In defense of Superlative Technodevelopmental Formulations

In his comments to my Defense of Superlativity, Dale Carrico politely describes my ideas as “idiocy”. To make his point, he has produced a masterpiece of nonsensical hair-splitting at the grandest level, in the spirit of the best ideologically motivated demonstrations that 2+2=5. Some people have really elevated mental masturbation to a very creative art form.

Dale is perplexed because he would expect a “Defense of Superlativity” against his critique to make some effort to address at least one of the five charges mentioned below, and it does not seem to him that I made much of an effort to do so.

But wait a minute. I am making just one point, and a very simple one: that “superlative technologies” like immortality and mind uploading are compatible with our current scientific understanding of reality and, someday, may be developed as practical engineering options. Dale has said many times that he refuses to engage “Superlative Technocentrics” in debates on the actual, scientific and engineering aspects of superlative technologies. He only wants to discuss on his nebulous terms, about “(sub)cultural identity politics” (?), “elitist, alarmist, escapist, reductionist attitudes and rhetoric that are especially well suited to incumbent interests and anti-democratic politics” (???) and this kind of things. If he refuses to talk in my language, why the hell should I want to talk in his language?

OK Dale let’s see your points. What you have called Superlative Technodevelopmental Formulations seem to you:

One: To be hyperbolically unrealistic and sensationalist in ways that derange urgently necessary public deliberation about technoscience issues.

Well, first prove “unrealistic” instead of assuming it. Many people who know much more science and engineering than you would not agree. Second, your “Superlative Technodevelopmental Formulations” are not very much related to urgently necessary public deliberation about technoscience issues, so I still don’t see how one can derange the other. We are still far from public deliberation about civil rights for uploads, and the prospect of mind uploading has _nothing_ to do with today’s health care policy. So, I don’t see your point. If your point is that Superlative R&D can divert public research funding that should be used for more urgent things, my reply is that I do not see much evidence that a significant amount of funding is being diverted, and that one of the strength of the public research system is that it allocates moderate resources also to basic research without immediate applications. If your point is that I should follow your priorities instead of mine, then there is not much to discuss.

Two: To exacerbate irrational fears and fantasies about agency typically activated in any case by discussions of technology.

These are _your_ fears and fantasies. Technology is whatever was invented after you are born. Remember what luddites said about communication technologies in the 70s and 80s? “Dehumanizing” and all that? The younger generations have cheerfully embraced the Internet, cell phones, SMS, P2P networks and Facebook without thinking twice. Future generations will also, I think, embrace brain implants, memory transfer and indefinite lifespans without thinking twice.

Three: To lend themselves to faith-based social forms and identity-based political models that are psychologically harmful and dangerously anti-democratizing.

You can say that of everything. Should we discuss the cult-of-personality, charismatic leadership, intolerance of dissent, thought policing and internal purges sooo typical of socialist parties? Yes my friend, socialist parties have had all that and worse. Should we then dismiss socialism as psychologically harmful and dangerously anti-democratizing? Up to you.

Four: To facilitate elitist, alarmist, escapist, reductionist attitudes and rhetoric that are especially well suited to incumbent interests and anti-democratic politics, whatever the professed politics of those who advocate them.

If you mean that Superlative Technologies are Bad because they will be developed and used by military-industrial interests, wait a minute. I had formed the impression that you thought of Superlative Technologies as nonsensical and impossible delusions of sci-fi geeks or Robot God cultists. Industry and the military complex would hardly invest money and resources on impossible dreams, would they. Then Superlative Technologies are not so impossible after all? Interesting. No, I see that I was making a wrong assumption - you never discuss concrete things but “reductionist attitudes and rhetoric”. So your point is just that our Superlative Technodevelopmental Formulations are “well suited” to incumbent interests. Well. So what? Democracy is also _very_ well suited to them, since they can often buy enough votes to win. Should we throw democracy away because it (like everything else) is a double edged weapon that can be used also by the bad guys? I don’t think so.

Five: To represent in their extremity a clarifying and symptomatic expression of the basic irrationality and authoritarianism of prevailing discourses of “Global Development” and “Technoscientific Progress” in an era of neoliberal and neoconservative politics.

