X-Message-Number: 19716
Date: Wed, 07 Aug 2002 12:26:34 -0700
From: <>
Subject: Re: CryoNet #19703 Transhumanism isn't just for cranks

Mark Plus posts a news item:

Titled Converging Technologies for Improving Human Performance:
Nanotechnology, Biotechnology, Information Technology, and Cognitive Science,
the 405-page report calls for more research into the intersection of these
fields. The payoff, the authors claim, isn't just better bodies and more
effective minds. Progress in these areas of technology also could play a key
role in preventing a societal "catastrophe." The answer to human brutality and
new forms of lethal weapons, it suggests, is a kind of tech-triggered unity:
"Technological convergence could become the framework for human convergence." 

Mark resumes: Why don't they just come out and say that they recommend
assimilation into the Borg? When mainstream organizations put out reports like
this, you have to wonder why bio-deathicists, Secular Humanists & traditional
religionists all gang up on cryonics & engineered negligible senescence as
outrageous & irresponsible. At least we are trying to defend the value of
human individuality. 


Steve Harris Comments:

Well, you know very well the reason why this doesn t scare the mainstream
bio-ethicists, deathists, humanists, and so on: Most of them come from the
Left, and they are collectivists who haven t quite grown up yet. They look to
the group, the government, to Big Daddy, or the Man on the White Horse
(Clinton, etc) to solve social problems. The idea of doing it yourself scares
them. They re mostly Eastern Urbanites, and not a few of them are women. They
view what happened on Flight 93 as an odd aberration rather than the expected
result of on-site problem solving, and (by contrast) at the abomination of
what happens now at airport security as the natural, normal, and long overdue
solution to that problem. They view economics in the same light, for these are
the very people who used to be Communists and fellow travelers before
free-market economics finally cleaned their clock. Now, they lean toward
Socialism China-style. They d never dare call it fascism.

However, it s time we took at good look at the Borg Collective, because it is
surely coming. The only way it won t is if we blow ourselves up, or if the
machines attain transcendence before we do, and either wipe us out
Skynet-Collosus-style, or else leave us with a techno-lock so that we can t
eventually do it ourselves (ie, so that we never develop mechanical telepathy
with computer assist).

With the advent of the Borg option (Borganism as somebody calls it), it s also
time to take a hard look at some old libertarian arguments about individual
rights.  Many of the best libertarian arguments point out that the although
the present collective community may be smarter and have more capability than
any individual (can YOU build a moon rocket?), at the same time it STILL makes
bad decisions for individuals because 1) it doesn t feel your pain (see the
FDA for details), and 2) no matter how smart they guys in Washington are,
they re a long way away, and they lack critical information about you, your
history, your values, and your experiences. Thus the failure of centralized
command economies.

But now, observe that this argument fails in the future, because things change
when we finally reach the Borg. In that case, the collective WILL feel your
pain. And it WILL have access to your memories, experiences, values. In such a
situation it will inevitably make the same decision in your behalf that you
would make for yourself, if only you were smarter than you are. That decision
can then be forced upon you, to be sure-- but it can also be presented to you
with reasons, and you can then accept or reject, just as you would with your
doctor or car mechanic s advice. In that case,  individualism  translates
merely into the freedom to be able to take stupid-pills and hurt yourself, if
you choose. Many of us would defend individualism even to those levels, but
it s a very precarious thing, once you admit it s *only* about the freedom to
be stupid and self-destructive.

Here let me present the argument of the Borg:  So you libertarians want to be
free to get drunk and go out alone into your back yard to dynamite fish in
your own pond, or tree-stumps, if you like. But at minimum we, your society,
are going to want to know first, before we allow this, if your contractual
obligations are met. Is your estate in order? Your children provided for? Your
creditors paid off? Your medico-cryonico-funeral arrangements all funded and
covering your for what you re about to do? 

That might please everybody except your neighbors who object that you ll
violate noise ordinances when you blow yourself up. But the problems don t end
there. The society of the future seems likely to be connected to a much
greater degree for most things, than for example above. When the person of the
future is out in  public  he may present as much of a public problem if he s
not in some sense connected to the net, as an airplane does when it enters
controlled airspace without a transponder. Remember also that  individuality 
is not a binary thing, but will go smoothly from 0 to 100% as your connection
to the collective is dialed from zero to maximal bandwidth.  So how much are
you going to be require to do, by law?  I suspect it will depend on where you
are and what you re doing. All those who think the Borg choice is an  in or
out  thing need to re-think. It will likely vary, even for rabid
individualists. 

And of course the laws of nature (speed of light) will force it to vary for
people who want to go Elsewhere in space. The Borg in Star Trek wouldn t even
work if it weren t for hyperspace communications, or otherwise individuality
would be forced on every individual Borg ship, if nothing else.

I ve saved the biggest libertarian problem for last.  It is this: even
libertarians limit the choices of children and mental defectives. Libertarians
would not let children drink and play with dynamite, or mentally challenged
adults, either.  And yet, observe how artificial the line that has to be drawn
is, between  minor  and  adult , and between  competent adult  and
 incompetent adult .  Does anybody think that the gain in wisdom stops when we
reach 16 or 18 or 21 or whatever?  Our forefathers had the wisdom to insure
that the guy we allow to make the decisions like launching thermonuke missiles
at the world ,has to be at least 35 years old, and I personally wish it was
more like 45 or 50 (and the voters seem to agree with me). In fact, I wish
this had to be a collective decision-- don t you? There is no bright line
where humans attain the wisdom they  need  to be trusted to act autonomously.
In truth, that line either doesn t exist, or else is defined entirely by
circumstance. 

Libertarians seem to be happy now having a statute or a judge determine when a
child or mentally challenged adult is allowed to do a given task. Or they
allow it to be decided by testing and licensure-- but the test rules again to
be decided politically. Well, folks, that s all we re talking about with the
Borg. They might well decide you re incompetent to do most things in society
unless you pass the licensure test, and without mental assistance
(deep-connect to the collective at some bandwidth), you ll never pass. You
simply cannot do it on your own, because you haven t the wherewithal. And
there you are. You libertarians happy, now? 

That s the real Borg problem. Compared with the Borg Collective of the future,
we individual un-augmented short-lived humans, are all children. And we are
all idiots, full of sound and fury, but not making a great deal of sense. We
ARE Kornbluth s Marching Morons, seeing only dimly. So deal with it. After one
connection with the collective, we ll likely view the state of disconnect with
the same horror as Charly Gordon remembering how it was to be retarded, after
his surgery. Do YOU want to go back to that? Well, me neither. At least, not
ever for long.

SBH

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