Promethean Movement

I was telling Phoenix about an idea I had about expanding Prometheanism into a transhumanist direction. For those who don't know what transhumanism is, it is the philosophy of mind and body improvement using technology (be it genetic & memetic engineering, cybernetics, nootropics, the like).

With that in mind, I wouldn't mind seeing some philosophical analysis done in that area, not to mention analysis of practical concerns, possible risks, etc.

Catching up on posts here... I think the site should have a F.A.Question on transhumanism at least, we do have one on eugenics but that's a nonidentical, though often overlapping concept.

One point is that I personally think that the emphasis on technology for human optimization in transhumanism, which seems to really be the uniting factor between some otherwise seriously divergent philosophies and strategic approaches, is mistaken or overstated.

I have actually argued over their degree of overstatement a bit with Darios who is into the promise of transhumanist, progressive technology much more than I am, so... really good issue to hash out more, I would say.

I don't think most transhumanists appreciate how deep the waters are as they contemplate skipping stones across them, to remain metaphorical for the moment. Realize that at the same time, I'm in no way suggesting that technology isn't a vitally important tool, as it has always functionally been for human progress, long before anyone rather epiphenomenally thought up transhumanist formalization of that principle.

I'll post follow-up thoughts in more detail later. (Later today or this weekend, this time.)

And oh yes, today wikipedia is featuring their article on transhumanism — someone more knowledgable about its history and critics should tell me if the article is solid, but to me it looks like a decent primer.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism

More thoughts: here are some potential problems with and objections to transhumanism, to begin with in the broadest sense of the theory advocating the achievement of human progress through technology. These potential criticisms, which occur to me at this moment, will not apply to all or every example of approaches termed transhumanist (which would include a rather disparate grouping, as I have said), but I think they are worth considering in any particular approach.

• Adherence to a sort of historical materialism, or modelling progress through a material, teleological historicism, despite historical discreditation of other forms of this by counterexamples — historical developments more easily explained otherwise (for example by principles of unique events, by the internalized influence of various ideas in a culture or individual, by biological commonalities in human nature, by mysterious individual faculty or creativity, etc.). In this sense transhumanism could be seen as undue simplification of more complex factors, not reducible to the products of technological capacities.

• Continuing from the above, determinism following from a faith in the advantageous or productive ramifications of developments in technology to improve human life, but minimization of possible deleterious or tangential ramifications. Such focus on technological benefits appears unwarranted unless coupled with a more sophisticated theoretical basis, which might account for why so many inventions and refinements have a) either been deliberately harnessed to achieve goals contrary to human advancement (e.g. much targeted DoD funding for the science and engineering towards military applications), or b) brought benefits coupled with unforeseen consequences which amounted to the same problem (e.g. Fritz Haber's chemistry), or c) brought unexpected benefits exceeding their original design (e.g. the internet, originally an academia-military partnership).

• Continuing from that point, failure to acknowledge the problem of dystopia in all its magnitude, and relationship to powerful technologies for the fullest realization of any attempted utopian (really dystopian) society.

• That various schools of transhumanism differ extraordinarily in philosophical methods, aims, and strategies, including both democratic socialism and liebrtarianism under the same roof of technological affinity and belief and faith, even to the point of something like worship of technological promise.

• Not unrelated to that, an ill-defined idea of human progress, happiness, satisfaction, etc. Individual or collective? physical or mental? human or non-human? productive or post-economic? and many other sometimes false, sometimes deep dilemmas of definition become points of argument.

• At the same time an interest in very simplified definitions of progress or improvement, such as enhanced physical strength, IQ, etc., each of which might be critiqued as less advantageous and more superficial than other forms of personal development. Briefly, IQ tests are stupidly overemphasized in themselves as though we had no knowledge of multiple, and non-quantifiable intelligences. Also physical strength historically better equips people to become slaves, servants and soldiers under the power of those less mighty. There is little reason to think that these or other cyber/genetic or other isolated, superficial enhancements to specific, quantifiable capacities would empower individuals to live better lives any more than they have in the past, without integrated and cohesive personality development, liberating systems of philosophical principles, and varied, useful models of analysis and conception — in short complicated enhancements which are not obviously or mainly  technological products.