Similar comment as above. That neoliberals and neoconservatives like ice cream does not mean that I cannot like ice cream, it just means that ice cream is good for both. “Global Development” and “Technoscientific Progress” are _good_ things, even if also neoliberals and neoconservatives say so.

Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address) on 11/29 at 11:42 AM

  1. Giulio Prisco: Worse. Debater. Ever.

    Posted by Disinfo  on  11/29  at  07:49 PM

  2. Hi Disinfo. Perhaps.You.Could.Explain? I look forward to learning the noble art of debate from you. G.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  11/30  at  08:13 AM

  3. “Superlative technologies” like immortality and mind uploading are compatible with our current scientific understanding of reality

    Logical possibility is not the same thing as practical likelihood in any human relevant timescale and only the latter relevance justifies the hope & faith (not to mention the apocalyptic dread) you superlative technocentric types go on about. Quite apart from this, before you get to remote logical possibility problematic notions of intelligence, selfhood, progress get smuggled into basic superlative assumptions.

    If you guys are wrong in these areas it doesn’t matter the near-vacuous logical entailments you claim or the blue-sky megaengineering schemes if you’re building on quicksand.

    Dale… refuses to engage “Superlative Technocentrics” in debates on the actual, scientific and engineering aspects of superlative technologies.

    You call your hocus pocus “technical” and count on general scientific illiteracy to cut the slack you need to indulge in psychologically edifying handwaving.

    He only wants to discuss on his nebulous terms… If he refuses to talk in my language, why the hell should I want to talk in his language?

    That’s the task you take on when you decide to “respond” to my critique if this is the language and these are the concerns of which it is composed.

    first prove “unrealistic” instead of assuming it. Many people who know much more science and engineering than you would not agree.

    Many more people who know more science and engineering than I do disagree with you, and a responsible citizen who isn’t a scientist should defer to consensus. I agree that many superlative technocentrics know enough science to misinform the public, or to convince themselves that their wish-fulfillment fantasies are really going to come true any day now.

    Should we discuss the cult-of-personality, charismatic leadership, intolerance of dissent, thought policing and internal purges sooo typical of socialist parties? Yes my friend, socialist parties have had all that and worse. Should we then dismiss socialism as psychologically harmful and dangerously anti-democratizing?

    Only in the wingnut right can you get away with pretending that people of the democratic left are “unaware” of the dangers of authoritarianism whether on the “left” or the “right.” I ferociously oppose anti-democratic governance wherever it’s happening, smearing social democracy/democratic socialism with Stalinism is dumb.

    On the other hand, there are at most a few thousand self-identified “transhumanists” in the world, a handful of marginal organizations, and a small coterie of published authors and Usual Suspects who function as “go to” guys for your movement—and the proportion of would-be gurus, flim-flam artists, proud right wing reactionaries, young white guys begging for validation is flabbergastingly high.

    If you mean that Superlative Technologies are Bad because they will be developed and used by military-industrial interests, wait a minute. I had formed the impression that you thought of Superlative Technologies as nonsensical and impossible delusions of sci-fi geeks or Robot God cultists.

    Superlative discourse is the hype that enables corporate-militarists to peddle non-superlative crap they’re actually capable of. We’re sold lethal bombs with fantasies of precision bombs, sold dangerous expensive nuclear technology with fantasies of energy too cheap to meter, sold unnecessary even harmful drugs with fantasies of eternal youth and easy happiness, sold landfills filled with toxic plastic with fantasies of cheap ubiquitous colorful abundance, etc. Superlatives are True Believers in hype while the beneficiaries profit from the lies.

    That neoliberals and neoconservatives like ice cream does not mean that I cannot like ice cream, it just means that ice cream is good for both. “Global Development” and “Technoscientific Progress” are good things, even if also neoliberals and neoconservatives say so.

    Of course, different people can mean different things by the same words. “Global Development” too often means confiscatory wealth concentration. “Technoscientific Progress” too often means “no limits” (none to atmospheric resilience, none to soil or fresh water, no energy descent, no need to maintain infrastructure or legitimacy with taxes, etc.) to white racist North Atlantic corporate-militarist hegemony.

