Sentient Developments

Should we clone Neanderthals?

2010-07-15T23:25:00.002-04:00

Zach Zorich of Archeology explores the scientific, legal, and ethical obstacles to cloning Neanderthals:

The ultimate goal of studying human evolution is to better understand the human race. The opportunity to meet a Neanderthal and see firsthand our common but separate humanity seems, on the surface, too good to pass up. But what if the thing we learned from cloning a Neanderthal is that our curiosity is greater than our compassion? Would there be enough scientific benefit to make it worth the risks? "I'd rather not be on record saying there would," Holliday told me, laughing at the question. "I mean, come on, of course I'd like to see a cloned Neanderthal, but my desire to see a cloned Neanderthal and the little bit of information we would get out of it...I don't think it would be worth the obvious problems." Hublin takes a harder line. "We are not Frankenstein doctors who use human genes to create creatures just to see how they work." Noonan agrees, "If your experiment succeeds and you generate a Neanderthal who talks, you have violated every ethical rule we have," he says, "and if your experiment fails...well. It's a lose-lose." Other scientists think there may be circumstances that could justify Neanderthal cloning.

"If we could really do it and we know we are doing it right, I'm actually for it," says Lahn. "Not to understate the problem of that person living in an environment where they might not fit in. So, if we could also create their habitat and create a bunch of them, that would be a different story."

"We could learn a lot more from a living adult Neanderthal than we could from cell cultures," says Church. Special arrangements would have to be made to create a place for a cloned Neanderthal to live and pursue the life he or she would want, he says. The clone would also have to have a peer group, which would mean creating several clones, if not a whole colony. According to Church, studying those Neanderthals, with their consent, would have the potential to cure diseases and save lives. The Neanderthals' differently shaped brains might give them a different way of thinking that would be useful in problem-solving. They would also expand humanity's genetic diversity, helping protect our genus from future extinction. "Just saying 'no' is not necessarily the safest or most moral path," he says. "It is a very risky decision to do nothing."

Hawks believes the barriers to Neanderthal cloning will come down. "We are going to bring back the mammoth...the impetus against doing Neanderthal because it is too weird is going to go away." He doesn't think creating a Neanderthal clone is ethical science, but points out that there are always people who are willing to overlook the ethics. "In the end," Hawks says, "we are going to have a cloned Neanderthal, I'm just sure of it."

Link.

Gelernter's 'dream logic' and the quest for artificial intelligence

2010-07-15T22:50:00.004-04:00

Internet pioneer David Gelernter explores the ethereal fuzziness of cognition in his Edge.org article, "Dream-logic, the internet and artificial consciousness." He's right about the imperfect and dream-like nature of cognition and conscious thought; AI theorists should certainly take notice.

But Gelernter starts to go off the rails toward the conclusion of the essay. His claim that an artificial consciousness would be nothing more a zombie mind is unconvincing, as is his contention that emotional capacities are are necessary component of the cognitive spectrum. There is no reason to believe, from a functionalist perspective, that the neural correlates of consciousness cannot take root in an alternative and non-biological medium. And there are examples of fully conscious human beings without the ability to experience emotions.

Gelernter, like a lot of AI theorists, need to brush-up on their neuroscience.

At any rate, here's an excerpt from the article; you can judge the efficacy of his arguments for yourself:

As far as we know, there is no way to achieve consciousness on a computer or any collection of computers. However — and this is the interesting (or dangerous) part — the cognitive spectrum, once we understand its operation and fill in the details, is a guide to the construction of simulated or artificial thought. We can build software models of Consciousness and Memory, and then set them in rhythmic motion.

The result would be a computer that seems to think. It would be a zombie (a word philosophers have borrowed from science fiction and movies): the computer would have no inner mental world; would in fact be unconscious. But in practical terms, that would make no difference. The computer would ponder, converse and solve problems just as a man would. And we would have achieved artificial or simulated thought, "artificial intelligence."

But first there are formidable technical problems. For example: there can be no cognitive spectrum without emotion. Emotion becomes an increasingly important bridge between thoughts as focus drops and re-experiencing replaces recall. Computers have always seemed like good models of the human brain; in some very broad sense, both the digital computer and the brain are information processors. But emotions are produced by brain and body working together. When you feel happy, your body feels a certain way; your mind notices; and the resonance between body and mind produces an emotion. "I say again, that the body makes the mind" (John Donne).

The natural correspondence between computer and brain doesn't hold between computer and body. Yet artificial thought will require a software model of the body, in order to produce a good model of emotion, which is necessary to artificial thought. In other words, artificial thought requires artificial emotions, and simulated emotions are a big problem in themselves. (The solution will probably take the form of software that is "trained" to imitate the emotional responses of a particular human subject.)

One day all these problems will be solved; artificial thought will be achieved. Even then, an artificially intelligent computer will experience nothing and be aware of nothing. It will say "that makes me happy," but it won't feel happy. Still: it will act as if it did. It will act like an intelligent human being.

And then what?

Latest piece: Observation Selection Effect [art]

2010-07-12T21:00:00.003-04:00

I'm teaching myself how to paint. Check out my most recent work, "Observation Selection Effect":

Munkittrick joins Discover Mag's Science Not Fiction

2010-07-12T18:15:00.001-04:00

IEET colleague and Pop Transhumanism blogger Kyle Munkittrick has joined the Discover Magazine empire as a contributor to their Science Not Fiction blog. Way to go, Kyle!

Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience by Stephen S. Hall [book]

2010-07-12T18:00:00.003-04:00

Stephen S. Hall's new book, Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience, looks interesting.

Promotional blurbage:

A compelling investigation into one of our most coveted and cherished ideals, and the efforts of modern science to penetrate the mysterious nature of this timeless virtue.

We all recognize wisdom, but defining it is more elusive. In this fascinating journey from philosophy to science, Stephen S. Hall gives us a dramatic history of wisdom, from its sudden emergence in four different locations (Greece, China, Israel, and India) in the fifth century B.C. to its modern manifestations in education, politics, and the workplace. We learn how wisdom became the provenance of philosophy and religion through its embodiment in individuals such as Buddha, Confucius, and Jesus; how it has consistently been a catalyst for social change; and how revelatory work in the last fifty years by psychologists, economists, and neuroscientists has begun to shed light on the biology of cognitive traits long associated with wisdom—and, in doing so, begun to suggest how we might cultivate it.

Hall explores the neural mechanisms for wise decision making; the conflict between the emotional and cognitive parts of the brain; the development of compassion, humility, and empathy; the effect of adversity and the impact of early-life stress on the development of wisdom; and how we can learn to optimize our future choices and future selves.

Hall’s bracing exploration of the science of wisdom allows us to see this ancient virtue with fresh eyes, yet also makes clear that despite modern science’s most powerful efforts, wisdom continues to elude easy understanding.

Hall's book is part of a larger trend that, along with happiness studies, is starting to enter (or is that re-enter?) mainstream academic and clinical realms of inquiry.

A. C. Grayling has penned an insightful and critical review of Hall's book:

First, though, one must point to another and quite general difficulty with contemporary research in the social and neurosciences, namely, a pervasive mistake about the nature of mind. Minds are not brains. Please note that I do not intend anything non-materialistic by this remark; minds are not some ethereal spiritual stuff a la Descartes. What I mean is that while each of us has his own brain, the mind that each of us has is the product of more than that brain; it is in important part the result of the social interaction with other brains. As essentially social animals, humans are nodes in complex networks from which their mental lives derive most of their content. A single mind is, accordingly, the result of interaction between many brains, and this is not something that shows up on a fMRI scan. The historical, social, educational, and philosophical dimensions of the constitution of individual character and sensibility are vastly more than the electrochemistry of brain matter by itself. Neuroscience is an exciting and fascinating endeavour which is teaching us a great deal about brains and the way some aspects of mind are instantiated in them, but by definition it cannot (and I don't for a moment suppose that it claims to) teach us even most of what we would like to know about minds and mental life.

I think the Yale psychologist Paul Bloom put his finger on the nub of the issue in the March 25th number of Nature where he comments on neuropsychological investigation into the related matter of morality. Neuroscience is pushing us in the direction of saying that our moral sentiments are hard-wired, rooted in basic reactions of disgust and pleasure. Bloom questions this by the simple expedient of reminding us that morality changes. He points out that "contemporary readers of Nature, for example, have different beliefs about the rights of women, racial minorities and homosexuals compared with readers in the late 1800s, and different intuitions about the morality of practices such as slavery, child labour and the abuse of animals for public entertainment. Rational deliberation and debate have played a large part in this development." As Bloom notes, widening circles of contacts with other people and societies through a globalizing world plays a part in this, but it is not the whole story: for example, we give our money and blood to help strangers on the other side of the world. "What is missing, I believe," says Bloom, and I agree with him, "is an understanding of the role of deliberate persuasion."

Contemporary psychology, and especially neuropsychology, ignores this huge dimension of the debate not through inattention but because it falls well outside its scope. This is another facet of the point that mind is a social entity, of which it does not too far strain sense to say that any individual mind is the product of a community of brains.

Intersexed athlete Caster Semenya given green light to compete

2010-07-10T12:46:00.004-04:00

South African sprinter Caster Semenya has been given approval by the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) to race as a female. The 19 year old runner is an intersexed individual with internal males testes that are producing testosterone at rates considerably above average for women. After a gender test in September 2009, the IAAF decided to ban her from racing, citing a biological advantage that was not of Semenya's doing. Now, after conducting an investigation, the Federation has passed a ruling allowing Semenya to race again.

This is a very interesting, if not perplexing, decision, and I wonder how it's going to play against the International Olympic Committee's (IOC) recent decision calling for intersexed athletes to have a medical procedure in order to qualify for the Olympics. By all accounts, Semenya has not had the procedure, or if she has, is not disclosing that information to the public. Moreover, the results of her most recent gender test are not being disclosed.

Very fishy.

So why did the IAAF suddenly change its mind, and why are they not giving any reasons? Did they feel pressured by the public? Is this a case of political correctness on the track? Or did Semenya have the medical procedure? And if so, why not disclose it? Or would that open a huge can of worms -- and a possible charge of a human rights violation?

Let's assume Semenya did not have the procedure. Has the IAAF therefore decided that intersexed persons are good to compete against unambiguously gendered individuals? And what about her competitors? I can't imagine that they're very happy right now. This would seem to be a dangerous and ill conceived precedent. Semenya is not the only intersexed athlete currently competing in Olympic sports. What about them?

