A Quick One: Why Must Atypicality Justify Itself?

Why is is that non-typical things (and people) are held to an extremely high standard of self-justification, whereas more typical things (and people) get to have their existence taken at face value?

I came across a comment today (I don't remember the exact site) in which someone was making the claim that even if an autistic person was happy and okay with being autistic, we (there's that lovely non-inclusive "we" again) still have an obligation to prevent future people from being autistic. The reason? Because there's apparently "no reason for autism/Asperger's to exist."

(and no, this person didn't even bother claiming that he was only talking about people with "severe difficulties" -- he was including everyone who might presumably fall under the "autistic spectrum" umbrella, as far as I could tell.)

My first response to this (internally) was, "Wha?!"

See, as far as I know, there's no "reason" outside conscious awareness for anything to exist in the first place...stuff just sort of exists, and different people find meaning and value in different parts of existence. Maybe it's my vaguely existential tendencies talking here (if so, it's all Joss Whedon's fault!), but I think it's perfectly valid for people to decide for themselves that their existence -- however they might happen to be configured -- has value for its own sake.

Which means that autistic people (regardless of what their "label" happens to be, if they have one) have just as much right as anyone else to assert that there's nothing wrong with the fact of their existence, or the existence of similar others. The idea that any deviation from the norm needs to provide extra justification points for its existence is just plain silly. Real life is not some kind of assembly line, and people are not interchangeable parts.

There is no set of figures or statistics that can possibly provide an "objective" guide to configuring humans on some grand scale of promised "improvement". Either you decide that people are valuable for their own sakes and keep that in mind when making decisions from that point on, or you decide to play the "leaky lifeboat" game of looking at all of humanity with the goal of deciding who it is okay to throw overboard.

To me, it seems obvious that the former position is more ethically sound, but it sometimes seems to be very hard to justify it in ways that others can readily understand.

(Obviously this isn't some kind of hard-and-fast guide, and I am not suggesting everyone go home and snuggle with a serial killer because "everyone just needs to be loved". Rather, I am talking about a general weighting of attitudes, in which a person cultivates a default position of presuming value and seeing where that presumption takes them.

My guess is that if more people did this, there would be a lot less in the way of "writing people off" and/or assuming that because you can't understand how someone else could be happy, their own assertions to that effect can't be taken as anything more than signs of ignorance or "resignation to a lesser life").

Science, Social Justice, and Autistic Self-Advocacy

There are two perspectives (and by "perspectives" here, I mean "ways of looking at things") in my head that I sometimes have difficulty harmonizing with one another as far as autistic self-advocacy goes.

One perspective is extremely data-oriented and considers scientific research (ideally performed in collaboration with researchers who are themselves autistic) to be of paramount importance in characterizing autistic neurology and cognition.

As for why this characterization is important in the first place (aside from the science stuff frankly just being really interesting to a brain-geek like me), this perspective also figures that many of the problems faced by autistic people and our families stem from misconceptions about what autism is -- misconceptions which deny our strengths, misconstrue the reasons behind our behavior, and prompt all sorts of ridiculous assumptions about what we must intrinsically lack (e.g., self-insight, capacity for compassion, etc.).

This perspective is also the one from which I often feel compelled to point out, upon encountering people who invoke the standard litany of "will-nevers" ("she will never live in her own apartment or house, she will never make friends, she will never marry, she will never drive, she will never go to college", etc.) in response to learning that someone happens to be autistic, that these "will-nevers" are by no means justified by the facts.

Now, of course some people truly "will never" do one or more of the things on the above list; I'm presently in the "possibly will never drive" zone myself, for instance.

But nevertheless, it is a fact that autistic people (including some who had speech delays or other indicators often assumed to indicate "low functioning" as children) sometimes do end up growing up capable of doing many things nobody could have predicted when they were younger.

It is a fact that research has revealed areas of measurable strength common to many autistics.

And it is also a fact that, from an historical standpoint, the very first documented study of autistics (in which the word "autistic" was used), included the following observation:

Even though most of these children were at one time or another looked upon as feebleminded, they are all unquestioningly endowed with good cognitive potentialities...The astounding vocabulary of the speaking children, the excellent memory for events of several years before, the phenomenal rote memory for poems and names, and the precise recollection of complex patterns and sequences, bespeak good intelligence in the sense in which this word is commonly used.

- Leo Kanner, 1943

So, basically, from a scientific and observational standpoint, the notion that being autistic automatically brings with it a global cognitive deficit is just plain wrong. It was wrong in Kanner's time, and it is still wrong now. And the wrongness of claiming that someone has this or that deficit, in this context, has nothing to do with making value judgments about people and everything to do with perpetuating misconceptions that could lead to some people being essentially "written off" as not worth the time and effort it might take to educate them or provide them with enrichment opportunities.

The other perspective, however, is much more social-justice oriented, figuring that the longstanding disability rights movement (as well as the superset civil rights movement) have already done all the major philosophical work that autistic advocates need to draw on.

Additionally, this social justice perspective is in some ways orthogonal to the question of what autism is -- it is less concerned with trying to figure out how autistic brains work than with trying to figure out how to secure basic civil rights for people currently labeled or identified as autistic. It is even, at times, leery of fixating too much on the data the scientists like so much, as the data-gathering process (even when done well) might be backed by entities with a primary interest in, say, coming up with a means to identify autistic genes for the sole purpose of eugenically preventing future autistic people.

Moreover, there's also the matter of what the scientific perspective's focus on dispelling misconceptions leaves unsaid. If it is wrong to assume that all autistics have global, severe, cognitive deficits, does that make it somehow okay to write off people who do have global, severe cognitive deficits? I would personally say "absolutely not", and I don't think there's anything inherent in the scientific perspective that claims it's okay to abuse or neglect people once they can be considered "sufficiently disabled", but this kind of discussion does come up from time to time, and it does concern me.

A great example of something the social-justice sector of my brain wholeheartedly agrees with is the essay The Thing Itself Is The Abuse, from the Biodiverse Resistance blog.

It's not the inherent wrongness of the treatment that is discussed, it is the supposed "horrible mistake" of subjecting someone to that treatment when that person actually turned out to be not a member of the category of people that it's considered acceptable to do this sort of thing to. No thought is given to why it's supposedly "acceptable" to do it to people who are in that category, despite the fact that, in both cases, the reporting of the incident blatantly begs the question: if it was horrible and inhuman and inacceptable to do this to one person "by mistake", what is it to do it to a whole "Othered" class of people deliberately?

Clearly, there are at least two main "things" going on in all this -- first of all, there's the question of what it means for a person to be autistic (and the implications of this for advocacy, for who is considered "qualified" to self-advocate as an autistic person, etc.). And second of all, there are the very real (and extremely distressing) problems of abuse and neglect of, and failure to educate and provide opportunities to, individuals with all types of disabilities.

I want to be able to acknowledge and deal with both these things without having my efforts to do so come across as somehow being ignorant of the other -- e.g., if I point out that plenty of autistic people do actually go on to learn to type or speak, and make friends, I don't want this to come across as denigrating those who cannot type or speak even as adults. I care about them, too, and I would hope that anyone advocating for more ethical treatment of disabled persons would agree that it is not any particular "ability level" in anything that grants a person the "right not to be abused", but that the fundamental problem here lies in the assumption that certain kinds of people can and even should be subject to "extreme aversives" or levels of tranquilizers sufficient to stupefy them.

I have been trying for ages to figure out if these perspectives (the scientific and the social-justice) are compatible, and fundamentally I guess I believe that on some level they are, but it's so difficult to navigate the language around this stuff that I sometimes despair of ever being able to explain why and how my own overall perspective makes sense, even to me.

