There's no reason to exclude any information from one's speculations, including expected lifespan.

But the point is the emphasis on prolonged lifespans is clearly evading the question of whether or under what circumstances life is worth living in the first place.

Now you might respond that that question is not within the purview of technologism, but then I would have to disagree with you.

Full-blown technologism is by design a sort of consolatory religion for people who don't want to believe in death, or want to experience an intellectual sensation of immortality. Many (maybe all?) ideologies partially serve this function.

The above is a hard case to make empirically but maybe I don't have to if you will concede it. Reading Ray Kurzweil, do you get the sense that all his obsessive prophesying about the future and the ineffable transformation that technology will bring is, at bottom, a way of denying his mortality?

I agree with everything in this paragraph. I didn't mean to dismiss people having a fascination with technology. (Especially people who actually work in technology or related fields, but fanboys are ok too.)

I meant, and I think used a couple of times, "hardcore technologism". I never defined this term and not sure I will do a good job of it now but I would try this: "the (possibly unacknowledged) belief that technology is the most important good for humanity". Sorry for the musty Platonic phrasing but that mistake (and really it has to be a logical mistake) seems to me to be the essence of hard technologism.

I can't remember what you quoted here but I didn't mean to diss sci-fi as such. I was dissing sci-fi hiding under the cover of scientific prediction and serving as religion.

Also I want to be clear on the respect in which I approved of religion. I am not at all a fan of religion as a source of truth (beyond folk wisdom and that kind of thing).

The one advantage of religion in the context of this argument is that it honestly faces the questions that it exists to answer.

Religion does not shy away from "what makes life worth living?" "how should I live?" "is it better to live or die?", "what is the purpose of human life?". Etc.

Now its answers may be completely bogus, but it at least has the dignity of honestly facing the questions.

Substitutive religions by contrast try to provide the same sort of consolation about the same uncertainties while pretending not to deal with them at all. Thus they evade the questions and in doing so they simply become bogus religions or philosophies. (Imo obv.)

Seems to me if you look at the past errors of sci-fi they almost always come from extrapolating known trends too far while completely failing to anticipate new trends. (The Black Swan contains a great argument from Karl Popper on why this error is unavoidable.)

Based on this I would rather say that "technology will progress at a rate of omfg awesome in many old domains, you-****ing-kidding-me-slow in a few old domains, but most importantly it will make great strides in domains that simply have not been imagined yet."

I agree completely.

Kurzweil has stated that he wants to make some sort of simulacrum of his father, with 'his' mind / personality generated from Kurzweil's own memories.

It would be difficult to fabricate a better example of what you've pointed out.

A great deal of the lure of the singularity is it provides an escape from mortality by erasing one's humanity, without the terror and guilt of suicide.

I am sympathetic to your ambivalence on this fantasy - avoiding the human condition by writing "cease being human" deep in your day planner is strange, but difficult to judge.

probably he is. I assume he's signed up for cryonics or something if he doesn't make the cut?

This is what I don't get, how do you arrive at a notion of the human condition to begin with, which then makes you ambivalent about these sci-fi fantasies? Is it really that strange to want to fundamentally reconsider what the human condition is given our current and future perspectives on cosmology, neuroscience & computation?

well put

Transhumanism isn't about "fundamentally reconsidering" the human condition. It's about obviating the human condition.
MM is pointing out that transhumanism provides the escapism proffered by religion and philosophy, but does not adopt the labels of religion / philosophy.
Transhumanists literally claim that you can live out trillions of lifetimes in paradise with all of your dead loved ones - they are certainly not the first group of people to promise "eternal life."

Just because transhumanism shares this feature with religion doesn't make it a religion - it is however, an important similarity.

It certainly makes sense to me to be ambivalent to this escapism, as it would make sense for me to feel ambivalent to the following scenario:

A parent loses his / her child, and takes solace in the belief that "they are in a better place (heaven), and will one day meet again."

Furthermore, if transhumanist visions become reality, ambivalence still makes sense (albeit, this time it's a little more abstract, and far less relevant). When the ability to upload your consciousness into virtual paradise and live a life without suffering, should you take it? Obviously, you will, but you won't know if you're doing the right thing moments before you enter heaven.

********
Note: I'm using the "happy paradise" scenario for discussing the singularity. I realize this isn't an inevitable outcome of the singularity, should it happen.

I think it would be absurd to deny, a priori, that the milieu of technologism or futurism can give birth to an authentic philosophy (or religion?), or indeed sweep philosophy and religion off the table by radically transforming human existence to the point where the old fundamental questions are no longer relevant or no longer even make sense.

To deny that would just be a particularly dogmatic attempt at prophecy.

My problem rather is that technologism, as it exists now, is an *inauthentic* substitute for religion or philosophy. Its purpose is to lull its adherents with techno-utopian visions into forgetting that the fundamental questions of living even exist, or perhaps into believing that the questions have somehow already been mooted by the fantastic possibilities of as yet non-existent technologies.

I am of course referring to pretty hardcore technologists, not random people who subscribe to Wired or whatever.

The pay check for my new book is near!

troof

http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php...&id=1968#comic

If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, chances are it's a duck.

Unless it's a robot AI duck.

All the hostility in this thread: is it directed towards the idea of ever reaching a singularity, or is it more directed to Kurzweil and his methods?

