Cyborgs

[Kursk]

Kurzweil writes that in my children's lifetime we will be very far down the path of merging with our technology via biomechanical and biocomputer interfaces and that this will confer a marked evolutionary advantage to those that agree to be computer and bioprosthetically enhanced. He doesn't see a problem with this. Bill Joy has written that technology may result in our extinction, with particular concern for self replicating technologies like nanotechnology, robots and engineered organisms. Maybe this is old noise to most of you but I re-read his essay and was again powerfully moved to think about the topic. Its the "road to hell paved with good intentions" argument where Bill is questioning his smaller role in a process that could end the species. I throw this out to get your thoughts and also to get a view from the medical side - what are we going to be when we start replacing part after part with plastics and magnetic motors? How do we define humanity then?

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/8.04/joy.html?pg=3&topic=&topic_set=

[Kursk]

BTW - Kurzweil's book is a fun and interesting read:
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140282025/qid=1083188048/sr=2-1/ref=sr_2_1/002-1770528-5487206

[vegan4]

The end of the human race is nigh?

Kursk, you sound upset.

I think I know why.

The Cardinals.

Look, St. Louis' baseball team is foundering, playing below .500 ball as of today. Although I don't follow MLB day to day, St. Louis' runs allowed do suggest that your pitching staff is just awful. Gone are the days of Bob Gibson.

Does this mean life as we know it is finished?

Hey, I'm from Buffalo, New York. The sight of the Lombardi trophy makes me break into a cold sweat. You don't see me linking to websites that suggest imminent species extinction. You probably just need some catchup. Catchup has natural mellowing agents, as evidenced by this: http://prairiehome.publicradio.org/performances/20040424/scripts/catchup.shtml

[Kursk]

Actually I am more of an optimist - via Kurzweil, but I think Bill Joy makes an interesting point. While we go about our usual processes of investigation, researching and passing on that knowledge are we involved in larger "macro-process" of which we are unaware, focused as we are on our surrounding microcosm? It just gave me pause to reconsider "where are we going" and "do we have a plan". Is it even possible to have a plan? Maybe the questions here are too large to consider. Just threw it out for your consideration, not a doom sayer, and gonna go get some ketchup. The big bottle. Hunts.

[vegan4]

The article by Bill Joy is thought provoking.

Comparing how placentals displaced marsupials to robots and homo sapiens is not equivalent in my mind. Placentals & marsupials are both water and carbon-based life forms; both are specifically, mammals, and would be involved in a natural, Darwinian struggle for survival. I don't believe you can extend this to machines or any human tool. Simplistically (and somewhat ridiculously), knives and forks have not risen up to conquer us. I'm sure that someone with more practical intelligence regards computers will explain that I' missing an important point. I'd love to listen to that perspective.

Joy's admonition to include ethics or routine ethical debate in the study of science and technology is valuable. I believe that this already occurs to some extent just because human beings are involved in the day-to-day mechanics. We all make ethical choices as we carry out our daily responsibilities and these choices affect results. I made an ethical choice when I decided to respond to your thoughtful post. Still, daily ethical banter is important. Perhaps had that option been open to Kaczynski we wouldn't have his miserable legacy.

Joy references Kurt Vonnegut, a fellow anthropologist. But he references Cat's Cradle. I believe a better Vonnegut reference is Player Piano. Have you read that? Player Piano's storyline resembles much of what Joy describes. In the end, according to Vonnegut, we will continue to invent and tinker.

Joy also cites the Dalai Lama. I'm a follower of Thich Nhat Hanh's Buddhist philosophy. As I experience Hanh's philosophy, the relative or worldly truth that includes nanotechology is impermanent. When we as beings are practiced in ethics and meditation, we see the relative truth as offering either happiness or suffering. We choose happiness. We treat sick people, we choose to use technology to improve the human condition and we are watchful of illness or excess technology that will result in too much suffering or in losing our human-ness. Hanh wrote that "if you recognize and accept your pain without running away from it, you will discover that although pain exists, joy also exists". There is joy in technology.

