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Sunday, February 28, 2010

More Serious Futurology from Transhumanist Martine Rothblatt

I have already had occasion to discuss the, er, work of Very Serious Transhumanist Futurologist Martine Rothblatt at the stealth Robot Cult outfit IEET (with which I was myself briefly unfortunately associated). But I now find myself drawn irresistibly back as Rothblatt asks the question on every sane person's lips today, namely Would Mindclones Be Part of the Human Family? Or, as one Luna Lovegood more forcefully put the point, should Nargles be considered part of the Wrackspurt Continuum?

Among many other moments of wonder, we are told in this essay that:
By virtue of digital technology it is possible to self-replicate one’s mind wholly apart from the DNA-driven partial replication of one’s body (aside from cloning, babies are a blend of two people’s largely similar but subtly unique genes). For example, the entirety of one’s digital life –- all of our photos, emails, web searches, music, videos, chats, texts, documents, links and downloads -– could be archived in cyberspace and animated with a sophisticated chatbot. It will not be difficult for advanced artificial intelligence (AI) programs to ferret out and replicate the unique personality that is woven through our digital reflections. Now, provide that chatbot, running our personality program, with self-replication capability and our inherent Natural Selection bred drive to self-replicate could be satisfied just for our minds.

I don't think that word "possible" means quite what some people seem to think it does…

It actually matters that there is no actually existing "digital technology" that I ever heard of by means of which one can "self-replicate one's mind."

Nor is there any actually-existing cloning, "aside from" which one properly compares human sexual reproduction at this particular time.

No one has a "digital life" in the first place "the entirely of which" is archivable in cyberspace (also, not a real space, I suppose I am forced to add, given present company), thereupon to be "animated" by a "chatbot," however "sophisticated." This matters.

Second Life is not life. Your avatar is not you. Neither are you a picture of you. This stuff really matters, you know.

I guess I could concede that should hypothetical instantiations of non-existing not even particularly conceptually coherent current notions of "artificial intelligence" eventually come into existence it may indeed be possible that that particular non-existing not presently-possible non-thing may also cause other presently non-existing not presently possible non-things to be marginally more existing or possible as well. Who on earth can say? What on earth is any of this supposed to mean?

It matters. And of course, that's the point. That's what makes a futurologist "serious" in the first place, I suppose.

For myself, I prefer making contact with such fancies by way of science fiction writers who have been playing around with these notions already for generations, and in ways that can reasonably be expected to be accompanied by interesting plots, arresting characterizations, compelling settings, and rarely require that I confuse fiction with fact or skylarking with policy analysis.

4 comments:

jimf said...

> I have already had occasion to discuss the, er, work of
> Very Serious Transhumanist Futurologist. . .
>
> I prefer making contact with such fancies by way of
> science fiction writers who have been playing around with
> these notions already for generations. . .

You know, the contrast between the Very Serious Transhumanists
(or the Very Ridiculous Transhumanists, depending on your
mood) and a halfway-decent SF author like Greg Egan really
makes me respect the talents that are displayed by
the latter (and which are conspicuously absent in the former).

I had, before my brush with the >Hists, merely taken for
granted that I could read books like _Permutation City_
and _Disapora_ with enjoyment and a sufficient degree of
suspension of disbelief that my thoughts were not
dragged into the Wrackspurt Continuum. I no longer
take the artistry of decent SF for granted. Greg Egan,
and Iain Banks, and Vernor Vinge for that matter, are
clearly doing something that the >Hists cannot, for
the life of them, do. They aren't doing science either,
of course. Or policy wonkery. I don't know what
they're doing. Something like vacuum-cleaner salesmanship,
without the vacuum cleaners (or Roombas either).

"Love is the morning and the evening star."

-- Elmer Gantry, fictional ex-vacuum cleaner salesman

Dale Carrico said...

My thoughts exactly.

Mitchell said...

"it may indeed be possible that that particular non-existing not presently-possible non-thing may also cause other presently non-existing not presently possible non-things to be marginally more existing or possible as well"

Now that's futurology!

jimf said...

> Now that's futurology!

You know, C. S. Lewis had a word for "worship of
the future" -- he called it "mellonolatry",
from the Greek:

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080428081218AAIzP78
-----------------------
Greek word for 'future'?

If you mean future as a noun meaning
"a time that is to come" (not like a
prospective) then it is "MELLON"
(L written as the greek lamda- an upside-down
english V). You stress the letter "E".
I write it here in greek, I don't know if
will be correctly displayed in ur computer
Capital : ΜΕΛΛΟΝ Small: μέλλον
-----------------------

The word occurs in a paragraph in _God in the Dock_,
in which Lewis remarks "Mellonolatry, or the
worship of the future, is a **fuddled** religion."

Unfortunately, the paragraph in which this sentence is
embedded begins with the comment "Mechanism, like
all materialist systems, breaks down at the problem
of knowledge. If thought is the undesigned and
irrelevant product of cerebral motions, what
reason have we to trust it?"

The conjunction of "undesigned" with "irrelevant" is
far from logically necessary, but the line of reasoning
required to make that point, relying as it does on the
evolutionary significance of natural selection and
on selectionist theories of knowledge and brain
development, would hardly have been congenial to
Lewis.

(Curious, and perhaps not accidental, that Tolkien's
Elvish word for "friend" is "mellon". Although in Elvish
the root is supposed to be mel- "love". Maybe there's
a connection with the Greek "mel" as in "honey". ;->
Tolkien disavowed any such associations between his
linguistic constructions and "real-world" languages,
but those disavowals were disingenuous. The echoes
are there to see. Atalantë "the Downfallen" for
the "Atlantis" isle of Númenor? Give me a break!)

Still, the >Hists would no doubt aver that
"the Future is your Friend".