Normal Human Heroes

This song is a favorite.

Beautiful song, from the main menu of the game Civilization IV. (No real relation to the gameplay.)

March 25th, 2010
A second great music video from Matt and Kim, kind of eclectic here. Somehow it makes me very happy about human beings and life in general. I couldn’t find a quicker loading version, but it’s worth starting and coming back to after it loads.

March 5th, 2010
This is pretty cool, you can find out more at Matt’s website.

For those who don’t follow LessWrong: the human mind suffers terribly from scope insensitivity. I.e. experiments in which people pay much more to save one child, than they do to save 8. The brain just doesn’t multiply well, and the world is a huge place.

December 25th, 2009
I have really positive associations with Christmas, and as an atheist but a cultural Christian I still really enjoy it. I self-perceived most of my youth as a fight against boredom, and with little income, Christmas really helped out. It was also one of the only 3 or so times a year I got to see my “fun” grandparents.
These days I have the money to buy the things I really want, so the gifts aren’t such a big thing anymore, but it’s still a lot of fun. Listening to a song that came on (posted below), a different kind of fantasy struck me. Being focused on existential risk throughout the year, I have it occasionally. There’s a lot of beauty that’s possible, and enjoyments that are worlds beyond what we can imagine, but sometimes, I fantasize just about safety. I think about a world where we’ve done it, succeeded, with no more existential risk, no more involuntary death, no more significant suffering. The enhancements, the superhuman happiness, the vastly greater intelligence, the radically enhanced communication, I can wait for. We could take our time, the future shining and unblemished by danger or fear, each of us knowing we’d be around as long as we want to be, able to take ourselves as far as we want, as fast as we want. We’d be able to relax so fully, enjoying each other’s company as we approach a welcoming horizon.

Sarah McLachlan singing John Lennon’s “Happy Christmas (War is Over)” You might want to listen without watching the video, which while nice, dissipates and changes the tone of the song a little.

P.S. If you’re wondering what I’m talking about in technical terms, I’m referring to the rise of  a benevolent singleton, protecting our present and future while allowing the self-determination of personal choice. Something we might get if SIAI or their allies eventually succeed.

December 13th, 2009
Related to my last post, I’m including here a scene from a children’s movie that was a favorite of mine. Fern Gully has a lot of beautiful scenes, but this one in particular always struck me, and to this day this sort of place still holds a greater sense of personal wonder than any other. If we survive to utopia, and then succeed in the difficult task of building something that might be fit to bear that name, I neither expect nor desire that it all feel like one thing. It’s just a matter of time until we’d get bored of that, assuming – quite reasonably – that boredom is something we want to retain. But if utopia were a house of a million rooms, for now, this place would be my favorite.
What’s also interesting is the song that’s playing. While I very seldom thought on this scene since childhood, when I did it often served as a reminder of how good, how beautiful life might be, especially when that was otherwise hard to remember. A few years ago I actually listened to the lyrics of the song, and they describe fairly accurately this very relationship.
It’s unlikely that other people will get that much out of this, but on the off chance they do I’ve included the scene here. Even if this doesn’t do much for you, perhaps you can think back on some similar experience that you had as a child; some really positive vision or impression of the world as it might be. Note: this could be a little cheesy to someone seeing it first as an adult. You may choose to see it with more of the perspective of a less critical mind, or choose to avoid watching it if some cheesiness is a big thing to you. Note also: the element of romance in the scene was lost on me at that age, and beyond friendship it’s quite tertiary and unrelated to the appreciation of which I’ve spoken.

December 8th, 2009
As we get older we (appropriately) learn more both about what we can do, and what we can’t. When very young, most of us had very little idea of what we couldn’t do, and that meant very few bounds on our dreams. Eventually you grow up and develop much more reasonable dreams, such as leading a successful career, marrying a great spouse, living in a nice house, and seeing the world.
To me it seems that one meaning of “transhumanist” is just someone who’s began to see just how much we can do, now or in the future. Looking back after so many papers and books and engineering proposals, I realized that those once-childish dreams of youth are with us once more. Here’s a recapitulation for those who have already let the strength of the arguments overcome categorical disbelief for such radically positive outcomes. I’m not saying that the following are guaranteed, even if we survive, only that they are delightfully possible.

