From: Avatar Polymorph (avatarpolymorph@hotmail.com)
Date: Sun Nov 17 2002 - 16:37:23 MST
Brett Paatsch queried my reference to my "bio" work on my body - I have 2
sets of dna because I had a bone marrow transplant and my white blood cells
are now set number two. The other things are just indications that
artificial materials are in my body (most people have tooth fillings at
least). Currently these materials are non-intelligent. Following insertion
of cell repair machines and molecular supercomputers (Drexler estimated c.
70 supercomputers within each cell) my cellular structure will have an
artificial "addition", like a set of sophisticated mitochondria. Following
augmentation my brain will have a variety of inter-cellular nanotech
electrochemical neural interfaces and a computronium strandframe of some
sort probably surrounding the brain. The skull itself will be hardened with
additional sophisticated materials. There will be a variety of interactive
communications and storage and failsafe devices and procedures as well. I
will not however be going down the upload-as-software track.
Brett wrote on the Last Mortal Generation:
"A good book with a great title. Though I see it more as challenging than
amusing."
Yes. It's a bit dry, perhaps. Also a bit of a rehash of The Spike. But that
can't be helped, since certain procedures are likely to be locked in for
long (billenia) periods of time. Culture however is far more flexible and
can easily change over billenia (common sense tells us this since the
experience of non-sentient multicellular life encompasses great divergencies
as well as similarities over a period of half a billion years).
Brett makes a lot of points about the stem cell debate and religious views
on the foetus. The difficulty from the ethical point of view as far as
secular persons go is that opinion varies. Scientists often define the brain
as neurological, feminists define life as starting after birth (thus
abortion is legitimate), Peter Singer defines life as starting at 2 or 3
years of age (non-continuous setient awareness, i.e. prior to this he
defines a baby as being like an [un-conscious] dog).
My position has always been that I define life neurologically, and bearing
in mind principles of continuity. Thus, for me, once a brain and brain stem
has developed, after several weeks, a foetus is "alive" and after this point
fair or reasonable principles of continuity of developement should be
brought in, in this instance indicating that it is unethical to kill a
foetus after brain start/growth. For me, therefore, stem cells encompassing
only a few days growth (clusters of a dozen cells or several dozen maximum)
are certainly NOT alive. The principle of continuity doesn't yet hold in
these cases, any more than it would for individual sperm or ova, or
fertilized eggs that had lodged in the uterus but failed to "take" to the
uterine wall.
Christians do hold their ground. This assists them politically. The stem
cell debate itself is a classic example of what I was talking about before,
the failure to recognize the IMMEDIATE future. It's like we're living in
1932, the first fuel reactor rods have been made and we're talking about
atomic bombs in a decade but everyone's burying their heads in the sand.
Well, atomic bombs can be made, even if they can't in this year of 1932.
Ditto for Drexlerian cell repair machines and molecular computers, and ditto
for assemblers. It's not like an argument for connecting superstrings to
black holes as power sources, which may or may not be possible. It's a
purely practical extension of existing chemical and computing knowledge.
"I'm not sure about this. At various points in my life I've
fluctuated between almost evangelical atheism and philosophical tolerance of
other peoples "brain fog" just as on occassions I've no doubt been fortunate
that others have tolerated mine."
I have my own philosophical or ethical or spiritual beliefs set out in my
website www.paradigm4.com.au/way/
These involve absolute tolerate around the notion of the principles of
choice extending to all and protective shielding extending to all potential
victims of non-consensual force. By the "notion of the princiles of choice
extending to all" I specifically include a repudiation of the notion of ANY
NON-CONSENSUAL heaven or hell or indeed dystopia containing said persons
held by force against their will. This is a generic statement. It may well
be that the nodal stem of this univese (i.e. the reality or overtuality
around us) contains elements of a dystopia depending upon personal
definition, it certainly contains areas of rejection. My point relates
specifically to virtualities. Any Christian community creating a virtual
reality version of hell would never (in my opinion) be ethically entitled to
forcibly place an "offender" into such a thing. In my view, the "principles
of choice" also contain the idea of free will and the ability to self-boost
being made available to all beings, including children entering maturity. In
this situation, for example, any Christian attempting to neurogolically or
surgically (including molecular surgery if you like) trammel their children
[to make them unable to have sex outside of marriage, let us say] would be
acting unethically. Or to give one final example, if Dr Tipler ever
succeeded in a version of his Omega Point theory (see The Physics of
Immortality) I would regard it as unethical if he attempts to implement his
view of leaving the "bad" people behind (i.e. those who have committed evil
acts should be punished by a kind of hell of omission, whereby they are not
rendered immortal and cannot enter any multiverse - this is a version of
some present Christian thinking).
