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* The Transhumanist FAQ*

A General Introduction

Version 2.1 (2003)

Nick Bostrom^*

Faculty of Philosophy

Oxford University

10 Merton Street, Oxford OX1 4JJ, U. K.

Click here <http://transhumanism.org/resources/FAQv21.pdf> for the FAQ
in PDF format

Published by the /World Transhumanist Association/

www.transhumanism.org <http://www.transhumanism.org>

^* Please see endnote for document history and acknowledgments.

*CONTENTS*

* *

1 GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT TRANSHUMANISM <1>

1.1 What is transhumanism?. <#whatistranshumanism>

1.2 What is a posthuman?. <#whatisaposthuman>

1.3 What is a transhuman?. <#_Toc53059353>

2 TECHNOLOGIES AND PROJECTIONS. <2>

2.1 Biotechnology, genetic engineering, stem cells, and
cloning ? what are they and what are they good for?  <#21>

2.2 What is molecular nanotechnology?. <#22>

2.3 What is superintelligence?. <#23>

2.4 What is virtual reality?. <#24>

2.5 What is cryonics? Isn?t the probability of success too
small?. <#cryonics>

2.6 What is uploading?. <#26>

2.7 What is the singularity?. <#27>

3 SOCIETY AND POLITICS. <3>

3.1 Will new technologies only benefit the rich and powerful?
<#31>

3.2 Do transhumanists advocate eugenics?. <#32>

3.3 Aren?t these future technologies very risky? Could they
even cause our extinction?. <#33>

3.4 If these technologies are so dangerous, should they be
banned? What can be done to reduce the risks?  <#34>

3.5 Shouldn?t we concentrate on current problems such as
improving the situation of the poor, rather than putting our efforts
into planning for the ?far? future?. <#35>

3.6 Will extended life worsen overpopulation problems?. <#36>

3.7 Is there any ethical standard by which transhumanists
judge ?improvement of the human condition??  <#37>

3.8 What kind of society would posthumans live in?. <#38>

3.9 Will posthumans or superintelligent machines pose a threat
to humans who aren?t augmented?  <#39>

4 TRANSHUMANISM AND NATURE. <4>

4.1 Why do transhumanists want to live longer?. <#41>

4.2 Isn?t this tampering with nature?. <#42>

4.3 Will transhuman technologies make us inhuman?. <#43>

4.4 Isn?t death part of the natural order of things?. <#44>

4.5 Are transhumanist technologies environmentally sound?. <#45>

5 TRANSHUMANISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND CULTURAL VIEWPOINT. <5>

5.1 What are the philosophical and cultural antecedents of
transhumanism?. <#51>

5.2 What currents are there within transhumanism? Is
extropianism the same as transhumanism?  <#52>

5.3 How does transhumanism relate to religion?. <#53>

5.4 Won?t things like uploading, cryonics, and AI fail because
they can?t preserve or create the soul?  <#54>

5.5 What kind of transhumanist art is there?. <#55>

6 PRACTICALITIES. <6>

6.1 What are the reasons to expect all these changes?. <#61>

6.2 Won?t these developments take thousands or millions of
years?. <#62>

6.3 What if it doesn?t work?. <#63>

6.4 How can I use transhumanism in my own life?. <#64>

6.5 How could I become a posthuman?. <#65>

6.6 Won?t it be boring to live forever in a perfect world?. <#66>

6.7 How can I get involved and contribute?. <#67>

7 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS AND DOCUMENT HISTORY. <#7>

GENERAL QUESTIONS ABOUT TRANSHUMANISM

1.1 What is transhumanism?

Transhumanism is a way of thinking about the future that is based on the
premise that the human species in its current form does not represent
the end of our development but rather a comparatively early phase. We
formally define it as follows:

(1) The intellectual and cultural movement that affirms the
possibility and desirability of fundamentally improving the human
condition through applied reason, especially by developing and
making widely available technologies to eliminate aging and to
greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological
capacities.

(2) The study of the ramifications, promises, and potential dangers
of technologies that will enable us to overcome fundamental human
limitations, and the related study of the ethical matters involved
in developing and using such technologies.

Transhumanism can be viewed as an extension of humanism, from which it
is partially derived. Humanists believe that humans matter, that
individuals matter. We might not be perfect, but we can make things
better by promoting rational thinking, freedom, tolerance, democracy,
and concern for our fellow human beings. Transhumanists agree with this
but also emphasize what we have the potential to become. Just as we use
rational means to improve the human condition and the external world, we
can also use such means to improve ourselves, the human organism. In
doing so, we are not limited to traditional humanistic methods, such as
education and cultural development. We can also use technological means
that will eventually enable us to move beyond what some would think of
as ?human?.

It is not our human shape or the details of our current human biology
that define what is valuable about us, but rather our aspirations and
ideals, our experiences, and the kinds of lives we lead. To a
transhumanist, progress occurs when more people become more able to
shape themselves, their lives, and the ways they relate to others, in
accordance with their own deepest values. Transhumanists place a high
value on autonomy: the ability and right of individuals to plan and
choose their own lives. Some people may of course, for any number of
reasons, choose to forgo the opportunity to use technology to improve
themselves. Transhumanists seek to create a world in which autonomous
individuals may choose to remain unenhanced or choose to be enhanced and
in which these choices will be respected.

Through the accelerating pace of technological development and
scientific understanding, we are entering a whole new stage in the
history of the human species. In the relatively near future, we may face
the prospect of real artificial intelligence. New kinds of cognitive
tools will be built that combine artificial intelligence with interface
technology. Molecular nanotechnology has the potential to manufacture
abundant resources for everybody and to give us control over the
biochemical processes in our bodies, enabling us to eliminate disease
and unwanted aging. Technologies such as brain-computer interfaces and
neuropharmacology could amplify human intelligence, increase emotional
well-being, improve our capacity for steady commitment to life projects
or a loved one, and even multiply the range and richness of possible
emotions. On the dark side of the spectrum, transhumanists recognize
that some of these coming technologies could potentially cause great
harm to human life; even the survival of our species could be at risk.
Seeking to understand the dangers and working to prevent disasters is an
essential part of the transhumanist agenda.

Transhumanism is entering the mainstream culture today, as increasing
numbers of scientists, scientifically literate philosophers, and social
thinkers are beginning to take seriously the range of possibilities that
transhumanism encompasses. A rapidly expanding family of transhumanist
groups, differing somewhat in flavor and focus, and a plethora of
discussion groups in many countries around the world, are gathered under
the umbrella of the World Transhumanist Association, a non-profit
democratic membership organization.

References:

/ World Transhumanist Association/. http://www.transhumanism.org
<http://www.transhumanism.org>

1.2 What is a posthuman?

It is sometimes useful to talk about possible future beings whose basic
capacities so radically exceed those of present humans as to be no
longer unambiguously human by our current standards. The standard word
for such beings is ?posthuman?. (Care must be taken to avoid
misinterpretation. ?Posthuman? does not denote just anything that
happens to come after the human era, nor does it have anything to do
with the ?posthumous?. In particular, it does /not/ imply that there are
no humans anymore.)

Many transhumanists wish to follow life paths which would, sooner or
later, require growing into posthuman persons: they yearn to reach
intellectual heights as far above any current human genius as humans are
above other primates; to be resistant to disease and impervious to
aging; to have unlimited youth and vigor; to exercise control over their
own desires, moods, and mental states; to be able to avoid feeling
tired, hateful, or irritated about petty things; to have an increased
capacity for pleasure, love, artistic appreciation, and serenity; to
experience novel states of consciousness that current human brains
cannot access. It seems likely that the simple fact of living an
indefinitely long, healthy, active life would take anyone to
posthumanity if they went on accumulating memories, skills, and
intelligence.

Posthumans could be completely synthetic artificial intelligences, or
they could be enhanced uploads [see ?What is uploading??], or they could
be the result of making many smaller but cumulatively profound
augmentations to a biological human. The latter alternative would
probably require either the redesign of the human organism using
advanced nanotechnology or its radical enhancement using some
combination of technologies such as genetic engineering,
psychopharmacology, anti-aging therapies, neural interfaces, advanced
information management tools, memory enhancing drugs, wearable
computers, and cognitive techniques.

Some authors write as though simply by changing our self-conception, we
have become or could become posthuman. This is a confusion or corruption
of the original meaning of the term. The changes required to make us
posthuman are too profound to be achievable by merely altering some
aspect of psychological theory or the way we think about ourselves.
Radical technological modifications to our brains and bodies are needed.

It is difficult for us to imagine what it would be like to be a
posthuman person. Posthumans may have experiences and concerns that we
cannot fathom, thoughts that cannot fit into the three-pound lumps of
neural tissue that we use for thinking. Some posthumans may find it
advantageous to jettison their bodies altogether and live as information
patterns on vast super-fast computer networks. Their minds may be not
only more powerful than ours but may also employ different cognitive
architectures or include new sensory modalities that enable greater
participation in their virtual reality settings. Posthuman minds might
be able to share memories and experiences directly, greatly increasing
the efficiency, quality, and modes in which posthumans could communicate
with each other. The boundaries between posthuman minds may not be as
sharply defined as those between humans.

Posthumans might shape themselves and their environment in so many new
and profound ways that speculations about the detailed features of
posthumans and the posthuman world are likely to fail.

1.3 What is a transhuman?

In its contemporary usage, ?transhuman? refers to an intermediary form
between the human and the posthuman [see ?What is a posthuman??]. One
might ask, given that our current use of e.g. medicine and information
technology enable us to routinely do many things that would have
astonished humans living in ancient times, whether we are not already
transhuman? The question is a provocative one, but ultimately not very
meaningful; the concept of the transhuman is too vague for there to be a
definite answer.

A / transhumanist/ is simply someone who advocates transhumanism [see
?What is transhumanism??]. It is a common error for reporters and other
writers to say that transhumanists ?claim to be transhuman? or ?call
themselves transhuman?. To adopt a philosophy which says that someday
everyone ought to have the chance to grow beyond present human limits is
clearly not to say that one is better or somehow currently ?more
advanced? than one?s fellow humans.

The etymology of the term ?transhuman? goes back to the futurist FM-2030
(also known as F. M. Estfandiary), who introduced it as shorthand for
?transitional human?. Calling transhumans the ?earliest manifestation of
new evolutionary beings,? FM maintained that signs of transhumanity
included prostheses, plastic surgery, intensive use of
telecommunications, a cosmopolitan outlook and a globetrotting
lifestyle, androgyny, mediated reproduction (such as /in vitro/
fertilization), absence of religious beliefs, and a rejection of
traditional family values. However, FM?s diagnostics are of dubious
validity. It is unclear why anybody who has a lot of plastic surgery or
a nomadic lifestyle is any closer to becoming a posthuman than the rest
of us; nor, of course, are such persons necessarily more admirable or
morally commendable than others. In fact, it is perfectly possible to be
a transhuman ? or, for that matter, a transhumanist ? and still embrace
most traditional values and principles of personal conduct.

