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

Sunday, August 26, 2012

Are Techno-Immortalist Robot Cultists the Real "Deathists"?

In Wake Up, Deathist! You DO Want to Live 10,000 Years!, Robot Cultist Hank Pellissier argues that magic would be cool if it were real as a way of distracting your attention from the fact that magic is not real. My first working title for this piece was the judiciously worded, "Robot Cultist Battles Deathist Menace From Glitter-Farting Unicorn in Space." From all this, the discerning reader of Amor Mundi will understand that the piece under discussion is the latest Very Serious work of futurology published by the White Guys of "The Future" at the stealth Robot Cult "think-tank" IEET, the Institute for Ethics (where ethics are rarely actually discussed) and Emerging Technologies (where the technologies are rarely actually emerging).

Contra Pellissier, I think it is fair to say that not everybody would want to spend 10,000 years living what passes for the lives they are now living, when the reality of suicide demonstrates that not everybody wants to live even the Biblical allotment of three score and ten. More seriously still, I think it is fair to wonder if what we even mean by "living a life" as a narrative and otherwise coherent structural matter when we talk about such things now is enough like what might arise with such a prolongation that it makes a lot of sense to glibly apply the term to such projections, just as I think it is fair to wonder the same about the propriety of applying intuitions of present "selfhood" to such presumably transformed conditions, about the propriety of applying the word "living" to so differently prostheticized and therapized a process and so on.

Of course, Pellisier doesn't care about such things very much, he just wants to pretend that "technology" in some general construal that makes no sense will "provide" through mechanisms that have no real specification "health" and "capacities" and "lives" and "selves" that are and legibly remain everything they already are now, except, you know, that they will be more More MORE! As always with futurologists, the Robot Cultists confuse more with better, confuse more with change: it is an essentially unimaginative temper promoting itself as imagination, it is an essentially incurious consumerism advertising itself as wonder, it is an essentially reactionary fear marketing itself as an embrace of transformation. It's all very boring and very conventional advertising strategy -- more Skittles in the bag peddled as progress! a new color coating added to the Skittles rainbow peddled as change! Robot Cultists just pump up this sort of volume by orders of magnitude more than conventional crappy consumer marketing does -- indeed they amplify advertising hyperbole so much that their discourse takes on the coloration of theological discourse, the fraudulent promises of consumer satisfaction become promises of outright techno-transcendence.

Pellissier and his fellow Robot Cultists are just circus barkers selling a mirage and promoting a brand, at once indulging in wish-fulfillment fantasizing as well as trying to enlist as many others in this fantasizing as may be, either to make the fantasy seem more real in the fervency of shared belief or, more cynically and opportunistically, to attract attention and the power that follows from such attention by making noise. For instance:

"Many researchers suggest that Death will soon be annihilated," writes Pellissier. This is, of course, to speak plainly, a lie. I doubt that very "many" actually reputable researchers suggest anything of the sort even on the most idiosyncratic construal of that word "many," but even if a few folks who aren't laughingstocks in every aspect of their lives otherwise do say such things you can be sure that there are incomparably "many" more who do not for every one who does, and in any case no-one who takes things like citation indexes or reproducible results seriously would ever say or take seriously anything of the kind.

To raise questions, as I do, about the coherence and legibility of terms like "life" and "self" and "health" as they are used by futurologists when they seek at once radically to change the referents for these terms, sometimes beyond recognition, is to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist." To recognize, as I do, and to insist on the recognition, as I do, of the absolutely and irrefutably true facts that human beings are and have always been and are always going to remain mortal to the extent that life is a biological process and intelligence remains incarnated in biological brains and social struggle in a living and finite world is, again, to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist." And to testify, as I do, to the reality of the record in which literally all of the meaning and beauty and pleasure and wonder and power in which humanity has had a part in the world has been both perfectly possible and indeed exclusively available to always only mortal beings is, once again, to risk being derided by Robot Cultists as what they call a "Deathist."

