More Than Human

Global Warming: Risk of Methane Release from Frozen Tundra

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 17:51:00 +0000

Now this is scary.

The linear rate of global warming, in and of itself, is scary only in the somewhat long term (100+ years or so).

The real risk with global warming is runaway feed-forward loops. E.g., one that you hear about often is that if the polar ice melts it will make the earth darker and absorb more heat (to the tune of maybe a few percent more).

Much more frightening than that particular feed-forward loop is the frozen methane trapped in clathrates at the bottom of the sea bed, in the frozen tundra in places like Siberia, and (not frozen, but dissolved) in peat bogs.

Methane is a green house gas orders of magnitude more powerful than CO2. It has a dramatic effect on heating (though it doesn't last long in the atmosphere).

Now there is evidence that the tundra is outgassing. That is pretty scary.

Any methane released would go away fairly quickly, but it could lead to an escalating spiral of heating and trigger other feed-forward effects that would lead to warming of actually civilization-threatening levels.

The link, from Nature:

http://www.nature.com/news/2008/081203/full/news.2008.1275.html

Anders Sandberg, Aubrey de Grey, Nick Bostrom on Future of Human Aging

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 04:29:00 +0000

Three of my friends and fellow futurists commenting on the future of future of human aging.

Anders focuses on uploading the brain (the best preservation, but most challenging),

Aubrey de Grey on our attitudes on change.

And Nick Bostrom on the uncertainties implicit in the future.

All three honest and straightforward as usual (though I disagree slightly with Nick Bostrom on overpopulation).

Uncertainty and Conditioning

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Mon, 24 Nov 2008 01:46:00 +0000

The article below quotes research stating that uncertain outcome produces more uncertainty than clear negative outcomes. That makes sense from an adaptive standpoint.

Makes me wonder if that is the the same mechanism underlying the advantage of inconsistent conditioning over consistent conditioning in operant behavior.

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/uncertainty-can-be-more-stressful-clear-negative-feedback-17831.html

Woman Gets New Windpipe Grown from Her Stem Cells

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Wed, 19 Nov 2008 13:04:00 +0000

Now this is really exciting.

New Scientist: Woman Receives Windpipe Built from Her Stem Cells

Organ transplants have lots of problems, from the number of donors and availability of the right organ, to the issues of transport and logistics, and especially immune rejection.

For a while researchers have dreamed of growing new organs using someone's own genetic material, so they can place them in the body and have them be exact genetic matches. That would eliminate the need for orgon donors and the risk of immune rejection.
We are not there yet, but this case is very close. The researchers used the connective tissue from a windpipe from a dead organ donor but removed all living cells. Then they used the female patient's own stem cells (extracted from bone marrow) to grow a fully functional windpipe on that scaffolding (in particular to grow new cartilage), which they then 'transplanted' into her.

In principle the same technique could be used to regrow all sorts of organs, though actually growing the organs and having the right scaffolding is still extremely tricky and has only been demonstrated for a few organs. Even so, progress is being made at a remarkable rate.

First Potential Anti-Aging Drug Clears Mouse Trials

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Wed, 05 Nov 2008 13:56:00 +0000

Back in 1990 or so, Tom Johnson demonstrated that it is possible to slow the aging process in a multi-cellular organism.

Since then, our knowledge of the biology of aging and the interconnections of caloric restriction, the effects of red wine, mitochondrial function, and the genetics of aging have advanced tremendously.

Maybe. :)

In any case, the first drug created as an attempt to directly manipulate the underlying causes of aging is getting very close to human trials. It might not work - most drugs fail in trials - but it might just be found to be effective in, say, protecting against diabetes, or stabiliizing blood sugar, or helping people lose weight.

Note that in the mouse trials, this drug - which is a synthetic analog of resveratrol, a beneficial compound in red wine - keeps mice skinny and healthy even when they are on a high fat, high calorie diet. It also increases their endurance. Mice on this drug are more fit and can run longer than mice not on it. In short, it looks a lot like what happens to an animal under Caloric Restriction, except that the animals can still eat.

Sounds like something people might pay for, eh? Assuming of course that it works in humans, is safe, and doesn't have side effects that people would find intolerable. A lot of promising drugs that work in other animals fail to get to humans for those reasons.