    I understand the appeal of these facile phrases you cling to, this ice cream cone business, but the truth is you don’t seem to understand more than a fraction of the points I am making.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/01  at  04:06 PM

  4. This debate reminds me that there are two activities one can indulge in that are likely to make you chuckle.

    One is to read what transhumanists and extropians and other technophiles say will be possible within current human lifetimes in fields like Robotics, and then take a look at the cutting edge of that field as it stands today.

    The gap between these dreams and current reality is ludicrously vast.

    The second activity is to read past objections from naysayers dismissing as either totally impossible (or certain to remain infeasible for the forseeable future), technological developments that were realized within their lifetime.

    The sheer lack of imagination and technical knowhow of those who snorted ‘the suggestion that the human voice could be transmitted across the Atlantic is ludicrous’ beggars belief.

    Moral of the story? Be an open-minded skeptic with regards to either group.

    Extropia DaSilva- Plans to jump from primary to primary for as long as human-level AI takes.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/01  at  05:29 PM

  5. I agree with Extropia that one should be an open-minded skeptic with regards to either group. I may have said a couple of times that sadly I do not think immortality and uploading technologies will be developed within my natural lifetime. Well, no big deal. This is what cryonics is for, isn’t it.

    Dale, sorry to be reductionist again, but I must insist on the ice cream business. Or if you prefer another formulation:

    The concepts most frequently used by corporate-militarists to peddle their plans are _democracy_ and _human rights_. We don’t invade other countries for the oil, the money and the power, but we do so to bring democracy and human rights to them.

    I think nobody can deny that corporate-militarists have used democracy and human rights _much_ more frequently than “superlative technologies” to justify their actions. According to your logic, we should then conclude that democracy and human rights should be thrown away as corporate-militarists concepts. Please.

    Smearing social democracy/democratic socialism with Stalinism may be dumb, but your smearing transhumanism with cultism and crankiness is equally dumb.

    I could, of course, use precisely the same debating technique that you like to use, refuse to accept your statement “I ferociously oppose anti-democratic governance wherever it’s happening”, and go on equating social democracy/democratic socialism with Stalinism. You know that I could list many solid examples and facts in support of this position (which I do _not_ share), please don’t make me list them.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/01  at  07:19 PM

  6. Referring to this discussion, Dale writes in the comments section of his blog:

    “the brain is more gland than computer”

    Now Dale, I don’t know on which New Age book you found this apparently profound statement, but it is just nonsense because:

    A gland is a computer

    A gland is a computer because it:
    a) Is a physical object that obeys the laws of physics;
    b) Reacts to inputs generated from its environment and produces a corresponding output;
    c) Stores and executes electro-chemically coded programs that determine its dynamical responses to its inputs;
    d) Its behavior can be fully understood in terms of physical laws;
    e) Once its behavior is fully understood, it is possible to design another mechanical device to reproduce the same behavior, or a different behavior considered “better” according to appropriate criteria.

    Apparently profound but actually nonsensical statements like “the brain is more gland than computer” are frequently used by religious fundamentalists in support of their delusional belief that living organisms are characterized by some nebulous, ineffable “vital spirit” forever beyond the domain of science.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/01  at  07:58 PM

  7. What strikes me most about this Superlativity “debate” is that it’s not so much a dialogue as two concurrent monologues. I must say, I agree with Dale on a lot of his points (though not on his delivery, and I agree with Giulio on others, though I won’t go into depth now).

