EPISODE RELEASED 1st APRIL 2023
WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS AND RISKS OF TRANSHUMANIST TECHNOLOGIES, AND WHAY ARE THEY SO TABOO? HOW DO WE LEGISLATE TO AVOID EXISTENTIAL RISKS WITHOUT HOLDING BACK THE ENORMOUS POSSIBLE BENEFITS? HOW DO WE SECURE THE MENTAL HEALTH, RIGHTS, AND EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES OF THE PUBLIC AS THEY INEVITABLY ROLL OUT?
So today we have the tricky and somewhat taboo topic of how to ethically guide the ever-increasing application of transhumanist technologies. With the recent advances in bio-technology, and some technologies already making their way into our bodies, it seems that the move towards a transhumanist vision of how to improve our standard of living is already well under way. So the question now is how do we educate ourselves the public and legislate tech corporations and governments, to be sure that people’s mental and physical health, access to opportunities, and personal freedoms are not being compromised in the gold-rush.
Fortunately our guest today is a sociologist and bioethicist with over 25 years of debating exactly these kind of questions. He is the executive director of the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies or IEET, and he is the Associate Provost for Institutional research, Assessment and Planning at the University of Massachusetts Boston, James Hughes.
He is a Buddhist and techno-optimist, and was executive director of the World Transhumanist Organisation from 2004-2006. He argues for a democratic transhumanism in which human enhancement technologies should only be allowed if available to everyone, with respect for the rights of the individuals to control their own bodies.
He’s the writer of many articles and papers and the author of the book,“Citizen Cyborg: Why democratic societies must respond to the redesigned human of the future”. He is currently working on another book about moral enhancement, tentatively titled “Cyborg Buddha: Using neurotechnology to become better people”.
Being a techno-optimist and futurist myself, yet extremely cautious of mankind’s reckless and often blind curiosity when developing technology, I felt it was an important time to take a balanced multi-perspectival look into the ethics and policy development of transhumanist technologies. The interview offered me a process of re-evalutation of my own preconceptions and triggers, so I hope it helps you question your own opinions on this complex topic.
A brief apology to those of you watching for the lack of video feed on the host during the interview, you’ll only see James Hughes - which may turn out for the better!
What we discuss:
00:00 Intro
08:00 Difficulty accepting our inevitable transhumanist future
09:40 IEET The Institute of Ethics and Emerging Technologies, a techno progressive organisation
10:30 Protecting the future of work, equity and liberal outcomes in the near term
14:00 The taboo of transhumanism and debating toxic issues
19:45 It’s not the tech that’s the risk but the way we use it and legislate it: Max Tegmark
23:00 Regulating technologies democratically, over banning them and sending them underground
27:20 Humanity only really mobilises after someone gets hurt
29:90 The CCCP has limited how much time kids can play video games
31:30 The film Gattaca is misleading: they have genetic modification but can’t fix the protaganist’s heart - it doesn’t make sense
33:20 The History of Transhumanism
35:53 JBS Haldane 1920’s, Genetic engineering and artificial wombs
36:30 Julian Huxley, Director of UNESCO: 1956 Article Humanism to Transhumanism
37:30 Extropy Institute: 1980’s Libertarian post-counter culture futurism in California
38:50 Every culture has an immortalist subculture
43:00 Algorithmic Bias
44:50 Is Eugenics connected to Transhumanism?
49:30 JBS Haldane became a critic of eugenics after he became a Marxist
51:00 The roadmap towards markets rolling out transhumanist technologies
52:30 The Kurzweilian paradigm: Smaller, smarter and faster
53:30 Biotech meets nanotech e.g. ’Neural dust’
55:45 Backing up memories - replacing and supplementing brain function
57:00 Instantiating brain backups in robot bodies, cloned bodies or computers
57:45 Using Social media profiles to create a virtual simulacrum of you
58:45 The Metaverse and brain-internet interfaces assessed
01:03:00 Augmented reality will be more popular than virtual reality
01:05:30 Big data about my biometric reactions in virtual reality
01:06:00 Technology interfering with the evolution of brains and culture
01:07:00 Gender Binaries will break down and become meaningless
01:10:00 Selective scientific publication about the negative mental health outcomes
01:11:20 Obsessive behaviours vary depending on the era
01:12:00 People will be able to adapt
01:12:30 Don’t let your kid do anything for 8 hours a day
01:13:40 Addiction treatments to block dopamine rewards
01:16:00 Prioritising mental health outcomes: Face to Face connection, nature connection, physical activity and sleep
01:18:00 Wearable devices to motivate pro-mental health behaviour
01:19:30 Surveillance capitalism, the attention economy and legislating algorithms
01:21:00 Neurolink: brain computer internet interfaces assessed
01:27:00 Gene therapy assessed: the risks of yet further inequality of wealth and power
01:29:00 The distinction between somatic and heritable/reproductive gene therapy
01:30:00 The distinction between therapeutic and enhancement gene therapy
01:32:00 If we change something, in future we can just change it back
01:32:40 No super powered technologies should be allowed only for the rich
01:35:00 Cyborgs: Part biological and part synthetic
01:37:15 The exocortex: tech outside the body can be updated more easily than inside
01:39:00 Life extension and immortality: Ray Kurzweil
01:40:40 Older people tend to be more content and satisfied than young people, on average
01:42:20 Euthanasia: you will also be able to choose when to die
01:43:50 The Singularity explained: Vernor Vinge’s ‘Singularity’ is a physics blackhole term referring to total unpredictablitly of future outcomes
01:49:00 Nick Bostrum’s simulation hypothesis VS Nikolai Kardesev’s hierarchy of civilisations
02:51:00 The Fermi Paradox debate: what does it take not to destroy your civilisation as it progresses technologically
01:55:00 How we apply our technological resources: Uniting as a species VS destroying/dominating within it
01:56:20 Inequality leads to dangerous conflict VS Transnational collaboration leads too peace
References:
James J Hughes ‘Citizen Cyborg’
Metaverse paper ‘The Democratic Metaverse’
JBS Haldane’s ideas in Contemporary biopolitics in 1920s' British futurism paper
Julian Huxley ‘Transhuamanism’ paper, 1957
Morman Transhumanist Association
Nick Bostrum - ‘A History of Transhumanist thought’ paper
The Machine Intellligence Research Institute MIRI
The Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies IEET
Alvin Toffler ‘Future shock’
James Hughes - Millenial Tendencies in Response to Apocalyptic Threats paper
The Centre for the Study of Existential Risk, Cambridge University