming the Borg.

Mark Plus|7.27.07 @ 7:08PM|#

In conclusion, Ekstract, who was bothered by what he clearly perceived as the "selfish" transhumanist desire to radically boost human life expectancy, asked, "Would you sacrifice your own immortality in order to ensure the success of a posthuman world?" That's a no-brainer. Of course, I would.

First of all, since when did libertarians care about seeming "selfish"?

And secondly, the alternatives contradict themselves. A "posthuman world" where people still have to die wouldn't qualify as a "success" by definition.

|7.27.07 @ 8:27PM|#

Truly. How does the transhumanist goal of nearly indefinite life jibe with the UN's projection of a world population of only 5.5 billion by 2100?

Postmodern Sleaze|7.27.07 @ 9:04PM|#

mediageek:

The UN isn't predicting a singularity.

Then again, neither am I, though I think any demographic projections for 100 years from now are more useless than a vagina on Janet Reno.

|7.27.07 @ 9:28PM|#

I heard from a certain Phd on this blog that the movie sucked. And it must, since it went from #1 to "wherzit" in no time.

Mark Plus|7.28.07 @ 12:28AM|#

We sat at a table together over lunch and it was amusing to see some of the more Marxist-inclined transhumanists express horror when Minsky explained that he thought that democracy was not such a good idea. Why would anyone want to be governed by a majority of stupid people, he wondered.

Why would anyone want the market to set prices and allocate scarce resources based on the purchasing decisions of a majority of stupid people?

Mark Plus|7.28.07 @ 12:33AM|#

I might add that everyone, including Marvin Minsky, displays stupidity about something or other. Those unlettered voters Minsky holds in contempt often know how to build houses, repair automobiles, re-upholster furniture and perform other useful services that brainiac Minsky has no clue how to do on his own.

Michael Anissimov|7.28.07 @ 2:03AM|#

I would be very interested in a Ronald Bailey blog where you give your candid opinions instead of writing in the voice of a journalist getting paid.

My opinions on the talks:

Philip Rosedale: I loved this talk and think SecondLife is the future. Can't wait till they integrate voice. One of the best talks at the conference.

Ben Goertzel: Out of all the AI projects I have looked at in detail I find his the most promising.

Ed Begley: he was okay, it sounded like he might have actually wrote his own talk.

Mark Ekstract: deathist

Your talk: ambitious and actually transhumanist (unlike many of the other talks), but you need to study a bit more on molecular manufacturing so you can describe more specific scenarios than just handwaving.

Jerome Glenn: pretty good talk, I agree that his mentions of international crime and potential solutions made it unique. Jerry is working with the Lifeboat Foundation so I may be biased a bit in his favor here.

Diamandis: my favorite talk of the conference. The man is amazing.

Kurzweil: may have been interesting to anyone who is hearing it for the first time but it was incredibly boring if you think about how most have already read his book. He also promised something different at the beginning but never delivered...

Marvin Minsky: he's said it all before, the main impact I got was that he's very grouchy and old now.

William Shatner: better than I thought but let's not too excited about a talk with no original content and that HE DIDN'T EVEN WRITE. (And you're not stupid so you probably know this too.)

texpat|7.28.07 @ 2:08AM|#

Why would anyone want the market to set prices and allocate scarce resources based on the purchasing decisions of a majority of stupid people?

Because the market also does a good job of satisfying niches, whereas the state usually imposes one-size-fits-all outcomes.

I might add that everyone, including Marvin Minsky, displays stupidity about something or other.

Inevitable with division of labor, although "ignorance" would be more accurate than "stupidity".

|7.28.07 @ 2:14AM|#

Regarding the comment about the girls in Burma supposedly taught 'Eagle Claw' martial arts in elementary school:

As I said to a Burmese girl the other day, "Now I have met a lot of dames in my life, but your Eagle Claw skills... are reeeaally special." She bought it......

No, but semiseriously, do people just believe anything the Burmese government tells them? Okay, it's possible they do sorta teach this skill. But I happen to live in a community with a number of Burmese people who hadn't heard of this. So, if they do teach it, I don't think it's taught intensively and carried throughout the years. The Burmese ladies I have met, while being very nice and gracious, have not struck me as being able to tear anyone's eyes out with their...claws....or much else. Maybe wrapping paper.

