Human Enhancement & Nanotechnology Conference – Day 2

NOTE: These are essentially my notes taken live during the HEN conference. Note these contain numerous spelling errors and probably some minor errors due to richness of a lot of the presentations. This is far from an accurate transcript of any given presentation. Video and slides from presenters will be available shortly at the conference site.

• 9:02 AM Liveblogging from the Human Enhancement & Nanotechnology Conference in Kalamazoo, MI
• 9:27 AM Sean Hays – “Nietzsche and the Philosophical Underpinnings of Human Enhancement.”
• 9:32 AM SH: Transhumanism, Anti-humanism and Nietzsche’s Overman – a response to the anti-humanism in transhumanism through Nietzceh’s concept of the eternal recurrence and the nature of man and overman as process elements.
• 9:33 AM SH: Transhumanism – I define it broadly as the entire community of knowledge producers from end useres to legislators and executive policy makers with scientists, researchers, and advocates somwhere in between and mixed in among them.
• 9:36 AM SH: definition – in a deeper sense it means that we can begin to conceive of institutions, groups, and individuals who would not self-identify as transhumanists as such by virtue in their invovlement in producing the ends directed knowledge of that community.
• 9:36 AM SH: scientists are hyper-focused on their particular narrow issue … paradigm warriors – advocate for their own particular approach.
• 9:37 AM SH: I conceive of both the activity and the community of transhumanism in much the same way as Julian Huxley did in his seminal essay Transhumanism (Huxely, 1957)
• 9:37 AM Huxley. Transhumanism. www.transhumanism.org
• 9:37 AM The sociality of transhumanism is significant for me because it situations it in what I consider to be the most powerful force for influencing scientific and technological development and its adoption by society — social/political/economic
• 9:39 AM SH: Political – the realm of political competiton while being relatively self-explanatory is still complex in the vareity of actors and institutional contexts they interact with. However, the political and policy realms are generally overplayed in the influence they do, can, and should have on the development of technology.
• 9:40 AM SH: Political can have effects at the margins – moving around money — piecemeal bans, such as with stem cell research. Saw how that utterly failed at halting stem cell research. Laboratories were creative about segregating funds; funding sources from other sources.
• 9:40 AM SH: Economic realm – has a profound impact on the developoment of S&T but it is asecond order effect
• 9:41 AM SH:Economics answers to activity in the social realm to a much greater degree than is commonly acknwoledge. Social realm is the prime mover inshaping S&T.
• 9:41 AM SH: The economic realm’s most significant role is to confound activity in the political realm – particularly the global and interconnected nature of the economy – economic activity in a single state has less impact because innovation can move elsewhere Tends teo exaecerbate some of the problems we see with socioeconomic access.
• 9:42 AM SH: Social – the most institutional diverse / popular media, religion, civic associations, the family and extended social group.
• 9:42 AM SH: The family and then the peer group still remain the most influential etnties in shaping ideological outcomes and political proclivities.
• 9:43 AM SH: Your appreciation for technology and beliefs about how and why it should or should not be developed will be forme dprimarily in this crucible.
• 9:43 AM SH: The social context also exerts a tremendous influence on the S&T knowledge producing community, the relationship is reciprocal assymetric.
• 9:44 AM SH: Perhaps our foucs on policy and legislative responses to the development of advanced technology may be misguided. Shaping social context and having an impact on the family is our most effective methdo for influencing the dev of technology and its introduction into society.
• 9:46 AM SH: there won’t be a deicsion point. Gradual advance of technology.
• 9:46 AM SH: The relationship between social context and S&T is reciprocoal. Chagne in both tech and context is incremental, cumulative, and has a profound impact on later iterations. What this understanding of S&T dev gives us is a greater appreciation for discourse
• 9:47 AM SH: Discourse in transhumanism frequenly exhibits an anti-human tone. This tone ranges in severity. The argument from flawed evolution to a more perfect directed evolution. Eliezer Yudkowskys’s Five pounds of regurgitated raw hamburger.
• 9:47 AM SH: Correct evolution — is implicitly anti-humanism. Sees human organisms as a flawed being that needs to be repaired or redeemed.
• 9:50 AM SH: Conference in San Jose. Runs the Singularity Institute. Eliezer Yudkowsky. Talking about strategy for developing human friendly artificial intelligences. One that he didn’t care if they were human friendly. The other was that the human being, particular the …he could eat five pounds of hamburger, vomit it up and regurtitate something more sophisticated.
