John G. Messerly's Blog, page 94

Steven Pinker: A Critique of Robert Wright’s Progressivism

Steven Pinker (1954 – ) is an experimental psychologist, cognitive scientist, linguist, popular science author, and the Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University, where he earned his PhD in 1979. He regularly appears on lists of today’s most influential scientists, thinkers, and public intellectuals.

Pinker agrees with Wright that biological organisms and cultures get more complex over time and that there has been cultural and moral progress. Yet he is not convinced “that the cosmos has, in some sense, the “goal,” “end,” “purpose,” or “destiny” of producing complex life, intelligent species, societies, and global cooperation … natural selection is a feedback process with a kind of “goal,” and so is human striving. But do the two have the same goal, and is that goal an increase of complexity in the service of cooperation?”  Pinker argues that the answer to both parts of this question is no. But why?

First, the goal of natural selection is to enhance reproduction; increasing complexity and cooperation are sub-goals in the service of this primary goal, as are increased size, speed, energy efficiency, parental care, weapons, etc. All may have increased over time, but they are not the goal or destiny of evolution. Second, human intelligence was no more destined to be than elephant trunks or any other biological adaptation. Brains evolve only when their benefits exceed their costs, an occurrence quite rare in living things since most things never develop brains. Third, humans don’t seek cooperation and societal complexity; they seek pleasure, friendship, knowledge and the like. Complexity may help us be happy, and it may help organisms reproduce, but that doesn’t mean they were evolution’s goal. Finally, Pinker argues that cooperation and moral progress will not increase toward a limit, but cease when the benefits of cooperation are balanced by its costs. Organisms and societies have become more complex, intelligent, and cooperative over time, but that doesn’t mean they were destined to become so. There may be some progress, but it is not inevitable, it is not built into the nature of things.

Summary – Biological and cultural evolution do not have a destiny.

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http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/th...

The Main Thesis of Robert Wright’s, The Logic of Human Destiny

Robert Wright (1957 – ) is a journalist, and prize-winning author of books about evolutionary psychology, science, religion, and game theory. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught courses on the evolution of religion.

In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright argues that biological and cultural evolution are shaped and directed primarily by non-zero-sumness—a concept in game theory that describes situations where both parties involved in an interaction can gain something. (As opposed to zero-sum games where one party’s gain is the other party’s loss, that is, the sum is zero.) As a result of the interactions between individuals in non-zero sum situations, increasingly complex information-processing individuals who cooperate more readily with each other emerge, implying that we are here because of a process that made the evolution of intelligent beings likely. As the complexity of individuals and societies increases, their ability to reap the rewards of cooperation increases, thus perpetuating further cooperation and developmental complexity.

The majority of Wright’s book summarizes the biological and cultural development which follows almost by necessity from non-zero sum interactions. However, at the end of his book, Wright intimates that we may be on the threshold of developing a global consciousness along the lines suggested by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a thinker we will discuss later. This leads him to wonder if there is any spiritual or moral directionality in evolution, and ultimately to the question of whether such progress is connected with the meaning of life. The connection, as Wright sees it, resides in the fact that consciousness imparts meaning.

A strictly empirical analysis of both organic and cultural evolution … reveals a world with direction—a direction suggestive of purpose … Life on earth was, from the beginning, a machine for generating meaning and then deepening it, a machine that created the potential for good and began to fulfill it.

Summary – An analysis of biological and cultural evolution suggest a purposeful direction toward more meaning and goodness.

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Robert Wright, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Vintage, 2001), 331

Summary of Robert Wright’s, The Logic of Human Destiny

Robert Wright (1957 – ) is a journalist, and prize-winning author of books about evolutionary psychology, science, religion, and game theory. He is a graduate of Princeton University, where he has taught courses on the evolution of religion.

In Nonzero: The Logic of Human Destiny, Wright argues that biological and cultural evolution are shaped and directed primarily by non-zero-sumness—a concept in game theory that describes situations where both parties involved in an interaction can gain something. (As opposed to zero-sum games where one party’s gain is the other party’s loss, that is, the sum is zero.) As a result of the interactions between individuals in non-zero sum situations, increasingly complex information-processing individuals who cooperate more readily with each other emerge, implying that we are here because of a process that made the evolution of intelligent beings likely. As the complexity of individuals and societies increases, their ability to reap the rewards of cooperation increases, thus perpetuating further cooperation and developmental complexity.

The majority of Wright’s book summarizes the biological and cultural development which follows almost by necessity from non-zero sum interactions. However, at the end of his book, Wright intimates that we may be on the threshold of developing a global consciousness along the lines suggested by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, a thinker we will discuss later. This leads him to wonder if there is any spiritual or moral directionality in evolution, and ultimately to the question of whether such progress is connected with the meaning of life. The connection, as Wright sees it, resides in the fact that consciousness imparts meaning.