Timelines and specific predictions aside, I believe a singularity is almost inevitable. I also believe we humans are not likely to be invited to the party.

http://www.smbc-comics.com/?db=comics&id=1803#comic

wurd

I would just want to know what you mean by the human condition. Do you just mean awareness/experience of mortality?

Like skepticism, ambivalence is the proper attitude wrt things one does not fully understand, so I don't have any fundamental problem with being ambivalent about the non-obvious. But ambivalence is also a consequence of extant views, perspectives and sentiments. As laughable as some transhumanists are, the slippery-slope Faustian bargainers are also pretty dull and are motivated by the same anxieties.

At any rate, I'm a reductionist way before I'm any kind of transhumanist, and reductionism does more serious damage to most classical conceptions of the human condition than fantasies of living forever inside a computer.

Sorry for sucking at responding in a timely manner.

I agree that technologism has adherents who are lulled by fantasies, but this doesn't imply much about the merit of the musings of any particular technologist. There's salvageable philosophical/anthropological content in technologism despite its appeal to virginal introverts. Technologism/futurism should ask precisely the fundamental questions of living. Also, one's enthusiasm or desire for certain exotic technologies should not affect how likely one thinks that these technologies will be invented.

I did want to make this point about as yet non-existent technologies. Some itt have needled the prospect of computerizing consciousness and achieving immortality, and I can agree that it's improbable and wishful to think that this can ever happen. However, another popular novum of transhumanism is better living through chemistry; the advent of safe and perpetually effective euphoric drugs (or methods for reversing tolerance of existing euphoric drugs). Significant near-term 'progress' in this field seems feasible if not imminent, assuming there's no neurophysiological constraint on safe perpetual euphoria. Now, there's disdain for this, emanating chiefly from one grossly overrated book, but these issues are here today to address.

We're probably a lot closer to some form of functioning 'nanites' than this 'singularity.' The former also raises interesting ethical concerns.

Smrk, even if such a thing were emanently distant in the future, it's still worth discussing the implications. Philosophy (and sociology, etc.) are more than happy to tackle with such subjects. That they're far off in the future (or unlikely to ever happen) is no point against the worth of the topic.

Speaking for myself, I totally agree. I think there's plenty of philosophical value in discussing the implications of even far-fetched technologies. Being diplomatic, however, I can concede to skeptics that the enthusiasm on the part of some budding techno-utopians is not proportional to what is likely, and it's a function of angst. But yes there's credible philosophy behind futurism (pro and con), for example negative utilitarianism and abolitionism which I sort of endorse.

"Ray Kurzweil does not understand the brain

There he goes again, making up nonsense and making ridiculous claims that have no relationship to reality. Ray Kurzweil must be able to spin out a good line of bafflegab, because he seems to have the tech media convinced that he's a genius, when he's actually just another Deepak Chopra for the computer science cognoscenti."

http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2...t_understa.php

Nice read.

Myers is making that claim off of gizmodo's writeup of a speech, of which there isn't a transcript available (nor is there a video). Obviously, Myers was not there.

Apparently, people who attended do not corroborate the math anecdote.
It appears that Kurzweil was just making the point that the genome does contain the "plans" for the brain, and that it can be represented with a small number of bytes.
Considering that all of us own computers that could store the compressed genome in RAM many many times over, claiming that Kurzweil thinks that reading the genome will reverse engineer the brain seems to imply that he both doesn't understand biology and computer science, which is an unfathomable claim.
I have never seen Kurzweil make any quantitative claim relating the genome's entropy to mind-simulation.

In Kurzweil's defense, it is fascinating out how little you need to make a brain - a womb + a cell, both of which have "plans" contained in 3 gigabases. That alone would be amazing, let alone the fact that the genome can be compressed, and that almost (controversial) all of the genome can undergo basechanges w/o any change in the product.

It is unfathomable that a professor in this field could possibly consider backing up a claim relating to the entropy of the genome and the ease of which a brain simulator can be made. Myers should probably have shot him an email before writing this nonsense.

If Kurzweil actually thinks that the genome will easily allow the simulation of the brain, then yes, plans made around this assumption are dog ****.

(sentence in red): The design of the brain is in the genome.
As a side note, Myers' posting the descriptions of the proteins is totally irrelevant. Furthermore, "utterly false" is just rhetoric. Myers knows this, because he's been published in Development.

It will be interesting to see if Myers does any sort of editing / retraction, as he seems to have accused Sejnowski of thinking that an atom-by-atom simulation of the brain is in the works. Oh wait, this is an internet, so you can write anything you want and not get in trouble. So while I'm here - "Myers thinks that the genome is irrelevant to understanding the development of the brain." Take that, Myers! Let's see you get published now, prick.

In closing, the source of Myers' rage, gizmodo, also posted Myers' rant. http://gizmodo.com/5614927/ray-kurzw...tand-the-brain
The first comment links to a slashdot comment http://science.slashdot.org/comments...2&cid=33278862 stating that Kurzweil didn't make the claim.
So, we've got someone writing bull**** after reading a reprint of a Wired article, which, like 99% of science journalism was bull**** for the laity to begin with. I the internet

What's fascinating is how people think that because we understand how mammals reproduce we have a handle on the whole 'reverse engineering the brain' problem.

I was gonna give you HUGE props for the analysis...but then I realized that there's an end quote...nice find tho, thanks for the post.

It's fascinating how little you need to make a universe; just 4 fundamental forces of nature and a bit of matter.