Still: Whether this particular drug succeeds or fails, Pandora's box is open. Nothing about human lifespan or anything else about the human organism should be taken as fixed any longer.

http://blog.wired.com/wiredscience/2008/11/next-generation.html

http://www.scienceblog.com/cms/drug-mimics-low-cal-diet-ward-weight-gain-boost-running-endurance-17725.html

Solar Prices Drop Exponentially for 30 Years

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:36:00 +0000

FuturePundit blogs about projections for $2 a watt photovoltaics by 2010, which would be a reduction in cost of about half from today's prices.

The interesting thing in this post for me is a link to an Earth Policy Institute page which shows an exponential decline in photovoltaic prices over the last 33 years, from $100 per watt in 1975 to $4 a watt today.

That's a highly encouraging long term trend. It reflects a "cut the price in half" time of about 5 years, which bodes very well in the long term.

Lots more stats available at the Earth Policy Institute Solar Power Indicators page.

mez

A Solar Grand Plan

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Thu, 03 Jan 2008 21:26:00 +0000

The cover story of this month’s Scientific American is a proposal to build out solar power in the US to supply 70% of the country’s electrical needs by 2050. It looks like a pretty doable plan, actually, requiring no technological advances in solar power beyond what’s projected between here and 2020. The price tag the authors estimate is $420 Billion, which works out to $10B a year, or about ½ of 1% of the US federal budget.

Article: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-solar-grand-plan

Sidebar with a quick summary of the plan:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=us-plan-for-2050

Meditate - Why and How

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Tue, 26 Jun 2007 05:07:00 +0000

At Foo Camp I did a 5 minute "learn to meditate" session for about 50 people. It was fun despite being a really noisy environment (due to a session next door, mostly). A lot of people came up later and gave me positive feedback.

I don't meditate all the time. I go through on/off cycles of a few months. When I am doing it, I think I'm both happier and more functional. It really increases my sense of mental well being. I feel more 'clear', like I'm more able to process information, focus on a task, perceive important patterns, see the outcomes I want, respond emotionally in the ways that I want, and so on.

That dovetails with a large body of research saying that even a few minutes of meditation reduces stress, boosts immune function, increases perceived well being, stimulates learning, and improves attention and memory.

The meditation technique I presented at Foo was basically a simplified version of Anapana meditation, a form taught directly by the Buddha.

Here are the steps:

1. Sit Comfortably

2. Close Your Eyes

3. Become Aware of Your Breathing

4. Allow it to Slow and Deepen

5. Let Your Breath Become the Center of Your Attention

6. When Your Mind Wanders -> Smile, Bring it Back To Your Breath

That's it. Pretty simple. The imporant thing is not knowing these steps, though: it's doing it.

Meditation skill, in my experience, is like a muscle - it gets stronger when exercised. When I first tried meditating, I had a tough time going more than about a minute, and my mind was racing constantly. After a week or two of meditating once a day I could do it for five minutes. Another month or two and I could meditate for a whole 20 minutes.

So if you try, just do it, and enjoy it, and don't get discouraged.

As someone once told me: There's no such thing as a bad meditation. If you meditate, and you find your mind constantly racing or wandering, that's just a sign that you really needed that meditation session.

-mez

FOO Camp Talks

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Mon, 25 Jun 2007 19:05:00 +0000

This past weekend I was at FOO Camp which was fabulous. My head is still spinning from all the great information, ideas, and people.

My talks from this year and last year are online:

2007:

When Everything Becomes Information: The Convergence of Matter, Life, and Media

Learn to Meditate in 5 Minutes

2006:

The Wired Brain: Implanting and Interfacing Computers With Your Head (This is actually a version of the talk I gave at Transvision 2004, but which is very similar).

Great Boing Boing Review of Citizen Cyborg

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Tue, 12 Apr 2005 05:33:00 +0000

James Hughes's Citizen Cyborg gets a fantastic review over at Boing Boing. I couldn't agree more!

Blogging vs. Book Writing

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 22:50:00 +0000

One of the most common questions I get is "how did you write this book?". (The most common is actually "how did you get it published?", but more on that later.)

