- In the near future we will have the understanding of what makes the human mind work, muscularly, biologically and functionally. We will be able to fix or repair brain damage, restoring functionality to those that have lost ability due to injury or illness. We will also be able to repair genetic damage that was caused at birth by applying these same techniques to eradicate retardation, Down's Syndrome and other mental deficiencies. Many feel it is ethically responsible for us to bring all of humanity up to a even playing field to allow all of us equal opportunity.
- But what if we understand what intelligence is and we can re-engineer all biological life such that we can grant human level intelligence to animals? Should we? Should humanity be the sole owners of intelligence? Should we uplift just chimpanzees? Should we uplift dogs, cats, pigs, cows, flies, anything?
- If we could talk with them, what would they say? How would they feel about not having an opposeable thumb and the inability to manipulate objects as finely as us? Would they want us to re-engineer them to be more like us so as to effect the world like we do? Or would they want something different?
- Would they want to be treated as equals and demand equal rights? Does that apply to just the uplifted animals and not the ones left behind? Should all animals be uplifted?
- What about the different factions of humans? One group feels that animals should be left alone; another says uplift them but engineer them to be willing slaves; another says they should have free will and manifest destiny; others say just add some intelligence, but not all the way, for WE should maintain our dominance.
- Would natural traits such as alpha instinct, pack mentality and predator/prey behavior be engineered out of them? Could they be? Would we be able to take this part of intelligence but not that part? If unable to weed out these behavioral instincts, how will they function in our civilized society? Would uplifted wolves still chase uplifted rabbits that run from everything? Or would the uplifted rabbits fight back with cunning and trickery?
- I feel the most interesting points will be to discover what these animals have to say. What does a whale sing about? Why does the Preying Mantis eat her mate after sex? Would the black widow spider share her knowledge of webspinning? Does my dog REALLY like me, or am I just a convenient food source, thus I shouldn't be pissed off. WHAT ARE THEY THINKING?
I hope to continue this project and get some feedback from Iamba as to what direction this will go.
We also waxed philosophical about talking politics with strangers. I really shouldn't! LOL. Without going into too much detail, I was sucked in to a morning commute conversation (I ride the Tri-Rail from Hollywood to Miami) with an acquaintance and she mentioned that I really don't talk much about politics. I mistakenly took that as a cue that she would be willing to have a nice discussion on various political views. I like differing views and like to discuss their pros and cons. Well, in short, she said something I understood to be, "The reason that Miami city government is so corrupt is," then in a very hushed tone and a furtive glance, "all the Cubans are used to getting around the system back on their island so they do it here." ...
I was shocked! I then asked if what I heard was correct. "Did I just hear you say that Cubans are to blame for the state of governmental corruption here?" She said, "Yes."
I then said, "I am not so sure I agree with the validity of that stereotypical statement. Do you happen to have evidence of the Cuban - corruption connection?" She began to get visibly upset. She said, "I didn't say that. I am not a stereotyper. I don't do that. That's not what I said!"
I then asked, "I'm sorry, but if that isn't what you said, what did you say? I just want to clarify that what I heard was correct."
She became more upset by the minute. Our stop came up and she bolted like I had just shot her. I followed, not understanding why she was practically running away. I caught up to her and said, "Have I upset you?" She repeated, "I am not a stereotyper or a racist!" and turned and walked away!" I attempted to apologize, but it fell on deaf ears.
On the bus ride to class later that night, I was replaying the event in my mind to see where I went wrong and have some questions:
- If someone says something in a hushed tone and furtive glances to see if anyone is listening, does that not mean they are aware that what they are about to say is possibly perceived to be controversial or not popular? Am I misinterpreting the body language here?
- Was my acquaintance angry at me for misunderstanding her statement, for calling her on it, or is she mad at herself for making the statement in the first place?
- Why do people want to discuss interesting controversial issues, but when they do, get upset and angry? I didn't feel angry at the woman for her view, I was just surprised she said it out loud. Why did she get angry? Why not discuss it rationally and evaluate the topic critically?
- I was dismayed to discover that our budding friendship was so fragile as to not handle even the slightest disagreement. I guess that it is better to have discovered this now before anything deeper had been created. I am just constantly amazed at the utter complexity of interpersonal relationships.
