Regular Contrarian readers may have noticed the healthy number of links to Sentient Developments over the years. The reason is simple: SD manages to explain complex subjects in plain terms, but never at the expense of the ethical implications of evolutionary technologies. This is great for a layman like myself, who can grasp Big Concepts, but lacks the training to parse purely technical treatises.

SD proprietor George Dvorsky recently brought on his first-ever guest blogger — Australian writer, philosopher, and critic Russell Blackford. (George promises to invite more guest contributors, which should be interesting.)

Among Blackford’s fourteen posts for SD is a two-part series on the Fermi Paradox, called “Where is my Alien Civilization?” In case you’re all, “Fermi huh?” here’s Blackford’s explanation:

Enrico Fermi observed that there seems to be a contradiction between the fact that we have not encountered alien civilizations and facts about the scale of the universe (and, indeed, our own galaxy). The vastness of space, the enormous number of stars and planets, and the age of the stars all add up to a presumption that there should be plenty of life Out There, some of it much older than life on Earth. If there are intelligent beings in space that began with millions of years of head start over us, why don’t they have technological civilizations far more advanced than our own? But if they do, why have we never encountered such things as alien space craft, probes, or radio signals?

Good question, and one for which there are, to date, no elegant answers. Plenty of suppositions, sure — but nothing to explain why we’re floating cold and alone on our wee blue ball. I’m not gonna get into von Neumann probes or Astrochickens, but let’s just say that math says we should’ve been contacted by someone or something by now.

Blackford:

Might it be that creating space craft that can travel reliably at even 1 per cent of the speed of light is harder than we assume? Or maybe advanced technological civilizations tend to destroy themselves? Or do they tend to stop expanding their populations, as human beings are doing? We’re really guessing.

The most pessimistic solution is that they tend to destroy themselves. From the point of view of our own species, that solution would suggest that our self-destruction lies ahead. If we discover life elsewhere, then, it’s bad news: the more common life is, the more common technological civilizations should be, and hence the more likely it is that the reason we don’t see them is that they destroy themselves. QED.

Oh noes! 2012, grey goo, methane burps, pandemics, WMD and Dane Cook! We’re doomed! Right? Right?

. . .I don’t think that’s the best way to look at it. There are other possibilities. Perhaps technological civilizations tend to reach a technological singularity point, at which stage they are transformed so comprehensively and deeply that we wouldn’t even recognize them. They might miniaturize themselves in some way that makes expansion into space pointless, or they might switch over to some kind of substrate that we would never recognize as a form of life (partly, no doubt, for their own convenience, but perhaps partly to avoid interfering with vulnerable civilizations at our level).

Or maybe our technology has limitations after all:

We might also be impressed by the now-embarrassing question, “Dude, where’s my jet car?” It sometimes seems that, even as the power of computer hardware continues to follow Moore’s Law, progress in what we can actually do with it seems to be slowing down. “Where’s my robot maid?” If so, human technological potential may be limited, and we need to imagine the future of the world with bounded horizons. Not that that need lead to crippling pessimism – it would not demonstrate our inability to produce great advances in, say, health and life span. What is and is not possible may be different from what we intuit in advance.

And that’s just Part One. The second installment looks at the Drake Equation — a kind of “uncertainty meter” for determining how many ETIs we may or may not come in contact with. But why should we be the sole arbiters of intelligence in the Universe? I call anthropic bias! Still, Blackford finds some cold comfort in Drake’s:

Some of the fractions that feed into the Drake equation may be very small indeed, so small as to make technologically advanced species, and the civilisations they create, incredibly rare. It’s consistent with what we now know that the conditions required for life to form are extremely fortuitous and unusual. It may need very rare combinations of environmental factors. And even then, you can have life staying at levels of neurological complexity that don’t lead to technology.

We know that life can stay at levels of intelligence well below our own pretty much indefinitely. If not for one or more catastrophic events at the end of the Cretaceous Period, including the bolide impact that caused the Chicxulub Crater, Earth might still be dominated by dinosaurs, which might not have developed any impressive levels of intelligence. They hadn’t done so in the previous 150-odd million years, so there’s no reason to think they would have in the past 65 million years.

So maybe we’re gonna be stuck at this general level of development for some time. Oh, well. I might not be able to upload my consciousness to be downloaded at the other end of the galaxy, but at least I have an iPhone!

Is it getting hot in here?

George Dvorsky, that Titan of future-forward analysis, has a chilling, must read post at Sentient Developments about how democracies will fare in an increasingly dangerous 21st Century. Dvorsky suggests that just-around-the-corner weapons of mass destruction (he identifies bioweapons, dirty bombs, weaponized nanotechnology, robotics and misused artificial intelligence as singular dangers), coupled with impending environmental disruption will force previously “free” societies to adopt totalitarian tactics to maintain control. This in turn could inspire counter-radicalism from groups and individuals — an escalation of tech-enabled aggression that could undermine our species’ very survival.

Like the Boy Scouts, current democracies are advised to “be prepared.”

