Tonight, over dinner, a show played on the television set. At one point, the lead character made the comment, in reference to his father:
"He considers burial a form of age discrimination!"
Cue the canned laughter. Move on to the next scene.
Meanwhile, I am sitting bolt upright in my living room, saying aloud, "Actually, I'd agree with that!"
Now, this shouldn't be taken to mean that I'm one of those people who writes irate letters to television producers whenever I hear a flippant remark that seems to promote an attitude I disagree with. (And if I did have any sort of serious vendetta against televisions, it would be on the basis that someone saw fit to invent the horrific auditory menace known as the "laugh track"). Rather, this is a case of seeing something, reacting to it, and then using that reaction as a jumping-off point for addressing something I do see as a real issue.
The "real issue" at hand is the fact that too few people consider age-related death to be an international health crisis, and are thereby not assigning proper urgency to the situation. And of course, part of this is due to the mindset that considers age-related death to be something natural, necessary, and even sacred.
Think about it for a moment: if I described the physical signs and eventual prognosis of aging to you, but you didn't know how old the person was that I was talking about, would you seriously consider the condition to be something nobody should look into addressing medically? Aging takes a healthy, vigorous person and saddles them with progressively increasing susceptibility to cancer, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, joint problems, overall weakness, and immune dysfunction and eventually kills that person. Without fail.
When we see these symptoms in children, we call it progeria, and you'd be hard-pressed to find anyone suggesting that we should just "let nature take its course" and let these children get sicker and sicker to the point where they die. Quite rightfully, we attempt to address their health challenges with therapies like aspirin, blood pressure pills, and cholesterol-lowering drugs. In addition to these conventional treatments, we also perform research along possible avenues that might eventually enable more effective treatments that strike right at the source of this condition -- the genes and underlying biology.
Even when these symptoms start appearing in younger adults -- a sort of "late-onset progeria" is diagnosed, called Werner syndrome. This condition results in the initial appearance of rapid physical aging following puberty. Individuals with Werner syndrome commonly die in their forties or fifties.
Notice anything interesting about the Werner prognosis? Though the expected lifespan of an individual afflicted with Werner syndrome is actually comparable to the average lifespan just over a century ago, this condition is most assuredly considered something that an individual would want to fight against with all available medical resources.
If today's anti-aging advocates were suddenly whisked through time and plunked back in 1896, when the average American lived approximately 48 years, would we experience opposition from folks who insisted that there really wasn't much point to living beyond 50, and that all efforts to do so were essentially rooted in deep hubris?
My father is turning 50 this year, and he is most certainly not an old man -- he's ambitious, active, and sharp, having received an advanced degree in his forties that enabled him to move further in his career. The majority of my co-workers are in their 50s or above -- far from being dead, they are fruitful contributors to the intellectual and monetary economies of the nation. Clearly, enough has changed over the past century so as to render the very idea of death at 50 or before an abomination.
Why, then, the continued discrimination against people in their 70s and above?
As I've written before, I don't think it's anyone's place to tell another person at which point they are simply not allowed to exist anymore. I don't see any difference between saying that someone is obligated to die because they're 90 or 100 years old and saying someone is obligated to die because they've been paralyzed in an accident or born with a disability.
(Incidentally, this is one of the reasons why I see a very strong alignment between transhumanism and disability rights -- as I read elsewhere, all humans might be considered to be "temporarily able-bodied", at least in this era wherein the road to effective, universal, and affordable life-extension treatments still lies beyond quite a bit of concentrated effort and hard work. People with no immediate, serious health challenges can sometimes be fairly smug about disposing of those they consider to be "burdensome" -- but the fact of the matter is, unless something is done about the aging problem, we're all going to be in a position of having to defend our own personhood and right to continued existence someday.)
Intentional neglect of the health care needs of the elderly is not an ethical solution to population pressure, or to anyone's religious or social ideals. The bottom line is that it makes no sense to consider all fatal conditions and accidents bad, except aging, for the mere fact that it affects older people. This is discrimination, pure and simple.
I look forward to an era wherein you won't ever hear anyone, even jokingly, suggesting that letting people die simply because they are old is anything but age discrimination.
Saturday, August 12, 2006
Friday, August 04, 2006
Persons in Progress - Notes on Animal Uplift
George Dvorsky has recently published a paper on the matter of animal uplift. I was witness to a reading of an earlier draft of this paper at HETHR back in May of this year. What follows is an expanded version of some comments I made on Betterhumans in response to this publication.
One thing I'm learning as the emerging future, well, emerges is that information and useful philosophical discourse sometimes lie along routes that one might not expect to find such things on. As such, I don't find it prudent to avoid any line of discussion on the sheer basis that someone might think it's weird (some of the commentaries that followed the HETHR conference specifically pointed to the "animal uplift" paper as something that somehow embodied the inherent strangeness of transhumanism).
