The Rejection of the Human Condition
Throughout the history of civilization, we have become accustomed to certain ideas and concepts. We’ve come to understand and accept the notions that we must eat, but we can’t eat just anything. We have to take care of our bodies and no matter what we have to die at some point. What would happen if these preconceived notions were challenged? Consider a world where beauty and physical aesthetic can be altered at will, and are entirely based on our preferences and not on our genetics, and where we are no longer penalized for being born with appearances outside of societal standards for beauty. A world where drugs, medicinal or recreational can be synthesized internally or replicated by altering brain chemistry on the fly thus rendering drug addiction and abuse obsolete. A world where cancer and infectious diseases cannot develop or spread. A world where access to nutrition, physical fitness, and bodily health is no longer dictated by the results of our bank statements or the amount of free time we have to dedicate to the preparatory hours required. A world where our daily independence is not tied only to our wages.
Though I do not have an advanced understanding of synthetic biology or medicine, my background in Artificial Intelligence and engineering leads me to believe it may be humanly possible to reject these notions. Assuming that what I will discuss is within the future capabilities of synthetic biology, then at current pace of technological advancement, I think, within a 30–50 year period it may begin to seem archaic that we once assumed that:
- We need our bodies and our internal organs to live
Our consciousness lives within our mind. The rest of our body’s primary function is to keep our brain alive and reproduce. Our organs and internal functions are liabilities, that we’ve grown accustomed to. Ideally we will be able to replace our organs with artificial devices almost at will, if necessary. It is unclear if cancer is something that can truly be cured but if we could replace our organs at will with artificial organs (that cannot develop cancer) we would be a lot closer than we are now. All cancer cells are not the same, so it seems unlikely that we will ever develop a panacea cure for cancer itself. What is more likely is that we will develop better early detection methods and develop ways to replace our vital organs so that cancer cannot develop and/or spread.
Research in this field is promising. Large numbers of people have already received artificial hearts but the majority of artificial organs are only useful for keeping people alive until they can receive a transplant, or they require frequent invasive maintenance that limits one’s quality of life. However, technology does seem to be moving in a direction where we could conceivably have sustainable artificial organs that work better than those we are born with.
Ideally, to maintain these artificial organs we would be able to swallow the doctor, that is take a capsule containing nano-robots that will monitor and repair our artificial organs.
2. We must eat to survive
A lot of the damage we do to our organs is because of what we eat. It is maddening to think that we must maintain a perfectly balanced diet in order to ensure health and even then, almost everything we eat seems to have some dangerous side effect. It is 2016, we should be eating for pleasure, not for survival. Also, food inequality is more extreme than ever globally, albeit stable in the US. It is a tragedy that we accept the current state as it is, where one part of the world can eat whatever they want to gluttonous excess and the other survives on scraps. Its maddening that high speed internet is beginning to encompass the world yet clean drinking water and nutrition are only accessible to a portion of us.
Further, let us think of the economics and environmental impact of the agricultural industry. Almost every square mile of land on this planet has been affected in some way by agriculture. In most countries, it is nearly impossible for someone to easily find and reach untouched earth. Vertical farming and precision agricultural are promising but we don’t have the ability to feed everyone easily, unless we transition the world’s population to a 100% plant-based diet. This holds true, given that most animal based food consumes 9 times as many calories than we are able to harvest from them and cattle have a significant impact on humanities carbon footprint. Even if we transition to algae or insect based protein, and other plant based food, the agricultural industry is still one of the leading causes of energy/water waste and environmental pollution. Not to mention food borne illness and malnutrition are still killing tens of thousands of people every day.
Companies like Soylent, Impossible Foods, and others are doing a great job of getting us further along but even so it takes significantly more energy from the sun in order to produce this food than we will ever get out of it. If we think of the human body as something that exists just to power the brain and reproduce, then conceivably we could power the brain and other forms of human function solely with electricity. Whether we generate electricity through biological (photosynthesis) or hardware based methods remains to be seen. But if we could power a cybernetic humanoid body with electricity we would also eliminate our dependence on our internal organs to survive. If we could reach this point we would become more efficient at harvesting energy from the sun, by cutting out the middle man (food).
