From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Fri Mar 08 2002 - 09:51:33 MST
On Thu, Mar 07, 2002 at 08:58:05PM -0800, Richard Steven Hack wrote:
> At 12:36 AM 3/8/02 +0100, you wrote:
>
> >In fact,
> >this tendency to regard "us" transhumanists as the enlightened few who
> >"get" it and the rest as either uneducated, mistaken or a luddite
> >opposition is one of the factors keeping transhumanist ideas from
> >becoming mainstream.
>
> No, what is keeping us from become mainstream is precisely because other
> people are either uneducated, unenlightened, Luddite - i.I., human (in the
> negative sense of the term).
Evidence, please?
If you look at people's reactions to transhumanism you will find plenty of
reasons they do not take transhumanism seriously or do not consider it a
good idea. Some of them certainly are due to lack of understanding or
incompatible values. But is the main reason transhumanism is not filling
football stadiums with enormous revival meetings that people are
irrationally resisting it, or due to how transhumanists spread their ideas?
After all, plenty of other ideas that have been fiercely resisted and
regarded as both silly or evil have eventually triumphed - Christian ideas
of mercy rather than the roman ideal of clemency, democracy, women's
suffrage, socialism etc. In all of these cases the vast majority considered
them outrageous from the start, and yet they changed their opinion. That was
hardly due to technological factors or some spontaneous mental evolution,
but plain and simple spread of ideas. The scribblings of philosophers have
surprising penetration power.
> > If you
> >regard them as irrelevant, you also end up regarding their economic,
> >political and research impact as irrelevant.
>
> Not necessarily - that doesn't follow. They are irrelevant in the sense
> that what they believe is not relevant. What they do is relevant only in
> the sense that we must be prepared to deal with it regardless of what they
> do. If they assist us, all good, if not, we deal with it. But it is a
> misallocation of resources to try to convince them ALL of the value of
> Transhumanism.
>
> I don't see it as a misallocation of resources to *promote* Transhumanism,
> as long as we realize that the purpose is to attract those who *can*
> understand and who *can* contribute. But trying to convince the world that
> Transhumanism is the future will merely relegate us to cult status or
> worse, wake the states of the world up to the threat to their existence and
> bring down even more oppression.
The issue isn't converting everybody to transhumanism - what would the point
of such a mental monoculture be? Rather, we need to create a culture where
transhumanism is regarded as a valid point of view. Transhumanism should not
be a silly fringe phenomenon, but rather a (possibly controversial)
ideological position others that participate in society. That is the only
way we can really get our hands on the relevant technologies (and have them
developed in the first place), avoid being arbitrarily outlawed since our
ideological opponents happen to own the playing field (which is bound to
happen soon if we do not work on our political act - remember that Leon Kass
is bioethics advisor to Bush, and he has explicitely said he will fight
against a posthuman future) and gain allies in our projects.
Ignoring the beliefs of others is not going to get us there.
> > Sure, stuff we like may be
> >developed by other people, but if transhumanists do not spread their
> >ideas the development will be aimed by other memes - memes that most
> >likely will be against transhumanist ideals.
>
> We need to spread our memes to those who *can* understand and who
> *can* develop what we need. And if necessary we need to find ways to get
> the others to develop what we need - by whatever appeals (to greed, or
> whatever) work.
Who will pay for a developing a brain-computer implant not intended for
treating handicaps? What pharmaceutical corporation will devote resources to
developing a creativity enhancer drug they know will not pass the FDA since
lack of creativity is not a disease? Why is the idea of genetics tests
usable by laypeople scaring medical regulators?
There are some people who agree with transhumanism in positions where they
can develop useful stuff, and a few who have money. But honestly they are
not that many - friendly billionaries do not grow on trees. Even if certain
cool technologies would be developed in this isolated way, they would be
extremely costly if the costs were not spread out across a big paying
customer base. This is of course where appeals to greed come in - there are
many ideas we like that could presumably be killer applications (just think
of life extension).
