This Unholy Mess
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A Future of Unintended Consequences
A FUTURE OF UNINTENDED CONSEQUENCES
In today’s world, it’s probably true that most people would bet on Artificial Intelligence as a shoo-in future winner of the Nobel Prize for Unintended Consequences. There are currently a lot of branches on the AI tree, true, but the many tech-niques being employed by tech-bro pioneers are intended to achieve the same goal of creating an entity much more intelligent than humans, so it can guide us to a world of greater peace, security, and prosperity. No sweat. What could go wrong?
But there is another contender out there, a dark horse candidate in the field of Unintended Consequences that deserves attention, too, and that is the Longevity Movement. Historically, there have been many exponents of this quest (think alchemy and Ponce de Leon), but the modern bio-tech version divides into two basic camps.
The first declares itself to be focused on slowing or reversing the aging process and thus increasing longevity. So that’s an easy one. I mean, who isn’t in favor of living a longer, healthier life? The other camp is where the controversy lies, where the berserkers live. It would best be described as the Immortality Movement. Its exponents will, for PR purposes, sometimes hide behind the goal of greater longevity; but most often they are unabashed in their single-minded effort to reach human immortality. Though in their quest they sometimes use experimental methods similar to those used by the longevity crowd, they also have many of their own techniques and their own champions.
It makes an interesting swim to plunge into some of the various ingenious—not to say bonkers—ways immortality partisans (usually wealthy, of course) envision leading us to our eternal future.
For example, you have Bryan Johnson, a self-described bio-hacker who has set 2039 as the target year for achieving human immortality. He spends his millions exploring reverse-aging using a wide range of models, along with experiments involving lobster enzymes and jellyfish cells, both linked to slow aging.
Others are working on growing and harvesting human organs and tissue to create a one- stop shop for those in need of, say, a 15-year-old set of kidneys for a 90-year-old body. This is familiar capitalistic territory for us, right? Come on down and check out our weekly specials!
In the digital-cyborg sphere, you run into characters like Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, whose “2045 Initiative” proposes to transfer (upload?) a human personality to a non-biological carrier (modified robot?) who could then “live” forever. Sounds like fun. Then there are others who prefer the idea of injecting nano-robots into our bloodstreams, little commandos whose orders are to repair aging cells. Sort of a Red Cross Seal Team Six, running the rapids of your arteries.
Lastly, there is the cryogenics crowd, those who figure that being fresh-frozen after death will put them at the front of the line for revival, with minimum freezer burn, when actual immortality techniques are perfected. Currently there are about 700 people actually frozen and another 5000 people in line for this treatment, among them one of the most public advocates of human immortality, Peter Thiel. Thiel is a billionaire co-founder of PayPal, and involved in any number of life-extension organizations, including Immortal Dragons, which also counts Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos as investors.
What makes Thiel different is that he is an actual philosophical crusader, having publicly said that it’s a scandal people are not more upset about death. He argues that death is not inevitable, it’s a mistake. And he’s going to fight to the death (so to speak) to eradicate it.
There are two things that strike me as extraordinary about Peter Thiel’s battle. One is that nowhere has he given in-depth consideration to the psycho-social effects that immortality would bring about. Hasn’t he read any of Robert Heinlein’s books? What happens when the more affluent people get longevity treatments and the others don’t? What will be the effect on a human being after living for two or three hundred years? Sounds like it might be terribly exhausting for the psyche, if not for the feisty, rejuvenated body. Cue the scene where the character leaps off a cliff, or walks in front of a bus.
The second thing that is arresting about Thiel’s crusade for immortality is its massive personal arrogance. The not-so-hidden subtext of his and his cohort’s efforts is that they must certainly believe that they, as the Masters of the Tech Universe, are so valuable and irreplaceable as they currently exist that they must remain alive forever for the good of humanity, or at least of their shareholders. It’s a pretty breathtaking conclusion, but one that’s hard to escape. Whether you are religious or not, isn’t it very presumptuous to think that the entire Universe, the Singularity within which everything is in constant motion, transforming its extraordinary and fathomless fertility into something else, will never produce beings as impressive and brilliant as Mister Thiel and friends?
So how about an alternative view, which could be expressed as: “Death is not a design flaw”? This would be the notion espoused by those people, religious or not, who believe that death is part of life. People who have some faith in the great cosmos we live in, who recognize that its constantly changing, inexhaustible infinity can be counted on to produce future miracles of beauty and intelligence that even Peter Thiel could never imagine.
Humans are, of course, free to mess with the building blocks of the universe as much as they please, and they certainly will, the lure of money and power being what it is. But as we hurtle toward an uncertain future with AI and with various immortality projects, it is important to remember unintended consequences. It’s not for nothing that the story of Pandora’s Box has so often served as a teaching moment for humanity.