What is wanted, writes Pellissier, "is to promote the Value of Life. Exalting human existence as the extraordinary experience that it is, redefines the Longevity Party movement. Maxim Maximus indicates this on the Longevity Party website; we want to be known as the 'Party for Life.' Conversely, all other groups can be castigated as a 'Party for Death.' Praising and promoting Life EverLasting gives transhumanists a powerful role, as ecstatic clairvoyants and scientific messiahs." You know, Science! (Also, "Maxim Maximus"? Very Serious!) You know, one needn't exactly be thrilled at the prospect of death or displeased by the great progressive of work of therapy and care and support through which illness is ameliorated (outside of the Robot Cult this is known as the rather commonsense appreciation of, you know, healthcare) to also deny utterly that mortality spoils everything for everybody or even counts as the worst evil in a world of inequities and troubles. Of course, we are all familiar enough with the uses to which phrases like "the Party of Life" can be put by political movements to have some healthy skepticism about declarations by people claiming not only to speak for "Life" but claiming that everybody who disagrees with them is dealing in death. There are many people in today's America who fancy themselves Life's great champions while at once treating women as incapable of making decisions concerning their own bodies, indifferent to the conditions of support that would define the quality of life of a child born of an unwanted pregnancy they would eagerly force a woman to bring to term against her will under threat of violence, all the while cheering the prospect of the execution of criminals (including, for some, doctors who perform abortions and women who would seek them) even knowing that at least sometimes this irrevocable punishment will be unjust, championing the unchecked proliferation of deadly weapons on our streets, denigrating the regulation of pollution and toxic substances, and denying the consensus of scientists that humans are contributing to redressable climate change that threatens all life on earth. Beyond the sensible skepticism born of such experience, just looking at Pellissier's specific proposal here, does it really make sense to declare oneself a brave and solitary promoter of the value of "Life" at all while at once denigrating so thoroughly so many of the terms on which it has always been lived?

Again, it is obviously stupid to deny that all humans have always been mortal and obviously stupid to pretend that the elimination of so universal a dimension of the human condition would not raise questions as to the humanity of beings so transformed -- at least insofar as that "humanity" had hitherto been reckoned. It is just as obviously stupid to pretend that there is anything in actual or even remotely developing medical science or technical expertise that makes the contemplation of such transformations matters of anything like practical concern, even if they remain relevant as ways to illuminate philosophical questions (after all, death denialism and wish-fulfillment fantasizing about eternal youth are among the earliest and most endlessly reiterated themes in the literary archive). The first kind of stupidity is just sloppy and lazy thinking, unworthy of intelligent assertion and demonstrative of fatal unseriousness, but the second connects more often than not to actual fraud.

If you think I jest or exaggerate when I deride Robot Cultists who act as though if only everybody could be convinced to clap louder suddenly we would unleash the spontaneous magical soopertech "forces of immortalization" that remain shackled by the weight of pessimists who keep on noticing that people age and die, you need only read Pellissier himself: "Obliterating Death requires a two-pronged attack. Science has to conquer the scourge, but, unfortunately, science is impeded by a stubborn obstacle that’s historically stone-walls progress: the narrow, anxiety-ridden, change-adverse conservatism of most human minds." Do recall Pellissier's talk of "ecstatic clairvoyants and scientific messiahs" before you would relinquish to him even momentarily the keys to the science car. Be that as it may, it still remains one thing to act as if the only reason people are mortal is because sane people recognize the fact of our mortality, and another thing to actually go on to peddle anti-aging kremes and boner-herbs and head-freezing schemes and nanobotic respirocyte animations for money among the rubes.

But it is not enough just to point out how stupid Robot Cultists are being when they fling the "Deathist" term around as they do -- and believe me, this is far from the only stupid thing Robot Cultists spend their limited time on earth doing -- I think it is important to note the extent to which this idiotic "Deathist" term of theirs, if it had any substantial reference to speak of, might more aptly be directed at them.

I say this because it is also fair to say that IF human life expectancy were actually to improve in any kind of substantial way in the actual world, it will almost certainly be because progressive citizens, activists, and administrators educate, agitate, and organize to provide more access to clean water, nutritious food, prenatal care, available but unprofitable treatments for neglected diseases to more people in the world, especially among the most vulnerable people in overexploited regions and populations in the world.

