Exaptationist vs adaptationist Singularity, and engineerability

In terms of total biological/social/technological complexity, human society may still be closer to the first single-celled lifeforms that colonized the Earth 4 billion years ago than we are to a technological singularity. But in terms of the logarithm of complexity, we're nearly there -- we have most of the orders of magnitude of progress we'll need. And because positive feedback loops continue to provide exponential or faster growth, that's what matters.

The Singularitarian's burden

The other day, it occurred to me how impressive it was that so much progress had been made without anyone or anything having to concern themselves with what their own or any other species was evolving into, or how quickly.

If we'd come that far without a targeted effort, how much faster could we progress toward the Singularity if we organized for that explicit purpose? Or if we weren't in a hurry, could we reduce the risk of an unfriendly Singularity, i.e. get some "Terminator insurance"? The standard assumption among Singularitarians seems to be that switching to "engineered evolution" is desirable if not essential, now that we understand the nature and dynamics of the positive-feedback loops involved.

But the first attempt to engineer humanity's evolution in a post-Darwinian framework was eugenics, which was clearly premature given Victorian-era science, and has clearly done more harm than good. Attempts to engineer technology's evolution (MIRI, Lifeboat Foundation, etc.) haven't caused a Holocaust yet, but they've led to a scientist receiving two death threats. At best, they've been a distraction, and they haven't produced any innovations that could feed the feedback loops (such as any algorithms a programmer could actually implement, compile, run, and get useful output from). And if it's possible to engineer the Singularity, then why did Ray Kurzweil get out of a successful engineering career (while allegedly in great health) when he discovered the concept?

Anxiety, workaholism and transhumanism

Max More, CEO of Alcor and noted transhumanist writer, sent me an e-mail last month that left me concerned about a possible epidemic of anxiety and workaholism within the transhumanist community. He wrote:

If you are actively working to bringing about technological advance, then clearly you are not a "passive singularitarian". 

For what my opinion is worth (and I've extensively studied practical psychology, especially cognitive therapy), I strongly agree that "should" thoughts are emotionally and psychologically dangerous. [...] I'm concerned that Singularity-thinking can be a strong source of "should" thinking.

I share Max's concerns. Many transhumanists have probably been harmed by "should" thinking, as I was; and those of us on the autism spectrum are likely to suffer from anxiety without knowing it (more on that in my next post). I hope that by making my own battle with anxiety public, I can open a much-needed dialogue.

Breaking the not-Facebook addiction

Why did I give up on Facebook years ago, and why did I decide today to come back? It's a long story. It started when I was a freshman, and got nothing but disappointment from Facebook that year.

My roommate went to a party school called Durham College, which happened to share the same dorms as my university's satellite campus. The matchmaking was an epic fail. He was in his fourth year of a 3-year program, had never even seen the campus library, and insisted on throwing a party the night before my first class, which I decided would be the worst time to show up without getting a full night's sleep first.

It was one of his party guests who insisted I open a Facebook account. The only people who friended me were the type my roommate tended to associate with -- extroverts who didn't believe in studying or being smart, and who were clueless about science and technology. Thus, I came to believe these were the only sorts of people who used Facebook, and all it was used for was wasting time. (This was back in 2007, so those beliefs may still have been widespread and partly true.)

After I moved into a single room, I stopped using Facebook. I thought, "Don't hate the players, hate the game." The problem was that by then, "the game" was almost everyone I could possibly ever come into contact with. For all practical purposes, "the game" was humanity.

Just as I was learning that smart people were out there (finding out about Transhumanism and Singularitarianism were a start) and that they used Facebook too, the horror stories started pouring in. Likejacking, cyberstalking, the online background check. Meanwhile, the Room 641A revelations were making my dad's ex-girlfriend's conspiracy theories harder to dismiss. Even though I used an anti-virus program and a browser that wasn't Internet Explorer, I felt safer staying off Facebook.

When Google+ came out, I was an early adopter. Finally, a social networking site from a company that had experience handling security and privacy, and where enough of the software engineers were old enough to know what they were doing! Alas, it never took off the way I hoped it would.

When the above "Not Google Plus" video came out, I watched it and commented, "I prefer not Facebook." But I didn't just prefer it -- I let it define me. It was how I stayed secure online, how I avoided distractions when I needed to study. In a sea of Facebook addicts, I was addicted to not-Facebook. Addicted, in other words, to being alone.

