International Philosophical Congress - Seoul Jul 30-Aug 5, 2008

The World Congresses of Philosophy are organized every five years by the International Federation of Philosophical Societies in collaboration with one of its member societies, which assumes responsibility for the or¬ganization of the Congress.

The XXII World Congress of Philosophy will be held from July 30 through August 5, 2008 in Seoul under the auspices of the Korean Philosophical Association. It has several aims, which are to be understood as complementary.
To call attention to the importance of philosophical reflection on philosophy itself, especially critical reflection on the diverse forms taken by contemporary philosophy and the history of philosophy.

To reflect on the tasks and functions of philosophy in the contemporary world, taking account of the contributions, expectations, and gaps in philosophical awareness that are associated with other disciplines such as the natural and humane sciences, with political, religious, social, economic, financial, technological, etc, activities, as well as with diverse cultures and traditions.

The first World Congress to be held in Asia, the Seoul Congress presents a clear invitation to rethink the nature, roles, and responsibilities of philosophy and of philosophers in the age of globalization. It is committed to paying heed to the problems, conflicts, inequalities, and injustices connected with the development of a planetary civilization that is at once multicultural and techno-scientific.

The main theme of the Congress will be developed, according to the tradition of the World Congresses, in the following four plenary sessions and five symposia.

PLENARY SESSIONS

1. Rethinking Moral. Social and Political Philosophy: Democracy, Justice and Globol Responsibility
2. Rethinking Metaphysics and Aesthetics: Reality, Beauty and the Meaning of Life

3. Rethinking Epistemology, Philosophy of Science and Technology: Knowledge and Culture
4. Rethinking History of Philosophy and Comparative Philosophy: Traditions, Critique and Dialogue

SYMPOSIA

1. Conflict and Tolerance Globalization and Cosmopolitanism
2. Bioethics, Environmental Ethics and Future Generations
3. Tradition, Modernity and Post-modernity: Eastern and Western
4. Perspectives of Philosophy in Korea

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/07/30 • (0) Comments •

WorldFuture 2008: Seeing the Future Through New Eyes

WorldFuture 2008: Seeing the Future Through New Eyes
July 26-28, 2008 • Hilton Washington • Washington, D.C.

José Cordeiro will be speaking at the conference.

Link

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/07/26 • (0) Comments •

Neural Interfaces Conference - Cleveland

The Neural Interfaces Conference will be held June 16-18th, 2008, at the Intercontinental Hotel in Cleveland, OH (http://www.cleveland-conferencecenter.intercontinental.com/ ).

This new conference will build from the Neural Interfaces Workshop, an annual meeting supported by the NIH from 2004 through 2006 as well as the preceding Neural Prostheses Workshop which ran for 37 years in Bethesda, MD. With NIH funding support, the NIC will continue to focus on developments in neural prosthesis and deep brain stimulation fields.

In recognition of the growth of the neural interfaces field, the NIC represents an evolution of the meeting from a NIH-focused workshop, to a
conference for the community of scientists, engineers, and clinicians who are involved neural interfaces R&D.

Access to conference web-site will soon be available listing the plenary session titles, breakout session topics, and providing the timeline for
registration, abstract submission, and student travel support opportunities. Further announcements concerning the NIC will be made
through the Neural Interfaces Listserv - https://list.nih.gov/archives/nip.html.

Link

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/06/16 • (0) Comments •

Candidates for the open 2008 WTA Board of Directors seat

Jani Moliis
Ben Goertzel

Ben Goertzel

I’ve been an avid transhumanist for as long as I can remember.

Most of my time recently has been spent actively trying to bring about transformative technologies. Since 1997 I have been leading commercial software R&D projects in the area of Artificial General Intelligence, aimed at producing AI systems with general intelligence at the human level and ultimately beyond. Since 2001 I have also been working, in parallel, on the application of AI technologies in bioinformatics, with a specific focus on using AI to accelerate the path to life extension. If you’re interested in exploring my work in these areas, check out the websites of my companies Novamente LLC (novamente.net) and Biomind LLC (biomind.com).

On the more academic side, I have carried out an active research career, resulting in the publication of nearly 80 papers and ten scientific books. Before entering the software industry I served as a university faculty in several departments of mathematics, computer science and cognitive science, in the US, Australia and New Zealand.

As well as carrying out future-focused science and technology development, however, I have also been actively involved in the futurist community, via doing writing and organizing aimed at helping us to collectively better understand our future and encourage it to unfold in a positive way. I have authored two books focused on the future of technology and society: Creating Internet Intelligence (Plenum, 2001) and The Path to Posthumanity (Academica, 2006). I also co-founded the non-profit AGIRI (Artificial General Intelligence Research Institute), which organized a very successful 2006 workshop in Bethesda; and am involved in organizing the follow-up AGI-08 conference (agi-08.org) conference which will be in Memphis in March 2008.

I am also the Director of Research of the Singularity Institute for AI, and in this role am working with Bruce Klein, Eliezer Yudkowsky, Tyler Emerson and my other colleagues there to better understand how the human race may go about creating a positive future for humanity that also includes very advanced AI systems.

My motivation in running for the WTA board is a desire to become engaged with a broader variety of transhumanists around the world; to assist the WTA via my experience in managing organizations, and doing fundraising and publicity in various contexts; and also, potentially, to contribute my expertise and experience in science and business to help the WTA connect more closely with individuals doing transhumanist-focused R&D in commerce and academia. Transhumanism is a damn important meme—I would love if the WTA could find ways to help bring a more strongly transhuman and more positive world about more quickly!!

I am physically based in Washington DC, but I travel to San Francisco roughly 10 times per year, so if elected I will have frequent options for F2F communications with James Clement (whom I know fairly well F2F already), and any other WTA members who may be based in the Bay area.

General information about my human life can be found at my website, goertzel.org

Jani Moliis

I’m seeking an extension to what has so far been a two-year position on the WTA Board. When I ran for the WTA Board for the first time two years ago, I wrote in my candidate statement: “On the Board of the WTA, I would like to focus on good management… It is my explicit goal to ensure that all sources of friction are dealt with in a democratic and transparent way, before they get the opportunity to become conflicts detrimental to our common goals. I’m known to be a calm mediator, who attempts to gain the trust of all sides in a dispute.”

I’m extremely glad that during the last two years, there has not been any need for any mediating skills, but that even heated debates have been carried out in a (mostly) civilized manner, or have been halted before turning sour. So that part of my goals for my Board position has remained untested, and hopefully will continue to remain so. As for other aspects of good management and transparency, I have been emphasizing these in my role as the Treasurer for the WTA, a duty I’m
willing to continue if re-elected to the Board. With the tiny cash flows of the WTA (around $8,000 in 2006), it seems almost tragicomic that there have been accusations of misconduct in the past. However, to alleviate the risk of such accusations ever rising again, I have created transparency in WTA finances by reporting them regularly to the Board, as well as submitting the annual financial statements for membership approval. These kinds of transparency-enhancing procedures will become ever-more important as WTA’s funds will increase in the near future. That is why, looking forward, I feel that good management is still highly relevant, and something I believe I can bring to the Board effectively.

Background: I was born in 1980 in Helsinki, Finland and have lived there as well as in Mexico, Sri Lanka and Austria. I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree in International Relations from Webster University as well as a Master of Social Sciences degree in political science from the University of Helsinki. I am married, have a two-month old daughter, and currently work as a management consultant for Accenture. I am a founding member of the Finnish Transhumanist Association and its Chair since 2006.

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/04/03 • (0) Comments •

Association Francaise Technoprogressiste

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/03/19 • (0) Comments •

Site and Mailing List Outage

Hopefully some of you noticed that the WTA website was down for three days, and that our email lists are still down. That is because the servers in London that host the WTA, the Journal of Evolution and Technology, the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a variety of other like-minded groups was brought down by a hack attack last week. The servers have now been rebuilt, but our email list is still inexplicably down. We’re working on it, and hopefully will have it fixed shortly. We have no idea whether the attack was ideologically motivated or not.

Posted by secretary on 2008/03/17 • (0) Comments •

Nanofactory or AGI — Which technology could cure humanity’s many problems?

by Natasha Vita-More

There are a number of supposed shifts on the horizon. The most publicly talked about shift is the impending Singularity when greater-than-human-intelligence will come to pass. However, in the nanotechnology communities are other ramblings singularities, such as when the personal, desktop nanofactory are will come about. In fact, some transhumanists are arguing not just about which will come first—molecular manufacturing or artificial general intelligence—but about which technology will ultimately prove to be the cure for human suffering worldwide.

“It is necessary to keep one’s compass in one’s eyes and not in the hand, for the hands execute, but the eye judges.” Michelangelo Buonarroti

In order to discern the arrival of one ahead of the other, or the proposed curative strength of one over the other, we would have to select a few ills, which spread across continents: poor sanitation, starvation, disease, pollution, poverty, insufficient medicine and healthcare, human rights issues, and corrupt governments and war. How could either or both molecular manufacturing or artificial general intelligence begin to address these long-outstanding worldwide problems of immense proportion?

The nanofactory is a conceptual desktop molecular manufacturing system. Its proposed job would be to build a variety of large diamonoid products. According to Robert Freitas, the nanofactury would employ a “controlled molecular assembly that will make possible the creation of fundamentally novel products having the intricate complexity currently found only in biological systems, but operating with grater speed, power, reliability, and, most importantly, entirely under human control” while spitting out a precise assembly of products atom-by-atom. While this sentence could compete with Buckminster Fuller’s lengthy language, its meaning is clear: the nanofactory could change the way people look at materiality.

Materiality would no longer be a measure of status quo because everyone everywhere would be able to build products from their desktop nanofactory. To put it simply, by delivering materials, such as carbon, into the nanofactory, the nanofactory would then take the carbons and rearranged them, atom by atom, and turn them into tangible products. For example, a person could download a furniture diagram from the Internet and assign the plan to the nanofactury to produce a product, such as a designer chair. The nanofactory would then infuse with carbon, turn the carbon around and output something like a Wassily chair (Marcel Breuer 1925). With a little more seriousness and b it less Bauhaus, the nanofactory could significantly address poverty, for example, by producing essential products that people need to build better sanitation in their habitats, provide housing, medical equipment, and so forth.

