In this new three-part series, leading theoretical physicist and futurist Dr Michio Kaku explores the cutting edge science of today, tomorrow, and beyond. He argues that humankind is at a turning point in history. In this century, we are going to make the historic transition from the 'Age of Discovery' to the 'Age of Mastery', a period in which we will move from being passive observers of nature to its active choreographers. This will give us not only unparalleled possibilities but also great responsibilities.
I was interviewed for a portion of this special back in May -- at this point I honestly don't remember a whole lot about what I actually said, but I know I discussed life extension and (I think) the fact that technological innovation should lead to an increase in diversity, not a decrease. I've no clue how the editing is going to make it sound, though -- I guess the main thing I hope is that my enthusiasm for longevity medicine and for the proliferation of diversity comes through, and that my disapproval of "eugenics", etc., also comes through. (One question that seems to come up a lot is whether I think we're going to end up with a "world of genetic haves and have-nots", and the amount of inherent prejudice behind that question never ceases to astound me).
Seriousness aside for the moment, though: one funny thing (well, funny to me) that happened during the filming was that we all walked to a nearby park so that the camerapeople could get some footage of me sitting on a bench typing on a laptop. I figure they just wanted the footage for visual variety, but I found it amusing because I've never in my life gone to that park to work on the computer.
Overall, the description of the "Visions of the Future" series reminds me a lot of all those "Gee Whiz, What If This Happened?" speculative science shows I loved to watch as a youngster. That's one reason I thought it was a neat thing to participate in -- I remember watching an "invention" show called Beyond 2000 (lated renamed Beyond Tomorrow) over a period of several years, and I'm a bit of a "retro-future" enthusiast in that I love mining the Web and old basement boxes for magazine articles purporting to predict the Amazing Developments Just Around The Corner.
I've read and watched so much media of this sort that I've found it impossible to even consider getting "attached" to any particular vision of the future -- even though flying cars, jet packs, and houses made entirely of plastic figured big in American 1950s "futurism", there was still plenty of subtle and not-so-subtle variety in the overall future-speculative genre. And I've also seen enough years even in my own less-than-30 of them to realize how ridiculous trying to pinpoint "exact arrival dates" for any given technology is. "2000" has come and gone (remember when people used to append "2000" to everything, in an effort to make it sound cool and futuristic?) and a lot of things I imagine a lot of people were waiting for ended up becoming obsolete before they could be invented.
So, in short, I do understand and appreciate superlativity critiques. I think it's important for everyone to realize that while a person might be able to say, "Okay, I can imagine X and what it would take to build X, and here's when I think we'll have X on that basis", they can't go much further beyond the very short term in that extrapolation. One of the "retro-future" articles I recall reading a while back proposed a post-2000 world "entirely run by vaccuum tubes, with computers weighing no more than a few tons!" There's a huge element of uncertainty in science, and we don't always know what's going to be important, or what one given technology (along with the prevailing set of social conditions) is going to enable.
But -- I also figure that some degree of sweeping, superlative near-pantomime is part and parcel of the popularization of science. Some people might not end up giving the topics discussed on "future-speculative" programs a second thought, but others will undoubtedly be inspired to learn and study more. I know that such programs were a huge inspiration for me as a child. And most sensible people, I think, realize that utopia and apocalypse are equally unrealistic propositions -- but projecting forward our present-day dreams, wishes, hopes, and deep anxieties can still be a useful (and, dare I say, enjoyable) exercise. Just remember that there's a lot we can do now to help improve things in the world -- even in the absence of benevolent nanobot swarms.
10 comments:
I almost dread to ask what you had to do to get interviewed for that. It certainly sounds interesting though. Eugenics is a touchy subject, there is merit to its ideas (The improvement of the human gene pool through our own intervention) BUT in the modern era eugenics is too deeply associated with the Nazi's which has pretty much ruined a whole scientific field.
