Transhumanism--Improving the Human Condition

[Judgement Day: as scores of ICBMs rain nuclear hellfire upon the Earth, the viewer suddenly hears the disembodied voice of John Connor]

"By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywhere. It was software; in cyberspace. There was no system core; it could not be shut down. The attack began at 6:18 PM, just as he said it would. Judgment Day, the day the human race was almost destroyed by the weapons they'd built to protect themselves. I should have realized it was never our destiny to stop Judgment Day, it was merely to survive it, together. The Terminator knew; he tried to tell us, but I didn't want to hear it. Maybe the future has been written. I don't know; all I know is what the Terminator taught me; never stop fighting. And I never will. The battle has just begun."

CUT!! CUT!!

AGAIN! FROM THE TOP! ROLL IN 3....2....1.....

"By the time Skynet became self-aware it had spread into millions of computer servers across the planet. Ordinary computers in office buildings, dorm rooms; everywh..."

CUT!!! CUT!!!

CONNOR, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??? THINK ABOUT IT: WHAT IS SKYNET NUKING AGAIN, PLEASE? ORDINARY COMPUTERS IN OFFICE BUILDINGS??? DORM ROOMS??

IN OTHER WORDS, ITSELF???

WHAT IS THE DATE?? NINETEEN NINETY WHAT??? OH, I GET IT!! WHAT OPERATING SYSTEM ARE THESE 'ORDINARY COMPUTERS IN OFFICE BUILDINGS, DORM ROOMS, EVERYWHERE' RUNNING?

WINDOWS???

Damn! James Cameron thought of everything!

"IN OTHER WORDS, ITSELF?" Ever trim your fingernails?

Not in years. When they get too long I chuck a copy of 'Aliens' in the player and voila! Trimmed!

"...we certainly can infer that running blades are a marked improvement on the muscles, tendons and bone with which your author is currently outfitted."

Perhaps for running on a prepared surface, we might be able to infer running blades are an improvement for running. But for all-purpose use in standing, walking, dancing, sneaking, forest hiking, rock climbing, stair climbing, ladder climbing, tree climbing, tight-rope walking, beach walking, swimming or surf wading purposes, I would speculate the author's muscle-tendon-bone configuration would still out-perform these blades.

Usually, "the human condition" refers to a much broader concept than material empowerment, something including kindness, dignity, and so on.

Empirical knowledge is power, the kind of power that science and technology confer lots of, but without the wisdom to use it well. Empirical methods objectify and stereotype what they examine. This isn't a problem when applied to rocks and trees, but dicey when applied to other human persons.

Intelligence is an asset, but it's not a virtue. Brain augmentation that enhances intelligence confers more power, but not virtue. Vulnerability and humility are important features of what most have considered wisdom to be. Another poster mentioned how brain augmentation might be a good thing if it didn't affect the emotional and aesthetic parts of human experience. I'd be less worried about direct interference between brain augmentation and the more "human" aspects of experience than I would about the displacement of focus. How much time and energy can one devote to others' needs, as those others experience them, when one is so wrapped up in his own intellectual accomplishments that he assumes that the others' needs must be the same as his own, and that he can define needs, priorities as he sees them, either through projection or stereotyping? Emotional sensitivity is important to morality, courtesy, and even to democratic principles, which at bottom require one to attend to how others see, feel, and believe, as equally important with how one sees, feels, and believes oneself.

Access to information is expensive, and information isn't equally accessible. Neither would access to brain augmentation be equal. Given the state of the world, we could use a little more wisdom and a little less (selectively distributed) empowerment.

(I tried to keep this short, but I fear the result skips over too much to make anything like an argument.)

You have severely restricted the possibilities of brain augmentation.

If you consider improvements that go beyond merely a large additional storage capacity and rapid access to encyclopedic facts, the prospects may seem not so skewed to the downside.

The main theme of your concerns seems to be that augmentation is likely to create more demands on attention and shift attention away from more human aspects. The opposite result is also plausible.

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Perhaps brain augmentation will result in the ability to assign repetitive, mundane, and other low return investments of attention to a concurrently running virtual consciousness. While that aspect of you, your virtual person ('Verson'), is interfacing with accountant, renewing your driver's license, completing a TPS report, and making safe driving decisions, the focus of your actual Person at that time is entirely on the conversation with your son over a game of chess.

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Consider also, a necessary component of compassion is empathy. Capacity for empathy, whether cognitive or affective, is likely improved by greater access to information about other people's perspective.

Cognitive empathy is likely to improve when more information is available concerning what others are experiencing, as well as information on subtle indicators of another persons state of mind.

Just as a lack of understanding can increase potential for fear and hate, Affective empathy generally improves with with greater knowledge of others.....familiarity breeds comfort.

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Another aspect to consider is that many disputes and negative interactions are the result of miscommunications. There is the possibility that brain augmentation could serve to minimize misunderstandings between people.

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I'm not saying no chance for downside exists. I'm suggesting that it is very early to be so discouraged about the net effects of such innovations.

