Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Thursday, April 15, 2010

White Guys Forever Redux

I mentioned in an offhand way in a post yesterday that, quite apart from the hyperbole and the mystifications that seem to me to suffuse the claims of members of the various superlative futurological sects of the Robot Cult archipelago (the extropians, transhumanists, singularitarians, cybernetic-totalists, techno-immortalists, nano-cornucopiasts, and so on), the fact that they have always been and remain to this day so overabundantly populated by white guys despite existing in a world more abundantly populated by other than white guys is, frankly, creepy and wrong and should send up red flags to anybody who takes a gander at their little sub(cult)ural cul-de-sac. Needless to say, there are endlessly many other red-flag provocative things Robot Cultists say and do otherwise apart from the whole white guy parade thing, too, but I just happened to mention that red flag in particular in that particular post.

In the Moot, one "Mitchell" was not impressed:
I find this thoroughly unpersuasive. It's like saying only white men will ever have nukes or be hackers. If we analyse transhumanism as a cultural and existential response to a certain level of technology, then what exactly is going to stop it from springing up everywhere else that has Internet and biotechnology?


"Cultural and existential response"?

Sounds like a science fiction fanclub or convention to me -- the sort of thing I thoroughly approve of as a big old geek -- but the thing is the "transhumanists" seem to want their sf fandom to be treated as a policy think-tank, a political movement, or a religious/philosophical organization providing members the meaning of Life, the Universe, and Everything.

"[W]hat exactly is going to stop it from springing up everywhere"?

Honestly, just what exactly is the "it" you fancy will "spring up" inevitably everywhere?

Have you noticed that the Robot Cultists have been indulging in roughly the same song and dance for over two decades by now and yet the Robot God, the nanobotic genies-in-a-bottle, the gengineered sooper-bodies, the cyberspatial immortalization and sexytime Holodecks are no closer to materialization or even to making sense, and self-described "transhumanists" planetwide have never managed to be more than the same few handfuls of white guys?

At what point does "inevitable" start looking to you like the "dumb" it looks like to actually technoscientifically literate politically aware people more generally?

Digital networked media and non-normativizing medical techniques are already available, after all -- is everybody "transhumanist" now, has "transhumanism" swept the world, whatever that is supposed to mean?

If you really make the effort to characterize just what you think "transhumanism" consists of as some "thing" that will "happen" or in some sense "prevail," I predict you will EITHER say something general to the point of vacuity that can be described without introducing the term "transhumanism" concerning your marginal handful of sf fanboys who cannot distinguish science from science fiction to capture "it" -- something on the order of: new, widely-available techniques tend to alter general conduct in ways that serious people will want to account for in law and policy -- OR you will say something hyperbolic and hilariously implausible about wanting to live forever by cryonicizing your brain or uploading your "mind" into cyberspace or how hackers should build a desktop dirt-to-diamonds nanomachine in your basement or whatever that immediately reveals you to be a wish-fulfillment fantasist who would be better off in therapy than in a Robot Cult.

Not to be rude, Mitchell, but do you happen to be a transhumanistical white guy yourself? Do you think transhumanistical white guys are The Voice of this "transhumanism" that will "spring up" so inevitably soon enough in The Future?

5 comments:

Mitchell said...

Honestly, just what exactly is the "it" you fancy will "spring up" inevitably everywhere?

To begin with, all those same "childish" desires and aspirations: stay young forever, live in cyberspace, live in outer space. In a civilization that grows organs in the lab, interacts with lifelike computer characters for entertainment, and sends robot probes to Mars, it is inevitable that some people are going to think like that, even when they become adults. If transhumanism ceased to exist it would be reinvented somewhere else, and it would not require white guys to do it.

So unless we're going to simply ignore all these dramatic real-world developments, or unless we're going to posit their mysterious imminent disappearance from the world, then at the very least we must admit that transhumanism in various forms is going to haunt the whole 21st century. It is human nature to want freedom and to abhor death, so of course people are going to pursue this path.

Dale Carrico said...

stay young forever, live in cyberspace, live in outer space. In a civilization that grows organs in the lab, interacts with lifelike computer characters for entertainment... unless we're going to simply ignore all these dramatic real-world developments, or unless we're going to posit their mysterious imminent disappearance from the world, then at the very least we must admit that transhumanism in various forms is going to haunt the whole 21st century

Actual lab-grown organs, actually life-like computer characters? Dude, none of the dramatic "real world" developments you mention are... really real. Before you speak of their "disappearance" what is wanted is their, you know, appearance. We're in the 21st century, by the way, and transhumanism isn't haunting us, so that "whole" bit is already refuted.

it is inevitable that some people are going to think like that,

Again: like what? Confusing science fiction with science fact? Indulging in infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies? Is that your vaunted world-view, is that your movement? You're actually admitting this? Sorry to break it to you, but wanting to live forever is no more a "philosophy" than wanting something for nothing. It's just something everybody feels at some point or other in their lives when they are being irrational and infantile. It's not a worldview. It really isn't.

If transhumanism ceased to exiist it would be reinvented somewhere else

Tough talk for somebody who has yet to actually say of what "it" uniquely consists in any kind of substantive way.

I still eagerly await a response on the question of why it doesn't seem to you problematic that your "movement" is never anything much more than white guys talking to each other in a world in which white guys are a considerable minority of the folks impacted by technoscientific changes or informed on technoscientific questions.

I won't hold my breath, though, waiting for an answer.

Mitchell said...

Actual lab-grown organs, actually life-like computer characters? Dude, none of the dramatic "real world" developments you mention are... really real.