I have a feeling this story is far from over.

Video games as art?

2010-07-10T11:57:00.004-04:00

The interwebs are angry because Roger Ebert, a film critic who knows virtually nothing about video games, is arguing that video games will never be considered an artform. Grant Tavinor of Kotaku takes a more nuanced approach to the question and uses the popular BioShock video game to make his case:

Finally, and this is my judgment, BioShock is the result of the intention to make an artwork. Intentions can be slippery things, but it seems evident enough in the game that it is intended to be something more than just a game: BioShock is intended to have the features listed above (they are not accidental) and it is intended to have these features as a matter of its being art.

Hence, BioShock seems an entirely natural candidate for art status. It has, in some form, all but one of the criteria. The one it lacks-belonging to an established artistic form-it lacks because of the very newness of video games. BioShock is not necessarily a masterpiece (the last act is problematic) but this is beside the point; the vast majority of art works are not masterpieces. Surely it would be unfair to deny BioShock art status when it has so many of the qualities that in other uncontested art works accounts for their art status?

I agree that part of the problem is the nascent status of video-games-as-art. Pacman never attempted to be artist; Bioshock clearly does. It's still early days.

Moreover, even if you dismiss current games as having any artistic merit, Ebert's claim that they will never be legitimate artforms is suspicious. Never? Really? Not even when augmented reality enters the picture? Or completely immersive virtual reality?

Even more profoundly, a number of years ago I speculated about the potential for directly altering subjective and emotional experience and how mental manipulation could become an art form. In the article, Working the Conscious Canvas, I wrote:

It's conceivable that predetermined sets of emotional experiences could be a future art form. Artists might, for example, manipulate emotions alongside established art forms, a la A Clockwork Orange-but certainly not for the same questionable ends.

For example, imagine listening to Beethoven's "Ode to Joy" or "Moonlight Sonata" while having your emotional centers manipulated in synch with the music's mood and tone. You'd be compelled to feel joy when the music is joyful, sadness when the music is sad.

The same could be done with film. In fact, last century, director Orson Welles, who was greatly influenced by German expressionistic filmmaking, directed movies in which the subjective expression of inner experiences was emphasized (Touch of Evil, for example). In the 1960s, Alfred Hitchcock, also a student of expressionism, went a step further by creating and editing sequences in a way that was synchronized with subjective perception, such as the quick-cut shower sequence in Psycho.

In the future, audiences could share emotional experiences with a film's protagonist. Imagine watching Saving Private Ryan, Titanic or Gone with the Wind in such a manner. The experience would be unbelievably visceral, nothing like today's experience of sitting back and watching.

The beauty of such experiences is that sophisticated virtual reality technology isn't required, just the control mechanisms to alter emotional experience in real-time.

Of course, some will argue that when artists can directly manipulate emotions, they will have lost a dialogue with their audience, as audience members will simply be feeling exactly what's intended. But this won't necessarily be the case. Rather, audience members will respond to emotional tapestries in unique ways based on their personal experiences, the same way they do now to other art forms.

Imagine this same technology, but in the context of video games. Now there's some scary potential.

Art, whether it be traditional or novel, has always been about transcending the individual and sharing the subjective experience of others. As I've written before, "The greatest artists thrill us with their stories, endow us with emotional and interpersonal insight, and fill us with joy through beautiful melodies, paintings and dance. By doing so they give us a piece of their selves and allow us to venture inside their very minds—even if just for a little bit."

And yes, this includes video games.

Economist: War in the Fifth Domain

2010-07-10T11:49:00.003-04:00

The latest cover article of The Economist poses the question: are the mouse and keyboard the new weapons of conflict?

Important thinking about the tactical and legal concepts of cyber-warfare is taking place in a former Soviet barracks in Estonia, now home to NATO’s “centre of excellence” for cyber-defence. It was established in response to what has become known as “Web War 1”, a concerted denial-of-service attack on Estonian government, media and bank web servers that was precipitated by the decision to move a Soviet-era war memorial in central Tallinn in 2007. This was more a cyber-riot than a war, but it forced Estonia more or less to cut itself off from the internet.

Similar attacks during Russia’s war with Georgia the next year looked more ominous, because they seemed to be co-ordinated with the advance of Russian military columns. Government and media websites went down and telephone lines were jammed, crippling Georgia’s ability to present its case abroad. President Mikheil Saakashvili’s website had to be moved to an American server better able to fight off the attack. Estonian experts were dispatched to Georgia to help out.

Many assume that both these attacks were instigated by the Kremlin. But investigations traced them only to Russian “hacktivists” and criminal botnets; many of the attacking computers were in Western countries. There are wider issues: did the cyber-attack on Estonia, a member of NATO, count as an armed attack, and should the alliance have defended it? And did Estonia’s assistance to Georgia, which is not in NATO, risk drawing Estonia into the war, and NATO along with it?

Such questions permeate discussions of NATO’s new “strategic concept”, to be adopted later this year. A panel of experts headed by Madeleine Albright, a former American secretary of state, reported in May that cyber-attacks are among the three most likely threats to the alliance. The next significant attack, it said, “may well come down a fibre-optic cable” and may be serious enough to merit a response under the mutual-defence provisions of Article 5.

