Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Anders Sandberg

Swedish Neuroscientist, Researcher, Science Debater, Futurist, Transhumanist and Author

"?The Wisdom of Old Age? is an interesting concept. It is probable that under a lifetime the brain abstracts more or less general rules and experiences from the many special cases. People learn the most common consequences of certain actions, and make so many analogies that powerful abstractions develop. This leads to that an wise person has a good chance to guess the results of an action even in the long run. Unfamiliar situations may pose a problem, but if a person has lived a sufficiently varied life and abstracted enough general rules he might be able to use inductive reasoning and apply his wisdom anyway. The drawback is of course that if conditions change this old wisdom may lose its usability, since the world no longer follows the map. It is worth noting that the views on old people vary between static and dynamic cultures: in a static culture old people are valued as wise and experienced, in dynamic cultures they are often seen as a conservative burden and unable to adapt. The question is how to develop methods to enhance our own wisdom and at the same time keep our minds flexible. While most transhumanists hope to live for a very long time, and thus expect to get plenty of chances to extend their wisdom, it would be even better if we could become wiser faster. One method could be to optimize wisdom in areas which are general enough not to be changed markedly with time (such as mathematics and systems theory) or which are not expected to change much (like how physical objects behave) and hope some of the results can be applied in other areas. The big problem is whether it is possible to develop general and communicable rules of wisdom even in more dynamical areas, or if the only way towards WA is constant training/living for a long period."

"A major transhumanist goal is IA, Intelligence Amplification, to extend and enhance human intelligence in new ways. This is of course an attractive idea, since we have an intelligence shortage today (or rather, an applied intelligence shortage). But I wonder if it is not time to think of WA too - Wisdom Amplification. Intelligence can be said to be the ability to solve problems. Wisdom is the ability to determine which problems should be solved."

"Anything that improves communication is a big deal because that's what's stringing our brains together."

"As humans redesign themselves after their values, new forms of humanity will develop. Many of these posthumans will diverge radically from us. Some humans will likely develop themselves into something quite like Greek gods: long lived, possibly immortal, physically and mentally almost perfect humans (at least perfect from their own point of view). Others may develop far more radically, perhaps into digital lifeforms swimming through the information networks or transcendental superminds among the moons of Jupiter. And some will, for various reasons, choose to remain unchanged."

"As transhumanists, we must be aware of the symbolic power of cloning. As the current hysteria shows, it can be used as a effective rhetoric weapon against technologies and possibilities we seek by encouraging people to ban reproductive technologies in order to preserve the status quo. But cloning can also be a symbol of liberty from the old rules of biology; by being able to clone ourselves we have become able to truly change who we are and what we might become."

"At present I am creating a review of the state of the art in cognitive enhancement as well as an online electronic bibliography database of relevant publications. Enhancement has a huge scope, ranging from chocolate eaten during pregnancy (may have an enhancing effect on the developing fetal brain) to the impact of Internet search engines like Google."

"Arguments against cloning can be divided into two groups: Pragmatic arguments: cloning is not wrong in itself, but would have undesirable consequences. Ethical arguments: cloning is wrong in itself."

"Cloning is a commonplace process in biotechnology and genetic engineering, where it is used to create cultures of identical cells for study. Cloning higher animals; however, is more tricky. The reason is that as the cells of the embryo divide, they differentiate: despite starting out with an identical genetic composition they specialize into specific cell types such as neurons, muscle fibers, skeleton or sex cells. This process is still not entirely understood, but seems to involve chemical signals telling different cells to choose different "careers" in the body. In their nuclei, genetic switches toggle genetic programs depending on the signals, changing the way the cells act and grows. Their descendants will retain the settings of the genetic switches, remaining differentiated into neurons or skin cells despite the fact that each carry the full genome of the entire person."

"Even if the first clinical methods for slowing ageing arrive a few decades ahead, that is still good news for the majority of people living today. Especially since slowed ageing gives you more years of medical progress. While nothing is certain, it looks like in the long run ageing may become just another treatable chronic disease. Some would argue that slowing ageing is all about achieving immortality. But treating ageing directly makes sense simply in terms of health: ageing is a direct contributor to heart disease, diabetes, weakened immune system, Alzheimer's and many other maladies. Life extension cannot give us eternal life: besides ageing, we are killed by diseases, accidents and violence. And if we fix those, we are still finite beings in a universe ruled by probability. Sooner or later we will be unlucky and perish. But we can maybe make this probability so low that it does not matter much in practice. The real issue might be what we would do if we had indefinite lifespans."

