(A bit more commentary on some stuff that's been running through my head as of late...)
Consider the following:
- I feel out of place in groups where people seem literally convinced that they personally are likely to find some way to "live forever" based on the fact that some cool stem-cell experiments seem to be panning out.
- I feel equally out of place where people are expounding on the benefits and virtues of actually "going gentle into that good night" (i.e., not engaging in "heroic" lifesaving measures for elderly patients). (Or when people are claiming that merely wanting to partake of rejuvenation medicine is a sign of hapless and hubristic vanity.)
- I'm against pathologizing old people for being old, but I'm very much for finding better ways to stop old people from dying of cancer or heart disease or basically anything identifiable that kills them already.
- I'm terribly weirded out by people who seem to think non-infinite lives are somehow meaningless (and yes, there are a few, both religious and non).
- I'm also annoyed when people express the idea that taking measures to (even if only by a tiny margin) potentially maximize one's long-term survival odds is a sign of undeniable pathological narcissism.
- I don't think wanting to live another 100 or even 200 years is any more morally wrong than wanting to live one more day, no matter how old you are -- and yet, I do worry about the character of people who seem overly fixated on their own survival above all else.
- I think it's kind of goofy and crackpottish to believe that you are personally going to live forever in a nearly-indestructible "uploaded" form, but I'm totally okay with the idea of cryonics, and am considering signing up myself at some point (I figure even if it doesn't work, it's a cool science experiment!).
Now, of course I don't feel like there's anything wrong with the position(s) I hold here, otherwise I'd hold different positions. But still...I keep feeling myself running up against weird pressures to either jump on the Live Forever In A Robot Body! bandwagon, or on the Just Lay Down And Die Gracefully! bandwagon. And I don't have any desire to jump on either. Hopefully I can keep going along the way I've been going, picking and choosing my projects accordingly, because the only thing I've really ever found that "works" for me in areas like this is the "salad bar" approach!
I still volunteer with the Methuselah Foundation, and plan to keep doing so, as they're doing a lot of practical work that I see as having the potential to benefit many people. It's pretty clear to me after having been acquainted with them for several years even before becoming a volunteer that they're legitimate (the fact that they've got actual research programs going on at major universities is a big positive sign as far as I'm concerned).
But I'm finding in general, I have to be very careful in evaluating any group or person that claims to want to address actual age-related problems scientifically and ethically. There's so much crackpottery, opportunism, and sheer overly-wishful thinking out there that it's practically impossible to be too careful.
16 comments:
I feel kind of similarly to this. On the one hand, a non-infinite life does feel meaningless to me - i literally can't think about the prospect of death-meaning-total-nonexistence without lapsing into utter, incomprehensible, abject terror.
On the other hand, i find the idea of continuing on until the end of the universe in more or less continuous physical form distinctly creepy, and somehow "wrong" in some undefinable, "instinctive" way...
It might be the fact that i used to be a genuinely-believing Christian, and am not any more, partly because the idea of a non-material afterlife just doesn't seem rationally possible to me any more. I wish i could believe in reincarnation or something, but ultimately i know there's no such concept, in a rational philosophy, of "wanting to believe" something - i have to believe only that which seems plausible and rational to me, yet neither any of the religious conceptions of afterlife, nor the idea of eternal physical existence, nor the idea of totally ceasing to exist, seem plausible or rational to me...
shiva:
Oh, I'm totally okay with the idea of perpetual existence -- it doesn't seem creepy "wrong" to me from a moral standpoint or anything, I just don't think it's a very realistic thing to believe in. I think it would be incredibly cool to maximize the lifespan(s) of sentients to whatever degree possible per the laws of physics -- I just draw a distinction between maximizing lifespan and "becoming immortal".
Based on what humans know right now, it looks as if the universe itself is going to end up winding down at some point, and I don't personally know nearly enough about physics and biology to posit at what point a consciousness-supporting matter configuration would become unsustainable -- IMO, questions like that are actually more metaphysical than scientific, just as each person's coming to terms with the largeness of spacetime is bound to be a very individual thing.