A strictly empirical analysis of both organic and cultural evolution … reveals a world with direction—a direction suggestive of purpose … Life on earth was, from the beginning, a machine for generating meaning and then deepening it, a machine that created the potential for good and began to fulfill it.

Summary – An analysis of biological and cultural evolution suggest a purposeful direction toward more meaning and goodness.

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Robert Wright, Non-Zero: The Logic of Human Destiny (New York: Vintage, 2001), 331

Jean Piaget: Knowledge Evolves

Jean Piaget (1896-1980) was a Swiss biologist, psychologist, and philosopher known most prominently for his studies of the cognitive development of children. He was a voluminous writer in multiple fields whose publishing career began at age ten and continued unabated for about seventy years. He is one of the most important psychologists and cited intellectuals of the twentieth-century.

The desire to find a bridge between biology and knowledge was Piaget’s lifelong goal, and evolution provided that bridge, since both life and mind evolve. What Piaget discovered after decades of empirical study was that interactions between biological organisms and their physical environment were strikingly parallel to those found in the relation between minds and reality—in both domains evolution proceeds similarly.

The key concepts in Piaget’s thought were: organization, adaptation, assimilation, accommodation, and equilibration. An animal is an organization, a complex, physical structure. If a biological organism is in a state of disequilibrium—for example it’s hungry—it is motivated to adapt to its environment—search for food. This process of adaptation comes about by assimilating from the environment—eating—and then accommodating to what’s been assimilation—undergoing the digestive process. The end result of the adaptive process is that the organism returns to a state of biological equilibrium—its hunger satisfied.

In a similar way humans exist as organisms in a cognitive environment. If an organism is in a state of cognitive disequilibrium—say it’s unsure of a truth claim—it is motivated to adapt to its cognitive environment—say by signing up for a class about the topic. This process of adaptation consists of both the process of assimilating new knowledge—attending a lecture—as well as accommodating to what’s been assimilated—by reconciling the new information with previous cognitive structures. The end result of the adaptive process is that the organism achieves a higher level of cognitive equilibrium.

Together organization and adaptation constitute what Piaget calls the process of equilibration—essentially a biological drive to produce optimal states of equilibrium between organisms and their physical and cognitive environments. The result in biological evolution is organisms more adapted to or equilibrated with their physical environments, and in cognitive evolution organisms more adapted to or equilibrated with their cognitive environment.

The empirical evidence to support his view comes from multiple sources. For instance, the cognitive development of a child—the evolution of individual mind—and the development of better scientific theories—the evolution of the group mind—both provide overwhelming evidence for the progressive evolution of knowledge toward better theories about the world, contra Kuhn. The equilibration process drives both individuals and groups to higher levels of equilibrium between mind and reality. In other words thought gradually adapts to reality. While Piaget did not discuss whether the evolution of cognitive structures would construct or discover meaning, we might infer that meaning, if real, will be approached by the increasing power of mind—mind that is the product of the process of equilibration that in turn moves mind closer and closer to truth.

Summary – Knowledge evolves in a progressive direction characterized by a better fit between mind and the real.

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For more see John G. Messerly, Piaget’s Conception of Evolution (Lanham Md.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996).

Will Durant On Cultural Progress

Will Durant (1885-1981) was a prolific writer, historian, and philosopher best known for his magnum opus, The Story of Civilization (11 Volume Set), and his book,The Story of Philosophy: The Lives and Opinions of the World’s Greatest Philosophers, one of the best-selling philosophy books of all time. He is generally regarded as a gifted prose stylist, was a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction and a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and was one of the most beloved public intellectuals of the twentieth-century.

In a 1941 magazine essay entitled “Ten Steps Up From the Jungle,” Durant makes a historian’s case for cultural progress. He begins by retelling the story of Nicolas de Condorcet, the young French aristocrat, mathematician, and Enlightenment philosopher who penned one of the greatest tributes to progress ever written while hiding from the guillotine, the Historical Record of Progress of the Human Race. Given expanding scientific knowledge and universal education, Condorcet believed that there was no limit to human progress. Of him Durant exclaims:

I have never ceased to marvel that a man so placed—driven to the very last stand of hope, with all his personal sacrifices of aristocratic privilege and fortune gone for nothing, with that great revolution upon which the youth of all Europe had pinned its hopes for a better world issuing in indiscriminate suspicion and terror—should, instead of writing an epic of despondency and gloom, have written a paean to progress. Never before had man so believed in mankind, and perhaps never again since.

Of course many legitimately question whether progress is real, whether our knowledge and technological achievements are good, for though knowledge is power, it is not justice or wisdom or beauty or kindness or hope. Civilizations have crumbled to dust and our technology may destroy us—thus pessimism may be warranted. So is progress real? Despite misgivings, Durant answers in the affirmative, for though history is full of war, it is also full of genius, the true source of the advance of civilization. The achievement of genius, preserved and transmitted as cultural heritage, transcends the fleetingness of states and empires, leaving us a legacy for which we are richer. Progress is real.