At the SC07 International Conference for High Performance Computing, Networking, Storage and Analysis conference, Professor Neil Gershenfeld’s keynote “Programming Bits and Atoms”, Gershenfeld described a worldwide paradigm shift of a proportion equal to the Singularity. Gershenfeld, Director of MIT’s Center for Bits and Atoms, foresees the desktop computer moving over to allow space for the desktop nanofactury. According to Gershenfeld, people will actually be able to print 3-D objects as efficiently and amply as computers today print out glossy color images. In his book FAB he and his colleagues describe how their global “fab labs” could provide problem-solving alternatives to, for example, peoples in small villages in India wherein “their lab [could] develop devices for monitoring food safety and agricultural engine efficiency.”

The timeframe for nanofacturing could be anywhere from 20 years to 100 years, depending on who is forecasting. Surely, there will be substantial concerns about potential dangers and hazards of such anyone, anywhere producing objects that could be to the detriment of society. That is not the topic of this short article. I am looking speculatively at AGI and/or nanofacturing and their potential to help alleviate some of the world’s many immediate and wearisome problems that are hurting people and taking human lives by the thousands on a daily basis.

A vastly different technological concept to molecular manufactoring, is AGI which when built will obtain the ability to solve numerous complex problems in a variety of complex environments. According to the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, “[w]e expect the ethical and significant enhancement of cognition will help solve contemporary challenges - disease and illness, poverty and hunger - more readily than other charitable pursuits.”

I remember having a conversation with AGI specialist Peter Voss, entrepreneur and founder of Adaptive A.I. Inc., who states that his company’s AGI “is based on a specific theoretical model of high-level intelligence developed over the past decade.” Voss told me that if it were between nanotechnology and AGI, that AGI offered a better solution for addressing and resolving worldwide problems because of the very fact that AGI would provide far better and more efficient, capable intelligence with enormous reserves of knowledge—vastly more than any human mind or groups of brilliant minds could muster. For example, an AGI could contemplate and problem-solve such issues as poor sanitation, starvation, disease, pollution, poverty, insufficient medicine and healthcare, and human rights issues, and corrupt governments and war.

What does this mean for transhumanists? In large part, it means that we have to accept the fact that we are not so intelligent and need the help of greater-than-human-intelligence. It also means that we have to start planning now for a watershed of doomsayers who will claim that the marvels of molecular manufacturing’s nanofacturies and AGI’s supper intelligences will open a very large can of worms. We must arm ourselves with two treaties: first, the ability to admit that we do not know what in fact will happen in the future; and second, the ability to be courageously proactive in addressing the risks of these two pending technologies.

Al Gore has made the phrase “existential risk” a red carpet, Oscar-moment of prestige. Benny Peiser, social anthropologist, has taken the phrase and added paradox to it by noting that “proliferation of democratic liberalism and free market economies around the world has dramatically curtailed the death toll associated with natural disasters and diseases. … Yet the very same technologies that re serving us to analyze, predict and prevent potential disasters have reached such a level of sophistication and potency that their misuse can transform vital survival tools into destructive forces, thus becoming existential risks in their own right.”

This is a big dilemma. We must work diligently to address risk, and a number of organizations and philosophers and theoreticians are doing just that. If we apply the “Minipawf Principle” (minimize the probability of awful outcomes), but no matter how carefully constructed the strategy or collection of scenarios, even if there is spectrum of differing estimates on how much we can minimize risks, there must be a potentially great achievement. The technologies must offer great achievement or not. If the achievement is not forecast to be truly great, then the probability for risk is not worth the effort.

Further, I’m not entirely sure they are addressing probable risks when considering the issue of which comes first—AGI or the desktop nanofactory. This in and of itself could offer a new set of scenarios and deliberation for transhumanists. In addition, while there are two suggested paradigm shifts on the horizon—super intelligence brining about a Singularity and/or nanofacturing bringing about worldwide abundance—transhumanists may not be so concerned with which one comes first. Of greater consequence is which one could potentially be more crucial, especially in the development and ethical pursuit of the other and prove to be a viable cure for poor sanitation, starvation, disease, pollution, and poverty.

“Take into account that great love and great achievements involve great risk."- Dali Lama

Notes:

Freitas, R. “What is a Nanofactory?” http://www.molecularassembler.com/Nanofactory/
SC07 program http://sc07.supercomp.org/?pg=keynote.html
Gershenfeld, N. (2005) FAB, New York: Basic Books.
Id. http://books.google.com/books?id=hd-B3-pC4UgC&printsec=frontcover&vq=%22fab%22+gershenfeld#PPA12,M1
http://www.agiri.org/forum/index.php?showtopic=88&mode=threaded
http://adaptiveai.com
Peiser, B. (2007) “Existential risk and democratic peace”, BBC News. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7081804.stm

Link

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/01/25 • (0) Comments •

Executive Summary of the 2007 WTA Member Survey

Full report available here

Report on the 2007 Interests and Beliefs Survey of the Members of the World Transhumanist Association

Prepared by
James J. Hughes, Ph.D.
Secretary, World Transhumanist Association

January 2008

For more information please contact

James Hughes Ph.D.
Secretary
World Transhumanist Association
http://transhumanism.org
secretary@transhumanism.org
Box 128, Willington CT 06279 USA
(office) 860-297-2376

Executive Summary

This survey was fielded in December 2007 over the course of ten days. The survey was fielded to everyone we considered members (N=4642) whose email addresses still worked (N=3737). Of those 760 people responded, compared to 606 in 2003 and 586 in 2005. This was a lower response rate (20%) than the 2003 and 2005 surveys (26% and 36% respectively). A majority of respondents (52%) had joined in the last two years, and the response rate from more recent joiners was higher than from pre-2002 joiners. However the stability of the frequencies in this report suggest that there is not a large problem of comparability between the years, although the response biases are of course unknown. Voting members were much more likely to respond (69%) than basic members (18%).

Respondents represented US and non-US members, basic and full members, and our too-few non-male members, in a reasonably balanced way. The percent of non-US respondents rose in this sample was 57%, reflecting their actual proportion in our membership base. As in 2003, roughly 90% of the sample was male. The median age of the respondents in both 2003 and 2005 is roughly the same, about 30-33. Approximately one in five of our members have disabilities. Curiously there was no relationship between the age of the member and the likelihood of having a disability or chronic illness.

Comfort with “Transhumanist” Identity

The second question on the survey was about how comfortable the respondent felt about identifying as a transhumanist. Although all respondents had signed up as WTA members through the website membership form, some had done so in order to get access to the website and newsletter. For the subsequent analyses the 5% who said “I am not a transhumanist” were excluded. Also, compared to 2003, there was an increase in the percent of respondents who were full members and a decrease in the percent who did not consider themselves transhumanists.

Satisfaction with the WTA and Transhumanism

Satisfaction with the WTA remains very high. Fully 83% of the respondents say they are satisfied with the WTA overall, down slightly from the 90% satisfied in 2003. Satisfaction of US and non-US members is roughly equal.

Satisfaction with the Transvision conferences (for those who attended) was relatively high, while satisfaction with the “WTA Activism” remains the lowest. Of all respondents, 50% thought our activism was fair or poor, compared to only 39% who thought the WTA website was fair or poor.

Three quarters of transhumanists say they are likely to recommend that someone join the WTA.

One question related to satisfaction with whether respondents thought we were too utopian or too pragmatic. The 8% of respondents who felt we were too pragmatic, and the 19% of members who felt we were too utopian, were less satisfied than the three quarters of members who felt we had the right balance of utopianism and pragmatism.

As in 2003, “interest in transhumanism” was the principal reason noted for joining, followed by “intellectual stimulation.” Activism was only cited as a reason by 40% of members, and networking only by 20%.

Two thirds of respondents think our voting member dues are “about right” (71% last time and 68% this time). Members in the developing world were more likely to think full membership dues were too high (31% versus 14%). Only 13% of respondents say they would never pay full voting membership dues.

Conferences

Four in ten respondents were very likely to attend conferences in their own country, but only 6% were very likely to attend a conference in another country. This is generally true for Americans and non-Americans.

Attitudes

A part of this survey was a set of attitudes that respondents were asked to agree or disagree with. We used responses to these questions in 2005 to create a 10 question self-diagnostic for whether someone is a transhumanist:

Ten “Are you a Transhumanist?” Questions

Yeses

95% Do you believe that people have a right to use technology to extend their mental and physical (including reproductive) capacities and to improve their control over their own lives?

95% [Noes] Do you think human genetic engineering is wrong because it is “playing God”?

94% Do you think that by being generally open and embracing of new technology we have a better chance of turning it to our advantage than if we try to ban or prohibit it?

93% Do you expect human progress to result from human accomplishment rather than divine intervention, grace, or redemption?

93% Do you think it would be a good thing if people could become many times more intelligent than they currently are?

87% Do you think it would be a good thing if people could live (in good health) for hundreds of years or longer?*

83% Do you believe women should have the right to terminate their pregnancies?

82% Does your ethical code advocate the well-being of all sentient beings, whether in artificial intellects, humans, posthumans, or non- human animals?

80% Would you consider having your mind uploaded to computers if it was the only way you could continue as a conscious person?

77% Should parents be able to have children through cloning once the technology is safe?

* “In good health” was added in 2007

There was little change on the consensus around these issues.

If we use agreement with more than half of these statements as a self-diagnostic for whether someone is probably a transhumanist, this would include 98% of all the respondents to this survey who were “very comfortable” calling themselves transhumanists.

Since a change in the anti-aging question to add “in good health” appeared to garner an additional 7% of affirmation for life extension it s also interesting that we added a question about what to call our advocacy for anti-aging medicine. A plurality voted for “life extension.”

Politics and Religion

Asking about political self-identity, there is a substantial trend toward increasing left-wing orientation, from 36% of respondents in 2003 to 47% in 2007. The category “technoprogressive” was offered for the first time this year, and garnered 16% of the respondents. The increase in left-wing orientations was accompanied by slight declines in the libertarian, conservative, apolitical and other categories.

