The Secret Diary of Steve Jobs, on working at Google:
And you know what? There is something really evil about taking thousands of the world’s smartest young people and using them to sell online text ads more efficiently. Really.
I think it’s a complicated situation, but I have to admit he has a point.
Edit, 3-10-13: The big bang happened. The universe expanded a lot. Everything was pretty evenly distributed. The universe was a uniform mist of plasma, light, and hydrogen, as far as the eye could see.
After 13.77 billion years, things are no longer so evenly distributed. Matter has clumped up into gas clouds, planets, stars, solar systems, galaxies, clusters, superclusters. Quantum fluctuations during the big bang made things a little uneven, and gravity did the rest.
I’ve been trying to figure out how to quantify just how clumped up matter has become. How to put a number on how gravitationally inhomogeneous the universe is. If a universe with a perfectly even mist of atoms and photons is a 1, what are we?
I have this crazy-and-probably-wrong idea that this quantity, and the amount of dark energy observed throughout cosmological history, might share some eerily similar inflection points. Moreover, these two quantities might be causally connected- e.g., an increase in gravitational inhomogeneity may cause an increase in dark energy.
But I don’t think there’s a good holistic calculation of gravitational inhomogeneity yet. And I am not a very good cosmologist.
The following is an attempt to fumble around for an analogy of why this could be the case. However, I ask theorists to focus less on the analogy and more on the simple, empirical prediction that gravitational inhomogeneity and dark energy will correlate better and better as our measurements of them improve.
Lawrence Lessig has been getting some trolls over at his blog and asked his readers for advice on a comment policy (basically, what the threshold should be for deleting inappropriate comments). Here’s what I took to be the most insightful suggestion:
Anon:
I suspect the same notion holds true for most internet communities, wikis inclusive, once they reach a certain popularity threshold.
(Luckily, Modern Dragons does not yet suffer from such pitfalls of runaway popularity!)
John A. Wheeler, the great physicist who coined the term ‘black hole,’ a primary architect of modern physics, and the scientist for whom the fictional “Wheeler Laboratory” is named in ‘A Beautiful Mind’, died last week. Many are calling this an end of an era; as Max Tegmark of MIT says, “For me, he was the last Titan, the only physics superhero still standing.” There’s a great write-up in the Times about his life and career.
I’m no authority on this stuff, but as an enthusiast reading about the history of physics, I was always impressed with Wheeler’s propensity toward clever speculation. Here’s an excerpt from Richard Feynman’s 1965 Nobel Lecture where he talks about one of his mentor’s crazy ideas- the idea remains unproven, but it provided the inspiration for modern Quantum Electrodynamics:
As a by-product of this same view, I received a telephone call one day at the graduate college at Princeton from Professor Wheeler, in which he said, “Feynman, I know why all electrons have the same charge and the same mass” “Why?” “Because, they are all the same electron!” And, then he explained on the telephone, “suppose that the world lines which we were ordinarily considering before in time and space – instead of only going up in time were a tremendous knot, and then, when we cut through the knot, by the plane corresponding to a fixed time, we would see many, many world lines and that would represent many electrons, except for one thing. If in one section this is an ordinary electron world line, in the section in which it reversed itself and is coming back from the future we have the wrong sign to the proper time – to the proper four velocities – and that’s equivalent to changing the sign of the charge, and, therefore, that part of a path would act like a positron.” “But, Professor”, I said, “there aren’t as many positrons as electrons.” “Well, maybe they are hidden in the protons or something”, he said. I did not take the idea that all the electrons were the same one from him as seriously as I took the observation that positrons could simply be represented as electrons going from the future to the past in a back section of their world lines. That, I stole!
And thus the Feynman Electron Diagram was born.
Still, I have to think it’d be a neat application of Occam’s Razor if Wheeler is eventually proven right that the fabric of reality is woven by just one particle, getting knocked forward and backward in time by its past and future selves.
I like America a lot. But lately I’ve been wondering, “what’s going on here?”