Link.

NYT: Until Cryonics Do Us Part

2010-07-10T11:38:00.003-04:00

The New York Times has published a piece about cryonicists and how not all family members buy into it. The article focuses on Robin Hanson, a name that should be familiar to most readers of this blog:

Among cryonicists, Peggy’s reaction might be referred to as an instance of the “hostile-wife phenomenon,” as discussed in a 2008 paper by Aschwin de Wolf, Chana de Wolf and Mike Federowicz.“From its inception in 1964,” they write, “cryonics has been known to frequently produce intense hostility from spouses who are not cryonicists.” The opposition of romantic partners, Aschwin told me last year, is something that “everyone” involved in cryonics knows about but that he and Chana, his wife, find difficult to understand. To someone who believes that low-temperature preservation offers a legitimate chance at extending life, obstructionism can seem as willfully cruel as withholding medical treatment. Even if you don’t want to join your husband in storage, ask believers, what is to be lost by respecting a man’s wishes with regard to the treatment of his own remains? Would-be cryonicists forced to give it all up, the de Wolfs and Federowicz write, “face certain death.”

Link.

The Brain Preservation Foundation: Better preservation through plastination

2010-06-29T19:00:00.003-04:00

I've often thought that cryonics, the practice of storing tissue (namely the brain) in a vat of liquid nitrogen, may eventually come to be seen as a rather primitive and naive technique for preservation. While it may be the only current option for those hoping to capture and restore their brain states for future reanimation, cryonics as a concept may not stand the test of time. More sophisticated methods have already been proposed, including warm biostasis and plastination.

While warm biostasis remains a largely theoretical endeavor, brain plastination was recently given a considerable boost through the founding of the Brain Preservation Foundation. Launched by Accelerating Studies Foundation founder John Smart and Harvard neuroscientist Ken Hayworth, the BPF is seeking to facilitate the development of any technology that will effectively preserve the brain for eventual reanimation. While the foundation members' pet interest is in plastination, they are not married to any particular technique. As far as they're concerned, the successful development of any kind of brain preservation technology means that everyone wins.

To this end, the Foundation has launched the Brain Preservation Technology Prize – a prize for demonstrating ultrastructure preservation across an entire large mammalian brain and verified by a comprehensive electron microscopic survey procedure. Think of it as an X-Prize for brain preservation technology. The Foundation wants to encourage researchers to develop techniques “capable of inexpensively and completely preserving an entire human brain for long-term storage with such fidelity that the structure of every neuronal process and every synaptic connection remains intact and traceable using today’s electron microscopic imaging techniques.”

The current purse is for $100,000, but they expect this prize amount to increase as donors chip-in. And in anticipation of success, the BPF has created a Brain Preservation Bill of Rights.

As noted, the BPF has a special interest in brain plastination, mostly on account of Smart and Hayworth's extensive work in this field. If you've ever seen seen a Body Worlds exhibit, then you know about plastination. It is thought that brain-state may be preserved through the chemical conversion of brain matter into a non-degradable substrate, which is why the proposed technique is also referred to as chemical brain preservation. For example, it might be possible to flood a brain shortly after death with glutaraldehyde to fix proteins, followed by osmium tetroxide to stabilize lipids and other compounds. Essentially, this process could turn a deceased brain into a chunk of plastic that will last indefinitely.

Smart envisions the day when this technology is refined and streamlined to the point where preservation may cost as little as $2,000. Not a bad price for a radically extended life.

I recently had the opportunity to speak with Smart and Hayworth about their project at the Humanity+ Summit that was held in early June. A few of us conference attendees were given an informal guided tour of Hayworth's lab at Harvard. It is here where Hayworth uses electron microscopy to delineate every synaptic connection from plastinated mouse brains, a process that preserves both structure and molecular level information. Essentially, while they're working on technologies to preserve, image, and analyse mouse brains--an essential step toward a whole mouse brain connectome--Hayworth and his team are developing the theory and technologies that will be required to preserve human brains as well.

The tour of Hayworth's lab was jaw dropping on many levels. Not only did I get a chance to see slides of brains at the nanometer scale, I got a chance to see real researchers doing real work in a real lab. It's transhumanism under construction; this wasn't airy-fairy armchair futuristic fantasy - this research is actually happening.

Hayworth noted that, "Over the next decade or two these or other techniques will be developed and will allow the creation of a synapse-level atlas of the entire human brain - something that has been dubbed the 'human connectome'." As for mind uploading from a plastic embedded brain, Hayworth believes that's about 50 years off.

Make a donation to the Brain Preservation Foundation today. Your life may depend on it.

Skeptically Speaking broadcast now available

2010-06-27T19:43:00.002-04:00

My recent conversation/debate with Greg Fish on Skeptically Speaking Radio about transhumanism is now available in streaming audio and download.