The closest I can get to that right now, I suppose, is saying that while social justice has nothing to fear from truth (as revealed by properly-done science), science is still a human endeavor, and therefore subject to untoward influence as far as how experiments are designed, conducted, and interpreted. And far from being "anti-scientific", autistic self-advocacy can directly support scientific endeavors by asserting ourselves as stakeholders, even as we work in other contexts toward better ethical standards for all people, regardless of presence, type, or level of disability.

No Such Thing As An Irrelevant Skill

Following up (somewhat tangentially) on my recent post on "fascinations", the article Many of My Most Useful Skills I Owe to Serendipity on the (excellent) Slow Leadership blog makes a few statements I can quite thoroughly agree with:

Serendipity is not only an essential input to creative thinking, it often serves up unexpected benefits elsewhere. There’s no way of knowing in advance precisely how — and whether — anything you learn or become interested in will benefit you. Yet sometimes you find yourself needing idea or technique and there it is; right from an area of interest or learning you undertook years ago with no thought it would ever be useful.

And I especially like this part:

Learn all you can about anything that interests you. Never mind if it’s “useful” or “relevant.” It’s all relevant. If you’re passionate about cats, or cars, or canyons, learn all you can about them. If you love hiking, learn all you can about the sport and the places you hike through. Keep adding to your learning. One day — you won’t be able to predict when, so don’t worry about it — it’ll be exactly what you need the most.

(The whole article is worth reading, I just figured I'd share a few quotes here, as someone who has gotten a ton of unexpected benefit from simply being fascinated with things).

Actual Disasters, A Conference Announcement, Shady Autism "Gurus"

Okay, there's a lot going on right now -- here are some links and notes on matters that have managed to grab my attention recently.

(1) An online friend recently pointed out a way to help the people affected by Myanmar cyclone, and I figured I'd pass along the link.

The International Burmese Monks Organization is partnering with Avaaz.org to, per their web site, "provide direct support to the people of Burma". Apparently (and this is something I didn't even know until yesterday personally), the country's junta military is restricting direct distribution of international aid.

I can't even fathom how any person or group could possibly be thinking of whatever weird power agendas they have going at a time like this over and above people's lives, but anyway. Right now the monks and nuns in Burma represent a channel through which concerned members of the international community can maximize the chance of their donation actually helping the citizens in direst need. You can read more about the monks on burmesemonks.org, and donate via Avaaz.org. I know there's no way to reclaim the lives lost so far, but there's at least some opportunity to help prevent further deaths in the aftermath of the disaster.

(2) Regarding the Sichuan earthquake: my employers are doing a matching-donation thing, so I'm most likely going to go that route personally -- however, I only found out about that opportunity by spotting an inconspicuous sign on a bulletin board outside the cafeteria. If you're currently employed, you might want to ask around/investigate to see if your company is doing anything similar.

Additionally, anyone can donate to the American Red Cross, who are also working on coordinating relief efforts with the Chinese Red Cross and routing supplies to the earthquake victims in China.

(3) H/T to Robin Zebrowski for noting this on her blog: apparently, a conference entitled Cognitive Disability: A Challenge to Moral Philosophy is being held from September 18 - 20, 2008 in Stony Brook Manhattan, New York, USA.

From the conference web site:

The realities of cognitive disability pose a significant challenge to certain key conceptions philosophers have held. Philosophers have conceived of the mark of humanity as the possession of rational cognitive capacities. They have traditionally extended the mantles of equality, dignity, justice, responsibility, and moral fellowship to those with these abilities, whom they speak of as "persons." What then should we say about those with severe cognitive disabilities? How should we treat these individuals and what sorts of entitlements can they claim? Should we grant the arguments of some philosophers who want to parse our moral universe in ways that depend on degrees of cognitive capacity, not on being human? How do claims for the moral consideration of animals bear on the question? Is it morally acceptable to consign some human beings to the status of "non-persons"? Philosophers have rarely faced these questions squarely and systematically.

Speakers include public intellectuals such as Michael Bérubé, Ian Hacking, Martha Nussbaum and Peter Singer. The conference will explore philosophical questions about three specific populations—people with autism, Alzheimer’s disease and those labeled “mentally retarded” —and will raise ethical and foundational questions on regarding both theoretical and practical matters.

I'm nowhere near New York, but seeing as the conference specifies that they "...also welcome those with cognitive disabilities who would benefit from and could contribute to the discussion.", it would be super cool if some autistic or other self-advocates could attend. There are so many cans-of-worms (fractal cans of worms, even!) in the description of the conference alone that it would not behoove me to get heavily into them here, but suffice to say that I have problems with assuming that in order to be considered a "person", one must be either genetically human or possessed of some specific (usually status-quo mediated) ability set.

Hence, I was very pleased to see Anita Silvers on the list of speakers, as she is awesome when it comes to human-difference stuff (I saw her present once and her paper was called "The Right Not To Be Normal As The Essence of Freedom" -- how cool is that?). I mean, I know Peter Singer is pretty gung-ho for animal rights and helping the poor and all, but frankly he scares the heck out of me with his utterly matter-of-fact disregard for the value of the lives of disabled humans.

The entire discourse in this area needs a lot of work -- right now, it's still sadly far too dominated by what amounts to the trumpeting of neo-eugenics on one side, and simplistic creepy religio-moralizing about "human exceptionalism" on the other.

As Robin Z. eloquently commented: "I think it’s past due time that people started having to contend with their views of morality (and ontology, and metaphysics) that presume cognitive (and physical) outliers are exceptions to the rule instead of equally valid members of the group that demonstrate and define the rules." Hear, hear!

(4) Joel Smith has written a good post on the problem with "autism gurus":

Autism seems to attract a disproportionally large number of “gurus”.

For instance, we have doctors peddling their “detoxification” treatments - which require exact adherence to the wisdom of the guru, uh, doctor’s orders (you’re not supposed to notice that few of the doctors peddling detoxification agree on how to do detoxification, nor do most mainstream doctors think there is a shred of support for detoxification of autistics as a treatment - the GURU’s wisdom is what is important, and it must be done exactly his way!)...

...The problem with all of this is that often the gurus, although they may truly believe they have a gift, are full of the very same feces they seek to eliminate. Good intention is not the same as truth. So while I believe that many of the gurus truly are sincere, I also believe them to be wrong. And I have a message for parents, teachers, staff, and others who want to know the deep secrets of understanding autistic people:

THERE IS NO SECRET KNOWLEDGE TO BE LEARNED. You don’t need to know the dark secrets of the depths to interact successfully with autistic people.

Good stuff, Joel -- "gurus" in general make me VERY nervous, regardless of what they're pushing, so I'm always glad to see attention being drawn to the problem of folks who see themselves as the Savior[s] of Mankind (for a fee, of course).

(Also, a request: please read carefully and spend some time thinking about this stuff before commenting if you're going to comment -- I've had it up to here with the Jerking Knee this week...)

From The Lurker's Guide

(h/t to commenter Xuenay for nudging me there...)

If you decide what you want, before you know who you are, you're likely to get something that will destroy you; if you know who you are, you can then ask for something that will be of greater use to you.

- J. Michael Straczynski, commentary on the Babylon 5 episode Comes the Inquisitor

There are various ways to interpret the above quote -- I interpret it several different ways (and across several minor variations) simultaneously.

Definitely thought-provoking, at the very least. And no, the quote is not meant to imply (in any valid interpretation I can think of) that it is possible to really "know who you are" to 100% absolute, fixed certainty; if you're reading it that way, you're missing the point, as we humans are not 100% absolute and "fixed" in our configurations in the first place.

I think that's sort of part of the point.

That, and the fact that there are degrees and gradients as far as these things go.

I'm also reminded to some extent of the notion of Naming in Madeleine L'Engle's A Wind In The Door.

*goes off to ponder some more, and then sleep*

Descriptive, Not Prescriptive

A while back, I was involved in a BBS discussion about computers and gender (in the context of whether the notion of "female-friendly design features" was a logical one).