But it seems kind of silly given what we do know now to defend a belief in the likelihood of one's own perpetual existence (and note that a belief is a very different thing than a "want" or desire). People's individual religious convictions are their own, of course, but I'm guessing even most religious folks would admit that their belief in personal immortality (in the context of an "afterlife") isn't based on scientific evidence of any kind, but rather on some ineffable "feeling".
You said: I wish i could believe in reincarnation or something, but ultimately i know there's no such concept, in a rational philosophy, of "wanting to believe" something - i have to believe only that which seems plausible and rational to me, yet neither any of the religious conceptions of afterlife, nor the idea of eternal physical existence, nor the idea of totally ceasing to exist, seem plausible or rational to me...
Yeah, I went through a brief "wishing for belief" phase, but I'm just not wired to convince myself of things with insufficient evidence. I inadvertently managed to give myself a crash course in critical thinking when I was maybe 10 or 11, as I had a Major Fascination around that age with paranormal phenomena and such -- I read every book I could find on ESP and telepathy and all that, and genuinely approached it all without any pre-judgment other than really hoping it was true. And after doing a number of "experiments" (randomly testing people with card-guessing tasks, flipping coins repeatedly whilst trying to "influence" the results, etc.), I came to the conclusion that people who believed in that kind of thing were engaging in "wishful thinking".
And as far as religion goes, I was raised nominally Christian, and I considered myself one until my early teens. But once I learned that there were a zillion religions in the world, many of them mutually exclusive in their tenets, but all supported by approximately equal amounts of evidence (which is to say, not much beyond words in books written by humans with definitive agendas), I found myself figuring that if they couldn't all be right, then maybe none of them were right. I consider myself an atheist now and have since I was 16 years old (or thereabouts), but it wasn't like one day I sat up and "decided" not to believe -- I just sort of realized that I didn't believe. And even back when I was calling myself a Christian, I had a lot of trouble with the idea of "heaven", because I couldn't fathom how a person could be (a) somehow stripped of all inclination to "sin", and (b) put somewhere that would somehow be Absolutely Super Wonderful for everyone no matter who they were. Frankly, I had the same problems with ideas of heaven that I do now with ideas of "utopia" -- both sound like very stagnant, empty, closed systems.
anne,
"...I don't personally know nearly enough about physics and biology to posit at what point a consciousness-supporting matter configuration would become unsustainable -- IMO, questions like that are actually more metaphysical than scientific..."
Freeman Dyson explored this question without recourse to metaphysics and found that, in principle, intelligent life should theoretically be able to live forever and think an infinite number of thoughts:
http://www.aleph.se/Trans/Global/Omega/dyson.txt
However, this was in the context of a Big Chill, before the discovery of the acceleration in the expansion of the Universe -- if the acceleration is consistent with a dark energy model rather than a temporary quintessence model, Dyson's results are ruined and intelligent life in this spacetime manifold does indeed have an expiration date.
awesome blog.
-- bryan
I agree with your sentiments although I feel like adding that I feel uncomfortable with people professing an infinite life as becoming boring and meaningless; what do they know? Are these people knowledgeable about the subject, I think not... they simply feel like there is a limited amount of information and experiences to live through and relate the basis of their assumption on the inability of others to live infinitely; but doesn't that presume there only being one individual partaking of infinite life or a limited number of social experiences one can partake in? Another thing, with the potentiality of "uploading" oneself, does not the possibility of interacting with alternate versions of yourself as they progress independently through history seem enticing... anyways, those are a few thoughts incoherent though they may be.
dark adonis:
I agree that the "what if you get bored?" argument is stupid, but I also think it's irrelevant. I frankly can't see any actual possibility of some powerful group managing to legislate and enforce "dying on schedule" on the basis that by doing so, they're "saving" people from the horrible scourge of boredom.
Those kinds of arguments are therefore totally irrelevant to the actual scientific/social discussion of healthcare improvements and consquent longevity gains.
I don't get into responding to people who whine about very long lives being potentially "boring" these days, as I think those discussions are a distraction and a waste of time.
And regarding "uploading": as far as I'm concerned, "uploading" is a purely science-fictional concept. Therefore, while it might be interesting to write stories about and philosophically contemplate, it's not the kind of thing that anyone with any sense ought to be concerned about as far as trying to get things done in the real world.