The second article in the Wired issue you linked, the "A Tale of Two Botanies" provides evidence of a tempering of technology that is more cadent with my expectations. The authors there conclude " for crops, the best choice would be fairer distribution of food grown by a respectful and biologically informed agriculture that stops treating soil like dirt" - organic farming. My wife and I practice organic farming in our little backyard gardens. I believe that the more we learn of our ability to manipulate the environment, the more we are awestruck by the natural world. That will temper our embrace of technology. Our awareness that gene-spliced Bt insecticide in corn pollen kills monarch butterflies helps make organic choices wiser. We continue to tinker but we do so as ethically-bound scientists, respectful of the power of the web of life we find ourselves enmeshed in.

I hope to be able to engage in further discussion on this subject. I'm sure there's much I missed and much I need to know about this. I have other thoughts on this subject but I'm getting busy just this moment (ah, the worldly truth...).

[vegan4]

BTW, I never meant to suggest you were a Luddite or doomsayer. Anyone who listens to Neil Finn and practices medicine as thoughtfully as you give evidence of is an incurable optimist. Just tryin' to keep the conversation lively :) .

The intrusion of computers and technology into human health and the possible precipitation of a cataclysm by this technology is very real, I agree. In his book about Feynman, "Genius", the physicist James Gleick does a nice job of reporting the development of he bomb. It all did go a little bit too smoothly; brilliant human beings devising a means to exterminate life on the planet. I forgot that Teller thought we might set fire to the sky.

Could we create an interdependence or a dependence on technology that confounds our human-ness? My understanding of the use of binary systems in nanotechnology makes that seem inevitable if only because the technology makes it possible and we are too curious to avoid doing it. Likewise, I believe that genetic engineering (an oxymoron at present according to Joy's article) is inevitable. We will hopefully use these technologies to prolong life and maybe address and correct conditions such as Bloom's syndrome or cystic fibrosis. Like CABG and bone marrow transplantations, this medical technology has the capacity to serve us well when employed responsibly.

There will still be reminders, like the Monarch butterfly, that we need to honor this planet as our home. Exercise and diet and meditation will still be important, perhaps more so because of the heightened scrutiny technology will bring to bear on human health.

I am glad you began this string. I am heartened by the knowledge that someone like Bill Joy wrestles with these issues.

I believe that the ability or, perhaps better put, the desire to engage in self-criticism and to conceive of an absolute truth are quintessential attributes of organic life. Selfishly, I prefer that organic life remain preeminent on this planet. As we invest more of our lives in the progress promised by nanotechnology, robotics and genetic engineering, we will be well-served to cultivate those things that keep us human on a daily basis. Like this discourse.

best regards,

John

[vegan4]

Nature AOP, published online 28 April 2004; doi:10.1038/nature02551

An autonomous molecular computer for logical control of gene expression

YAAKOV BENENSON1,2, BINYAMIN GIL2, URI BEN-DOR1, RIVKA ADAR2 & EHUD SHAPIRO1,2

1 Department of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel
2 Department of Biological Chemistry, Weizmann Institute of Science, Rehovot 76100, Israel


Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to E.S. (Ehud.Shapiro@weizmann.ac.il).


Early biomolecular computer research focused on laboratory-scale, human-operated computers for complex computational problems. Recently, simple molecular-scale autonomous programmable computers were demonstrated allowing both input and output information to be in molecular form. Such computers, using biological molecules as input data and biologically active molecules as outputs, could produce a system for 'logical' control of biological processes. Here we describe an autonomous biomolecular computer that, at least in vitro, logically analyses the levels of messenger RNA species, and in response produces a molecule capable of affecting levels of gene expression. The computer operates at a concentration of close to a trillion computers per microlitre and consists of three programmable modules: a computation module, that is, a stochastic molecular automaton; an input module, by which specific mRNA levels or point mutations regulate software molecule concentrations, and hence automaton transition probabilities; and an output module, capable of controlled release of a short single-stranded DNA molecule. This approach might be applied in vivo to biochemical sensing, genetic engineering and even medical diagnosis and treatment. As a proof of principle we programmed the computer to identify and analyse mRNA of disease-related genes associated with models of small-cell lung cancer and prostate cancer, and to produce a single-stranded DNA molecule modelled after an anticancer drug.