While some Robot Cultists may have notional commitments to such efforts it is crucial to grasp that there is nothing that they contribute from the vantage of their futurology to those commitments and that so long as they are speaking futurologically they are not contributing to these efforts, and indeed they are distracting attention away from these efforts and often actively undermining these efforts through the proposal of imaginary techno-fixes that promote complacency and deny the relevance of actually-available reforms and strategies that are ready-to-hand. Even to the extent that life expectancy might rise in general through the development of new genetic or prosthetic medical techniques it is crucial to note how rarely Robot Cultists are actual participants either in the scientific research and publication, the technical implementation and distribution, or even in the real-world political organizing to increase scientific research spending, improve science education, overcome proprietary circumscriptions of technoscientific innovation and access through elite-incumbent intellectual property regimes, and so on.

This point acquires special resonance in reference to this particular piece by Pellissier, because as we have seen he is not only making the usual nonsensical "anti-deathist" noises of the Robot Cultists in this piece but is doing so in the context of promoting a new "movement" calling itself the Longevity Party. Of course, Robot Cultists are forever re-packaging their stale devotions as Brave New Movements, starting political parties and phony movements that have no real constituencies responding to no real problems, fighting for libertopian asteroid belt colonies that nobody now alive will ever live to see or fighting for the rights of artificial intelligent software that don't exist, writing online manifestos whomping up the same lame digital utopianism with disposable neologisms and pretending that all this represents serious political activity even though it is more or less the same handful of guru wannabes in charge every time and an endlessly revolving and yet never really changing cast of True Believer wannabes who sign on every time.

Just as they claim to be doing politics when they are really indulging in shabby self-promotion, so too they claim to be interested in more medical research even though they are not aligned with legible healthcare advocacy in any way but want to agitate for more money for what they call "radical longevity research," in other words for public money diverted from legitimate medicine and for public legitimacy conferred on the usual futurological snake oil salesmen and software coders who think they are biologists who throng the New Age and nutritional supplement convention circuit with the cryonics cranks and "uploading" enthusiasts who think materialism somehow justifies "soul migration" fantasies and that a picture of you is the same thing as you, except, somehow also immortal.

While Robot Cultists traffic in the fear of death their discourse and their organizations do nothing to improve actual lives in any practical way while they distract attention and derange effort from such practical work at every turn. If their pet term of abuse were not so patently ridiculous in the first place the question might be well asked of them, just who, after all, are the real "Deathists"?

21 comments:

jimf said...

> Just as they claim to be doing politics when they are really
> indulging in shabby self-promotion, so too they claim to be interested
> in more medical research even though they are not aligned with
> legible healthcare advocacy in any way but want to agitate for
> more money for what they call "radical longevity research,"
> in other words for public money diverted from legitimate medicine. . .

Ehh. They should stick with the vampire books.

Or Rider Haggard:

"Tell me, stranger: life is -- why therefore should not life be
lengthened for a while? What are ten or twenty or fifty thousand years
in the history of life? ... There is naught that is wonderful
about the matter... Life is wonderful, ay, but that it should be a
little lengthened is not wonderful. Nature hath her animating
spirit as well as man, who is Nature's child, and he who can find
that spirit, and let it breathe upon him, shall live with her life.
He shall not live eternally, for Nature is not eternal;
and she herself must die, even as the nature of the moon has died...
But when shall she die? Not yet, I ween, and while she lives,
so shall he who hath all her secret live with her."

"Ah, how little knowledge does a man acquire in his life. He gathereth
it up like water, but like water it runneth through his fingers,
and yet, if his hands be but wet as though with dew, behold a generation
of fools call out, 'See, he is a wise man!'"

-- Ayesha, She-who-must-be-obeyed,
to L. Horace Holly
in H. Rider Haggard's _She_

jimf said...

> Exalting human existence as the extraordinary experience that
> it is, redefines the Longevity Party movement. Maxim Maximus
> indicates this on the Longevity Party website. . .

Ah yes, Maxim Maximus. The great, great, great,...
great grandson of Biggus Dickus.

Giulio Prisco said...

Re "[It is] obviously stupid to pretend that the elimination of so universal a dimension of the human condition would raise questions as to the humanity of beings so transformed."

I agree! (but perhaps you mean "deny" instead of "pretend." ;-)

Dale Carrico said...