The coming decades will bear witness to[. . . ] political experimentation and restructuring, including a renewed devotion to extreme measures and radicalism. It is becoming increasingly clear that 21st Century politics will be focused around managing the impacts of disruptive technologies, addressing the threats posed by apocalyptic weapons and environmental degradation, and attending to global-scale catastrophes and crises as they occur.

This restructuring is already underway. We live in the post 9/11 world — a world in which we have legitimate cause to be fearful of superterrorism and hyperterrorism. We will also have to reap what we sowed in regards to our environmental neglect. Consequently, our political leaders and institutions will be increasingly called-upon to address the compounding problems of unchecked WMD proliferation, terrorism, civil unrest, pandemics, the environmental impacts of climate change (like super-storms, flooding, etc.), fleets of refugees, devastating food shortages, and so on. It will become very necessary for the world’s militaries to anticipate these crises and adapt so that they can meet these demands.

More challenging, however, will be in avoiding outright human extinction.

It seems to me that there is a woeful lack of understanding of many of these issues at the federal level. As keepers of the Department of Defense purse, some Congressional committees and subcommittees regularly deal with future-tech stuff. But it’s usually a one-way street: a four-star gives a PowerPoint asking for gobs of money because, “in order to retain American military superiority in the face of increasingly sophisticated enemy actors, we must pursue cutting-edge weaponizable applications.” (Quote completely fabricated.) Congress then appropriates the requisite billions for whatever twisted gadget is needed to “protect America.”

DOD and other agencies occasionally produce terrifying reports filled with contingencies for dealing with diaspora, resource shortages and other insecurities resulting from successive environmental crises. But I don’t think there is any one agency, Congressperson or committee that possesses a perspective expansive enough to administer to the multiplicity of threats and pressures outlined in Dvorsky’s post.

And that’s a problem.

Likewise, there is a lack of pubic understanding of these existential dangers. The question is, how do you make the case to a populace numbed by dystopic fantasy? For decades, we’ve thrilled to such breathtakingly terrifying scenarios in popular fiction and at the movies. Yet if you told the average Joe Sixpack about the very real possibility of molecular reassembling nanobots, he’d likely dismiss it as more make-believe. What’s the opposite of “suspension of disbelief?”

We need to enlist a coterie of journalists and intellectuals who can describe these threats in a compelling way that makes sense to the layman. Francis Fukuyama gained a great deal traction with his idea that free markets and globalization had triumphed in the aftermath of the Cold War, and that we were now living in “the End of History.” On this and many other matters, he was full of neoconservative beans. But as an oft-cited public intellectual, he was indispensable in advancing this message to policymakers and the public. We need a similar effort to raise awareness about the escalating dangers America (and the world) faces as a result of potent and difficult-to-control externalities.

Start with popular erudite rags like Mother Jones, The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper’s, etc. Then move on to Op-Eds in various papers of record. The public has a right and a duty to stay informed about these matters. Dvorsky:

Looking further ahead, extreme threats may even rekindle the totalitarian urge; this option will appeal to those leaders looking to exert absolute control over their citizens. What’s particularly frightening is that future technologies will allow for a more intensive and invasive totalitarianism than was ever thought possible in the 20th Century – including ubiquitous surveillance (and the monitoring of so-called ‘thought crimes’), absolute control over information, and the redesign of humanity itself, namely using genetics and cybernetics to create a more traceable and controllable citizenry. Consequently, as a political mode that utterly undermines humanistic values and the preservation of the autonomous individual, totalitarianism represents an existential risk unto itself.

I also think there needs to be an H+ lobby group in Washington to help lawmakers comprehend the ethical issues associated with genetic and post-biological technologies. In the last century, these concerns were swept under the rug — Eugenics was determined to be “bad,” therefore, most human biological experimentation was shunned by the medical medical establishment. And this attitude is still prevalent today, despite the fact that science is speeding towards a reckoning that will test the very limits of social and scientific ethics. But that’s for another post — I don’t wanna ruin anyone’s Holiday.

As our majestic blue orb slings around the sun for another round of chaos, beauty and bewilderment, I wish you all a Happy New Year.

Brian Appleyard wrote a book I didn’t read called How To Live Forever Or Die Trying. In it, he talks to Transhumanists who believe death is a condition we can transcend through science and technology.

According to current definitions, Transhumanism is an “intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.”

Some of the folks at the forefront of this movement have unleashed a web rag called H+ (PDF), which I also have not had the time to read.

Appleyard says “much of the magazine is just gadgetry with attitude.” Huh.

As a practicing Buddhist, I have a curious relationship with Transhumanism. On the one hand, I believe that, ethically pursued, science and technology have the potential to elevate mankind’s conception of the universe and bring us closer to understanding its limitless complexity (and fundamental impermanence).

