Giving Transhumanoid George Dvorsky "Credit Where Credit Is Due"

I have written lots of pieces ridiculing the ridiculous futurological stylings of transhumanoid George Dvorsky, especially since he was offered a comparatively high profile pundit-perch at io9 (for a representative sampling of my Dvorscatology scroll down to his entry in the Superlative Summary), and it shouldn't have been surprising given this focus that several people have directed my attention to a recent piece of his in which he manages to say a few things that are not quite so stupid among some other things that are still pretty stupid, Is Human Super Intelligence A Bad Idea? Shouldn't I give credit where credit is due, each of these sympathetic readers have asked me, proffering the link over and over again? I mean, a variation on that phrase, "credit where credit is due" literally appeared in every single one of these referrals to Dvorsky's piece. What gives?

You know, I'm not sure I am willing to concede that "human super intelligence" is even an idea at all, let alone a good one, and so it doesn't seem to me that creditable an advance to declare it conceivably a bad one when it comes to it. I am truly glad for Dvorsky's own sake as a fellow finite earthling that he has found his way at least momentarily to the realization that what gets called "intelligence" in the AI-deadender set he frequents tends to be a scrawny affair at best, indifferent to so much of the lived emotional embodied historical socialized richness of intelligence as it plays out in the real world. Nevertheless, the obvious fact remains that lots and lots of people already say all the sensible things Dvorsky has managed to say to this effect in the piece in question without saying any of the idiotic things he also says here and definitely endlessly elsewhere and yet I'm not sure we're giving them any credit for saying so much more so much better though presumably they deserve such credit at least as much as he does.

Also, you know, I don't happen to think futurological disasterbation about transhumanoid tropes (reductive understandings of intelligence may lead to a Robot God that eats us all instead of a Robot God who kisses away all our boo boos!) really is the least bit more helpful or serious in the way of thought than the more usual techno-utopian wish-fulfillment futurological mode about transhumanoid tropes. I personally think it is inherently deranging to misconstrue problems of user-unfriendly software or network insecurity as problems of unintelligent or malevolently intelligent designed entities rather than of unintelligent or malevolent designer entities. I haven't exactly made a secret of the fact that I think the whole discourse of artificial intelligence is a sprawling inapt inept metaphor yielding a harvest of artificial imbecillence all around. Dvorsky's assumption in this piece of a kind of futurological moderate middle pausing momentarily over a few serious AI problems is a pose -- it mostly functions to circumscribe the whole discussion of intelligent software and network design within the tropological field of artificial intellects that nourishes the worst futurological fancies in the first place. Not only is it not enough to declare oneself "pro" or "con" or "middle of the road" on questions of the Robot God or concerning the Writing on the Wall in current software and network problems that presumably foretell His Robotic Be-Coming -- I happen to think that never ever taking up any of these positions at all is the best way to have a chance at saying anything sensible about real world computation. Let's just say it's one more science-fictional game for which the only winning move is not to play.

And about science fiction... As almost inevitably happens in a George Dvorsky piece, there is once again an accompanying image from a mainstream Hollywood science fiction flick providing the proscenium into what passes for the futurological theatrum philosophicum he offers up this time around as well. I just can't repeat this enough. There is a difference between science fiction and science practice, there is a difference between science fiction and science policy, there is a difference between science fiction and science criticism. I say this as someone who is a huge science fiction fan, as someone who takes science fiction enormously seriously, and as someone who takes literary criticism seriously, too. I readily agree that like so much great literature science fiction assumes a critical and imaginative vantage on the quandaries of the present, including moral and metaphysical and sometimes even technical quandaries concerning the vicissitudes of emerging technoscience and ongoing technodevelopmental social struggle. But the actual practice of science, the actual practice of regulation, funding, and distribution of technoscientific costs, risks, and benefits in research settings and policy-making settings, as well as any kind of sustained and systematic critical analyses or even documentation of technoscience practices has actual standards and emerges out of actual discursive archives. One can quibble around the edges, one can point to occasional cross-pollinations, one can note that none of these things is really only one thing, one can elaborate complex historical trajectories and contexts for them all, but these efforts are all different from science fiction in ways that make a difference. If George Dvorsky wants to be taken for somebody doing serious or even not so serious philosophy of technology or technnology criticism or literary criticism or technoscience policy or, hell, even science fiction fandom -- every one of which are perfectly legitimate and legible endeavors of which I personally whole-heartedly approve -- well, he is doing it wrong, and I can't set that aside just because he manages a smidge of sense in public for once.

Okay, and another thing. In the column, Dvorsky quotes life-long self-identified transhumanists like Mark Walker (as he has done for James Hughes or Mikey Anissimov in other recent pieces of his), never pointing out that these are people who are affiliated with him through his own membership in transhumanist organizations, pretending they are independent intellectuals in order to raise their public profiles. Sometimes he even has transhumanists gamely stumble upon the topic of "transhumanism" as though they were outside observers or something, as if anybody but transhumanists themselves (and a handful of weird critics like me) really talk about transhumanism as if it were this widely known, you know, "thing" that comes up among technoscientifically concerned intellectuals when they're just hanging out and shooting the breeze. Your mileage may reasonably vary on this question, but I personally think it verges on journalistic malpractice for Dvorsky to fail to point out his connection to the muckety-mucks in his own cult he is flogging this way. Dvorsky's columns in io9 are almost always straight up transhumanoid Robot Cult proselytizing for techno-transcendental techno-immortalizing sooper-humanizing consumer-paradising malarkey. And that's fine. I mean, it's terminally stupid and dangerously distracting, but, you know, you say your stupid shit and I say it's stupid shit and then people say I'm a stupid shit for saying it's stupid shit or what have you -- let a bazillion flowers bloom. But I think when Dvorsky is not just indulging in his pet ideology but stealthfully shoring up marginal institutions and organizational ties beholden to that ideology then there is a conflict of interest in play that should be seen for what it is -- and I do think if Dvorsky were a Scientologist or a Raelian doing this sort of blatant sub(cult)ural logrolling it would be exposed as such and impact his credibility (such as it is).

Howzabout this? If io9 comes to its senses and cuts Dvorsky's mic, I'll give credit where credit is due.