Iamba talked a little about this when I related the event to her. She said she tries to refrain from talking politics as most people are over emotional and not logical in their views. (I wonder why that is. Government should be dispassionate and reasonable.) She said that she will only discuss political theory, not working politics. I guess I will have to adopt that view to keep others from getting upset unnecessarily.
I thought I had said I wasn't going to go into detail...sigh...
*changed the names to protect the not so innocent...
Anyway, On to more positive topics like:
- Semantic Web takes big step forward - This is going to be as big a jump in use fullness as the web itself was.
- Self-Paced Brain-Computer Interface Gets Closer to Reality - I am waiting, impatiently, for my PC to just 'know' what I am thinking, just like my leg or arm does now. Keyboard? Mouse? Useless.
- Penn Engineers Create Carbon Nanopipettes That Are Smaller Than Cells and Measure Electric Current - This leads us to tiny repair tools that will slip into cells and repair DNA an organelles from the inside out, repairing age related damage and genetic abnormalities. Maybe even DNA restructuring. Also the possibility of inserting a nanopipette into neurons to monitor individual firing and create recordings of the resultant patterns in realtime. Fun stuff.
- Graphene quantum dot may solve some quantum computing problems - Could this be the next paradigm in computation, after the IC chip?
- Pushing The Limits Of Computer Chip Miniaturization - Another related article to computational paradigms. With further refinement and improvement, Moore's Law could go to 2020, but we should be well into the next substrate of computing before then. I do like how this article shows the Accelerating Returns that IC chips have followed. The next 20 years will have 1 million times more change than the last 20. WOOT!
- Food from cloned animals deemed safe in US - Why did it take over a year to determine if cloned animals are safe to eat? Muscle is muscle, regardless of how it is born...I'm confused here. And why are two thirds of consumers wary of cloned products? Same reason as for the reluctance to accept Genetically Modified foods? (They don't realize that most domesticated animals have been genetically modified for centuries. Its called selective breeding.) I guess they really don't know what it is, and thus are afraid of what they don't understand. Unfortunately change is accelerating and consumers will understand less and less, does that mean they will consume less and less? When everything is like magic, will they stop consuming altogether?
- Has AT&T Lost Its Mind?A baffling proposal to filter the Internet. - Nice way to destroy a company.
- MacBook ErrWhy I'm disappointed in Apple's ultraslim new laptop. - Smaller sizes. Greater capabilities. I am loving this day and age. Can't wait for the "PC in a pill"
4 comments:
There is so much that could be said, but perhaps I should just mention the most pressing issues. First, the female praying mantis only eats her mate while in captivity. Such behavior has not been observed in the wild. The reason for this difference is simply a lack of readily available nourishment for the female while in captivity - so, as a substitute, she eats the male. It's kind of like humans cannibalizing when they are stranded without food. Obviously, a survival tactic that is only used as a last resort.
Second, I think your logic about genetics/cloned species for mass consumption is a little skewed. True, people will often fear/shy away from things that they don't fully understand, but what is it that they don't understand? What is it that makes them wary? You pointed out that we have been breeding and artificially selecting premium specimens for generations. This is true, however, we have had generations to witness the consequences of altering our food supply. When you suddenly change even just a few variables, there will always be that risk of a negative interaction between our altered food, and our bodies. What are the long term effects of changing just one variable? One could postulate ideas, theorize, hypothesize, but in the end, there's nothing better than long term testing. Even though the FDA is rather flawed and suspect to providing favors, the goal is still the same, to make sure that such things are prevented. Realistically, even with extensive testing, there are no guarantees that every possible interaction could be foreseen. It's just like installing a new version of a program/app - no matter how much the program has been tested, both in beta and debugging, there will always be unforeseen bugs/flaws/conflicting interactions with other programs. This is why, even for the professionals, they release updates and patches constantly, and have a 'submit a bug' section.
So, in the end, what have we learned? People are wary because they DO understand the potential consequences, and are afraid of not knowing 100% whether or not such food is actually safe to eat over time. Stupidity? Perhaps it's just a survival technique.
Thank you "anonymous", I appreciate you correcting me on the preying mantis topic. I do like to actually know myth from fact. This prompted me to conduct a bit of web research of my own, to see if either of us was correct. And we both were! See: "The Female Praying Mantis: Sexual Predator or Misunderstood" by Michele Doughty
In response to your questioning of my logic, I believe you are holding all things to be equal and just changing one variable. In addition to increasing the speed of genetic change we are also increasing the speed of testing, modelling and simulating the effects these changes have as well. We are gaining a greater understanding of the assembly language that is DNA. We are gaining greater control of molecules and their interactions.
