Humility - A path forward

I accidentally, with the help of Blogger, reverted a post back to draft and restored an earlier version of it, a blank paper, to be specific. Which is why I haven't been active. I'm writing this post very sporadically because a reoccurring thought popped up in my head and I felt like writing it down. Here goes.


"We wish to find the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both." ~ Carl Sagan

To watch Carl Sagan's Cosmos is truly a journey. I especially like his view of spirituality as a human emotion, not contingent on a religious source. It is far more satisfying to challenge ourselves than to stay ignorant, he argues. Instead of reassuring fantasies, our source of spirituality could instead be the insights about the world and ourselves as revealed through science.

His work is a plead to humanity to grow up and finally learn about its place in the cosmos akin to a child finding out the truth about santa upon getting older. It may not be pleasant, but it is necessary. The road there is long, however and it requires something very special, humility.

We got the imagination part covered. Just imagine (hah :D) the reaction of aliens visiting Earth's different religious sects and hearing their provincial and anthropocentric beliefs. Skepticism is what we're lacking and for that we need humility. We are apes and thus carry an enormous evolutionary baggage. I've noticed in my daily interactions that humility is often overridden by more primitive drives. We don't back away from claims in an appropriate manner when proven wrong in order to save face. But why does this save face? By denying our fallibility we inflate our social standing and try to create the impression that we are mindful about what we say, this doesn't make any sense.

Surely someone who espouses self-criticism and strives to learn more about what is true, pure and beautiful will save more face because those things ultimately matter more than partaking in some social-game whose rules don't make any sense when examined more closely. We tend not to choose the wise path, instead we show ourselves to be ignorant AND unwise. This may stem from how we view our beliefs. If we believe something, we incorporate that belief into who we are. It becomes part of our identity. To have others challenge this can be painful. Even more so when we realize the error ourselves. We react as if we had been betrayed by our own brain. It had us convinced and let us down. Right about now we start to examine what had us convinced to begin with and instead of taking a more skeptical approach to sources in general, we show animosity toward that specific source which mislead us. "Cosmic occurrences simply lent us a very unfair subset of all critical facts.", we tell ourselves. The world had been unfair to us, anyone would've drawn the same conclusion, we rationalize. These might be the things running through our heads when trying to deal with a damaged ego, but instead of learning our lesson and changing how we approach claims - we often go back to making the same mistakes over and over.

Additionally, coming to the realization that we were foolish angers us and with anger comes righteousness. This serves to misdirect us further.

If we are dedicated however, our will to be skeptical will inevitably lead us scrutinize and reevaluate our positions on a number of issues to the point where this skeptical mindset has become part of how we think. We will always be susceptible to irrationality because we are human, but reason and clear thought is able to drastically reduce its ability to persuade us.

After one of these mental battles with myself I feel relieved. I feel free from my own mental shackles. In the beginning it may piss us off, but in the end it will set us free. It's okay to be wrong. Everyone is wrong from time to time. The important thing is to acknowledge it and reevaluate.

“In science it often happens that scientists say, 'You know that's a really good argument; my position is mistaken,' and then they would actually change their minds and you never hear that old view from them again. They really do it. It doesn't happen as often as it should, because scientists are human and change is sometimes painful. But it happens every day. I cannot recall the last time something like that happened in politics or religion.”  ~ Carl Sagan

Carl Sagan pointed out that science is more a way of thinking than it is a body of knowledge. To travel among the stars we must first become scientists in the way we think. That's what humanity needs to reach its full potential.



Feed your curiosity.

Rapture of the nerds?

For as long as there has been minds capable of abstract thought there has probably been dreams of, if not an eternal, at least an extended lifetime. Throughout the childhood and adolescence of our species (our current developmental stage, in my opinion) we have in our ignorance and wishful thinking convinced ourselves that such possibilities were within our reach through supernatural means and without much real effort. Progress was slow.

Today the picture is very different. The industrial revolution and current (relative) rule of law and state of governance has been great enablers of massive amounts of research. This research has led to great insights into the workings of the human body and the world around us. This knowledge has helped us reach an average lifespan of about 70-80 years, up from circa 25. In addition, every year we add more and more time to the average lifespan. Will we eventually add more than a year every year? Time will tell.