• Likewise a poor track record of technological fields of development to affect direct enhancements. While economic productivity has often resulted from technological enhancements, given a social and cultural foundation willing and able to appreciate, generate, reward, and circulate them, direct biological or artificial modification of human beings to "improve" them, or in fact change them in any substantive way, really has not materialized. Promises of cyber- and nano- enhancements are still too premature to judge. Genetics were found to be a much more limited field than once thought, due to the limited numbers of genes discovered (most of the complexity of form is found in phenotypical protein expression, which is a recombination of billions of proteins from mere thousands of genes). Genetic determinism is fairly discredited outside of certain studies of rare diseases and counterfactual scenarios like "Gattaca." There is little reason to imagine positive enhancements will not imitate our generally unsatisfying experience trying to address troublesome polycausal phenomena such as cancer using genetic analysis. And judging from complex system neuroscience, the most important thing to enhance (the central nervous system) may well defy any attempt for direct modification by a linear or determinist model of change. There is little if any reason to think our modern tech will in the forseeable future be able to help us much with the real development except in the most secondary way, in the service of those same disciplines which predate it and have already been guiding personal and inner development for centuries or thousands of years: 'metaphysical' visualization through metaphor and myth, psychological models of analysis and guided development, philosophical modelling using verbal and other interpretation, and so on.

• Following the above up, transhumanists often may fail to appreciate the extent and depth of the biological human being they attempt to change. Should a change actually be affected, they do not and often cannot know whether the results of a direct change to one or a few variables would be desired ones, given that a human being is a complex system of complex systems, which are by definition unpredictable, or predictable within rather severe confines. A great deal of the human equation involves the massive influence of many thousands of years of culture we still understand poorly, and much more so the innate biological past of millions and even billions of years of the history of our ancestral organisms. Even if some understand a bit of this influence and profound legacy within ourselves, and are able to appreciate some of the limitations of this biological mortmain, controlling it is a whole other problem beyond knowing a problem exists or describing it. Further, if our characteristics inherently involve "primitive" older circuits, hopefully recombined in interesting and sophisticated ways, it's not clear that human progress would involve speaking a new and foreign 'language' of technologically-driven development, a magic with supposedly superior efficacy for change, to the exclusion of better understanding and conjuring up the old tongue of evolutionary development (whether bodily, behaviorally, conceptually — this is organic in nature, first and foremost) which actually has delivered our tangible and intangible advancements, including the abilities necessary to create and harness artifices (i.e. technology).

• In conclusion of some of the points above, an overemphasis of technology contra other models which may better predict and achieve human development, chiefly philosophical development and the nature of predominant ideological rules.

• Finally, transhumanism often appears an attempt to take shortcuts around more difficult and yet more important work to understand, define, and affect the advancement of life. Technology often seems more impressive than its subtler relatives in other fields among our more intangible toolboxes, intellectual, philosophical, psychological, and other disciplines. Nonetheless it has not proven itself to wholly exceed the profoundness of other tools, and rather has shown that like all other tools, it loses it relevance or even oversteps its bounds dangerously when applied haphazardly in contexts beyond its sensible application.

Any thoughts on these points I have sketched out, anyone?

Also any notion of whether this sort of discussion should be further refined and published? I'm curious to hear how important you think it is to address this stuff more formally.

Incidentally I could come up with some endorsements too, but I feel more of a need to address the headlong, surface-skimming optimism among many transhumanists who have beaten me to the enthusiastic position. I think there's probably enough heedless faith in technology around — and I by no means oppose exploring and utilizing technology. I depend on it every day. However I also feel it causing me trouble every day (RSI/carpal tunnel is a handy reality check, no pun intended).

EDIT: fixed typos and added more.