In order for humanity to continue surviving you have to accept that we have to improve our gene pool. But not through such vulgar means as selective breeding and sterilisation but more through genetic engineering (albeit in the future most likely) in order to promote and create desirable traits in our species.
I'm an advocate of improving humanity but certainly not of its wholesale slaughter at the behest of some twisted ideal of what perfection is. Thats what religion is for.
(responding to Gash here)
I almost dread to ask what you had to do to get interviewed for that.
I didn't really do much of anything, really. Someone from the BBC found some of my writing online and e-mailed me to ask if I wanted to participate in a documentary project about future-oriented stuff.
I actually wondered at first if someone was trying to prank me! But it definitely turned out to be legitimate. I figure they probably wanted to get a cross-section of perspectives, not just those of people with a lot of established research credentials.
Eugenics is a touchy subject, there is merit to its ideas (The improvement of the human gene pool through our own intervention) BUT in the modern era eugenics is too deeply associated with the Nazi's which has pretty much ruined a whole scientific field.
See, I don't think that the "association" with the Nazis is the problem so much as the fact that the whole Nazi mess (and the American Eugenics Movement, for that matter) happened in part as a result of attitudes that many people saw as "harmless" or even "compassionate".
I think that the same kinds of attitudes that lead people to believe that eugenics is a good idea tend to be those that, unchecked, result in the widespread devaluation of certain kinds of people. And those attitudes are still around today, and have even seemed to undergo a resurgence in popularity lately.
There are autism organizations who are working on genetic tests for autistic spectrum conditions, with the intent of hoping they can someday "prevent autism" (which would have to be through selective abortion, pre-implantation genetic diagnosis, or genetic treatments applied in the womb).
I know some people say, "Well, maybe we'd only prevent cases where people would be likely to be miserable their whole lives", but there's no way to tell whether someone is going to have a miserable life or not by checking their genes for "autism markers".
There are plenty of people who lead miserable lives, and plenty of people who lead happy lives -- and I think we need to really look carefully at trying to improve the lives of people who already exist. Which means making the world a far more flexible, accommodating, and tolerant place than it presently is.
I think some people have the idea that if we make everyone similar enough, there will be more resources left hanging around for those similar-enough folks to enjoy luxuries without having to worry about, or be inconvenienced by, the needs of those who function differently than they do.
And I don't agree with that viewpoint at all.
In order for humanity to continue surviving you have to accept that we have to improve our gene pool.
Huh? I don't think we're in any danger of going extinct (at least due to anything genetic!) anytime soon. I don't think there's any obligation, from an ethical standpoint, to "improve" the gene pool (who gets to decide what constitutes an "improvement", anyway?), any more than people have an obligation to have children in the first place.
I agree that we need to improve health care for all people, and some of this might mean making "enhancements" more widely available (vaccination is a kind of enhancement for the immune system, for instance), but I think the phrase "we have to improve the gene pool" is sort of empty.
What if a race of fish-people came down from Venus and decided that they were going to benevolently "improve" humanity by giving us all fish heads? Something tells me people would complain...
But not through such vulgar means as selective breeding and sterilisation but more through genetic engineering (albeit in the future most likely) in order to promote and create desirable traits in our species.
While I'm not totally against genetic engineering, I'm a little leery of assumption-laden phrases like "desirable traits". If you're talking about turning off genes that predispose people to cancer, I don't see who could really argue with that, but we need to be careful.
The thing I'm most excited about (in a good way) with regard to genetic technology is the idea of using genetic information and bioengineering to create far more individualized medicine than we have today.
I think that the focus of genetic tech should be that of helping people of all different genetic constitutions, rather than on trying to create some standardized form of human that will supposedly be easier and/or cheaper to deal with.
I'm an advocate of improving humanity but certainly not of its wholesale slaughter at the behest of some twisted ideal of what perfection is.
I'm not so much about trying to establish a centralized plan for "improving humanity" as I am about advocating maximum self-determination for individuals.