In regards religious views, the dominant secularism of the WTA membership remains unchanged at almost two thirds of all members (atheist, agnostic, secular humanist or some other secular philosophy). This year we asked about “other” religious or non-religious views and were able to reclassify many of the formerly other or nones to existing or new religious categories. For instance 1% of respondents listed “pantheist” or “scientific pantheist” as either a religious or secular philosophy.

We also asked about whether transhumanism was compatible with religion. Our members are all over the map on this question, whether secular or religious. The majority of the religious or spiritual believed transhumanism was compatible with religion, although 8% believed it was incompatible with “religion” (although not presumably with their beliefs). The majority of the seculars believed transhumanism could be compatible with or synthesized with at least some form of religion, although a third believed transhumanism was incompatible with religion.

Other Organizational Memberships

There have been notable increases in the proportion of respondents who belong to political parties (one in five) and the Transhumanist Student Network (one in ten). More than four in ten belong to Facebook.

Posted by secretary on 2008/01/15 • (0) Comments •

2008 WTA Board Elections

Five WTA Board members’ terms expire this month, and eight candidates are standing for election to replace them. WTA Board members set policy goals and oversee their implementation, contributing with their experience and expertise to the WTA’s work. The term of service for these seats is two years, which for these five open positions means Jan 20, 2008 - Jan 19, 2010.

Voting in this election is open to all dues-paying, voting ("supporting" or “sustaining") members of the association in good standing as of 7pm EST/midnight GMT of Saturday January 5th, 2008.

Voting will take place from Monday January 7th, 2008 to 7pm EST/midnight GMT of Sunday January 13th, 2008.

If you are a voting member and do not receive a link to the balloting on Monday please contact the Assistant Director.

Posted by secretary on 2008/01/05 • (0) Comments •

Candidates for the 2008-2010 WTA Board of Directors seats

Michael Anissimov
Nick Bostrom
Tyler Emerson
Ben Goertzel
James J. Hughes
Bruce Klein
Eugen Leitl
Jani Moliis
Guido Núñez-Mujica

Michael Anissimov

I’m a science writer and transhumanist activist living in the San Francisco Bay Area. I write a blog on futurist issues, Accelerating Future. I co-founded the Immortality Institute and the SF Bay Area chapter of the WTA, BA-Trans. I’m a part of the Lifeboat Foundation, where I look into ways to prevent human extinction risks. I’ve given talks in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, and at Yale University.

My involvement with organized transhumanism goes back to 2001. I know hundreds of transhumanists on a first-name basis, and if I don’t know you yet, I’d be pleased to meet or chat.

Located in the Bay Area, I am ideally positioned to meet face-to-face with the WTA’s new Executive Director, James Clement, attend frequent local H+ oriented events, and communicate with the media, as I already do regularly. I am free to meet with any WTA members living or visiting the area, a crossroads for many. I am very well-connected to transhumanists both locally and globally and hope to get even better connected.

The WTA is all about the local chapters. We need to deemphasize mailing list debate and emphasize getting on the front page in our respective cities. By making ourselves visible, talking to reporters, scientists, futurists, tech entrepreneurs, and others, we can continue to push transhumanist discussions to the forefront of futurism in general.

Transhumanists deserve an organization that reflects the breathtaking wonder of our vision. By working together, we can continue to grow the WTA until it becomes firmly established and widely respected.

As far as personal interests, a pressing concern of mine lately is perfecting deep-fried tofu.

Nick Bostrom

My involvement with the transhumanist movement now goes back more than ten years. We have come a long way in this time, both internally in terms of development of ideas and organization, and externally in terms of the public becoming more aware of transhumanist topics and views. These developments should accelerate over the coming years. In its next stage, I would like to see the WTA mature into a well-run global grassroots advocacy organization that is effective in giving responsible forms of transhumanism a public voice. To accomplish this, we must achieve two objectives. First, we need to demonstrate that we are capable of mature, well-considered, socially-responsible judgment---by developing and articulating a transhumanist outlook that is relevant, trustworthy, and attractive to much broader constituencies than our current core support groups. Second, we must build our organizational capacity by fundraising to enable us to hire some staff. These objectives are mutually supporting.

Some personal background… I’m one of the founders of the WTA (together with David Pearce, in 1998). I’ve been the Chair of the organization since 2002, and its general-purpose “coordinator” before that. For a time I served as the editor-in-chief of the Journal of Evolution and Technology. I led the collaborative project that produced the original Transhumanist FAQ and the revised version published in 2003, and I coordinated the writing of the Transhumanist Declaration. I’ve written extensively on wide variety of transhumanist matters, for both academic and lay audiences. Preprints of many of my papers can be found on my website, http://www.nickbostrom.com .

Some more background… I am the director of the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University. I previously taught in the Faculty of Philosophy and in the Institute for Social and Policy Studies at Yale University. My research covers the foundations of probability theory, philosophy of science, global catastrophic risks, and the ethical, practical, strategic issues related to human transformation and emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence and nanotechnology. I’ve published some 130 papers and articles, including research papers in Nature, Mind, Journal of Philosophy, Ethics, Bioethics, Journal of Medical Ethics, Astrophysics & Space Science, along with one monograph, Anthropic Bias (Routledge, New York, 2002), and two edited volumes with Oxford University Press (forthcoming, 2008), one on human enhancement ethics, the other on global catastrophic risks. My writings have been translated into 16 languages. I’ve done more than 260 interviews with television, radio, and print media, including BBC, CNN, NBC, ABC, PBS, CBC, Discovery Channel, Financial Times, New York Times, Washington Times, The New Yorker, Der Spiegel, The Sunday Times, The Guardian, Nature, New Scientist, and Forbes. I have also been invited to advise various governmental agencies in the UK, Europe, and the USA.

Tyler Emerson

Background: Singularity Institute Executive Director and Singularity Summit Curator. Entrepreneurial mindset. I get shit done. If I fall short, it’s not for lack of effort. Workaholic, so I can make time for WTA and Methuselah Foundation (advisor). I bring people together and work hard to move the dial forward. I can’t stand internal politics and nonsense. Demanding of myself and others. Collaborative and encouraging, but straightforward. Not afraid to accept or dole out honest feedback. Open to having my views changed, but will push for views that I hold strongly.

Recent work: Co-created Singularity Summit in 2006 with Kurzweil and major underwriting from Thiel. Co-organized second summit in 2007 with Bruce Klein: 18 speakers, 40 press, nearly 1,000 people. Raised $500K through 2007 Singularity Challenge. Conceived Singularity Institute Research Grants (still securing trial-phase underwriting).

WTA: Met Clement two months ago; liked what I heard. Kept in touch. Learned in mid-November about LEF’s $12.5K matching grant. Suggested finding funds to double matching fund pool, giving up to $50K in starting cash for ‘08. Said I would help make this happen. Conceived matching grant webpage; worked with Clement and skilled designer to implement. Brought together pieces for t-shirt (thanks E.W. Scott and Simone Syed) and student outreach trial-run (thanks Todd Huffman).

Ben Goertzel

I’ve been an avid transhumanist for as long as I can remember.

General information about my human life can be found at my website, goertzel.org

James J. Hughes

Background: I’m a married forty six year-old father of two children. I have a doctorate in Sociology from the University of Chicago, and my focus has been bioethics, medical sociology, health policy and organizational sociology. I teach in the Public Policy Program at Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut USA, where I also work as an administrator.

For the last five years I have served as Secretary of the WTA Board, managing membership, chapter communications and discussion lists. I served as the WTA’s first Executive Director from 2004-2006. In 2004 I founded and serve as Executive Director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. I am editor of the Journal of Evolution and Technology. I produce the weekly syndicated public affairs talk show Changesurfer Radio and am author of Citizen Cyborg (2004), an argument for democratic transhumanism, and am working on a second book, Cyborg Buddha, on the use of neurotechnologies to enhance virtues. I’ve published many scholarly articles, and appear often in the press - print, radio and television - promoting transhumanist ideas.

Vision: I believe the WTA will play a pivotal role in the biopolitical conflicts to come, and can draw together a broad, diverse and inclusive transhumanist movement. We can be a forum for vigorous, yet civil, debate of transhumanist ideas and their relationship to practical policy issues of our day, and work for universal access to safe human enhancement technologies.

My WTA agenda for the coming two years includes:

work with our new Executive Director James Clement to raise funds, create a cutting-edge, interactive website, and publish our new on-line magazine
strengthen our global network of chapters, affiliates and contacts, especially our Transhumanist Student Network, and develop local activist projects that they can undertake
build another successful Transvision conference in the summer of 2008 (presumably in San Francisco)
increase transhumanist visibility and respectability in the media, bioethics, cultural, and political milieus.

Bruce Klein

I love transhumanists - one of the most rational and caring groups of people living on this fragile blue planet - so relish the opportunity to work more closely with the World Transhumanist Association. As background, I’ve helped tangibly guide projects, events and and/or outreach efforts within the following futurist related organizations:

* Alcor Life Extension Foundation - a premier cryonics organizations (www.alcor.org)
* AGI Research Institute (co-founder) - fostering the creation of powerful and ethically positive AI (www.agiri.org)
* Immortality Institute (co-founder) - an active online social network for life extensionists (www.imminst.org)
* Lifeboat Foundation - safeguarding humanity from existential threats (www.lifeboat.com)
* Methuselah Foundation - a premier effort to eradicate aging in humans (www.mfoundation.org)
* Singularity Institute - helping to guide the accelerating progression toward powerful AI (www.singinst.org)
* Terasem Movement - helping everyone to extend personal cyberconsciousness (www.terasemfoundation.org)

(Note: the descriptions above are my own and should not be interpreted as an official statement from the organization. For that, please visit the respective organization’s website, where you’ll find a wealth of valuable, humanity-saving information, along with more precise definitions of missions, etc.)

My goal for WTA during my potential term on the Board is to advance existing efforts to enhance the organization’s public profile, aiming to attract a larger supporting membership base. I also look forward to helping with events and projects as they arise and as time permits, for I do have a “day-job” working as President of Novamente LLC, which I believe has a great chance to become the primary company to create powerful AI capable of accelerating humanity toward a positive Singularity - but that’s a whole other story!