Sam Vaknin: The Ten Errors of Science Fiction

2010-06-27T18:42:00.007-04:00

Global Politician columnist Sam Vaknin argues in a recent article that science fiction is guilty of ten specific mistakes when postulating the characteristics of advanced extraterrestrial life. Specifically, he contends that sci-fi writers consistently buy into fallacies about:

Life in the universe

The concept of structure
Communication and interaction
Location
Separateness
Transportation
Will and intention
Intelligence
Artificial vs. natural
Leadership

While the article certainly raises some food for thought, Vaknin's call for writers to think more 'outside of the box' is a bit of a stretch, if not condescending. Science fiction writers, for the most part, take great pains to weave a coherent narrative around novel imaginings of what ETIs might look like. Moreover, Vaknin is himself guilty of considerably hand-waving, arguing that ETIs may be existentially and qualitatively of a different sort than what we might expect, but at the same time he doesn't provide any substantive or compelling evidence for us to believe otherwise.

Sure, I agree that ETIs may be dramatically different than what we can imagine and that they may exist outside of expected paradigms, but until our exoscience matures we should probably err on the side of the self-sampling assumption and figure that the ignition and evolution of life tends to follow a similar path to the one taken on Earth. Now, I'm not suggesting that we refrain from hypothesizing about radically different existence-states; I'm just saying that these sorts of extraordinary claims (like alternative intelligences spawning different quantum realities) require the requisite evidence. It's far too easy to fantasize about some kind of energy-based hive-mind living in the core of asteroids, it's another thing to prove that such a thing could come about through the laws of physics [my example, not Vaknin's].

In the article, Vaknin also posits six basic explanations to the Fermi Paradox (and the apparent failure of SETI) that are not mutually exclusive:

That Aliens do not exist
That the technology they use is far too advanced to be detected by us and, the flip side of this hypothesis, that the technology we use is insufficiently advanced to be noticed by them
That we are looking for extraterrestrials at the wrong places
That the Aliens are life forms so different to us that we fail to recognize them as sentient beings or to communicate with them
That Aliens are trying to communicate with us but constantly fail due to a variety of hindrances, some structural and some circumstantial
That they are avoiding us because of our misconduct (example: the alleged destruction of the environment) or because of our traits (for instance, our innate belligerence) or because of ethical considerations

Very quickly, point number one is possible but grossly improbable, points two to five are essentially the same argument—that we don't yet know where, how and what to look for, and point six violates the non-exclusivity principle (explains some but not all ETI behavior). It's odd that Vaknin selected these particular six arguments. There are many, many potential resolutions to the FP with these not being particularly stronger than any other (though point #1 has a lot of traction among the Rare Earthers.). And where is the Great Filter argument, which is possibly the strongest of them all?

Nice try, Vaknin, but the Great Silence problem is more complex than what you've laid out.

Women's Bioethics Project Closes

2010-06-25T18:00:00.000-04:00

After six years of ground-breaking and influential blogging, the Women's Bioethics Project has come to an end. Kathryn Hinsch made the announcement on June 11.

For years, the WBP provided a crucial channel for female bioethicists to voice their concerns and support for key biotechnologies at the dawn of the transhuman era. Virtually no topic was off limits, whether it be voluntary euthanasia or the potential for exosomatic wombs. The WBP perspective was a breath of fresh air in a sea littered with bioconservatives, anti-technological feminists and religious conservatives. Not to mention overzealous male techno-optimists.

But it wasn't always this way. Back in 2003 I spoke at Yale about how feminists seemed to be forsaking the future, unwilling to engage in bioethical and biotechnological discourse. It seemed absurd to me at the time that the only people talking about such topics as human trait selection, reproductive technologies, genomics, and stem cell research were geeky white males (myself included). All feminists, it seemed to me at the time, were anti-technological ideologues who were unwilling to discuss the possibilities and what it might mean for women. Donna Haraway's legacy, I thought, had been all but abandoned.

It was with great relief, then, that the Women's Bioethics Project was launched a year later, featuring such writers as Linda MacDonald Glenn, Kristi Scott, Kelly Hills and many others. Indeed, as the blog header proclaimed, "This is not your typical blog. We have recruited scholars and public policy analysts from around the world to provide daily news and commentary on the implications of bioethical issues for women." And as Hinsch noted in her farewell post, "we developed innovative programs, policy recommendations and research on ethical issues pertaining to women’s health, reproductive technologies, and neuroethics. We made a difference: our work brought these important issues to new audiences and encouraged women to participate in policy development around bioethics questions."

And that they did. Their work will be missed, but thankfully many of the WBP alumni will continue to contribute to the IEET.

Well done, WBP!

Book: Choosing Tomorrow's Children

2010-06-25T17:55:00.000-04:00

Just added this to my ever growing must-read list: Choosing Tomorrow's Children: The Ethics of Selective Reproduction by Stephen Wilkinson. Here's an excerpt from Iain Brassington's excellent review:

In Choosing Tomorrow's Children, Stephen Wilkinson looks at the ethics of selection, concentrating mainly on 'same number' decisions that we may make. A 'same number' decision is one in which we have chosen to bring a child to birth, but have not decided which. (A 'different number' decision, by contrast, would be one in which we have to choose whether to reproduce at all.) Put another way, he is concerned with choosing between different possible future people (p5). Within this range, though, there's a number of different situations that may give us cause to want to choose: we might be making decisions about choosing an embryo to act as a 'saviour sibling', choosing an embryo to avoid a certain disability, choosing in favour of a (prima facie) disability - as in the case of Candace McCullough and Sharon Duchesneau, who sought specifically to have a deaf child - or choosing one gender over another. Wilkinson spends time considering all these variations on the 'choosing children' theme, and is guided by a presumption of permissibility - a presumption that everything is permitted unless and until it is forbidden, and that the onus is on the person doing the forbidding to make the case for impermissibility.