The latest poll numbers are in, and I’m clearly not alone. The AP is now reporting that 81% of Americans think we’re on the wrong track. One need not look far for proximate reasons: a strange and fragile economy, huge credit card debts, the behavior of our elected officials, our election of said officials, the sad, hollow state of our public discourse, voter apathy, the general state of our media, and so forth. There are still plenty of things going right in America, but compared to our particularly exemplary history of competence, principles, and vibrant public life, something has clearly changed.
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The New York Times recently published a set of speculations on what the lives of New Yorkers will be like in the year 2108. Among those asked were professors and Nobel Laureates, and discussion topics ranged from biotechnology to global warming. All very interesting, but here’s my favorite:
KATE KAPLAN
Seventh grader, School of the Future, a New York City public school near Gramercy Park
The city will be all skyscrapers, no more town houses and brownstones. Buildings will connect to each other through an aboveground tunnel system. You’ll no longer have to worry about finding a bathroom; you’ll just carry a small chip with you that can expand into a private portable toilet.
Central Park will be preserved in a bubble to protect it from the adverse effects of global warming. Everything will be shiny and nice and big. The subway cars and stations will have TVs in them. The Empire State Building will no longer be New York’s largest building; it will probably be replaced by a giant Starbucks. Madame Tussaud’s wax figures will have robotic capabilities.
Finally, instead of antidepressants, doctors will make people happy by implanting chips in their heads with comedy routines and programs, like my favorite, “The Colbert Report.”
Well played, Miss Kaplan.
Part 1: The Transhumanism Movement.
Part 2: Society is more delicate than transhumanists think.
This short essay doesn’t delve into my personal ethics as applied to enhancement– which, I must admit, I don’t have figured out yet. And I’m assuming, for the sake of this essay, that a technological ‘Singularity’ is a feasible outcome of our current technological trajectory, or at least that significant augmentative technologies will become available in the not-too-distant future. This is a purely practical critique of full-speed-head-and-damn-the-torpedoes Transhumanism.
Transhumanism is about using technology to transcend one’s humanity and becoming qualitatively more[1] than what one was born. There are, of course, social downsides to allowing people to do this.
The Equality Objection to Transhumanism: breaking the bonds of common humanity is a serious thing.
First, let’s talk about equality. In the Western public sphere, we tend to treat everyone (save children and mental patients) as exactly identical. Now, the sharp-eyed among you will notice this often doesn’t make a lot of sense– but the current excesses and irrationality involved in treating everyone as exactly identical in the public sphere are much less harmful than the excesses and necessary oversimplifications involved in treating everyone differently with respect to the the perceived value of their capabilities and potentials. More than just as a matter of efficiency or polite fiction, there’s real, generative value in the philosophy of equality, even if it doesn’t completely fit reality at the seams[2]. And I think this broad-sense every-human-is-equal liberalism we’ve built into our culture is really the only buffer we have against really nasty, heartless states of affairs that could arise from the misuse of cognitive enhancement. But I suspect that the very presence of cognitive enhancement may very well erode its own mitigating buffer.
If we look inward, it’s not a large stretch to say we’re a culture worth saving and amplifying in large part because of the liberalism and philosophy of equal worth we’ve deliberately nurtured and woven into our collective self-identity. Insofar as cognitive enhancement increases the cognitive divides within society[3], people will notice and it’ll put an unavoidable culture-wide strain on this philosophical outlook. We’ve spent hundreds- perhaps thousands- of years building, affirming, and lauding our bonds of common humanity and equality, and it’s now Western society’s nominal organizing principle and the glue that holds us together. Technology that threatens to rip this integral part of our social fabric apart is not progress. Or if it is, it must pay (preferably in advance) for the damage it will cause.