• 9:50 AM Eliezer Yudkowsky yudkowsky.net
• 9:50 AM SH: Anti-humanism has two principle effects. First it tends to confound attempts at productive dialogue.
• 9:51 AM SH: REgardless of ideological or political persuasuion opponents or skeptics of enhancement tend to react extremely negatively to this tone. This is not to say that these groups embrace enlightenment humanism or that it is rejected by transhumanism. I am referring to the denigration of embodied man and his institutions not enlightenment humanism.
• 9:52 AM SH: Rejection of actual human being as a flawed entity (not rejection of enlightenment ideas of humanism)
• 9:52 AM The Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence – www.singinst.org
• 9:53 AM SH: Second, it shapes a social context that lends itself ot the creation of technologies that are themselves inherently anti-human
• 9:53 AM SH: The kindness of robots – one type of ‘post-human’ intelligence will perhaps be robots or AI possessed of greater than human intelligence. A concern is how these entities will relate to their progenitors – extermination / enslavement / pity / respect
• 9:54 AM SH: This will lead to creation of AIs that don’t respect us, because we don’t respect ourselves.
• 9:56 AM SH: WHy Nietzsche? His philosophy tends to coneceive of both the human and the post-human as redcursive process elements rather than ends in themselves. The resistance to essentializing either humans or post-humans, what Nietzsche would call the Overman, lends itself to a less antagonistic social context.
• 9:57 AM SH: The eternal recurrence, which envisions a constantly recurring self-overcoming where the positions of beast, man, and overman are relative rather than fixed brings to light the necessity of respect for previous generations — your relative position will eventually change / other process elements are absolutely necessary for continued self-overcoming
• 9:58 AM SH: Recurring experience — Higher man is person who could experience that torment and say — lets go.
• 10:01 AM SH: Not really saying history will recur exactly. If this is truly a recursive process, your position will change. The next generation of higher men will view you in the same way you view the lower men. Respect for lower man is essential both for the process and your own current cohort in how they will be treated. Generally speaking, his thinking is something of an evolutionary process.
• 10:02 AM SH: Despite conceiving of the various process elements as “necessary” Nietzsche resists teleology by resisting ends process . The process is valuable in and of itself rather than leading to a valuable product in any linear fashion. Design in the teleologicla sense is a fantasy for Nietzsche, auto-design or the creation of value by self-overcoming man is the only design he will admit.
• 10:04 AM SH: Tight rope show. Jester begins to berate the tight rope walker. Jester jumps over the tight rope walker. Walker is startled and stumbles to his death. Jester tells Zarathursta he needs to move on and quickly or he’ll leap over him. Z figures out jester only got it half right. Continued movement is extremely appointment. Moment where Z discover seeing overman as process rather than an end itself
• 10:05 AM SH: I teach you the overman – Z. / Z’s journey beigns principally with these words. It ends whth his self-discovery and the understanding that such ends-directed thinking breeds pity for both the lower man and the emergent higher men who are forced into assocation with them. Such pity is no kindness and denies the continugin and significant necessity of the lower man.
• 10:06 AM SH: N understood the strong members of hte species to be an essentially conservative force, acitng to perserve gains obtained through social, cultural, and physical evolution. He notes explicitly in Beyond Good and Evil that it is the sick who introduce the variation in pursuit of the problem sovling that drives the species evolution.
• 10:06 AM SH: N., contrary to popular wisdom, had a profound appreciation for man and not just as a predecessor to the overman.
• 10:07 AM SH: Social inst. and ocntrext are prime movers in shaping technology. Discourse in trans. is having, in some cases, a determinetla effect on social context through anti-humanism.
• 10:07 AM SH: Trans. write arge can benefit both from increased cred. with tis partners in dailogue and by helping to shape a social context that will produce tech which are pro-human by learning a lesson from N.
• 10:07 AM SH: We cannot expect our technology to love us if we do not love ourselves.
• 10:10 AM Question: as an engineer, we have to look at ourselves honestly and say there are things that are wrong with us or we’ll never be able to improve. We are a goal-driven species.
• 10:10 AM SH: N doesn’t forsake the idea of having discreet goals and being discretely critical of flaws you find in yourself and friends.