References:

FM-2030. /Are You a Transhuman?/ (New York: Warner Books, 1989).

2 TECHNOLOGIES AND PROJECTIONS

2.1 Biotechnology, genetic engineering, stem cells, and
cloning ? what are they and what are they good for?

Biotechnology is the application of techniques and methods based on the
biological sciences. It encompasses such diverse enterprises as brewing,
manufacture of human insulin, interferon, and human growth hormone,
medical diagnostics, cell cloning and reproductive cloning, the genetic
modification of crops, bioconversion of organic waste and the use of
genetically altered bacteria in the cleanup of oil spills, stem cell
research and much more. Genetic engineering is the area of biotechnology
concerned with the directed alteration of genetic material.

Biotechnology already has countless applications in industry,
agriculture, and medicine. It is a hotbed of research. The completion of
the human genome project ? a ?rough draft? of the entire human genome
was published in the year 2000 ? was a scientific milestone by anyone?s
standards. Research is now shifting to decoding the functions and
interactions of all these different genes and to developing applications
based on this information.

The potential medical benefits are too many to list; researchers are
working on every common disease, with varying degrees of success.
Progress takes place not only in the development of drugs and
diagnostics but also in the creation of better tools and research
methodologies, which in turn accelerates progress. When considering what
developments are likely over the long term, such improvements in the
research process itself must be factored in. The human genome project
was completed ahead of schedule, largely because the initial predictions
underestimated the degree to which instrumentation technology would
improve during the course of the project. At the same time, one needs to
guard against the tendency to hype every latest advance. (Remember all
those breakthrough cancer cures that we never heard of again?) Moreover,
even in cases where the early promise is borne out, it usually takes ten
years to get from proof-of-concept to successful commercialization.

Genetic therapies are of two sorts: somatic and germ-line. In somatic
gene therapy, a virus is typically used as a vector to insert genetic
material into the cells of the recipient’s body. The effects of such
interventions do not carry over into the next generation. Germ-line
genetic therapy is performed on sperm or egg cells, or on the early
zygote, and can be inheritable. (Embryo screening, in which embryos are
tested for genetic defects or other traits and then selectively
implanted, can also count as a kind of germ-line intervention.) Human
gene therapy, except for some forms of embryo screening, is still
experimental. Nonetheless, it holds promise for the prevention and
treatment of many diseases, as well as for uses in enhancement medicine.
The potential scope of genetic medicine is vast: virtually all disease
and all human traits ? intelligence, extroversion, conscientiousness,
physical appearance, etc. ? involve genetic predispositions. Single-gene
disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, sickle cell anemia, and Huntington’s
disease are likely to be among the first targets for genetic
intervention. Polygenic traits and disorders, ones in which more than
one gene is implicated, may follow later (although even polygenic
conditions can sometimes be influenced in a beneficial direction by
targeting a single gene).

Stem cell research, another scientific frontier, offers great hopes for
regenerative medicine. Stem cells are undifferentiated (unspecialized)
cells that can renew themselves and give rise to one or more specialized
cell types with specific functions in the body. By growing such cells in
culture, or steering their activity in the body, it will be possible to
grow replacement tissues for the treatment of degenerative disorders,
including heart disease, Parkinson?s, Alzheimer?s, diabetes, and many
others. It may also be possible to grow entire organs from stem cells
for use in transplantation. Embryonic stem cells seem to be especially
versatile and useful, but research is also ongoing into adult stem cells
and the ?reprogramming? of ordinary cells so that they can be turned
back into stem cells with pluripotent capabilities.

The term ?human cloning? covers both therapeutic and reproductive uses.
In therapeutic cloning, a preimplantation embryo (also known as a
?blastocyst? ? a hollow ball consisting of 30-150 undifferentiated
cells) is created via cloning, from which embryonic stem cells could be
extracted and used for therapy. Because these cloned stem cells are
genetically identical to the patient, the tissues or organs they would
produce could be implanted without eliciting an immune response from the
patient’s body, thereby overcoming a major hurdle in transplant
medicine. Reproductive cloning, by contrast, would mean the birth of a
child who is genetically identical to the cloned parent: in effect, a
younger identical twin.

Everybody recognizes the benefit to ailing patients and their families
that come from curing specific diseases. Transhumanists emphasize that,
in order to seriously prolong the healthy life span, we also need to
develop ways to slow aging or to replace senescent cells and tissues.
Gene therapy, stem cell research, therapeutic cloning, and other areas
of medicine that have the potential to deliver these benefits deserve a
high priority in the allocation of research monies.

Biotechnology can be seen as a special case of the more general
capabilities that nanotechnology will eventually provide [see ?What is
molecular nanotechnology??].

2.2 What is molecular nanotechnology?

Molecular nanotechnology is an anticipated manufacturing technology that
will make it possible to build complex three-dimensional structures to
atomic specification using chemical reactions directed by nonbiological
machinery. In molecular manufacturing, each atom would go to a selected
place, bonding with other atoms in a precisely designated manner.
Nanotechnology promises to give us thorough control of the structure of
matter.

Since most of the stuff around us and inside us is composed of atoms and
gets its characteristic properties from the placement of these atoms,
the ability to control the structure of matter on the atomic scale has
many applications. As K. Eric Drexler wrote in /Engines of Creation/,
the first book on nanotechnology (published in 1986):

Coal and diamonds, sand and computer chips, cancer and healthy tissue:
throughout history, variations in the arrangement of atoms have
distinguished the cheap from the cherished, the diseased from the
healthy. Arranged one way, atoms make up soil, air, and water arranged
another, they make up ripe strawberries. Arranged one way, they make up
homes and fresh air; arranged another, they make up ash and smoke.

Nanotechnology, by making it possible to rearrange atoms effectively,
will enable us to transform coal into diamonds, sand into
supercomputers, and to remove pollution from the air and tumors from
healthy tissue.

Central to Drexler?s vision of nanotechnology is the concept of the
/assembler/. An assembler would be a molecular construction device. It
would have one or more submicroscopic robotic arms under computer
control. The arms would be capable of holding and placing reactive
compounds so as to positionally control the precise location at which a
chemical reaction takes place. The assembler arms would grab a molecule
(but /not/ necessarily individual atoms) and add it to a work-piece,
constructing an atomically precise object step by step. An advanced
assembler would be able to make almost any chemically stable structure.
In particular, it would be able to make a copy of itself. Since
assemblers could replicate themselves, they would be easy to produce in
large quantities.

There is a biological parallel to the assembler: the ribosome. Ribosomes
are the tiny construction machines (a few thousand cubic nanometers big)
in our cells that manufacture all the proteins used in all living things
on Earth. They do this by assembling amino acids, one by one, into
precisely determined sequences. These structures then fold up to form a
protein. The blueprint that specifies the order of amino acids, and thus
indirectly the final shape of the protein, is called messenger RNA. The
messenger RNA is in turned determined by our DNA, which can be viewed
(somewhat simplistically) as an instruction tape for protein synthesis.
Nanotechnology will generalize the ability of ribosomes so that
virtually any chemically stable structure can be built, including
devices and materials that resemble nothing in nature.

Mature nanotechnology will transform manufacturing into a software
problem. To build something, all you will need is a detailed design of
the object you want to make and a sequence of instructions for its
construction. Rare or expensive raw materials are generally unnecessary;
the atoms required for the construction of most kinds of nanotech
devices exist in abundance in nature. Dirt, for example, is full of
useful atoms.

By working in large teams, assemblers and more specialized nanomachines
will be able to build large objects quickly. Consequently, while
nanomachines may have features on the scale of a billionth of a meter ?
a nanometer ? the products could be as big as space vehicles or even, in
a more distant future, the size of planets.

Because assemblers will be able to copy themselves, nanotech products
will have low marginal production costs ? perhaps on the same order as
familiar commodities from nature?s own self-reproducing molecular
machinery such as firewood, hay, or potatoes. By ensuring that each atom
is properly placed, assemblers would manufacture products of high
quality and reliability. Leftover molecules would be subject to this
strict control, making the manufacturing process extremely clean.

The speed with which designs and instruction lists for making useful
objects can be developed will determine the speed of progress after the
creation of the first full-blown assembler. Powerful software for
molecular modeling and design will accelerate development, possibly
assisted by specialized engineering AI. Another accessory that might be
especially useful in the early stages after the assembler-breakthrough
is the /disassembler/, a device that can disassemble an object while
creating a three-dimensional map of its molecular configuration. Working
in concert with an assembler, it could function as a kind of 3D Xerox
machine: a device for making atomically exact replicas of almost any
existing solid object within reach.

Molecular nanotechnology will ultimately make it possible to construct
compact computing systems performing at least 10^21 operations per
second; machine parts of any size made of nearly flawless diamond;
cell-repair machines that can enter cells and repair most kinds of
damage, in all likelihood including frostbite [see ?What is cryonics?
Isn?t the probability of success too small??]; personal manufacturing
and recycling appliances; and automated production systems that can
double capital stock in a few hours or less. It is also likely to make
uploading possible [see ?What is uploading??].

A key challenge in realizing these prospects is the bootstrap problem:
how to build the first assembler. There are several promising routes.
One is to improve current proximal probe technology. An atomic force
microscope can drag individual atoms along a surface. Two physicists at
IBM Almaden Labs in California illustrated this in 1989 when they used
such a microscope to arrange 35 xenon atoms to spell out the trademark
?I-B-M?, creating the world?s smallest logo. Future proximal probes
might have more degrees of freedom and the ability to pick up and
deposit reactive compounds in a controlled fashion.

Another route to the first assembler is synthetic chemistry. Cleverly
designed chemical building blocks might be made to self-assemble in
solution phase into machine parts. Final assembly of these parts might
then be made with a proximal probe.

Yet another route is biochemistry. It might be possible to use ribosomes
to make assemblers of more generic capabilities. Many biomolecules have
properties that might be explored in the early phases of nanotechnology.
For example, interesting structures, such as branches, loops, and cubes,
have been made by DNA. DNA could also serve as a ?tag? on other
molecules, causing them to bind only to designated compounds displaying
a complementary tag, thus providing a degree of control over what
molecular complexes will form in a solution.

Combinations of these approaches are of course also possible. The fact
that there are multiple promising routes adds to the likelihood that
success will eventually be attained.

That assemblers of general capabilities are consistent with the laws of
chemistry was shown by Drexler in his technical book /Nanosystems/ in
1992. This book also established some lower bounds on the capabilities
of mature nanotechnology. Medical applications of nanotechnology were
first explored in detail by Robert A. Freitas Jr.
<http://www.rfreitas.com>in his monumental work / Nanomedicine
<http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm>/, the first volume of which came
out in 1999. Today, nanotech is a hot research field. The U.S.
government spent more than 600 million dollars on its National
Nanotechnology Initiative in 2002. Other countries have similar
programs, and private investment is ample. However, only a small part of
the funding goes to projects of direct relevance to the development of
assembler-based nanotechnology; most of it is for more humdrum,
near-term objectives.