Brett noted:
"As a consequence, out of percieved political expedience, the
case for therapeutic cloning was never even argued in Australia and
anti-cloning laws will soon go into effect for at least three years. This
was an expected outcome and had been deemed to be an exceptable loss in
order to expedite the passage of other legislation that would permit the
extraction of ES cell lines from excess IVF embryos. Unfortunately in
failing to argue the merits of therapeutic cloning at all, the cloning
prohibition legislation passed unanimously (despite many who would have
supported therapeutic cloning had they been given the opportunity to
understand it). This then became a political fact usable by the "religious
conservatives" in making an argument to ethical consistency."
As an aside, my views on cloning are that - once it is safe, and that's
probably about 3-8 years away - it's not much different from having an
identical twin or identical triplet. Logically, the legislation should
instead ban having large numbers of clones.
Generically, however, the ban on cloning stems from a fear of becoming
irrelevant. This fear is similar to the machine fear (fear of machine AI),
and envisages bioligical breeding becoming irrelevant (as in Brave New
World). Since the 1920s this fear has been strong. The fear of robots has
been alleviated somewhat because they can be (rightly) seen as big dumb
pentium 10,000s with legs. However, it will probably return somewhat once
military robots are seen to outperform humans (the first robotic plane has
been produced in prototype). These notions of supercession and irrelevance
of humans are tied to notions of human elites misusing superior tools and
restricting benefits.
The answer to such notions lies in a clear understanding of our own
self-awareness, the forthcoming ability to alter ourselves, our own
impending amortality or immortality or emortality (phrases are irrelevant) -
not just that of our children - and the forthcoming emergence of
self-reproducing assembler technology (such technology is capable of
terraforming Mars within a period of 20 years).
Deeper issues lie ahead, more difficult ones, but the initial hurdle is of
importance now. You can't take about stem cell research without refering to
life extension for centuries and youthful appearance for centuries. Refering
to DISEASE ALONE
facto ban the importing of
m
pro-therapy, pro-development lobby be perceived as
anti-religious.
Historically terms like human life, human rights, human being,
human dignity
have all been relatively clear and these labels have been used
as slogans
and weapons in meme wars where the combatants were actual
persons. Perhaps
the persons where "nobles" vs peasants, one race vs another, men
vs women.
In all these cases to refer to human rights is to espouse the
Yet modern biology tells us that human life takes place on
multiple levels.
A hair cell is alive (at least in the follicle). So is a skin
cell (at least
the deeper ones). Sperm are alive. Embryos are alive. Cancer
cells are very
much alive. It is patently absurd to argue, as many do, without
realising
it, that all forms of human life are equal. It creates a
circumstance where
the cancer cell in a cancer patient is on equal terms with the
patient. When
religious people try and use the language of tradition in new
contexts they
are not being conservative they are extending it, distorting it
and
perverting it. When societies afford rights on any other basis
than that
which its citizens have accepted reciprocal responsibilities for
(and this
includes capacity to assume effective responsibility, not just a
desire to
assume it) they introduce a form of counterfiet into the social
contract. In
relation to embryonic stems cell research there is a trade off
between a
duty of care to the sick and any moral duty owed to human
embryos.
There are no religious positions on the moral status of the
embryo that
pre-date the scientific discovery of the embryo. New times throw
up new
moral challenges and their is no ancient code that can prepare
people for
all the moral challenges they may face in the future and
ultimately no
religion that can be so pervasive as to remove the individuals
responsibility to make interpretations of their own.
>
>The next issues for me are those such as: guarantees for
equality of
>opportunity for all, whether human, artificial, augmented or
even (though
I
>don't believe in it conceptually myself) "uploaded" - and in
appropriate
>cases, where a sentient being originates in another species
such as a
>chimpanzee.
It seems that you look forward to guarantees that have never yet
existed. Do
you think it is possible to guarantee equality of opportunity
for all even
in principle? Who or what acts as guarantor of the guarantee?
And most
importantly it seems to me how do we get from here (equality is
certainly
not currently guaranteed to all) to there? (Treat as rhetorical
if you like.
Sorry about the rant above. Got distracted from something else I
should be
doing :-)
>Guarantees that no resource predomination should be allocated
to
>any one sector (say virtuality-generating shared Matrioshka
brains) unless
a
>coherent argument was put forward (saying it's most efficient
isn't
enough).
>Equally this may entail restricting maximum overt distinctive
births a
>little, say to one every few million or tens of millions of
years rather
>than every year (on current possibility). In the meantime,
extropians
>hopefully (at least me anyhow) will search for unlimited overt
growth, in
>the multiverse (ethical virtualities and otherwise) and in
spacetime
>manipulation (from ethical quantum duplication to ethical
teleportation).
No disrespect intended but the search for unlimited overt growth
in the
multiverse seems a tad religious in itself. It has a certain
vagueness about
it. I wonder if we can meaningfully seek anything that is so non
concrete. I
can understand how one might seek to overcome particular limits
on ones
growth and even to go beyond what has previously been done by
others in ones
species but I'm not sure that unlimited overt growth is even
meaningful if
one holds, as you seem to, that resources are an issue. Though I
sort of get
what you mean. Good luck, I guess :-)
Brett
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