As far as Wilkinson is concerned, many (if not most) of the arguments that one might mount to establish the impermissibility of choosing children fail. This principle applies even in relation to controversial decisions such as McCullough and Duchesneau's. For in their case, the strongest argument that they would have to face would in all likelihood have to do with the welfare of the child created thereby: that deafness is welfare-reducing, and that it is wrong deliberately to created a child with lower welfare than it might otherwise have enjoyed. Yet, says Wilkinson, even this claim is weak. Partly this has to do with a scepticism about whether choosing for a disability is necessarily the same as choosing for a lower quality of life; partly it has to do with a claim that, even if disabled, people overwhelmingly have a life worth living, and that since this is the only life they could possibly have lived, there is no sense in which they could be said to suffer from a wrongful life; partly it is because the impersonal 'Same Number Quality Claim' - the idea that we ought to select for a higher quality of life whenever possible - does not reliably tell us that all examples of selecting for disability are wrong, and so, even at its strongest, will not tell us that this particular instance of choosing disability is de facto wrong.

Ronald Bailey: Plastic Brains, Femmebots, and Aliens Watching TV

2010-06-24T20:17:00.002-04:00

Reason Online's science correspondant Ronald Bailey has published his account of the Humanity+ Summit recently held at Harvard University.

NYT: Merely Human? That’s So Yesterday

2010-06-24T19:55:00.003-04:00

I'm sure most of you have caught this by now, but the New York Times recently published a 5,000 word article about the Singularity University, Ray Kurzweil, and the technological Singularity. All the usual suspects are referenced within, including the IEET's James Hughes, Terry Grossman, Peter Thiel, Peter Diamandis, Andrew Hessel, Sonia Arrison, and William S. Bainbridge.

A taste of the article:

Richard A. Clarke, former head of counterterrorism at the National Security Council, has followed Mr. Kurzweil’s work and written a science-fiction thriller, “Breakpoint,” in which a group of terrorists try to halt the advance of technology. He sees major conflicts coming as the government and citizens try to wrap their heads around technology that’s just beginning to appear.

“There are enormous social and political issues that will arise,” Mr. Clarke says. “There are vast groups of people in society who believe the earth is 5,000 years old. If they want to slow down progress and prevent the world from changing around them and they engaged in political action or violence, then there will have to be some sort of decision point.”

Mr. Clarke says the government has a contingency plan for just about everything — including an attack by Canada — but has yet to think through the implications of techno-philosophies like the Singularity. (If it’s any consolation, Mr. Long of the Defense Department asked a flood of questions while attending Singularity University.)

Mr. Kurzweil himself acknowledges the possibility of grim outcomes from rapidly advancing technology but prefers to think positively. “Technological evolution is a continuation of biological evolution,” he says. “That is very much a natural process.”

Disturbing fact revealed in the article: Google and Microsoft employees trailed only members of the military as the largest individual contributors to Ron Paul’s 2008 presidential campaign.

For a curious and infuriating response to the NYT article, be sure to check out Pete Shank's "A Singular Kind of Eugenics," but be warned: the bullshit factor is off the charts (e.g. Shank is terribly confused about the history of transhumanism, particularly the role and evolution of the Extropy Institute, the World Transhumanist Association, Humanity+ and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies).

Singularity Summit 2010: August 14-15

2010-06-24T19:07:00.006-04:00

The Singularity Summit for 2010 has been announced and will be held on August 14-15 at the San Francisco Hyatt Regency. Be sure to register soon.

This year's Summit, which is hosted by the Singularity Institute, will focus on neuroscience, bioscience, cognitive enhancement, and other explorations of what Vernor Vinge called 'intelligence amplification' -- the other route to the technological Singularity.

Of particular interest to me will be the talk given by Irene Pepperberg, author of "Alex & Me," who has pushed the frontier of animal intelligence with her research on African Gray Parrots. She will be exploring the ethical and practical implications of non-human intelligence enhancement and of the creation of new intelligent life less powerful than ourselves.

A sampling of the speakers list includes:

Ray Kurzweil, inventor, futurist, author of The Singularity is Near
James Randi, skeptic-magician, founder of the James Randi Educational Foundation
Dr. Anita Goel, a leader in the field of bionanotechnology, Founder & CEO, Nanobiosym, Inc.
Dr. Irene Pepperberg, leading investigator of animal intelligence, trainer of the African Grey Parrot "Alex"
Prof. Alan Snyder, Director, Centre for the Mind at the University of Sydney, researcher in brain-computer interfaces
Prof. Steven Mann, augmented reality pioneer, professor at University of Toronto, "world's first cyborg"
Dr. Gregory Stock, bioethicist and biotech entrepreneur, author of Engineering Humans: Our Inevitable Genetic Future
Dr. Ellen Haber-Katz, a professor at the Wistar Institute who studies rapid-regenerating mice
Joe Z. Tsien, scholar at the Medical College of Georgia, who created a strain of "Doogie Mouse" with twice the memory of average mice
Eliezer Yudkowsky, research fellow with the Singularity Institute
Michael Vassar, president of the Singularity Institute
David Hanson, CEO of Hanson Robotics, creator of the world's most realistic humanoid robots
Demis Hassabis, research fellow at the Gatsby Computational Neuroscience Unit at the University of London

From the press release:

Will it be one day become possible to boost human intelligence using brain implants, or create an artificial intelligence smarter than Einstein? In a 1993 paper presented to NASA, science fiction author and mathematician Vernor Vinge called such a hypothetical event a "Singularity", saying "From the human point of view this change will be a throwing away of all the previous rules, perhaps in the blink of an eye". Vinge pointed out that intelligence enhancement could lead to "closing the loop" between intelligence and technology, creating a positive feedback effect.