There are a lot of things about my body I would like to change (not sure if that applies to my mind as well) through genetic therapy and cybernetics. For example, I am deaf and would like to be free from interpreters and pencil and paper to communicate with people who don't know how to sign. It is true that I have had a few good interpreters in the past, but most I've encountered have been either mediocre or very bad, and it makes me uncomfortable anytime I have to rely on one of them to talk to my department head, or anyone else.

I'm planning to write an article for my personal website, titled "Transhumanism and the Disabled" that explores how disabled people in general have made technology an unwitting cornerstone of their lives and what that portends for our future. I strongly believe that the deaf, the blind, and the maimed will be the first to benefit from next-generation human-enhancement technologies, followed by elite athletes, the military, and astronauts.

Ah, Phoenix, you touched on the naive optimism among the transhumanist crowd so well. The only real response I can think of to the abovementioned points is that they stress the need for an individual-based transhumanism in lieu of all the conflicting philosophies out there. When attempting to enhance ourselves, only the individual knows thyself best.

Ah, now that is a great target for technological progress. But I'm not so sure I would even call that transhumanism. I think that gives too much credit.

I mean, it's the sort of pattern than has been going on since time immemorial. First someone perceives an obvious lack, an apparent problem in their current, oftentimes natural condition. They can imagine an alternate situation they think they would like, because alternatives exist (in this case, hearing people). Therefore, they go about understanding the situation and generating attempts at artificial solutions. This is a 'human action' pattern people have followed to create all sorts of benefits, such as those which better economic conditions (a poor person recognizes he lacks things, can identify what wealth means in terms of having stuff, and tries to connect the two through irrigation of his fields or what have you).

But this pattern differs enormously from what transhumanists have in mind, or rather fail to have in mind; they can't envision an 'enhanced' human and we don't know quite what that means — at least, they don't have it worked out, there are many competing ideas of what it would mean. They aren't just talking about solving point deviations from knowable conditions. Much more than that, which completely predates transhumanism. They're talking about remapping the norms, so far as we know them, including whatever peaks we humans experience among that "norm" to something "better." Honestly, what the fuck does that mean, and what would be the effects? I don't know. Nobody knows.

Of course, it's not as though we should have to know results in detail before we can act; that's not possible. Sure, the future is always a bit unpredictable, but they're actually acting as though they can predict it in remarkably specific detail, and achieve it, despite having very little to go on whatsoever. Surely that arrogance would make the future wildly more variable, if anything.

They're really confusing two different things, substituting goals they can't imagine for methods they can. For example, they can imagine a cyber-implant replacing your arm muscles, which means having a stronger arm, or other muscles in your body. What they don't have figured out, is why that's necessarily superior. How does it relate to the rest of your body, which was balanced for the needs of a weaker range of muscle power? Will you need new a new nervous system to gauge your own strength? What about accidents, when holding a baby for instance? How does the increased strength change your psyche? How will your and other people behave with arms that can tear a car apart? Would that make war more horrible? We can ask a million questions about this sort of thing, that would point out that the means or method at hand was allowed to drive the goal, instead of actually doing the philosophical work to say, hmm, what do we really want here? and letting the usual pattern fall into place, where technological means are then found to achieve what we imagine, desire, and perceive as a lack or need or target.

This is why future vistas for humanity are a bit more ambitious than anything appropriate for technological problem-solving. This is a matter for philosophy, e.g. the Overman in Nietzsche. I think our experience tells us some things about the path we have to walk, and of course I do talk about some of the Great Ideas we are fortunate anough to have as guides to remake ourselves. But we ought to admit this isn't as though we have enough information to go around saying, oh, this or that thing needs fixing to be like so-and-so. We don't have a blueprint of the superhuman from God. And since transhumanists generally have even more than the usual indifference and contempt for our heritage and the lessons it teaches us about the future, since they are so future-focused, they generally know even less than they might from studying what there is.