"Genomes usually contains many varieties of transposable elements, which are able to move around or replicate themselves within the genome. Some move by encoding the enzyme transponase, which moves the transposomes from site to site. Others move through RNA intermediaries. This is a prime example of a selfish replicator. The movements often modify surrounding DNA or move entire genes around the genome. This movements is a major factor in causing spontaneous mutations, and under environmental stress the organism can undergo transposition bursts, where many transposomes shift their positions. This has an evolutionary advantage, as new varieties of organisms can quickly develop under stress, but also destabilizes the genome of the individual. Transposome movements are able to create oncogenes by accidentally moving close to a proto-oncogene."

"Every time someone dies, a library burns. The experiences, skills, and relationships painstakingly built across a lifetime disappear forever. We cannot prevent any particular library from eventually having a fire, but we can make sure the fires are rare. Humans are precious, and that is why we should not wish them to age. Some might say we need a change of generations to keep our culture youthful. Yet, to continue the library metaphor, few people think the way of maintaining a successful culture is to burn the archives and art museums. There are better ways of changing things than killing the old guard. The physicist Max Planck said that science advances one funeral at a time, but in practice many radical new ideas do sweep the scientific world faster than scientists are being replaced. In the social arena we have seen struggles to extend human rights succeeding faster and faster, despite people living longer: compare the time it took for female suffrage to go from academic idea to political practice with the time it took gay rights to make the leap from unthinkable to orthodox. At any rate, if long lives actually do slow social changes there are still better ways of speeding it up than letting people die prematurely. We have term limits in politics: maybe we should have them for professors and CEOs too."

"Cloning is not important as a technology. It is important as a symbol. This is why the current debate about cloning often misses the point; the central question is not the ethics or dangers of cloning (which are far too often utterly misunderstood and replaced with emotional rhetoric), but what it means to be a human. The clone is another incarnation of our technological doppelganger, our shadow made real forcing us to deal with the hard and profound questions of personhood, reproduction and the destiny of humanity. These questions are deep down a matter of values and attitudes, and can not be easily resolved. So in order to avoid a painful debate and the threat of having to think of the big questions many seek to sweep the problem under the rug by clamoring for a worldwide ban on cloning, not realizing that it would not get rid of the problem: the clones are already among us, forcing us to confront ourselves."

"Have you upgraded your genetics this year? While our environment and actions can reshape us a great deal, on the deepest level we are influenced by our genes. If they are changed, what we are is changed. Few other subjects of autoevolution are as controversial and debated as genetic enhancements. By their nature they will affect future generations in ways most other self-transformations will not, which raises thorny ethical questions. At the same time few other technologies holds such promises for improvement of the body."

"Emergence. I tried to symbolize how life can grow out of information; the floor is a game of life pattern (with a glider gun in the foreground) while the plant is an L-system."

"I do have a ridiculously high hedonic set-point."

"I have met 18 year olds claiming they do not want to live beyond 20 because they will be old and decrepit, while my 105 year old grandmother still potters on since dying is simply not done. Some people find new meaning again and again, others feel suicidal about Sunday afternoons. It is not uncommon to envision one's life as a book, and then assume it must have a beginning, a middle and an end. This is reasonable since we tend to construct our identities as narratives: we often tell stories about who we are, what we have done, and where we are going, so thinking of a life this way comes naturally to us. But a book can be a short pamphlet, a thick epic, or maybe a never-ending fantasy series ... which one would we want to be like?"

"I think we have a chance of getting to the future in a moral way, and I think it's actually going to be really good, but we need to think about it ahead."

"In a few years we will see how some humans will begin to move beyond the current human limitations. Ever more radical changes become possible: genetic engineering gives us control over our bodies, bionics erases the border between man and machine, intelligence amplification will make anyone into what in the old days would have been called a genius. This transhuman stage is also the beginning of the end of the species homo sapiens: like all other species it must sooner or later branch into new species or go extinct."

"Isn't it wonderful that something in the world is permanent? Thanks to constant extension of copyrights intellectual property will never vanish, never be subjected to the creative destruction of the market or re-interpretation. It will remain forever, and when the sun becomes a red giant it will light up the face of the Immortal Mouse towering above the dust of humanity."