This August 14-15, hundreds of AI researchers, robotics experts, philosophers, entrepreneurs, scientists, and interested laypeople will converge in San Francisco to address the Singularity and related issues at the only conference on the topic, the Singularity Summit. Experts in fields including animal intelligence, artificial intelligence, brain-computer interfacing, tissue regeneration, medical ethics, computational neurobiology, augmented reality, and more will share their latest research and explore its implications for the future of humanity.

FastForward Radio interview

2010-06-24T19:03:00.001-04:00

In case you missed it, here's the podcast of my recent appearance on FastForward Radio where I reviewed the recent Humanity+ Summit at Harvard.

NASA: Beware solar flares from 'huge space storm'

2010-06-23T21:05:00.003-04:00

As if we didn't already have enough to worry about, NASA is now warning of space storms that could spawn devastating solar flares. The Telegraph UK reports:

Scientists believe it could damage everything from emergency services’ systems, hospital equipment, banking systems and air traffic control devices, through to “everyday” items such as home computers, iPods and Sat Navs.

Due to humans’ heavy reliance on electronic devices, which are sensitive to magnetic energy, the storm could leave a multi-billion pound damage bill and “potentially devastating” problems for governments.

“We know it is coming but we don’t know how bad it is going to be,” Dr Richard Fisher, the director of Nasa's Heliophysics division, said in an interview with The Daily Telegraph.

“It will disrupt communication devices such as satellites and car navigations, air travel, the banking system, our computers, everything that is electronic. It will cause major problems for the world.

“Large areas will be without electricity power and to repair that damage will be hard as that takes time.”

Dr Fisher added: “Systems will just not work. The flares change the magnetic field on the earth that is rapid and like a lightning bolt. That is the solar affect.”

Technology Review: The Argument over Aging

2010-06-23T20:57:00.001-04:00

MIT's Technology Review wonders if a drug can extend good health and postpone the effects of aging. Early results are not promising:

In 2003, Sinclair made headlines around the world when he announced that the red-wine component resveratrol, which had previously been linked to a reduction in heart disease, extended life span in yeast. He argued that the compound activated one of the sirtuins and proposed that it mimicked the effects of caloric restriction. Sinclair and Westphal launched Sirtris in 2004 with the aim of developing molecules that could stimulate the enzyme much more potently. The company is developing treatments not for aging itself--which the U.S. Food and Drug Administration doesn't consider an illness--but for diseases of aging, such as diabetes, Alzheimer's, and cancer.

As Stipp recounts, hopes for antiaging drugs captured media attention and investors' imaginations. But a different conversation has played out in the academic community. Some scientists doubted whether resveratrol truly targeted the sirtuins. Researchers at drug maker Pfizer also published a study in January questioning whether one of Sirtris's newer compounds targets the enzyme. The study failed to confirm the health benefits seen in earlier trials. To make matters worse, safety concerns have arisen over one of Sirtris's resveratrol compounds. In May, Glaxo announced that it would not expand a clinical trial for multiple-myeloma patients until it better understood why some participants developed a dangerous kidney ailment.

The field of antiaging research is littered with failures, and the controversy over Sirtris's compounds highlights just how difficult it has been to transform exciting scientific discoveries about the aging process into useful drugs. As Stipp illustrates, many candidates with promising antiaging benefits later failed to work in mammals or showed conflicting results.

Published in the American Journal of Bioethics

2010-06-23T20:38:00.004-04:00

I recently co-authored an open commentary with bioethicist Linda MacDonald Glenn that has been published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Bioethics (Volume 10 Issue 7 2010).

The article, "Dignity and Agential Realism: Human, Posthuman, and Nonhuman," was in response to Fabrice Jotterand's critique of transhumanism, "Human Dignity and Transhumanism: Do Anthro-technological Devices Have Moral Status?"

I can't republish our entire article at this time, but here's a taste:

The notion that beings exist as individuals with inherent attributes (such as dignity) anterior to their representation, is a metaphysical presupposition that underlies the belief in political, linguistic, and epistemological forms of representationalism (Barad, 2003). Within the framework of representionalism, dignity is most certainly tied into capacity; it is fair, within that framework, to suggest that the diminishment or deliberate withholding of certain attributes results in the lessening of one's dignity (That being said, one should not confuse dignity with the ways in which all human persons deserve equal status in the eyes of the law). Consequently, the inverse also holds true, whether it be the alleviation of a debilitating syndrome or the augmentation of a physical or cognitive characteristic. As far as the agent in question is concerned, human or otherwise, these interventions are dignifying. Representationalism, on the other hand, separates the world into the ontologically disjointed domains of words and things. (Barad, 2003)

A performative understanding, in contrast, contests this metaphysical assumption that dignity is an inherent attribute, as if dignity existed in a vacuum, independently of an individual’s actions or interactions with other beings. A performative understanding shifts the focus from description and questions of correspondence to matters of practice, doings and/or actions; the active participation, phenomena and “intra-actions” (Barad 2003, 2007) are what help create agreed upon meaning. The phrase made popular by M. Scott Peck, “Love is as love does” is an illustration of this shift in understanding; so is Forrest Gump's “Stupid is as stupid does.”