To specify this progress, Durant focused on ten salient progressive steps that together reveal cultural progress as self-evident. They are:

1) speech; 2) conquering animals; 3) conquering fire and light; 4) agriculture; 5) social organization; 6) morality; 7) developing the aesthetic sense; 8) science; 9) communication; and 10) education to transmit our cultural heritage.

Seen from a distance these steps show progress to be real and optimism justified. In the end this upward trajectory left Durant as optimistic about the future as Condorcet and Voltaire.

Do I have doubts about the future? Yes. Certainly, we shall pass through misery and terror. But I envy our children. I feel toward them as Voltaire felt when he came to Paris in 1778, aged 83, to die. He looked at the young men in Paris; he could see in their eyes the coming revolution. He knew they would suffer. That great men had died so many deaths to live so many lives—how gladly he would have died one more death to live one more life for those young men in Paris, to go through with them their revolution and their terror, their suffering and their creation. So he said to them what I should say to you: “The young are fortunate, for they will see great things. For us older ones, parents and teachers, it only remains to make straight their way.”

Summary – There has been cultural progress.

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Durant, 56.

Has There Been Biological Progress?

We have already seen thinkers like Ray Kurzweil and Hans Moravec defend the idea that cosmic evolution is progressive. But what of biological progress? The debate between those who defend evolutionary progress and those who deny it has been ongoing throughout the history of biology. On the one hand, more recent biological forms seem more advanced, on the other hand no one agrees on precisely what progress is.

Darwin’s view of the matter is summarized nicely by Timothy Shanahan: “while he rejected any notion of evolutionary progress, as determined by a necessary law of progression, he nonetheless accepted evolutionary progress as a contingent consequence of natural selection operating within specified environments.” This fits well with Darwin’s own words:

There has been much discussion whether recent forms are more highly developed than ancient . . . But in one particular sense the more recent forms must, on my theory, be higher than the more ancient; for each new species is formed by having had some advantage in the struggle for life over other and preceding forms I do not doubt that this process of improvement has affected in a marked and sensible manner the organization of the more recent and victorious forms of life, in comparison with the ancient and beaten forms; but I can see no way of testing this sort of progress.

The most vociferous critic of biological progress was Harvard’s Stephen Jay Gould (1941 – 2002) who thought progress an annoying and non-testable idea that had to be replaced if biological history were to be understood. What we call evolutionary progress is really just a random moving away from something, not an orienting toward anything. Starting from simple beginnings, organisms become more complex but not necessarily better. In Gould’s image, if a drunk man staggers from a wall that forces him to move toward a gutter, he will end up in the gutter. Evolution acts like that wall pushing individuals toward behaviors that are mostly random but statistically predictable. Nothing about it implies progress.

The biologist Richard Dawkins is more sanguine regarding progress, arguing that if we define progress as adaptive fit between organism and environment then evolution is clearly progressive. To see this consider the predator/prey arms race, where positive feedback loops drive evolutionary progress. Dawkins believes in life’s ability to evolve further, in the “evolution of evolvability.” He believes in progressive evolution.

Darwin seemingly reconciled these two views.

… as the forms became complicated, they opened fresh means of adding to their complexity … but yet there is no necessary tendency in the simple animals to become complicated although all perhaps will have done so from the new relations caused by the advancing complexity of others … if we begin with the simpler forms & suppose them to have changed, their very changes tend to give rise to others.

Simple forms become increasingly complex, thus stimulating the complexity of other forms. This did not happen by necessity and no law need be invoked to drive the process, nonetheless competition between organisms will likely result in progressively complex forms.

There is probably no greater authority on the idea of evolutionary progress than Michael Ruse whose book, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology, is the most comprehensive work on the subject. Ruse observes that museums, charts, displays, and books all depict evolution as progressive, and he thinks that the concept of progress will continue to play a major role in evolutionary biology for the following reasons. First, as products of evolution, we are bound to measure it from our own perspective, thus naturally valuing the intelligence that asks philosophical questions. Second, whatever epistemological relativists might think, nearly all practicing scientists strongly believe their theories and models get closer to the truth as science proceeds. From there scientists typically transfer that belief in scientific progress to a belief in organic progress. Finally, Ruse maintains that the kinds of scientists drawn to evolution are those particularly receptive to progressive ideas. Evolution and the idea of progress are intertwined and nearly inseparable.

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Barrett, P., Gautrey, P., Herbert, S., Kohn, D., and Smith, S., Charles Darwin’s Notebooks, 1836-1844 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1987).