• Everyone can be rich, or at least the equivalent of rich by today’s standards. CHECK
• Everyone can have enough toys, food, and medical care, and we’ll see the end of (most) scarcity and war. CHECK
• We’ll never have to spend our time in boring classrooms. CHECK
• We’ll explore the universe. CHECK
• We’ll see the end of aging, and nobody will be forced to get sick or die anymore. CHECK
• We can spend the entirety of our time on favorite hobbies and activities, should we so choose. We can keep playing with our friends for as long as we like. CHECK
• Nobody has to be sad or unhappy ever again. CHECK

November 27th, 2009
On Thanksgiving my family visits my Aunt and Uncle’s place just across the Wisconsin border. They’ve got this cool old house in the woods, nested by this creek one must drive over, wondering each year how strong that wooden bridge still is. My cousins and I used to spend the afternoon watching movies upstairs, and even more than that I enjoyed the walks we would take along that creek, quiet and still, sometimes blanketed by a little snow. There was one cousin that I got along with especially well, and we were close friends for many years. Both in email correspondence and in person as we walked along that creek, we would talk about all the dreams we had for the future, all the things we were going to go and see, anticipation for our next months and years hung like a piñata above us, ready to burst.
This year was the first that I didn’t hide away watching movies with my cousins and sister. I don’t really mind that; I have less access to the aunts and uncles than I do to movies, and joining the “big people table” was inevitable. This was also the first year I took the walk along the creek on my own. It’s nothing that sinister; my sister is still away on study abroad, and the cousin was having thanksgiving at his parent’s place this year. But there was something wistful about the experience.
My cousin and I have drifted apart in the past several years. We still get along and have some laughs when we meet, but our relationship is more distant and our long-running email correspondence is dead or dormant. I’m not sure how much we have in common these days, but over the years that’s often been the case and I wonder how much was based on that sharing of hopes and dreams. I’m happy to say that I still occasionally feel some wide-eyed wonder, but our relationship is more strongly tinged with memories of all those happy times of the past. Today it occurred to me that if things for me are tinged by old experiences, things may be for him as well, and perhaps that’s part of the reason for the distance. He accomplished more than I did but also had it much rougher, and in the end he lost two people very very close to him, forever. He seems to be doing well these days with a very nice career starting up, but also like a man much more aged and worn than he should be.
My uncle is the oldest of a large family and over 60; he and my aunt are aging and may soon sell this place. It’s not as clean as it used to be, every year a little more overgrown, a few more of the large trees dead and fallen, and the fallen trees a little softer and more rotted. I may love that creek more than anyone and it’s still beautiful out there, but one way or another it’s not going to last. I wish I could have logged my experiences, so that when that creek is no longer there I can at least remember clearly the times we had in it. Without such ability it will eventually fade from recollection, leaving only a deformed imprint, a memory of trees and rocks and an emotional residue of excitement and longing.
________________________________________________________
The dream of transhumanism is that we can do so much better than this. We can prevent the dreary crawl of unwanted decay and aging, we can preserve value, and we can live better lives, lives less inclined to suicide, lives less marred by suffering and grief. A good dream is a precious thing, and I’m not letting go.

November 21st, 2009
(This review contains only negligible spoilers).