Initially I was rather annoyed with the very premise of the discussion, as when I think of "female-friendly design features", my mind cynically goes straight to pictures of pink Barbie-themed laptops where you can play "shopping games".

But it turned out that (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here, since this discussion happened a while ago) the person who started the discussion was actually just referring to design features that might actually be functionally useful for a statistically significant percentage of women. Such features might include, say, a smaller keyboard to accommodate smaller hands. In other words, she wasn't talking about making computers pink, or pre-loading them with "Magic Makeover" software or anything else relating to cultural stereotypes -- she was just talking about perhaps implementing design variations and options that at least some women might benefit from.

Now, I'm still vaguely skeptical about the need to "gender" these features in the first place, as there are always going to be people of every gender (and I say "every" because gender isn't exactly binary) who find certain device options useful per their individual characteristics. But at the same time, I do see it as potentially useful to look at what groups are using (or not using) particular devices, and why. Sometimes, things end up getting designed with all kinds of built-in assumptions about who is going to be using them -- and consequently, people the designers didn't have in mind have more difficulty using those things, or have a sub-optimal experience while using them.

So in a sense, I guess I'm okay with considering gender as a design factor when the consideration is geared toward making devices (or offering services) that a wider variety of people can benefit from. As the person who started the gender-and-computers discussion noted, there are ways of accounting for physical and functional realities different people face that are descriptive, not prescriptive.

Descriptive Versus Prescriptive

I want to explore the concept of "descriptive versus prescriptive" a bit here, as it's a distinction I've been finding tremendously useful lately in thinking about labels and how they are employed. In the aforementioned discussion about computers and gender, I initially jumped right to the conclusion that "female-friendly design features" must refer to silly, stereotype-reinforcing aesthetic elements.

I remember as a kid being tremendously irritated by things like the fact that bicycles in catalogs advertised as being "for girls" were almost invariably PINK, covered in hearts, and emblazoned with ridiculous phrases like "Pretty Lady" or "Princess Sunshine". Not only that, but they often had white tires (as if they didn't expect girls would even dream of riding through mud puddles, etc.).



(Me, I was all about riding the BMX through the dirt.)

Eventually, as a result of seeing so many things I had no interest in presented as being "for girls!", and being occasionally chastised for daring to wander outside the boundaries of certain stereotypes, it got to the point where I started to wonder if I even was a "real girl". There was so much I was apparently "supposed" to be that I just plain wasn't, so my natural reaction was to wonder if someone had stuck the wrong tag on me at the factory, so to speak.

So, even though I was definitely what you might call "socially oblivious" in some respects, I was very aware of stereotypes and how they tended to be "enforced" from a fairly early age. I couldn't really not notice them, as I ran up against them constantly in pursuing my interests and trying to express my actual preferences.

Nevertheless, I can now see that pretty much everything that bothered me about gender-related stuff as a kid was rooted in gender (and gender stereotypes in particular) being applied prescriptively. I think I figured this out on some level (though not the linguistic level, as I couldn't have described it in this way back then) when I was maybe ten or eleven -- at that point I stopped doubting the fact that I was actually a girl, and decided instead that the problem had to do with the assumed definition of "girl" being too narrow.

In other words, girl was a fine enough descriptive term for someone with my physical features and chromosome configuration, but there was absolutely no reason for that term to limit me as far as what activities I could try out, or as far as what things I could be interested in.

And...that's how I've tended to approach labels and associated concepts ever since.

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon

On Saturday, April 26, 2008 I visited the Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon exhibit at the San Jose Museum of Art. I'd been quite excited to go (being a shameless robo-fangirl and all) and the exhibit did not disappoint.



Matt (my steadfast and very patient Significant Other) and I arrived in downtown San Jose shortly after noon, where we joined up with two local friends and proceeded to catch a quick lunch prior to entering the exhibit. A large banner hung on the front of the museum displaying a gigantic image of a metal robot with a clock embedded in its chest. The connotation was unmistakable: here, there be robots.

There were no "No Photography!" signs up at the museum, so initially I had my camera out, and managed to get two or three shots of several exhibits before a museum employee informed me that picture-taking was verboten. I apologized and put the camera away, and do not plan on publicly displaying the exhibit photos I took (in deference to the Lords of Copyright), but you can still view images of some exhibits on the museum's Web site. The museum has also released an online video series which includes a fair bit of exhibit footage and commentary.

First Impressions

The exhibit includes paintings of robots, sculptures of robots, quilted robots, model robots, toy robots, drawings of robots, metal robots, and plastic robots.

Implementations range from the simple line drawing to the highly complex electromechanical avatar.

One of the latter is equipped with two flat-screen monitors, each displaying a large humanlike eye (and yes, the eyes follow you).

Another is constructed almost entirely of small CRT television monitors, each showing an identical animated pattern flashing through endless cycles of decidedly psychedelic imagery. The CRT-monitor 'bot was rather unnerving to stand near -- not because of its appearance (I was actually quite excited at all the power strips and outlets all over it, as I am totally Arthur Weasley when it comes to electrical plugs and sockets), but because of the massively multiplied high-pitched whine chorus emanating from all those CRTs.

I don't know if the artist was trying to make a statement about the pervasiveness of electronic "noise" in the world these days or whether that particular piece was there to keep bats away, but it was definitely one of the more abstract pieces in the exhibit.

Another piece is humanoid in form, mostly metal in its construction, but adorned with a pair of deer antlers, one on each side of its head: a mechanized Herne. In its belly behind a clear plexiglass cover sits a smaller metal humanoid, pumping and pedaling away so as to drive different but coincident motions in the larger figure. That one evoked all kinds of weird associations, but most predominantly it seemed an irreverent wink at the notion of the homunculus. And it was probably one of the most damn-cool looking things I've ever seen in an art museum.

On the "low-tech" side of things, a particularly impressive structure stands nearly ceiling-height (in a room with a very high ceiling); it is constructed entirely of Styrofoam package inserts from actual electronic products. It presides over a circle of surrounding, smaller Stryobots and several tables at which visitors are invited to build their own model robots out of provided Lego bricks.

A quote on the wall reads: We Were Promised Robots, in reference to the contrast between the retrofuturist-nostalgia version of a robot-enhanced reality and the actual present and emerging era of pervasive electronics that, while certainly more impressive in some ways than previous generations could have imagined, is decidedly different from what was imagined.

In reflecting upon that contrast, I cannot help but feel at once that things have turned out better than imagined in many respects (and I'm not just talking about iPods and flat-screen TVs here, but about civil rights, womens' rights, gay rights, etc.), but that we as a species still have a tremendously long way to go with regard to things like resource distribution, respect for our neighbors (regardless of who we are or where we live), and sustainable development. I'm not sure how to feel (much less what to do) about the fact of my having a nice shiny computer, a comfy apartment in a reasonably safe neighborhood, and easy access to art museums, while half the world population doesn't even have access to flush toilets.

Did the futurists of the 1950s and 1960s (who envisioned widespread atomic superabundance) expect fair and ethical resource-distribution systems to come about by magic, or perhaps with the help of friendly robot assistants?

The Robot as Self and Other

In film, art, and literature, robots have appeared to cross all cultural and class lines. Sentient robots in stories have been portrayed almost as a kind of enslaved underclass in some scenarios, even as they've busily worked toward taking over the world in other scenarios.

Iconic robots can serve to reflect ubiquitous anxieties present in modern industrialized culture: perhaps unresolved guilt and fear about the consequences of maintaining an underclass or worker class (whether that be the continued and un-addressed exploitation of sentients, or the classic "robot uprising"), as well as a sense that maybe the collective will of the machinery we construct might be essentially shackling us to its agenda, rather than the other way around.