    I consider myself to be a transhumanist, but sometimes I can’t help but screw my eyes in disbelief at the cultishness I see springing up in places. I would suggest, however, that Dale’s brash insistence upon uttermost cultishness is a bit over the top - there are certainly cultish elements, and I’d hate to see these grow to encompass any more of the transhumanist “movement” than they already do, but as it rests currently, I would hardly call transhumanism an identity cult. The problem, I feel, is that transhumanism inexorably falls into the trap of prognostication. What I see as being the basic heart of the philosophy is an insistence upon social equality and pluralism - consider it a “Gay Rights movement” for sorts of people who don’t (or who possess characteristics which do not) exist yet. The problem, of course, arises with the fact that it’s not relevant to anything - who needs a Gay Rights movement if there’s never been anybody of homosexual orientation before? One might argue it on principle, but unfortunately, principles don’t often change societies, at least not when they’re manifestly irrelevant to those societies. So, transhumanism is forced to fall into attempting to convince people that the principles really DO apply, or really WILL some time soon. Dale, you once indicated that if transhumanism were to be denatured of its superlativity and hyperbole, that it would be little more than standard liberal democratic, pluralistic fare - I agree wholeheartedly, but there’s a rock (the disparity between reality and principle of transhumanist aspirations) and a hard place (the clannish tendency of people to self-organise into social classes according to shared perceptual identities) which must be overcome first.

    If I might be so bold as to make a suggestion to Dale? From the form of your debating, I find it hard to imagine that you are an educator. Debates, useful ones at any rate, are predicated upon a mutual sphere of agreed upon presumptions, which strikes me as conspicuously absent here. Consider Giulio as somebody whom it is your job to educate - somebody who doesn’t share your assumptions, your education, your experience with these topics. The context matters.

    Giulio, no offence in stating this, but you really must both try a great deal harder to see things from the other’s view, even if you merely do so in an attempt to manipulate them into seeing things your way. Understanding goes down easier when it’s not crammed down somebody’s throat, and as academics you must both see that.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/01  at  11:57 PM

  8. Hi JM Inc,

    you are certainly right that this Superlativity “debate” is not so much a dialogue as two concurrent monologues.

    I use to read carefully all that Dale writes, and I usually agree with him on many things besides this Superlativity thing. His arguments on Superlativity do not persuade me because my impression is that he is just assuming his “conclusion”: that everyone who dares taking seriously possible future immortality technologies like mind uploading is a cultist, a crank and a danger to serious policy work.

    Besides, I see a frequent logic fallacy: corporate-militarists are Bad, corporate-militarists can use transhumanism for their ends, and consequently transhumanism is Bad. It is very easy to see that this is bad logic, and it becomes especially evident if you replace “transhumanism” with “hot water”.

    Since Dale is evidently a very smart person, my impression is that his hatred of transhumanism is of a mainly emotional nature, and that his main motivation is defending the statu-quo represented by current human biological nature, with all its imperfections, against scary possible posthumanist futures. I also see some residual traces of religious “humility” and “reverence” wrt. nature.

    In conclusion I think the problem here is not that one is unable to see the arguments of the other, but that we start from two fundamentally different sets of priorities and goals. It is difficult to explain things to someone who does not want to understand (this may apply to both of course).

    This symmetry is broken when it comes to tolerance: I have nothing against Dale’s worldview and do not feel the need to systematically attacking him, while he apparently does.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/02  at  07:31 AM

  9. Apparently profound but actually nonsensical statements like “the brain is more gland than computer” are frequently used by religious fundamentalists in support of their delusional belief that living organisms are characterized by some nebulous, ineffable “vital spirit” forever beyond the domain of science.

    Name one.  Name one religious fundamentalist who has said “the brain is more gland than computer.”  Name one, how hard can that be, since you claim it is frequent.  What is mystical about a gland?  I am completely flummoxed by this point of yours.  And now you are insisting that glands are computers.  Everything is a computer.  For Plato the mind was a mirror, for Nietzsche it was a stylus inscribing a surface, for Freud it was a steamworks, now people fetishize the computer as our quintessential tech and now the mind is computer, or a network as the popular focus nudges that way.  I guess I can follow this move, you seem to want to describe as a “computer” any complex system susceptible of scientific analysis.  OK.  I think it probably is more useful to distinguish computers from non-computers, inasmuch as it seems to me in common parlance there are plenty of intelligible non-computers in the world, but, hey, I get functionalism, I’m down with it.  I don’t honestly think that;s what you are up to here, Giulio, I think you’re just uncritically flinging fetishized terms around and not getting my critique particularly, but that, I suppose, is neither here nor there.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/02  at  06:28 PM

  10. [C]onsider [“transhumanism”] a “Gay Rights movement” for sorts of people who don’t (or who possess characteristics which do not) exist yet. The problem, of course, [is]—who needs a Gay Rights movement if there’s never been anybody of homosexual orientation before?