Quite right, thank you for that. I suppose it makes copy-editing the easier when you suspect anything that seems to be agreeable to you seems sure to be contrary to my intentions! By the way, do you really deny that the elimination of so much which has conditioned the experience and discourse of life as we know it would not even open the door to questions about the propriety of the easy use of familiar terms whose referents would presumably be made to be so very different? You deny even the question arises, even allowing you the argumentative possibility of overcoming the objection (rightly or wrongly by my lights), you don't even see the force of the objection in the first place? Really? Really?

Giulio Prisco said...

Of course I agree that life without death would be different from life as we know it. But also life without headaches would be different from life as we know it. Different is not necessarily worse, it may be better.

Dale Carrico said...

You cannot pretend to be a good faith interlocutor on this subject while implying that human techno-immortalization would be like changing one's socks -- if such a phrase as "human techno- immortalization" is even conceptually coherent at all let alone worthy of contemplation as a kind of remotely practical prospect rather than some sort of essentially poetic utterance to be judged on aesthetic terms.

Giulio Prisco said...

You can still feel like yourself, and happier, after changes much more radical than changing your socks. Your grandparent(s), or theirs, moved to America from Europe one or two centuries ago, in what can only have been a very radical and dramatic change for them, leaving their country, families, friends, language, favorite foods etc. behind. I hope they found a good and happy life in America.

Giulio Prisco said...

A better and simpler analogy is just growing up. I remember crying in despair when I was about 5, at the idea that someday I would leave childhood behind and become an adult. I guess everyone has similar memories, and everyone remembers that the change is very radical and dramatic indeed. But we are still here, adults.

Dale Carrico said...

Will immortal sooper-intelligent cyborg angels still enjoy their once favorite foods? The world breathlessly awaits the verdict of the Robot Cult. You are a good person to hope immigrants like my great grandparents (one of those was a native American, but never mind) found a happy life when they came to America -- it really is too bad, to be sure, that such attitudes are so rarely to be found outside the great-hearted and oh so commonsensical precincts of the Robot Cult.

Giulio Prisco said...

Re "Will immortal sooper-intelligent cyborg angels still enjoy their once favorite foods?"

But OF COURSE!!! We will simulate the taste of delicious food down to the tiniest detail, and we will eat as much as we want without becoming fat!

Dale Carrico said...

Yes, the analogization of imaginary ascension/ transcension to actually real adulthood/ pubescence is a common move in many religious faiths. Of course, the analogy is strictly speaking false and not at all clarifying conceptually.

Plenty of people of faith will agree with me in denying the force of such mundane analogies to grasp such articles of faith, just as will freethinkers and atheists will in ways that are even more congenial to my own thinking.

Dying isn't anything like growing up, after all, getting your brain hamburgerized and plopped in some cryonics scam artist's dewar isn't anything like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly. To say otherwise makes no more sense than to say you believe in the existence of a being beyond existence just because you want imagine in your mind that this incoherent notion looks like an old man with a beard in a stone chair.

As I said before, however, you and your fellow Robot Cultists are of course perfectly free to indulge these notions if you without my censure if you would concede them to be essentially poetical utterances, or at any rate not matters of real science or serious policy or actual philosophy. I would still judge your analogy rather bleakly unoriginal and inapt and ungainly on aesthetic grounds, but, you know, let a bazillion flowers bloom.

Dale Carrico said...

We will simulate the taste of delicious food down to the tiniest detail, and we will eat as much as we want without becoming fat!

I guess late nite is the time for infomercials after all, but let's not encourage endless dilation in this vein. I'm bored now, let's see if anybody else has anything to say now, shall we?

Giulio Prisco said...

Right. And happy birthday! (couple of days too late I fear).

Athena Andreadis said...

"Many researchers suggest that Death will soon be annihilated."

I don't know whether to laugh or weep.

jimf said...

> Contra Pellissier, I think it is fair to say that not everybody
> would want to spend 10,000 years living what passes for the lives
> they are now living. . .

And if you **could** live for hundreds or thousands of years (barring
accidents), suicide might then become the commonest way out.

