Oh yes, lots...

Lots to think about, hhhmmm.....

1) Well, we have to establish first what you mean by "pleasure". Do you mean pleasure in the Platonic Form sense, or the actual sensory/nervous system sense? If the first, I don't know what to tell you, as I don't think my brain picks up Pleasure. If the second, then I would ask in which of the five senses?

There are pleasing arrangements of colors and objects, pleasant sounds, pleasurable flavors and aromas and lastly but not least, touch. All have different feelings, varying degrees of pleasing, and are experienced differently from one person to the next.

Then of course there are different kinds of pleasure not related to the senses. Being told you are loved, or that someone is proud of you causes biological reactions in the body to be sure, but there is something more to the experience than that. Satisfaction from intellectual stimulation or social acceptance can also cause pleasure to a person.

As I've now take a butcher's blade to your first question and gone far beyond the original context of the question, I'll answer it now the way I thought you meant the question to be answered.

I assumed you meant that this would be some kind of machine that would create a matrix-like environment or even just something that directly stimulated the pleasure centers of the brain. The first possibility is something that could spawn its own thread of conversation entirely (hint hint), so I'll go with the second.

For a visual I'm imagining some kind of hat or helmet that covers the entirety of one's head, so as to be close to the surface of the brain.

Do I think that such a device, one that produces pure pleasure, should be banned? I don't think so. The biggest problem with drugs is that they do have side-effects that can be potentially lethal to the users and those around them. Impaired judgment, loss of coordination, and relationship to criminal elements etc. are all things that go into law enforcement's consideration of how bad a drug really is, and whether it should be banned. So if there are no damaging side-effects, then there is no reason to ban it from a public safety stance.

One could object on the grounds of public health concerns. If such a device really did exist, and was effective in creating pleasure, who would ever want to take it off? People could develop terrible habits of sitting on a couch, strapped into their portable pleasure device, only stopping to sleep, eat, and occasionally work to ensure they can continue using their helmet. Obviously, the health risks associated with such a device would be pretty serious, and addictive behavior would be a concern.

From a public policy stance as well, one could object to such a device. With so many people likely to use it, how would it affect social networks, government, the workplace, and the economy? Now there is a concern now that people are getting more and more disconnected to reality, their neighbors, even their own family, even as they are getting more connected to the world. A world with this device would only serve to further this disconnection to reality.

Should it be banned? Maybe. Its hard to deny people something so enticing, and yet it might be the best course of action.

(Hah! You thought I was done, didn't you?)

2) Aaahhhh.... genetic modification. Hopefully I'll write a book about this one day. So here's the deal: I'm not opposed to genetic modification on principle. In fact, I think it could be a very powerful instrument for improving the world.

I'm only partially moved by the objection that it would be "playing God", or "messing with nature". After all, we do that everyday don't we? We flip on the lights using energy from splitting atoms, burning coal, or harnessing wind. We jump into cars that burn fossil fuels. We take anti-biotics when we are sick. All of that is decidedly unnatural, yet we have no problem with it.

Genetic modification is an uncomfortable subject for many people, myself included. It goes to the heart of the human question: what am I? Genetics says you are one part of an unbroken chain of deoxyribonucleic acid stretching from the distant past to today. It is uncomfortable, to say the least, to think that our fundamental nature is reducible to breeding, and could be changed by people in lab coats.

That said, I have no problem with genetic research going into identifying, eliminating and patching up sections of DNA that cause any number of genetic disorders. Gaucher's disease, asthma, Alzheimer's disease, Parkinson's, Lou Gehrig's disease and the list goes on. Can you imagine a world where any one, or all, of these diseases could be eliminated?

It is an exciting possibility, and one that later generations would be more than grateful for. If possible, I would definitely want to ensure that my children would not be burdened with a disease for which I was a carrier. But that's about how far the extent of my meddling would go.