• 10:11 AM SH: The relationship between pity and ultimate ends-directed philosophy. Arguign that X is on a linear path of being an ultimate X. Some sort of end point.
• 10:15 AM Carlos Melendez – “Looking forward to enhancement: ethical thinking before it’s too late”
• 10:17 AM CM: claim — by 2015 we may have nano-enabled food products that will provide whole nutrition. This can elminate the food scarcity problem.
• 10:18 AM CM: Structure of the way we talk about enhancement techs. Identification of a goal to solve some problem. Then we talk about the implications.
• 10:20 AM CM: Nanofood now — agricultural improvements: yield/ quality — proces simprovements: ‘enriched’ foods with high organoleptic quality — Safety improvements: pathogen detection
• 10:21 AM CHM: Nano-encapsulatatoin of agrochemicals / nano-encapsulation of nutraceuticals / Nanosensors (electronic tongue)
• 10:25 AM CM: ‘if we are to manag eth epotential health or environmentla concerns these products raise and, ultimately, realize their promised benefits, it is critcial that we…anticipate food and agriculture applications of nanotechnology.” Kuzma and VerHage, PEN 4, 2008
• 10:25 AM CM: Nanofood, perhaps … nutragenomics: foods tailored to genotypes; modifiable foods: self-disdciplinign foods for allergencity and malleable oganoleptics; nano-bot produce foods
• 10:30 AM CM: “There will always be residual uncertainty which we have to use judgement on, that we have to adapt our behavior to without ever being able to in a sense scientifically and completely reationally analyse it. We always need to be aware of waht and try to use our imagination for what the potential risks are in a situation and to really try to identify what we don’t understand.” David Spiegelhalter
• 10:31 AM CM: assessing enhancements. Risk assessemtn of enhancement technologies: hazards, exposures, management / Precautionary approach
• 10:34 AM CM: Critiques of speculation … “..the hypothetical gets displaced by a supposed actual, an imagined future overwhelms the present.” (NOrdmann 2007).
• 10:34 AM CM: Mere possiblity arguments — “…an argument in which a conclusion is drawn from the mere possibility that the choice of an option … may lead … to certain consequences.”
  (Hansson)
• 10:36 AM CM: speculation and technology — “…because we can play a role in crafting that future, we need to opnely confrot it an address what lies on the horizon.” (Khushf, 2006). / Goal Horizons, goal envisioning
• 10:38 AM CM: Speculation about speculation
• 10:41 AM CM: Relcaiming speuclation. Means/ends, straight-line instrumentalism in absence of speuclation. Inquiry, driven by speculation. Enhancement and treatment merge — “Technological progress is not meaningless apart from ends; on the contrary it is the locus of meaning.” C.E. Ayres
• 10:43 AM CM: Assessing human enhancement technologies without speculation reduces to : research ethics / business ethics /political considerations
• 10:44 AM CM: Intelligent enhancement through speculative planning / ethical adoptin requires speculative regulatin / explicit about speculation in enhancement
• 11:15 AM Richard Robeson – “Parallax: The Blind Spot Created by the Therapy vs. Enhancement Dichotomy in Sports Ethics”
• 11:18 AM RR: What is the role of bioethicists. Two camps: bioethicists who provide answers/take it upon themselves to provide answers. Others who take it upon themselves to make sure that it is the questions that are identified as an ongoing and organic process.
• 11:18 AM RR: Thinks of bioethics as making sure the questions ge
  t raised.
• 11:19 AM RR: Enhancement/therapy distinction.
• 11:20 AM RR: Enhancement/therapy dichotomy historically derives from, say, cosmetic surgery which bear some relation to reconstructive surgery. There are some cricumsantces under which a nose job is purely aesethic, and some circumsntances under which a nose job is therapeutic or necessary.
• 11:21 AM RR: For example, Tommy John surgery
• 11:23 AM RR: Makes the arm stronger. If the surgery is successful, the person is able to throw stronger than they could before. Both therapeutic and enhancing. The effect, however, is temporary. It winds up being necessary to redo the surgery. People who have had it multiple times. Maybe four or five times. Issues embedded in that. What compels a person to have that surgery, and have that repeatedly.
• 11:29 AM RR: Why do we want to keep enhancements, etc. from athletes if we don’t want to keep it from anyone else.
• 11:29 AM RR: What makes athletics unique in their undeserving status in their access to enhancement?