But the real problem is the claim that there aren't many attacks on women in Burma. Well, tell that to the Karen or other tribes. Regardless, the extent to which there are attacks or not, which are probably not too different in other neighboring countries, has got pretty much nothing to do with the women allegedly having been taught 'Eagle Claw.'



"Glenn also made one of the more novel suggestions I've ever heard for improving the status of women around the world. Teach every girl Eagle Claw martial arts defense in elementary school."

|7.28.07 @ 2:37AM|#

Edit: I meant, they could tear open wrapping paper...not that they could use wrapping paper to tear people's eyes out, unless of course the Burmese government says they can.

|7.28.07 @ 9:14AM|#

"Sure, nanotechnology might take care of all material wants,..."

This is absurd. Nanotech might be the next great thing, who knows? Kurzweil's singulartity might really happen too, but again who knows?

The one thing I am utterly certain of is that no advancement of any sort will "take care of all material wants" or anything approaching such an achievement. Nanotech might make Bill Gates a trillionaire instead of a mere 100 billionaire, but I positively garantee you that the bottom 99% will still have plenty of material wants, and many of them will still be dying of starvation.

Mark Plus|7.28.07 @ 11:05AM|#

Because the market also does a good job of satisfying niches, whereas the state usually imposes one-size-fits-all outcomes.

One-size-fits-all solutions work much better than "niches" when it comes to matters like law, public health, environmental quality and so forth. You wouldn't want to live next to a community of several thousand people who refuse to vaccinate their children and chlorinate their water supply, for example.

I might add that everyone, including Marvin Minsky, displays stupidity about something or other.

Inevitable with division of labor, although "ignorance" would be more accurate than "stupidity".

No, I mean "stupidity." Marvin Minsky could have traded places with a carpenter early in life, but I doubt that even with extensive training the carpenter would work out as a university AI researcher, or that Minsky could attain the skill level of the carpenter.

Mark Plus|7.28.07 @ 11:11AM|#

The one thing I am utterly certain of is that no advancement of any sort will "take care of all material wants" or anything approaching such an achievement.

Actually, some kind of neuroscience breakthrough could pull that off. For example, if neuroscientists can figure out how Buddhist monks' brains work, then in principle we could develop the technology to suppress people's dukkha. We might even need that technology to prevent widespread violence during the downward slide in world oil supplies and the likely accompanying die off of most of the world's population.

LarryA|7.28.07 @ 12:07PM|#

I might add that everyone, including Marvin Minsky, displays stupidity about something or other.

Inevitable with division of labor, although "ignorance" would be more accurate than "stupidity".

Actually, these are three different responses. If I go out and get in my car and find it won't start:
Division of labor--sending it to a garage to have it repaired.
Ignorance--opening the hood to figure out what's wrong with it.
Stupidity--forgetting to check the gas gauge before doing the above.

texpat|7.28.07 @ 1:08PM|#

You wouldn't want to live next to a community of several thousand people who refuse to vaccinate their children and chlorinate their water supply, for example.

Not wanting to doesn't give me the right to force them to do those things. Besides, I can vaccinate my own kids and take responsibility for my own water supply.

|7.28.07 @ 2:26PM|#

I would give up immortality to have hair like William Shatner. Otherwise, no.

|7.28.07 @ 3:05PM|#

Mark Plus,

Shouldn't you be writing about how anyone over the age of five who reads a Harry Potter story should be executed by firing squad? That makes about as much sense as the pseudo-scientific paranoid raving you've done here and the scat you've deposited on your blog, so I think you should go with it.

Postmodern Sleaze|7.28.07 @ 9:04PM|#

wayne:

Yes; the future with nanotech probably looks more like Stephenson's "The Diamond Age" than any techno-rapture fantasy- in other words, the more things change, the more things stay the same.

As one of my friends once pondered with these fantasies of nano-utopia- "where does the energy to run all these nanobots come from"? Unless we have access to some sort of ultra-fusion or zero-point Santa Claus energy, we're simply dealing with another energy-sapping advanced technology that will require a load of conventionally generated juice to run. (David Brin pointed this out in "Earth", where he made a few offhand comments about the failure of the nano-utopians... where does all the power come from to run these little buggers?)