This is a separate issue from the current **plausibility** of the whole
>Hist "longevity" project, and discussing the **desirability**
of the indefinite prolongation of "the life we are now living"
only plays into the hands of those who scream "deathist" even
at those who merely express skepticism at the **scientific** legitimacy
of the project.

But it is worth noting that in many works of fiction in which
longevals are depicted, such creatures do not necessarily choose
to live indefinitely. Vampires as Anne Rice describes them usually
can't stand long unbroken stretches of existence -- they must "go
to earth" periodically, often for centuries at a time (Maharet
being the only known exception). The Eighteenth Men in Stapledon's _Last
and First Men_ live until they've become literally obselete,
and can't contribute significantly to society anymore (after about 50,000
years, IIRC). When they die (by choice), their friends conduct
a solemn ceremony in which they eat the body. In Iain M. Banks'
"Culture" novels, about 400 years is the expected life of a human as
human -- it's up to the individual, but sticking around for much
longer than that is considered to be in bad taste. ;->

The philosophy gets more complicated if you believe in a religious
tradition in which there are immortal "souls" apart from the
body, but in such cases the state of a soul after the physical
death of the body is often (though not always -- I'm thinking
of Mormons ;-> ) considered to be quite different from "life as
we know it".

J. R. R. Tolkien's works revolve around the juxtaposition of
two similar races of incarnates, one physically mortal (Men),
and the other physically longeval (Elves) -- though both are
construed as having a soul (fëa) which becomes separated
from a physical body (hröa) at death.
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fëa_and_hröa )

jimf said...

Speaking of Tolkien, there's an interesting essay in _Morgoth's Ring_
(Vol. 10 in the _History of Middle-earth_) explaining why Men are
forbidden to sail West to the Undying Lands with the Elves
(quoted at http://www.minastirith.com/cgi-bin/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic;f=2;t=000327 )
------------------
Let us suppose then that the Valar had also admitted to Aman
some of the Atani. . . [For a mortal child born in Aman,]
the natural span of its life, the period of the
cohesion of hroa and fea, would be no more than, say, 100
years. Not much more, even though his body would suffer no
sickness or disorder in Aman, where no such evils existed.
(Unless Men brought these evils with them - as why should they
not? Even the Eldar brought to the Blessed Realm some taint of
the Shadow upon Arda in which they came into being.)
But in Aman such a creature would be a fleeting thing. . .
He would not escape the fear and sorrow of his swift mortality
that is his lot upon Earth, in Arda Marred, but would be burdened
by it unbearably to the loss of all delight.

But if any should ask: why could not in Aman the blessing of
longevity be granted to him, as it was to the Eldar? This must be
answered. Because this [does] bring joy to the Eldar, their
nature being different from that of Men. The nature of an Elvish
fea was to endure the world to the end, and an Elvish hroa was
also longeval by nature; so that an Elvish fea finding that its
hroa endured with it, supporting its indwelling and remaining
unwearied in bodily delight, would have. . . lasting joy. . .

But what of that Man's fea? Its nature and 'doom' could not be changed,
neither by the health of Aman nor by the will of Manwe himself.
Yet it is (as the Eldar hold) its nature and doom under the will of
Eru that it should not endure Arda for long, but should depart
and go elsewhither, returning maybe direct to Eru for another
fate or purpose that is beyond the knowledge or guess of the
Eldar.

Very soon then the fea and hroa of a Man in Aman would not
be united and at peace, but would be opposed, to the great pain
of both. The hroa being in full vigour and joy of life would cling
to the fea, lest its departure should bring death; and against
death it would revolt as would a great beast in full life either flee
from the hunter or turn savagely upon him. But the fea would
be as it were in prison, becoming ever more weary of all the
delights of the hroa, until they were loathsome to it, longing
ever more and more to be gone, until even those matters for its
thought that it received through the hroa and its senses became
meaningless. The Man would not be blessed, but accursed; and
he would curse the Valar and Aman and all the things of Arda.
And he would not willingly leave Aman, for that would mean
rapid death, and he would have to be thrust forth with violence.
But if he remained in Aman, what should he come to, ere Arda
were at last fulfilled and he found release? Either his fea would
be wholly dominated by the hroa, and he would become more
like a beast, though one tormented within. Or else, if his fea
were strong, it would leave the hroa. Then one of two things
would happen: either this would be accomplished only in hate,
by violence, and the hroa, in full life, would be rent and die in
sudden agony; or else the fea would in loathing and without
pity desert the hroa, and it would live on, a witless body, not
even a beast but a monster, a very work of Melkor in the midst
of Aman, which the Valar themselves would fain destroy.