A Recap of Cosmic and Biological Evolution

Our universe is 13.8 billion years old; our solar system is 8 billion years old; and the earth is 4.5 billion years old. A timeline on earth from that point on reads like this (and what a testimony to scientific achievement this list is):

billion years of simple cells (prokaryotes),
3 billion years of photosynthesis,
2 billion years of complex cells (eukaryotes),
1 billion years of multi-cellular life,
600 million years of simple animals,
550 million years of complex animals,
500 million years of fish and proto-amphibians,
475 million years of land plants,
400 million years of insects and seeds,
360 million years of amphibians,
300 million years of reptiles,
200 million years of mammals,
150 million years of birds,
130 million years of flowers,
65 million years since the dinosaurs died out
40 million years of butterflies and moths
20 million years of giraffes
15 million years of hominids
13 million years since orangutan-hominid split
10 million years since gorilla-hominid split
6 million years since chimpanzee-hominid split
5 million years of Australopithecines
million years of Ardipithecus
million years of Australopithecus afarensis
5 million years of Homo habilis
8 million years of Homo erectus
2 millions years of Homo antecessor
600 thousand years of Homo heidelbergensis
350 thousand years of Neanderthals
200 thousand years of Anatomically modern humans
160 thousand years of Homo sapiens
50 thousand years since migration to South Asia
40 thousand years since migration to Australia and Europe
15-40 thousand years since migration to Americas
12 thousand years since evolution of light skin in Europeans

Is something happening here? Is there anything we can infer from all this?

Does Evolution Imply That Life is Meaningful?

All the past is but the beginning of a beginning; all that the human mind has accomplished is but the dream before the awakening. ~ H.G. Wells 

Mankind is still embryonic … man is the bud from which something more complicated and more centered than man himself should emerge.

~ Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

I have argued previously in this blog that it is helpful to be optimistic about the meaning of life in the face of death—thus there is a pragmatic justification for believing that life has meaning. I have also argued that there are good reasons to believe that death can be defeated—thus there is a scientific justification for believing that we can erase an essential impediment to a meaningful life. And I have argued that it is desirable to defeat death—thus there is a moral justification for defeating death inasmuch as a completely meaningful life is otherwise impossible. In the conquering of death lies our most immediate hope of making life more meaningful.

Still, none of this guarantees that our life or cosmic life is meaningful. Why? For one thing, a positive attitude says nothing about the reality of our situation. For another, we cannot know if the technology to defeat death will ever come to fruition or, if it does, that it will do so in our lifetime. Not knowing if the technology will ever come to fruition, or be developed in our lifetimes, our best response is optimism. But even if technology does defeats death in our lifetime, or revives us after death, a meaningful life is still not assured because a long life is no guarantee of a meaningful one. In other words, immortality is only a necessary condition for full meaning, not a sufficient one; we need quality as well as quantity for fully meaningful lives.

But if immortality is not enough for full meaning, what is? It is audacious to attempt to answer this question, since we probably do not possess the intellectual wherewithal to specify all the necessary and sufficient conditions of full meaning—assuming the question even makes sense. Fortunately the inability to capture the essence of meaning need not impede our search, an insight noted also by Thaddeus Metz:

Fortunately the field does not need an extremely precise analysis of the concept of life’s meaning … in order to make progress on the substantive question of what life’s meaning is. Knowing that meaningfulness analytically concerns a variable and gradient final good in a person’s life that is conceptually distinct from happiness, rightness, and worthwhileness provides a certain amount of common ground.

So while we cannot apprehend meaning with precise conceptual clarity, we can assume that it is some good in addition to, enmeshed in, intertwined with, or emergent from being, truth, joy, beauty, and all the other good things. Meaning is a variable and gradient good that is desirable, something we want desperately. Therefore we will not pursue further abstruse questions about the essence or logical possibility of complete meaning.

In the next few posts I ask if the idea of evolution supports the claim that life is meaningful, or is becoming meaningful, or is becoming increasingly meaningful. Does evolution add to the case for meaning? Is there anything about evolution in general—as opposed to technological evolution specifically—which sheds light on meaning? Is there anything about evolution—cosmic, biological, and cultural—which implies that life is meaningful, or that meaning emerges, or that, given enough time, complete meaning will be attained, actualized, or approached as a limit? Does an a posteriori analysis of past evolution allow us to draw positive conclusions about the meaning of life?

Perhaps there is a progressive directionality to evolution, perhaps the meaningful eschatology of the universe will gradually unfold as we evolve, and perhaps we can articulate a cosmic vision to describe this unfolding—or perhaps not. Essentially, what we want to know is: are there any other good  reasons to believe that life meaningful besides the practical effects of optimism and the possibility of technological immortality? It is to such concerns that we now turn.

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Thaddeus Metz, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/lif...

Critique of Bill Joy’s “Why the future doesn’t need us”

“I’m Glad the Future Doesn’t Need Us: A Critique of Joy’s Pessimistic Futurism”

(Originally published in Computers and Society, Volume 32: Issue 6, June 2003)

ABSTRACT

In his well-known piece, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” Bill Joy argues that 21st century technologies—genetic engineering, robotics, and nanotechnology (GNR)—will extinguish human beings as we now know them, a prospect he finds deeply disturbing. I find his arguments deeply flawed and critique each of them in turn.