While it seems fairly well established that molecular nanotechnology is
in principle possible, it is harder to determine how long it will take
to develop. A common guess among the cognoscenti is that the first
assembler may be built around the year 2018, give or take a decade, but
there is large scope for diverging opinion on the upper side of that
estimate.

Because the ramifications of nanotechnology are immense, it is
imperative that serious thought be given to this topic now. If
nanotechnology were to be abused the consequences could be devastating.
Society needs to prepare for the assembler breakthrough and do advance
planning to minimize the risks associated with it [see e.g. ?Aren?t
these future technologies very risky? Could they even cause our
extinction??]. Several organizations are working to preparing the world
for nanotechnology, the oldest and largest being the Foresight Institute.

References:

Drexler, E. /The Engines of Creation: The Coming Era of Nanotechnology/.
(New York: Anchor Books, 1986). http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html
<http://www.foresight.org/EOC/index.html>

Drexler, E. /Nanosystems: Molecular Machinery, Manufacturing, and
Computation/. (New York: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 1992).

Freitas, Jr., R. A <http://www.rfreitas.com>. /Nanomedicine, Volume I:
Basic Capabilities/. <http://www.nanomedicine.com/NMI.htm> (Georgetown,
Texas: Landes Bioscience, 1999).

/ Foresight Institute/. http://www.foresight.org <http://www.foresight.org>

2.3 What is superintelligence?

A superintelligent intellect (a superintelligence, sometimes called
?ultraintelligence?) is one that has the capacity to radically
outperform the best human brains in practically every field, including
scientific creativity, general wisdom, and social skills.

Sometimes a distinction is made between weak and strong
superintelligence. /Weak/ /superintelligence/ is what you would get if
you could run a human intellect at an accelerated clock speed, such as
by uploading it to a fast computer [see ?What is uploading??]. If the
upload?s clock-rate were a thousand times that of a biological brain, it
would perceive reality as being slowed down by a factor of a thousand.
It would think a thousand times more thoughts in a given time interval
than its biological counterpart.

/Strong superintelligence /refers to an intellect that is not only
faster than a human brain but also smarter in a qualitative sense. No
matter how much you speed up your dog?s brain, you?re not going to get
the equivalent of a human intellect. Analogously, there might be kinds
of smartness that wouldn?t be accessible to even very fast human brains
given their current capacities. Something as simple as increasing the
size or connectivity of our neuronal networks /might/ give us some of
these capacities. Other improvements may require wholesale
reorganization of our cognitive architecture or the addition of new
layers of cognition on top of the old ones.

However, the distinction between weak and strong superintelligence may
not be clear-cut. A sufficiently long-lived human who didn?t make any
errors and had a sufficient stack of scrap paper at hand could in
principle compute any Turing computable function. (According to Church?s
thesis, the class of Turing computable functions is identical to the
class of physically computable functions.)

Many but not all transhumanists expect that superintelligence will be
created within the first half of this century. Superintelligence
requires two things: hardware and software.

Chip-manufacturers planning the next generation of microprocessors
commonly rely on a well-known empirical regularity known as Moore?s Law.
In its original 1965-formulation by Intel co-founder Gordon Moore, it
stated that the number of components on a chip doubled every year. In
contemporary use, the ?law? is commonly understood as referring more
generally to a doubling of computing power, or of computing power per
dollar. For the past couple of years, the doubling time has hovered
between 18 months and two years.

The human brain?s processing power is difficult to determine precisely,
but common estimates range from 10^14 instructions per second (IPS) up
to 10^17 IPS or more. The lower estimate, derived by Carnegie Mellon
robotics professor Hans Moravec, is based on the computing power needed
to replicate the signal processing performed by the human retina and
assumes a significant degree of software optimization. The 10^17 IPS
estimate is obtained by multiplying the number of neurons in a human
brain (~100 billion) with the average number of synapses per neuron
(~1,000) and with the average spike rate (~100 Hz), and assuming ~10
instructions to represent the effect on one action potential traversing
one synapse. An even higher estimate would be obtained e.g. if one were
to suppose that functionally relevant and computationally intensive
processing occurs within compartments of a dendrite tree.

Most experts, Moore included, think that computing power will continue
to double about every 18 months for at least another two decades. This
expectation is based in part on extrapolation from the past and in part
on consideration of developments currently underway in laboratories. The
fastest computer under construction is IBM?s Blue Gene/L, which when it
is ready in 2005 is expected to perform ~2*10^14 IPS. Thus it appears
quite likely that human-equivalent hardware will have been achieved
within not much more than a couple of decades.

How long it will take to solve the software problem is harder to
estimate. One possibility is that progress in computational neuroscience
will teach us about the computational architecture of the human brain
and what learning rules it employs. We can then implement the same
algorithms on a computer. In this approach, the superintelligence would
not be completely specified by the programmers but would instead have to
grow by learning from experience the same way a human infant does. An
alternative approach would be to use genetic algorithms and methods from
classical AI. This might result in a superintelligence that bears no
close resemblance to a human brain. At the opposite extreme, we could
seek to create a superintelligence by uploading a human intellect and
then accelerating and enhancing it [see ?What is uploading??]. The
outcome of this might be a superintelligence that is a radically
upgraded version of one particular human mind.

The arrival of superintelligence will clearly deal a heavy blow to
anthropocentric worldviews. Much more important than its philosophical
implications, however, would be its practical effects. Creating
superintelligence may be the last invention that humans will ever need
to make, since superintelligences could themselves take care of further
scientific and technological development. They would do so more
effectively than humans. Biological humanity would no longer be the
smartest life form on the block.

The prospect of superintelligence raises many big issues and concerns
that we should think deeply about in advance of its actual development.
The paramount question is: What can be done to maximize the chances that
the arrival of superintelligence will benefit rather than harm us? The
range of expertise needed to address this question extends far beyond
the community of AI researchers. Neuroscientists, economists, cognitive
scientists, computer scientists, philosophers, ethicists, sociologists,
science-fiction writers, military strategists, politicians, legislators,
and many others will have to pool their insights if we are to deal
wisely with what may be the most important task our species will ever
have to tackle.

Many transhumanists would like to become superintelligent themselves.
This is obviously a long-term and uncertain goal, but it might be
achievable either through uploading and subsequent enhancement or
through the gradual augmentation of our biological brains, by means of
future nootropics (cognitive enhancement drugs), cognitive techniques,
IT tools (e.g. wearable computers, smart agents, information filtering
systems, visualization software, etc.), neural-computer interfaces, or
brain implants.

References:

Moravec, H. /Mind Children/ (Harvard: Harvard University Press, 1989).

Bostrom, N. ?How Long Before Superintelligence?? /International Journal
of Futures Studies. /Vol. 2. (1998).

2.4 What is virtual reality?

A virtual reality is a simulated environment that your senses perceive
as real.

Theatre, opera, cinema, television can be regarded as precursors to
virtual reality. The degree of immersion (the feeling of ?being there?)
that you experience when watching television is quite limited. Watching
football on TV doesn?t really compare to being in the stadium. There are
several reasons for this. For starters, even a big screen doesn?t fill
up your entire visual field. The number of pixels even on
high-resolution screens is also too small (typically 1280*1224 rather
than about 5000*5000 as would be needed in a flawless wide-angle
display). Further, 3D vision is lacking, as is position tracking and
focus effects (in reality, the picture on your retina changes
continually as your head and eyeballs are moving). To achieve greater
realism, a system should ideally include more sensory modalities, such
as 3D sound (through headphones) to hear the crowd roaring, and tactile
stimulation through a whole-body haptic interface so that you don?t have
to miss out on the sensation of sitting on a cold, hard bench for hours.

An essential element of immersion is interactivity. Watching TV is
typically a passive experience. Full-blown virtual reality, by contrast,
will be interactive. You will be able to move about in a virtual world,
pick up objects you see, and communicate with people you meet. (A real
football experience crucially includes the possibility of shouting abuse
at the referee.) To enable interactivity, the system must have sensors
that pick up on your movements and utterances and adjust the
presentation to incorporate the consequences of your actions.

Virtual worlds can be modeled on physical realities. If you are
participating in a remote event through VR, as in the example of the
imagined football spectator, you are said to be /telepresent/ at that
event. Virtual environments can also be wholly artificial, like
cartoons, and have no particular counterpart in physical reality.
Another possibility, known as /augmented reality/, is to have your
perception of your immediate surroundings partially overlaid with
simulated elements. For example, by wearing special glasses, nametags
could be made to appear over the heads of guests at a dinner party, or
you could opt to have annoying billboard advertisements blotted out from
your view.

Many users of today?s VR systems experience ?simulator sickness,? with
symptoms ranging from unpleasantness and disorientation to headaches,
nausea, and vomiting. Simulator sickness arises because different
sensory systems provide conflicting cues. For example, the visual system
may provide strong cues of self-motion while the vestibular system in
your inner ear tells your brain that your head is stationary. Heavy
head-mounted display helmets and lag times between tracking device and
graphics update can also cause discomfort. Creating good VR that
overcomes these problems is technically challenging.

Primitive virtual realities have been around for some time. Early
applications included training modules for pilots and military
personnel. Increasingly, VR is used in computer gaming. Partly because
VR is computationally very intensive, simulations are still quite crude.
As computational power increases, and as sensors, effectors and displays
improve, VR could begin to approximate physical reality in terms of
fidelity and interactivity.

In the long run, VR could unlock limitless possibilities for human
creativity. We could construct artificial experiential worlds, in which
the laws of physics can be suspended, that would appear as real as
physical reality to participants. People could visit these worlds for
work, entertainment, or to socialize with friends who may be living on
the opposite site of the globe. Uploads [see ?What is uploading??], who
could interact with simulated environments directly without the need of
a mechanical interface, might spend most of their time in virtual realities.

2.5 What is cryonics? Isn?t the probability of success too
small?

Cryonics is an experimental medical procedure that seeks to save lives
by placing in low-temperature storage persons who cannot be treated with
current medical procedures and who have been declared legally dead, in
the hope that technological progress will eventually make it possible to
revive them.

For cryonics to work today, it is not necessary that we can currently
reanimate cryo-preserved patients (which we cannot). All that is needed
is that we can preserve patients in a state sufficiently intact that
/some possible technology/, developed in the future, will one day be
able to repair the freezing damage and reverse the original cause of
deanimation. Only half of the complete cryonics procedure can be
scrutinized today; the other half cannot be performed until the (perhaps
distant) future.

What we know now is that it is possible to stabilize a patient?s
condition by cooling him or her in liquid nitrogen (- 196 C°). A
considerable amount of cell damage is caused by the freezing process.
This injury can be minimized by following suspension protocols that
involve suffusing the deanimated body with cryoprotectants. The
formation of damaging ice crystals can even be suppressed altogether in
a process known as vitrification, in which the patient?s body is turned
into a kind of glass. This might sound like an improbable treatment, but
the purpose of cryonics is to preserve the / structure/ of life rather
than the /processes/ of life, because the life processes can in
principle be re-started as long as the information encoded in the
structural properties of the body, in particular the brain, are
sufficiently preserved. Once frozen, the patient can be stored for
millennia with virtually no further tissue degradation.