• 11:56 AM James Hughes – “Technoprogressive Policies to Ensure Enhancement Technologies are Safe and Accessible”
• 11:56 AM JH: What is a technoprogressive? Whare have you all been all my life and wher ecan I sign up? What do we technoprogressives want, and how we =can get it sooner
• 11:56 AM JH: The Enlightenment – Descarte, Lock, etc.
• 11:57 AM JH: Principles – atuonomy of reason / human perfectability / empierical optimism / legitimacy of govt based on free assoc / tolerance of diversy, freedom of thoguht / ethical universalism
• 11:57 AM JH: Egalitarina conteintal strain / free market anglo-american strain / romantic pastoral-luddite strain
• 11:59 AM JH: From biotethics to biopolitics. Suddenly the genteel bioehtics tea party turns into a huge public brawl / roe v wade / stem cells / terri schiavo
• 12:00 PM JH: Roe v Wade — first time mass movement said we need to have an argumetn about human personhood and how technology illuminates that.
• 12:01 PM JH: Right to life movement has been elaborating their argument into other areas. Bioethicists thought we had already decided these issues 20 years ago.
• 12:02 PM JH: Psychopharmacoloyg / genetic engineering / nanotechnology / artificial intelligence / cognitive sicnece
• 12:02 PM JH: The accelerating converngence of all these “for improving human performance.”
• 12:02 PM JH: Sketch out what the broadest possible techno questions are so we have a framework for dealig with thiose quetions.
• 12:03 PM JH: More than Human by Ramez Naam.
• 12:03 PM JH: Who is a citizen with a right to life? / control of reproduction / fixing disabilities to ‘human enhancement’ / extending life / control of the brain
• 12:04 PM JH: What is transhumanism: it is possible and deisrable for individuals to trascnd the limitations of the human body throug happlie dreason, esp lby using technology to elminate aging, etc
• 12:05 PM JH: BioConservatives – Religous right: CS Lewis ‘The Aboltion of Man’ / Deep Ecologists – Alduous Huxley / Jeremy Rifkin / Left-wing/Feminist critic of biotech: Gena Corea / center for genetics and society / Pro-disability extremists: Not Dead Yet
• 12:08 PM JH: 2002-3 BioPolitical Landmark — Leon Kass / Fukuyama / Greg Stock / Manifesto on Biotechnology and Human Dignity / Bill McKibben – Enough (2003) / PCB’s Beyond Therapy (2003)
• 12:08 PM JH: Christian Right BioCon Network – Millions of dollars poured into “conservative bioethics”
• 12:09 PM JH: one of their central concerns is prospect of human enhancement.
• 12:09 PM JH: Progressive pushback – Progressive Bioethics Network — Caplan, McGee, Charo / Women’s Bioethics Network, etc. — Pinker “The Stupidity of Human Dignity” New Republic / Waiting to pull the plug on the President’s Council
• 12:10 PM JH: Technoprogressive Turn — liberal bioethicists are explicitly defending the right to enhance, within the context of universal access and regulated safety
• 12:11 PM JH: Arthur Caplan — “enhacning intelligence or changing personality or modifying our memory, maybe that should be available to everyone as a guarantee of equal opportunity”
• 12:12 PM JH: Most H+ are Left-Wing
• 12:14 PM JH: Technoprogressivism — Citizen Cyborg by James Hughes / Equality and solidarity / tech needs regulation and universal access / universal access to safe HETs / Basic income guarantee, structural unemployment / Geoengineering and biotech for sustainability / Great ape rigths / Post-genderism|
• 12:15 PM JH Transhumanists vs. Bioconservatives … personhood, validity of human reason, management of risks
• 12:16 PM JH: Beyond human-racism… is there seomthign unique about being human that gives us right in society. Human-racism=humanness as basis of rights-bearing. Humans have souls or crypto-spiritual “human dignity”
• 12:16 PM JH: Boundaries of Humanness – animal-human: Chimaeras & uplifed animals…. Perinatal: Totipotent cells and artificial wombs. Perideath: Brain repair. Machine-human: AGI & neuro-prosthetics. Human-posthuman: ?