My blog and biography can be found here (www.novamente.net/bruce), and relevant to WTA’s goals, I had a large part in the creation of the following two educational works (both freely available online):

* Exploring Life Extension - (www.imminst.org/film)
* The Scientific Conquest of Death - (www.imminst.org/SCOD.pdf)

It’s worth mentioning that I live in San Francisco, near James Clement, where together with Tyler Emerson and others, we’ve recently organized a Non-profit Futurist League (NFL for short) which has started to meet periodically. We’re finding opportunity and synergy, as meeting in physical form has the advantage of higher bandwidth information flow.

It’s also worth noting that in 2005, I served a few months on the WTA board, but then resigned because I felt leadership was broken. However, now I’m filled with optimism after seeing the addition of James Clement as Executive Director, and new support from Board members such as PJ Manney and Anne Corwin - two brilliant women!

Thanks warmly for your consideration. Forever, Bruce Klein

Eugen Leitl

I’m a naturally born transhumanist, 41, XY-karyotyped, married, one boy. Physical location nowadays around 48.07100, 11.36820 (WGS84), virtual mostly in Extropia Core (Second Life). Online persona at times considered caustic, but in general helpful.

My educational and professional background is in hard sciences and technology like chemistry (synthetic-, computational-, polymer-, bio-), some cryobiology, lately network and IT systems security. Apart from my professional career in cheminformatics, I moonlight as an enterpreneur in my copious free time.

As a typical transhumanist, early and current interests include—in no particular order—cypherpunks and privacy, virtual worlds, nanotechnology, cryonics, computational neuroscience and animal modeling, AI and artificial life in general. Newer activities include participating in the bootstrap of a local cryonics organization, transhumanist community-building and outreach in the current instance of the metaverse, political activism against EU-wide data retention legislation and loss of personal privacy in general.

I see my role in attempting to reverse some of the transhumanist community fragmentation we’ve seen recently. I would like to see the WTA become a unifying force across all political quadrants and all flavours of transhumanism. We are so few we can’t afford not to focus on our common goals instead on our differences.

I promise to be there in the political process, early and often, representing your interests.

Jani Moliis

Guido Núñez-Mujica

Overcoming human limitations is the very essence of Transhumanism, its most basic premise. It is the quest for liberation from our biological constraints, the breaking of the evolutionary chains that still tie us to the primordial mud, that some contend we ought to return.

However, that escape from our biological fate is not something we are going to achieve automatically or easily. It is not a path without risks, nor will it be a transition that all of our fellow humans will gladly accept. It won’t be a monolithic program suitable for all tastes; not only due to our genetic individuality or the sheer multitude of choices soon to be available to us but also because our personal tastes, even more individual than our genomes, and much more plastic.

Morphological freedom is a central conviction of H+, a privilege that arises from our diversity and from the fact that we all do not think alike in many respects. Yes, we may agree on many things, from the variety of aesthetic patterns in which we can find beauty, to the revelation that there is no single and “correct” path to enlightenment and happiness.

We want to embrace and expand this freedom, we want to explore as much of this mindscape as possible, and we want to construct entirely new realms with our augmented minds – perhaps even merging with non-human (but sentient) intelligences and discovering some new truths about ourselves in the synthesis.

On the other hand, the desire for morphological freedom arises from different viewpoints and from a diversity of upbringings and backgrounds. Despite the fact that we are the World Transhumanist Association, our current ethnic and cultural diversity is not that broad.

Widespread enhancement of the human condition of billions of people could be possible with the technology we have today, but is not practical because of challenging economic and political realities. That said, we should do our best to bring about change for these billions of people by working on increasing diversification and understanding alternative viewpoints to get a broader picture.

This is not a call to cultural relativism; as heirs to Humanism and the Enlightenment, the respect of basic rights, freedom of inquiry and the pursuit of knowledge is not something that we should negotiate. The struggle to achieve equality for all sentient beings has to be one our key goals. In the future, when we will work side-by-side with other advanced intelligences, we will be witness to a partnership that strips the universe of its hidden secrets.

How can new technologies bring welfare to all neglected peoples? How can we leapfrog entire stages of development? Can we make feasible today what was not realistic last year?

These are not easy questions and we cannot solve them alone. To answer them in a satisfactory way, however, we must get answers from those people who are directly affected by these situations—and not only do what we think they want us to do.

This approach is both humane, necessary, and just; developed countries, after all, are in the minority. We, the people living in countries where basic needs are still unmet, represent the majority of the world. Any vision of the future which does not acknowledge this is certainly naïve or biased, and as technology accelerates and disseminates the developing world is going to play an increasingly interesting and pivotal role.

I have been a H+ for a long time and my first involvement with organized Transhumanists was with TransVision 2005 in Caracas, an international conference that I helped to organize. I am an undergraduate student of Biology and Computational Physics, and soon to be Guest Professor in Bioinformatics at Los Andes University, Mérida, where I am currently based.

I have been writing about science and technology since 2000 and have been the recipient of several awards, including the WTA’s Haldane Award in 2006 for my paper, “The Ethics of Enhancing Animals.” I have also worked as a consultant for the Millennium Project, implementing their State of the Future Index. Currently I am finishing my thesis on mathematical modelling of the parasite that causes Chagas’ disease, attempting to create a biotechnology startup and a community for OS drug and diagnostic development for Chagas disease here in Venezuela.

What can I offer to the WTA and its members? I am committed to adding more diversity to the association, committed to spreading the meme among the people that surround and engage me, and committed to analyzing the future from non-traditional perspectives.

Finally, I want to show to our critics that H+ is not an ideology of wealthy Caucasian people as it has oftentimes been argued. Transhumanism is a powerful world-changing idea, and Fukuyama was right, it is the world’s most dangerous idea—but only to those who exploit today’s awful situation. Today, thanks to new technologies, many of us who in previous generations would have been kept silent are now able to express ourselves and perhaps even change things.

I am thankful for this opportunity and determined to make the best of it.

Posted by mrinesi on 2008/01/03 • (0) Comments •

H+ New Year Party at Moscow

On December 31, 2007 Russian transhumanists celebrated the New Year 2008 with an H+ party. As far as we know, this was the first official transhumanist New Year party in the world.

17 people attended, including officials of the Russian Transhumanists Movement, a director of cryonics company, a mathematician, a director of medical centers, emergency medical personnel, a TV star, a lift engineer, a founders of abstinence society, several full-time transhumanists, a specialist in drug design, a specialist in mind uploading, web designers, politicians, programmers, some communists and a postmodernist (we needed someone to pick on).

Photos from the H+ New Year party

We took homeopatic doses of TV, including a completely forgettable and content-free speech by Mr. Putin, and small (albeit not homeopatic) doses of alcohol, though nobody got drunk and plenty of people didn’t drink much. Some people took Alertec (modafinil) instead and laughed at a latent biocon who didn’t. Overall, attending transhumanists were intentionally militant towards the bioconservative and religious forces outside the H+ circle, showing that calculated uses of our animal instincts can be productive.

H+ propaganda stickers

We launched some fireworks, walked around the block (swords drawn), placed some transhumanist stickers on walls, poles and windows around and returned back. But mostly it was an intellectual event with the emphasis on discussion and thinking. We talked about current enhancement technologies, the future and everything transhumanists discuss when they get together, watched some transhumanist YouTube playlists and previewed an unreleased transhumanist documentary.

It was a great New Year party and we will certainly do it again (bigger and better) next time!

Photos from the event are available at http://picasaweb.google.com/Danila.medvedev/2008.

Posted by Danila Medvedev on 2008/01/02 • (0) Comments •

Lifenaut.com

Lifenaut.com is a web-based storage space for organizing and preserving critical information about one’s unique and essential characteristics. The purpose in creating this ex-vivo consciousness storage is to preserve one’s individual consciousness so that it remains viable for possible uploading with consciousness software into a cellular regenerated or bionanotechnological body by future medicine and technology.

Link

Posted by mrinesi on 2007/12/29 •

Entrevista a Bostrom y Pearce en Cronopis

Dave y Nick son los cofundadores de la Asociación Transhumanista Mundial, una organización sin fines lucrativos para la mejora de las capacidades humanas con alta tecnología.

ANDRÉS LOMEÑA: El transhumanismo propone el uso de nuevas tecnologías para mejorar las habilidades físicas y mentales de los seres humanos, descartando algunos aspectos como la estupidez o el sufrimiento. Habéis sido descritos como tecnoutópicos por críticos que escriben sobre las exageraciones del futuro. En mi opinión, hay algo bastante peor que el optimismo: el tecnopesimismo radical, encabezado por Paul Virilio, el fallecido Baudrillard y otros pensadores. ¿Por qué hay una fuerte tensión entre los puntos de vista optimista y pesimista?

NICK BOSTROM: En realidad no puedo compartir que ninguna instancia de mi personalidad sea denominada “tecnoutópica”, aunque ciertamente es un término que ha sido aplicado al transhumanismo por algunos críticos. De hecho, hay algo de justicia en su crítica. El transhumanismo es un movimiento muy diverso, y algunos individuos que pueden llamarse a sí mismos transhumanistas pueden ser llamados, con acierto, “tecnoutópicos” en el sentido de “aceptación acrítica de la visión de que las tecnologías inevitablemente resolverán todos los grandes problemas”.

No sé si el tecnopesimismo es peor o mejor que el tecnoutopismo. Me parece que deberíamos intentar superar los sesgos en ambas direcciones (malentendidos que llevan a resultados positivos y malentendidos que llevan a resultados negativos) y asignar posibilidades basadas en la evidencia y el juicio honesto más que en la base de la ideología o el prejuicio temperamental.

DAVID PEARCE: ¿Es nuestra calidad de vida en sociedades avanzadas mejor que los ancestros de cazadores-recolectores de la Sabana africana? La respuesta parece obvia: sí. Los tecnopesimistas podrían replicar esta evidencia sugieriendo que el promedio de los más felices es pequeño. Y luego pasan a extrapolarlo. Bien, tal extrapolación es prematura. Estamos en vísperas de una transformación de la naturaleza humana en sí misma. En teoría, podemos recalibrar la rutina del hedonismo y llegar a ser más felices (relegando el pesimismo a la historia). El tecnopesimismo puede ser útil cuando estimula el pensamiento crítico de consecuencias no anticipadas de las nuevas tecnologías, planificando escenarios mal previstos y analizando mejor la relación entre riesgo/recompensa. Pero si los humanos fueramos todos realistas depresivos, entonces todavía estaríamos viviendo en cuevas. Los transhumanistas creen que podemos superar nuestras limitaciones físicas, intelectuales, emocionales (¿y morales?) como seres humanos mediante el uso resposnable de la tecnología.