    I definitely agree that this is what transhumanism is up to.  And I strongly disapprove of that.  Identity politics are organized by the complementary gestures of identification (with those with whom one identifies, “we”) and crucially of dis-identification (“they”): every “we” has what deconstruction terms the “constitutive outside” on which it depends for its sense.  I disapprove of the politics of identification in general, because it seems to me politics is about the ongoing contingent reconciliation of a diversity of stakeholders who share the world, many of whom are “theys” rather than “we’s”—I consign identification to the field of the moral (from mores, “we intentions”), and strongly distinguish the pleasures and costs of moral membership from political participation.  But, setting all that aside, a futurological identity politics is especially dangerous to my way of thinking these things, since it performs a double dis-identification: the dis-identification of so-called “post-human” beings on some idealized construal impossibly ascertained from the present pre-post-human vantage as distinguished from those beings who fail to pass muster on the terms of this construal; but, worse, a dis-identification in the present itself from those with whom one shares the world from this pre-post-human vantage, a dis-identification with the actual field of the political (politics is contestation in an open present aspiring in the direction of futurity) for an idealized field assigned the status of “the future” (always with the definite article in front of it to indicate its closedness).  As I argue elsewhere, it seems to me to be the case that either people are already post-human (in the sense that we no longer expect a humanist meta-narrative of species solidarity to deliver universal rights, learning the hard way that this never pans out but functions as an alibi for anti-democratic politics) and we never will be.  This is an important insight to have, but it is distorted by a facile assimilation of an aspirational post-humanist politics of secular consensual democratic planetary multiculture into an advocacy for some particular construal of a post-human species standing in some definitive relation to a marginal sub(cult)ural movement of “transhuman” believers here and now.  I understand that that is rather dense, but space on comments are limited, and I am a guest here, after all.

    Dale, you once indicated that if transhumanism were to be denatured of its superlativity and hyperbole, that it would be little more than standard liberal democratic, pluralistic fare—I agree wholeheartedly, but there’s a rock (the disparity between reality and principle of transhumanist aspirations) and a hard place (the clannish tendency of people to self-organise into social classes according to shared perceptual identities) which must be overcome first.

    That is the whole reason I shifted into technoprogressive advocacy in which I resist technocentric tribalism as much as I resist bioconservatism and corporate-militarist retro-futurism.  The whole reason.

    From the form of your debating, I find it hard to imagine that you are an educator. Debates, useful ones at any rate, are predicated upon a mutual sphere of agreed upon presumptions, which strikes me as conspicuously absent here.

    I don’t blog for the same reasons I teach.  When I teach I am paid to treat every student equally and I am happy to do so.  Everybody is ignorant, everybody is mistaken, everybody has the capacity to learn more.  That is what is beautiful about the pedagogical scene.  Online I am clarifying my own views through contestation, or blowing off steam, or making polemical cases in the face of urgent problems.  I tend to argue with people with whom I disagree or to focus on areas of disagreement with people with whom I more generally agree—because that’s what I learn from, because that’s the place that is most likely to overturn my settled convictions.  I think it is probably very difficult to imagine my teaching from my blogging and vice versa.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/02  at  06:55 PM

  11. ‘For Plato the mind was a mirror, for Nietzsche it was a stylus inscribing a surface, for Freud it was a steamworks, now people fetishize the computer as our quintessential tech and now the mind is computer, or a network as the popular focus nudges that way.’