That is, I think that people should be able to modify (or not modify) themselves in accordance with their own goals and desires, and that we need to advocate for this above and beyond anything else.
I think that the "optimality drive", which seeks to define "health" as a single short list of criteria that everyone has a "right" to, tends to end up becoming a list that everyone has an obligation to conform to, lest they be considered "drains on the system".
This isn't to say that I think there's no such thing as disease, or that we shouldn't treat problems like addiction and alcoholism -- of course there are things that cause people a lot of pain and can even kill them, and I'm not against treating pain and helping people avoid death!
I just don't agree with the ongoing trend toward the pathologization of variation, which forces people to define their differences in the medical context simply so they can get *basic* services they need (everyone has needs, and the fact that some people have less common needs than others should not compel people to try and make sure that those with unique needs "normalize" themselves or cease to exist in the future!)
No doubt some people will end up taking forms that might seem "superlative" by today's standards, but some people might choose to keep their unmodified genome and body, and this needs to be okay with the rest of the world.
That is, people who do not choose *particular* augmentations should not be subject to pressure or ridicule or pity -- not everyone has the same desires, and not everyone will want to choose the same form given a wide range of choices. And some might choose modifications that would arguably be considered "disabilities" to others -- e.g., if a person wants to trade a "natural" limb for a stronger synthetic one, some might consider this barbaric, whereas the person making the trade will consider it an upgrade.
Policy should allow people to do such things, IMO, but it should not pass value judgments on such things in advance -- e.g., rather than defining a robotic leg replacement as "mutilation" or "enhancement", such a thing should be considered neutrally (as a "modification") from the policy standpoint. Value judgments regarding modifications should only be made by those choosing or rejecting them for themselves.
And when it comes to trying to engineer the next generation, we obviously can't ask future children how they'd like to be configured -- parents are always going to be engaging in a guesswork game regardless of what technologies become available.
And I honestly think that we ought to focus on making the world more welcoming to all different kinds of children than on trying to narrow the range of kinds of children that are born.
I know 2 people online who spent time in the neonatal ICU (one had cystic fibrosis, one had something called VATER association) and I am sad to think that today some people are advocating aborting or "letting die" people like my friends rather than taking their unique needs into consideration and helping them survive.
Well humanity has been practicing voluntary eugenics for as long as it has been around same as any species. We choose our mates depending on a variety of factors that each of us finds "attractive" for the majority of people these factors are mostly physical. There is also the selective breeding of animals for a variety of traits (EG: fancy rats have had their wild nature bred out of them, pigs bred for more meat, etc)
And yes gene-tech does look to be able to do a lot of good once we start the wagon rolling on it. The biggest problem with it though is public opinion not being too fussed with it.
And in regards to your answer to my gene-pool comment. I meant improving the human body's overall ability. Mostly these are traits you couldn't breed into humanity as they would require a fair bit of reworking. When genetic engineering of humans is more commonplace I would hope that a generic set of life improvement modifications would become the standard to improve everyones quality of life. EG: Longevity, radiation resistant cell structure (that one would be very important as we go out into space), stronger immune systems and such similar ones.
Your right on the fact that we should be free to choose how we modify our bodies. But even then records must be kept for all manner of reasons ranging from hospital use to identification. I also have to agree on the use of neutral language in relation to voluntary prosthetics.
And finally one last thing.
Answering the brief mention you made of a standardised human:
"I think that the focus of genetic tech should be that of helping people of all different genetic constitutions, rather than on trying to create some standardized form of human that will supposedly be easier and/or cheaper to deal with."
I could never find myself advocating such an approach as to make a standardised generic humanity. Such an approach would lead to stagnation and extinction.
Gash said:
Well humanity has been practicing voluntary eugenics for as long as it has been around same as any species. We choose our mates depending on a variety of factors that each of us finds "attractive" for the majority of people these factors are mostly physical.