Vale la pena decir que yo soy un pesimista por temperamento. Pero creo que (previsiblemente) la tecnología informática y la biotecnología nos traerán miles de millones de años de seres humanos invencibles con más fortuna que ninguna otra cosa realizable hoy.

A.L. : Wikipedia sistematiza todos los miedos y reticencias hacia el movimiento transhumanista: inviabilidad, el argumento de jugar a ser Dios, el argumento de la fuente de la juventud, de un nuevo “mundo feliz”, de Frankestein o de Terminator (basado en el libro “La hora final” de Martin Rees). ¿Cuáles de esos temas son comprensibles y cuáles no? Una crítica común suele ser la visión finalista del transhumanismo (como ocurre con el marxismo o el cristianismo, por ejemplo). En resumen, ¿cómo rebatís esos punto de vista distópicos?

N.B. : Bajo las bases del “caso por caso”, también intentando identificar los sesgos que pudieran afectar a nuestro juicio a través de un amplio rango de casos. El miedo no es algo necesariamente malo siempre que esté dirigido a algo que es realmente peligroso, y que resulta un intento constructivo de hacer algo sensato para reducir el peligro. Por ejemplo, tiene sentido estar preocupado por la enfermedad pandémica, algo que ocurre junto con la posibilidad de grandes errores en bioingeniería. Pero sentir miedo teniendo la opción de retrasar la enfermedad y la
senilidad a través de algunas terapias de rejuvenecimiento efectivas es algo perverso. De todas maneras, no creo que haya muchas personas que en realidad teman eso, aunque algunos puedan expresar oposición por razones ideológicas.

Para ilustrar cómo uno puede intentar localizar y borrar sus prejuicios sobre temas de mejora, echa un vistazo sobre los sesgos del Status Quo: http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf

D.P. : ¿Jugar a ser Dios? ¿Qué podría estar más “endiosado” que crear nueva vida? Históricamente, casi todas las culturas han tenido conexiones entre tener sexo y reproducción; nosotros no tenemos una excusa así. Por un lado, condenamos a los escritores de “malware” informático, quienes liberan código corrupto. Por otro, nosotros propagamos nuestro propio código corrupto a través de generaciones (una enfermedad genética letal, el envejecimiento, y una predisposición a los desórdenes de ansiedad, depresión y otros desagradables estados darwinistas de la mente). Con los avances en medicina reproductiva, ¿qué hay de malo con actuar como padres responsables? ¿Por qué no planear la salud genética a largo plazo y la felicidad de las generaciones futuras?

¿El argumento de la fuente de la juventud (el desprecio por la carne)? ¿Qué podría mostrar más desprecio por la carne que apoyar cuerpos darwinianos que se desmoronan y mueren? Con la madurez de la medicina genética, ¿por qué no diseñar un anteproyecto para los cuerpos eternamente jóvenes? Es más, nosotros tendremos pronto la oportunidad de explorar formas más ricas de sensualidad; magnificar el cortex somato-sensorial; aislar el centro del deseo sexual y amplificar sus sustratos según lo queramos. Trascender la carne puede ser una opción, no una
obligación.

¿Un nuevo “mundo feliz”? Este argumento es más complicado de desmontar con rotundidad. La biotecnología puede reforzar al ciudadano individual más que al Estado. Por ejemplo, mejorando la iniciativa para incrementar la autonomía personal y la participación activa en la sociedad. Por contra, la baja iniciativa está asociada a la subordinación y al retraimiento social. El soma de Huxley estaba equivocadamente recomendado como una “droga de placer ideal”.
Verdaderamente la farmacología utópica superará eso.

¿Argumento de dehumanización (Frankenstein)? Sí, la tecnología puede deshumanizar; la biotecnología puede crear monstruos. Aunque también pueden crearse santos y ángeles. Menos poéticamente, pronto podremos “humanizarnos” a nosotros mismos. Podemos mejorar biológicamente nuestra capacidad para la empatía (ya sea amplificando funcionalmente nuestras neuronas espejo, o por el uso de diseños “empatógenos” prosociales, o por la liberación de oxitocina sostenida por ingeniería genética para promover la confianza social. ¿Haremos todo eso?
No lo sé.

¿El argumento Terminator? El bioterrorismo y el virus “grey goo” son quizás los escenarios más preocupantes. Pero dentro de las próximas décadas, tendremos probablemente bases autosostenibles para la Luna y Marte. Incluso en los escenarios más apocalípticos, cualquier riesgo existencial para la vida inteligente se disminuirá de este modo. Desde una perspectiva ética utilitarista, es esencial que los seres humanos sobrevivan para llegar a ser posthumanos. Somos la única especie capaz de erradicar el sufrimiento en toda la vida sintiente. Nosotros también somos la
única especie lo suficientemente inteligente como para liberar felicidad a lo largo del universo accesible.

A.L. : Probablemente, el problema más importante es la poca información que tenemos sobre vuestro movimiento. En realidad, aquí el transhumanismo es aún un gran desconocido, salvo por algunos artículos de Fukuyama. Me gustaría preguntarles por las relaciones entre transhumanismo y otros aspectos. Por ejemplo:

- El transhumanismo y la religión. ¿Os consideráis religiosos? ¿Hay un transhumanismo ateo o agnóstico?

N.B. : Me considero agnóstico. La mayoría de los transhumanistas no son religiosos, pero hay transhumanistas católicos, mormones, budistas, etc.

D.P. : Pienso que es difícil reconciliar el transhumanismo y la religión revelada. Si queremos vivir en el paraíso, tendremos que ingeniárnosla nosotros mismos. Si queremos la vida eterna, necesitaremos reescribir nuestro código genético erróneamente conducido y llegar a ser como dioses. “Todo lo que tiene vida puede ser librado de sufrimiento”, dijo Gautama Buddha. Es un sentimiento maravilloso. Por desgracia, sólo las soluciones dadas por la alta tecnología pueden erradicar el sufrimiento del mundo. La sola compasión no es suficiente.

- El transhumanismo y la eugenesia. ¿Son todos los transhumanistas eugenistas? ¿Tenéis un programa político en este tema?

N.B. : La asociación transhumanista mundial ha adoptado oficialmente una declaración en la que prohibe todas las formas de eugenesia neonazi de la organización (esto ha sido una respuesta a un incidente de hace algunos años, cuando uno o dos trolls intentaron infiltrarse en la organización). El transhumanismo apoya los derechos reproductivos, entre otros derechos humanos. Tendemos a pensar que es mejor que las decisiones reproductivas están en manos de los padres, en contacto con su doctor, y dentro de las amplias líneas del Estado. Sería éticamente inaceptable, así como muy peligroso, tener una imposición de Estado con una fórmula que determina qué tipo de personas deberían existir en la próxima generación.

Si yo fuera padre, consideraría la obligación moral para tomar todos los pasos razonables hacia la seguridad de que el niño que vamos a traer al mundo empiece su vida con las mejores oportunidades de vida posibles. Si una mujer preñada puede mejorar el coeficiente intelectual del hijo tomando “ácido fólico” o sumplementos de “colina”, y evitando el alcohol, el tabaco y el agua no potable, creo que sería irresponsable para ella no hacerlo. De igual manera, si estuviera usando fertilización in vitro, y hubiera un test genético sencillo que pudiera seleccionar el mejor embrión para la salud y otras capacidades deseables, entonces creo que sería negligente no aprovecharme de ese test. Sería un inconveniente muy pequeño para una importante ganancia.

D.P. : Los tranhumanistas no son eugenistas en nada que recuerde al odioso sentido tradicional de la palabra. No obstante, la humanidad está al borde de una revolución reproductiva. Los padres pronto podrán elegir la clase de hijos que ellos quieren traer al mundo. El diagnóstico pre-implantación se volverá una rutina. El diseño de genomas será lo siguiente. La mayoría de los padres aspiran a tener hijos más felices, más listos y más sanos. En principio, una mayoría de personas probablemente apoyaría el uso de la medicina genética para prevenir enfermedades como la “fibrosis cística”. En contraste, sólo una minoría de personas apoya actualmente las tecnologías para estas mejoras. Las tecnologías de mejora de hoy son las terapias del mañana. Para nuestros sucesores, los humanos mortales pareceremos trágicamente enfermos y disfuncionales. En la actualidad pensamos que es moralmente aceptable pasar la herencia letal del envejecimiento a nuestros hijos y una predisposición a la rica variedad de desórdenes mentales (envidia, falta de iniciativa, ansiedad, resentimiento, soledad) adaptativos en el medio ancestral. Así la vida humana puede ser potencialmente mejor. Con tecnologías maduras, ¿por qué no reemplazar la cruel ruleta genética de la selección natural por la superfelicidad preprogramada genéticamente, la superlongevidad y la superinteligencia? Críticamente, esta transformación no necesita (y no debería) suponer la opresión de otras razas o especies. Trascender nuestras limitaciones biológicas supone trascender los sesgos etnocéntricos y antropocéntricos de nuestros ancestros.

Tenemos por delante un verdadero dilema. En un mundo post-envejecimiento, ¿cómo reconciliamos los derechos reproductivos con la capacidad de explotación finita de nuestro planeta? ¿Presionará la población finalmente para que nos hagamos a la idea de las estrellas? ¿O este escenario es solamente ciencia-ficción?

- El transhumanismo y la inmortalitalidad. ¿Creéis en la “transferencia mental”? Si la respuesta es sí, supongo que os consideráis dualistas.

N.B. : Pienso que la transferencia podría, bajo circunstancias correctas, preservar la consciencia y la identidad personal. Yo no me considero un dualista. Pienso que mi mente actualmente está corriendo en una especie de computadora de proteínas, y si los mismos procesos computacionales fueran implementados en un ordenador de silicio creo que no notaría ninguna diferencia.