As noted in my post, I'm all for researching ways to better help older people live longer and avoid painful, unpleasant illnesses. But I hardly think that coming up with better treatments for heart disease somehow implies that people alive today can expect to someday transfer their consciousness into a near-indestructible artificial substrate.
B simply does not follow from A, and not just because B "sounds weird" -- there's just a point at which the "logic" some people use to demonstrate the supposed plausibility of uploading breaks down and turns into glorified handwaving.
And no amount of hand-waving is going to help improve healthcare for the elderly or anyone else, except perhaps in the sense that reading fun sci-fi stories can lift one's mood and spark creativity and imagination.
bryan said: ... if the acceleration is consistent with a dark energy model rather than a temporary quintessence model, Dyson's results are ruined and intelligent life in this spacetime manifold does indeed have an expiration date.
Yeah, that sounds about right. Of course I don't claim personally to "know for sure" what the ultimate fate of life in the universe will be, but I don't think it makes sense to use uncertainty as a basis for faith in personal immortality (science-borne or otherwise).
All intelligent life can do is try to figure out this whole "universe" thing and see where it takes us -- after all, even a finite and self-limiting universe is still a pretty awesome experimental playground, and we might as well make the best of it!
Anne, do you figure that uploading is impossible, or just don't think it's probable enough for reasonable people to think about?
There needn't be research programs at major universities for us to realize that the very IDEA of having a Methuselah Foundation is crucially important. Would you not have supported the MF in its early days, just because it didn't yet have research going?
Michael Anissimov said:
Anne, do you figure that uploading is impossible, or just don't think it's probable enough for reasonable people to think about?
I think the comment I made on discussion on Russell Blackford's blog probably sums up my thoughts on this matter more coherently than anything else I've written on the subject, so I'll repeat it (with a few edits to account for context) here:
We don't know what will happen as a result of replacing various parts of our brains with prosthetic pieces [a speculation common to many "uploading" scenarios]. And I don't think we will know until it becomes more feasible to deal with things like infection, bodily rejection of foreign materials, interface issues, etc.
I'm an electrical engineer, not a neuroscientist or cognition scientist, so take my opinion for whatever it's worth, but the things that always stand out for me in considering the feasibility of "neural prosthetics" [and, by extension, "uploading"] are the practical things.
That is, I think [we humans] have sort of hit a kind of wall at this point regarding what we can extrapolate from experiments involving rat neurons controlling attached electronics, cochlear implants, etc. There seems to me to be a fairly large gap between what we know we can do already, and all the theoretical/imaginative scenarios that crop up in science fiction stories and discussions on the Internet about "uploaded consciousness", etc.
As far as I'm concerned, the question of whether "uploading" is possible is not even a scientific one to begin with. In order for a problem to be scientifically accessible, you need some means to gather data, and once you have the data, you need some way to coherently fit that data to a model that effectively predicts or explains things in the real world. And right now, we don't even have a way to get data about the effects on subjective human consciousness of advanced [where "advanced" means "advanced" enough to shed any light on potential "uploading" scenarios] neural prosthetics.
So, the question at this point becomes: in what framework would pursuing this data even make the most sense?
I'm all for research, and I think brain research is some of the most interesting stuff going on right now. I don't see any indication that we humans are going to stop tinkering with our sensory interfaces or studying cognition anytime soon. I also see lots of potential for such research to help people who might be dealing with brain injuries or other issues, and I know I am not the only one who sees this potential.
I mean, actual scientists are working on this stuff right now! It's not as if there's any great need to convince people to research brains, or stick chips in brains, or do things that are very likely to lead to much more data about how brains work (and about what happens when we change how they work).
This is all already happening.
And I frankly just don't see how questions about "total mind uploads" or "digital immortality" add anything to the actual scientific pursuit of data about the brain and its plasticity and potential. These questions certainly add value when employed in the service of philosophy and creative literature (and yes, I realize philosophy and even literature can sometimes influence what gets studied or invented), but I do not think that literary/aesthetic/philosophical value implies relevance (much less "hyperbolic" relevance) to real-world policy and funding issues.