Joy’s unintended consequences argument cites a passage by the Unabomber Ted Kaczinski. According to Joy, the key to this argument is the notion of unintended consequences, which is “a well-known problem with the design and use of technology…” Independent of the strength of Kaczynski’s anti-technology argument—which I also find flawed—it is hard to quibble about the existence of unintended consequences.1 And it is easy to see why. The consequences of an action are in the future relative to that action and, since the future is unknown, some consequences are unknown. Furthermore, it is self-evident that an unknown future and unknown consequences are closely connected.

However, the strongest conclusion that Joy should draw from the idea of unintended consequences is that we should carefully choose between courses of action; and yet he draws the stronger conclusion that we ought to cease and desist in the research, development, and use of 21st century technologies. But he cannot draw this stronger conclusion without contradiction if, as he thinks, many unknown, unintended consequences result from our choices. And that’s because he can’t know that abandoning future technologies will produce the intended effects. Thus the idea of unintended consequences doesn’t help Joy’s case, since it undermines the justification for any course of action. In other words, the fact of unintended consequences tells us nothing about what we ought to choose, and it certainly doesn’t give us any reason to abandon technology. Of course Joy might reply that new, powerful technologies make unintended consequences more dangerous than in the past, but as I’ve just shown, he cannot know this. It may well be that newer technologies will lead to a safer world.

Joy’s big fish eat little fish argument quotes robotics pioneer Hans Moravec: “Biological species almost never survive encounters with superior competitors.” Analogously, Joy suggests we will be driven to extinction by our superior robotic descendents. But it isn’t obvious that robots will be superior to us and, even if they were, they may be less troublesome than our neighbors next door. In addition, his vision of the future presupposes that robots and humans will remain separate creatures, a view explicitly rejected by robotics expert Rodney Brooks and others. If Brooks is correct, humans will gradually incorporate technology into their own bodies thus eliminating the situation that Joy envisions. In sum, we don’t know that robots will be the bigger fish, that they will eat us even if they are, or that there will even be distinct fishes.

Joy’s mad scientist argument describes a molecular biologist who “constructs and disseminates a new and highly contagious plague that kills widely but selectively.” Now I have no desire to contract a plague, but Joy advances no argument that this follows from GNR; instead, he plays on our emotions by associating this apocalyptic vision with future technology. (In fact, medical science is the primary reason we have avoided plagues.) The images of mad scientist or Frankenstein may be popular, but scientists are no madder than anyone else and nightmarish describes only one possible future.

Joy’s lack of control argument focuses upon the self-replicating nature of GNR. According to Joy, self-replication amplifies the danger of GNR: “A bomb is blown up only once—but one bot can become many, and quickly get out of control.” First of all, bombs replicate, they just don’t replicate by themselves. So Joy’s concern must not be with replication, but with self-replication. So what is it about robotic self-replication that frightens us? The answer is obvious. Robotic self-replication appears to be out of our control, as compared to our own or other humans self-replication. Specifically, Joy fears that robots might replicate and then enslave us; but other humans can do the same thing. In fact, we may increase our survival chances by switching control to more failsafe robots designed and programmed by our minds. While Joy is correct that “uncontrolled self-replication in these newer technologies runs … a risk of substantial damage in the physical world,” so to does the “uncontrolled self-replication” of humans, their biological tendencies, their hatreds, and their ideologies. Joy’s fears are not well-founded because the lack of control over robotic self-replication is not, prima facie, more frightening than the similar lack of control we exert over other human’s replication.

Furthermore, to what extent do we control our own reproduction?  I’d say not much. Human reproduction results from a haphazard set of cultural, geographical, biological, and physiological circumstances; clearly, we exert less control over when, if, and with whom we reproduce than we suppose. And we certainly don’t choose the exact nature of what’s to be reproduced; we don’t replicate perfectly. We could change this situation thru genetic engineering, but Joy opposes this technology. He would rather let control over human replication remain in the hands of chance—at least chance as determined by the current state of our technology. But if he fears the lack of control implied by robotic self-replication, why not fear that lack of control over our own replication and apply more control to change this situation? In that way, we could enhance our capabilities and reduce the chance of not being needed.

Of course Joy would reiterate that we ought to leave things as they are now. But why? Is there something perfect or natural about the current state of our knowledge and technology? Or would things be better if we turned the technological clock back to 1950? 1800? or 2000 B.C.? I suggest that the vivid contrast Joy draws between the control we wield over our own replication and the lack of it regarding self-replicating machines is illusory. We now have and may always have more control over the results of our conscious designs and programs, then we do over ourselves or other people whose programs were written by evolution. If we want to survive and flourish then we ought to engineer ourselves with foresight and, at the same time, engineer machines consistent with these goals.

