Nikki Olson

Who are the Heroes of Transhumanism?

by Nikki Olson

Transhumanists identify scientists and theorists that have been especially important to the development of the movement. Among these are Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Richard Feynman. But could we identify hero figures that have done the same? And, what is the relationship between Transhumanism and heroism? I came to this question after learning of Australia’s recognition of Julian Assange as a heroic figure, awarding him the Australian Peace Prize for “exceptional courage in pursuit of human rights.” Assange is a live, modern day Prometheus figure, thought to have ‘stolen fire from the Gods.’ By demonstrating computer security weaknesses in bureaucratic systems, he stole the presupposition of secrecy, and hence power, from government authorities; an act, most unanimously considered ‘heroic’ by hacking communities. Arguably, Assange’s goals are consistent with, but not a major component of Transhumanist goals more generally. Could there [...]

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How Do Transhumanists Party?

by Nikki Olson
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It’s difficult for humans to ‘live in the present’; we are wired to worry about the future, and to dwell upon the good things of the past. These instincts serve us well, since overestimating negative future possibilities better prepares us for them, and having nostalgia for the past suppresses memory of hardship, making life overall seem better and more worth investing in. Futurist groups such as Transhumanists and Singularitarians tend to take a different approach, coming at things in almost the opposite way; focusing on the anticipated happiness of the future and all the wonderful things it will bring, and having little interest in life in the past. And like the past, ‘the present’ in Transhumanist culture has become almost completely invisible. In a recent interview for H+ magazine, R. U. Sirius is asked to compare present day Transhumanists with [...]

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The Singularity is Near! What’s Next?

by Nikki Olson
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Those who look ahead three or four decades and see a technological singularity taking place confront a future in which time appears to stand still. However, few look beyond 2045 because it is near-impossible to foresee what happens post-Singularity. So although we may be certain that the Singularity is Near, we are uncertain about what’s next. This reality differentiates Singularitarians from every other major worldview to shape human history: other groups, in looking out into the future, have always had some kind of ‘destination’, or ‘endpoint’ in mind. Religious groups originating in the West have tended to envision ‘heaven’, or ‘hell’, as endpoints, while those in the East anticipate ‘rebirth’, and eventual nirvana. Some mythologies envision an ‘underworld’, while those not believing in an afterlife do their best to imagine death as their ultimate destination. Even those drinking Kool-Aid in [...]

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Transhumanism for Children

by Nikki Olson

It is often pointed out that Transhumanism shares many features with religion. It answers questions regarding the nature of the world and humanity’s place in it, it offers guidance on how to live, and inspires hope. However, there are a number of important things distinguishing it from a religion, such as the lack of belief in a Deity and its emphasis on the empirical method and reason. Another distinguishing feature relates to the obstacles associated with teaching Transhumanism to children. Although being religious as an adult entails contemplation of many of life’s more difficult questions, following a religion can and does occur at very young ages. Children are able to contemplate God to some extent, usually via the anthropomorphized metaphor of ‘the father’, they are able to associate simple moral behaviors with ideas of reward and punishment, and they become [...]

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A Turing Test Point of View: Will the Singularity be Biased?

by Nikki Olson

Computers, by their very nature, don’t need to have a point of view. However, for our purposes, it is often preferred that they do. In the days before natural language processing, this manifested as a bias towards other computers. For example, Macintosh hardware didn’t run Windows software until 2006, and printers weren’t recognized by PC hardware without deliberate driver installation until Windows 7 came out in 2010. But as of late, computers are capable of holding a new kind of ‘bias’, that being a ‘biased’ opinion about human beings, and about the world at large. This past year computers began working as journalists, writing articles about data-intensive topics such as weather and sports. For articles generated by the software program Statsheet, over 80% of the time, sports readers cannot tell whether a computer or human has written the article. Say [...]

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Against Nature Deficit Disorder: Why All Roads Lead Us to Merge with Machines

by Nikki Olson
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In his 2005 book Last Child in the Woods, Richard Louv coined the phrase ‘nature deficit disorder,’ a condition meant to provide explanation for the declining health of today’s youth. Essentially, he argues, we are meant to spend time outdoors, moving around, splashing in puddles and playing with sand, and the decreasing frequency with which we do these things can be said to account for our declining physical and mental health in the industrialized world. Symptoms of ‘nature deficit disorder’ include; attention deficit disorder, obesity, depression, mood disorders, generalized anxiety, and systemic health conditions. Louv is part of a larger group of ‘preservationist’ thinkers, including Bill McKibbern and Kirkpartick Sale, who argue that the influence of technology disrupts our tendency and desire to engage in the things that are most healthy and beneficial to us, as individuals, and as groups. [...]

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Love and Sex with Robots: The Next Step of the Relationship between Man and Machine?

by Nikki Olson

Back in 2007, computer chess programming guru David Levy wrote a provocative book about robot-human relations entitled Love and Sex with Robots: The Evolution of Human-Robot Relationships. In it he made a number of bold predictions regarding future relations between humans and machines, the most surprising of which being that we would fall in love with robots. Fast forward 4 years (and almost 3 Moore’s Law cycles) and it seems as though his predictions are no nearer coming true than they were when he made them. David Hanson’s skin has gotten more realistic and more people know about Hiroshi Ishiguro’s real looking androids, but many important developments stand in the way of our considering robots something we could one day fall in love with. So what’s standing in the way of our moving more quickly toward robots as companions? In [...]

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Smart Homes: Is AI the Ghost in the Machine?

by Nikki Olson

When we conceptualize AI, we often forget that it is not something that has to operate in a single location, or have intelligence qualities like our own. We are already surrounded by AI systems that are nothing like our own intelligence, that utilize many machines spread out over large distances, and are equally ‘present’ in many locations. In the future we will bring AI systems like these into our homes in the form of ‘smart environments.’  In doing so we introduce new and interesting relationships between man and machine. However, there may be some limits as to how ‘alive’ we want our AI homes to be. One of the most well-known depictions of the potential ‘terror’ of intelligent environments,  which happens to be a parody of 2001’s HAL and Dean Koontz’s Demon Seed, is the Simpson’s ‘Treehouse of Horror XII’ [...]

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