One of the best examples of what I was talking about above is "paradise-engineering" through neural chemicals. I ran into this years ago, and remembered it now:

http://www.huxley.net/

For all of its apparent deliberation and care in crafting the argument, I would call it virtually divorced from reality and even deranged for its wholehearted opposition to nature and evolution (including natural selection, which appears to the author now pointless and as destined for being outmoded as dissatisfaction). Call it what you like, you can't accuse it of not thinking big. The bit where it talks about remaking all of nature so no organism will suffer struck me as particularly insane.

All this grandiosity — without even knowing quite how Prozac works (or doesn't, or how to alleviate its side-effects), or even in most cases, how to manage the pain of a simple recurring backache. Truly, we are like GODS!

Where's the respect for nature? If not for the immensity of its barriers and baffles we cannot presently overcome and for endless mysteries it contains which may forever both delight us and elude our grasp, at least because we come from nature, we are nature and IT IS US. I can't quite believe how many people don't seem to get that... for a mythical illustration, that worshipping Mother Nature is like recognizing and bowing to ourselves as much as the whole beyond ourselves.

Odd... you say they can't envision an 'enhanced human', but I've been doing that very thing in my novel-writing.

Apart from that, I don't see any major fault in your points. All I can say is that humans have been using performance-enhancing equipment for centuries, from eye-glasses to energy drinks to steroids. This is merely the next step. Yes, eye-glasses break and steroids often have nasty side effects, but they do give performance improvements.

It all depends on how you apply these technologies. And they can lead to new ways of experiencing the universe. Suppose you had a genetic modification or cybernetic implant that gave you eagle vision or a rattlesnake's infrared vision? You wouldn't need binoculars or night vision goggles.

I do have a problem with these who believe so fervently in the "Singularity" that point in the future when technology exponentially advances past an event horizon where we can't see anything beyond. That idea doesn't even take in account the non-uniform progress of technology. For example, computer and software technology has come quite a long way in only fifty years, but automotive technology hasn't produced anything substantially new in that time period. For that reason, popularizers of the Singularity overwhelmingly are computer scientists. (Ray Kurzweil and Vernor Vinge come to mind)

Some have defined the Singularity as the instant we create a human-level artificial intelligence. That's a much better definition than the one above, but it fails to take in account what we haven't learned about human intelligence and consciousness. Not to mention that recent research has suggested that consciousness itself may be an illusion.

And, who knows, even if we do create a highly intelligent and automonous machine, if its thinking patterns will remotely follow that of a human? How will we define its consciousness then?

Lots of stuff to chew on...

Well done, Phoenix.

I have not completely read your entire manifesto yet, but I have this much to offer: your assessment of Transhumanism is remarkably similar to mine. Transhumanism stands on a great number of assumptions, which as you say, mean nothing in and of themselves. "Better" is such a subjective term, that it is impossible to predict with accuracy for another being anything which will make a generic human "better." Does "Better" entail happiness, or does the belief system from which they operate equate greater ability with greater happiness? What if an increase in the potential for "good" increases, as they might have already gathered, the potential for suffering and overall worsening of otbers' situation?

I likewise have been conflicted over various philosophies, including Daniel Quinn's criticisms from an anthropological/ecological perspective. His book has garnered much interest, but I find in it more of a utopian transformation of society than a means to a practical or even influential change in societal organization or even culture.

I actualy subscribed to the list for Transhumanism for a while, and have come to the conclusion that they operate under a very western, very idealistic basis. Technology has changed society, but no futurist predicted the most widespread and influential of technologies: The internet, mass media, personal computers, search and economics. These, as you mentioned along with humans, are complex systems and are almost emergent. They are difficult to plot along a graph of "progress" -- but rather simply milemarkers along a journey with no destination. The characteristics change as systems grow, as they speed up or as they interact... but not predictably so.

I'll post more as I read more. So far... I'm intrigued by Prometheanism.

I should have specified what I meant by 'enhanced'. In that context, I was speaking of the idea of being enhanced beyond humanity. Post-human, if you like. That is to say, some human beings perfectly well have the resources and imagination to enhance themselves, but the same special people turn to pronounced degrees of conjecture and creative theorizing when they try to take it a step beyond experience (as would make sense) to an integrated, cohesive new kind of life comparable to a new species. Therefore the wise ones recognize the limitations of futurism. Many transhumanists, on the other hand, act as though humans have detailed recipes, maps, guides or whatever metaphor you like.