Joy’s easy access argument claims that 20th century technologies—nuclear, biological, and chemical (NBC)—required access to rare “raw materials and highly protected information,” while 21st century technologies “are widely within the reach of individuals or small groups.” This means that “knowledge alone will enable the use of them,” a phenomenon that Joy terms: “knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD).”

Now it is difficult to quibble with the claim that powerful, accessible technologies pose a threat to our survival. Joy might argue that even if we survived the 21st century without destroying ourselves, what of the 22nd or the 23rd centuries when more accessible and powerful KMD becomes possible? Of course we could freeze technology, but it is uncertain that this would be either realistic or advisable. Most likely the trend of cultural evolution over thousands of years will continue—we will gain more control and power over reality.

Now is this more threatening than if we stood still? This is the real question that Joy should ask because there are risks no matter what we do. If we remain at our current level of technology we will survive until we self-destruct or are destroyed by universal forces, say the impact of an asteroid or the sun’s exhaustion of its energy. But if we press forward, we may be able to save ourselves. Sure, we must be mindful of the promises and the perils of future technologies, but nothing Joy says justifies his conclusion that: “we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil…” Survival is a goal, but I don’t believe that abandonment of new technologies will assure this result or even make it more likely; it just isn’t clear that limiting the access to or discovery of knowledge is, or has ever been, the solution to human woes.

Joy’s  poor design abilities argument notes how often we “overestimate our design abilities,” and concludes: “shouldn’t we proceed with great caution?” But he forgets that we sometime underestimate our design abilities; and sometimes we are too cautious. Go forward with caution, look before you leap—but don’t stand still.

I take the next argument to be his salient one. He claims that scientists dream of building conscious machines primarily because they want to achieve immortality by downloading their consciousness into them. While he accepts this as distinct possibilities, his existential argument asks whether we will still be human after we download: “It seems far more likely that a robotic existence would not be like a human one in any sense that we understand, that the robots would in no sense be our children, that on this path our humanity may well be lost.” The strength of this argument depends on the meaning of: “in any sense,” “no sense,” “humanity,” and “lost.” Let’s consider each in turn.

It is simply false that a human consciousness downloaded into a robotic body would not be human “in any sense.” If our consciousness is well-preserved in the transfer, then something of our former existence would remain, namely our psychological continuity, the part most believe to be our defining feature. And if robotic bodies were sufficiently humanlike—why we would want them to be is another question—then there would be a semblance of physical continuity as well. In fact, such an existence would be very much like human existence now if the technologies were sufficiently perfected. So we would still be human to some, if not a great, extent. However, I believe we would come to prefer an existence with less pain, suffering, and death to our current embodied state; and the farther we distanced ourselves from our former lives the happier we will be.

As to whether robots would “in no sense” be our children, the same kind of argument applies. Whatever our descendants become they will, in some sense, be our children in the same way that we are, in some sense, the children of stars. Again notice that the extent to which we would want our descendants to be like us depends upon our view of ourselves. If we think that we now experience the apex of consciousness, then we should mourn our descendants’ loss of humanity. But if we hold that more complex forms of consciousness may evolve from ours, then we will rejoice at the prospect that our descendants might experience these forms, however non-human-like they may be. But then, why would anyone want to limit the kind of consciousness their descendants experience?

As for our “humanity being lost,” this is true in the sense that human nature will evolve beyond its present state, but false in the sense that there will still be a developmental continuity from beings past and present to beings in the future. Joy wants to limit our offspring for the sake of survival, but isn’t mere survival a lowly goal? Wouldn’t many of us prefer death to the infinite boredom of standing still? Wouldn’t we like to evolve beyond humanity?  It isn’t obvious that we have achieved the pinnacle of evolution, or that the small amount of space and time we fill satisfies us. Instead it is clear that we are deeply flawed and finite—we age, decay, lose our physical and mental faculties, and then perish. A lifetime of memories, knowledge, and wisdom, lost. Oh, that it could be better! Joy’s nostalgic longings for the past and naïve view that we preserve the present are misguided, however well they may resonate with those who share similar longings or fear the inevitable future. Our descendants won’t desire to be us anymore than we do to be our long ago ancestors. As Tennyson proclaims: “How dull it is to pause, to make an end, To rust unburnish’d, not to shine in use!”2

Joy next turns to his other technologies make things worse argument. As for genetic engineering, I know of no reason—short of childish pleas not to play God—to impede our increasing abilities to perfect our bodies, eliminate disease, and prevent deformity. To not do so would be immoral, making us culpable for an untold amount of preventable suffering and death. And even if there are Gods who have endowed us with intelligence, it would hardly make sense that they didn’t mean for us to use it. As for nanotechnology, Joy eloquently writes of how “engines of creation” may transform into “engines of destruction, but again it is hard to see why we or the Gods prefer that we remain ignorant about nanotechnology.

