lumrant
Friday, April 30, 2004
Being Reasonable: the Godsend Movie
I stumbled upon something interesting today: the makers of a movie called Godsend have recently begun a major marketing blitz in preparation for the movie's upcoming release. Though I haven't read much in the news about the movie yet, I suspect that I will soon, as more Christian groups and "concerned citizens" band together to protest it.
To fully understand the intrigue, simply visit the movie's official Web site and click on the link that says "The Institute". You'll see.
The thing I like about this issue is that it exemplifies some of the most troubling undercurrents of American society today: scientific illiteracy and media-driven mob mentality. What is happening right now is that thousands of people are being directed to the "Institute" site by friends, misinterpreting it just as they are intended to do, getting all pissed off, and then mailing the link to other friends. Even when they eventually learn that it's all just a way to market a movie, these people are going to remain pissed. And, just as Americans supported going to war in Iraq in response to 9/11, they are going to support escalating their side of the "culture war" in response to the movie, the Web site, and the underlying premise--even though there is no basis in reality for any of it!
The brilliance of this marketing strategy makes me wonder why we haven't seen stronger analogous efforts for other movies. Jurassic Park comes to mind: one of the best parts of that movie was the "movie within a movie" where they showed a behind-the-scenes documentary/propaganda short that explained for the characters how the dino-restoration technology actually worked. Why didn't the Jurassic Park folks pull a Godsend and release that short film as a marketing device? My guess is that it's because Jurassic Park was first and foremost about special effects, and the marketing folks correctly realized that nothing should dilute that message.
Of course, there is a basis in reality for human cloning in general--just not Godsend-style cloning with the intent to exactly reproduce a dearly-departed family member. Even if no human has yet been cloned, gestated, born, and raised, technological advances guarantee that it will soon be feasible. And for this reason it is an important topic that everyone should be interested in understanding.
Indeed, what the movie Godsend should be stimulating is not moral outrage, but instead an important ethical discussion. We should be talking openly about about the differences between therapeutic and reproductive cloning and the foolishness of the notion that it is possible, even in principle, to clone someone's exact personality and behavior patterns. We should be examining Bush's decision to hamstring American scientists from pushing the envelope of benefits that therapeutic cloning technology can provide for the world.
Hell, I'm more than happy to stand up and be Exhibit A! Either I am, or my twin brother is, after all, a clone. The majority of Americans need to understand this fact and realize that cloning--even reproductive cloning of the sort that Nature used to create me or my brother--does not automatically imply evil. At the end of the day, technology is, without exception, morally neutral. And the best way to ensure that technology is not used to expand human misery is to face the issues directly and reasonably.
Transparent Opinion
One of the problems with this blogging thing is that it encourages a person to keep on cranking out new pulp without really refining any ideas to the point of usefulness. I definitely don't need that encouragement, but I tell myself that it's marginally better to write something (while not taking real action) than it is to write nothing (while not taking real action). To be clear, that "real action" would be anything concrete that affects other people's mindsets and produces votes against Bush this fall.
At any rate, here's the "new pulp" part of things: I had an idea today that I'm calling Transparent Opinion. In theory, it would combine my personal campaign against privacy (you're reading this blog, right?) with my hope that America can become more rational in the way that it forms its opinions about important issues.
Transparent Opinion would manifest itself as a sort of community Web site that focuses on presenting the opinions of real Americans. Pie charts would abound, but so would short opinion paragraphs--explanations that expand upon and clarify simple "for" or "against" positions. In principle, anyone could participate.
So far this doesn't sound so revolutionary. But here's the kicker: in order to participate, you must provide thorough demographic information, you must allow that information to be presented alongside any vote you cast or opinion you opine, and you must consent to background checks to ensure that the identify you claim is valid. Though your actual identify need not (but may, optionally) be exposed to the community, it would be exposed to an independent oversight group responsible for granting your membership and policing the system. In this way, I imagine that we could achieve some sort of Consumer Reports of Opinion.
Here is how a topic might appear in the community:
In the current Supreme Court case regarding the civil rights of individuals identified as Enemy Combatants by the Executive Branch of our government, do you side with the plaintiffs or with the government?
If you were interested in digging beyond the high-level percentage breakdown, you could click on the graph, slice and dice the responses by the various underlying demographics, and read the actual comments and opinions of the people who participated in the poll. This contrasts with current opinion polling, which often gives only the top-level percentages and doesn't give any insight into the specific reasons why people voted a certain way.