Many experts in molecular nanotechnology believe that in its mature
stage nanotechnology will enable the revival of cryonics patients.
Hence, it is possible that the suspended patients could be revived in as
little as a few decades from now. The uncertainty about the ultimate
technical feasibility of reanimation may very well be dwarfed by the
uncertainty in other factors, such as the possibility that you deanimate
in the wrong kind of way (by being lost at sea, for example, or by
having the brain?s information content erased by Alzheimer?s disease),
that your cryonics company goes bust, that civilization collapses, or
that people in the future won?t be interested in reviving you. So, a
cryonics contract is far short of a survival guarantee. As a cryonicist
saying goes, being cryonically suspended is the second worst thing that
can happen to you.

When we consider the procedures that are routine today and how they
might have been viewed in (say) the 1700s, we can begin to see how
difficult it is to make a well-founded argument that future medical
technology will never be able to reverse the injuries that occur during
cryonic suspension. By contrast, your chances of a this-worldly comeback
if you opt for one of the popular alternative treatments ? such as
cremation or burial ? are zero. Seen in this light, signing up for
cryonics, which is usually done by making a cryonics firm one of the
beneficiaries of your life insurance, can look like a reasonable
insurance policy. If it doesn?t work, you would be dead anyway. If it
works, it may save your life. Your saved life would then likely be
extremely long and healthy, given how advanced the state of medicine
must be to revive you.

By no means are all transhumanists signed up for cryonics, but a
significant fraction finds that, for them, a cost-benefit analysis
justifies the expense. Becoming a cryonicist, however, requires courage:
the courage to confront the possibility of your own death, and the
courage to resist the peer-pressure from the large portion of the
population which currently espouses deathist values and advocates
complacency in the face of a continual, massive loss of human life.

References:

Merkle, R. ?The Molecular Repair of the Brain.? /Cryonics magazine/,
Vol. 15, No?s 1 & 2. (1994). http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html
<http://www.merkle.com/cryo/techFeas.html>

2.6 What is uploading?

Uploading (sometimes called ?downloading?, ?mind uploading? or ?brain
reconstruction?) is the process of transferring an intellect from a
biological brain to a computer.

One way of doing this might be by first scanning the synaptic structure
of a particular brain and then implementing the same computations in an
electronic medium. A brain scan of sufficient resolution could be
produced by disassembling the brain atom for atom by means of
nanotechnology. Other approaches, such as analyzing pieces of the brain
slice by slice in an electron microscope with automatic image processing
have also been proposed. In addition to mapping the connection pattern
among the 100 billion-or-so neurons, the scan would probably also have
to register some of the functional properties of each of the synaptic
interconnections, such as the efficacy of the connection and how stable
it is over time (e.g. whether it is short-term or long-term
potentiated). Non-local modulators such as neurotransmitter
concentrations and hormone balances may also need to be represented,
although such parameters likely contain much less data than the neuronal
network itself.

In addition to a good three-dimensional map of a brain, uploading will
require progress in neuroscience to develop functional models of each
species of neuron (how they map input stimuli to outgoing action
potentials, and how their properties change in response to activity in
learning). It will also require a powerful computer to run the upload,
and some way for the upload to interact with the external world or with
a virtual reality. (Providing input/output or a virtual reality for the
upload appears easy in comparison to the other challenges.)

An alternative hypothetical uploading method would proceed more
gradually: one neuron could be replaced by an implant or by a simulation
in a computer outside of the body. Then another neuron, and so on, until
eventually the whole cortex has been replaced and the person?s thinking
is implemented on entirely artificial hardware. (To do this for the
whole brain would almost certainly require nanotechnology.)

A distinction is sometimes made between destructive uploading, in which
the original brain is destroyed in the process, and non-destructive
uploading, in which the original brain is preserved intact alongside the
uploaded copy. It is a matter of debate under what conditions personal
identity would be preserved in destructive uploading. Many philosophers
who have studied the problem think that at least under some conditions,
an upload of your brain would be you. A widely accepted position is that
you survive so long as certain information patterns are conserved, such
as your memories, values, attitudes, and emotional dispositions, and so
long as there is causal continuity so that earlier stages of yourself
help determine later stages of yourself. Views differ on the relative
importance of these two criteria, but they can /both/ be satisfied in
the case of uploading. For the continuation of personhood, on this view,
it matters little whether you are implemented on a silicon chip inside a
computer or in that gray, cheesy lump inside your skull, assuming both
implementations are conscious.

Tricky cases arise, however, if we imagine that several similar copies
are made of your uploaded mind. Which one of them is you? Are they all
you, or are none of them you? Who owns your property? Who is married to
your spouse? Philosophical, legal, and ethical challenges abound. Maybe
these will become hotly debated political issues later in this century.

A common misunderstanding about uploads is that they would necessarily
be ?disembodied? and that this would mean that their experiences would
be impoverished. Uploading according to this view would be the ultimate
escapism, one that only neurotic body-loathers could possibly feel
tempted by. But an upload?s experience could in principle be identical
to that of a biological human. An upload could have a virtual
(simulated) body giving the same sensations and the same possibilities
for interaction as a non-simulated body. With advanced virtual reality,
uploads could enjoy food and drink, and upload sex could be as
gloriously messy as one could wish. And uploads wouldn?t have to be
confined to virtual reality: they could interact with people on the
outside and even rent robot bodies in order to work in or explore
physical reality.

Personal inclinations regarding uploading differ. Many transhumanists
have a pragmatic attitude: whether they would like to upload or not
depends on the precise conditions in which they would live as uploads
and what the alternatives are. (Some transhumanists may also doubt
whether uploading will be possible.) Advantages of being an upload would
include:

Uploads would not be subject to biological senescence.

Back-up copies of uploads could be created regularly so that you could
be re-booted if something bad happened. (Thus your lifespan would
potentially be as long as the universe?s.)

You could potentially live much more economically as an upload since you
wouldn?t need physical food, housing, transportation, etc.

If you were running on a fast computer, you would think faster than in a
biological implementation. For instance, if you were running on a
computer a thousand times more powerful than a human brain, then you
would think a thousand times faster (and the external world would appear
to you as if it were slowed down by a factor of a thousand). You would
thus get to experience more subjective time, and live more, during any
given day.

You could travel at the speed of light as an information pattern, which
could be convenient in a future age of large-scale space settlements.

Radical cognitive enhancements would likely be easier to implement in an
upload than in an organic brain.

A couple of other points about uploading:

Uploading should work for cryonics patients provided their brains are
preserved in a sufficiently intact state.

Uploads could reproduce extremely quickly (simply by making copies of
themselves). This implies that resources could very quickly become
scarce unless reproduction is regulated.

2.7 What is the singularity?

Some thinkers conjecture that there will be a point in the future when
the rate of technological development becomes so rapid that the
progress-curve becomes nearly vertical. Within a very brief time
(months, days, or even just hours), the world might be transformed
almost beyond recognition. This hypothetical point is referred to as the
singularity. The most likely cause of a singularity would be the
creation of some form of rapidly self-enhancing greater-than-human
intelligence.

The concept of the singularity is often associated with Vernor Vinge,
who regards it as one of the more probable scenarios for the future.
(Earlier intimations of the same idea can be found e.g. in John von
Neumann, as paraphrased by Ulam 1958, and in I. J. Good 1965.) Provided
that we manage to avoid destroying civilization, Vinge thinks that a
singularity is likely to happen as a consequence of advances in
artificial intelligence, large systems of networked computers,
computer-human integration, or some other form of intelligence
amplification. Enhancing intelligence will, in this scenario, at some
point lead to a positive feedback loop: smarter systems can design
systems that are even more intelligent, and can do so more swiftly than
the original human designers. This positive feedback effect would be
powerful enough to drive an intelligence explosion that could quickly
lead to the emergence of a superintelligent system of surpassing abilities.

The singularity-hypothesis is sometimes paired with the claim that it is
impossible for us to predict what comes after the singularity. A
post-singularity society might be so alien that we can know nothing
about it. One exception might be the basic laws of physics, but even
there it is sometimes suggested that there may be undiscovered laws (for
instance, we don?t yet have an accepted theory of quantum gravity) or
poorly understood consequences of known laws that could be exploited to
enable things we would normally think of as physically impossible, such
as creating traversable wormholes, spawning new ?basement? universes, or
traveling backward in time. However, unpredictability is logically
distinct from abruptness of development and would need to be argued for
separately.

Transhumanists differ widely in the probability they assign to Vinge?s
scenario. Almost all of those who do think that there will be a
singularity believe it will happen in this century, and many think it is
likely to happen within several decades.

References:

Good, I. J. ?Speculations Concerning the First Ultraintelligent
Machine,? in /Advances in Computers/, Vol. 6, Franz L. Alt and Morris
Rubinoff, eds (Academic Press, 1965), pp. 31-88.

Vinge, V. ?The Coming Technological Singularity,? /Whole Earth Review/,
Winter Issue (1993).
http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html
<http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html>

Ulam, S. ?Tribute to John von Neumann,? /Bulletin of the American
Mathematical Society/, Vol. 64, Nr. 3, Part II, pp. 1-49 (1958).

3 SOCIETY AND POLITICS

3.1 Will new technologies only benefit the rich and powerful?

One could make the case that the average citizen of a developed country
today has a higher standard of living than any king five hundred years
ago. The king might have had a court orchestra, but you can afford a CD
player that lets you to listen to the best musicians any time you want.
When the king got pneumonia he might well die, but you can take
antibiotics. The king might have a carriage with six white horses, but
you can have a car that is faster and more comfortable. And you likely
have television, Internet access, and a shower with warm water; you can
talk with relatives who live in a different country over the phone; and
you know more about the Earth, nature, and the cosmos than any medieval
monarch.

The typical pattern with new technologies is that they become cheaper as
time goes by. In the medical field, for example, experimental procedures
are usually available only to research subjects and the very rich. As
these procedures become routine, costs fall and more people can afford
them. Even in the poorest countries, millions of people have benefited
from vaccines and penicillin. In the field of consumer electronics, the
price of computers and other devices that were cutting-edge only a
couple of years ago drops precipitously as new models are introduced.

It is clear that everybody can benefit greatly from improved technology.
Initially, however, the greatest advantages will go to those who have
the resources, the skills, and the willingness to learn to use new
tools. One can speculate that some technologies may cause social
inequalities to widen. For example, if some form of intelligence
amplification becomes available, it may at first be so expensive that
only the wealthiest can afford it. The same could happen when we learn
how to genetically enhance our children. Those who are already well off
would become smarter and make even more money. This phenomenon is not
new. Rich parents send their kids to better schools and provide them
with resources such as personal connections and information technology
that may not be available to the less privileged. Such advantages lead
to greater earnings later in life and serve to increase social
inequalities.