But even these fields need more than just us convincing the CEO of Novartis
that life extension is a huge market: the surrounding attitudes in society
need to be changed in order to make that project viable. Attitudes do not
change just because a technology appears - look at the reactions to cloning
and performance enhancement in current society. Instead it is necessary to
spread the idea that these technologies can be used in a constructive way.
We need to deal with the philosophical and cultural assumptions underlying
bans and resistance to these things if we are going to see anybody develop
them seriously.
> >Saying technology is the driver puts the cart in front of the horse. It
> >leaves out the circular interplay of technology and culture, and makes
> >for a simplistic view that technology will advance of its own and that
> >it will create a cultural climate amenable to the things we desire.
>
> It will. In this century, technology will *subsume* culture. Oh, of
> course, culture will have its influence initially. And saying that
> "technology can advance on its own" makes no sense - obviously there has to
> be motivation and intent - whether corporate greed or the love of
> discovery; the point is that the research will continue to be done. And it
> will influence the culture if people who are interested in that make it so
> - such as the special effects in movies, or even the Net games being
> discussed in other threads.
When I talk about culture, I talk about all the "software" our civilization
carries around - art, traditions, stories, ideologies, language,
institutions, laws etc. It is not just about movies.
My point is that the motivation and intent is largely derived from the
cultural sphere. There are of course human drives like seeking security,
social status, survival etc, but these are channeled and shaped by culture
(and vice versa!): we invent not just because we are curious and enjoy it,
but because we have ideological aims, it fits symbols and ideals we have
grown up with (the mad scientist, the wizard, the hacker, the lone champion
of truth and all the others), we gain various forms of recognition
(professional, coolness, membership in clubs), we get rewards (monetary and
intellectual) and so on. The *things* we invent are even more culturally
derived (in a sense I would say technology is a proper subset of culture,
and cannot subsume it more than movies could) - just look at the aims of
software, and think of how they often reflect various more or less clearly
expressed cultural aims within western culture.
That technology can get tremendously powerful and is likely to continue as
long as our current style of individualist culture remains is true, but
remember the lesson of Ming China! Progress is by no means the default
state, and can be ended by a cultural shift. If you do not make sure your
culture will support your development, you might end up stymied.
> >A small step in
> >the right direction, slowly building a case that will help people
> >integrate ideas of technological transformation into their worldview.
> >But for this to work we have to dress in suits and ties, learn to
> >explain why freedom, technology and progress are good things and show
> >that our vision is not just realistic but also the right thing to do.
> >
>
> And the whole thing will be tossed out the minute it conflicts with their
> other basic human drives, such as the fear of death.
You mean like people always toss out everything they believe to be true when
it suits them?
> No, the groups that ended up controlling the meme pool were those who
> *could* talk to the people because they operated on the same irrational,
> emotional basis as most people do. And those who tried to use reason to
> oppose those people didn't succeed precisely because of that.
You mix up presentation with message. To be a great orator, you need to show
both logos (logic), pathos (emotion) and ethos (being morally just); if you
just have one or two of these aspects in your message it will be weaker.
That doesn't say anything about the truth of the message. Many of the most
successful groups in affecting the meme pool have spread messages that are
opposed to much of normal human emotions - democracy, rationality, the
scientific method, tolerance etc (the whole enlightenment tradition). They
did this in clever, forceful ways, but the message was not about being
emotional.
I think you should really take a look at the history of ideas, maybe check
out Hayek's _The Intellectuals and Socialism_. Memetics is just the
"transhumanistically correct" (and lazy?) way of talking about culture, and
there is a far longer tradition of studying what happens with ideas and
ideology than the current transhumanist movement. One of the main things we
can learn from history is actually what others have tried and why they
failed - and when it comes to the area of changing the world, many many
groups have done that, which provides rather useful background database. I
think you would find, if you explore this field, that many of the views you
have espoused in this discussion are common to many of the failed movements.
What you need to show is that either the situation now is sufficiently
different for them to work, or that your combination actually manages to get
some unique new result.
> Good post, Anders. Gave me a chance to rant a bit and that always helps
> clarify my thinking - :-}
The same. I think these are very important issues, and such issues always
need clarifying.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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