Nanotech will be huge, I have no doubt about it- but it won't give us immortality or an end to poverty, at least in the short run.

|7.28.07 @ 10:37PM|#

Actually, some kind of neuroscience breakthrough could pull that off. For example, if neuroscientists can figure out how Buddhist monks' brains work, then in principle we could develop the technology to suppress people's dukkha. We might even need that technology to prevent widespread violence during the downward slide in world oil supplies and the likely accompanying die off of most of the world's population.

I would rather join a terrorist organization dedicated to the violent destruction of technology than submit to a psuedo-Buddhist cyber-lobotomy, and I suspect many others in the populous would agree with me. If it comes down to the plebes being told to take their soma so they can die off quietly, don't expect it to happen without a struggle.

And bear in mind, I love computers, gizmos, and technology. I'm no Luddite. I'd prefer a high-tech world. But if the choice is between tech and meaningless lives of digital masturbation or no tech and real lives filled with struggle and overcoming, I'll take the latter.

|7.28.07 @ 11:16PM|#

Powering nanotech,

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/summary/290/5496/1528

http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/sci;290/5496/1555

http://www.nsti.org/news/item.html?id=61

Quiet_Desperation|7.29.07 @ 4:24AM|#

Ha ha ha ha ha!!!

I love Transhumanists! They're silly!

*giggle*

You want to know what the future is? Some combination of Orwell's stamping boot mixed with green wafers from the Soylent Corporation.

>>> "SecondLife is the future"

HA HA HA HA HA HA!

>>> "Ed Begley: he was okay"

As much as I disagree with him on things, I respect the man. He walks the walk that he talks. I hear he generates the power for his morning toast with a stationary bike. The greenies should drop Gore like a plagure ridden squirrel and sign up Begley.

Artificial Intelligence is the fusion power of the computing world. It's forever 20 years away. :)

>>> The UN isn't predicting a singularity.

Hey, even the UN has to get something right once in a while.

Franklin Harris|7.29.07 @ 11:47AM|#

I would give up immortality to have hair like William Shatner.

Don't be so dramatic. Even Shatner didn't pay that much for his hair.

|7.29.07 @ 4:34PM|#

"...his avatar had bought the virtual flute..."

This one time, at virtual band camp...

|7.30.07 @ 3:06PM|#

Kurzweil apparently states as fact that average life expectancy is increasing 3 months every year. On what does he base this? And he implies that this isn't asymptotic to some maximum (~100 years). Is there any evidence for this?

Postmodern Sleaze|7.30.07 @ 8:00PM|#

Quiet_Desperation:

AI is already here, it's simply not the magical superintelligent Santa Claus that most AI enthusiasts hope for. I'm not a software engineer myself (just a well-educated layman), but as my friends who are software engineers say regarding AI, our software becomes more intelligent every year, continually boosting our productivity and intelligence. The singularity is a mirage, however, as is simulated consciousness. But anyway, what good would a super-human monkey mind be, even if we could build one? Google and OS/X seem much more powerful and useful for augmenting my reality than such a simulated mind would be any day.

No, we're not headed for Orwell's world or Kurzweil's. We will continue to live in the world that humans always have, where there are haves and have-nots, despotic empires and democratic revolutions, pockets of freedom and iron cages of tyranny. There's no technological Santa Claus, though some of us will have longer lives, greater wealth, and greater energy at our command (with any luck, maybe it will even be most of us, rather than a small elite).

There's no singularity coming; but there's no apocalypse either. Just life, in all it's ugliness, beauty, and complexity. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way.

Quiet Desperation|7.31.07 @ 12:18AM|#

>>> I'm not a software engineer myself

Well, I *am*. *And* I'm a hardware engineer. Your friends are BSing you, or indulging in a very watered down usage of "AI".

>>> what good would a super-human monkey
>>> mind be, even if we could build one?

Warfare.

>>> but there's no apocalypse either

Neither 1984 nor Soylent Green were apocalyptic visions. They were more "not with a bang but a whimper" sorts of predicitons.

>>> it's ugliness, beauty, and complexity.
>>> And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other
>>> way.

I'd like a little less ugliness, please.

*And* fusion power *and* my goldanged flying car that I was promised! PROMISED, I tell you!

nanostuff|7.31.07 @ 7:56PM|#

[quote]The singularity is a mirage, however, as is simulated consciousness.[/quote]
Well then, you seem to have figured it all out.

Nothing left to see here people, go back to your homes, some guy has spoken.