Steven Johnson has a thoughtful post on the writing side, or specifically, how writing a book and writing a blog are different, and why he has kept the two separate.

My own thought is that two of the keys to writing are persistence and discipline - taking the time out of each day to put some more words down. That's something that authors and bloggers have in common. But in other ways the two are very different. Blogging is instant gratification - people see what you write immediately and you may get feedback immediately. It's also a short attention span audience - people follow links from one blog to another, or skim a long list of posts in their aggregator. Book writing is the other side of those coins.

For myself, while writing More Than Human it was a bit of a struggle to focus on the longer term writing project with the lure of blogging or perhaps posting to an email list, but in the end it payed off.

Gizmodo and NPR

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Tue, 22 Mar 2005 05:43:00 +0000

I was interviewed this morning on San Diego's NPR station KPBS. The host, Tom Fudge, had clearly read the book and had great questions. So did the callers. You can listen to the interview online.

And as a nice bonus, I got a brief review in gizmodo today.

Scientific American Editors Recommend More Than Human, Citizen Cyborg

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sun, 20 Mar 2005 00:00:00 +0000

In the April issue of Scientific American, the Editors Recommend section features both More Than Human and James Hughes's excellent Cyborg Democracy.

Infertile Women Would Use Sex Selection

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Tue, 15 Mar 2005 15:24:00 +0000

Betterhumans quotes a recent survey which shows that 41% of women undergoing infertility treatments would select the sex of their child if possible.

Interestingly enough:

Contradicting fears that such sex selection would cause gender imbalance, the
survey found that women with no children would choose baby girls and boys in
approximately equal numbers.
Furthermore, women with only daughters wanted to
select a male child while women with only sons wanted to select a female child.

More Than Human 4th on BookTalk

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 20:08:00 +0000

According to Technorati's BookTalk, the fourth most talked about book in the blogosphere is .... More Than Human . It's right behind The Davinci Code, Blink, and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince. Not bad!

Of course, this will probably change by the time you read this post, so I took a snapshot. :)

It's Good to Have Friends

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 06:15:00 +0000

A gaggle of friends and acquiantances around the web have blogged links to me over the past few days. The only reason the book hit #650 on Amazon in its first few days is the large social network I had who jumped on buying it right away. It's good to have friends, especially friends as smart and capable as these.

Mike Treder posts about MTH on the Center for Responsible Nanotechnology Blog

Over at Sentient Developments, all around great guy George Dvorsky mentions the book.

And James Hughes, the only ex-budhist monk cum radio host cum transhumanist author I know, blogs me up very nicely at Cyborg Democracy and the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies Blog .

BTW, if you haven't read James's book Citizen Cyborg, you owe it to yourself to buy a copy. It's the most sophisticated analysis of the political issues brought up by advances in biotech, nanotech, and AI that I know of.

We're All Transhumanists

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 04:27:00 +0000

Thinking about my conversation with Alex Pang about his review of More Than Human in the LA Times.

I still think it's a fine review, the kind that informs people about the book and calls out an honest limitation- More Than Human isn't going to convince Leon Kass or anyone who deeply agrees with him to embrace genetic engineering tomorrow.

Where Alex and I disagree is the size of the audience that is persuadable through logical arguments. This is where the title of this post comes from: I tend to take the view that almost everyone is a closet (or at least potential) transhumanist.

That is to say, when presented with a biotech product that will produce a clear improvement in their lives and that 1) is reasonably affordable; 2) has been demonstrated as safe; and 3) doesn't carry an awful social stigma, I believe the majority of Americans and Europeans would be willing to use the product.

Where "transhumanists" differ is that they're excited about technologies that aren't yet affordable or safe, and that have a social stigma - what Kass would call repugnance - around them.

Yet repugnance tends to fall away with time and familiarity. Technologies that are initially threatening simply because they're new and "gross" have a way of becoming acceptable as people come to understand them and their benefits. This is something I talk about in chapter 7 in the book, using the example of in-vitro fertilization (IVF).