For some reason, and maybe its the genes talking, but I do want to pass down a part of myself, not create some hand-picked uber-version of myself. There's something uncomfortable and a bit creepy about being able to create an entire person using spare code. It would also be an awesome responsibility, one which I don't want to take on.

Then again, if everyone is doing it I could get an angry call from my son/daughter is born. If world is filled with 6' 4", blond hair blue-eyed ubermenchses and uberwencheses who can do calculus with one hand, recite the Odyssey and hang from the rim on a basketball court after having dunked from the three-point line, my kids will probably have a bone to pick with me about why I simply chose to prevent them from getting male-pattern baldness and severe pollen allergies. That's not a phone call I really want to receive.

At the end of the day, could you really deny someone the option of determining how physically and intellectually capable their child would be? I don't know that I could, but I do know that I'd have a problem making that choice.

I guess I'll just have an answering machine screen my calls.

3) It was pretty good. It wasn't the orgasmically good screenplay that I was told I should believe it was though. It does make it into my "Superhero Movie Hall of Fame" though.

4) I think the same way about it that I do female birth control: Waste of money unless you're having a ton of sex, or are a woman with period issues, which some birth control actually helps alleviate. As I am currently not doing the former, and am not the latter, I'm not planning on buying anytime soon.

Further up and Further in!

Something to talk about

Originally submitted by InventionEnds:

Just to discuss something:

1) If there were a machine that cost very little and had no side effect but which produced pure pleasure, should it be banned like drugs?

2) If genetic modification became common place by the time we had kids, would you want to make sure your child had the best chance in life (e.g. Gattica)

3) How about watchmen!

4) Leaving aside personal moral implications, what do you say to the male birth control pill? Take it once a week and three months later, you're sterile until you stop taking it. (Like a lot of the questions in this email, I got it from this site: http://www.sentientdevelopments.com/2008/04/sorry-ladies-male-birth-control-pill-is.html)

Thank you!

Transhumanism, definitely maybe the next form of transportation.

Certainly some of you have heard of transhumanism. It is the movement or idea that humans can be improved upon, that the human form is somehow imperfect and could be made better. It is the process by which the human body’s capability for intellectual thought and physical ability is greatly increased. It also means the removal of our weakness, in addition to bolstering our strengths.

There are two ways to think about this: the fantastic and the mundane. Surely many of us have desired to have the ability to run as fast as Usain Bolt, swim as quickly as Michael Phelps, and lift boulders with the ease of Magnus ver Magnusson. Others have dreamt of growing wings and taking flight amongst the clouds. Some wish for enhanced sight, acute sense of smell, or just the ability to jump long distances. Want an extra arm? It’s yours! All you need to do is plug and play, and take a few weeks to get used to a fifth appendage. According to science fiction, god-like powers are within humanity’s reach hundreds, maybe only dozens of years in the future. And all are within the realm of possibility, or so scientific optimists would have us believe.

But putting aside x-ray vision, invincibility, and shooting electricity from one’s fingertips, transhumanism also offers treasures in a much more mundane setting whose benefits are just as wondrous and joyous: The end of disease. The curing of cancer. The invulnerability of the human body to all things viral, bacterial or infectious. Regrowth of limbs. The successful treatment of all genetic disorders. The prevention of diseases caused by the onset of age. The end of aging as we know it. Immortal life.

But there is danger in transhumanism.

If transhumanism progresses, and it seems that it will, there will be almost no secret left to life as we know it. Genes, the very blueprints of life, will be catalogued, and with it the secrets of how to solve all our genetic problems. With the genetic problems solved, and the specific powers of each gene known, we can then progress to improving upon our basic physiology. When the first basic physiological experiments have been successful, then it will become mainstream. Increasingly more potent, and increasingly more severe will the improvements become until eventually everything within the realm of the human genome has been improved until it cannot be pushed any farther. Having reached the limit of human expansion, other living creatures will be brought into the equation. Eventually human and animal will be spliced together to improve humans beyond their original capabilities. Who knows what the future will hold? But chances are anything that might exist in the future will no doubt be strange, or even frightening, to us in the present. To be human, or one’s “humanity” might lose its meaning. Maybe being “humane” will be considered barbaric in the future. Perhaps in the future identity will lie in one’s genes, and one’s genes alone.