Joy also claims that there is something sinister about the fact that NBC technologies have largely military uses and were developed by governments, while GNR have commercial uses and are being developed by corporations. Unfortunately, Joy gives us no reason whatsoever to share his fear. Are the commercial products of private corporations more likely to cause destruction than the military products of governments? At first glance, the opposite seems more likely to be true, and Joy gives us no reason to reconsider.

Joy’s it’s never been this bad argument asserts: “this is the first moment in the history of our planet when any species by its voluntary actions has become a danger to itself.” But this is false. Homo sapiens have always been a danger to themselves, both by their actions, as in incessant warfare, and by their inaction, as demonstrated by their impotence when facing plague and famine. I also doubt that humans are a greater threat to themselves now than ever before. We have explored and spread ourselves to all parts of the globe, multiplied exponentially, extended our life spans, created culture, and may soon have the power to increase our chance for survival from both celestial and terrestrial forces. This should be a cause for celebration not despair. We no longer need be at the mercy of forces beyond our control, we may soon direct our own evolution.

Joy next quotes Carl Sagan’s to the effect that the survival of cultures producing technology depends on “what may and what may not be done.” Joy interprets this insight as the essence of common sense or cultural wisdom. Independent of the question of whether this is a good definition of common sense, Joy assumes that Sagan’s phrase applies to an entire century’s technologies, when it is more likely that it applies to only some of it. It is hard to imagine that Sagan, a champion of science, meant for us to forego 21st century technology altogether.

And I vehemently dispute Joy’s claim that science is arrogant in its pursuits; instead, it is the humblest of human pursuits. Many human pursuits are more arrogant than science, which carefully and conscientiously tries to tease a bit of truth from reality. Its claims are always tentative and amenable to contrary evidence—much more than can be said for most creeds. And what of the charlatans, psychics, cultists, astrologers, and faith-healers? Not to mention the somewhat more respectable priests and preachers. Science humbly does not pretend to know with certainty, much more than can be said about some ignorant people.

And what of his claim that we have no business pursuing robotics and AI when we have “so much trouble …understanding—ourselves?”  The reply to this, trying to understand mind won’t help you understand the mind argument, notes that self-knowledge is the ultimate goal of the pursuit of knowledge. His sentimentally notes that his grandmother “had an awareness of the nature of the order of life, and of the necessity of living with and respecting that order,” but this is hopelessly naïve and belies the facts. Would he have us die poor and young, be food for beasts, defenseless against disease, living lives that were, as Hobbes so aptly put it: “nasty, brutish, and short?” The impotence and passivity implied by respecting the natural order has condemned millions to death.3 In fact, the life that Joy and most of the rest of us enjoy was built on the labors of persons who fought mightily with the natural order and the pain, poverty and suffering that nature exudes. Where would we be without Pasteur and Fleming and Salk? As Joy points out life may be fragile, but it was more so in a past that was nothing like the idyllic paradise that he imagines.

Joy’s analogy between the nuclear arms race and possible GNR races is also misplaced, inasmuch as the 20th century arms race resulted as much from a unique historical situation and conflicting ideologies as some unstoppable technological momentum. Evidence for this is to be found in the reduction of nuclear warheads by the superpowers both during and after the cold war. Yes, we need to learn from the past, but its lessons are not necessarily the ones Joy alludes to. Should we not have developed nuclear weapons? Is he sure that the world would be better today had there not been a Manhattan project?

Now it may be that we are chasing our own tails as we try to create defenses for the threats that new technologies pose. Possibly, every counter measure is as dangerous as the technology for which it was meant to counter. But Joy’s conclusion is curious: “The only realistic alternative I see is relinquishment: to limit development of the technologies that are too dangerous, by limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.” In the first place, it is unrealistic to believe that we could limit the pursuit of knowledge even if we wanted to and it was a good idea. Second, this “freeze” at current levels of technology does not expunge the danger; the danger exists now.

A basic difficulty with Joy’s article is this: he mistakenly accept the notion that technology rules people rather than the reverse.4 But if we can control our technology, there is another solution to our dilemmas. We can use our technology to change ourselves; to make ourselves more ethical, cautious, insightful, and intelligent. Surely Joy believes that humans make choices, how else could they choose relinquishment? So why not change ourselves, relinquishing not our pursuit of knowledge, but our self-destructive tendencies?

Joy’s hysteria blinds him to the possible fruits of our knowledge and his pessimism won’t allow him to see our knowledge and its applications as key to our salvation. Instead, he appeals to the ethics of the Dalia Lama to save us, as if another religious ethics will offer escape from the less noble angels of our nature. I know of no good evidence that the prescriptions of religious ethics have, on the whole, increased the morality of the human race. No doubt the contrary case could easily be made. Why not then use our knowledge to gain mastery over ourselves? If we do that, mastery of our technology will take care of itself. Joy’s concerns are legitimate, but his solutions unrealistic. His planned knowledge stoppage condemns human beings to an existence that cannot improve. And if that’s the case, what is the point of life?