But just as our machines do in life, the robots represented by the exhibit pieces defy confinement to any one role or position, and instead overlap and inhabit multiple contexts. One universal feature of life (especially human life) is that it co-opts pieces of its environment over time, as is required to maintain itself as a process. Humans are particularly adept at this, to the point where we are not only becoming increasingly able to maintain ourselves in the face of circumstances that would assuredly have killed our ancestors, but also increasingly confronted by the blurring of boundaries between self, tool, and resource.

Fictionalized and aestheticized robots are perhaps the ultimate confrontation in this regard, existing as they do somewhere between extension-of-self (in tool form) and autonomous "other", and frequently muddling this distinction entirely.

The Robots: A Cultural Icon exhibit provides many representative examples of this muddling.

One stark set of line drawings (done in classic Chinese pen and ink style) shows a humanlike figure sailing through the air, borne on the back of a birdlike robot, into which another humanlike figure has been inserted or merged. It is impossible to tell who is calling the shots (pilot, craft, or passenger) and perhaps the point is that it is not necessarily useful to attempt to delineate such things in the first place, at least not in any absolute sense.

On a wall in the museum, a projector plays the Björk video, All is Full of Love on infinite repeat. The inclusion of this video in the exhibit was somewhat surprising to me at first (as you don't exactly need to go to a museum to access a popular music video these days), but in the context of the exhibit, viewers are encouraged to consider All is Full of Love in a mindset which is less MTV and more imagery-focused. I'd seen this video before and found it at once unsettling and gorgeous, and watching through it again my reaction was similar.

However, with this viewing of the video I also noticed a lot more of what I like to refer to as "stuff English teachers love", by which of course I mean "stuff that can be interpreted as having sexual connotations". Nevertheless, there is no human flesh to be seen in the video; the closest we get are the stylized humanlike faces of the two gynoids that move through varying stages of construction and deconstruction and entanglement and separation.

The video is also interesting in that it simultaneously shows robots of an obviously fantastic nature, and robots that are more realistic and familiar to anyone who has ever seen an actual industrial robot. The gynoids look more human than the faceless hydraulic mechanisms disassembling them in reverse, but who built the mechanisms? Which type of machine more properly suggests the usual output of human will? And more importantly, what does each of us want the output of our will to look like?



On a less serious note, the exhibit also provides a set of easels at which visitors can sit and draw their own "robotic self-portrait" with provided crayons. Two mirrors printed with "robot face" outlines hang on the wall facing the easel seat, presumably so we'll be compelled to line up our actual faces within the outlines. This was all a bit silly, but too much fun to resist; I spent about two minutes sketching a (very rough) AnneBot.

The idea of the exercise is to draw a robot and think about how your robot reflects how you see yourself. I'm not exactly sure what my result says about me (if it says anything at all), but it was neat to have the opportunity to sit and play with crayons in a public place. And the exercise did get me thinking about how robotic imagery has historically tended to communicate things about both its creators and the cultures they inhabit.

Robots That Think And Feel

Text painted on one of the exhibit's walls declares: "The bipedal humanoid robot with fully developed artificial intelligence may be realized in the near future".

As is commonly the case with declarations such as this, little is offered in explanation of what "artificial intelligence" actually means, let alone what it means for such a thing to be "fully developed". My guess, though, is that when people make predictions about "fully developed AI", they are envisioning artificial "brains" that function exactly the way human brains do, albeit on some substrate other than biological wetware.

Such "AIs" have existed in literature for quite some time, however, they are conspicuously absent from the real world. My guess is that they will likely continue their absence indefinitely. Even if "artificial humans" were feasible to construct, humans of sufficiently differing internal architecture seem to have a tremendously difficult time communicating effectively with one another -- even the oft-cited human superpower of "empathy" seems in practice often restricted to persons sufficiently similar to the self.

So the question emerges: how do robots, both fictional and actual, reflect how humans think and feel about the very processes of thinking and feeling?

In some depictions, robots are assumed stonily indifferent and consequently feared. After all what could be more dangerous than an enemy who does not see you as an enemy, but as a pile of raw materials to be exploited or recycled? In other cases, the perceived hyper-rationality of the robot is valorized and sought as an ideal, "perfect" state in which the purity of reason might shine forth without the messy complexities wrought by amygdalae and endocrine systems.

As far as I'm concerned, both these reactions are rather puerile. Robots and emotion are inextricably intertwined, no matter how you look at it, and it makes little sense to infuse them with such superlative and impersonal power whether you're drawing them or thinking about actually building them. So it was refreshing to see at the exhibit a range of different depictions, some of which went for direct subversion of the stereotypes.

One piece that compelled much in the way of lingering and staring on my part was a small, unassuming-looking "shadow box" hung on the wall in one room. Its area probably did not exceed a square foot; it commanded attention not by looming over you in the imposing manner of the giant Styrobot in the adjoining room, but by drawing you in like an open window into a miniature world.

A toy robot sits on a chair in this piece, in what looks like a handmade doll's-house living room. Tissues (both boxed and used) clutter the area; the robot also clutches a crumpled tissue in his hand. A portrait hangs on the rear wall of the shadow box/living room, depicting (presumably) the occupant's Robot Grandma. A tiny model television with a real, working screen plays clips from Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

And if you look closely, you can see a tiny lacquered tear on the watching robot's cheek.

Even if we are truly talking about robots as tools -- actually emotionless mechanisms employed in the extension of human intent -- we are still dealing with emotion-infused machines, as the emotions in that case are ours. (Sometimes our machines even prosthetically become parts of us as well, to the point where having someone else touch or take them without our permission feels like a bodily violation, because that's exactly what it is.*)

And if we are talking about fictional robots equipped with some measure of autonomy via artificial-intelligence mechanisms, you would be hard-pressed to find a literary example of a robotic character that has not been anthropomorphized in some way. And a particular challenge for artists and roboticists alike is that of determining how to "blend" mechanical and human attributes effectively for whatever purpose the robotic character or actual robot is being invoked.

On that note, I've been to a few AI-themed lectures and listened to numerous episodes of robot-related podcasts (such as Talking Robots, which I highly recommend), and one thing that seems to be coming up a lot these days is the notion of robots being designed according to [typical] human reciprocity expectations.

What concerns me (a little bit) here is that perhaps the reason why we see statements like "We'll have fully functional artificial intelligence in the near future!" on the walls of art museums is because so many public and popular demonstrations of robotics technology feature creations that set off human "comfort and familiarity" cues.

Of course this is not problematic in and of itself, but whenever I come across an article about how robots are beginning to demonstrate social reciprocity, I can't help but be reminded that actual existing people (who might not show these typical reciprocity signs in easily-recognizable ways, due to being autistic or otherwise atypical) are still being written off as "empty shells".

Don't get me wrong -- I think robotics research is super neat, and I can see how studying human reactions to a robot's nonverbal behavior might yield fascinating insights into multiple aspects of social cognition. But at the same time, I think it is interesting to look at the assumptions behind the display (or lack thereof) of certain "signals", in humans and in robots.

Hence, one of the things I've always appreciated about "robot art" is how it often actually manages to acclimate people to atypical expressions of both emotion and cognition. Iconic robots do not always look or even act typically "human" (R2D2, for instance), and yet, people come to love them anyway.

Closing Notes

Robots: Evolution of a Cultural Icon definitely lived up to my expectations (which, admittedly, were along the lines of, "This exhibit will contain cool, robot-themed art pieces"). The exhibit was not large (it spanned only part of a single floor in the multi-story museum), but it didn't need to be. I was actually rather pleased at how the setup and structure of the exhibit allowed visitors time and space for reflection on individual works -- the pieces were not crammed or crowded together, and while there was a guided tour option, this was not mandatory. The environment was also quiet and clean and not sensory-overloading (hooray for sensory accessibility!). It probably took about two hours to go through the entire exhibit (and that time span included several instances of lingering a long while to examine particular pieces) -- a pleasant length for a weekend afternoon outing.