This achievement is quite astonishing in itself but we are still sadly nowhere near immune to aging despite promising results from gene therapy in mice. This is where transhumanism comes in. Transhumanism seems to promise so much more than a potentially longer life, it also seems to indicate the possibility of a richer and more fulfilling one at that. The idea is that we humans will merge with our technology to become one and by doing so will eventually be transcending our biology and what is normally referred to as being human, thus becoming post-humans. Our abilities will be greatly enhanced through applications of many different scientific fields. Not just by robotics and computing as one may stereotypically envision but by bio-engineering and medicine in general. One does not need to necessarily look like a cyborg to classify as transhuman. Merging with technology no longer sounds that far fetched in today's world with robotic limbs that are controlled using chips implanted in the brain, gene therapy, smartphones that can provide us with almost instant information on anything we like and Google glass on the horizon. 

Then there's "The Singularity" which was first talked about by John von Neumann and made popular by Vernor Vinge. One well-known proponent of the singularity is Raymond Kurzweil which is often likened to a prophet when making his bold claims about our future. He sets forth an (optimistic) timeline of future events based on the the exponential growth of information technologies due to the law of accelerating returns. The law of accelerating returns is about the fact that information technologies build upon their last iteration and therefore grows like a geometric sequence as opposed to an arithmetic sequence. For example:(2 4 8 16 32 64) versus (1 2 3 4 5 6). This non-linear progression is not intuitive and is often used to respond to criticism of the overly-optimistic nature of Ray's predictions. Here's an example of that exponential growth.

(Logarithmic graph showing the processing power of the 500 most powerful computers in the world. Source: third slide from http://www.top500.org/blog/slides-from-the-top500-session-at-isc13-in-leipzig/) 

According to Ray's estimates we will have reverse engineered the human brain in the 2020's, AI will pass the Turing test by 2029 and the singularity will occur by 2045 as described in his book "The singularity is near" published in 2005 by Viking. The singularity is an idea that technology after the creation of a superhuman intelligence will keep improving faster and faster and eventually (or imminently, rather) cause such a rapid technological progress that it forever changes human civilization. The name itself refers to the inherent unpredictability following such an event thus creating an "event horizon" beyond which we cannot see considering it involves super-human intelligence. 

Baked into this is the ability to not only augment our abilities but allow us to live as long as we please ,either biologically through medicine, or through "mind-uploading" where we transfer ourselves as software into a computer. Humans who do not choose to follow the curve and augment themselves will be left behind as they cannot keep up with the incredible rapid pace of progress. How would they even find a job?

This sound amazing and scary at the same time, right? Except that the "law of accelerating returns" isn't really a law, it's just conjecture based on observation.

I've been told to hold in doubt that which promises some kind of utopia whether it is on earth or in the so-called afterlife. Some are even calling the singularity "Rapture of the nerds" alluding to it's almost religious connotations. Let us examine Kurzweil's claims more closely. First off we don't know and wouldn't know if mind-uploading would simply be the creation of an exact copy of yourself and not be transferring you, as in the conscious experience. The same problem applies to teleportation by breaking you down to molecules and transferring the information. There are different ways of avoiding this, like changing only a part of you at the same time. Because, after all, we no longer consist of the same matter as say 10 years ago because all cells are replaced and for all we know, we didn't cease to exist. 

This is a minor issue though because these predictions assume that this exponential growth will also bring with it insight in equal. We don't know if these fields will necessarily develop the way he says simply due to an increase in information processing. A great example of this is genetics. The sequencing cost per genome has even crushed Moore's  law completely but as David J. Linden writes in "The singularity is far: A neuroscientist's view", July 14th 2011 on http://boingboing.net "I contend that our understanding of biological processes remains on a stubbornly linear trajectory. In my view the central problem here is that Kurzweil is conflating biological data collection with biological insight." which means that we may not know what the genes we can sequence actually do. 

Kurzweil also assumes that current technologies in the semi-conductor industry, like silicon, will be replaced with better materials that will constitute a paradigm-shift that will allow the exponential growth to continue. This is a very well known growth called Moore's law which states that the number of transistors that you can fit on a particular area will double every two years. Kurzweil cites the transition from vacuum tubes to transistors as one paradigm shift (one of many, in fact) which implies that this growth started before the advent of transistors and will continue after our current transistors run out of steam. However, the International Technology Roadmap for Semiconductors (source: http://www.itrs.net/Links/2010ITRS/2010Update/ToPost/2010Tables_ORTC_ITRS.xls which is a list compiled by experts in different Semiconductor industry associations) predicts that this exponenital growth will slow down by the end of this year. Despite this there are actually many candidate solutions that could constitute the next paradigm or otherwise postpone a slowdown, such as stacking transistors three-dimensionally, carbon nanotubes or graphene. There has been a lot of interesting developments in quantum computing lately as well.