"It is an interesting fact that most proposals of improving the human body in transhumanistic discussions are mainly based upon bionic and chemical enhancements, while overlooking the potential of genetic engineering. In part this may be due to the fact that most methods of changing the genome is most efficient only on very small groups of cells or in the embryo. This means that these methods will mainly work on our children, not on ourselves, something which has made many transhumanists turn to other methods. However, genetic engineering has obviously great potential to transform living beings, it is already an viable technology (unlike bionics) and gene therapy is advancing fast. Perhaps most important, and controversial, is the fact that this method will not only change a single individual, but also affect all of his/her/its offspring. This will give us the ability to once for all eliminate certain genes or add new ones."

"Instead of being the "crown of creation" as man often likes to see itself, she will become the "foliage of creation" - a growing tree of new species and entities, united by a common origin but now quickly diverging in new directions."

"Many people who wish for radical life extension are afraid of dying. This is a bad motivation: sooner or later they will run out of time anyway, and living just to avoid something is a diminished way of life. They are not hoping for something of value, merely the avoidance of loss. The problem with death is not just that it can be painful, but that it also irreversibly prevents any more experience, any more action. Our social bonds are broken. Pain can be dealt with, but these other factors point at what makes life worth living. We should seek to live longer because we love life. We should wish to experience good things, gain wisdom, and interact with people in important ways. A long and healthy life is quite useful for this."

"So far we have freed ourselves from some of the basic limitations for all animal species on Earth, but we are now beginning to understand how we can free ourselves from some human limitations. The coming years we will see how more and more illnesses, limits and weaknesses can be cured or circumvented through different means. There already exist promising research that suggests that with some support we could live to the maximal lifespan of around 120 years, and even this lifespan isn't set in stone. Immense progress occurs today in psychology, neurology and information processing: slowly these fields are merging. Much research is directed towards systems amplifying our intelligence in various ways; computer programs that collect or process information, tools for decision-making and analysis, drugs that influence memory and concentration, mental techniques to make our thinking more efficient and harmonious. This exists today."

"Some people see cloning as threatening human uniqueness. But twins are natural clones, does their existence threaten our concept of being unique individuals? Clones will be just as individual persons as everyone else, so cloning will not threaten more than the bodily uniqueness (which can already be modified anyway). The deeper fear here is that as reproductive technology and other transformative technologies advances, the human sense of being unique will erode. But this is an argument based on the avoidance of truth, since it suggests that it would have been better if Copernicus had not discovered that the Earth revolves around the Sun or that Darwin didn't discover evolution. If human uniqueness has to be hinged on ignorance, I think it would be an unworthy concept. An ethics that cannot accept facts will in the long run only lead to delusions. We are not born unique, we make ourselves unique. This goes as well for clones."

"Most transhumanists are very pro-space, for a variety of reasons. Remaining limited to Earth is not only contrary to the transhumanist mindset of expansion, growth and evolution but also downright dangerous: killer meteors, nuclear wars, resource scaricity and customized plagues are real possibilities in the present, and in the future nanotechnology might give tremendous destructive power to very small groups. There are also positive reasons to explore and colonize space, ranging from sheer curiosity, the will to explore and the search for freedom to pragmatic reasons such as gaining resources and energy, living space and safety."

"Once we start editing DNA on a large scale, we will need to keep track of what we do, revision histories, comment the new genes and add copyright notices. This is a suggested standard of entering ASCII information into the genome: We will use 4-base codons to encode 7-bit ASCII. I know it is a bit primitive, but I think it does well enough and we might want to use the extra bit (see below). Each base codes two bits, and the complementary base codes the inverse: A: 00 G: 01 C: 10 T: 11 Thus each character will be coded as four bases, read in the canonical 5'->3' direction. The letters 'DNA' will thus become 01000100 01001110 01000001 G A G A G A T C G A A G or GAGAGATCGAAG The problem when reading a DNA string is: which strand should we read? If we read the complementary strand, we will get an inverted string backwards. But since we use 7-bit ascii, we can test to see if every 8th bit is a one or zero, and deduce which side we are on. The reading process thus tries out the eight starting frames, and chooses the one which gives an unbroken stretch of ones or zeros. If the stretch are zeros, the bases are read and converted, if they are ones they are read to the end of the message, inverted and reversed. Note that some errors can become detectable this way, as interruptions of the stretches of similar bits. To delineate the comments, we need markers. A standard could be the sequence corresponding to "COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT..." repeated a number of times (we don't want to use a long stretch of similar bases, since it would influence the bending of DNA, which might lead to unwanted effects). A problem is that we might accidentally create active regions in the DNA with these comments; ideally we should choose a coding that minimizes the biological effects of the comment. Methylating the cytosine bases will also inactivate the comment. If it can be marked as an intron it could also be placed inside exons, making sure the comment will follow the gene it belongs to."