I just finished reading Accelerando by Charles Stross. It’s a masterpiece of hard science fiction, and I highly recommend it.
Vernor Vinge coined the term Singularity when he observed that no author could write realistically about smarter-than-human intelligences. Literature allows you to realize characters who are stronger or more outgoing, but the intelligence of their plans is limited by your ability to think of them. Superintelligences must be kept off screen or in some infant stage. Considering the likelihood of superhuman intelligence in our relatively near future, this makes writing really hard sci-fi a difficult endeavor. Vinge blurbs on the back cover of the book “There is an intrinsic unknowability about the technological singularity. Most writers leave it safely offstage or invent reasons why it doesn’t happen”, which applies to his own work as well. In comparison Stross’s Accelerando dives in headfirst, with mainstream (post)human civilization becoming essentially incomprehensible by the middle of the book.
Of course any real superintelligences still have to be kept off screen, and so the story follows characters who for one reason or another have been left behind by the tsunami of increasing intelligence. This creates the interesting effect that despite inhabitating lives stranger (and more probable) than those in the vast majority of sci-fi, the characters’s situations manage to feel very backwater. It’s as if you were following a family of Amish throughout the industrial and information revolutions, but more significant.
At a few points I grew dissapointed as it seemed Stross’s literary ambitions may have overcame him, with superintelligences mysteriously on our level, but by the end it all makes fair sense through one route or the other. I would have enjoyed those sections more if I knew that to begin with. There were also a small handful of differences between my own best estimates and the world of Accelerando. The Singularity is a tad on the slow side, and there always remain a number of independent, comparably powerful entities. This is probably my largest contention (it seems more likely for a single superintelligence to achieve dominance at some point), but there might not be much of a story if this were otherwise. There’s also no significant mention of emotional engineering, ala David Pearce’s Hedonistic Imperative or Nick Bostrom’s Letter From Utopia. A more sociological than technological point, but people are pretty nonchalant about creating and deleting copies of themselves. I care more about expectation of experience than identity, but as a preferential utilitarian I can get along just fine with those who think otherwise, as long as they don’t force that choice on others.
When I first heard about this book, the take-away message was the great density of concepts. The book is packed with advanced technological proposals, internet subculture references, unusual vocabulary, economics, neuroscience, history…it goes on. However Accelerando is much more readable than this would suggest, and most of the references are tangential, perfect understanding not required. The few times a concept is critical he takes a moment to explain it, and those interested can hunt down referenes on the net (try doing that 10 or 15 years ago). I’m admittedly not bleeding-edge (cutting maybe?) on speculative technology, but to the limits of my knowledge all the ideas are presented in a sober, best-guess fashion. To load the book with so many ideas takes quite an intellect or a great deal of work, and most likely both. Stross took 5 years to write this and has an impressive background, with degrees in pharmacy and computer science, and those who’ve known (biblical sense) WoW might be interested to learn he came up with death knights, back in the day.
The best and favorite thing I can say about this book is that it is mind boggling. A common criticism of sci-fi is that it takes one idea and places it in an otherwise changed world. Accelerando is just the opposite, which includes just about every feasible proposal and then mixes them in with additional ideas about their interaction. This allows for very unique and interesting turns of plot, and the book tends to put the reader in a constant state of future shock, continuing for 400 pages, even while in the relative backwater I mentioned above. The density of information and references adds to this effect nicely. The human mind suffers from the conjunction fallacy, and we’re more likely to put belief in speculation that is more specific, such as the setting of a book. Despite this I think Accelerando is excellent for improving our sense of the future, by reminding us that the future isn’t going to be one or a few new ideas, it’s going to be a great number of them, all interacting and creating ever newer ones. There are three meanings to the Singularity, one of which is that without intelligence enhancement, really understanding the world is something you’d have to entrust to others. It’s one thing to read about that kind of future but another to catch a glimpse of it, and that’s something that Accelerando provides.
Vinge also calls Accelerando “the most sustained and unflinching look into radical optimism I’ve seen”. While our own future could be much better, this really is a pretty optimistic book, which I like as I’m generally an optimist myself. It also presents some very possible dangers and threats. The future could be better than we’re physically capable of imagining, but there are thousands of ways it could go badly and it’d be worth it (understatement) to prevent those outcomes. The future may be incomprehensible, but for now we’re still in control, and still the most intelligent life on this planet. Let’s make the most of that, because it’s not going to last.

October 7th, 2009
For Humanity’s sake, this may be the time!

From Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure:
Rufus: Well you can start by signing this for my kids.
(Holds out a CD of Wyld Stallyns music.)
Ted: Why?
Rufus: They’re big fans of yours.
Ted: What?
Rufus: Everyone is. Wyld Stallyns music is the foundation for our whole society.
Bill & Ted: No way.
Rufus: Yes way. In fact, I believe you were there. The futuristic place with the domes?
Bill: And the totally excellent music.
Ted: They totally worshipped us there, Rufus.
Rufus: I know. That’s why I was sent to make sure you passed your History report. If you guys were separated it would have been disastrous for life as we know it. You see, eventually your music will help put an end to war and poverty. It will align the planets and bring them into universal harmony. Allowing meaningful contact with all forms of life. From extra terrestrials to common household pets. And, it’s excellent for dancing.
(If you’d like to hear the full song and are into that sort of thing [I am], you can find it here. Great if you need some cheering-up from contemplating existential risk all day.)