Of course, the two keys to making this successful would be:
- Developing a critical mass of participants who represent a reasonable cross-section of the population and who actually participate.
- Funding and operating the independent organization that ensures the validity of the demographic info and the privacy (to one another, at least) of the participants.
Thursday, April 29, 2004
Maggie Lum!
My brother called to inform me that I now officially have as many nieces as I have nephews! (I think.)
My newest relative (and the second human being over whom I could viably claim paternity if I so desired!) was born a little while ago: something like 8 lbs., 15 oz . "A load," as my brother confirmed for me. Don't know the length or any of that crap.
Congratulations to Knave and Alyssa! I'm sure pictures are forthcoming, including perhaps some ones of questionable taste that zero in on the birth process itself...
Tuesday, April 27, 2004
Lum the Poet, circa 1989
The Berlin Wall would fall later that year, and I didn't give a damn. But for a brief moment in Mrs. uh...Mrs. Someone's English class in my Junior year in high school, I turned philosopher for a few days! We had just learned about consonance and assonance (huh-huh), meter, rhyme, etc, and our assignment was to write a poem. Here's what I wrote:
Smaller and smaller it all is pulled
by gravitational jolts,
and from the expanse of matter culled
an undimensional point results.
The inconceivable then occurs
and hurls existence out;
a world is born that calls life hers
and brings human beings about.
And civilizations may live and die,
or find other worlds to woo,
but a ball can only bounce so high,
and collapse will begin anew.
This unending process results in
stranger things than can be believed;
watching and wondering soon begin,
and God is again conceived.
-- John Lum 2/20/1989
It's still sad to me that the latest cosmological research has supposedly put the nail in the coffin of the Closed Universe, but back then science hadn't conclusively shown that the rate of expansion was increasing. Back then it seems that I was a big fan of science, but not a fan of thinking about the implications of science. Either that, or I was far-sighted enough to realize that an MIT-trained engineer would have a better chance of getting a decent job than an MIT-trained philosopher...
Jeanie vs. John on Naturalism
Jeanie and I had an interesting argument the other day. She asked me about the book I was reading (Tower of Babel, by Robert Pennock), and I told her a little about it.
The main idea of the book is to illuminate the rise of the "New Creationism" over the last 15 years or so and to debunk the arguments (both scientific and philosophical) that Creationists pose against evolution. The novel concept that Pennock throws in is a strong analogy between special creation with language (as described in the Biblical Tower of Babel episode) and special creation with Everything Else (the Universe, Adam, Eve, etc.).
Anyway, I hadn't yet gotten too far into the book, but Jeanie's question prompted me to give some stock response about how science can't allow supernatural explanations for things: if it's supernatural, it ain't science. Jeanie almost always takes more of a relativistic standpoint when she and I talk about anything philosophical, and it was no different here. She bristled at my dismissal of the possibility of supernatural causes playing a role in a science-based approach. It went back and forth, with me denying that it was a meaningful idea and her insisting that it was if you managed to strictly define what you meant by supernatural.
In the end, I stuck to my guns, but it nagged at me: what's the best way to defend the "no supernatural things in science" stance? What exactly is the difference between causes that science doesn't yet understand, on the one hand, and "supernatural" causes on the other? Is it just a matter of semantics?
Well, as fate would have it, this very issue formed a core part (and I think the best part) of the Pennock book that Jeanie had asked about. It's a book written by a philosopher of science who is a professor at UT Austin, so my friend Steven might be interested in reading it at some point. Anyway, an interesting distinction Pennock makes is that between "ontological naturalism" (or "metaphysical naturalism") and "methodological naturalism," with science pretty much favoring the latter nowadays. The difference between the two flavors is that the ontological naturalist explicitly defines the space of actors and concepts that are valid in his worldview--with things like the undead or a personal god both frequently being excluded from that space. Meanwhile, the methodological naturalist doesn't explicitly define anything out of his system, but does require that the world behave in a rule-based manner (according to some set of underlying laws) that allows for repeatable empirical results to be obtained.
This makes me breathe easier about my own stance. Though you can't prove the nonexistence of a supernatural god, there is no empirical evidence out there to suggest that such a hypothesis is necessary. Again and again, science has proven its ability to explain mysterious phenomena in terms of naturalistic causes, and until we witness miraculous events in the laboratory, I am content to side with the (methodological) naturalists.