"One common belief is that wisdom has an ethical component, or that ethics forms the basis of wisdom. I think it is the other way around: wisdom leads to the development of an ethical view, since ethical actions usually have long- range positive consequences (the exact kind of ethics will of course depend heavily on the person and the culture, just as wisdom itself is not necessarily identical across all of humanity). As I see it, ethics can be based on rational judgements of what is good or useful and do not need any supernatural backing."

"One risk that exists with cloned children is that the parents expect them to become just as great as their donors or (in the case of parents cloning themselves) grow up to live the life they never got, fulfilling all expectations. This is a definite risk, not only with cloned children but also for children who have been genetically modified, specially educated or just happen to have over-expectant parents. The risk certainly exists, but is no argument against cloning: if we discourage cloning because we fear that the parents will be intrusive, should we not discourage other parents from having children if they are deemed to have too high expectations? The right to have children is one of the most fundamental rights in democratic nations, and just the fact that somebody isn't an ideal parent cannot and should not be used to prevent this person from having children. The solution of this problem is most likely counseling and a better awareness of how children develop and family psychology. It is a psychological problem in a society where many feel unfulfilled with their lives, and believe their children could fulfill them better than themselves, rather than a problem specific to cloning."

"Memetics is the study of ideas and concepts viewed as "living" organisms, capable of reproduction and evolution in an "Ideosphere" (similar to the Biosphere) consisting of the collective of human minds. Memes reproduce by spreading to new hosts, who will spread them further (typical examples are jokes, catchphrases or politicial ideas). At present memetics is somewhat controversial. Partly this is due to misunderstandings about what it means, leading to claims that it excludes human free will, creativity and progress, and that it is bad science. This will likely change in time, as the field matures."

"One of the most common myths is that a clone is an identical copy of the donor, with identical body, personality, skills and memories. This is obviously untrue, since the clone would be a new-born infant, not a Xerox copy of the donor. In time the clone may grow up into the donor's younger twin brother, but that is as close as they will ever get. While they will most likely be quite similar in many respects, both are individual and unique. In fact, it appears that the growth of the brain is highly individual and the brains of identical twins actually differ from each other in macroscopic structure; in the case of clones the different environments during pregnancy and childhood will most likely make the brains even more different between the donor and the clone. Another common myth is that cloning involves "force-growing" the clone into an adult. This would require extensive control over the developmental process and most likely an artificial womb, two things we are incapable of yet. While it might be possible in the future to increase the growth rate of cells, there are strict limits due to the efficiencies of enzymes, the diffusion of chemicals, rate of reactions in the cell and removal of waste products and heat. To make an adult clone, something like advanced nanotechnology would be necessary. To sum up, a newborn clone of any species is indistinguishable from any other newborn. It has the same needs and capabilities as others, and cannot be identified in any way. The only thing that is different is that it has a much older twin. When it grows up it will become just as individual as everyone else."

"People have tried to extend their lives since time immemorial. The oldest great work of literature, the epic of Gilgamesh is partially about the king's search for the herb of immortality. Up until recently we did not have any deep understanding of what ageing truly is, so doing anything about it was hard. That has changed radically in recent decades. We now understand why we age, and can in the lab even slow it down in test animals. Some treatments can prolong animal lifespans by up to 40 per cent whether by removing senescent cells, reducing caloric intake, or influencing certain metabolic pathways. While none of the methods are likely to carry over straight to humans, the fact that we have gone from ageing being an immutable fact to something that can be manipulated is already revolutionary."

"One week ago I said that cloning of mammals was years away... it is fun to be alive at this point in history."