So a performative understanding of dignity includes recognition that the dignity of a person is contingent on the ways in which they are treated by others (including institutions) and the ways in which they are capable of interacting with their external environment. What should not be tied into notions of dignity is the value of persons or the questioning of a person's degree of equality under the law. Nor should dignity tied into the Kassian notion of embodied human life—an inherently speciesist notion that carries with it unjustifiable conditions for exclusionism. Dignity is not status; rather, it is a measurement (or assessment) of the quality in which persons are treated, the depth of their interactions, and the degree to which they are capable of engaging in life. Consequently, a performative understanding of dignity recognizes it as more an issue of treatment and social justice than abstract and confusing notions about equality, value and status.

I Contact: Contact lens mouse

2010-06-23T08:33:00.005-04:00

I love this: The contact lens mouse:

Via Yanko Design:

This one’s kinda hard to swallow so take a deep breath, open your minds, and pretend it’s 2100. I CONTACT is essentially a mouse fitted to your eyeball. The lens is inserted like any other normal contact lens except it’s laced with sensors to track eye movement, relaying that position to a receiver connected to your computer. Theoretically that should give you full control over a mouse cursor. I’d imagine holding a blink correlates to mouse clicks.

The idea was originally created for people with disabilities but anyone could use it. Those of us too lazy to use a mouse now have a free hand to do whatever it is people do when they sit at the computer for endless hours. I love the idea but there is a caveat. How is the lens powered? Perhaps in the future, electrical power can be harnessed from the human body, just not in a Matrix creepy-like way.

Economist: Humanity is about to confront its true nature

2010-06-23T08:24:00.004-04:00

Noting the tenth anniversary of the reading of the human genome, The Economist issues a call to action, but not without warning:

Humanity’s foibles will be laid bare. The species’s history, from its tentative beginning in north-east Africa to its current imperial dominion, has already been revealed, just through being able to read the genome. It is now possible, too, to compare Homo sapiens with his closest relative—not the living chimpanzee, with whom he parted company perhaps 5m years ago, but the extinct Neanderthal, a true human. That will do what philosophers have dreamed of, but none has yet accomplished: show just what it is that makes Homo sapiens unique. The genome will answer, too, the age-old question of original sin. By showing what is nature, it will reveal what is nurture—and thus just how flexible and perfectible the human animal really is.
...
Genomics may reveal that humans really are brothers and sisters under the skin. The species is young, so there has been little time for differences to evolve. Politically, that would be good news. It may turn out, however, that some differences both between and within groups are quite marked. If those differences are in sensitive traits like personality or intelligence, real trouble could ensue.

People must be prepared for this possibility, and ready to resist the excesses of racialism, nationalism and eugenics that some are bound to propose in response. That will not be easy. The liberal answer is to respect people as individuals, regardless of the genetic hand that they have been dealt. Genetic knowledge, however awkward, does not change that.

On Skeptically Speaking this Friday

2010-06-22T21:31:00.004-04:00

I will be on Skeptically Speaking this coming Friday June 25 at 8:00PM EST. I will be having a conversation/debate about transhumanism with World of Weird Things blogger Greg Fish. More specifically, we will "explore the predictions and the problems in the quest to “enhance” human beings."

While the show will be broadcast live over the air on CJSR 88.5 in Edmonton, it will also be made available live over the internet (and eventually distributed to over 22 radio stations across North America). It's also a call-in show, so feel free to call me during the broadcast.

Peter Singer on artificial life: Scientists playing God will save lives

2010-06-22T20:43:00.002-04:00

Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer provides his take on the recent synthetic life breakthrough:

Patenting life was taken a step further in 1984, when Harvard University successfully applied for a patent on its "oncomouse", a laboratory mouse specifically designed to get cancer easily, so that it would be more useful as a research tool. There are good grounds for objecting to turning a sentient being into a patented laboratory tool, but it is not so easy to see why patent law should not cover newly designed bacteria or algae, which can feel nothing and may be as useful as any other invention.

Indeed, Synthia's very existence challenges the distinction between living and artificial that underlies much of the opposition to "patenting life" – though pointing this out is not to approve the granting of sweeping patents that prevent other scientists from making their own discoveries in this important new field.

As for the likely usefulness of synthetic bacteria, the fact that Synthia's birth had to compete for headlines with news of the world's worst-ever oil spill made the point more effectively than any public-relations effort could have done. One day, we may be able to design bacteria that can quickly, safely, and effectively clean up oil spills. And, according to Venter, if his team's new technology had been available last year, it would have been possible to produce a vaccine to protect ourselves against H1N1 influenza in 24 hours, rather than several weeks.

Hmmm, now who else recently said we shouldn't patent sentient life and use it as a laboratory tool? Oh, yeah—that was me at the Humanity+ Summit at Harvard last week.