I really do think it's more than a next step; it's a different way of thinking about technology and its role. As I said, I think there's a big difference between the linear advancement-through-human-action paradigm, which is timeless in my opinion, and a much less direct, less directed intention for technology. To generalize, transhumanism is far more holistic and less targeted in scope. Often, it seems very vague indeed, and plagued by value confusion. I don't feel that having technology help you figure out what you want along the way — which is what transhumanism would amount to — is a fitting use for what should be, after all, a tool!

Rather, technological progress can profitably be used, as it always has been in human history, to address particular needs and wants we can actually identify. These planned advances might be likened, in some ideal sense, to linear approaches to curved equations of what actually happens, due to unplanned consequences. What they do not do for us is chart the curve over any considerable breadth, much less tell us what the equation is, if you follow me at all.



Notice that your examples describe isolated state modifications by technologies, which are not systemic, and which imitate known states. That is once again, akin to the linear progressive model of technological application people have long benefitted from. No doubt unexpected, holistic and systemic consequences will ramify from doing such things, in the same sense that they always have, but that's quite another thing from a deliberate transhumanist conception of driven or guided progress.

You might say that the objection boils down to complexity theory, really. As befits people who seem frequently more attracted by the promise of control through technology than freedom via technology (the minority of tech-utopian libertarians aside), most transhumanist in my experience believe in dictating to organic complex systems. (Yeah, sure, that works.) Organic complex systems unfold. They don't take direction, except at the level of the restrictions on component functionality. Which means, for all of us people, that there are natural restrictions on how much we can plan out and execute. We can cultivate favorable results with much more likelihood of success than we can have imposing them. You can take on reasonable guidelines for cultivating more advanced humans in a physical, social and every sense, and propagate them, and you'd be more likely to see both technological, and many other kinds of advancements. What you can't do is follow some incorporated blueprint akin to the bionic man to achieve the coming of a super-/post-/mega-/enlightened-/human-but-demigod-being, or whatever. In doing so, one is allowing the tool to dictate the result, and going against what amounts to a law of nature — the dynamics of chaos.

Yes, I've heard of this Singularity business. At that point, I can't classify such transhumanism as anything besides an attraction to another form of religious eschatology (whether indicative of deliverance by AIs or posthumans, or a great comeuppance if you fear the Singularity) — in short yet another escapist metaphysics, distinctly antique at its base. I didn't find the notion too impressive, or 'futuristic', for that reason.

Well, the conclusion I came to when I was thinking through these things while preparing for writing TWoP (fiction, importantly, where I think the concept will remain for some time, if I had to predict) was that any SI (Synthetic Intelligence, a term I took up in preference to AI) created by humans would have to be capable of interfacing with them, and therefore would, at least in some compartmentalized aspect, be capable of thinking in an analogous way to our biological life, including language, various hierarchical psychological 'circuits', associative patterns acting like attractors, habituation, interests, affinities and disinclinations, and so forth. The differences, I felt, would involve things like particular augmented capacities of thought (speed, storage, etc.), a different, rapid  evolution with a lack of personal and evolutionary experience and a shallower history without ages of biological and cultural selection (among other things, possibly leading to some mix of sensitivity, vulnerability, and naivete), and a greater degree of parallelism in thought, achieving more perspectivism. And in this case I also decided on an SI with an integrated body-mind that was self-generated even, within limits, on a short timescale, on a very momentary, voluntary, ad-hoc basis, e.g. nanotech to change body form. So, a person with characteristics we would recognize as analogues to some human ones, but a person with very different limits.



Indeed!

Haha, well, almost I hesitate to even bring it up again because I sure went off on a rant the last time his name came up, but you might be interested to read that threadjack anyway.

Welcome and thanks for joining the discussion.