Trying to ban technological innovation on these grounds, however, would
be misguided. If a society judges existing inequalities to be
unacceptable, a wiser remedy would be progressive taxation and the
provision of community-funded services such as education, IT access in
public libraries, genetic enhancements covered by social security, and
so forth. Economic and technological progress is not a zero sum game;
it?s a positive sum game. Technological progress does not solve the hard
old political problem of what degree of income redistribution is
desirable, but it can greatly increase the size of the pie that is to be
divided.

3.2 Do transhumanists advocate eugenics?

Eugenics in the narrow sense refers to the pre-WWII movement in Europe
and the United States to involuntarily sterilize the ?genetically unfit?
and encourage breeding of the genetically advantaged. These ideas are
entirely contrary to the tolerant humanistic and scientific tenets of
transhumanism. In addition to condemning the coercion involved in such
policies, transhumanists strongly reject the racialist and classist
assumptions on which they were based, along with the notion that eugenic
improvements could be accomplished in a practically meaningful timeframe
through selective human breeding.

Transhumanists uphold the principles of bodily autonomy and procreative
liberty. Parents must be allowed to choose for themselves whether to
reproduce, how to reproduce, and what technological methods they use in
their reproduction. The use of genetic medicine or embryonic screening
to increase the probability of a healthy, happy, and multiply talented
child is a responsible and justifiable application of parental
reproductive freedom.

Beyond this, one can argue that parents have a moral responsibility to
make use of these methods, assuming they are safe and effective. Just as
it would be wrong for parents to fail in their duty to procure the best
available medical care for their sick child, it would be wrong not to
take reasonable precautions to ensure that a child-to-be will be as
healthy as possible. This, however, is a moral judgment that is best
left to individual conscience rather than imposed by law. Only in
extreme and unusual cases might state infringement of procreative
liberty be justified. If, for example, a would-be parent wished to
undertake a genetic modification that would be clearly harmful to the
child or would drastically curtail its options in life, then this
prospective parent should be prevented by law from doing so. This case
is analogous to the state taking custody of a child in situations of
gross parental neglect or child abuse.

This defense of procreative liberty is compatible with the view that
states and charities can subsidize public health, prenatal care, genetic
counseling, contraception, abortion, and genetic therapies so that
parents can make free and informed reproductive decisions that result in
fewer disabilities in the next generation. Some disability activists
would call these policies eugenic, but society may have a legitimate
interest in whether children are born healthy or disabled, leading it to
subsidize the birth of healthy children, without actually outlawing or
imposing particular genetic modifications.

When discussing the morality of genetic enhancements, it is useful to be
aware of the distinction between enhancements that are intrinsically
beneficial to the child or society on the one hand, and, on the other,
enhancements that provide a merely positional advantage to the child.
For example, health, cognitive abilities, and emotional well-being are
valued by most people for their own sake. It is simply nice to be
healthy, happy and to be able to think well, quite independently of any
other advantages that come from possessing these attributes. By
contrast, traits such as attractiveness, athletic prowess, height, and
assertiveness seem to confer benefits that are mostly positional, i.e.
they benefit a person by making her more competitive (e.g. in sports or
as a potential mate), at the expense of those with whom she will
compete, who suffer a corresponding disadvantage from her enhancement.
Enhancements that have only positional advantages ought to be
de-emphasized, while enhancements that create net benefits ought to be
encouraged.

It is sometimes claimed that the use of germinal choice technologies
would lead to an undesirable uniformity of the population. Some degree
of uniformity is desirable and expected if we are able to make everyone
congenitally healthy, strong, intelligent, and attractive. Few would
argue that we should preserve cystic fibrosis because of its
contribution to diversity. But other kinds of diversity are sure to
flourish in a society with germinal choice, especially once adults are
able to adapt their own bodies according to their own aesthetic tastes.
Presumably most Asian parents will still choose to have children with
Asian features, and if some parents choose genes that encourage
athleticism, others may choose genes that correlate with musical ability.

It is unlikely that germ-line genetic enhancements will ever have a
large impact on the world. It will take a minimum of forty or fifty
years for the requisite technologies to be developed, tested, and widely
applied and for a significant number of enhanced individuals to be born
and reach adulthood. Before this happens, more powerful and direct
methods for individuals to enhance themselves will probably be
available, based on nanomedicine, artificial intelligence, uploading, or
somatic gene therapy. (Traditional eugenics, based on selecting who is
allowed to reproduce, would have even less prospect of avoiding
preemptive obsolescence, as it would take many generations to deliver
its purported improvements.)

3.3 Aren?t these future technologies very risky? Could they
even cause our extinction?

Yes, and this implies an urgent need to analyze the risks before they
materialize and to take steps to reduce them. Biotechnology,
nanotechnology, and artificial intelligence pose especially serious
risks of accidents and abuse. [See also ?If these technologies are so
dangerous, should they be banned? What can be done to reduce the risks??]

One can distinguish between, on the one hand, endurable or limited
hazards, such as car crashes, nuclear reactor meltdowns, carcinogenic
pollutants in the atmosphere, floods, volcano eruptions, and so forth,
and, on the other hand, /existential risks/ ? events that would cause
the extinction of intelligent life or permanently and drastically
cripple its potential. While endurable or limited risks can be serious ?
and may indeed be fatal to the people immediately exposed ? they are
recoverable; they do not destroy the long-term prospects of humanity as
a whole. Humanity has long experience with endurable risks and a variety
of institutional and technological mechanisms have been employed to
reduce their incidence. Existential risks are a different kind of beast.
For most of human history, there were no significant existential risks,
or at least none that our ancestors could do anything about. By
definition, of course, no existential disaster has yet happened. As a
species we may therefore be less well prepared to understand and manage
this new kind of risk. Furthermore, the reduction of existential risk is
a global public good (everybody by necessity benefits from such safety
measures, whether or not they contribute to their development), creating
a potential free-rider problem, i.e. a lack of sufficient selfish
incentives for people to make sacrifices to reduce an existential risk.
Transhumanists therefore recognize a moral duty to promote efforts to
reduce existential risks.

The gravest existential risks facing us in the coming decades will be of
our own making. These include:

/ Destructive uses of nanotechnology/. The accidental release of a
self-replicating nanobot into the environment, where it would proceed to
destroy the entire biosphere, is known as the ?gray goo scenario?. Since
molecular nanotechnology will make use of positional assembly to create
non-biological structures and to open new chemical reaction pathways,
there is no reason to suppose that the ecological checks and balances
that limit the proliferation of organic self-replicators would also
contain nano-replicators. Yet, while gray goo is certainly a legitimate
concern, relatively simple engineering safeguards have been described
that would make the probability of such a mishap almost arbitrarily
small (Foresight 2002). Much more serious is the threat posed by
nanobots deliberately designed to be destructive. A terrorist group or
even a lone psychopath, having obtained access to this technology, could
do extensive damage or even annihilate life on earth unless effective
defensive technologies had been developed beforehand (Center for
Responsible Nanotechnology 2003). An unstable arms race between
nanotechnic states could also result in our eventual demise (Gubrud
2000). Anti-proliferation efforts will be complicated by the fact that
nanotechnology does not require difficult-to-obtain raw materials or
large manufacturing plants, and by the dual-use functionality of many of
the basic components of destructive nanomachinery. While a nanotechnic
defense system (which would act as a global immune system capable of
identifying and neutralizing rogue replicators) appears to be possible
in principle, it could turn out to be more difficult to construct than a
simple destructive replicator. This could create a window of global
vulnerability between the potential creation of dangerous replicators
and the development of an effective immune system. It is critical that
nano-assemblers do not fall into the wrong hands during this period.

/Biological warfare/. Progress in genetic engineering will lead not only
to improvements in medicine but also to the capability to create more
effective bioweapons. It is chilling to consider what would have
happened if HIV had been as contagious as the virus that causes the
common cold. Engineering such microbes might soon become possible for
increasing numbers of people. If the RNA sequence of a virus is posted
on the Internet, then anybody with some basic expertise and access to a
lab will be able to synthesize the actual virus from this description. A
demonstration of this possibility was offered by a small team of
researchers from New York University at Stony Brook in 2002, who
synthesized the polio virus (whose genetic sequence is on the Internet)
from scratch and injected it into mice who subsequently became paralyzed
and died.

/Artificial intelligence/. No threat to human existence is posed by
today?s AI systems or their near-term successors. But if and when
superintelligence is created, it will be of paramount importance that it
be endowed with human-friendly values. An imprudently or maliciously
designed superintelligence, with goals amounting to indifference or
hostility to human welfare, could cause our extinction. Another concern
is that the first superintelligence, which may become very powerful
because of its superior planning ability and because of the technologies
it could swiftly develop, would be built to serve only a single person
or a small group (such as its programmers or the corporation that
commissioned it). While this scenario may not entail the extinction of
literally all intelligent life, it nevertheless constitutes an
existential risk because the future that would result would be one in
which a great part of humanity?s potential had been permanently
destroyed and in which at most a tiny fraction of all humans would get
to enjoy the benefits of posthumanity. [See also ?Will posthumans or
superintelligent machines pose a threat to humans who aren?t augmented??]

/Nuclear war/. Today?s nuclear arsenals are probably not sufficient to
cause the extinction of all humans, but future arms races could result
in even larger build-ups. It is also conceivable that an all-out nuclear
war would lead to the collapse of modern civilization, and it is not
completely certain that the survivors would succeed in rebuilding a
civilization capable of sustaining growth and technological development.

/Something unknown/. All the above risks were unknown a century ago and
several of them have only become clearly understood in the past two
decades. It is possible that there are future threats of which we
haven?t yet become aware.

For a more extensive discussion of these and many other existential
risks, see Bostrom (2002).

Evaluating the total probability that some existential disaster will do
us in before we get the opportunity to become posthuman can be done by
various direct or indirect methods. Although any estimate inevitably
includes a large subjective factor, it seems that to set the probability
to less than 20% would be unduly optimistic, and the best estimate may
be considerably higher. But depending on the actions we take, this
figure can be raised or lowered.

References:

Bostrom, N. ?Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and
Related Hazards,? /Journal of Evolution and Technology. /Vol. 9 (2002).
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
<http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html>

Center for Responsible Nanotechnology. ?Dangers of Nanotechnology?
(2003). http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm
<http://www.crnano.org/dangers.htm>

Foresight Institute. ?Foresight Guidelines on Molecular Nanotechnology,
version 3.7? (2000). http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/current.html
<http://www.foresight.org/guidelines/current.html>

Gubrud, M. ?Nanotechnology and International Security,? /Fifth Foresight
Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology/. (1997)
http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/Gubrud/index.html
<http://www.foresight.org/Conferences/MNT05/Papers/Gubrud/index.html>

Wimmer, E. et al. ?Chemical Synthesis of Poliovirus cDNA: Generation of
Infectious Virus in the Absence of Natural Template,? /Science/, Vol.
257, No. 5583, (2002), pp. 1016-1018.