On the other hand, I think that technology has the potential to keep us trapped in an endless cycle of desire, as we chase a false utopia that seems to be just around the corner but never actually arrives. Then there’s the idea of massively extended lifespans: would wisdom acculmulate in proportion to years lived, or would not dying result in abject boredom and a runaway ego? And would we stop biologically reproducing? The planet would get crowded really fast if nobody kicked the bucket.

Yet an extended lifespan might provide new perspective on the Self, (or the inherent lack thereof). Without the distortions of our compressed perception of time, we may naturally gravitate towards a clearer view of the intrinsic emptiness of phenomena, including the habitual aggregates of consciousness we call personality. And why keep it to ourselves? A wiki-like awareness could underscore the connection between all phenomena, creating holistic conditions for “enlightenment.”

Transhumanists are sometimes ridiculed as narcissistic and deeply unsatisfied geeks, but the best of their lot are obsessed with improving the conditions for all life. They call it “uplifting,” but is it really so different from the bodhissattvic mission of liberation for all sentient beings?

The biggest danger to Transhumanism as I see it is that it necessitates  fiddling with the engine of evolution, which, as far as science can ascertain is “blind.” We still haven’t come to psychological terms with the last century’s misguided experiments in eugenics — what makes us think we have the spiritual fortitude to start making crucial decisions about the whos, whats and hows of human modification? We’re not just talking genetic refinement or alteration — our future tech could enable molecular assembly, consciousness upload and sharing and even the emergence of artificial intelligence that would permanently render the human biological animal obsolete.

If you’re struggling with any of these concepts or think it’s just a bunch of sci-fi gobbledygook, I highly recommend  reading The Singularity is Near, by Ray Kurzweil, as a primer.

[Hat tip to The Daily Dish for the Appleyard link]

My Nadja review is up at Dusted. Check it out; there’s an MP3 posted, too.

Just about to head off to Falls Church, VA, to bring back the guitars and sundry from last Sunday’s house party.

One last thing, re: Buddhism v. Transhumanism: it seems accurate to say that science desires absoulutes, even when the only way forward is to indulge the theoretical. Buddhism, on the other hand, does not neccesarily require categorical definitives. Although it doesn’t deny the validity of scienttific discovery, Buddhism’s general cosmological orientation is based on the idea of "no fixed quality," which thereby undermines such demands for certainty. The nature of reality is apprehended subjectively, but Buddhist practice seeks to reframe said subjectivity in an infinitely vast field of possibility — spontaneously, and in the here and now. So I still intuit a subtle conflict between human enhancement and Buddhist tradition. But I certainly appreciate George Dvorsky’s perspective.

Never got to see No Country for Old Men, but Candleblog also raves. Maybe this weekend. . .

Thanks for playing.

After yesterday’s long-ass post about the Dalai Lama, I figured we might as well stay on the Buddhist tip.

Found an interesting article at thinkBuddha.org about Transhumanism — another abiding interest of mine.

The blogger at thinkBuddha was forthright in admitting his relative ignorance of Transhumanism; the reason he was writing about it at all was because of a seemingly unfavorable New Scientist article about cognitive scientist and Transhumanist Marvin Minski.

As a practicing Buddhist with a layman’s interest in technological development and its impact on culture and civilization, I read the post with great interest.

According to current definitions, Transhumanism is an “intellectual and cultural movement supporting the use of new sciences and technologies to enhance human mental and physical abilities and aptitudes, and ameliorate what it regards as undesirable and unnecessary aspects of the human condition, such as stupidity, suffering, disease, aging and involuntary death.”

A lot of that seems at odds with the basic tenets of Buddhism, which regards the sloppy bad crap of life as the fertile manure from which the lotus of enlightenment sprouts. Of course, one could counter that Buddhism itself is a self-improvement trip. But that’s somewhat off the mark. Buddhism seeks to improve conditions not through transcendence, but rather acceptance. This acceptance is hardly an ignorant, “oh well” approach to things, however. There’s an almost scientific approach to the examination of consciousness, until the neurosis brought on by attachment to ego is exposed under the all-encompassing light of realization.

I’m also interested in Transhumanism, but recognize the enormous ethical implications human enhancement will bring about. We never really reconciled the last century’s misguided stabs at eugenics, and I dare say that DNA tweaking and bio/nanotech “add-ons” will create a political shitstorm the likes of which humanity has never seen.

And this technology isn’t in some far-off sci-fi future, either. Given technological measures such as Moore’s Law, some observers suggest we’re at the cusp of a Singularity. But that’s another story. Kind of.

I haven’t yet reconciled my personal Buddhist practice with possible technological “improvements” to my biological self. Like the Christian philosopher Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, I do believe that the universe (or God) seeks to know itself, and technological progress is a function of evolution. Hell, everything can be expressed by data.

Of course, it’s probable that everything can also be expressed by feeling and karmic connectivity. You know, like, rocks having souls an’ shit.

Are they both sides of the same coin? Is the universe an infinitely macro and micro orderly chaos machine? Are the mandalas of Buddhism actually spiritual representations of fractal expression?

Are you there, George Dvorsky? It’s me, Casey.