I don't think choosing your own mate and then having a child with your chosen mate should be considered "voluntary eugenics" -- regardless of whatever subconscious "reproductive fitness" factors influence a person's choice of mate, on the conscious level, people generally choose partners on the basis that they enjoy their company and find them pleasant to be around.
People don't generally leave their partner upon finding out that their partner is infertile. And not everyone even wants to have children -- plenty of people today (myself included) have decided not to reproduce simply because they'd rather spend their time doing other things.
And then of course you have same-sex couples, who (at least for the time being) cannot combine their gametes to make a child sharing the genetic makeup of both parents.
Clearly, there are factors other than baby-making potential at work in human mating habits. I don't think seeking companionship can be wholly reduced to "I want someone I can make pretty babies with" -- the existence of willingly child-free couples, same-sex couples, and infertile but loyal couples makes this obvious.
Now, if a couple decides to go in for genetic screening, and on that basis decides whether or not to have children, that might be considered "voluntary eugenics". As might the actions of a woman who goes to a sperm bank and requests the sperm of a "handsome medical student", etc. But two people getting together because they like each other and having a baby -- that's just plain old reproduction, and shouldn't be marred with a tainted term like "eugenics".
There is also the selective breeding of animals for a variety of traits (EG: fancy rats have had their wild nature bred out of them, pigs bred for more meat, etc)
The American Eugenics movement was in part based on exactly this rationale -- some folks looked at the practice of animal husbandry and figured, "why not apply it to humans?" Hence, I certainly don't think that animal husbandry is the place we ought to look in order to demonstrate that "eugenics" is just some mundane, harmless idea. (Not that you're necessarily suggesting this!)
When genetic engineering of humans is more commonplace I would hope that a generic set of life improvement modifications would become the standard to improve everyones quality of life. EG: Longevity, radiation resistant cell structure (that one would be very important as we go out into space), stronger immune systems and such similar ones.
I certainly wouldn't be opposed to engineering for greater longevity, though I would think it would be very difficult to test (since humans are so long-lived as it is, it would be a long time before anyone could gauge the effectiveness of such an intervention, much less its safety). And if such a thing did become possible, we'd need to take great care to make it universally available (e.g., not just to the rich, or to certain ethnic or morphological groups).
I forgot it said you lived in America for a moment then. If you came to the UK and observed the relationships that the majority of people here develop you would find they are usually more based on physical characteristics than any emotional attatchment (a sad but true state of affairs in this vile nation). Or that could just be my own personal feelings on the quality of women in this country when compared to my standards in a partner.
And in regards to the generic set of genetic mods for people. That is exactly what I meant Anne. Rather than just doling them out to handful of people who pay for them, give them to the entire human race so that everyone benefits at least partially from this technology. Further upgrades and mods would be purely at the behest of the person having them done to him/herself but by giving everyone a generic starting set everyone starts out with a (hopefully) improved quality of life and lifespan.
See, I am still uncomfortable with the notion of a "generic set of mods". I would much prefer to speak in terms of specific mods, because when you use a term like "generic" (along with a phrase like "improved quality of life"), there's potential for unexamined assumptions to creep in.
If I say, "I would like increased longevity to be universally available", I am not saying anything about a generic set of modifications. I am talking about one modification specifically.
Hopefully that makes sense -- I just don't want to ever sound as if I am suggesting that there's ever going to be one particular set of things that "we" (whoever "we" is) can assume everyone would want. I consider something like longevity to be a special case in this regard because, well, you can't do anything if you're not alive!
I get what your saying. I'm just using those terms to describe a number of specific theoretical mods such as the proposed longevity, improved immune system and such. It would be a set of genetic mods chosen purely because they do improve the life of the person receiving them.
Although in theory any genetic mods could be passed onto any offspring (whether it would have the intended effect or not is another matter) and thats if we ever develop the ability to change the hosts DNA after they're born.