I have definitely been inspired by what I saw, not only to write about it as I have here, but to keep exploring the cultural and artistic contextualization of robots in addition to the mechanisms by which actual robots operate in the real world.



After all, we and the robots we build, draw, and create as characters are essentially vectors along which the stuff of the universe explores different avenues of expression. And what is so strange, given that, about the idea that all (whether it be biological or mechanical) could indeed be "full of love", as Björk's video suggests, hopefully without irony? Perhaps the separations we try to enforce between what is "life" and what is hard cold material are in fact, overly facile.

In any case, it will be interesting to keep watching the interplay between real robots, humans, fictional robots, and robot-themed art as the world and its people change over time. And while there is no way to predict what shape this interplay may take in the far-off future, one thing seems likely to remain certain: our iconic robots have (and will continue to have) much to tell us about our individual and collective fantasies, fears, dreams, and priorities.

---

*Before any econ-libertarians get excited, I'm not talking about things like taxation when I talk about people feeling justifiably violated when others touch things that are "attached" to them. Rather, I'm talking about situations where someone is (for instance) using a wheelchair, and someone else comes up and starts pushing them without asking. In other words, symbolic value in the form of money is one thing, but prostheticized objects are quite another.

Perception and Impressions: An Experiment

I tried this experiment recently with some friends, and the results were interesting enough to compel me to try it out on Existence is Wonderful. I was thinking recently about the way different people tend to prioritize different features as salient when they form their first impressions of something (or someone, for that matter), and it occurred to me that a small survey involving fairly simple images might serve as an interesting demonstration.

So, if you are so inclined, please choose the option in the poll box below that most closely matches your initial impression: is A or B more like X?

NOTE: In the polling application I'm using for this experiment, merely selecting one of the radio buttons will count as a "vote" -- so please look carefully before choosing, because you can't take your vote back.

EDIT (2/22/08): I would actually greatly appreciate it if people would comment on their reasons for choosing either A or B. You might want to avoid looking at other people's comments before making your own choice so as to avoid unduly biasing your response, and you don't HAVE to state your reasoning in order to vote, but it would be cool if at least a few people offered their thoughts in this regard.

Facing the Quasi-Autonomous Robot Monsters Under The Bed, Part I

Commenter Geoffrey asked a whole slew of questions in response to my post on ethics and robots and autonomy, oh my!. And they aren't simple-to-answer questions. In fact, they are precisely the kind of questions I frequently avoid addressing because of their can-of-worms nature.

But I've never been very good at coming up with excuses -- more often than not, eventually I'll realize that it's taking more effort to keep explaining why I'm avoiding something than it would to just go ahead and confront the darn thing. That's where the title of this post comes from: at a certain point, thinking about the monsters (quasi-autonomous robot sort or otherwise) that might be under the bed (and how to avoid them) starts to become more exhausting and annoying than just switching on the light and proving that either there aren't any monsters at all, or just getting to know them a little better if there are.

So while this post (the first in a series) will by no means address these questions to the extent that they likely need to be addressed, it will at least be a start. I figure it's a good chance to at least try and get some of the language sorted out in my head for discussing issues like this, since they seem to come up rather a lot, and I usually respond by saying "I haven't thought that through well enough to comment yet".

In the following, G precedes each of Geoffrey's questions/statements, and A precedes each of my responses.

G: (1) What do you mean by autonomous? As far as I can tell from your post, it seems that autonomy, according to your philosophy, is the ability to make decisions for one's self. However, what does this mean?

A: Most dictionaries (see here for an example of this) seem to define "autonomy" in terms like independence, freedom, self-direction, and self-governance. I don't have any argument with the dictionary in that regard, however, in this discussion, the "autonomy" I have most in mind is that which describes a discrete and independently-operating locus of consciousness, awareness, and thought.

In this sense, humans and cats and even mice can be said to be "autonomous". Every human, cat, and mouse has some level of wholly private experience that no other entity can directly access. That is the usual sense in which I think about autonomy -- there are other complicating layers and definitions on top of that one, some involving decision-making ability and legal sorts of independence from external coercion and control, but the basic unit of "autonomy" for me is the individual mind.

As far as what it means for an entity to be capable of making decisions for itself, that's another question entirely. It's also a question that depends on what you'd consider a "decision" to be, and whether you automatically require explanations of agency in addressing that concept.

In some respects, entities (we can assume to be) wholly lacking in minds are capable of "making decisions" -- say you write a function in C that will output one string if a variable has a value of less than five and a different string if a variable has a value of five or more. Many of us would, at least colloquially, say that the function decides which string to output based on what its input value is. And if this function existed in the context of a program where any of multiple functions might be called in response to higher-level inputs, we might say that the program decides which functions it is going to call.

But if we dig a little deeper, it's clear that the colloquial conventions in which program behavior is commonly discussed do not reflect the (arguably) "ultimate" sources of the program's behavior. The software engineer writing the program in fact decides in advance what the program's outputs are going to be. She decides what inputs will prompt which functions to be called, and she also decides what criteria will determine the outputs of each function.

But! Say we dig even deeper than that! Say the software engineer is writing her program according to a set of requirements handed to her by her boss. Her boss may not even know the C language himself; all he knows is what he wants the program to do. So he provides "inputs" to the software engineer in the form of requirements, which are probably written in "natural language" as opposed to code or pseudocode. The engineer then takes the requirements and processes them into a C program.

But let's not stop there! Say the boss got the requirements from the customer over the phone. Furthermore, say that the customer speaks only Chinese, whereas the boss speaks both Chinese and English. The boss, in this case, has to translate the customer's requirements into English so that the software engineer (who doesn't know a word of Chinese) can understand them. This entails the boss having to make a lot of decisions regarding what the customer likely meant by certain turns of phrase, and it also entails the boss having to think about what points to emphasize most strongly so that the engineer gets a sense of the customer's priorities.

Now, lest anyone think I'm veering into the realm of cybernetic totalism, let's pause a moment. While one could indeed condense the software engineer herself into a code-producing box into which you put requirements and out of which you get a software package, and while one could reduce the boss into a Chinese-English requirements translation machine, surely it is apparent that there are discontinuities in this instructional chain.

That is, as you move further away from any individual program output (let's say, a string printed on the screen that reads either "X is less than five" or "X is greater than or equal to five"), things become less and less easy to determine, and far more subject to uncontrollable variables.

When writing a C program, the kinds of inputs the computer gets are constrained to a relatively narrow set -- the programmer generally uses a keyboard interface to type the code in, and very specific rules of syntax must be followed in order for the program to do anything at all when it is compiled (much less the precise thing the programmer wants it to do).

What's more, as far as any of us knows, present-day desktop PCs don't have anything like the "internal life" that we humans do, or like chimps or cats or mice do, even. Neither the computer nor the individual program being written is "autonomous" in the basic sense of having a private vista of self-aware reflection embedded in a larger reality -- notions of the computer and program "making decisions" are found only in a kind of linguistic folklore rather than in literal points of fact. Certainly one might suggest that "random quantum events" or short circuits or power surges might result in the program being written behaving differently than the programmer specifies it to behave, but essentially, the program's outputs are severely and rigorously constrained by the programmer's textual inputs.

The programmer, on the other hand, is autonomous in the sense defined at the beginning of this writing. She has a mind that nobody else can experience the way she experiences it. She can have thoughts that aren't detectable by any other people or by any measuring instruments. And she can, in the most general folk sense of the word "choice" (the one that ignores the vast and convoluted and seemingly never-ending Free Will Debate), choose:

(a) whether or not to write the program at all

(b) whether or not to come to work in the morning

(c) whether to keep this job or seek another

(d) whether to make one function perform a particular task (or split the task across two functions, one of which calls the other)

...or any number of other options that will affect the nature of the program, up to and including whether or not it comes into being at all.