You still have room to quibble, just barely, with the first item. There are people out there with so-called artificial bladders which were grown from their own cultured tissue and then implanted, whereupon nerves and blood vessels grew into the implant and made it functional. This is at the outer limits of current tissue engineering, and no doubt there have been some interesting debates about whether this is really an organ or something else - a para-organ, perhaps? One paper calls it a "tissue engineered neobladder".

"Lifelike computer character" is an existing term of art. The ones we have are lifelike in some respects and not in others. Physical resemblance to the human form is pretty good now; so are various types of physical motion. Of course, it's the intellect which is absent. The most sophisticated "AI" in any video game is probably somewhere below flatworm level in its complexity, but it's operating an anthropomorphic puppet.

Tough talk for somebody who has yet to actually say of what [transhumanism] uniquely consists in any kind of substantive way.

One step at a time. I can hardly deny that actually existing transhumanism does include people who simply hope to avoid death, for example, and for whom this hope is based on very simple ideas, like "if they can grow it in the lab, they can keep replacing the parts of my body as they wear out". But this actually makes the minimal version of my argument easier. Your thesis, remember, is that transhumanism is a sort of folk religion for white guys, and so all I have to do is point out that you don't have to be white or male or in the West to be into this stuff. And in fact it would be ridiculous to insist otherwise.

Now of course the more interesting issue is not whether people are going to be fantasizing about immortality and mind uploading until the end of technological civilization, but whether anything like the transhumanist project has a chance of ever delivering the goods in the real world. So let's consider one of my favorite scenarios - because I think it's instructive to consider - namely, transhumanism as the Marxism of the 21st century.

First, let's review the fortunes of Marxism in the 20th century. You start the century with a bunch of capitalist imperialist states commanding the world. You have a war, one of them (Russia) becomes a Marxist revolutionary state, another one (Germany) creates its own back-to-nature ideology, goes to war with the Marxist state, and loses. The other empires unravel, something like Marxism takes over in China and in many lesser countries, but after many decades of technological rivalry, Russia dumps the ideology and the American rival declares victory. Marxism is a "God that failed". Though right now it's looking like the Chinese hybrid of east and west gets the last laugh.

Apologies for the kindergarten-level history but I want to make plain how this analogy works. It should be really easy to imagine something that calls itself transhumanism coming to power in a major country some time in this century, and having an agenda that is more than just empty words. If you wish to reject the imputation of transcendentality to technologies which are not actually transcendental, go ahead, be my guest. But it is screamingly obvious that the technical barriers to extremely radical, historically unprecedented forms of experimentation are falling every year, especially in biology.

A future in which transhumanism comes to power and is discredited for producing monsters is a zillion times more likely than a future where transhumanism remains a fringe ideology irrelevant because it is doomed to powerlessness. This fact alone makes the gesture of dismissal inadequate and itself irrelevant.

Dale Carrico said...

"Lifelike computer character" is an existing term of art. The ones we have are lifelike in some respects and not in others. Physical resemblance to the human form is pretty good now; so are various types of physical motion.

You need to get out more. Actual lifelikeness is far from captured in online environments, however entertaining they may be -- my partner is a ferociously devoted online gamer, btw. "Lifelike computer characters" is a term of advertising, not of technical art. You would never mistake the AI or appearance of a character for reality. It's only a prior ideological faith in the eventual arrival of AI and immersive virtuality that deludes you into saying otherwise.

Dale Carrico said...

Your thesis, remember, is that transhumanism is a sort of folk religion for white guys, and so all I have to do is point out that you don't have to be white or male or in the West to be into this stuff.

No, I pointed out that you Robot Cultists ARE and ALWAYS HAVE BEEN overabundantly white guys.

Are you denying that observation?

If, as you say, the loose set of infantile wish-fulfillment fantasies of which your religious faith essentially consists could or should in fact appeal to other than white guys, then doesn't the fact that they DO NOT seem in the main in the actual world ever to appeal to other than white guys constitute more of a problem for you rather than the solution to the problem at hand?

I guess there is a certain consistency here, though, in confusing an imagined logical possibility of diversity with the actual reality of diversity, confusing fairly commonplace human wish-fulfillment fantasies of personal power with a formal philosophy, confusing science fiction with actual science.

Maybe you're just a very silly, confused person, after all?

If, by the way, you think there is an actual definition of this "transhumanism" that you seem to advocate and expect to sweep the world that does not amount to "infantile wish fulfillment fantasies of immortality and personal power enabled through confusions of science fiction with science fact" I am eager to hear it on your own terms.

You keep promising to tell me what "it" is, but so far you keep agreeing with me that it often is just a kind of religious faith "based on" wanting to live a really long time, maybe even forever, and loll around in abundance, all of which will be delivered by "technology" in a construal that seems broad to the point of vacuity and through some mechanism that remains largely unspecified.

As I have warned you many times before, you will discover that if you strive in an honest way to provide specificity about either what this "technology" actually is supposed to consist of or what mechanism will enable this "technology" to deliver its supposedly transcendentalizing wish-fulfilling goods you will surely discover either (one) that you are saying very bland sorts of things nobody needs "transhumanism" to say, or (two) you are saying batshit crazy things that only "transhumanists" say.

When you finally grasp that the Robot Cult spell will be broken and you will be free to be a geek who enjoys reading science fiction on its own terms and advocating sensible consensus science policy on its different terms as a grown up person. If you also happen to be a democratically minded person of the left you might even do some good in the world once you leave your Robot Cult behind, championing funding for science education and research and the application of consensus science in relevant domains of public policy (like climate change legislation, urban planning, public healthcare provision, sex education, and so on).

You don't have to thank me, just become a sensible person and do some good in the world.