That is, I think it's fine to speculate creatively about uploading and brain-machine interface. I also, of course, think it's fine to actually work in fields like cognitive neuroscience. But to suggest that "uploading" has some near-term major relevance (politically, economically, or otherwise)?
Call it "lack of imagination" [or even speculate about my "insufficient IQ"] if you will, but I'm having trouble seeing how [speculating about uploading] is in any way useful [as far as lending credence or relevance to actual healthcare improvement efforts] outside sitting around having [fun!] philosophical interludes with one's friends.
There needn't be research programs at major universities for us to realize that the very IDEA of having a Methuselah Foundation is crucially important.
Did I say there was? Importance (perceived or actual) is orthogonal to questions of legitimacy. I think organizations like the MF are important because I personally value life very highly, and I know most other people do as well, but that doesn't mean I'm going to feel comfortable getting behind any and every group that says stuff indicating they agree with me on what sorts of things are valuable.
Would you not have supported the MF in its early days, just because it didn't yet have research going?
I initially came to the MF via reading about the Methuselah Mouse Prize, and frankly, it was the fact of actual ongoing research that piqued my interest and initially signaled legitimacy. My legitimacy standards are very rigorous, and I'm sure they probably limit the degree to which I'm willing to "sign on" to new ideas, but what can I say? That's just how I operate.
I am actually extremely open-minded (probably to a fault) when it comes to taking new or novel ideas on their own terms -- my nature is actually very trusting and more than a bit naive, so unless something sets off my warning flags (e.g., "this is spam!", "this is a financially-motivated scam!", "this is some kind of $cientology tricksterism!") immediately, I'm likely to at least be willing to give it the time of day for a while.
But I combine this open-mindedness with a very stodgy and even curmudgeonly commitment to skepticism and critical thinking. I'm beginning to realize that this is kind of a weird combination of cognitive tools, but it works for me, so I'm planning on sticking with it. :P
In any case, it's how I ended up a very science-minded atheist engineer-type who doesn't believe in unicorns, homeopathy, leprechauns, "energy healing", the magical benefits of Super Colon Cleanse, or any other such poppycock, but who will also delightedly listen to "Coast to Coast AM" if I can tune it in, who thinks cryonics is a pretty neat idea, and who can often find decent and reasonable points being made by persons whose overall viewpoints I disagree strongly with.
Anne, that was a really emphatic essay against Uploading and against even considering it.
But what makes is unscientific?Uploading, at least the specific proposal of it we all have in mind, is clearly a falsifiable proposition, which (according to Popper) is all that's required for any proposition to be scientific. Comparing that with the belief in pink unicorns, God or Zeus is unjustified.
Uploading isn't that far in the future either, if we choose to have it soon. In fact Uploading a C. Elegans has been done by Thomas Ferree. It escapes me why no group is trying for higher animals. A successful Upload of, say, a lamprey would be a strong confirmation of current models.
Hephaistos: Read my response again - I said everything I'm going to say on the subject for now there.
> I'm. . . annoyed when people express
> the idea that taking measures to (even
> if only by a tiny margin) potentially
> maximize > one's long-term survival
> odds is a sign of undeniable
> pathological narcissism.
No, that just strikes me as ordinary prudence.
> [A]nd yet, I do worry about the character
> of people who seem overly fixated on
> their own survival above all else.
Now **that** strikes me as pathological
narcissism. As to whether it's "undeniable"
or not -- I'll leave that to the experts.
> There's so much crackpottery, opportunism,
> and sheer overly-wishful thinking out
> there. . .
Apropos of which, something I saw today
via a link on the on-line New York Times:
"How does a scientist or doctor become a crank?"
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2008/05/how_a_scientist_or_doctor_becomes_a_cran.php
jfehlinger said:
No, that [taking measures to (even if only by a tiny margin) potentially maximize one's long-term survival odds] just strikes me as ordinary prudence.
Indeed - I don't see that sort of thing as really separable from such measures as not smoking, drinking enough water, getting checkups now and then, etc.
Now **that** [people who seem overly fixated on their own survival above all else] strikes me as pathological narcissism.