Now these things are but matters of thought, and might-have-
beens; for Eru and the Valar under Him have not permitted
Men as they are to dwell in Aman. Yet at least it may be seen
that Men in Aman would not escape the dread of death, but
would have it in greater degree and for long ages. And moreover,
it seems probable that death itself, either in agony or horror,
would with Men enter into Aman itself.

Dale Carrico said...

This is a separate issue from the current **plausibility** of the whole >Hist "longevity" project, and discussing the **desirability** of the indefinite prolongation of "the life we are now living" only plays into the hands of those who scream "deathist" even at those who merely express skepticism at the **scientific** legitimacy of the project.

Oh, yes, I quite agree with you and I agree that this is actually also an important point. That is why I begin the post with the point: "Robot Cultist Hank Pellissier argues that magic would be cool if it were real as a way of distracting your attention from the fact that magic is not real." I think that transhumanoids much prefer arguing with folks who think the techno-transcendental sooperpowers that obsess them are *dangerous* or *bad* to those who point out that these obsessions of theirs are *conceptually incoherent* and *pseudo-scientific* and *pathologically symptomatic* and *politically reactionary* as I do. Bioconservatives who wring their hands about AI and singularity and clone armies and post-humanoidal soopermen and so on are engaging in supernative futurology that perfectly supplements and supports the superlative futurology of the Robot Cultists, just as the bioconsersvative championing of homo naturalis and the transhumanoid championing of homo superior are co-supportive supplements sustaining eugenicism.

Eudoxia said...

>Dying isn't anything like growing up, after all, getting your brain hamburgerized and plopped in some cryonics scam artist's dewar isn't anything like a caterpillar becoming a butterfly.

Well, in a metamorphosis the caterpillar is disassembled into a gooey sort of thing, with only some content remaining - Analogous to hamburgerization* - before becoming a butterfly, so the analogy of uploading or cryonics as a sort of metamorphosis could apply, since the caterpillar dies so that the butterfly may be born.

And as for uploading, well, I believe a copy is a copy no matter how much philosophy and "but materialism!!!!11!" one tries to throw around; but whether the soon-to-be-a-descerebrated-corpse cares about this is a completely different matter. The caterpillar doesn't seem to mind, maybe it considers the loss of most of its identity as an acceptable sacrifice to be able to fly?

* I assume you use that term to refer to mechanical ice damage, yes? I'm inferring this because one of the criticisms of cryonics is that it's like "turning a hamburger into a cow".

Athena Andreadis said...

Two points:

1. A caterpillar is not turned "into a gooey sort of thing" -- it goes through each stage of metamorphosis according to a well-defined epi/genetic program that includes such things as internal gradients. This is lightyears away from the neuronal degradation and randomization that occurs after brain death.

More generally, the idea that body interiors, from cells to organs are soupy goo (partly the fault of textbooks) has wrought a lot of damage to both science and lay perceptions of biology.

2. Even if the concept of "goo" applied to metamorphosis, it's very unlikely that butterflies remember any conscious experiences of their caterpillar stage ("memories" carried by gradients are a different matter). So to argue that a person can attain immortality through an equivalent method, when this method obliterates the person that was, is self-defeating at best.

Eudoxia said...

Certainly not immortality, but there will probably be some continuity in personality and experience, whether this is enough to justify a conservation of personal identity, I suppose is a personal medical decision.

It's still kind of a death cult though.

jimf said...

> More generally, the idea that body interiors, from cells to
> organs are soupy goo (partly the fault of textbooks) has wrought
> a lot of damage to both science and lay perceptions of biology. . .

What, you mean there's no such thing as "protoplasm"? ;->

Remember the _Star Trek_ TOS episode "The Immunity Syndrome",
in which the Enterprise encounters a giant space amoeba, and
Spock, from his science station, announces that the interior
of it consists of "protoplasm"?