Solar power is known to be a solvable engineering problem. As for photosynthetic methods in humans it is unclear if this will ever be possible. Though research has been conducted by Christina Agapakis:
Another option, although research is completely lacking, would be to have a bioreactor built into a future android body that utilizes a symbiotic relationship with algae blooms living inside of this android body to directly generate energy from photosynthetic means. For something tangentially related: http://blog.mbl.edu/?p=3285
Recently, a man has agreed to undergo a full head transplant. It does seem likely that we could either replace much of our body with cybernetic components with time or transplant our brains entirely into an android body. Also, it is notable that Robert White successfully connected the brain of a monkey to the central nervous system of another monkey in 1963. Once we have perfected our ability to conduct full head transplants the next step is to develop an artificial central nervous system to transplant to. Our ability to transcend the human body is hinged on whether it is possible to transplant our brain to an artificial nervous system. This nervous system would serve as the platform that allows our brain to interface with all of the electronic augmentation that we would supply.
3. We must die
If we can replace our body with cybernetics and no longer need to eat to survive, then most, if not all, modern diseases will become irrelevant. The only thing limiting our lifespan is how long we can maintain our brain before it begins to malfunction. There are already electrical neural implants that can handle some of this but we will really need to improve the quality and scope of these if we are to maintain our consciousness forever. If we can successfully figure out a way to augment our brains, then we could live for hundreds of years, if not indefinitely.
By extending our lifespan and removing the need for food/water, suddenly things like colonizing the galaxy, or at least our solar system seem much easier. Additionally, the number of atmospheres we can survive in rises significantly. Colonization would obviously be the next step, given that population will likely grow drastically on earth. There is still an upper bound for how many humans the earth could support, although without a need for food or water this planet could certainly support significantly more. Eventually space and hardware waste/recycling begins to be the limiting factor. Of course if we have eliminated the traditional concept of the human body and eating to survive our culture will change drastically and if we augment our brain extensively one could argue that we may no longer be human. Going forward human evolution may be driven by technological increases and not by artificial/natural selection.
4. We must work to live
For centuries now, we have taken pride in our work. And we should continue to do so. But we should work out of passion, out of ambition, not out of a need to survive. In all likelihood there is a coming wave of Artificial Intelligence and robotics that will automate most menial tasks and labor. This leads us to a fork in the road where we can move to a dystopian society with extreme unemployment rates, which is of course unsustainable because people will need an income source in order to feed the corporations seeking to profiteer from automation. Or we can move into a Utopian society where the wealth gains from AI and automation are distributed uniformly as a form of basic income, freeing the lower and middle classes from wage servitude and allowing people to freely work on the things that interest them most. This should, in theory help society maximize its time spent on innovation and creative arts.
If we could achieve these feats, then we could drastically reduce the need for fossil fuels and clean water. Our energy consumption could now be harvested directly from the sun. We could finally escape the apocalyptic future of runaway climate change and we could effectively eliminate the current unsustainable consumptive model required for human survival. Space will of course become an issue; however, population growth should slow tremendously given a significant decrease in labor demand.
For some series of generations humanity would still be able to support population growth through reproduction, given that our consumptive model should be orders of magnitude more efficient without the need for fossil fuels or food to survive. Simply put, these optimizations allow the planet to support a larger population. Reductions in agricultural activity should allow us to become increasingly efficient with how we allocate space. Autonomous transportation will also eliminate the need for massive parking lots and free up more urban space as well. Additionally, if we are fully cybernetic, our requirements for comfort and accommodation would be greatly reduced. For a transhuman artificial body, sleeping outside offers virtually the same level of comfort as a 10,000 sq. ft. mansion. Though I doubt people will ever, or should ever reject the comforts of having our own private space, the value proposition of purchasing space at the highest possible premiums begins to disappear.