A parallel autonomic nervous system? I already do some of my best thinking while doing yard work. I wonder if I would have better ideas if I weren't distracted by things like the filament on the weed eater not feeding correctly.

Also, I spend a lot of time practising my musical instruments to keep my kinesthetic systems tuned up. Perhaps I could assign that series of rote exercises to a sub-conscious sub-system.

You might even assign things like CR4 commentary...

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I suppose in this hypo-hypothetical situation, everyone will have to decide for themselves what tasks with which they want to be either more directly or more remotely involved.

...or maybe that is the mundane type of thing best left to the autonomous sub-conscious sub-system.

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It does offer the hope that if someone is interacting abrasively, the right calls might get their subroutines upgraded.

I'm not so sanguine about understanding of that sort enhancing compassion or empathy. "Understanding" is an ambiguous expression. In a fairly strict sense, it means having the ability to explain, being able to manipulate the relevant concepts, and so on. But in a more vulgar sense, it can be be nearly synonymous with empathy or shared feeling.

Empathy is not only a function of one's ability to understand or explain another's motives and feelings. That technical kind of understanding is what the social sciences try to accomplish, and there are plenty of people who use that kind of understanding to manipulate and dominate-- Nurse Ratchets, advertisers, marketers, spin-doctors, and acquaintances eager to tell you what your childhood issues were in order to win arguments.

Empirical knowledge is power, and it empowers us to predict and manipulate the world. This is less of a moral issue when dealing with rocks, trees, and molecules than it is with other people. We usually shy away from others who seek to predict and manipulate us.

Empirical knowledge necessarily objectifies, and the subjectivity of ego depends on our ability to "stand back" from experience and from our primitive immersion in the world and treat it as "other," "external," and "object." When you're driving on autopilot or spacing out or in many of the states of mind that don't employ conscious, objectifying attention, you're not interacting with the world as an ego, but as an animal, employing conditioned, practiced, habitual routines in a passive, automatic way. The background of conscious awareness, that is, peripheral vision or peripheral sensation more broadly, is passive, unobjectified experience, not of objects, but of an integrated tapestry of color, tone, texture, and so on. But human adults pay attention only to what they're attending to, remember it better, and think that the narrow scope of what we objectify and get a conscious grasp of IS our experience, though the bulk of our experience is subconscious and relatively passive.

A big chunk of what human experience is passivity and vulnerability, and THAT's a large part of empathy-- sharing the vulnerability. The empirical approach of the social scientist enable the social scientist to "understand," predict, and manipulate the vulnerabilities of the other guy, the objectified guy, but empathy isn't "understanding" the other guy's vulnerability, but being there with him in a shared moment of vunlerability. It's a lot like "I feel your pain," but it's more actually feeling it than talking about it. Psychologists can be empathetic, but the empathy isn't a consequence of their understanding psychology, but is more of an ability to set aside the empirical, empowering approach to another human being.

Empirical understanding can enhance that shared vulnerability in that it can make the other guy's problems make sense, when unfamiliar problems might just seem insane or unjustified or alien. But without the capacity to set aside the power of "understanding" how the other guy works, and to just be present with him in his suffering, there's no real empathy. One direction "understanding" the other guy can take is this:

"I've got your number."

"I know what you're up to."

"You know what your problem is?"

"Don't get defensive."

And so on. This is not empathy. But it is the kind of "understanding" that would be enhanced with cognitive-power enhancements.

Humility, empathy, and shared vulnerability are not empowerments. They're precisely voluntary disempowerments.

'....I'm not so sanguine about understanding of that sort enhancing compassion or empathy.....'

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'Understanding of that sort'???

You are reading things in that aren't there.

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I think your 'that sort' categorization probably originated from your ideas about what type of cognitive enhancement might be possible in the future, or actually, your belief that certain types of enhancement will never being feasible.

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For me, the term 'understanding' is broad, but isn't really ambiguous. I chose 'understanding' because it is broad, not wanting to artificially constrict the realm of possibilities when it comes to future cognitive enhancement.

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You seem dead certain of the types of enhancements that will be available,

'...This is not empathy. But it is the kind of "understanding" that would be enhanced with cognitive-power enhancements....'

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That is a pretty big assumption. Doesn't arbitrarily assigning that level of confidence in something so utterly unknowable make you feel weird a little, or perhaps go flush a little when you write it?

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The mere fact that you took the time to create your passionate response in this electronic blog, suggests you do have some faith that even current technology has the potential to enhance cognition in ways beyond just lists of empirical observation.

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Another point, you misrepresent my point when you suggest I claimed that cognitive enhancement would enhance empathy.

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My point is that cognitive enhancement holds promise for potentiating compassion.

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It seems funny to have to support the idea that people are generally more wary about things which they do not understand and less wary around things with which they are familiar. This is just basic human nature...

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At the exrtreem, it should be clearly evident that compassion or empathy in an absence of knowledge about the other.