3.4 If these technologies are so dangerous, should they be
banned? What can be done to reduce the risks?

The position that we ought to relinquish research into robotics, genetic
engineering, and nanotechnology has been advocated in an article by Bill
Joy (2000). Joy argued that some of the future applications of these
technologies are so dangerous that research in those fields should be
stopped now. Partly because of Joy?s previously technophiliac
credentials (he was a software designer and a cofounder of Sun
Microsystems), his article, which appeared in /Wired/ magazine,
attracted a great deal of attention.

Many of the responses to Joy?s article pointed out that there is no
realistic prospect of a worldwide ban on these technologies; that they
have enormous potential benefits that we would not want to forgo; that
the poorest people may have a higher tolerance for risk in developments
that could improve their condition; and that a ban may actually increase
the dangers rather than reduce them, both by delaying the development of
protective applications of these technologies, and by weakening the
position of those who choose to comply with the ban relative to less
scrupulous groups who defy it.

A more promising alternative than a blanket ban is /differential
technological development/, in which/ /we would seek to influence the /
sequence/ in which technologies developed. On this approach, we would
strive to retard the development of harmful technologies and their
applications, while accelerating the development of beneficial
technologies, especially those that offer protection against the harmful
ones. For technologies that have decisive military applications, unless
they can be verifiably banned, we may seek to ensure that they are
developed at a faster pace in countries we regard as responsible than in
those that we see as potential enemies. (Whether a ban is verifiable and
enforceable can change over time as a result of developments in the
international system or in surveillance technology.)

In the case of nanotechnology, the desirable sequence of development is
that nanotech immune systems and other defensive measures be deployed
before offensive capabilities become available to many independent
powers. Once a technology is shared by many, it becomes extremely hard
to prevent further proliferation. In the case of biotechnology, we
should seek to promote research into vaccines, anti-viral drugs,
protective gear, sensors, and diagnostics, and to delay as long as
possible the development and proliferation of biological warfare agents
and the means of their weaponization. For artificial intelligence, a
serious risk will emerge only when capabilities approach or surpass
those of humans. At that point one should seek to promote the
development of friendly AI and to prevent unfriendly or unreliable AI
systems.

Superintelligence is an example of a technology that seems especially
worth promoting because it can help reduce a broad range of threats.
Superintelligent systems could advise us on policy and make the progress
curve for nanotechnology steeper, thus shortening the period of
vulnerability between the development of dangerous nanoreplicators and
the deployment of effective defenses. If we have a choice, it seems
preferable that superintelligence be developed before advanced
nanotechnology, as superintelligence could help reduce the risks of
nanotechnology but not vice versa. Other technologies that have wide
risk-reducing uses include intelligence augmentation, information
technology, and surveillance. These can make us smarter individually and
collectively or make enforcement of necessary regulation more feasible.
A strong prima facie case therefore exists for pursuing these
technologies as vigorously as possible. Needless to say, we should also
promote non-technological developments that are beneficial in almost all
scenarios, such as peace and international cooperation.

In confronting the hydra of existential, limited and endurable risks
glaring at us from the future, it is unlikely that any one silver bullet
will provide adequate protection. Instead, an arsenal of countermeasures
will be needed so that we can address the various risks on multiple levels.

The first step to tackling a risk is to recognize its existence. More
research is needed, and existential risks in particular should be
singled out for attention because of their seriousness and because of
the special nature of the challenges they pose. Surprisingly little work
has been done in this area (but see e.g. Leslie (1996), Bostrom (2002),
and Rees (2003) for some preliminary explorations). The strategic
dimensions of our choices must be taken into account, given that some of
the technologies in questions have important military ramifications. In
addition to scholarly studies of the threats and their possible
countermeasures, public awareness must be raised to enable a more
informed debate of our long-term options.

Some of the lesser existential risks, such as an apocalyptic asteroid
impact or the highly speculative scenario involving something like the
upsetting of a metastable vacuum state in some future particle
accelerator experiment, could be substantially reduced at relatively
small expense. Programs to accomplish this ? e.g. an early detection
system for dangerous near-earth objects on potential collation course
with Earth, or the commissioning of advance peer review of planned
high-energy physics experiments ? are probably cost-effective. However,
these lesser risks must not deflect attention from the more serious
concern raised by more probable existential disasters [see ?Aren?t these
future technologies very risky? Could they even cause our extinction??].

In light of how superabundant the human benefits of technology can
ultimately be, it matters less that we obtain all of these benefits in
their precisely most optimal form, and more that we obtain them at all.
For many practical purposes, it makes sense to adopt the rule of thumb
that we should act so as to maximize the probability of an /acceptable/
outcome, one in which we attain some (reasonably broad) realization of
our potential; or, to put it in negative terms, that we should act so as
to minimize net existential risk.

References:

Bostrom, N. ?Existential Risks: Analyzing Human Extinction Scenarios and
Related Hazards,? /Journal of Evolution and Technology. /Vol. 9 (2002).
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html
<http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html>

Joy, B. ?Why the Future Doesn?t Need Us?. /Wired/, 8:04 (2000).
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html
<http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy_pr.html>

Leslie, J. /The End of the World: The Ethics and Science of Human
Extinction/. (London: Routledge, 1996).

Rees, M. /Our Final Hour/. (New York: Basic Books, 2003).

3.5 Shouldn?t we concentrate on current problems such as
improving the situation of the poor, rather than putting our
efforts into planning for the ?far? future?

We should do both. Focusing solely on current problems would leave us
unprepared for the new challenges that we will encounter.

Many of the technologies and trends that transhumanists discuss are
already reality. Biotechnology and information technology have
transformed large sectors of our economies. The relevance of
transhumanist ethics is manifest in such contemporary issues as stem
cell research, genetically modified crops, human genetic therapy, embryo
screening, end of life decisions, enhancement medicine, information
markets, and research funding priorities. The importance of
transhumanist ideas is likely to increase as the opportunities for human
enhancement proliferate.

Transhuman technologies will tend to work well together and create
synergies with other parts of human society. For example, one important
factor in healthy life expectancy is access to good medical
care. Improvements in medical care will extend healthy, active lifespan
? ?healthspan? ? and research into healthspan extension is likely to
benefit ordinary care. Work on amplifying intelligence has obvious
applications in education, decision-making, and communication. Better
communications would facilitate trade and understanding between people.
As more and more people get access to the Internet and are able to
receive satellite radio and television broadcasts, dictators and
totalitarian regimes may find it harder to silence voices of dissent and
to control the information flow in their populations. And with the
Internet and email, people discover they can easily form friendships and
business partnerships in foreign countries. A world order characterized
by peace, international cooperation, and respect for human rights would
much improve the odds that the potentially dangerous applications of
some future technologies can be controlled and would also free up
resources currently spent on military armaments, some of which could
then hopefully be diverted to improving the condition of the poor.
Nanotechnological manufacturing promises to be both economically
profitable and environmentally sound. Transhumanists do not have a
patent solution to achieve these outcomes, any more than anybody else
has, but technology has a huge role to play.

An argument can be made that the most efficient way of contributing to
making the world better is by participating in the transhumanist
project. This is so because the stakes are enormous ? humanity?s entire
future may depend on how we manage the coming technological transitions
? and because relatively few resources are at the present time being
devoted to transhumanist efforts. Even one extra person can still make a
significant difference here.

3.6 Will extended life worsen overpopulation problems?

Population increase is an issue we would ultimately have to come to
grips with even if healthy life-extension were not to happen. Leaving
people to die is an unacceptable solution.

A large population should not be viewed simply as a problem. Another way
of looking at the same fact is that it means that many persons now enjoy
lives that would not have been lived if the population had been smaller.
One could ask those who complain about overpopulation exactly which
people?s lives they would have preferred should not have been led. Would
it really have been better if billions of the world?s people had never
existed and if there had been no other people in their place? Of course,
this is not to deny that too-rapid population growth can cause crowding,
poverty, and the depletion of natural resources. In this sense there can
be real problems that need to be tackled.

How many people the Earth can sustain at a comfortable standard of
living is a function of technological development (as well as of how
resources are distributed). New technologies, from simple improvements
in irrigation and management, to better mining techniques and more
efficient power generation machinery, to genetically engineered crops,
can continue to improve world resource and food output, while at the
same time reducing environmental impact and animal suffering.

Environmentalists are right to insist that the status quo is
unsustainable. As a matter of physical necessity, things cannot stay as
they are today indefinitely, or even for very long. If we continue to
use up resources at the current pace, without finding more resources or
learning how to use novel kinds of resources, then we will run into
serious shortages sometime around the middle of this century. The deep
greens have an answer to this: they suggest we turn back the clock and
return to an idyllic pre-industrial age to live in sustainable harmony
with nature. The problem with this view is that the pre-industrial age
was anything but idyllic. It was a life of poverty, misery, disease,
heavy manual toil from dawn to dusk, superstitious fears, and cultural
parochialism. Nor was it environmentally sound ? as witness the
deforestation of England and the Mediterranean region, desertification
of large parts of the middle east, soil depletion by the Anasazi in the
Glen Canyon area, destruction of farm land in ancient Mesopotamia
through the accumulation of mineral salts from irrigation, deforestation
and consequent soil erosion by the ancient Mexican Mayas, overhunting of
big game almost everywhere, and the extinction of the dodo and other big
featherless birds in the South Pacific. Furthermore, it is hard to see
how more than a few hundred million people could be maintained at a
reasonable standard of living with pre-industrial production methods, so
some ninety percent of the world population would somehow have to vanish
in order to facilitate this nostalgic return.

Transhumanists propose a much more realistic alternative: not to retreat
to an imagined past, but to press ahead as intelligently as we can. The
environmental problems that technology creates are problems of
intermediary, inefficient technology, of placing insufficient political
priority on environmental protection as well as of a lack of ecological
knowledge. Technologically less advanced industries in the former
Soviet-bloc pollute much more than do their advanced Western
counterparts. High-tech industry is typically relatively benign. Once we
develop molecular nanotechnology, we will not only have clean and
efficient manufacturing of almost any commodity, but we will also be
able to clean up much of the mess created by today?s crude fabrication
methods. This would set a standard for a clean environment that today?s
traditional environmentalists could scarcely dream of.

Nanotechnology will also make it cheaper to colonize space. From a
cosmic point of view, Earth is an insignificant speck. It has sometimes
been suggested that we ought to leave space untouched in its pristine
glory. This view is hard to take seriously. Every hour, through entirely
natural processes, vast amounts of resources ? millions of times more
than the sum total of what the human species has consumed throughout its
career ? are transformed into radioactive substances or wasted as
radiation escaping into intergalactic space. Can we not think of some
more creative way of using all this matter and energy?