At the end of the day this is perhaps just an embodiment of human wishes packaged in a neat and contemporary way. Perhaps Ray Kurzweil will die and be remembered as a brilliant mind that fooled itself in its quest to escape death. Looking on the bright side (or dark side, depending on your preferences), even if the singularity never occurs we probably still have a transhuman future in front of us. Whatever the outcome I intend to stick around and see what might be the single most important event in human history, one that will ultimately be the hallmark of our species. If we do transcend this state of being and essentially become immortal , or even immortal sentient machines, what could we accomplish? A very interesting implication of this is the possibility for space exploration on a scale our old selves never dared to hope.

This will be the topic of my next post.

Relevant links:
http://boingboing.net/2011/07/14/far.html (link to the cited article by David J. Linden)

http://2045.com/

“The main science mega-project of the 2045 initiative aims to create technologies enabling the transfers of an individual’s personality to a more advanced non-biological carrier, and extending life, including to the point of immortality. We devote particular attention to enabling the fullest possible dialogue between the world’s major spiritual traditions, science and society.”

Taken from http://2045.com/ideology/

http://www.deusex.com/game (A sci-fi fps game set in 2027 in which you have to deal with the ethical and philosophical dilemmas of human augmentation)

http://singularityhub.com/ (Keep up with the latest news in all areas pertaining to scientific progress and transhumanism)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1hJdq46wqE (A dubstep song with a singulatarian theme)

If you have something interesting to add such as a discovery or breakthrough or otherwise relevant information like a fact correction, feel free to leave a comment. Truth > complacency.

Feed your curiosity

Feed your curious mind

INTRODUCTION

Greetings fellow surfers of the internet! Right now you are using the most sophisticated communication tool the human race has ever devised. You live in the future and you should rejoice. This is a time of great danger but also a time of great opportunity. That fact that you find yourself on this blog this very moment is a testament to all that our human race has learned through the awesomely powerful method of science. Our knowledge grows constantly and information technologies increase exponentially. Your ability to comprehend those sentences is even more astounding. Yes, buried below these scientific topics are those philosophical questions that underpin everything we build our world upon.

Our everyday lives may at times feel mundane and repetitive. When this happens I start contemplating everything that makes this existence so wonderful and mind-boggling. The fact that we, Homo sapiens sapiens, once dwellers of the African savanna recently compiled a highly-detailed gravitational map of the moon, still receive signals from two spacecraft Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, the first of which will soon leave our own solar system and much, much more show that these are indeed exciting times! So what am I getting at here? Well it's this.

What is the quintessential difference between our ancestral hunters and gatherers and contemporary humans working in factories using glasses with augmented reality to help them carry out maintenance of complex engines? 

Knowledge. Hard-earned knowledge.

"I believe our future depends powerfully on how well we understand this cosmos, in which we float like a mote of dust in the morning sky." ~Carl Sagan

I am from the northern European country Sweden and English is therefore my second language. This is the first attempt at a blog I've done which will also allow me to develop my skills in English further. The blog will mostly contain all the questions, wonderings and opinions that inhabit my mind, whether they be brief, sweeping, contemporary or deep, encompassing and ancient. If possible I could introduce a picture feed that touch topics I'm interested in. My goal is to write a post at least every week. I have a lot of things on my mind that need to be written down so this will also allow me to catalog my own thoughts and evaluate them. Hopefully I will touch on a subject of your interest that will offer you something of value.

I look at the future very brightly because I am aware of the potentially great harvests of knowledge that lay before us. I am also aware of all the dangers that this technology may bring. I am also interested in issues regarding secular humanism, in fact, that is how I got interested in philosophy (or was it the other way around?).  I started watching "The Atheist Experience" on YouTube  which is a great show and many videos contain long discussions about epistemology which is the philosophy about knowledge.  As you may have noticed, I am a big fan of technological advancements of all sorts and I reckon this will occupy a large chunk of posts. The overall content itself however will be mixed and I think there will be something for most people to enjoy. 

While I am a student of university, I am like everyone else, a student of life. 

So when you feel a bit down, inquisitive, or just want to kill some time you're always welcome to visit Inquisitivestudent at Ephemeral and perpetual contemplations.

Feed your curiosity