Transhumanists see themselves as the “good guys” (and gals… though mostly guys). Given all the good things these technologies can do, I understand why. But I’m not quite ready to grant unconditional “good guy” status as I think there are several stands of naivety that often surface in transhumanist culture, and true ‘good guys’ can’t be naive. In this context, I think transhumanists need to acknowledge 1. the value of our carefully and painstakingly created framework of equality, 2. that transhumanism does indeed violate it, and 3. that this violation of our current social contract is an extremely serious, dangerous thing. And it’s asking a lot, but if transhumanists are going to be at the forefront of dismantling the basis for this social philosophy, I’d prefer that they offer an alternative that people can buy into that has a more nuanced understanding of human identity and human worth in this upcoming age of increasing divides. Ideally something that provides on average as much social cohesion, philosophical coherence, and spiritual nourishment as this philosophy of equality.[4] Because if we mortgage the social bonds of the present in service of the future, that future is likely to fall apart.
I think transhumanists (and people in general) tend to think of society as a somewhat dysfunctional but intrinsically resilient entity. That, for all its warts, modern society has a solid foundation we can depend on while bootstrapping ourselves into a better mode of existence. But I think when transhumanists start to tinker with human nature, we can no longer take this for granted. After all, if you’re undermining society’s organizing principle, even with the best intentions you may break important things and deeply anger many, many people. And can you blame them? For all you’re offering, you’re also dismantling the basis for their belief and identity systems, and at least apparently pushing a system that runs counter to many of our crusading social heroes such as Martin Luther King, Jr.
I understand the promise of transhumanism: literally, to eliminate all suffering. This is not to be minimized. But I think it’s an open question whether moving to a transhuman society will break society in the process.
Of course, it’s unfair to put all of this on the shoulders of transhumanism. The debate of whether we should allow these technologies into society is a probably hollow one: they have so many physical and philosophical beachheads already, and we are such an open, self-directed society that lives and breathes the ideas of potential and progress, that of course they’ll become part of society. Similarly transhumanism, in its better and more public corners, is a movement that very sincerely means well, and it’s less causing the development of these transformative technologies so much as being a cheerleader for their positive uses. And asking the more realistic question of, given that this will happen, how do we make this happen in the best possible way?
But my advice to transhumanists is, do understand that society is a much more fragile thing than you probably realize, and that large parts of society may not greet you as saviors.
[1] Arguable, of course. Francis Fukuyama has suggested that enhancement technologies would cause us to “no longer have the characteristics that give us human dignity.”
[2] This normative force for equality within society does have its ugly side, e.g., slowing the bright kids down for “No Child Left Behind”.
[3] I think it’s fairly clear that transhumanist technologies will increase the divides within society and corrode our culture of equality: not only will there likely be uneven access to these technologies, and uneven knowledge about them, but there’s a strong status quo bias in the human psyche. These technologies will be new, different, and sometimes very strange. A divide is a divide- and causes problems- regardless of whether it happens by chance or by choice.
[4] The philosophy of transhumanism, though relatively developed and fleshed out, is not the presumptive solution here because it simply hasn’t proven acceptable to the general public. Maybe version 2.0, 3.0, or 4.0 will be the one that finally gains traction and appeals to more than a small subset of the population. But- no offense meant to transhumanists- it’s clearly not there yet.
Lawrence Lessig has announced an extraordinarily important- and what I hope will be an extraordinarily effective- movement to reform Congress. If you listen to one speech on politics this year, make it this one.
Wikipedia’s immune system is impressive, but I think it scales more poorly and devolves more easily than outsiders realize. Really, most of Wikipedia’s current ills can be explained as a moderate form of autoimmune disease, caused by chronic inflammation of the community by vandals and trolls.
How do you treat autoimmune disease? I don’t know. Will Citizendium avoid the same fate? I tend to think (hope) so.
Transhumanism: an odd name for an interesting movement.
There’s a growing number of people who believe technology is going to make things Really Different around here. And while they’re still essentially a loose-knit, fragmented movement, they’ve made significant inroads among society’s movers, shakers, and simply rich people.
So what’s all the fuss about? In short, these ‘transhumanists’ (or less rigorously, ‘futurists’) believe that the technological trajectory we’re on is exponential and will result in deep, sweeping, and generally utopian changes to society, to the human experience, and to human nature within most of our lifetimes. The word “transhumanist” refers to “transcending the human state” through technology and becoming, in a very significant way, more than what one was born — and all the transhumanists I’ve talked with are quite serious about it. It may sound silly and it may sound strange, but to this growing group of people it’s a real goal.