    But if you read chapter 4 of Kurzweil’s ‘Singularity Is Near’ you will find a list of ways in which the brain differs from a conventional computer. It is therefore slightly innacurate to say that transhumanists think ‘the mind is computer’. A more accurate way to put it would be ‘transhumanists believe that,in a very crude sense, the brain is a bit like a computer, and distinctions between the two may become harder to identify as neuroscience and computer science collaborate on building models of human intelligence’.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/02  at  07:49 PM

  12. I’m not going to engage in a debate about the variously qualified claims any given hundred different transhumanist-identified (or not) people have made about just how much and in just what ways the brain is like a computer.  Transhumanists are far from unique in understanding that there may be utility in such analogies in some respects, this is not a transhumanist contribution, just basic pop science.  My own point about the conventional recourse to fetishized contemporary techs in modeling mind is also a commonplace.  Your point is well taken, but I really think there is finally little that is useful to understanding superlativity that would come from dwelling on he-said she-said on this subtopic.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/02  at  08:41 PM

  13. Giulio: it seems perfectly obvious to me that Dale is using “computer” to mean “computer as constructed by humans” (digital, modular, programmable, etc.), not “computer-science abstract machine”. I certainly think that the computational metaphor of mind is a really good one (certainly better than a “gland” - huh?), and that any physical system is a computer in an abstract theoretical sense, and that uploading is possible - but to claim that the brain is a computer in a concrete sense - that it is for practical purposes like the digital, modular, programmable thing on your desk - is absurd. This is not mysticism, just recognition of the limits of an analogy. Do you understand now?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/02  at  09:28 PM

  14. Actually, I’m not proposing to model minds by analogy to glands, the whole force of the intervention was to dislodge a too facile embrace of cybernetic totalism.  Duh.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/02  at  11:12 PM

  15. Dale, I find it difficult to take seriously your advocacy of pluralism:

    I disapprove of the politics of identification in general, because it seems to me politics is about the ongoing contingent reconciliation of a diversity of stakeholders who share the world, many of whom are “theys” rather than “we’s”

    when most of your writings are about “we serious people” against “they cranky transhumanist cultists who believe in robot gods”. Where is the “reconciliation of a diversity of stakeholders who share the world”?

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  06:29 AM

  16. On brains, glands, computers and minds:

    Of course I realize that brains are different from conventional computers. My brain does not run MacOSX or Linux just yet. Also DNA and quantum computers are quite different from conventional computers. Yet they, as well as brains and minds, can be thought of as examples of computational machines in the extended sense provided by the definitions of Von Neumann, Turing and many others after them.

    So, when I say that brains are computers and minds are programs I understand both the limits AND the strength of the analogy. I certainly don’t think that our brains contain Radio Shack RAM chips, and realize that the computational schemes used by a brain to run a mind are quite different from those used by my Mac to run Excel.

    But I see a lot of practical value in the analogy, as it provides us with both crude practical engineering examples and more refined theoretical formulations.

    The main point that I want to make with the brain-computer analogy is that the brain, and the mind running on the brain, are physical computational systems whose properties and detailed mechanisms can be and will be understood, reproduced and improved upon.

    Saying that the brain is a gland and not a computer (which does not add any new insight because glands themselves are physical computational systems), appears as a rhetorical way to deny the merit of the analogy to “conclude” that the brain and the mind cannot be understood, reproduced and improved upon. This is how I read the statement “the brain is a gland and not a computer”, and is precisely what religious fundamentalists wish to make us believe.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  06:58 AM

  17. Where is the “reconciliation of a diversity of stakeholders who share the world”?

    I’m not censoring you I’m saying you’re wrong.  I’m not defaming you I’m critiquing you.  I’m not violating you I’m arguing against you.  Pluralism is both collaborative and contestatory.  Pluralism isn’t pretending to agree where one disagrees, nor pretending indifference to differences, nor a bland embrace of everything at the cost of saying nothing.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/03  at  07:33 AM

  18. Constructively. In order to make a valid argument against someone’s point in a constructive debate, one has to acknowledge that the other side has a point. Dismissing every sentence that contains the string “uploading” as cranky nonsense of Robot God cultists does not permit advancing too far.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  07:42 AM

  19. The main point that I want to make with the brain-computer analogy is that the brain, and the mind running on the brain, are physical computational systems whose properties and detailed mechanisms can be and will be understood, reproduced and improved upon.