As someone else on Betterhumans noted, the "animal uplift" question is a very intriguing thought experiment. As long as we don't get too bogged down in such things at the expense of tangible productive research, such thought experiments can lend necessary inspiration toward the very tangible productive research that is most likely to usher in a future wherein citizens enjoy longer, healthier lives and a far more egalitarian society than the one we have today. Hence, I think that this discussion is definitely appropriate for this blog.
I'd definitely recommend reading Dvorsky's paper before making any snap judgements regarding the consent issue, since Dvorsky does indeed address the issue of consent through the application of Rawlsian moral frameworks (if you're not familiar with what that means, remember that Wikipedia is your friend). The question then becomes, has he made a convincing reasonable case for uplift?
I would say that in a certain context, the answer is yes -- application of personhood theory here suggests that once a group of nonhuman animals is granted personhood status and the rights that accompany that status, any obligations that "we" (as in, those of us with the capacity to provide uplift technology) consider that we have toward other persons would necessarily extend across species lines.
The deeper question is, perhaps, not one of consent but one of judgement -- that is, when is one being capable of determining that another being would be better off in another state? There's an entire continuum here, from the obvious (being alive is better than being dead, being well is better than having pneumonia) to a much fuzzier region (are certain modes of sensory perception inherently better than others? is it inherently more "fun" to be one gender rather than another?)
If the animal uplift question does become a critical issue at some point (which I think it probably will), I do not think that anyone will ever be able to make a convincing case on either the side of "uplift is always good" or "uplift is always bad". Rather, very specific interventions will, and must, be considered in light of very individual circumstances.
If we figure out a way to definitively and effectively communicate with chimpanzees or whales, for instance, it is entirely possible that some members of a given species may want certain modifications, while others may not. In considering modification as potentially applied to any person -- whether that person be human, transhuman, posthuman, ape, dolphin, elephant, or sentient AI -- it is important to think and speak in terms of individuals rather than of groups or species. Otherwise, we run into the problem of overgeneralization which could effectively start trampling on the rights of individuals to set the course of their own futures.
Another important thing to remember is that humans do not represent the pinnacle of evolution in every possible respect. We're only one possible direction in which it could go, and it's a mistake to assume that every animal on the planet would rather be like us, given the choice -- just as it would be a mistake to assume that every other human on Earth would rather think, perceive, and feel the way any one of us does at any given moment. The point of uplift would NOT be to eliminate animal diversity and turn every living thing into a human, but rather, to extend assistance (technological and memetic) to creatures that we can already identify with to some extent. This has nothing to do with certain animals being "cute" -- it has to do with certain animals already sharing certain evolved traits and characteristics with humans, to the extent that it seems clear we ought to consider them "persons" and extend all rights granted other persons to those animals.
I don't think we can even assume that a creature such as a squid doesn't already have "higher" thinking. It might think more "highly" than we do in some ways we can't even imagine, and it would be arrogant to assume that we humans have it all figured out and that any creature, given the choice, would choose to be just like us. We have absolutely no way of knowing this, and I think it would be a mistake to act as if we do. Death and suffering are unfortunate, but it gets really tricky when one starts considering things like gut bacteria -- are we obligated to attempt to bring every E. Coli in our intenstine toward a human-like self-awareness?
Do we need to make every bacterium immortal in order to be ethical creatures? And what about individual cells that comprise animal bodies? If we uplift a bacterium, why not a skin cell or muscle cell? If everything was entirely autonomous, could organisms even maintain structural integrity? Does any organism have the right to exist at all if it means other organisms of any sort must experience discomfort?
And if we managed to make every animal life form on the planet self-aware and capable of composing sonatas and doing calculus, would plants be next? And after plants, would we need to start thinking about offering sentience to rocks or water molecules? (You can see how ridiculous it starts to get at this point -- a line definitely must be drawn somewhere, lest we risk paralyzing ourselves!)
There comes a point at which endless philosophical deliberation about vastly far-future scenarios becomes counterproductive -- I think it's best to start from where we are now and move forward realistically along visible avenues of progress. I think it's fine to talk about radically extending human lives and offering personhood rights to chimps and dolphins, but once we've established that at least some aspects of these things are a good idea, we'd best start working on making them a reality rather than pondering the intellectual well-being of a mosquito.
Particularly when it comes to life extension, time is of the essence, and even if we do eventually want to start extending such technologies to certain nonhumans that might appreciate them, these technologies first need to exist!