Even with full-blown space colonization, however, population growth can
continue to be a problem, and this is so even if we assume that an
unlimited number of people could be transported from Earth into space.
If the speed of light provides an upper bound on the expansion speed
then the amount of resources under human control will grow only
polynomially (~ t^3 ). Population, on the other hand, can easily grow
exponentially (~ e^t ). If that happens, then, since a factor that grows
exponentially will eventually overtake any factor that grows
polynomially, average income will ultimately drop to subsistence levels,
forcing population growth to slow. How soon this would happen depends
primarily on reproduction rates. A change in average life span would not
have a big effect. Even vastly improved technology can only postpone
this inevitability for a relatively brief time. The only long-term
method of assuring continued growth of average income is some form of
population control, whether spontaneous or imposed, limiting the number
of new persons created per year. This does not mean that population
could not grow, only that the growth would have to be polynomial rather
than exponential.

Some additional points to consider:

In technologically advanced countries, couples tend to have fewer
children, often below the replacement rate. As an empirical
generalization, giving people increased rational control over their
lives, especially through women?s education and participation in the
labor market, causes couples to have fewer children.

If one took seriously the idea of controlling population by limiting
life span, why not be more active about it? Why not encourage suicide?
Why not execute anyone reaching the age of 75?

If slowing aging were unacceptable because it might lead to there being
more people, what about efforts to cure cancer, reduce traffic deaths,
or improve worker safety? Why use double standards?

When transhumanists say they want to extend lifespans, what they mean is
that they want to extend healthspans. This means that the extra
person-years would be productive and would add economic value to
society. We can all agree that there would be little point in living an
extra ten years in a state of dementia.

The world population growth rate has been declining for several decades.
It peaked in 1970 at 2.1%. In 2003, it was 1.2%; and it is expected to
fall below 1.0% around 2015. (United Nations 2002). The doomsday
predictions of the so-called ?Club of Rome? from the early 1970s have
consistently turned out to be wrong.

The more people there are, the more brains there will be working to
invent new ideas and solutions.

If people can look forward to a longer healthy, active life, they will
have a personal stake in the future and will hopefully be more concerned
about the long-term consequences of their actions.

References:
United Nations/. The World Population Prospects: The 2002 Revision/
(United Nations: New York, 2002).
http://www.gov.za/reports/2003/unpdhighlights.pdf
<http://www.gov.za/reports/2003/unpdhighlights.pdf>

3.7 Is there any ethical standard by which transhumanists
judge ?improvement of the human condition??

Transhumanism is compatible with a variety of ethical systems, and
transhumanists themselves hold many different views. Nonetheless, the
following seems to constitute a common core of agreement:

According to transhumanists, the human condition has been improved if
the conditions of individual humans have been improved. In practice,
competent adults are usually the best judges of what is good for
themselves. Therefore, transhumanists advocate individual freedom,
especially the right for those who so wish to use technology to extend
their mental and physical capacities and to improve their control over
their own lives.

From this perspective, an improvement to the human condition is a change
that gives increased opportunity for individuals to shape themselves and
their lives according to their informed wishes. Notice the word
?informed?. It is important that people be aware of what they choose
between. Education, discussion, public debate, critical thinking,
artistic exploration, and, potentially, cognitive enhancers are means
that can help people make more informed choices.

Transhumanists hold that people are not disposable. Saving lives (of
those who want to live) is ethically important. It would be wrong to
unnecessarily let existing people die in order to replace them with some
new ?better? people. Healthspan-extension and cryonics are therefore
high on the transhumanist list of priorities. The transhumanist goal is
not to replace existing humans with a new breed of super-beings, but
rather to give human beings (those existing today and those who will be
born in the future) the option of developing into posthuman persons.

The non-disposability of persons partially accounts for a certain sense
of urgency that is common among transhumanists. On average, 150,000 men,
women, and children die every day, often in miserable conditions. In
order to give as many people as possible the chance of a posthuman
existence ? or even just a decent human existence ? it is paramount that
technological development, in at least some fields, is pursued with
maximal speed. When it comes to life-extension and its various enabling
technologies, a delay of a single week equals one million avoidable
premature deaths ? a weighty fact which those who argue for bans or
moratoria would do well to consider carefully. (The further fact that
universal access will likely lag initial availability only adds to the
reason for trying to hurry things along.)

Transhumanists reject speciesism, the (human racist) view that moral
status is strongly tied to membership in a particular biological
species, in our case homo sapiens. What exactly does determine moral
status is a matter of debate. Factors such as being a person, being
sentient, having the capacity for autonomous moral choice, or perhaps
even being a member of the same community as the evaluator, are among
the criteria that may combine to determine the degree of somebody?s
moral status (Warren 1997). But transhumanists argue that
species-identity should be de-emphasized in this context. Transhumanists
insist that all beings that can experience pain have some moral status,
and that posthuman persons could have at least the same level of moral
status as humans have in their current form.

References:

Warren, M.-A. /Moral Status: Obligations to Persons and Other Living
Things/ (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997).

3.8 What kind of society would posthumans live in?

Not enough information is available at the current time to provide a
full answer to this question. In part, though, the answer is, ?You
decide.? The outcome may be influenced by the choices we make now and
over the coming decades. In this respect, the situation is the same as
in earlier epochs that had no transhuman possibilities: by becoming
involved in political struggles against today?s social ills and
injustices, we can help make tomorrow?s society better.

Transhumanism does, however, inform us about new constraints,
possibilities, and issues, and it highlights numerous important leverage
points for intervention, where a small application of resources can make
a big long-term difference. For example, one issue that moves into
prominence is the challenge of creating a society in which beings with
vastly different orders of capabilities (such as posthuman persons and
as-yet non-augmented humans) can live happily and peacefully together.
Another concern that becomes paramount is the need to build a world
order in which dangerous arms races can be prevented and in which the
proliferation of weapons of mass destruction can be suppressed or at
least delayed until effective defenses have been developed [see ?Aren?t
these future technologies very risky? Could they even cause our
extinction??].

The ideal social organization may be one that includes the possibility
for those who so wish to form independent societies voluntarily secluded
from the rest of the world, in order to pursue traditional ways of life
or to experiment with new forms of communal living. Achieving an
acceptable balance between the rights of such communities for autonomy,
on the one hand, and the security concerns of outside entities and the
just demands for protection of vulnerable and oppressed individuals
inside these communities on the other hand, is a delicate task and a
familiar challenge in political philosophy.

What types of society posthumans will live in depends on what types of
posthumans eventually develop. One can project various possible
developmental paths [see ?What is a posthuman??] which may result in
very different kinds of posthuman, transhuman, and unaugmented human
beings, living in very different sorts of societies. In attempting to
imagine such a world, we must bear in mind that we are likely to base
our expectations on the experiences, desires, and psychological
characteristics of humans. Many of these expectations may not hold true
of posthuman persons. When human nature changes, new ways of organizing
a society may become feasible. We may hope to form a clearer
understanding of what those new possibilities are as we observe the
seeds of transhumanity develop.

3.9 Will posthumans or superintelligent machines pose a
threat to humans who aren?t augmented?

Human society is always at risk from some group deciding to view another
group of humans as fit for slavery or slaughter. To counteract such
tendencies, modern societies have created laws and institutions, and
endowed them with powers of enforcement, that act to prevent groups of
citizens from assaulting one another. The efficacy of these institutions
does not depend on all citizens having equal capacities. Modern,
peaceful societies have large numbers of people with diminished physical
or mental capacities along with many other people who may be
exceptionally physically strong or healthy or intellectually talented in
various ways. Adding people with technologically enhanced capacities to
this already broad distribution of ability would not necessarily rip
society apart or trigger genocide or enslavement.

A common worry is that inheritable genetic modifications or other human
enhancement technologies would lead to two distinct and separate species
and that hostilities would inevitably develop between them. The
assumptions behind this prediction should be questioned. It is a common
theme in fiction because of the opportunities for dramatic conflict, but
that is not the same as social, political, and economic plausibility in
the real world. It seems more likely that there would be a continuum of
differently modified or enhanced individuals, which would overlap with
the continuum of as-yet unenhanced humans. The scenario in which ?the
enhanced? form a pact and then attack ?the naturals? makes for exciting
science fiction but is not necessarily the most plausible outcome. Even
today, the segment containing the tallest 90 percent of the population
could, in principle, get together and kill or enslave the shorter
decile. That this does not happen suggests that a well-organized society
can hold together even if it contains many possible coalitions of people
sharing some attribute such that, if they unified under one banner,
would make them capable of exterminating the rest.

To note that the extreme case of a war between human and posthuman
persons is not the most likely scenario is not to say that there are no
legitimate social concerns about the steps that may take us closer to
posthumanity. Inequity, discrimination, and stigmatization ? against or
on behalf of modified people ? could become serious issues.
Transhumanists would argue that these (potential) social problems call
for social remedies. (One case study of how contemporary technology can
change important aspects of someone?s identify is sex reassignment. The
experiences of transsexuals show that some cultures still have work to
do in becoming more accepting of diversity.) This is a task that we can
begin to tackle now by fostering a climate of tolerance and acceptance
towards those who are different from ourselves. We can also act to
strengthen those institutions that prevent violence and protect human
rights, for instance by building stable democratic traditions and
constitutions and by expanding the rule of law to the international plane.

What about the hypothetical case in which someone intends to create, or
turn themselves into, a being of so radically enhanced capacities that a
single one or a small group of such individuals would be capable of
taking over the planet? This is clearly not a situation that is likely
to arise in the imminent future, but one can imagine that, perhaps in a
few decades, the prospective creation of superintelligent machines could
raise this kind of concern. The would-be creator of a new life form with
such surpassing capabilities would have an obligation to ensure that the
proposed being is free from psychopathic tendencies and, more generally,
that it has humane inclinations. For example, a superintelligence should
be built with a clear goal structure that has friendliness to humans as
its top goal. Before running such a program, the builders of a
superintelligence should be required to make a strong case that
launching it would be safer than alternative courses of action.

References:

Yudkowsky, E. /Creating Friendly AI: The Analysis and Design of
Benevolent Goal Architectures/. (2003, Version 1.0).
http://www.singinst.org/CFAI/index.html
<http://www.singinst.org/CFAI/index.html>

4 TRANSHUMANISM AND NATURE

4.1 Why do transhumanists want to live longer?

This is a personal matter, a matter of the heart. Have you ever been so
happy that you felt like melting into tears? Has there been a moment in
your life of such depth and sublimity that the rest of existence seemed
like dull, gray slumber from which you had only just woken up?

It is so easy to forget how good things can be when they are at their
best. But on those occasions when we do remember ? whether it comes from
the total fulfillment of being immersed in creative work or from the
tender ecstasy of reciprocated love ? then we realize just how valuable
every single minute of existence can be, when it is this good. And you
might have thought to yourself, ?It ought to be like this always. Why
can?t this last forever??

Well, maybe ? just maybe ? it could.

