Transhumanist FAQ
6. Practicalities
6.6 Won’t it be boring to live forever in a perfect world?
Why not try it and see?
“Perfection” is a vague and treacherous word. There is considerable disagreement among transhumanists about what kind of perfection is attainable and desirable, either in theory or in practice. It is probably wiser to speak of improving the world, rather than making it “perfect”. Would it be boring to live for an indefinitely long time in a greatly improved world? The world could surely be improved over the way it is now, including becoming less boring. If you got rid of the pain and stress associated with, say, filling out annual tax returns, people would probably not sit around afterward saying: “Life feels meaningless now that I no longer have income tax forms to fill out.”
Admittedly, material improvements to the environment may not, in themselves, be sufficient to bring about lasting happiness. If your accustomed fare is bread and water, then a box of cookies can be a feast. But if every night you eat out at fancy restaurants, such fine fare will soon seem ordinary and normal; and any lesser feast, such as a box of cookies, would be insulting by comparison. Some cognitive scientists speculate that we each have a “set point” of happiness, to which we soon return regardless of changes in the environment. There may be considerable truth to the folk wisdom that an expensive new car does not make you happier (or rather, it makes you happier, but only temporarily). In some ways, human minds and brains are just not designed to be happy. Fortunately, there are several potential viewpoints from which to go about addressing this challenge.
Apes engage in activities that we, as humans, would find repetitive and dull. In the course of becoming smarter, we have become bored by things that would have interested our ancestors. But at the same time we have opened up a vast new space of possibilities for having fun – and the new space is much larger than the previous one. Humans are not simply apes who can obtain more bananas using our intelligence as a tool. Our intelligence enables us to desire new things, such as art, science, and mathematics. If at any point in your indefinitely long life you become bored with the greatly improved world, it may only indicate that the time has come to bump up your intelligence another increment.
If the human brain has a “set point” of happiness to which it returns, maybe this is a design flaw and should be fixed – one of those things that we will end up defining as human, but not humane. It would probably be unwise to eliminate boredom entirely, since boredom can serve to prevent us from wasting too much time on monotonous and meaningless activities. But if we’re doing new things, learning, growing more intelligent, and we still aren’t happy, for no better reason than that our cognitive architecture is badly designed, then perhaps it is time to redesign it. Present clinical mood-drugs are crude, but nonetheless they can sometimes restore interest and enthusiasm for life – sometimes tiredness and despair has no interesting reason behind it and is simply an imbalance of brain chemistry. Only by compartmentalizing our thinking to a high degree can we imagine a world where there is mature molecular nanotechnology and superhuman artificial intelligence, but the means are still lacking to control the brain circuitry of boredom. Fundamentally, there is no reason why pleasure, excitement, profound well-being and simple joy at being alive could not become the natural, default state of mind for all who desire it.
Ed Regis (1990, p. 97) suggests the following points also be considered:
1. Ordinary life is sometimes boring. So what?
2. Eternal life will be as boring or as exciting as you make it.
3. Is being dead more exciting?
4. If eternal life becomes boring, you will have the option of ending it at any time.
Transhumanism is not about a fancier car, more money, or clever gadgetry, even though this is what the media presents to us as “science” and “advanced technology”; transhumanism is about genuine changes to the human condition, including increased intelligence and minds better suited to the achievement of happiness.
References:
Pearce, D. The Hedonistic Imperative. (2003) http://www.hedweb.com
Regis, E. Great Mambo Chicken and the Transhuman Condition. (Penguin Books: New York, 1990).
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