The major problem facing humanity at this point will be allocation of hardware waste from artificial organs and parts replacements. One obvious option would be to eject it into space. The secondary problem facing humanity will likely be boredom. How we as a collective species decide to allocate our newfound time and abilities will be the deciding factor on whether transhumanism is the savior of humanity or an existential threat.
During a transition period from biological to electronic hardware, another threat to society will be classism and inequality. If genetic and cybernetic modifications are only made available to the wealthy, then two obvious problems arise. First, There will be a loss of egalitarianism. We cannot transition away from work or away from food and truly maximize human potential here on earth if only a fraction of the earth’s population can transition. Second, living in a world where we have split the population into altered and unaltered humans, with one group having a clear unfair advantage, would create a dangerous divide unlike any the world has ever seen. Imagine the perils of a new caste system where one caste has access to an entirely new notion of health and a lifespan hundreds of years longer than the other caste. This is absolutely dangerous. This partition of society could effectively undermine democratic function entirely. Given this, the clear path forward seems to be a centrally regulated process for transition. Likely we would prioritize people based on current health risks, and current access to food/water. This methodology will allow for “emergency” transitions for those in dire need to serve as research so that the process can be honed. Robotic surgical equipment can be developed to complete these operations and at first regulation can impose a prohibitively high cost that in some sense penalizes early adopters (the wealthy). The large profit margins can be used to further fund R&D and fund the transitions of those less fortunate. Governments would have to regulate this and oversee that all have equal opportunity to transition.
Why would a government want to sponsor something like this? First, government tax burdens are greatly alleviated in a post human society. The government will no longer need to impose wage floors, that may eventually carry down to consumers. Social programs for food assistance will no longer be necessary and our healthcare problems will be easily eliminated as the new form of healthcare will be hardware maintenance. We will likely develop insurance plans and maintenance schedules for our bodies similar to what we have with modern automobiles. The government will be free of Medicare, Medicaid, and Social Security provisioning. Pharmaceuticals will no longer be necessary because hardware and brain chemistry can be altered at will through software updates and modifications. Paying for transhumanism begins to look like a small investment to governments. Especially given that this method of transition can ensure egalitarianism alongside wealth gains for all. I don’t mean to paint this societal transition as easy. There will be opposition within every democratic government due to constituent concerns and corporate influences from affected industries seeking to mitigate disruption. Disagreements on such issues could become a threat to the stability of democracies worldwide.
All of this seems extremely far off and I suspect that machine superintelligence is many decades away, but Turing complete humanoid artificial intelligence is right around the corner. Most technology for hardware related advances already exists. The true question is whether or not we can make our brain interface purely with electrical equipment. Research is already under way on this and plenty of electronic augmentations and implants for the brain already exists. Regardless of when the day comes, this will likely be an existential crossroad for humanity. Policy frameworks should be discussed now rather than later in order to avoid a world where technology access allows for runaway inequality and an eventual collapse of society.
There will also likely be extreme opposition to such a future spearheaded first by those who represent the industries that would be disrupted by this revolution, on the financial front. Secondly, on the social front there will be those who see this transition as a departure from human ideals, a departure from the centuries old human condition, and an altogether new meaning of what it means to be human, if our future philosophies even converge to an understanding that we are still human at all. There will be those who choose not to transition and may be violently opposed due to pre-existing religious beliefs and spiritual concerns. I, for one, when faced with the possibility of a rapidly accelerating lifespan that could ultimately be 3–100x what is now, find the subsequent choices quite easy to make. When faced with this possibility, all open questions regarding what it means to be human and how we define the human experience, become easy to reconcile.
“If it is natural to die then the hell with nature. Why submit to its tyranny? We must rise above nature. We must refuse to die.” — FM-2030 (Fereidoun M. Esfandiary)