D.P. : No hay ninguna razón científica por la que no podamos reescribir nuestro propio código genético y permanecer jóvenes indefinidamente. En cierto sentido, los posthumanos pueden llegar a ser casi inmortales (aunque quizás hablar así refleje nociones insostenibles de la identidad personal. ¿Cuándo? Unos pocos transhumanistas son optimistas. Ellos citan el crecimiento exponencial en el poder de las computadoras y predicen que congelar el envejecimiento puede ser posible en décadas.

Espero que estén en lo cierto. Por desgracia, yo temo que esa reescritura genética y otras intervenciones pueden tardar cientos de años, o incluso más. En cualquier caso, las pruebas bien controladas de terapias antienvejecimiento serán un problema.

¿Transferencia mental? Aquí quizás hay que tomar más precauciones. La tecnología dominante de un periodo ofrece metáforas de la mente. Nuestra tecnología dominante es la computadora digital. Así que es natural preguntarse si los robots orgánicos como nosotros pueden escanearse, digitalizarse y transferirse a un medio menos perecedero. Desgraciadamente, no tenemos ningún conocimiento científico sobre la consciencia, deja sólo una teoría rigurosa de sus múltiples apetitos. Ni la física clásica explica ahora cómo billones de células cerebrales pueden generar un campo de experiencia unitaria. Personalmente, soy escéptico de que la computadora digital con una arquitectura clásica pueda ofrecer alguna vez consciencia unificada (¿Madurarán las computadoras cuánticas artifiaciales para ser sintientes? Puede). Debería añadir que gente muy capaz está en desacuerdo. ¿Si soy un dualista? No, pienso que el mundo está exhaustivamente descrito por ecuaciones matemáticas. Lo que respira fuego dentro de las ecuaciones no es un problema tal como lo entendieron los metafísicos materialistas.

- El transhumanismo y la singularidad tecnológica [progreso tecnológico y cambio social tan brusco que cambiará nuestro ambiente hasta el punto de que un ser humano anterior a la singularidad sería incapaz de comprender o predecir]. ¿Está la singularidad, tal como la explica el escritor de ciencia-ficción Vernor Vinge, realmente cerca?

N.B. : No lo sé. Nadie lo sabe. Para mí, esto significa que alguien puede pensar en términos de una distribución de probabilidad sobre un alto rango de posibilidades, incluyendo algunas probabilidades nada triviales sobre la posibilidad de que eso ocurrirá bastante pronto, dentro de un par de décadas; alguna probabilidad dice que será mucho más tarde; y algunas probabilidades indican que esto nunca ocurrirá. Podríamos tener entonces una interesante discusión acerca de la forma exacta de estas distribuciones de probabilidad. Pero a menos que primero reconozcamos la incertidumbre de estas previsiones, estaremos muy lejos en nuestros análisis.

D.P. : El desarrollo de la superinteligencia transhumana es presumiblemente inevitable en al menos algunas frecuencias de amplitud de la función ondulatoria universal. ¿Cerca? Supongo que depende de tu concepción de proximidad. ¿Deberíamos temerla? No si la inteligencia superhumana trae una capacidad más rica para el entendimiento empático de otros seres sintientes. El instituto de la singularidad [http://www.singinst.org] explora estos temas en profundidad.

Vinge habla de cómo podemos, en un futuro cercano, crear (o convertirnos) criaturas que superen a los humanos en las dimensiones intelectual y creativa. Los hechos que van todavía más allá (llamados singularidad tecnológica) son tan inimaginables como lo es la ópera para un “platelminto” [gusanos sin aparato circulatorio o respiratorio]. Vinge puede estar en lo cierto. Pero vale la pena recalcar que el amor por la ópera de los humanos tiene algo importante en común con los gusanos: la interacción funcional entre nuestros respectivos opioides y sistemas de
dopamina. Es la escala del placer lo que hace que algo merezca la pena. Sin un tono hedonista, no hay ningún significado en la existencia. No, posiblemente no podemos imaginar sobre qué tipo de conceptos sofisticados de mentes posthumanas podemos ser felices (no más que un gusano puede saber sobre la ópera). Pero predigo que los posthumanos no serán solamente superinteligentes sino también supersintientes.

A.L. : El “imperativo hedonista” propone la biología molecular del paraíso. Un mundo sin dolor físico o mental. David refuta objeciones diciendo: “La guerra, el robo, el infanticidio y el abuso de niños han existido desde tiempos inmemoriales. Estos son bastante naturales si lo miramos desde una perspectiva histórica, cultural o sociobiológica”. He entrevistado a Gary Francione, un teórico de los derechos animales, y él opina algo semejante sobre el consumo de productos animales frente al veganismo. Así que supongo que deberíamos tener en cuenta esta perspectiva abolicionista, ¿verdad?

Mi segunda pregunta aquí es: si nosotros logramos un paraíso biológico (olvidando las críticas que dicen que el dolor es algo necesario en la vida), ¿cómo viviríamos? Este nuevo mundo resulta casi inimaginable.

N.B. : Sí, pienso que deberíamos tener en cuenta la perspectiva abolicionista. Y sí, el mundo que resultaría si el proyecto abolicionista fuera eventualmente exitoso es casi imposible de imaginar. Para los iniciadores, nosotros podemos asumir con seguridad (considerando los obstáculos tecnológicos pantagruélicos que tendrían que ser superados para que esa visión llegara a ser real) que la eliminación del dolor no sería la única diferencia entre el nuevo mundo y el mundo actual. Muchas otras cosas cambiarían también.

Desde luego, el abstenerse de la intervención de una superinteligencia o la completa destrucción de la biosfera (otra forma de sufrimiento que podría ser abolida) no va a ocurrir de la noche a la mañana. Así que podemos tener una idea clara de estos asuntos para movernos gradualmente hacia nuestros objetivos.

D.P. : ¡Qué libro al servicio del demonio puede escribir sobre el torpe, vil, poco provechoso y cruel trabajo de la naturaleza! Dijo Darwin. ¿Y si la naturaleza, encarnada en dientes y garras, pudiera ser civilizada? ¿Y si los “parques salvajes” posthumanos pudieran estar libres de la crueldad? Es técnicamente viable. Pienso que cualquier ética compasiva (no sólo el budismo o el utilitarismo) debe reivindicar la extensión del proyecto abolicionista a todo el mundo viviente, no solamente a nuestros grupos étnicos o especies. Un compromiso con todos los seres sintientes está escrito dentro de la declaración transhumanista. ¿Qué significa ese compromiso en la práctica? ¿De veras vamos a parar de matar y comer a otras especies? Idealmente, el poder del argumento moral bastaría. Más plausiblemente, sólo el advenimiento de comida abundante, barata y deliciosa producida con ingeniería genética puede sentar las bases para la fundación de un veganismo global. La producción de “carne no animal” es potencialmente asumible. Sin embargo, si somos moralmente serios, una dieta libre de sufrimiento es solamente el principio. Un mundo sin sufrimiento supondrá el uso de políticas anticonceptivas para muchas especies; reescritura del genoma; rediseño del ecosistema de nuestros parques salvajes terrestres; nanorobots para dirigir el ecosistema marino; y mucho más. Esto representa un reto serio de computación e ingeniería. Visita http://www.abolitionist.com para una visión general.

¿Dolor físico? ¿Por qué nuestros robots responden a estimulos sin sentir agonía si son dañados? (mientras su contrapartida orgánica sufre usualmente tanto). Por el momento sólo podemos conjeturar. Hay al menos dos posibles soluciones a las miserias del dolor físico en la vida orgánica. La primera es librarse de todo lo desagradable mediante prótesis inteligentes… la solución “cyborg”. La otra alternativa es modificar las curvas de información sensible hacia gradientes de sublimidad del ser humano. Por ejemplo, tener analogías funcionales para el dolor sin notar el
vicioso sentimiento de dolor en bruto.

¿Cómo sería la vida en una hipotética era postdarwiniana? Es divertido especular. Por analogía, imagina si un especialista en dolor crónico empezara a pontificar a sus pacientes acerca de cómo deberían vivir sus vidas tras ser curados. ¿Por qué deberíamos hacerle caso? En teoría, los humanos mejorados emocionalmente podrían conservar mucho de nuestras arquitecturas preferidas para la existencia, simplemente recalibrando las rutinas así que nosotros todos llevaríamos vidas más placenteras en torno de un punto de vista hedonista. En la práctica, pienso que nuestro esquema conceptual también se verá revolucionado. Cualquier cosa concreta que digamos ahora sobre la era futura de la ingeniería del paraíso es probablemente una ingenuidad de niños. Para tener una idea de qué está en juego, quizás intenta recolectar las cimas más maravillosas de tu experiencia vital. Sospecho (pero no puedo probarlo) que el día a día de la vida posthumana será mucho mejor.

A.L. : Pienso que el transhumanismo nos es poco familiar porque no podemos leer una genealogía de vuestros pensamientos y vuestros maestros. Creo que para David el “utilitarismo negativo” es un buen punto de partida, pero no sé cuál es el de Nick. No conozco uy bien vuestros orígenes, no sé si porque intentáis despegaros de ciertas presunciones del pensamiento tradicional.

Además, ¿en qué momento arranca la historia reciente del transhumanismo? ¿En Ray Kurzweill, Marvin Minksy, Hans Moravec?

N.B. : No hay un punto de partida donde todo empezó. El pensamiento transhumanista ha tomado forma gradualmente, a través de las contribuciones de muchos pensadores. Mi visión filosófica no está basada en ningún predecesor en particular. Leo a muchos. Esto, por cierto, es muy habitual en la filosofía analítica contemporánea: ha llegado a ser más como una ciencia, con muchas personas haciendo pequeñas contribuciones a muchos problemas específicos.

D.P. : El transhumanismo es un movimiento muy diverso. Para más información visita: http://www.transhumanism.org/resources/faq.html. El transhumanismo en el sentido moderno del término realmente empieza en el trabajo de Max More y sus colegas del Instituto Extropiano. La historia del pensamiento transhumanista escrita por Nick es muy ilustrativa. Personalmente citaría muchas influencias como Bertrand Russell, Peter Singer, Richard Dawkins y Alexander Shulgin (no todos aparecen en el canon transhumanista).