Eight and a half months later, on July 25, 1978, Lesley Brown gave birth to
a healthy, blue-eyed, blond-haired baby girl. Louise Joy Brown, the
world’s first “test tube baby” was born. Through IVF, science had given us
the ability to create – or at least conceive - life in the laboratory.
The initial public response to IVF wasn’t pretty. Jeremy Rifkin and other
critics of biotechnology (including Leon Kass, now chairman of the President’s
Council on Bio Ethics) criticized the technique. Edwards and Steptoe were
accused of playing God. After their second successful IVF delivery, public
protest forced Steptoe and Edwards to halt their work for two years.
After the initial shock lessened, however, the technique rapidly gained in
popularity. Since 1978, more than a million babies conceived by IVF have
been born. More than 100,000 more are born each year. One out of
every one hundred births in the U.S. is conceived through IVF. In the
United Kingdom, France, and other parts of Europe where the cost of the
procedure is more frequently subsidized, the number is one in every fifty
births. In Australia, one in every twenty births is conceived through IVF.

Of course, Leon Kass is still uncomfortable with IVF. But that hasn't stopped the procedure from becoming hugely popular. So to come back to Alex's point (or my previous post), I don't think I need to convince the hardcore Kassians of anything to have a positive effect. If I can reach the people who are uncomfortable with biotech enhancements simply because they don't understand them, and educate those people on some of the myths and realities, I think that's enough to sway public policy.

This line of thinking also contributes to my dislike of the term "transhumanist". I think it's a horrible word from a PR standpoint. It adds a taint of weirndess - the very thing that makes people uncomfortable - to technologies that will either not work or will have straightforward benefits.

In my mind, there's no need for the label at all. The vast majority of things transhumanists want, if they work as advertised, will be desired by millions of mainstream consumers. Transhumanists are just future enthusiasts.

New Lie Detectors - Same Old Problems?

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sun, 13 Mar 2005 04:11:00 +0000

David Pescovitz over at BoingBoing blogs about new lie detectors based on facial blood flow.

This is fascinating technology, but I find the claims rather hyped. The scientists interviewed in the NewScientist article say things like:

"You can double your respiration rate or make it zero by holding your
breath. But no one I know of knows how to change the heating of minute areas
of the face by choice."

and:

"We think these responses are automatic and obligatory," he says. "And it
happens very early. We think it might, in fact, happen before you're even aware
of it."

Of course, galvanic skin resistance changes are automatic, and people previously thought they were obligatory. But they're consciously changed by anyone who plays Wild Divine.

And few would suspect that people could voluntarily alter brain wave patterns, but it's being tested to treat fibromyalgia.

I don't want to be too hard on these technologies, but given the past history of mis-use of polygraphs, I think we need to demand a high level of proof of any new lie detecting technology before we allow it to become a standard for making decisions about people's lives.

Making Light of the Bush Bioethics Agenda

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 10:05:00 +0000

Virginia Postrel blogs that Leon Kass is putting together an aggressive bioethics agenda for Bush's second term. Just what we need.

Classical Values saves my mood, though, with an elegant post that manages to simultaneously poke holes in Kass's logic, poke fun at the man himself, and mentions that the methuselah mouse prize has hit the $1 million mark!! (go Aubrey!) and the minor detail that my book has been released as well...

Justin, I hope you enjoy the book. It is indeed optimistic.

Why I Wrote More Than Human

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:12:00 +0000

I originally posted this as a review on Amazon, but thought it might be interesting here.

Why I Wrote This Book

In 1999, a friend suggested to me that within a few decades we'd have Matrix-esque implants in our brains that would, among other things, allow us to interact in a completely believable virtual reality and beam our thoughts instantly to one another. I pooh-pooh'ed the idea. The brain and body are much too complex to manipulate in that way, or so I thought.

That same year a scientist named Phil Kennedy in Atlanta implanted an electrode into the brain of a paralyzed patient named Johnny Ray - a stroke victim who was completely unable to move, speak, or feed himself. The electrode monitored the activity of just a few neurons inside the patients brain. But through it Johnny was able to learn to control a computer - moving a cursor around on a screen and typing out messages.

Later that year, Joe Tsien at Princeton made the cover of Time Magazine with his Doogie mice - genetically engineered mice that could learn at astounding speeds, up to five times as fast as genetically normal mice.