Yep. And it's obviously not that I think it's bad to have a survival instinct -- I'm talking here about people who just plain have no regard for what happens to anyone else as long as they end up okay, and who are also often willing to exploit/abuse others in the process of chasing their ambitions. It's a viewpoint in which the entire "not-you" world is viewed as little more than raw material to process according to your whims.
Re. "How does a scientist or doctor become a crank?"
Very cool article; I like Orac's stuff in general (he's an excellent smacker-down of antivaccinationist cranks in particular). Perhaps tangentially related, I found this article last night on the dangers of "believing your own hype" -- it's about the business world rather than the science world, but I imagine the same forces can operate regardless of the arena.
That sounds like pretty good reasoning to base any decision upon.
I sort of get the impression that you consider yourself to be in a kind of neutral threshold in between the two. I kind of feel like that about Deaf/Hearing culture, though the difference is that while you seem to have found a moderately comfortable fusion of the two, I find myself to be in a kind of bi-existence--living as a deaf person during the week, and a hearing person at home on the weekends. :s
BTW--Love the title ;)
> I found this article last night on the dangers
> of "believing your own hype"
. . .which contains the remark
> Practicing detachment. . . means understanding
> that taking yourself seriously is neither necessary
> nor useful.
Yes. Or as C. S. Lewis quotes in epigraphs
to _The Screwtape Letters_,
"The best way to drive out the devil. . .
is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn."
-— Martin Luther
and
"The devill . . the prowde spirite . . cannot endure
to be mocked."
-— Thomas More
and as Lewis says himself in his preface to
_Screwtape_,
"We must picture Hell as a state where everyone
is perpetually concerned about his own dignity
and advancement, where everyone has a grievance,
and where everyone lives the deadly serious
passions of envy, self-importance and resentment..."
On the other hand,
"Wit and humor. . . were verboten
in the [Ayn] Randian movement. The philosophical
rationale was that humor demonstrates
that one 'is not serious about one’s
values.' The actual reason, of course,
is that no cult can withstand the
piercing and sobering effect, the sane
perspective, provided by humor. One was
permitted to sneer at one’s enemies,
but that was the only humor allowed,
if humor that be."
-- "The Sociology of the Ayn Rand Cult"
by Murray N. Rothbard
"In the eyes of Randians, the greatest
crime -- so great it can't even be mentioned
or thought about -- is a sense of humour. . .
Brutal sneering at the unenlightened was
permissible, but a normal sense of humour
was threatening. Come to think of it, I never
met two more solemn fools than the Brandens,
whom I had lunch with when they were still
leading the Objectivists in the 1960s.
Randians take themselves so seriously that
they will never be in danger of understanding
how amusing the rest of the world finds them."
-- "The grim mob whose fountainhead is Ayn Rand"
by Robert Fulford
(Globe and Mail, January 23, 1999)
"Ayn had very little humor in her psychological
makeup, and was suspicious of humor on principle.
She roundly criticized the view that a sense
of humor is an important human trait, and projected
an especially withering contempt at the
suggestion that one should be able to laugh
at oneself.”
-- Barbara Branden, _The Passion of Ayn Rand_
(1986)
"[To] laugh at that which is good, at heroes,
at values, and above all at yourself [is]
monstrous. ... The worst evil that you can do,
psychologically, is to laugh at yourself.
That means spitting in your own face."
-- Ayn Rand, question period following Lecture 11
of Leonard Peikoff's series
"The Philosophy of Objectivism" (1976).
Funny how the world seesaws back and forth
between these two points of view.
False dichotomy, most people fall squarely in the middle.
Michael: If you're talking about the humor thing, I actually agree that the "humorousless vs. humor-appreciation" thing is a false dichotomy. But I don't see there as being a distinct "middle" position, either; rather, I just thing different people relate differently to humor.
In my case, I definitely think it's important for people to avoid taking themselves too seriously, but that's sort of a different dimension than whether or not someone is going to think something is funny. And also, while I do have a sense of humor, there are kinds of "humor" I don't appreciate; I'm not so much into anything where people are humiliated, for instance, and sitcoms bug the crap out of me most of the time with the laugh-track stuff.
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