FAQ: SOCIETY AND POLITICS

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Thanks for the continuing contributions to the FAQ. For this section I have made some answer-suggestions for some of the questions myself. After this one, we will have two more sections to do.

SOCIETY AND POLITICS

Won't new technologies only benefit the rich and powerful? What happens to the rest?

• The typical pattern with new technologies is that they are expensive in the beginning and get cheaper as time goes by. Take medical technologies, for example. Cutting-edge experimental procedures are usually only available to research subjects and the very rich. As these procedures become routine, costs drop, effectiveness improves, and the number of people who can benefit increases. Today, such advanced facilities as laser knifes for removing tumors and PET scanners for diagnosing neurological disorders are available to many people living in rich, technologically advanced countries. Other medical technologies have become cheap enough that even very poor people can afford them. Vaccination has eradicated many diseases throughout the third world, saving the lives of millions of children and adults every year. It is clear that everybody can benefit greatly from improved technology, though perhaps the greatest advantage will go to those who have the resources, the knowledge and especially the willingness to learn to use new tools. Societywill still have to decide what degree of redistribution from rich to poor is desirable; in that respect the situation will be no different from today. Yet, the pie that is to be divided will be enormously much greater. This only applies to societies that embrace new technologies. Individuals or countries who choose to resist change will be left behind. They might not progress much beyond their present level.

Shouldn't we concentrate on current problems like improving the condition of the poor people or solving international conflicts, instead of putting effort into foreseeing the "far" future?

Kluytman(?): -We should do both.

Won't extended life worsen overpopulation problems?

[My answer to this became quite bulky so I'll post it separately.]

What kind of society would posthumans live in?

What happens if these new technologies are used in war? Might they cause our extinction?

How will posthumans or superintelligent machines treat humans who aren't augmented?

• It is difficult to predict how posthumans or superintelligent machines will behave towards unaugmented humans. Hopefully they will be treated with tolerance and respect. There is no obvious reason why happy coexistence would not be possible - after all, humans live peacefully with dogs and cats that are their pets. (Our treatment of food stock animals suggests a much less appealing analogy.) If unaugmented humans preferred to have posthumans living among them, the posthumans would find ample lebensraumon other planets and in other solar systems. So it is clear that there are solutions that allow both those who want to remain human and those that choose to evolve themselves into posthumans to achieve their goals in harmony. There is room in the universe for an enormously diverse ecology of different life-forms and different cultures. Can these solutions be achieved? Since we humans are the ones who will build the superintelligences and become the posthumans, it seems that we will be in a position to influence what their values will be and what moral codes they will regard as inviolable. Transhumanists think that tolerance and diversity should be given a central place among the principles we instil in our mind children.

Do transhumanists think technology will solve all problems?

• Technology will not solve any problem. What technology will do is give us increasingly powerful tools that humans can use to solve most any material problem (including giving abundant wealth to everybody) - provided we have the foresight to take the necessary safety measures, and provided we are cooperative enough that we don't use the new technologies to wage war against each other. These are big ifs, and they indicate that the greatest difficulty we will face is not technological or scientific. Hard as the technical obstacles are, they will almost certainly be overcome sooner or later. Technological development is pretty much going in a transhumanist direction by its own momentum. The really tricky part will be political. Can people around the world and their leaders muster enough foresight and cooperation to pass and enforce international agreements that will prevent hostile military applications? Or at least delay them until effective defence systems have been developed? Nobody knows, but our survival might depend on it.

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