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

Thursday, March 15, 2012

What Should I Share With the Folks at the World Futurist Society?

I have had an interesting and still-ongoing exchange with futurologist Patrick Tucker (it's here, should you want to put in your own two cents) which has now yielded the rather unexpected result that Tucker has created a blog-perch at the World Future Society on which I have been welcomed (for now) to re-post occasional material. I actually subscribed to the "The Futurist" a while back, and although it has more than its share of Superlative Futurologists on hand it also features a substantial dose of more mainstream futurology and pop-tech as well. Of course, I'm a critic of all varieties of futurological discourse, but I do wonder what writings of mine would be most interesting and useful to its readership. Tucker started the ball rolling by re-posting my Ten Reasons to Take Seriously the Transhumanists, Singularitarians, Techno-Immortalists, Nano-Cornucopiasts and Other Assorted Robot Cultists and White Guys of "The Future", which I found an interesting choice, maybe more in-your-face than I would have chosen to introduce myself with (you all know what a retiring tremulous flower I am, after all), but attention-grabbing and not bad as a synoptic view of the sorts of connections I make in a snarky concise sort of way. I plan to post there no more than once or twice a week, since I don't want to wear out my welcome or saturation bomb them in a way that provokes dismissal, and I'm wondering what regular readers here think would be prime material for re-posting or re-working. My inclination is to post critiques of "geo-engineering," maybe stuff exposing the eugenicism of both enhancement advocacy and its naturalist opposition, and maybe some critiques of animal uplift stuff? I'm unsure. Help me out with recommendations, won't you?

11 comments:

Dale Carrico said...

Also, too, that decade old thin-me pic gives new meaning to the phrase retro-futurism... clearly I need to get a Bill Burroughs style grumpy gus on a porch rocker online.

jimf said...

> My inclination is to post critiques of "geo-engineering,"
> maybe stuff exposing the eugenicism of both enhancement
> advocacy and its naturalist opposition, and maybe some
> critiques of animal uplift stuff? I'm unsure.

How about your definition of "superlativity" and why it's pernicious?
How futurism (especially at the extremes of >Hism and **especially**
singularitarianism) appropriates "the conventional omni-predicates
of theology — omniscience, omnipotence, omnibenevolence". How this
kind of thing is always perched on the edge of turning cultish,
with guru-wannabes and True Believers waiting to snap into
the usual roles. How this rhetoric and motivation is ripe for exploitation
by con men. How it sucks people into a fantasy world that makes
it possible not to care about real problems (global warming? Not to
worry -- the Robot God will look after it; the only important
thing is to build Friendly (TM) AI, so send money.). The difference between
science-fiction fandom as aesthetic appreciation/entertainment
and SF-based futurism as an ideology (or a substitute for one, or a religion-substitute).
The joined-at-the-hip connection between libertopianism/Ayn Randism
and >Hism (pace James Hughes, whose "socialism" is by-and-large treated
as a foreign body to be driven off by the Extropian immune system).
The cultural homogeneity of >Hism -- the mens'-club atmosphere,
indifference or hostilility to feminism, indifference or hostility to gay
and/or other minority rights (e.g., "racism is over -- it's a non-issue
these days"). The body-loathing. The denigration of biology in
favor of machinery, the insistence on the incorrigible "irrationality"
of biological brains that can only be corrected by artificial intelligence.
The disturbing proximity of >Hism with various right-wing nutteries (above
and beyond libertarianism) -- gun enthusiasm, survivalism, wacko Waco
obsessions. The advocacy by some of these folks, after 9/11, to
nuke the Middle East. Even Holocaust denial has popped up.
The obsession with IQ, _The Bell Curve_, and so on.
Cryonics, and its oddities.

"Animal uplift" is subsidiary to the above -- it's an example of
the skewed priorities encouraged by taking superlativity
altogether too seriously.

Eugenics -- well, I see that also as being connected with the
right-wing rigidity of so many >Hists -- the belief in an objective
morality that will be worked out and **imposed** by the Robot God,
the suspicion of the diversity that already exists beyond heterosexual
white-male science-nerd society.

How's that for a start?

Start with your definition of "superlativity".

jimf said...

> Tucker has created a blog-perch at the World Future Society
> on which I have been welcomed (for now) to re-post occasional
> material.

Be careful, though, that you're not being lured (either
entirely innocently, or deliberately) into a situation
in which all the usual suspects -- Pico and Poco and
Rico and Roco and Kannabis Shitzu and Gnutopia da Pinga
and Mr. Antsypants -- pile on each and every post,
screaming bloody murder, and generating long pile-on
hostile comment threads (whether or not you get sucked into
extending them).

You won't, after all, have moderation privileges on somebody
else's blog, and you could conceivably end up in as
unedifying a situation as trying to comment objectively
on the literary merits of _Atlas Shrugged_ on an
Objectivist blog.

Something to think about.

Maybe you should just write the book. ;->

Athena Andreadis said...

Jim is right. That's what happened when I was asked to have articles of mine once again posted on the IEET blog because "things had changed" (not). Tried one round, told them no go, waste of time & energy. Real scientists won't debate creationists, flat earthers, transhumorists etc because it gives the impression that their position has merit, à la Faux News "fair and equal".

Dale Carrico said...

I am assuming for the moment that there are educable innocents and not only willful fantasists and charlatans to be found at wfs. I always have the impression that Robot Cultists were already casting about for a cult to cleave to, whereas many who read the Futurist also read Scientific American but not Nature and are, you know, naifs. I'm a rhetorician, not a scientist, and futurology may be damaging, deranging, and dangerous -- but it is a discourse, and discourse analysis is after all what I do. If they are as bad as all that, I daresay either I or they will throw up their hands in disgust and unperson me soon enough.