But though they have transhuman goals, as a community they’re quite human (sometimes, All Too). They have their own canon, heroes, and subculture[1], even a disillusioned, skeptical counterculture. Overall it’s a fairly diverse group[2]: though they’re generally united by the belief that technology is going to radically change society in as soon as 15 but not more than 40 years, and they have fairly standardized ‘in-group’ terms for upcoming clusters of technology, predictions vary on which technologies will be the primary driving forces, on the nature of the change, on what the most significant technological and social hurdles to a technological utopia are, and on the future of intelligence (i.e., whether computers, enhanced humans, or even “mere” improved computer networks and human-computer interfaces will be the gateway to a ‘Singularity‘).
This movement does have an uphill battle for credibility: not only does it make fairly wild-sounding predictions which lie outside the normal realm of human experience, but most people, if they even take notice of this movement, will tend to dismiss it as a bunch of yammering sci-fi geeks. I think many people instinctually look at transhumanists talking about augmenting their brains with computer chips or uploading their minds into computers much like they do Trekkies arguing about the ins-and-outs of the Enterprise’s teleportation system (that is, as completely irrelevant). This isn’t a wholly unreasonable response: many of the same geek traits (and I use that term endearingly) which give rise to theorizing about the future also give rise to solipsistic pontificating about Star Trek minutiae, and futurists have such a poor track record at predicting the future that the common conception seems to be that we’ll only need to perk up and listen to them once we get our long-promised flying cars.
But- dare I say it- something’s in the air. Something’s different with the intellectual ferment of 2008 futurism. Futurists are starting to bring nuanced, well-referenced, and falsifiable models of technological change to the table, and futurism as a field may finally be mature enough such that futurists actually have a special angle on predicting the future. More and more ‘respectable’ institutions are retaining the services of card-carrying futurists and transhumanists: In addition to shoe-ins like the Army, organizations such as British Telecom, IBM, the FBI and even Hallmark employ full-time futurists. By and large, this group sees themselves as the prophets, architects and philosophers of a coming wave of technology that will fundamentally remake society– and pretentious as this may be, they may be right.
[1] R.U. Sirius, editor-to-be of “H+” (lingo for Human-plus, or ‘enhanced’ human), notes “And it’s kind of become a little religion; we have our own Rapture and our own eschatology and all that sort of stuff.”
[2] Transhumanism covers a sufficiently vast and divisive territory that I think it’s inevitable that the community will splinter into many sub-movements once/if things really get going. If you think stem cells are an incendiary subject, well, you ain’t seen nothing yet.
For a more detailed outline of the transhumanist argument that technological change is exponential and poised to explode, I’d recommend my review of Kurzweil’s “The Singularity is Near“.
I’m planning on posting part two of this essay this weekend.
You should delete all comments, including those which attack you and your work, which are expressed in a fashion which a civil adult would not use when speaking face-to-face with another adult. Off-topic comments also get launched. That is, being on-topic is necessary but not sufficient for a comment to remain. Being civil is also necessary but not sufficient for a comment to remain.
Larry, there’s an adage which applies to hiring, that says: A-quality people hire A-quality people. B-quality people hire C-quality people. So you need to only make A hires, or your business is headed downhill.
In commenting, I’ve observed that A-quality comments attract A-quality comments. B-quality comments attract C-quality comments.
I’m an *old hand* at the internet discussion forum game, though I don’t care to list my name here. Your blog is already headed downhill as far as comments are concerned. If you want to maintain comment quality, you must prune rather ruthlessly. Now, nothing terrible will happen if you don’t. Your comment section won’t be any good, but then most comment sections aren’t, so yours won’t stand out. I don’t know that you actually want the hassle of maintaining a good comment section, it’s certainly harder than maintaining a bad one. But I’m telling you how, if you want to: if you want to maintain an actual GOOD comment section, one that literally *attracts* A-level commenters, you need to prune ruthlessly.