    In the very words you use to express this denial you demonstrate its falsity—you say that the force of the computer analogy to mind is just to emphasize that mind is susceptible of scientific analysis, but then you characterize thought as “the mind running on the brain,” which pushes the analogy quite a bit further still.

    Saying that the brain is a gland and not a computer (which does not add any new insight because glands themselves are physical computational systems), appears as a rhetorical way to deny the merit of the analogy to “conclude” that the brain and the mind cannot be understood, reproduced and improved upon. This is how I read the statement “the brain is a gland and not a computer”, and is precisely what religious fundamentalists wish to make us believe.

    The phrase I’ve repeated is that the brain is more gland than computer, an assertion intended to give pause to the facile cybernetic totalist in you but not at all intended to offer up some alternative equally facile analogy to model mind.  Now, as for all the “appearances” you go on to ascribe to this move, saying it is all woo-woo mystical or resigns itself to ignorance or whatever, this is all just palpable nonsense.  Glands are easily as intelligible as computers if you really want to be literal-minded about the analogy.  The implications you discern here just don’t make sense to me, try as I might to give you the benefit of the doubt.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/03  at  07:46 AM

  20. In order to make a valid argument against someone’s point in a constructive debate, one has to acknowledge that the other side has a point.

    I’ll acknowledge that when you earn it by my lights.  I certainly give you no end of opportunities.

    Dismissing every sentence that contains the string “uploading” as cranky nonsense of Robot God cultists does not permit advancing too far.

    I don’t need to advance with those incapable of grasping that “uploading” is Robot Cult nonsense.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/03  at  07:50 AM

  21. “All this writing about going to the Moon is utter bilge”- Richard Woolley, Astronomer Royal, 1956

    “Public acceptance of man’s coming exploration of space is slow….certainly not (something) we shall see”- E. Berghaust and W. Beller- 1957

    “I don’t need to advance with those incapable of grasping that “uploading” is Robot Cult nonsense”- Dale Carrico- 2007

    “We and other computer engineers are beginning to apply what we have learned about the organization of the brain’s memory system to the design of an entirely new generation of intelligent computers…If all our memories, emotions, knowledge and imagination can be translated into 1s and 0s…could it be that, 5000 years from now, we will be able to download our minds into computers…and live forever on the Network?”- Professor Joe Z Tsien, director for Systems Neurobiology, Boston University, 2007

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  09:37 AM

  22. Dale: “I don’t need to advance with those incapable of grasping that “uploading” is Robot Cult nonsense”.

    Then you can save your time for more productive applications, as I am incapable of grasping that “uploading” is Robot Cult nonsense.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  02:49 PM

  23. Thanks for the quote Extropia!

    Tsien’s article on SciAm is here. See also this blog post with comments of two good friends.

    Posted by .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)  on  12/03  at  03:28 PM

  24. Superlatives always want to believe they are the Wright Brothers or Edison, however all appearances are to the contrary.  What they are more likely to be instead is the dot-eyed crank in the basement who thinks he’s got a swell idea for a perpetual motion motion or a scheme to square the circle.  Perhaps Extropia would like to peruse the much larger archive of hype rather than the success stories before trying to imply that all you have to do to be visionary is aspire to the incoherence of theological omni-predicates.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/03  at  03:41 PM

  25. [Y]ou can save your time for more productive applications, as I am incapable of grasping that “uploading” is Robot Cult nonsense.

    As a critic of Superlativity in general and “transhumanism” in particular I find, quite to the contrary, that it is enormously productive to determine how and why a longstanding transhumanist-identified person fails to understand or to be swayed by the various elements of my critique (since I would like to persuade at least some transhumanists that they should rethink their views and since I would like to prevent many more from making the mistake of acquiring them); not to mention that it isn’t exactly unproductive to my way of looking at things to have occasion to publish for the world some of the conspicuous blind=spots, weaknesses, and excesses of somebody who represents a high-profile and well-respected public face of the “movement” I so disapprove of.

    Posted by Dale Carrico  on  12/03  at  03:47 PM
    26. Page 1 of 2 pages  1 2 >

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