And then I wondered why nobody ever read my blog. (That's why I haven't posted much this winter -- I decided if I wanted to write stuff nobody was ever going to read, I'd work on my thesis.)

But things are changing:

• Facebook has made some long-overdue privacy fixes, and ended the all-or-nothing fallacy of its social graph with an "Acquaintances" category.
• A popular video has argued that social media can save the planet (highly speculative, but so are all the alternatives) and politics as we know it can't.
• An expert argues persuasively that a lack of large teams is holding back progress in AI. Software has always been a field for extreme introverts, and AI is one of those fields where money isn't bringing us together in large enough numbers.
• In two years, I'll need an advisor for a Ph.D. dissertation. I can't do it at the one university that already knows me, because they don't have a doctoral-level program in computing. Thus, I need to network with profs elsewhere.
• I also need a girlfriend. As an undergrad, I decided to avoid distractions by staying single. But my biochemistry has changed to the point where being single is a distraction. (Which strikes me as a case of the tail wagging the dog, but maybe that's why it's called "getting some tail".)

Today I decided to give Facebook another try. It'll be a slow process, but maybe -- just maybe -- it'll be worthwhile in the end.

The Healthy Workaholic's Manifesto

Whereas, global food and water shortages, the dwindling supply of non-renewable resources, and the possibility of a nuclear war all imminently threaten to cause the collapse of society, if not human extinction;

And whereas, the only cause for optimism that such threats are humanly surmountable is the phenomenon of technological acceleration, and the revolutions it is expected to trigger in nanorobotics, biotechnology, cognitive neuroscience, and artificial intelligence;

And whereas, research shows that people who tend to be the most dedicated to their work, to the detriment of our immediate health, also tend to be the most logical, analytical, creative, disciplined, self-confident, optimistic, and future-oriented;

And whereas, such people, if we work in engineering or scientific research, are therefore an indispensable asset in humanity's race against time to solve social, environmental, and economic crises technologically before they destroy us;


And whereas, both scholarly and popular discourse nevertheless derisively call us "workaholics", depict us in fiction only as evil (or at best unsympathetic) Mad Scientists, and label our heroic self-sacrifice -- or, depending on life expectancy, our sensible long-term investment -- as a symptom of a mental illness;

Resolved, therefore, that workaholism is among human nature's few redeeming virtues, and that it is to be encouraged and celebrated in all people who:

• Work as, or are students training to become, scientists, engineers or professional philanthropists to help develop emerging technologies.
• Maximize our actual contribution to our field worldwide -- and not just our time spent at work, our reputation among colleagues or managers, or our value to only one particular company's shareholders or one particular government's taxpayers.
• Are concerned about the scientific and technological achievements of humanity as a whole more than about our own individually, so that we are motivated to cooperate rather than to compete.
• Commit to resisting the corruptive influence of our power.
• Accept that our lifestyle reduces our capacity to fulfill social and family commitments, and limit such commitments accordingly.

Workaholism isn't obsolete after all

A week ago I confessed to being a workaholic, and wrote about how working too hard tends to lead to second-rate output. I quoted FM-2030 as saying that workaholics -- even those of us who love our jobs -- were too uncreative and all-around boring to be ready for the singularity and its precursor period (which he called the Telespheral Age).

On Saturday, however, Sean Henderson from the Abolitionist Society wrote, in reply to an e-mail inquiry of mine, "Present day work implies involuntary suffering - we'll need workaholics to develop the means to transform human design so that activity is blissful. Maybe the motto should be 'towards the abolition of suffering through suffering'."

My name is Chris, and I'm a workaholic

In the small-town elementary school I went to, the teachers read us Aesop's "Fable of the Ants and the Grasshopper". They asked us what the moral of the story was, and prodded us into giving the usual answers. First, save for a rainy day. Second, hard work is a virtue that always pays off in the end.

John Maynard Keynes popularized the paradox of thrift in the 1930s, and by the postwar boom of the late 40s, everyone agreed he was right. Decades later, ants and uncles still teach the impressionable young grasshoppers of the Western world that thrift is a virtue. I believed this until Grade 9, when I was first exposed to Keynesian economics through a geography class. But I continued to believe the fable's other lesson, that hard work was a virtue, until this past Saturday.