In today’s world, it’s probably true that most people would bet on Artificial Intelligence as a shoo-in future winner of the Nobel Prize for Unintended Consequences. There are currently a lot of branches on the AI tree, true, but the many tech-niques being employed by tech-bro pioneers are intended to achieve the same goal of creating an entity much more intelligent than humans, so it can guide us to a world of greater peace, security, and prosperity. No sweat. What could go wrong?
But there is another contender out there, a dark horse candidate in the field of Unintended Consequences that deserves attention, too, and that is the Longevity Movement. Historically, there have been many exponents of this quest (think alchemy and Ponce de Leon), but the modern bio-tech version divides into two basic camps.
The first declares itself to be focused on slowing or reversing the aging process and thus increasing longevity. So that’s an easy one. I mean, who isn’t in favor of living a longer, healthier life? The other camp is where the controversy lies, where the berserkers live. It would best be described as the Immortality Movement. Its exponents will, for PR purposes, sometimes hide behind the goal of greater longevity; but most often they are unabashed in their single-minded effort to reach human immortality. Though in their quest they sometimes use experimental methods similar to those used by the longevity crowd, they also have many of their own techniques and their own champions.
It makes an interesting swim to plunge into some of the various ingenious—not to say bonkers—ways immortality partisans (usually wealthy, of course) envision leading us to our eternal future.
For example, you have Bryan Johnson, a self-described bio-hacker who has set 2039 as the target year for achieving human immortality. He spends his millions exploring reverse-aging using a wide range of models, along with experiments involving lobster enzymes and jellyfish cells, both linked to slow aging.
Others are working on growing and harvesting human organs and tissue to create a one- stop shop for those in need of, say, a 15-year-old set of kidneys for a 90-year-old body. This is familiar capitalistic territory for us, right? Come on down and check out our weekly specials!
In the digital-cyborg sphere, you run into characters like Russian entrepreneur Dmitry Itskov, whose “2045 Initiative” proposes to transfer (upload?) a human personality to a non-biological carrier (modified robot?) who could then “live” forever. Sounds like fun. Then there are others who prefer the idea of injecting nano-robots into our bloodstreams, little commandos whose orders are to repair aging cells. Sort of a Red Cross Seal Team Six, running the rapids of your arteries.
Lastly, there is the cryogenics crowd, those who figure that being fresh-frozen after death will put them at the front of the line for revival, with minimum freezer burn, when actual immortality techniques are perfected. Currently there are about 700 people actually frozen and another 5000 people in line for this treatment, among them one of the most public advocates of human immortality, Peter Thiel. Thiel is a billionaire co-founder of PayPal, and involved in any number of life-extension organizations, including Immortal Dragons, which also counts Sam Altman and Jeff Bezos as investors.
What makes Thiel different is that he is an actual philosophical crusader, having publicly said that it’s a scandal people are not more upset about death. He argues that death is not inevitable, it’s a mistake. And he’s going to fight to the death (so to speak) to eradicate it.
There are two things that strike me as extraordinary about Peter Thiel’s battle. One is that nowhere has he given in-depth consideration to the psycho-social effects that immortality would bring about. Hasn’t he read any of Robert Heinlein’s books? What happens when the more affluent people get longevity treatments and the others don’t? What will be the effect on a human being after living for two or three hundred years? Sounds like it might be terribly exhausting for the psyche, if not for the feisty, rejuvenated body. Cue the scene where the character leaps off a cliff, or walks in front of a bus.
The second thing that is arresting about Thiel’s crusade for immortality is its massive personal arrogance. The not-so-hidden subtext of his and his cohort’s efforts is that they must certainly believe that they, as the Masters of the Tech Universe, are so valuable and irreplaceable as they currently exist that they must remain alive forever for the good of humanity, or at least of their shareholders. It’s a pretty breathtaking conclusion, but one that’s hard to escape. Whether you are religious or not, isn’t it very presumptuous to think that the entire Universe, the Singularity within which everything is in constant motion, transforming its extraordinary and fathomless fertility into something else, will never produce beings as impressive and brilliant as Mister Thiel and friends?
So how about an alternative view, which could be expressed as: “Death is not a design flaw”? This would be the notion espoused by those people, religious or not, who believe that death is part of life. People who have some faith in the great cosmos we live in, who recognize that its constantly changing, inexhaustible infinity can be counted on to produce future miracles of beauty and intelligence that even Peter Thiel could never imagine.
Humans are, of course, free to mess with the building blocks of the universe as much as they please, and they certainly will, the lure of money and power being what it is. But as we hurtle toward an uncertain future with AI and with various immortality projects, it is important to remember unintended consequences. It’s not for nothing that the story of Pandora’s Box has so often served as a teaching moment for humanity.