Thursday, April 22, 2004
The Case Against Bush (work in progress)
Primary Strategic Issues Facing America:
- Ensure our global security
- Problem: fundamentalist terrorism and rogue people/powers
- Solution: effectively promote free-market, liberal democracy worldwide with multilateral initiatives
- Preserve and promote Life, Liberty, and Happiness for all Americans
- Problem: yawning gap between rich and poor means “wage slavery,” poor standard of living, denial of modern civil rights such as health care
- Solution: promote success of the little guy by reigning in the excesses of the biggest guys with more oversight of market economy, tax laws, and special-interest lobby
- Promote ethics-based technology innovation
- Problem: unenlightened thought both from the top down (President) and bottom up (populace) is preventing America from understanding and preparing for the future
- Solution: reshape public education to focus on science, critical thinking, and a global worldview; open up a public dialogue about science and philosophy that exposes people to ethical issues and encourages discussion
Why Bush is the wrong man for the job
Global Security
Bush has the right strategic idea (free societies don’t favor terrorism), but his unilateral “solutions” have set his freedom-spreading cause back by decades.
The benefits of removing Saddam Hussein from power have been more than negated by the costs of the operation: dead American soldiers, a hostile world, billions diverted from critical domestic causes, and an Iraq that seems destined to become a terrorist-harboring Islamic state.
It is the worst kind of 19th-century reactionary thinking to presume that global opinion is unimportant and America can succeed ...
Middle O' the Night Blog
I was reflecting today on how this blog is shaping up to be most of what I have to show for myself after having worked 1/2 my old workload over the past five months. Well, that and having read about a million pretty good books.
Steve Lohmeyer (NI Buddy) told me today that he had bought a house! That link is bound to go bad soon, but at moment Steve's house is showcased on the main page of the site, and he has the fun of saying to people: want to see my new house? Visit springerlane.com. Nice. The house is perfect for Steve, who is one of the handiest guys around and will no doubt do some cool things with it. It'll be fun to drop by his place when next I visit Austin.
Speaking of S-Lo, here are two other points: first, he is one of my personal targets to have a political debate with in the hopes of swinging more votes (and minds) against Bush. Second, he is shaping up to be a real front-runner in the NI Fantasy Baseball League that I'm the commish of this year. My team's name is America's Dumbest (a tribute to Tampa); Steve is Glove Men (a tribute to good gloves). At present, I am not near the top of the standings, but my team has performed very well, and I'm in a statistical dead heat for first. We'll see how things progress.
Saturday, April 17, 2004
Jazz: Back from the Brink
After a second visit to Death's Door in the past eight months thanks to a blocked urethra crisis (ouch), my cat has begun the recovery process. Instead of the $750 it cost me last time (thanks to the costly late-night emergency vet), this crisis only set me back about $270, which is making me think twice about what to do if his urethra decides to act up again.
Here Jazz is in his "happy to be home" recovery period. Jeanie and I were soon to administer a mini-bath ("he smells like piss," says Jeanie). The big question now is what to do next time; what exactly constitutes a chronic problem that is bad enough (and costly enough) that it's OK to just put the cat out of his misery? My bar is super-low in theory, but my Vulcan musings never seem to match the heartwrenching reality when I'm actually on the way to the vet with a suffering cat.
Lessons from Yavo
Lesson number one: your blog kicks much more ass if you actually stick a headline at the top of each entry.
Lesson number two: personal writing in a blog is vastly improved through the creative use of italics!
Lessons brought to you by: Rich Yavorsky, a buddy of mine who turns out to be a stupendously beautiful blogger. Blog on, you crazy cat!
Friday, April 16, 2004
Being Reasonable: The Beginning of a New History?
Here I was, ready to write a fascinating little essay about Francis Fukuyama's misunderstood "Then End of History and the Last Man." My thesis was to be that Fukuyama was right about men, but wrong about history; I was going to put an AI/ transhumanist spin on things and argue that the era of human history--in spite of the recent rise of fundamentalism--is probably over, but that a whole new era driven by non-human intelligence and unknown value systems is about to open up.