Chad Lott said...

I think something framed in practicality would be a great intro:

How to tell when your futurist is just selling you something.

Evaluating claims of accuracy in predictions.

I've always enjoyed the way film critic Armond White does his reviews. He might say some prickly, trollish shit, but he always give you an option:

"This movie sucks, watch this instead" -followed by reasons.

Ex: Replicators won't feed people, but permaculture does. Innovative agriculture needs sooper-geniuses too.

jimf said...

> I think something framed in practicality would be a great intro:
> . . .
> [A film reviewer] might say some prickly, trollish shit, but he always
> give[s] you [a different movie suggestion].
> . . .
> Ex: Replicators won't feed people, but permaculture does. Innovative
> agriculture needs sooper-geniuses too.

I get the idea here, but proposing and defending the "positive" suggestions risks
being a distraction, and a dilution of the needed **negative** criticism.
Somebody who has a pretty damned good idea of why it probably isn't
a good idea to go around telling people that "replicators" will
feed their children, is not thereby obligated to be an expert
on the subject of why permaculture might. Unless, of course, the
idea is that Dale is being invited by the World Futurist Society to
propose plausible **alternatives** to contemporary >Hism (which
sounds rather like a bait-and-switch to me).

I do think, however -- and I guess that's what I was trying to suggest
earlier, though I didn't say it explicitly -- that Dale should
try to build a structured case with his reposts (as if, indeed,
he were sketching the outline of a book), rather than reposting
independent, scattershot pieces -- or, frankly, less significant ones, like a
criticism of Hughes' nonsense about the moral obligation of
animal "uplift" (TM: David Brin). That would be a great subsidiary example
to use for the main case: the overreliance on SF tropes in >Hist discourse,
the derangement of what purports to be public policy recommendations; but it's
pretty watered-down as an overall critique of >Hism if presented
as a stand-alone article (and **easily** dismissed by the great
majority of >Hists, especially if the original idea [putting aside
Brin or even earlier SF authors like Olaf Stapledon]
came from Dr. H.).

Patrick Tucker said...

Hi, so interesting and useful discussion here. First, to clear a couple of things up, WFS membership is open to anyone who wishes to join. Our members are sociologists, scientists, corporate planners, educators, students, and retirees. Previous members have included Newt Gingrich, Al Gore, Buckminster Fuller, Robert F. Kennedy, and Vaclav Havel.

In terms of the tone of comments on our site, it's always respectful. We have a lot of educators, down-to-earth engineers, government folks, and, yes, more than a few people who are very excited about cutting edge technology and who might call themselves transhumanists. We also have vocal skeptics.

We at THE FUTURIST have a lot of readers who also read both Scientific American and NATURE thank you very much. Yes, some of our readers are naifs but many others have PhDs in technical fields. We were nominated in 2007 for an Utne Independent Press Award for our Science and Technology coverage.

In 2011, THE FUTURIST featured the writing of technology "maverick" Kevin Kelly, marketing guru Seth Godin, nature writer Richard Louv, Internet-freedom scholar Evgeny Morozov, environmentalist and MacAuthur Fellow Lester Brown among many other thought leaders. We explored the future of work, healthcare, energy, and education, and featured exclusive and on location coverage of the Japanese tsunami and its aftermath. We also did a lot of coverage of sustainability, aquifer depletion, soil erosion, sustainable farming, etc.

We've run plenty of stories on the concept of transhumanism. Some of them have taken a supportive tone and these have been popular. Other stories have been baldly critical. Running the later has cost us thousands of dollars in potential donations from Silicon Valley.

We are not, in other words, a cult. Our biggest problem is that our most important coverage is the stuff that gets the least amount of clickthrough and attention. Having sad all that we are happy to add your critical voice to the mix of what is available on our site.

Dale Carrico said...

We are not, in other words, a cult.

I'm proceeding on that very assumption. I daresay I'm much more encouraged to hear that Robert F. Kennedy was a member than to hear Kevin Kelly is (technology doesn't WANT anything -- that's part of what I mean by "naifs").

we are happy to add your critical voice to the mix

You've got it -- I certainly do not plan to be belligerent, but I can't help but be critical.

jimf said...

> > We are not, in other words, a cult.
>
> I daresay I'm much more encouraged to hear that Robert F. Kennedy
> was a member. . .

Robert F. Kennedy died nearly 44 (count 'em) years ago.
During _Star Trek_'s second-season reruns.

These days,

http://www.wfs.org/node/1033
-----------
Patrick Tucker is the deputy editor of THE FUTURIST magazine
and content director of this site. He has written prodigiously
on the topics of AI and AGI, information technology, cybernetics,
nanotechnology, genetics and genetic ethics, invention,
climate change and climate change mitigation, demography,
and neuroscience and his writing has appeared in various
publications and on many sites, including THE FUTURIST magazine
-----------

"AGI", in particular, is "What Ben Goertzel and Shane Legg mean
when they talk about artificial intelligence"

( Who coined the term “AGI”?
August 28, 2011
http://wp.goertzel.org/?p=173 )

and I would suspect anybody who has adopted the term of having at
least sipped the Kool-Aid.

I guess you'll find out.

jimf said...

> We've run plenty of stories on the concept of transhumanism.
> Some of them have taken a supportive tone and these have been
> popular. Other stories have been baldly critical. Running
> the la[t]ter has cost us thousands of dollars in potential
> donations from Silicon Valley.

Interesting insight into the realities of entertainment-magazine
publication.

You've got a budget (in lost "advertising revenue") here, Dale.

Use it wisely! :-/