Dignity

I'm in danger of worrying too much about this.  But maybe it's the right kind of thing to worry too much about.  I'm not conservative like Kass or Fukuyama.  But I always worry when someone dismisses a concern without showing that they understand the concern.  And Bostrom does that.

And I don't feel like I know how to invoke a sense of dignity.  So it's frustrating to not know how to shine a light on the problem with Bostrom.

As it turns out, whether or not we want a "posthuman" future, we've got one coming to us.  Medicine will constantly improve.  Technology will become more and more part of our lives, and our lifestyles, and our bodies and minds.  The only thing that will stop it, I think, is some combination of war and environmental destruction that wipes us out (and that's where my bet is, really).

When Copernicus said that we were not at the center of the universe, and Darwin said that we were not at some special center of God's creation, and Nietzsche said that Judeo-Christian morality is really a sign of a dying cultural life-force, Freud said that we are not creatures possessed of a guiding and divine-like rationality, and Marx said that our relationships and values and social structure were all really driven by money....  

All of these kinds of moments displace the human from some specialness.  They disillusion and disenchant us about ourselves.  They move us more toward the animal.

Meanwhile, technology, all along, has been moving us more toward the machine.

Both are happening all the time.  Moving us away from a picture of ourselves as godlike creatures of goodness and freewill.

Now maybe that's just us:  a tool using animal that puts on airs, dreams of itself as godlike.

Maybe, as some of you suggested, there's some new form of specialness, storing itself up even now.  I feel doubtful, but who knows?

Maybe the thing to know is that now, these days, we have it in our power to change, in deep ways, the kind of creature we are, very very rapidly.  It is happening, we are doing it, and we have no overarching vision or plan--or even real comprehension---to guide us.

Should that utter lack of light convince us to slow down?  That's a question.  It will feel like refusing to make progress.  Irrational.  But just as we lower our voices at a funeral, without really knowing why, it may be that we should hit the pause button on some technological advances, to give ourselves a chance to breathe.

OK, dissertation over.  Comments welcome.