When transhumanists seek to extend human life, they are not trying to
add a couple of extra years at a care home spent drooling at one?s
shoes. The goal is more healthy, happy, productive years. Ideally,
everybody should have the right to choose when and how to die ? or not
to die. Transhumanists want to live longer because they want to do,
learn, and experience more; have more fun and spend more time with loved
ones; continue to grow and mature beyond the paltry eight decades
allotted to us by our evolutionary past; and in order to get to see for
themselves what wonders the future might hold. As the sales pitch for
one cryonics organization goes:

?The conduct of life and the wisdom of the heart are based upon time; in
the last quartets of Beethoven, the last words and works of ?old men?
like Sophocles and Russell and Shaw, we see glimpses of a maturity and
substance, an experience and understanding, a grace and a humanity, that
isn?t present in children or in teenagers. They attained it because they
lived long; because they had time to experience and develop and reflect;
time that we might all have. Imagine such individuals ? a Benjamin
Franklin, a Lincoln, a Newton, a Shakespeare, a Goethe, an Einstein [and
a Gandhi] ? enriching our world not for a few decades but for centuries.
Imagine a world made of such individuals. It would truly be what Arthur
C. Clarke called ?Childhood?s End? ? the beginning of the adulthood of
humanity.? (Cryonics Institute)

References:

Cryonics Institute. http://www.cryonics.org/ <http://www.cryonics.org>

4.2 Isn?t this tampering with nature?

Absolutely, and it is nothing to be ashamed of. It is often right to
tamper with nature. One could say that manipulating nature is an
important part of what civilization and human intelligence is all about;
we have been doing it since the invention of the wheel. Alternatively,
one could say that since we are part of nature, everything we do and
create is in a sense natural too. In any case, there is no moral reason
why we shouldn?t intervene in nature and improve it if we can, whether
by eradicating diseases, improving agricultural yields to feed a growing
world population, putting communication satellites into orbit to provide
homes with news and entertainment, or inserting contact lenses in our
eyes so we can see better. Changing nature for the better is a noble and
glorious thing for humans to do. (On the other hand, to ?pave paradise
to put up a parking lot? would not be glorious; the qualification ?for
the better? is essential.) [See also ?Are transhumanist technologies
environmentally sound??]

In many particular cases, of course, there are sound practical reasons
for relying on ?natural? processes. The point is that we cannot decide
whether something is good or bad simply by asking whether it is natural
or not. Some natural things are bad, such as starvation, polio, and
being eaten alive by intestinal parasites. Some artificial things are
bad, such as DDT-poisoning, car accidents, and nuclear war.

To pick a topical example, consider the debate about human cloning. Some
argue that cloning humans is not unnatural because human clones are
essentially just identical twins. They were right in this, of course,
although one could also correctly remark that it is not natural for
identical twins to be of different ages. But the more fundamental point
is that it doesn’t matter whether human clones are natural or not. When
thinking about whether to permit human reproductive cloning, we have to
compare the various possible desirable consequences with the various
possible undesirable consequences. We then have to try to estimate the
likelihood of each of these consequences. This kind of deliberation is
much harder than simply dismissing cloning as unnatural, but it is also
more likely to result in good decisions.

These remarks hopefully should seem trivial. Yet it is astonishing how
often polemicists can still get a way with arguments that are basically
(thinly disguised) ways of saying, ?It is good because it?s the way it
has always been!? or ?It is good because that?s the way Nature made it!?

4.3 Will transhuman technologies make us inhuman?

The important thing is not to be human but to be humane. Though we might
wish to believe that Hitler was an inhuman monster, he was, in fact, a
human monster; and Gandhi is noted not for being remarkably human but
for being remarkably humane.

The attributes of our species are not exempt from ethical examination in
virtue of being ?natural? or ?human?. Some human attributes, such as
empathy and a sense of fairness, are positive; others, such as
tendencies toward tribalism or groupishness, have left deep scars on
human history. If there is value in being human, it does not comes from
being ?normal? or ?natural?, but from having within us the raw material
for being humane: compassion, a sense of humor, curiosity, the wish to
be a better person. Trying to preserve ?humanness,? rather than
cultivating humaneness, would idolize the bad along with the good. One
might say that if ?human? is what we are, then ?humane? is what we, as
humans, wish we were. Human nature is not a bad place to start that
journey, but we can?t fulfill that potential if we reject any progress
past the starting point.

4.4 Isn?t death part of the natural order of things?

Transhumanists insist that whether something is natural or not is
irrelevant to whether it is good or desirable [see also ?Isn?t this
tampering with nature??, ?Will extended life worsen overpopulation
problems??, and ?Why do transhumanists want to live longer??].

Average human life span hovered between 20 and 30 years for most of our
species? history. Most people today are thus living highly unnaturally
long lives. Because of the high incidence of infectious disease,
accidents, starvation, and violent death among our ancestors, very few
of them lived much beyond 60 or 70. There was therefore little selection
pressure to evolve the cellular repair mechanisms (and pay their
metabolic costs) that would be required to keep us going beyond our
meager three scores and ten. As a result of these circumstances in the
distant past, we now suffer the inevitable decline of old age: damage
accumulates at a faster pace than it can be repaired; tissues and organs
begin to malfunction; and then we keel over and die.

The quest for immortality is one of the most ancient and deep-rooted of
human aspirations. It has been an important theme in human literature
from the very earliest preserved written story, /The Epic of Gilgamesh/,
and in innumerable narratives and myths ever since. It underlies the
teachings of world religions about spiritual immortality and the hope of
an afterlife. If death is part of the natural order, so too is the human
desire to overcome death.

Before transhumanism, the only hope of evading death was through
reincarnation or otherworldly resurrection. Those who viewed such
religious doctrines as figments of our own imagination had no
alternative but to accept death as an inevitable fact of our existence.
Secular worldviews, including traditional humanism, would typically
include some sort of explanation of why death was not such a bad thing
after all. Some existentialists even went so far as to maintain that
death was necessary to give life meaning!

That people should make excuses for death is understandable. Until
recently there was absolutely nothing anybody could do about it, and it
made some degree of sense then to create comforting philosophies
according to which dying of old age is a fine thing (?deathism?). If
such beliefs were once relatively harmless, and perhaps even provided
some therapeutic benefit, they have now outlived their purpose. Today,
we can foresee the possibility of eventually abolishing aging and we
have the option of taking active measures to stay alive until then,
through life extension techniques and, as a last resort, cryonics. This
makes the illusions of deathist philosophies dangerous, indeed fatal,
since they teach helplessness and encourage passivity.

Espousing a deathist viewpoint tends to go with a certain element of
hypocrisy. It is to be hoped and expected that a good many of death?s
apologists, if they were one day presented with the concrete choice
between (A) getting sick, old, and dying, and (B) being given a new shot
of life to stay healthy, vigorous and to remain in the company of
friends and loved ones to participate in the unfolding of the future,
would, when push came to shove, choose this latter alternative.

If some people would still choose death, that?s a choice that is of
course to be regretted, but nevertheless this choice must be respected.
The transhumanist position on the ethics of death is crystal clear:
death should be voluntary. This means that everybody should be free to
extend their lives and to arrange for cryonic suspension of their
deanimated bodies. It also means that voluntary euthanasia, under
conditions of informed consent, is a basic human right.

It may turn out to be impossible to live forever, strictly speaking,
even for those who are lucky enough to survive to such a time when
technology has been perfected, and even under ideal conditions. The
amount of matter and energy that our civilization can lay its hands on
before they recede forever beyond our reach (due to the universe?s
expansion) is finite in the current most favored cosmological models.
The heat death of the universe is thus a matter of some personal concern
to optimistic transhumanists!

It is too early to tell whether our days are necessarily numbered.
Cosmology and fundamental physics are still incomplete and in
theoretical flux; theoretical possibilities for infinite information
processing (which might enable an upload to live an infinite life) seem
to open and close every few years. We have to live with this
uncertainty, along with the much greater uncertainty about whether any
of us will manage to avoid dying prematurely, before technology has
become mature.

4.5 Are transhumanist technologies environmentally sound?

The environmental impact of a technology depends on how it is used.
Safeguarding the natural environment requires political will as well as
good technology. The technologies necessary for realizing the
transhumanist vision can be environmentally sound. Information
technology and medical procedures, for example, tend to be relatively clean.

Transhumanists can in fact make a stronger claim regarding the
environment: that current technologies are unsustainable. We are using
up essential resources, such as oil, metal ores, and atmospheric
pollution capacity, faster than they regenerate. At the present rate of
consumption, we look set to exhaust these resources some time in this
century. Any realistic alternatives that have been proposed involve
taking technology to a more advanced level. Not only are transhumanist
technologies ecologically sound, they may be the only environmentally
viable option for the long term.

With mature molecular manufacturing [see ?What is molecular
nanotechnology??], we will have a way of producing most any commodity
without waste or pollution. Nanotechnology would also eventually make it
economically feasible to build space-based solar plants, to mine
extraterrestrial bodies for ore and minerals and to move heavy
industries off-earth. The only truly long-term solution to resource
shortage is space colonization.

From a transhumanist point of view, humans and our artifacts and
enterprises are part of the extended biosphere. There is no fundamental
dichotomy between humanity and the rest of the world. One could say that
nature has, in humanity, become conscious and self-reflective. We have
the power to dream of a better ways for things to be and to deliberately
set out to build our dreams, but we also have the responsibility to use
this power in ways that are sustainable and that protect essential values.

5 TRANSHUMANISM AS A PHILOSOPHICAL AND CULTURAL VIEWPOINT

5.1 What are the philosophical and cultural antecedents of
transhumanism?

The human desire to acquire posthuman attributes is as ancient as the
human species itself. Humans have always sought to expand the boundaries
of their existence, be it ecologically, geographically, or mentally.
There is a tendency in at least some individuals always to try to find a
way around every limitation and obstacle.

Ceremonial burial and preserved fragments of religious writings show
that prehistoric humans were deeply disturbed by the death of their
loved ones and sought to reduce the cognitive dissonance by postulating
an afterlife. Yet, despite the idea of an afterlife, people still
endeavored to extend life. In the Sumerian /Epic of Gilgamesh/ (approx.
2000 B.C.), a king embarks on a quest to find an herb that can make him
immortal. It?s worth noting that it was assumed both that mortality was
not inescapable in principle, and that there existed (at least
mythological) means of overcoming it. That people really strove to live
longer and richer lives can also be seen in the development of systems
of magic and alchemy; lacking scientific means of producing an elixir of
life, one resorted to magical means. This strategy was adopted, for
example, by the various schools of esoteric Taoism in China, which
sought physical immortality and control over or harmony with the forces
of nature.

The Greeks were ambivalent about humans transgressing our natural
confines. On the one hand, they were fascinated by the idea. We see it
in the myth of Prometheus, who stole the fire from Zeus and gave it to
the humans, thereby permanently improving the human condition. And in
the myth of Daedalus, the gods are repeatedly challenged, quite
successfully, by a clever engineer and artist, who uses non-magical
means to extend human capabilities. On the other hand, there is also the
concept of /hubris/: that some ambitions are off-limit and would
backfire if pursued. In the end, Daedalus? enterprise ends in disaster
(not, however, because it was punished by the gods but owing entirely to
natural causes