Similarly, the engineer's boss can make a whole slew of decisions (from the vantage point of his autonomous perspective) that will also affect the fate of the program, albeit not as directly and obviously as the decisions made by the engineer will. He can, like the programmer, make decisions that result in the program not being written at all -- e.g., he might decide not to give her the requirements because he wants her to focus on a different task for the rest of the afternoon. He might decide to second-guess something the customer said on the basis of a perception that he knows slightly more about programming than the customer does (whether or not this is a wise move is beside the point for now). Etc.

And by extension, the customer can choose to describe the requirements in one way rather than another based on how important he or she believes this particular project to be -- e.g., s/he might be more thorough and concerned about making sure the engineer's boss really understands the requirements, or s/he might just rattle off the requirements vaguely and carelessly due to feeling that the project is inadequately funded to begin with.

So far, I've described the program's pseudo-decision-making process -- e.g., the fact that the program branches at certain points, but not due to any kind of internally conscious self-reflection on the program's or the PC's part. I've also described the "volitional-feeling" choices made by the engineer, her boss, and the customer. But there are other factors that can indirectly affect the program as well that come from the human agents in the instructional chain without necessarily feeling like choices.

For instance, if the engineer is tired or hungry, she might not consciously decide to make the program sloppier and less modular, but it might come out that way anyway because she's not performing at her best. Similarly, if the engineer is well-rested and cheerfully sipping away at her Mountain Dew (provided generously by the company), the program might come out in a much slicker and more efficient form -- again, without any conscious feeling on the engineer's part that she's choosing for the program to come out that way as a result of sentient and deliberate decision-making.

And if the boss is distracted by other projects when he's taking the customer call, he might inadvertently write down the requirements sloppily. He might make typographical errors by mistake. He might hear the customer say a Chinese phrase he doesn't recognize, at which point he'll look it up in his Chinese-English dictionary, and in doing so discover that there's another phrase he got wrong earlier in the conversation. In any case, the program is going to be affected by things the boss does and various inputs he might receive and consider on a non-volitional-feeling level. The same goes for the customer -- their instructions might seem to say one thing rather than another based on whether or not the customer has a scratchy throat, or based on background noise in the customer's or boss's office. And so on, and so forth.

This is probably a good point to address the following assertion of Geoffrey's:

G: It seems to me that if everything is contingent upon determining material processes, then everything is determined and true decisions don't exist.

A: Here we encounter the can of worms that is the Free Will Debate. I'll go into my own detailed thoughts on that debate in a later post in this series, but for now I would like to ask Geoffrey what he considers to be a "true decision". In my example above, I'd be plenty satisfied to classify the "volitional-feeling" choices made by the engineer, the boss, and the customer as about as close to "true decisions" as humans can assert the existence of. Certainly, one can try and claim that everything about that person's life up to the moment they made the decision about this program actually "determined" its final state, and that there was nothing truly "volitional" about their decision, but one cannot deny that in everyday life, things we do on purpose feel qualitatively different than things we don't do on purpose.

Additionally, there's a whole weird and interesting realm of cognitive psychology related to matters of coercion and "compulsion". Yes, people can be coerced (by other people, by physiological inputs registered subconsciously, etc.), and in some cases people might "feel like" they are acting volitionally even when they're mainly responding to deep, low-level impulses like fear and reward. But at the same time, people are also capable of emerging from coercion and being able to look back and identify when they were actually being coerced (or compelled) and when they weren't.

In light of all that, even if you're a "hard determinist" in the "we're all just objects going through the unconsciously-programmed motions that could have been extrapolated at the moment of the Big Bang if only someone had had a big enough computer, and nobody really makes any kind of meaningful choices at all because of this" sense (I'm not one of those, by the way), I don't see why you'd want to ignore the many and various levels of "feelings of volition" and emergence from/descent into coercion that humans and presumably other entities seem to experience. Clearly, there's something interesting going on in the brain across all these experiences. But more on that in Part II.

What Needs To Be Said

There's a lot that needs to be said (and realized, and done differently) with regard to the ways different kinds of people are thought of, treated, and considered from an ethical standpoint.

A lot of it is very difficult to say, though, because it doesn't tend to fit into some tidy, fully self-consistent ideological framework.

And there's this weird bias I've noticed that seems to cause lots of really important points to go ignored (or even blatantly disregarded) because they can't easily be shoved into this-ism or that-ism (or because they seem to superficially contradict something "nobody would argue with", even when the points being made are a lot more nuanced than they might seem at first).

Dale Carrico puts some of what needs to be said very well in a recent post (emphasis mine):

It is not only those who go so far as to actively advocate involuntary modification who are typically described as eugenicist in my understanding. There are disciplinary pressures beneath the threshold of conspicuous coercion that will yield eugenic effects just as surely (and more efficaciously) than blatant force will do. Certainly programs of involuntary medical intervention constitute the most hideous and heartbreaking end of the eugenicist spectrum, but one can easily observe comparable homogenizing and restrictive effects arising from popular misinformation, from social stigma, from mass mediated promulgation of norms, from uncritical and inertial workings of orthodox institutional healthcare mechanisms, and so on...

Not everybody needs, as some "transhumanists" [and, I might add, others in general who claim no allegiances to any particular subculture, but whose views are essentially mainstream] apparently seem to do, to literally see a Nazi cracking a whip in the service of genocide before they will grant that even now society is conspiring unnecessarily and at great human cost to cast certain perfectly liveable and dignified and legible human capacities, morphologies, and lifeways as less-than-human, as offenses to humanity demanding "remedy" whatever those who incarnate them might have to say in the matter, and so on.

What he said.

I think a lot of people ignore the fact that the entire culture that would necessarily have to spring up in the service of enforcing "compassionate" involuntary modification would, in and of itself, comprise a terrible abuse racket. In some ways, such a culture already exists, and every time someone tries to make a claim that yet another neutral, non-deadly variation or state of being ought to be pathologized, this culture is bolstered rather than weakened.

So, sorry to rain on your utility function, but I'll have no hand in promoting the kind of culture that would have more and more people locked up for not "curing" their children of nonfatal variations, and that would perpetuate the revocation and diminishment of assistive services on the basis of a distorted, backward belief that these somehow drain the coffers of "deserving" normals.

The reality encompassing all sentient persons is huge, messy, complicated, beautiful, and yes, dangerous. Certainly, this reality could be improved in some respects, and I'm all for doing so when doing so allows more people to live outside the shadow of painful, deadly conditions (cancer, poverty, etc.). But beware the trap of feeling like good intentions alone are enough to justify whatever you do. And also beware the trap of trying to frame everything that makes you vaguely uncomfortable as an "emergency". There are enough real, deadly, actual emergencies in the world already. And the existence of a diverse range of live and conscious animals is not one of them.

An Advocacy Success: NYU Retracts "Ransom Notes" Campaign

A lot of people have written lately about the New York University Child Study Center's "Ransom Notes" billboard and ad campaign.

I first heard about this campaign a few weeks ago, and honestly, I was at something of a loss for words (hence, my not discussing it publicly until now). The images and messages associated with the campaign were apparently intended to "raise awareness" of childhood mental, psychological, and neurological issues (all carelessly lumped under the category of "psychiatric disorders", but anyway), including autism and Asperger's. Billboards were plastered all over New York, showing stark pictures of several different fake "ransom notes", one for each of the "featured" conditions -- with the emotional hook being the idea that the condition had kidnapped a child and taken him or her "hostage".

Now, believe me, I understand that when someone (child or adult) is having issues or struggling with something, it's good to see that they get whatever help they need. But merely intending to be helpful doesn't mean that whatever a person (or organization) does in the interest of fulfilling their intentions must be accepted uncritically. If you really want to help someone, it seems to me that you'd want their feedback as far as whether your efforts are actually working (or whether they're just making things worse)!