Eugenics is a pseudo-science (Hitler knew that when he was talking about it in such admiring tones). There is no way to literally "improve" the human race, particularly since that very phrase is incredibly nuanced. What one person would consider an improvement (for example, the classic, blonde hair and blue eyes), someone else would consider a back step (one can argue that since only 20% of the world population is of European descent, and even less has any likelihood of having blonde hair and blue eyes--both traits are recessive--that this "ideal" is out of the question by any standard).
Also, by improving our gene pool, we are running the risk of a.) developing new genetic diseases and b.) overpopulating the earth even further. I don't have any proof for A, but it seems to me to be a hypothetical possibility, somewhat similar to how old diseases are coming back even stronger due to our overuse of antibiotics (whooping cough, smallpox, TB, etc.).
Humanity is at no risk of dying off due to genetics. And I have the fear that wholesale slaughter will become much more common in the coming decades due in part to improved technology.
I am Deaf, Epileptic, and Narcoleptic; I have a father with Diabetes; and I have a brother with Asperger's Disorder, so when I found your blog, I was really delighted to find someone who actually knows what it's like to have to fight the way my brother has to, or the way I have to. You mentioned how people assume that we are miserable because we are not like everybody else. The truth is that when I am miserable, it is because other people don't understand that I am happy.
I like your hair ;)
I like your hair ^__^
Reading some more comments and I want to mention something: There is a wonderful book out there called "Better for All the World". It's dense, but it is about the Eugenics Movement in the US. Nazis based their ideals on our practices. I don't remember the author, sorry, but you can find it on Google easily enough.
I wrote a paper on the "Euthanasia Project" of WWII in Germany. Vicious stuff. I couldn't look at a book on the subject for weeks afterwards. Anyway, "Mentally Disabled" people were the focus, in part because it is so much easier to misdiagnose. Many deaf children were sent to the gas chambers as "hereditarily deaf" which only makes up about 5% of the deaf population. The Nazis were total idiots most of the time. Unfortunately, they were idiots in power. Two other books I recomend (if you can stomach it) are "Deaf People in Hitler's Europe" which is the only book on the overall subject (I think--more may have been written since) and "Crying Hands" which is translated from the German original. It is about the Sterilization of Deaf Germans during WWII. "Deaf People in..." cites it as a main source of information.
The man who diagnosed Asperger's waited until after WWII so that his patients wouldn't be dragged off and murdered. My brother often says that he hopes they don't develop a "cure" for Asperger's, because that would change who he was as a person. This is similar to the fight against Cochlear Implants. Eugenics seems to have evolved into Technology.
If you had a generic set of genes that all people had, wouldn't that result in specific genetic diseases rampant within a society? Like Azhkenazi Jews with Huntington's Disease?
kakalina:
I agree that eugenics is pseudoscience -- however, that doesn't seem to be stopping people from "rediscovering" it every few years or so and trying to present it as a "serious possibility for 'improving humanity'", or other such nonsense.
You said: The truth is that when I am miserable, it is because other people don't understand that I am happy.
That's an awesome quote. :) I may have to borrow it sometime, because it's something I can relate to very much. I remember once I went into a doctor's (psychiatrist's) office in a really good mood and was all ready to talk about how I'd been able to improve my skills in various areas, only to have her tell me that I seemed "down" and try to force antidepressants on me! I'm serious.
I still have no clue how she could have gotten that impression, because while I know my body language can be atypical and difficult for others to interpret, her reaction was bizarrely inaccurate to the point where I almost started to wonder if I'd stepped into the Twilight Zone! Sometimes when I am very happy I am very bouncy and like to jump around the room, but other times, I get very calm and still -- I think I was in "happy, calm, and still" mode that day and somehow that got interpreted as "bad mood", when it was anything but. Weirdness.
And when I was younger, people often used to assume that (a) I was unhappy because I was playing alone (or, heaven forbid, reading!), or (b) that I absolutely needed to partake in certain activities (like kickball at recess) in order to ward off future unhappiness. And all those assumptions did was annoy me.
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