A.L. : Por cierto, ¿vais a celebrar algo por el décimo aniversario de la asociación transhumanista? ¿Cómo os conocisteis y llegasteis a fundar esta organización? ¿Cuáles son vuestras actitivades principales en la actualidad?

N.B. : Supongo que deberíamos hacer algo por el décimo aniversario. He estado demasiado ocupado en mis propias investigaciones para plantearme esa idea. Dave y yo nos conocimos mientras yo estaba graduado en economía, en Londres. Tuvimos alguna correspondencia por mail. Dave se ha formado la impresión de que yo era el mandamás y él probablemente se decepcionó cuando vio que era solamente un pobre estudiante graduado. Sin embargo, después de nuestro encuentro él me describió en su diario on line como un “perseguidor de la verdad en busca de engaños epistémicos”. Yo era bastante inquieto en mis primeros años pero me he tranquilizado con los años.

Actualmente estoy centrándome en mi trabajo como director del instituto de la humanidad del futuro de la universidad de Oxford. Es una investigación interdisciplinaria sin ánimo de lucro que busca estudiar las preguntas vitales para la humanidad de una forma rigurosa, lo cual es una absorbente e importante misión. Me gusta intentar ayudar con la organización de las tareas transhumanistas, pero en mi corazón soy un investigador y pensador, no un activista o un ideólogo.

D.P. : Conocí a Nick hace una década. Él me escribió algunas astutas objeciones al manifiesto abolicionista. Con alguna dificultad, Nick me convenció de que yo era un transhumanista (yo predije que él sería el primer profesor del transhumanismo: uno espera ser el primero de muchos). Yo animé a Nick a hacer un website. La Asociación Transhumanista Mundial entró en un periodo de crecimiento explosivo sólo después de que el formidable bioético James Hughes ( http://changesurfer.com/Hughes.html) estuviera de acuerdo en ser secretario. Por el contrario, tengo una gran tendencia no-transhumanista que ocultar detrás de mi computadora. En un mundo darwiniano, los herbívoros tienden a ser tímidos… o son devorados.

Mi campo de investigación está en la psicofarmacología clínica (particularmente en el tratamiento de desórdenes afectivos) porque pienso que padecer sufrimiento es el desafío moral más urgente que debemos afrontar. No todos estarían de acuerdo, pero el dolor más sencillo de llevar es el de los otros. Las drogas psicoterapéuticas son sólo algo provisional: la medicina post-genómica será mejor. Pero la mayoría de las personas no quieren oír cómo sus descendientes pueden disfrutar de una larga vida de felicidad, juventud eterna, abundancia material ilimitada, libertad morfológica, etcétera. Ellos quieren saber cómo mejorar sus vidas (y la de sus seres queridos) en este mismo momento.

A.L. : Si estuviéramos viviendo una simulación, ¿qué supondría esto para nosotros? ¿Deberíamos cambiar algo? ¿Deberíamos creer en la navaja de Occam? A propósito, ¿qué pensáis de la “Física de la inmortalidad” de Tipler?

N.B. Esto se refiere a un texto académico que escribí hace unos años, que ha atraído la atención de muchos (véase http://www.simulation-argument.com). En resumen, no creo que la hipótesis de la simulación debiera cambiar drásticamente la forma en que vivimos, aunque esto es intelectualmente interesante y puede tener algunas ramificaciones prácticas perspicaces. Me gusta tener la oportunidad de enfatizar que el argumento de la simulación no muestra que nosotros estamos viviendo en una simulación de ordenador, sólo que al menos una de las tres proposiciones es verdadera [Proposición 1: la probabilidad de que una especie con nuestro nivel actual de desarrollo pueda sobrevivir antes de alcanzar la madurez tecnológica es muy baja. Proposición 2: .Casi ninguna civilización madura tecnológicamente está interesada en correr simulaciones de ordenadores de
mentes como las nuestras. Proposición 3: Estás con casi toda seguridad viviendo una simulación] . Una de esas proposiciones es la de la simulación.

D.P. : Cómo deberíamos comportarnos en una supuesta simulación depende de su naturaleza. Así, si tú tienes un sueño lúcido, cualquier cosa es permisible. La completa autoindulgencia está moralmente bien desde que las personas en un mundo de ensueño son sólo zombies. Lo mismo es cierto cuando usando software de realidad virtual del mañana en el modo de un jugador. Sin embargo, si la hipótesis de la simulación es verdadera, entonces las personas simuladas tienen experiencias reales. El sufrimiento, por ejemplo, no es menos real dentro del superordenador cómisco en el curso de una simulación de un superser. De hecho, una de las razones por las que creo que estamos viviendo en una realidad de fondo es porque encuentro inconcebible que un superser optara por recrear (y proliferar) los horrores del pasado darwiniano desde el cual éste emergió, aunque esto es más una incredulidad personal que un argumento.

¿La navaja de Occam? El argumento de la simulación es interesante precisamente porque es muy cauto con las afirmaciones. Sus premisas son bastante compartidas en la filosofía académica y la comunidad científica.

Mi propia idea de cómo comportarnos en una simulación tiene más lógica en la teoría de la percepción. Yo he creído durante mucho que cada uno de nosotros vive en una simulación egocéntrica del mundo proyectada por la mente/cerebro. Desde que los zombies de cada simulación tienen contrapartidas en el mundo real, uno debería tratarlos como si fueran reales. Sin embargo, como joven jinete de la angustia, mi aceptación radical de una teoría de la percepción realista me hace sentir como si estuviera condenado al confinamiento solitario toda mi vida. Este sentimiento de soledad era indescriptible. El realismo naïve es mejor para la salud mental de uno.

¿La física de la inmortalidad? Si la teología judeocristiana es verdadera, entonces el libro de Tipler es un intento maravillosamente audaz de mostrar cómo los dogmas religiosos pueden ser reconciliados con la ciencia natural. Pero dudo que cualquier físico que no comparta las premisas cristianas de Tipler esté de acuerdo en sus conclusiones.

A.L. : Admito que no entiendo bien el principio antrópico. ¿Podríais explicarnos con sencillez qué supone esto para nosotros?

N.B. : El principio antrópico se ha construido y deconstruido en muchas ocasiones. Si tú apartas todos los malentendidos, hay en realidad un corazón sensato e importante, el cual es el mandato para tomar en cuenta los efectos de las observaciones cuando las evidencias o hipótesis no contienen información catalogada. Tengo una web.com una introducción: http://www.anthropicprinciple.com.

D.P. : Todas las versiones del principio antrópico fuerte aseguran que el universo fue diseñado, en algún sentido, para la existencia humana. Yo no estoy convencido. Nuestra mejor teoría del mundo, la mecánica cuántica, nos dice que vivimos en un multiverso con un número inconcebiblemente inmenso de ramificaciones. En la gran mayoría de esas ramificaciones, las constantes de la naturaleza están equivocadas. Tales ramificaciones no contienen observadores o vida. Por el contrario, una minoría de las ramificaciones apoyan la replicación de la información que evoluciona vía selección natural hasta llegar a ser observadores. El observador ingenuo en tales ramificaciones pueden preguntarse por qué las constantes físicas básicas (por ejemplo, las constantes que determinan las cuatro fuerzas de la naturaleza) aparecen tan improbablemente afinadas para producir vida, o seres humanos. Ingenuamente, él invoca a Dios que ha puesto providencialmente las leyes de la naturaleza para el beneficio humano (o su castigo). Pero esas coincidencias antrópicas son meramente un efecto de la observación. La clase de vías que podemos observar están restringidas por las condiciones necesitadas para el surgimiento de observadores. Los observadores, por su propia naturaleza, se encontrarán a ellos mismos en una rama atípica del multiverso vista como un todo.

A.L. : Quiero preguntaros algo para finalizar. La mejora humana y el destino posthumano parecen ir hacia la extinción de la propia humanidad. La condición humana está condenándose a sí misma. ¿Qué pensáis de esta paradoja?

N.B. : Pienso que debemos distinguir la humanidad de tener una determinada clase de ADN en nuestras células, solamente como nosotros ya distinguimos los seres entre blancos y negros, mujeres u hombres, jóvenes o mujeres, gays o hetero. Podría haber muchas formas de humanidad, incluyendo nuevas formas que todavía no existan. Y el objetivo no es reemplazar a la gente actual con un conjunto de “personas superiores”. El objetivo es dar a las personas la opción de continuar desarrollándose de muy diversas maneras, incluyendo formas que difierente de los tipos de humanidad que tenemos hoy. Si quires un eslogan, podría decir que el humano es lo que somos, y
el humane es lo que esperamos llegar a ser (y esa necesidad no es exactamente la misma para todo el mundo).

D.P. : ¿Un bebé se mata a sí mismo por crecer hasta ser un adulto maduro? ¿Una crisálida se mata a sí misma por llegar a convertirse en una mariposa?

A.L. : Gracias por su amabilidad. ¿Desean añadir algo?

N.B. : Tengo anotaciones de muchas de mis publicaciones en Internet, así que los lectores interesados que quieran leer más pueden visitar mi web: http://www.nickbostrom.com.

D.P. : Puedes notar ciertas diferencias de énfasis entre Nick y yo. Pero pienso que ambos estamos de acuerdo en que el futuro de la vida en el universo es potencialmente glorioso más allá de la comprensión humana.

N.B. : Coincidimos en eso. Y esto resulta realmente importante.

Muchísimas gracias.
Andrés.

Posted by mrinesi on 2007/12/27 •

Bostrom and Pearce interviewed by Cronopis

Andres Lomena recently conducted an interview for the Spanish magazine Cronopis with Nick Bostrom and David Pearce about their co-founding of the World Transhumanist Association and related topics. They have kindly allowed us to reprint the interview here. (Spanish version here)

ANDRÉS LOMEÑA: Transhumanism, or human enhancement, suggests the use of new technologies to improve mental and physical abilities, discarding some aspects as stupidity, suffering and so forth. You have been described as technoutopian by critics who write on “Future hypes”. In my opinion, there is something pretty much worse than optimism: radical technopessimism, managed by Paul Virilio, deceased Baudrillard and other thinkers. Why is there a strong strain between the optimistic and pessimistic overview?