I do not present this as a nightmare scenario, far from it. It is merely a projection of what path of our collective futures could be. But before we get there, there remain some very important issues that will have to be overcome in order for anyone to cope with what is to be.

Science, at its heart, seeks to understand how the universe works. Transhumanism is the manifestation of what humans have always sought from time immemorial: the ability to control one’s life, and by extension, the world around them. In this world, there are so few things that are firmly within our control, and nothing is more under our control than our own bodies. Thus it is not surprising that we have sought over the years to understand it in order to control it. And yet after thousands of years, our bodies are still not fully under our control.

Now before this raises some red flags, this has nothing to do with body issues such as abortion. That issue is not the one under contention, except by a very far extension. Now that I’ve got that out of the way…

Medical science has progressed to the point where we can retain and regulate many bodily functions with a single pill. Mental disorders and neuroses can be solved with a simple dosage of chemicals. Infections can be treated with the right combination of antimicrobials, and immune systems bolstered by a steady stream of nutrients. The body can trick itself into combating a much weakened aggressor, fortifying against future infections. There are hundreds of secrets that we have learned since the time it was thought that leeches were accepted as necessity to rebalance the quantity of the four humors, or principal liquids.

Yet despite our advancements, we still get sick. We suffer from debilitating diseases, are unable to recover from terrible trauma, and sometimes, seemingly for no reason at all, our own body starts revolting and grows belligerently without rhyme or reason. Despite all our scientific data, despite thousands of the most brilliant minds in the world working on similar problems, the common cold is still uncured. The best recipe for getting better has remained virtually the same through centuries: lots of rest, quality foods and hot chicken soup. It’s not exactly the stuff of science fiction.

Transhumanism says that with the proper application of scientific energies, human beings could be made into human betters.

Certainly the curing of disease is a great and monumental achievement. Who would choose to have disease? Who would choose to suffer when the cure existed? Who would refuse to have their bodies lifted from their hospital beds, their lungs cleaned of cancer, all toxins removed from their kidneys, their heart repaired and functioning normally, their legs able to carry their weight once again? It seems to be a cut and dry case.

But is it?

Imagine: if all human problems, all human challenges could be removed within a few generations, what kind of world would that be? It would be one devoid of one kind of suffering certainly, but with that suffering was there ever anything good that came of it?

There are those in history who have defied the odds and overcame obstacles, both from within and without to do great things. Theodore Roosevelt suffered from debilitating asthma when he was a child. In those times it was a deadly affair, and only those with the means to buy expensive medications could afford to risk a day’s exercise. Teddy then went on to wrestle the disease into submission and make it cry for momma. After a daily regimen of hardy exercise lasting years, he was able to overcome his disease, and that mentality helped him throughout the rest of his days, even to the White House.

There are other examples, but suffice it to say that sometimes these problems, even the worst of them, can create good. They can spurn people to achieve great things, to try new things, and to find a modicum of happiness in an otherwise depressing existence. Stories of triumph can inspire people for generations, and spurn on ever greater and more impressive feats of greatness. In desperation and sadness there can yet be goodness.

That is not to say that I would, even for a second, withhold the cure to any disease to any person anywhere. At even the slightest provocation, were it in my power, I would relinquish upon the entire world the cure to everything that caused anyone pain in a torrent of tears. I could not bear to be the cause, nor even be in the way of a cure, for someone’s pain.