[Kursk]

V- thanks for your thoughts. I think the main thing that bothers me about these dystopian scenarios is the way I can see them envisioned. Although I grew up in a household where all sorts of bizarre conspiricy theories were always flying about (innumerable secret societies controlling everything) I personally never believed people could stay organized long enough and act in concert to achieve these ends. Joy's scenario of the slippery slope where head down scientists working on disparate areas create the afore mentioned self-replicating technology perhaps for no other reason than to see if it could be done sounds more like what happens. Things that don't seem to be dangerous at the time lead to bad things down the road. It is doubtful that the current vetting system for reasearch control will prove adequate. Another point that Kurzweil is trying to make clear is the Law of Accelerating Returns; in short technology is on an ever accelerating curve. It is not linear, but we tend to think it is - hence these danger points seem far in the future when in fact we are two trains accelerating at each other. And lastly, I am somewhat concerned and that we don't seem to have a good history of supressing technology, especially when it seems to offer a competitive advantage. I think nuclear power/weapons may fall in this category; we still have biological and chemical warfare agents more restricted by their inefficiency than by ethical debate.

And I guess that we don't really have a plan. Like that other stuff, technology happens .... and THEN we deal with it.

[Kursk]

Vegan - my favorite philosopher has said the same thing musically!
Four Seasons In One Day (Neil Finn/Tim Finn)
LYRICS

Four seasons in one day
Lying in the depths of your imagination
Worlds above and worlds below
The sun shines on the black clouds
Hanging over the domain
Even when you're feeling warm
The temperature could drop away
Like four seasons in one day

Smiling as the shit comes down
You can tell a man from what he has to say
Everything gets turned around
And I will risk my neck again

You can take me where you will
Up the creek and through the mill
Like all the things you can't explain
Four seasons in one day

Blood dries up
Like rain, like rain
Fills my cup
Like four seasons in one day

It doesn't pay to make predictions
Sleeping on an unmade bed
Finding out wherever there is comfort
There is pain
Only one step away
Like four seasons in one day


From the album Woodface
Chords & Tab for this song



Lyrics Copyright © 1991 Roundhead

[Kursk]

For those just tuning in here's a bit on bionic ears:
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.05/start.html?pg=3

[ozzie]

You better split man the endz is near
cause he messed with Ross Wilson who was the younger crowd by 3 years of this guy Billy Thorpe (and The Aztecs ) Right about when a young band called AC-DC were getting ready to rock the Crock..
Dammmm makes kinda elder status talking of the start of ac-dc had to be 25 years ago or more

humph and I thought that neil finn meant something

lol
[QUOTE=Kursk]Neil Finn
[/QUOTE3 year vers

[Kursk]

Ozzy I got the split enz reference but I am unable to translate the rest. What is the story with Ross Wilson?

Why the disparaging (I think) remark about Finn?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[ozzie]

Ross Wilson was (IS) very much a ICON in Australia and he really opened up the idea of a musical show rather than musical concert..Which the enz played out also .. In those days the path to music for a kiwi band was
NZ to Australia to Britain to the world..

Finn just like Wilson were much ahead of their time and paid the penalty I guess..
it was interesting times and the Australasian music scene was split into rock aka AC-DC Billy Thorpe soft rock like split enz daddy cool easybeats then all the other beatles /Elvis lamers LOL
And music was battles on many front we had the British invasion the Yankee invasion to deal with..

Understand that NZ'ers in those days got about as much respect and Canadians LOL
Nothing bad about finn just drove me crazy as I knew the quotes and the name but it took a while to sink in.. Add Hey still is a NZ er lol
just like the Canadians NZ'ers love to tag "hey" at the end of each sentence


Ozzy I got the split enz reference but I am unable to translate the rest. What is the story with Ross Wilson?

Why the disparaging (I think) remark about Finn?

Inquiring minds want to know!

[Kursk]

You simply must download and review this PPT presentation by Ray Kurzweil (http://www.kurzweilai.net/pps/army).

it just blows me away.

Computers disappear in 2010

The logarithmic progression is frightening!