One thing I'm learning as the emerging future, well, emerges is that information and useful philosophical discourse sometimes lie along routes that one might not expect to find such things on. As such, I don't find it prudent to avoid any line of discussion on the sheer basis that someone might think it's weird (some of the commentaries that followed the HETHR conference specifically pointed to the "animal uplift" paper as something that somehow embodied the inherent strangeness of transhumanism).
As someone else on Betterhumans noted, the "animal uplift" question is a very intriguing thought experiment. As long as we don't get too bogged down in such things at the expense of tangible productive research, such thought experiments can lend necessary inspiration toward the very tangible productive research that is most likely to usher in a future wherein citizens enjoy longer, healthier lives and a far more egalitarian society than the one we have today. Hence, I think that this discussion is definitely appropriate for this blog.
I'd definitely recommend reading Dvorsky's paper before making any snap judgements regarding the consent issue, since Dvorsky does indeed address the issue of consent through the application of Rawlsian moral frameworks (if you're not familiar with what that means, remember that Wikipedia is your friend). The question then becomes, has he made a convincing reasonable case for uplift?
I would say that in a certain context, the answer is yes -- application of personhood theory here suggests that once a group of nonhuman animals is granted personhood status and the rights that accompany that status, any obligations that "we" (as in, those of us with the capacity to provide uplift technology) consider that we have toward other persons would necessarily extend across species lines.
The deeper question is, perhaps, not one of consent but one of judgement -- that is, when is one being capable of determining that another being would be better off in another state? There's an entire continuum here, from the obvious (being alive is better than being dead, being well is better than having pneumonia) to a much fuzzier region (are certain modes of sensory perception inherently better than others? is it inherently more "fun" to be one gender rather than another?)
If the animal uplift question does become a critical issue at some point (which I think it probably will), I do not think that anyone will ever be able to make a convincing case on either the side of "uplift is always good" or "uplift is always bad". Rather, very specific interventions will, and must, be considered in light of very individual circumstances.
If we figure out a way to definitively and effectively communicate with chimpanzees or whales, for instance, it is entirely possible that some members of a given species may want certain modifications, while others may not. In considering modification as potentially applied to any person -- whether that person be human, transhuman, posthuman, ape, dolphin, elephant, or sentient AI -- it is important to think and speak in terms of individuals rather than of groups or species. Otherwise, we run into the problem of overgeneralization which could effectively start trampling on the rights of individuals to set the course of their own futures.
Another important thing to remember is that humans do not represent the pinnacle of evolution in every possible respect. We're only one possible direction in which it could go, and it's a mistake to assume that every animal on the planet would rather be like us, given the choice -- just as it would be a mistake to assume that every other human on Earth would rather think, perceive, and feel the way any one of us does at any given moment. The point of uplift would NOT be to eliminate animal diversity and turn every living thing into a human, but rather, to extend assistance (technological and memetic) to creatures that we can already identify with to some extent. This has nothing to do with certain animals being "cute" -- it has to do with certain animals already sharing certain evolved traits and characteristics with humans, to the extent that it seems clear we ought to consider them "persons" and extend all rights granted other persons to those animals.
I don't think we can even assume that a creature such as a squid doesn't already have "higher" thinking. It might think more "highly" than we do in some ways we can't even imagine, and it would be arrogant to assume that we humans have it all figured out and that any creature, given the choice, would choose to be just like us. We have absolutely no way of knowing this, and I think it would be a mistake to act as if we do. Death and suffering are unfortunate, but it gets really tricky when one starts considering things like gut bacteria -- are we obligated to attempt to bring every E. Coli in our intenstine toward a human-like self-awareness?
Do we need to make every bacterium immortal in order to be ethical creatures? And what about individual cells that comprise animal bodies? If we uplift a bacterium, why not a skin cell or muscle cell? If everything was entirely autonomous, could organisms even maintain structural integrity? Does any organism have the right to exist at all if it means other organisms of any sort must experience discomfort?
And if we managed to make every animal life form on the planet self-aware and capable of composing sonatas and doing calculus, would plants be next? And after plants, would we need to start thinking about offering sentience to rocks or water molecules? (You can see how ridiculous it starts to get at this point -- a line definitely must be drawn somewhere, lest we risk paralyzing ourselves!)
There comes a point at which endless philosophical deliberation about vastly far-future scenarios becomes counterproductive -- I think it's best to start from where we are now and move forward realistically along visible avenues of progress. I think it's fine to talk about radically extending human lives and offering personhood rights to chimps and dolphins, but once we've established that at least some aspects of these things are a good idea, we'd best start working on making them a reality rather than pondering the intellectual well-being of a mosquito.
Particularly when it comes to life extension, time is of the essence, and even if we do eventually want to start extending such technologies to certain nonhumans that might appreciate them, these technologies first need to exist!
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