"Using our knowledge and skills we have done things that no other species has ever done in the history of Earth: not only do we adapt to new ecological niches, we also change our environment to our purposes and create new ways of living. Through modern medicine we have largely overcome the illnesses that plague other species. We have increased our life expectancy so far that we are approaching the maximal possible human lifespan. Using our technology we can for good and ill change our planet noticeably, and all signs suggest that technology will continue to develop ever faster. We are especially accumulating knowledge about how we and our environment works, which increases our consciousness of our responsibility for our development."

"To implement the transhuman vision five things are needed: Labour - we cannot just lazily wait for "progress" to solve our problems and open our possibilities. It won't happen unless somebody does it. Tolerance - we must be able to accept other visions, other paths. If some people will not walk along our path it is their choice and nothing we should worry about as long as they do not seek to hinder us. Optimism - our culture has the last decades become ever more pessimistic, careful and apathetic. To be able to develop one must dare to enjoy oneself. Pessimism breeds apathy, optimism action. Freedom - we need freedom, not just political and social freedom, but also freedom from material limitations. Today we have technology that used in the right way can remove many of these limitations; we can develop it further and hence free ourselves. Reason - we need to let ourselves be guided by reason, by critically testing old and new ideas in order to avoid being blinded by our optimism or the pessimism of the Cassandras. Without reason we will wreck ourselves, without our visions we will lack direction. If we can combine these five elements the transhuman vision becomes feasible - and the foliage of creation will spread its branches among the stars."

"The Singularity should not stop us from thinking!"

"Transhumanism is a philosophy that humanity can, and should, strive to higher levels, both physically, mentally and socially. It encourages research into such areas as life extension, cryonics, nanotechnology, physical and mental enhancements, uploading human consciousness into computers and megascale engineering."

"The goal of transhumanism is to make humanity grow to its full potential. We are no longer bound by biological evolution, we can choose our own path: the era of autoevolution has begun. The responsibility of our development is now ours alone, we can choose what we want to become and how we want to become it."

"We are smart enough to realize that we are stupid, and stupid enough to make the problem of becoming smarter hard."

"We are the shapers of the universe, so we better shape up."

"We are all amazingly stupid, but we can get better."

"The reason we're here is that we're interested in questions about the future. We want to get to the future. But that also implies that the future better be a good place. Otherwise there wouldn't be a point in getting there. And that might mean, in turn, that the methods we are going to use in order to get to the future better be good, too. We don't want to end up in a future built on bad methods. We don't want to climb to the heavens on a pile of corpses. So, that's why we're going to bring in some small ethical considerations just to be a bit proactive. Normally, of course, ethicists tend to be the ones saying, ?Oh, you shouldn't be doing that research.? The ethics board that really complicates your research proposal, or the guy interviewed in the newspaper saying, ?this raises grave questions,? and never states the questions. I think we can be proactive in ethics. There are a lot of things we can figure out beforehand and do something about. Yes, there is a limited amount of brain power we can send in to ethical consideration; we shouldn't be making up too many problems just to make up problems and give ethicists like me job security. But there are interesting issues that we can actually resolve, and in some cases they might turn out to be very simple if we think about them before we embark on the project."

"Transhumanism has many forms, sometimes apparently contradictory. Its essence is in my opinion, that we humans can, and should continue to develop ourselves in all possible directions. The bodies and minds evolution has given us are wonderful, but far from perfect. They can be improved in many ways, and this can be done in a rational manner using science and technology. In the same way many other parts of the "Human Condition" may be changed through new methods and visions. In the long run, we will no longer be human anymore, but posthuman beings. Of course, not all people would like to go this far. Some might want to improve themselves somewhat, but still remain essentially as before. Others might reject any improvements outright for various reasons. From a transhumanistic standpoint, this is no problem. If they don't want to go in our direction, they are welcome to remain humans. What we cannot accept is other people putting restrictions on our quest towards transhumanity; in that case we have to prevent them from interfering, probably by simply avoiding them. In no way do we want to force anybody to anything."

"What would we be without vision and beauty? Beside seeking to overcome all present limits of biology, psychology, technology and physics, transhumanism also seeks to overcome limits of art and aesthetics, to integrate art with technology, science and life itself."

"What is the true source of diversity? Is it just chaos, chaos with selection or is true randomness needed?"

"While most transhumanists are rational and sceptic, there are some groups that are more mystical or downright religious about transhuman themes (irritating transhumanists who seek to keep transhumanism firmly rooted in reality and academically respectable to no end). However, it should be remembered that all human activity tends to have a spiritual/emotional side - regardless of how silly it might appear."