But after disease is cured, what then? As I have said before, even before all disease is cured, there will be experimentation to create a more perfect human being. It will be a part of humanity’s drive to overcome its long-time adversary. We have many names for what we are trying to conquer: disease, disorder, environment, temperament, moods, trauma, mentality etc.. Our nemesis then is Nature. It’s not the trees or the caribou against which we struggle, but a more basic, primal understanding of Nature. It is the “state of nature”, the human condition, our mentality, the external world mingling with the internal world, it is the ever-relevant statement: “shit happens”.

So what is it that we seek to conquer? It is our nature? Ourselves? Is what all these years of research and discovery are geared towards? Is it the elimination of what a human being is? Just who and what are we out to get.

If there are no drawbacks and only benefits to transhumanism. If we can create bodies that are durable, strong, regenerative, intelligent, fast, and self-sustaining, then what possible objection is there to transhumanism? If the future holds the reduction of suffering for all of human kind, even ignoring socio-economic inequalities in the future, why should anyone object to such advancement?

C.S. Lewis puts it perfectly in Abolition of Man when he speaks about the progress of Science in the conquest of Nature:

“We reduce things to mere Nature in order that we may `conquer' them. We are always conquering Nature, because `Nature' is the name for what we have, to some extent, conquered. The price of conquest is to treat a thing as mere Nature… The stars do not become Nature till we can weigh and measure them: the soul does not become Nature till we can psychoanalyse her. The wresting of powers from Nature is also the surrendering of things to Nature…. But as soon as we take the final step of reducing our own species to the level of mere Nature, the whole process is stultified, for this time the being who stood to gain and the being who has been sacrificed are one and the same.… It is the magician's bargain: give up our soul, get power in return. But once our souls, that is, ourselves, have been given up…. We shall in fact be the slaves and puppets of that to which we have given our souls. It is in Man's power to treat himself as a mere `natural object' and his own judgements of value as raw material for scientific manipulation to alter at will.… The real objection is that if man chooses to treat himself as raw material, raw material he will be: not raw material to be manipulated, as he fondly imagined, by himself, but by mere appetite, that is, mere Nature…”

The real danger, then, of transhumanism is not that the definition of humanity will be changed, or that some person will gain too much power vis-à-vis others, or even that such changes will cause humanity to cease being in its entirety. The danger is that we will not be conquering our weaknesses and becoming the masters over the world. The danger is that if we treat ourselves like so much genetic material, then we will be treated like so much genetic material. Of no intrinsic value in and of itself, but refuse without any quality if it does not meet specified standards. If we treat ourselves like simple organisms, then we will only ever be simple organisms to ourselves. We will be only one link in the long, purposeless chain of carbon transmissions hundreds of thousands of years long.

If transhumanism is right, and we can be made better, then those who are not perfect are simply refuse. Where will the bar be set? Will it begin with the designation of those with Down Syndrome as undesirable and useless? When will the bar be set for those that have IQs below 100 to be recycled? How long before those with asthma, cystic fibrosis or a predilection for alcoholism are considered genetic trash?

The point is, transhumanism does not recognize any dignity within the human person as it is. We are not created equal, and transhumanism would not only recognize that, but seek to make us all equal, and in the worst way possible: by making us all the same.

Without the dignity of the person, without intrinsic value in and of ourselves, what is humanity? Humanity will be reduced to a scientist’s playground. Nothing more and nothing less.

So fair warning: if you don’t treat yourself with respect, the world won’t either. Have respect for yourselves, and your fellow man for who they are. Otherwise we are without value. The future will be better than way.

In the mean time, I’ve already ordered an advance copy of a pair of wings and the ability to read minds.

The Very First Post

Some of you may be wondering why this is here. The Truth, if this can be capitalized, is that the future is always bleak to those who belong to the generation from whom ownership of the world is being ceded. We're here to reassure them that no, we'll do just fine, just as you did in your own lives.

We're here to show that the world is populated by intelligent, thoughtful and reasonable people. (Though they may be few and far in between)

Let the reasoned discourse begin!