Long term testing on the powerful computing platforms of tomorrow (and I don't mean 50-100 years, I mean 10-20 years, in which individual platforms will have thousands to millions of times the computing power of today, not including cloud computing potential) will be able to simulate hundreds of years of testing in hours or minutes of computing time. This will help us to determine which "flaws" that will crop up and what they will do and how to repair them. I do not deny that errors will occur. I deny that these errors will get to the food supply without proper testing, and the rate of testing is increasing exponentially. I would rather trust my food to an engineer, who has my best interest in mind because his job is dependant on it, than nature doing her job randomly. That is truly dangerous to me. I am amazed we have made it this far with nature trying to rub us out as aggressively as she could. (I feel uncomfortable anthropomorphizing a concept such as nature, but I really don't have another way to describe it)
You mention that there is no substitute for long term testing, but I disagree when any simulation sufficiently perfect might as well be the real thing. If I can't tell the simulation IS a simulation, will it matter if it IS a simulation? For all intents and purposes, it IS the real thing. If the body metabolizes the proteins just like a REAL cow, it might as well be a REAL cow, regardless of the method used to create the cow. I just can't believe that biological systems are so utterly complex that we can't reverse engineer it successfully and reliably to manufacture food directly, without using old, outdated methods such as breeding. This is prone to greater error due to mutation than the relatively predictable and reliable method of cloning. At first new things are hard to do, and very expensive, then it gets progressively cheaper and easier until its nearly free and very ubiquitous. Take the cell phone, for example. Remember the first ones? Huge and brick-like, the battery lasted 10's of minutes and the reception was atrocious. It cost a fortune, and was seen as a status symbol. Now it is given away in exchange for signing a service agreement. Things change, and things are changing faster, exponentially.
I may have gotten off topic there a bit...But my point is, we wont eat it until we trust it. We wont trust it until we understand it. We can't understand it, so we fear it. Even when it may be perfectly safe and shown to be so with thorough testing done through sufficiently accurate modelling. I say learn, adapt and be ready for change, for it is occurring at an exponential rate regardless of how we feel about it or how much want to change it.
I appreciate your follow-up comment. I was hoping that you wouldn't have any problem explaining your position. So, thanks.
I think what I failed to mention in my last post is that in a perfect world, things would work the way they were intended. In a perfect world, we would be perfect. But we know that humans aren't, and this is a variable that weighs against the singularity view. With the reality that human error will always be prevalent, and with the likelihood that there will always be those who hold opposing views - the singularity view seems void of acknowledging this undeniable factor.
Perhaps it could be said that we could create machines that exceed our capabilities on every level, but not at the rate we are headed. Beaureacracy is intent on providing resistance to things that could be misconstrued as "playing God." Look at the issue of abortions or even stem cell research. Before the first heart transplant, much of the public [and members of the medical community] were opposed to it. They felt that the soul was in the heart, and that replacing the heart would take away their soul.
Human nature, human error, human emotion, and human beliefs have always got in the way of progress and advances in technology. The rift between science and religion is the epitome of such an argument. Until we can overcome our own faults, we will perpetually stunt our potential.
Let's assume that we have overcome our faults and have progressed to a point of near singularity. This would require that we are either obsolete, and therefore are of no use to our creations or ourselves, and/or we will have overcome our faults to such a uniform degree that we do not take risks [because it serves no purpose when we are all the same], and there would not be opposing views to spark ingenuity. Inspiration and ingenuity accelerates via turmoil and tragedy. Without this rift, we would be content with the lives we live. For example, when you were going to school [or if you still are], you do so because you want to advance your education for your own self-augmentation. If we were honest with ourselves here, then it could also be said that part of this desire also stems from your contempt for meritocracy. Since we aren't all to a point where everyone is automatically afforded a uniform society [a.k.a. communism], there is still a need to take action towards advancing yourself before others. Democracy wouldn't be democracy without at least 1 other opposing view, and this is why it's necessary for an equilibrium among several opposing views and not a single view. When you narrow the perspective, you lose the opportunity and inspiration for inventive new ideas. At the same time, the species as a whole are likely to take a much bigger hit when there is only one type of mind to adapt to the changing times.
wow cool there are other people that are posting. nice. well gust leaving my mark.
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