I say forego Joy’s pessimism; reject all barriers and limitations to our intelligence, health, and longevity. Be mindful of our past accomplishments, appreciative of all that we are, but be driven passionately and creatively forward by the hope of all that we may become. Therein lies the hope of humankind and their descendents. In the words of Walt Whitman:

This day before dawn I ascended a hill,

and look’d at the  crowded heaven,

And I said to my Spirit,

When we become the enfolders of those orbs,

and the pleasure and knowledge of everything in them,

shall we be fill’d and satisfied then?

And my Spirit said:

No, we but level that lift,

to pass and continue beyond.

~ Walt Whitman 

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1. Kaczynski argues that machines will either: a) make all the decisions thus rendering humans obsolete; or b) humans will retain control. If b then only an elite will rule in which case they will: 1)quickly exterminate the masses; 2)slowly exterminate the masses; or 3)take care of the masses. However if 3 then the masses will be happy but not free and life would have no meaning. My questions for Kaczynski are these: Does he really think the only way for humans to be happy is in an agricultural paradise? Does he think an agricultural life was a paradise? A hunter-gather life? Are we really less free when we have loosened the chains of our evolutionary heritage, or our we more free? Kaczynski’s vision of a world where one doesn’t work, pursues their own interests, while being very happy sounds good to me.

2. from Alfred Lord Tennyson’s Ulysses.

3. I would argue that had the rise of Christianity in the West not stopped scientific advancement for a thousand years until the Renaissance, we might be immortals already.

4. As in Thoreau’s well-known phrase which appears, not surprisingly, on the Luddite home page: “We do not ride on the railroad; it rides upon us.”

5. From Walt Whitman’s “Song of Myself” in Leaves of Grass.

Summary of Bill Joy’s, “Why the future doesn’t need us,”

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Bill Joy (1954 – ) is an American computer scientist who co-founded Sun Microsystems in 1982, and served as chief scientist at the company until 2003. His now famous Wired magazine essay, “Why the future doesn’t need us,” (2000) sets forth his deep concerns over the development of modern technologies.

Joy traces his concern to a discussion he had with Ray Kurzweil at a conference in 1998. Taken aback by Kurzweil’s predictions, he read an early draft of The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence, and found it deeply disturbed. Subsequently he encountered arguments by the Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s. Kaczynski argued that if machines do all the work, as they inevitably will, then we can: a) let the machines make all the decisions; or b) maintain human control over the machines.

If we choose “a” then we are at the mercy of our machines. It is not that we would give them control or that they would take control, rather, we might become so dependent on them that we would have to accept their commands. Needless to say, Joy doesn’t like this scenario. If we choose “b” then control would be in the hands of an elite, and the masses would be unnecessary. In that case the tiny elite: 1) would exterminate the masses; 2) reduce their birthrate so they slowly became extinct; or 3) become benevolent shepherds to the masses. The first two scenarios entail our extinction, but even the third option is no good. In this last scenario the elite would see to it that all physical and psychological needs of the masses are met, while at the same time engineering the masses to sublimate their drive for power. In this case the masses might be happy, but they would not be free.

Joy finds these arguments convincing and deeply troubling. About this time Joy read Moravec’s book where he found more of the same kind of predictions. He found himself especially concerned by Moravec’s claim that technological superiors always defeat the inferiors, as well as his contention that humans will become extinct as they merge with the robots. Disturbed, Joy consulted other computer scientists who basically agreed with these technological predictions but were themselves unconcerned. Joy was stirred to action.

Joy’s concerns focuses on the transforming technologies of the 21st century—genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics (GNR). What is particularly problematic about them is that they have the potential to self-replicate. This makes them inherently more dangerous than 20th century technologies—nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons—which were expensive to build and require rare raw materials. By contrast, 21st century technologies allow for small groups or individuals to bring about massive destruction. Joy accepts that we will soon achieve the computing power to implement some of the dreams of Kurzweil and Moravec, worrying nevertheless that we overestimate our design abilities. Such hubris may lead to disaster.

Robotics is primarily motivated by the desire to be immortal—by downloading ourselves into them. (The terms uploading and downloading are used interchangeably.) But Joy doesn’t believe that we will be human after the download or that the robots would be our children. As for genetic engineering, it will create new crops, plants, and eventually new species including many variations of human species, but Joy fears that we do not know enough to conduct such experiments. And nanotechnology confronts the so-called “gray goo” problem—self-replicating nanobots out of control. In short, we may be on the verge of killing ourselves! Is it not arrogant, he wonders, to design a robot replacement species when we so often make design mistakes?

Joy concludes that we ought to relinquish these technologies before it’s too late. Yes, GNR may bring happiness and immortality, but should we risk the survival or the species for such goals? Joy thinks not.

Summary – Genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics are too dangerous to pursue. We should relinquish them.

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Bill Joy, “Why The Future Doesn’t Need Us,” Wired Magazine, April 2000.