[Surgeon]

Its amazing how television could morph such a powerful and emotional book as 'Cyborg' a seminal study on the combination of man and machine, as well as a powerful sci-fi read, to the campy, kitchy, unscientific '6 million $ man'

[ozzie]

Yo heads up its a 30 meg download grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr




You simply must download and review this PPT presentation by Ray Kurzweil (http://www.kurzweilai.net/pps/army).

it just blows me away.

Computers disappear in 2010

The logarithmic progression is frightening!

[Kursk]

Yeah, sorry 'bout that. But look at the slide on network speed increasing exponentionally - if you had waited until after lunch it would have taken mere nanoseconds to download!

[DrWinn]

Once we have massively parallel processing as envisioned with quantum computers, the possibility of true 'artificial intelligence' will emerge. The genius of these computers will not be constrained by the limits of the human brain and improvements in all areas of technology will accelerate logarithmically. I believe the movie I, Robot was close to the mark, but instead of just taking over menial jobs, I believe these super smart robots will also become tomorrow's doctors and engineers. Now if you were a super smart robot, would you want to be a slave to humans?....

[Tim2]

Some guys with >3SD brains would be challenged just by this thread.

I doubt the AI will be able to create algorithms that won't bottleneck where intuition is required. Logical choices and matters of the heart are at odds. I suppose they could be programmed to make irrational choices that may simulate intuition. That implies a 50% failure rate though.

[ozzie]

Now if you were a super smart robot, would you want to be a slave to humans?....
cant be any worse than a slave to our tax code, medicare/caid or wives for that matter, or even docsboard (as bigdoc only knows)
A slave to family guy I can deal with..
Oz

[Surgeon]

I would kill for a computer that would handle my patients who won't follow-up, who can't pay for the medication I prescribed, who mislead me about their previous diagnoses. Garbage in.....

[Kursk]

Why doesn't our brain work right? Why is there so much untapped potential?

The Brainman (http://www.courier-journal.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20050223/COLUMNISTS15/502230382)


But the focus of the program is Daniel Tammet, a 26-year-old British man who possesses stunning mental powers, functions on an adult level and can discuss his gift. Researchers think he is among a handful of such people on Earth.

How incredible are his skills? He can multiply 37 to the 4th power in seconds and recite the results like a computer. In one experiment, he carries the mathematical recitation of pi out to 22,500 decimal points, a feat that takes more than five hours.

[ozzie]

Why doesn't our brain work right? Why is there so much untapped potential?

easy one kursk..
our brains are bombarded with too much crap from the left..

[buslick]

Some of the novels by Vernor Vinge talk about these issues. I love his books.

http://tinyurl.com/6sr2k

http://tinyurl.com/573me

http://tinyurl.com/4uwpo

http://tinyurl.com/559gg

http://tinyurl.com/4kyn3

http://tinyurl.com/5yl4k

[Kursk]

More amazing human tricks

"To attain the rank of grand master of memory, you must be able to perform three seemingly superhuman feats. You have to memorize 1,000 digits in under an hour, the precise order of 10 shuffled decks of playing cards in the same amount of time, and one shuffled deck in less than two minutes. There are 36 grand masters of memory in the world. Only one lives in the United States"

http://slate.msn.com/id/2114925/?GT1=6208#ContinueArticle

[Kursk]

Kurzweil has a new book, same story. Humans will merge with machine and create a new (immortal) species.

Inventor Ray Kurzweil's new book, "The Singularity Is Near," predicts the fusion of humans and machines to create powerful and potentially immortal life forms.

In his book, "Enough," environmentalist Bill McKibben says that unless we forgo such technological fixes, and accept death, we will ultimately cease to be human.

Between these extremes rages a debate about the role that technology will -- or should -- play in shaping the future.

Recently the initiative has been with Kurzweil, who predicts that "within the next several decades" new beings will arise that blend human and machine traits, "a destiny we have come to refer to as the Singularity."

http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2005/10/03/BUG8QF0OO81.DTL&type=tech

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0670033847/qid=1128511647/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/104-3634196-9250346?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[Kursk]

Making some progress. Fascinating article at Pop Sci:
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/medicine/34f7cd8e5620c010vgnvcm1000004eecbccdrcrd.html