As Kathleen Seidel, parent activist and founder of neurodiversity.com, writes:

[Autistics also deal with] the very real challenges of navigating an environment in which they are bombarded with reminders of their presumed inadequacy and the tragedy and burden that their existence represents to their families and to society. All too many people feel free to characterize autistic people as living a "fate worse than death," as "never really there," as "kidnap victims" and "hollow shells."

The quote above was from a letter in response to a different media piece (that is, not the Ransom Notes campaign). But the message still holds true and remains relevant. If you want to help a group of people, the best way to do so is not to plaster entire cities with billboards that perpetuate oversimplifications, misconceptions, and negative stereotypes about that group of people.

I can't even imagine how horrible it would be to be a youngster living in New York right now, having to walk by all those billboards describing kids like me as "held hostage" by the very same brain differences which shape my strengths, my intense interests, and my ability to find joy in the seemingly mundane as much as they do my weaknesses.

The initial surge of outrage against the "Ransom Notes" campaign (which included an explanatory letter and petition started by the Autistic Advocacy Network) apparently took the NYU folks by surprise.

They initially defended the campaign as something that was merely "edgy" and designed to "cut through the clutter" of holiday advertising and draw people's attention to more important issues, but it seems that they eventually came to realize that the complaints were a shade more nuanced than simple expressions of "hurt feelings" (and there are few things more frustrating than trying to explain why something is unethical and damaging in a very real sense, only to have your critique dismissed as a complaint about "hurt feelings").

I was very pleased to learn earlier today that the NYU Child Study center was retracting the campaign in response to the huge outcry from various self-advocates, parents, disability-rights groups, and other concerned parties.

From the statement of retraction:

Though we meant well, we've come to realize that we unintentionally hurt and offended some people. We’ve read all the emails, both pro and con, listened to phone calls, and have spoken with many parents who are working day and night to get their children the help they need. We have decided to conclude this phase of our campaign today because the debate over the ads is taking away from the pressing day-to-day work we need to do to help children and their families. They are and remain our first concern.

I was even more heartened to see the following statement from Ari Ne'eman, President of the Autistic Advocacy Network (emphasis mine):

...having spoken directly with Dr. Harold Koplewicz, Director of the NYU Child Study Center, I have obtained a commitment to pursue real dialogue in the creation of any further ad campaign depicting individuals with disabilities. We applaud the NYU Child Study Center for hearing the voice of the disability community and withdrawing the "Ransom Notes" ad campaign.

Twenty-two disability rights organizations came together to ensure the withdrawal of this advertising campaign. Our response to this campaign stretched continents, with e-mails, letters and phone calls coming from as far away as Israel, Britain and Australia. The disability community acted with a unity and decisiveness that has rarely been heard before and we are seeing the results of our strength today. Our success sends an inescapable message: if you wish to depict people with disabilities, you must consult us and seek our approval. Anything less will guarantee that we will make our voices heard. We are willing to help anyone and any group that seeks to raise awareness of disability issues, but those efforts must be done with us, not against us.

I am tremendously grateful to Ari and the other individuals and organizations that have managed to accomplish the truly amazing feat of (hopefully) beginning to bridge the seemingly vast communication gap between organizations like the NYU Child Study Center and the people who live every day as "targets" of well-intentioned but often misguided "awareness campaigns".

As I see it, if you're going to do something from a position of authority which has the chance to shape the way certain other people are perceived and treated on a wide scale, you have an ethical responsibility to (a) get your facts straight, and (b) listen to the voices of people who your message is going to affect the most.

It remains to be seen what the results of the ensuing dialogue between NYU and the community of actual autistic/atypical/disabled people turn out to look like, but the fact that NYU is now at least willing to listen is quite encouraging.

A Few Brief Thoughts

In looking back over my posting history here on Existence is Wonderful, it is very interesting to see how my own attitudes have shifted over time. There are still some fundamental principles I adhere to: e.g., "Life is a good thing", and "All different kinds of people are valuable", but lately I've been coming to terms with some of the "affiliation uneasiness" that has been bothering me in the background throughout my public writing endeavors so far.

As of now, I'm still OK with using the term "transhumanism" to describe some of my take on technosocial development. I do believe that radical longevity is a great goal (and one that I will continue to advocate fiercely for). I find talking about robots and cyborgs, etc., to be fascinating and a lot of fun. I'm all for continuing the human process of shaping our environment (with sustainability in mind) to suit our needs and creative energies, and for enabling consensual "augmentation" and modification without regard for unexamined, parochial notions of what is "natural".

But here's the thing: I am massively social-libertarian when it comes to the issue of morphological freedom -- one of the things that strikes me as tremendously important in any movement that wants to "push" for positive outcomes in society involving the individual's rights to control his/her own form and function is the notion that we have to be radically tolerant of people who choose forms and functions that we ourselves would not. Which includes forms and functions that we (as in, any one of us) might even find bizarre or aesthetically displeasing.

I'm finding myself increasingly uncomfortable with the idea of being associated with people who can't understand how power relationships work, and who think that disability activism is "extremism" despite the wealth of good, cogent disability literature out there (which has much in common with transhumanist-themed morphological freedom literature).

Of course, this doesn't necessarily mean I'm getting annoyed at "transhumanists", per se -- I in fact think that many emerging mainstream attitudes are quite akin to early eugenic attitudes (e.g., the drive toward prenatal testing causing a shift away from trying to help keep all kinds of children alive once they are born), and that in the mainstream, these attitudes are probably more pernicious and powerful due to being examined less frequently and less consciously than in culturally critical and speculative movements.

I guess I'm just getting annoyed with how so much has been written on the nature of power dynamics, on the real reasons behind the need for disability activism (e.g., so that vulnerable populations are not continually depersonalized, and so that more people understand the nature of interdependence in society), and on similar stuff, but how some people still don't seem to be able to get past the status quo. I want to help shape a future that is truly "better" than the present, as opposed to just an extreme, exaggerated version of current fashion.

I don't know if this is even possible, given the complexity of the tasks at hand, but I do get the sense that a better future (one in which people enjoy increased liberty, tolerance, and safety from environmental and other risks) isn't going to happen through assuming too much about what forms and functionalities are "acceptable" for the future to contain.

On Advocacy and Semantics

Nick Tarleton commented on my last post, saying:

Conjecture: some people, through some psychological quirk, interpret "opposition to X" as "not wanting any instance of X to exist" - so if you're opposed to aging, you must want to eliminate all instances of aging in the world, i.e. kill old people.

Conjecture 2: some people conflate judgments about the desirability of traits or states with judgments about the inherent worth of people with those traits/in those states. Evaluating aging as bad is tantamount to evaluating aged people as worth less than the young.

I've been thinking about these conjectures since yesterday, and I really do think Nick has hit the proverbial nail on the head here. While the people who oppose longevity medicine obviously vary in terms of their reasons for doing so, I am wondering now if perhaps some of that opposition is rooted in a sense that it is wrong to "medicalize" aging. And as someone who generally prefers the social model of disability to the medical model, I can understand, if not sympathize completely, with this viewpoint.

Here's why: if I take Nick's conjectures above and re-word them thusly:

Conjecture: some people, through some psychological quirk, interpret "opposition to X" as "not wanting any instance of X to exist" - so if you're opposed to autism, you must want to eliminate all instances of autism in the world, i.e. kill autistic people.

Conjecture 2: some people conflate judgments about the desirability of traits or states with judgments about the inherent worth of people with those traits/in those states. Evaluating autism as bad is tantamount to evaluating autistic people as worth less than the nonautistic.

...they start looking eerily familiar. I've seen very similar arguments coming from people who insist that yes, of course they value their autistic child (or brother, or sister, or neighbor, etc.) as a person, but that they would "remove the autism" from that person if they could. And that if they'd known of a way to prevent the autistic person from being born autistic, they would have chosen it "in a heartbeat".