• 12:18 PM JH: … to Personhood … persons: “conscious beings, aware of themselves, with intents and purposes of time” . / you can be human and not persons: fetus, braindead / You can be a person and not human: great apes, AI, posthumans
• 12:19 PM JH: Radical human rights … persnhood, not race, gender or species, defines citizenship / citizens hav a right to control own bodies, brains & reproduction / Goal of governance should be to help each person fulfill her potential
• 12:19 PM JH: technological self-determination – the righ tot know how safe and effective technologies are / the right to use technology to control our own bodies and minds / the right of equal access to technological empowerment
• 12:21 PM JH: Obstacles to develompent – 1) fundamental disagreemtns about “the natural” and “the human; 2) prgramatic concerns about safety, access and effects on society; 3) existing institutional constrains on their development. Latter two can be addressed.
• 12:21 PM JH: Legimtate risk concerns: safety, efficacy
• 12:21 PM JH: TP Enhancement Agenda
• 12:22 PM JH: Promote technocitizenship — need for STEM ed; familiarith with sci-tech reduce technophobia / help students, NGOs, parties, journalists learn about benefits of research, and engage infomredly and constructively with HET issues
• 12:22 PM JH: Pro-science citizen lobbies — mobilized citizens can be allies of science policy
• 12:23 PM JH: ACT-UP as a good example of what engaged citizens can do as far as affect access.
• 12:24 PM JH: Defend state role of expertise — Mooney ‘the Republican War on Science’ / citizena nd inudstry influence in science policy needs balance from independent, non-partisna experts / religitimation of expertise by ensuring independence
• 12:25 PM JH: Facilitate innovation — support funding of HET research initiatives — stem cells / NBIC /neural prosthetics / brain modeling
• 12:26 PM JH: antiaging program to secure “longevity dividend.” Manhatten project on anti-aging. Olshansky’s about-face
• 12:28 PM JH: FDA — chroncially underfunded / compromised by dependince on user fees/ .. FDA Sicience and Mission at Risk 2008
• 12:29 PM JH: Regulate for Safety & Efficacy, not MOrals and Angst / No to more HFEAs / Yes to stronger and more independent FDA and European Medicicines Evaluation Agency
• 12:30 PM JH: Promote transgencis. Race-mixing hysteria / Primate shortage: replace primates with transgenics in clinical research
• 12:31 PM FDA Science and Mission at Risk – www.google.com
• 12:31 PM JH: In silico discvoery and trials
• 12:31 PM JH: Brain Modeling
• 12:32 PM JH: Restrict IP Over-reach … 1/5 of human genome is patented. Gene patent glut restricts gene product innovation. Ideally, EU etc. ignores gene patents, promotes opoen source model. Tighter restricts of patentaility. USPTO global patent pools.
• 12:33 PM JH: rollback overreach of IP
• 12:33 PM JH: International harmonizationof drug and device regulations around the world. Makes no sense that Europe, US, etc. have separate regulatory processes
• 12:33 PM JH: Promote access to hET.
• 12:34 PM JH: Beyond clinical trials to large obs studies. Too slow, expensive and small. Don’t respect rights to use experimental substances. Randomized trials violate clinical ethics. CTs control too much — don’t measure the variety of compliance
• 12:35 PM JH: Open sorudce data mining to stop data censoring by investigators. The aggregation of experimental outcomes by health systems
• 12:35 PM JH: Biomonitoring with Epi/Biostatistics. Allow liberal access to experimetnal substances. With patient education and advice to use
• 12:35 PM JH: Home and Implanted BioMonitoring. Telemedicien. Wireless devices,e tc.
• 12:36 PM JH: PErmits constant feedback. An observational model of safety testing would permit ongoing feedback of data to clinicians and patients, and ongoing tweaking of treatment regimes. Part public health monitoring for emerging diseases.
• 12:38 PM JH: Beyond Therapy/Enhancement. Prirotiy-setting in research and coverage. Use same cost-effectiveness criteria for therapies and enhancements to determine inclusion in health plans.
• 12:39 PM JH: Quality adjusted lives. Aging retardation vs. treatment of aging-related diseases; intelligence enhancement vs. cures for retardation, brian injury and dementia; treatment of depression vs. hypothymic medication
• 12:40 PM JH: Unviersal access – defend universal health care systems; expand access in the developing world – anti-retroviral drugs; TRIPS; Global Fund; WHO
• 12:40 PM JH: Establish rights of the person. Atuonomy rights a start. TEchnological self-determination.
• 12:41 PM JH: Transgender rights — theraepy or enhancement? Who knows. But those people suffer. They need coverage as many European companies do.