But alas! Hopping over to Amazon to see whether Fukuyama had published anything else since The End of History, what did I find but this:
"Our Posthuman Future: Consequences of the Biotechnology Revolution"
Gah! Perhaps I subconsciously knew that Fukuyama had gone in this direction, but I'm pissed off anyway. Nevertheless, with apologies to my boy Francis, here is my take on the issue.
By way of review, let's take a look at Francis's original thesis. What he claimed, first in a short essay, and later in his grandly philosophical book, were two things:
- Human history is a one-way street. Because knowledge accumulates and we have self-awareness of our past, we are free from a deterministic fate where we endlessly repeat the same historical patterns of philosophy, government, etc.
- We are at the end of this historical street, from a philosophical and political perspective. We are unlikely to come up with a "better" model than free-market economy/liberal democracy, and it's only a matter of time before all human societies adopt a variant of that model.
We will never know if Fukuyama is correct. An infinite amount of time would have to pass before we could verify either of his claims. However, I feel that he is right, and with a progressivism that seeks to maximize human happiness on a global scale, I hope that he is right. Our primary challenge, then, is to accelerate the pace with which free-market, liberal democracies are established worldwide in such a way that minimizes human suffering.
But wait. Will there truly be no new philosophies? No new models of government? Ten thousand years hence, will I really be able to live in the good old U.S. of A., eat a cheeseburger at McDonald's, and vote against one of George W. Bush's progeny?
Of course not. The critical element that Fukuyama left out of his original essay--and subsequent book--is technology. Fukuyama assumed then that human beings today would resemble human beings tomorrow. And, what is more, he didn't consider the scenario where human beings are no longer the only folks around who are able to contemplate life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Though I have not yet read it, I get the sense that Fukuyama's subsequent book tackles the first technological issue--the changing nature of humanity--by exploring the consequences of genetic engineering on human society. I believe that the second issue is more important, though: is human philosophy really destined to be the dominant philosophy on planet Earth?
This is a good opportunity to take a look at two possible models of the future of intelligence.
- Model 1: what I'll call the Transhuman model. In this case, humans employ technology to improve our own intelligence. That is, we use biotechnology, genetic engineering, electrical engineering, and other approaches to improve upon the basic functions of our own brains. Encompassed also here is the idea of emulation, where we transplant an essentially human consciousness into a non-biological substrate (electrical, optical, etc.). The key here is that we retain an essential humanity, in that the underlying engine for our intelligence works like the human brain works today.
- Model 2: the Artificial model. The fundamental difference here is that there is no essential humanity behind the intelligence. Though there may be similarities in design, we're talking in this case about truly artificial beings, engineered independently of the constraints of a human brain. Although it isn't clear today how a truly self-aware artificial intelligence will emerge, it is a spectacularly good bet that it will nevertheless emerge at some point. In the 2020s, the inherent processing power of a desktop computer will surpass the processing power of a human brain, and it shouldn't be many years beyond that point until true artificial intelligence (in the Turing sense or in whatever sense you want to define) emerges.
But why should humans remain the dominant philosophers forever?
I personally believe that Model 2 is destined to supplant Model 1 as the defining driver of History. Although both models will likely develop for some time, I see a future that is analogous to transfer mechanisms in heat flow. There, you often find that, while two mechanisms both theoretically contribute to the dissipation of heat (e.g. convection and radiation), at certain temperatures one of those mechanisms becomes totally dominant, such that the specifics of the other mechanism become irrelevant as a contributor to the overall process. So it may be with artificial intelligence. Once a machine intelligence is essentially able to evolve itself, I see no reason why the envelope of intelligence will not be driven completely by non-human innovations.
This Model 2 scenario could, of course, unfold exactly as it does in the Terminator movie franchise. Or, the AIs could be benign, and humans could be completely satisfied to have machine intelligence act as our caretakers. Or, there could be a crossing-over of sorts, where there is no simple differentiation between Model 1 and Model 2 entities. Regardless, each of these Model 2 scenarios implies its own major shift in ethics, economy, and political philosophy--the same outcome as Model 1.
Thus, it seems inevitable! History will keep on trucking. Realistically, though, we may still be living at the end of the current historical era for many decades. And while we're all waiting for History to start up again, I feel that we owe it to ourselves to maximize the happiness of those of us who have to live through the experience.
A Diet Update would certainly show me farther from "the goal," but fortunately we haven't gone to the gym in forever, so there's no damning evidence. Har!