Often, the people who make these arguments have a terrible time seeing how there could possibly be anything offensive about what they are saying. And when autistic self-advocates tell these folks that they find the notion that they ought to be "cured" (for their own good, for the good of society) insulting -- let's just say that the conversations don't always end with hearts and flowers.

I've stayed out of most of the major flamewars I've witnessed on the advocacy pages I read, but I've certainly read enough of them to get a sense of the common arguments that get made (and how those arguments fit in with my own various philosophical and ethical leanings).

And overall, I've gotten the distinct sense that there's a pretty clear difference between "disability" and "disease", as well as between "things that kill you" and "things that make you different". Put in those terms, autism and aging fall into very different categories, since while autistic people might be more vulnerable than nonautistic people in various ways, autism will not kill you. Aging, however, will.

But: on the other hand, there is a framing system in which autism and aging do fall into the same category -- and that is the one in which both "states" (aged, autistic) grant a person membership in a group devalued by those in society who hold the majority of the political and effective power.

Autistic and elderly people also share some common fears ("will I be institutionalized?") and common problems (employment discrimination, etc.). From within this framing system, it seems obvious that reducing the degree to which persons in the disenfranchised groups are treated as pathologies will help improve the lot of such people.

Have you ever been pathologized?

I have, and believe me, it's no fun. Not helpful, either. There was a professional who tried to insist that I needed to "work harder at being normal", and who refused to note any of the progress I'd made in learning to communicate more effectively and take care of myself physically at one point.

This was not only disparaging to my efforts, but dangerous -- if I'd had less presence of mind, or if I'd let this person intimidate me, I might have ended up returning to prior, unhealthy patterns of forgetting to eat and neglecting important aspects of self-care (because I was channeling too much energy into trying to maintain a facade of "standard" operation).

It was really only when I came to a point of self-acceptance -- as in, I started becoming better able to see myself as a healthy autistic-spectrum person as opposed to a "damaged" version of a neurotypical person -- that I started really branching out in my activities. I used to spend my weekends wandering in circles in the living room or fretting over the fact that I still couldn't manage driving a car at my age, but now I spend them writing, researching, editing, and even attending the occasional seminar or conference.

So, on the basis of that experience (and others, when I was growing up, in which certain teachers decided to single me out as a Behavior Problem rather than a kid who was simply developing atypically) I am very, very reluctant to think in "medicalized" terms when it comes to things that don't directly hurt or kill people.

I think that medicalizing things that shouldn't be medicalized can make people end up in worse condition than however they started out prior to seeking (or being put into) "treatment". And I think that treating any person as a "walking disease" and failing to see the person past whatever their challenges might be means you're running the risk of losing your ability to perceive the person at all.

Which is where the need for semantic clarification comes in.

When some people say "aging", they mean, "getting older" in the sense of accumulating birthdays.

When put in those terms, I am definitely "pro-aging" because I most certainly think that people should be enabled to experience as many birthdays as possible!

But when others refer to "aging", they mean, "the underlying bodily processes that lead to stroke, heart disease, immune collapse, dementia, and death".

When put in those terms, I am "anti-aging". (And those processes -- the nasty ones that kill you -- are the ones discussed in Ending Aging, which I highly recommend for anyone who wants to learn more about the science of SENS.)

So basically, I see aging as both a pathology and not a pathology, depending on the context in which it is used and on how it is defined.

I don't think old people are a pathology -- I think that the things that kill old people are pathologies. And I think it would be unfortunate indeed if people coming across longevity advocacy saw the whole thing as an attempt to pathologize the elderly and define them as "gross" and "scary".

I don't know if that's actually the impression people get or not, but if it is, I would like to know so I can work on explaining longevity advocacy better and emphasizing the fact that the goal is to help people survive and maintain their preferred health-state (defined according to individual criteria, not some arbitrary "optimality" measure) for as long as possible.

Now, returning back to the subject of autism for a moment, I want to make it clear that I do not think that autism can be defined (as I think aging can) as simultaneously, or alternately, "a pathology or not a pathology, depending on context".

Despite the similar social and political challenges faced by elderly and autistic people, and the common experience of lacking power as compared to the young and/or neurotypical (which should certainly be acknowledged), autism does not share with aging the "it'll kill you if you don't do something about it" component. And that's a very important component -- one that cannot be trivialized or argued away as a social construct.

You can, after all, be happy, healthy, and autistic.

You cannot be healthy, happy, and dead.

There is no "social model" for death, and I think that anyone who claims to champion the rights of any given group cannot seek to define that group as "obligated to die"!

Longevity advocates, therefore, have a very interesting challenge -- one that entails both discouraging age discrimination (especially with regard to health care) and at the same time, promoting the idea that we ought to develop treatments allowing older people to make their bodies function more like younger bodies.

I can see the political thorniness here and I'm frankly not sure what to do about it at the moment, except perhaps to say that I don't think that older people should be made to feel as if they have to embrace their own age-related death in order to accept themselves as people. To define "not being near death" as the exclusive province of the young seems a rather horrid proposition.

Political Compass, For What It's Worth

(I'm working on a bunch of different things right now, including the rest of my Summit commentary -- which is taking forever -- but figured I'd post this in the meantime).

My Political Compass results:

Economic Left/Right: -4.75
Social Libertarian/Authoritarian: -8.26



I've noticed that most of the people whose blogs I read tend to fall along either extreme left/democrat/socialist lines, or along libertarian lines. (I have no idea why that is, it's just the way things seem to have worked out -- but still, I am very surprised that I don't get more comments along the lines of, "Why do you bother with anything so-and-so says? They're one of them!") And all of them occasionally say things I agree with, as well as things I disagree with.

The thing that frustrates me most about politics is the fact that you're almost expected to (a) choose a side, and (b) think of the "other side" as entirely consisting of clueless people. There's almost a kind of alarmism among the strongly partisan, as if somehow, the Other Side is going to destroy the universe with their ideology if it isn't kept in check. I honestly don't know if any particular party is "dangerous" -- I know that there are dangerous ideas, and dangerous precedents, but it's very difficult for me to fully embrace or write off any particular system without understanding it deeply.

I sometimes feel guilty about this, especially since some people are so emphatically convinced of how damaging Viewpoint A is, but until I've fully grokked why, it's difficult for me to get fired up. (And I do get fired up about certain things -- people who think that old people should be denied lifesaving medicine just because they are old, or who think that autistics "lack the essential features of being human", or who are Nazis, will be spared no vitriol from me!)

Whatever my "compass score" says about me, I definitely plan to keep doing things as I have been all along: that is, considering individual issues as they come up and weighing them not in reference to some pre-fab party template, but against the ethical framework I've been developing ever since I started thinking about the world outside my own head. While I do understand the need to take "big picture" views and occasionally align with groups I may not agree with 100% in order to accomplish certain goals, overall, I find most pre-existing systems extremely limiting.

And not only are they limiting, they tend to have these huge, gaping holes that it's difficult to get anyone to acknowledge. Like disability rights -- where does that fit in? Most liberals ignore disability issues, despite being generally supportive of civil rights as they apply to women, minorities, and LGBT individuals. And though conservatives might occasionally pay lip service to "disability rights", the arguments they use (and the bizarro agendas they tie in -- "human exceptionalism" comes to mind) are often simplistic, offensive, and downright embarrassing.

This is one primary reason that the only "isms" I've lately found some utility in are "transhumanism" and "technoprogressivism", because it has been through the study of the topic-space surrounding these terms that I've discovered useful principles like morphological freedom. It's just amusing (and slightly scary) to have people hear some of my views on morphological freedom and assume that I'm either a pro-life wingnut or a product of some lazy, overly permissive, hippie mentality (and obviously a communist).

Granted, this doesn't happen too often anymore, but still, one reason I focus more on specific issues than on partisan stuff is because it's exhausting to have to constantly anticipate (and put forth disclaimers) for every possible little thing that might swing someone's assumption-o-meter in some extreme direction that has practically nothing to do with what I