NICK BOSTROM: I can’t recall any instance of me personally being labeled “technoutopian”, although certainly it’s a term that has been applied to transhumanism by some critics. In fact, there is some justice in this criticism. Transhumanism is a very diverse movement, and some individuals who call themselves transhumanists might fairly be called “technoutopian” in the sense of “uncritically accepting of the view that technology will inevitably soon solve all big problems”.

I don’t know whether technopessimism is worse or better than technoutopianism. It seems to me that we should try to overcome biases in either direction --- biases towards positive as well as biases towards negative outcomes --- and assign probabilities based on evidence and honest judgment rather than on the basis of ideological or temperamental prejudice.

DAVID PEARCE: Is our quality of life in technologically advanced societies better than life for our hunter-gatherer ancestors on the African savannah? The answer might seem obviously ‘yes’. Techno pessimists might reply that evidence suggesting we’re on average any happier is thin - and then go on to extrapolate accordingly. Such extrapolation is premature. We’re on the eve of a profound transformation of human nature itself. In theory, we can even recalibrate the hedonic treadmill and become happier - relegating pessimism to history. Technopessimism can sometimes be useful when it encourages deeper thought on unanticipated consequences of new technologies, worst-case scenario planning and better risk-reward analysis. But if humans were all depressive realists, then we’d still be living in caves. Transhumanists believe that we can overcome our physical, intellectual, emotional (and moral?) limitations as human beings via the responsible use of technology.

For what it’s worth, I’m a pessimist by temperament. But I (tentatively) believe that infotech and biotechnology will deliver billions of years of invincible well-being far richer than anything feasible today.

A.L.: There are many fears and more ignorance. Wikipedia systematizes all fears: infeasibility, playing God argument, Fountain of Youth argument, Brave New World argument, Frankenstein argument or Terminator argument (based on “Our final hour” by Martin Rees). What of these issues are sound (understandable) fears and what is not? One common criticism uses to be the eschatological vision of transhumanism (like Marxism and Christianity, for instance). In short, how could we struggle against these dystopian points of view?

N.B.: On a case-by-case basis, as well as by trying to identify biases that could affect our judgments across a broad range of cases.

Fear is not necessarily a bad thing, provided it’s directed at something that really is dangerous, and that it results in some constructive striving to reduce the danger. For example, it makes good sense to be concerned about pandemic disease, naturally occurring as well as the possibility of bioengineered superbugs. But to fear having the option of delaying disease and senility through some effective rejuvenation therapy is perverse. In fact, I don’t think there are many people who are actually afraid of that, although some might express opposition for ideological reasons.

For an illustration of how one might attempt to diagnose and remove a bias affecting judgment across a range of enhancement issues, see a paper on status quo bias (http://www.nickbostrom.com/ethics/statusquo.pdf), which I wrote together with Toby Ord.

D.P.: Hubris/Playing God? What could be more “godlike” than creating new life? Not all cultures historically have made the connection between having sex and reproduction; but we have no such excuse. On the one hand, we condemn writers of computer malware who release corrupt code. Yet we freely propagate our own corrupt code across the generations - notably a lethal genetic disease (ageing) and a predisposition to anxiety disorders, depression and other nasty Darwinian states of mind. As reproductive medicine advances, what’s wrong with acting as responsible parents instead? Why not plan the long-term genetic health and happiness of future generations?

Contempt for the flesh/Fountain of Youth argument? What could show more contempt for the flesh than to champion Darwinian bodies which crumble and die? As genetic medicine matures, why not design blueprints for perpetually youthful bodies? Moreover, we will soon have the opportunity to explore richer forms of sensuality; to magnify the somato-sensory cortex; and to isolate the molecular signature of sexual desire and amplify its substrates on demand. Transcending the flesh might be an option; it’s not an obligation.

Brave New World? This argument is harder to dismiss outright. But biotechnology can potentially empower the individual citizen rather than the state. For example, enhancing mood tends to increase personal autonomy and active participation in society. Conversely, low mood is associated with subordination and social withdrawal. Huxley’s soma was wrongly touted as an “ideal pleasure drug”. Truly utopian pharmacology will surpass it.

Dehumanization / the Frankenstein argument? Yes, technology can dehumanize; and biotech can create monsters. Yet biotech can also create saints and angels. Put less poetically, we will shortly be able “humanize” ourselves. For we can biologically enhance our capacity for empathy - whether by functionally amplifying our mirror neurons, or by use of pro-social designer empathogens, or by genetically engineering sustained oxytocin-release to promote social trust. Will we do so? I don’t know.

The Terminator argument? Bioterrorism and “grey goo” are perhaps the most worrying scenarios. But within the next few decades, we will most likely have self-sustaining bases on the Moon and Mars. Even on the most apocalyptic scenarios, any existential risk to intelligent life will thereby be sharply diminished. From an ethical utilitarian perspective, it’s critical that human beings survive to become post-human. For we are the only species capable of eradicating suffering in all sentient life. We are also the only species smart enough to spread intelligent bliss throughout the accessible universe.

A.L.: Probably, the most important problem is the shortage of information. Actually, we do not know too much about Transhumanism, excepting some Fukuyama´s articles (initially optimistic and then pessimistic). We would like to ask you the connections between transhumanism and other topics. For instance:
Transhumanism and religion: Do you consider yourself religious? Is there an atheist or agnostic transhumanism?

N.B.: I would call myself agnostic. Most transhumanists appear to be non-religious, but there are also Catholic transhumanists, Mormon transhumanists, Buddhist transhumanists, etc.

D.P.: I think it’s hard to reconcile transhumanism and revealed religion. If we want to live in paradise, we will have to engineer it ourselves. If we want eternal life, then we’ll need to rewrite our bug-ridden genetic code and become god-like. “May all that have life be delivered from suffering”, said Gautama Buddha. It’s a wonderful sentiment. Sadly, only hi-tech solutions can ever eradicate suffering from the living world. Compassion alone is not enough.

A.L.: Transhumanism and eugenics: Are all transhumanists eugenicist? Do you have a political program in this topic? Do you consider yourself a lobby of future generations?

N.B.: The World Transhumanist Association has officially adopted a statement banning all forms of neo-Nazi eugenicists from the organization. (This was in response to an incident some years ago when one or two such trolls attempted to infiltrate the WTA.) Transhumanism supports reproductive rights among other human rights. We tend to think that it is better that reproductive decisions be in the hands of parents, in consultation with their doctor, and within broad guidelines laid down by the state. It would be ethically unacceptable, as well as potentially very dangerous, to have the state impose a one-size-fits-all formula on what kind of people should exist in the next generation.

If I were a parent, I would consider myself as having a moral duty to take all reasonable steps to ensure that the child which I was about to bring into the world would start his or her life with the best possible chances for a good life. If a pregnant woman can improve her child’s IQ by taking folic acid or choline supplements, and by avoiding alcohol, tobacco, and lead-contaminated drinking water, I believe would be irresponsible for her to fail to take these easy steps. Similarly, if I were using in vitro fertilization, and there were a simple genetic test which could select the embryo with the best genes for health and other desirable capacities, then I believe it would be negligent not to make use of the test. It would be a very small inconvenience for a potentially large gain.

D.P.: Transhumanists aren’t eugenicists in anything resembling the odious traditional sense. However, humanity is on the brink of a reproductive revolution. Prospective parents will soon be empowered to choose the kinds of children they want to bring into the world. Pre-implantation diagnosis is likely to become routine. Designer genomes will follow. Most parents will aspire to have happier, smarter, healthier children. In principle, a majority of people today would probably support use of genetic medicine to prevent diseases such as cystic fibrosis. By contrast, only a minority of people currently favor “enhancement” technologies. But today’s enhancement technologies are tomorrow’s remedial therapies.

By the standards of our successors, mortal humans will presumably all seem tragically diseased and dysfunctional. At present we think it’s morally acceptable to pass on to our children the lethal hereditary disease of ageing - and a predisposition to various ugly states of mind (e.g. jealousy, low mood, anxiety, resentment, and loneliness) adaptive in the ancestral environment. Yet human life could potentially be so much richer. As technology matures, why not replace the cruel genetic roulette of natural selection with genetically preprogrammed superhappiness, superlongevity and superintelligence? Critically, this transformation needn’t (and shouldn’t) entail oppressing other races or species. Transcending our biological limitations entails transcending the ethnocentric and anthropocentric biases of our ancestors.

One real dilemma lies ahead. In a post-ageing world, how do we reconcile individual reproductive rights with the finite carrying capacity of our home planet? Will population pressure finally make us “head for the stars”? Or is this scenario just sci-fi?

A.L.: Transhumanism and immortality: Do you all believe in transfer uploading? If the answer is yes… I guess you consider yourself dualist, right? By the way, I think Greg Egan´s novel talk about transfer uploading in a metaphysical and interesting way.

N.B.: I think that uploading could, under the right circumstance, preserve both consciousness and personal identity. But I would not call myself a dualist. I think my mind currently is running on a kind of protein computer, and if exactly the same computational processes were implemented on a silicone computer I believe I wouldn’t notice any difference.

D.P.: There is no scientific reason why we can’t rewrite our own genetic code and stay youthful indefinitely. In a sense, posthumans may become quasi-immortal - though perhaps such talk reflects untenable notions of personal identity. When? A few transhumanists are optimistic. They cite the exponential growth in computer power and predict ageless living may be feasible in decades. I hope they are right. Sadly, I fear that genetic rewrites plus other effective interventions may take centuries or more. Either way, well-controlled longitudinal trials of human anti-ageing therapies will be a problem. Uploading? Here perhaps there are stronger grounds for caution. The dominant technology of an age typically supplies its root metaphor of mind. Our dominant technology is the digital computer. So it’s natural to wonder if organic robots like us might scan, digitize and upload ourselves to a less perishable medium.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any scientific understanding of the existence of consciousness, let alone a rigorous theory of its myriad flavors. Nor can classical physics explain how a hundred billion discrete brain cells can generate a unitary experiential field. I’m personally skeptical that a digital computer with a classical architecture will ever support unified consciousness. [Will mature artificial quantum