And that year is also when I learned of the pioneering longevity research of scientists like Tom Johnston at Colorado, who had genetically altered nematode worms to more than double their lifespan and preserve youthful health into old age. Suddenly, it seemed, science was resembling science fiction.

At the same time, there were a number of voices raised in concern over these technologies. What does it mean to extend our lives, boost our mental abilities, or integrate our minds with computers? Would we still be human? What would happen to society? To equality? To the meaning of life?

So I wrote this book to cover these two, interrelated topics:

1)The science of human enhancement - what's actually happening in the labs and what that could lead to in the near future.

2)The ethics, social consequences, and policy challenges of human enhancement. Basically, what we should or shouldn't do with this technology.

More Than Human is an optimistic book, but it's a cautious optimism. Along the way it looks at issues like the effect of longer lives on overpopulation, on socio-economic stratification and whether these technologies would help the rich pull further away from the poor, and at issues like human identity, and whether we could even call ourselves human after changing ourselves in such ways.

It's not a utopian book. There can be no doubt that using biotechnology to alter the human mind, body, and lifespan will lead to problems. But the conclusion I come to in the book is that these technologies will solve more problems than they create. And that the alternative - to prohibit their use - will create many more problems than it will solve.

Interview with Me Online

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 20:10:00 +0000

NuSapiens posts an email interview with me about the book.

Risks of Prohibition

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 16:10:00 +0000

Over at Marginal Revolution, Alex Tabarrok writes:

I understand that some people don't want to expand the human lifespan beyond its
"natural" limits but I object to their preventing others from doing so just
because they don't like the sight of sprightly senior citizens.

Not only should we object to others preventing people from enhancing themselves, we should fear the social consequences of such prohibition. Some people are certainly going to want enhancements like longer lives, greater intelligence, or better appearance. Prohibition wouldn't stop people from wanting those things, it would simply create a black market. And in a black market:

Prices would rise, exacerbating any economic-access-to-enhancement ills.
Safety would suffer, as black market vendors are seldom incented to comply with safety regulations.
Science - including such things as long term studies of safety and effectiveness of these techniques - would suffer as they were pulled out of the public domain.

In short, prohibition of enhancements would itself produce social ills.

More Transhumanism in the Blogosphere

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Fri, 11 Mar 2005 14:21:00 +0000

FuturePundit joins the conversation on transhumanism and identity.

A lot of this conversation hinges on how possible and likely it is that parents make radical personality changes to their offspring.

I think it's important to keep three things in mind when thinking about that:

1 - Parents are typically conservative in choices they make for their children

Parents have strong urges to help their children get ahead and to pass on their own belief system to them. But the one desire that's even stronger is the drive towards safety of their children. In situations where parents weigh potential advantage with risk, they seem to generally come out opting for the safest (or apparently safest) course for their kids. As I said in a previous post, this will slow the rate of inter-generational change as compared to the types of changes people (especially 20-somethings) will be willing to try out on themselves.

2 - Genetic personality alterations are hard to fine tune.

While genes play a large role in many behavioral traits, what they really code for are predelictions in one direction or another, not an exact degree. That means that when genetically pushing behavior in one direction or another, it's easy to undershoot or overshoot. Parents trying to create children that are more confident and assertive increase their odds of producing overbearing brats.

At the same time, it's possible to select genes highly associated with one end of a behavioral spectrum but still not have it manifest to the degree expected. An example I use in the boook is IQ. Imagine you found thousands of individuals with 160 IQs, cloned them (so that you had all of their IQ-affecting genes) and raised the children in average homes. What would the average IQ of the kids be? 160? Nope. If the genetic correlation with IQ is about 0.5, then the average IQ of the kids will be 130, because those individuals with 160 IQs typically had exceptional genes AND exceptional environments. The fraction of the clones that have a 160 IQ will be exactly the same as the fraction that have a 100 (totally average) IQ - with a mean right in the middle.

On the other hand, a few of these children will have truly freakishly high IQs - not many in absolute numbers, but at a much higher rate than in the base population.

Now apply this logic to a trait like religious intensity. Imagine an "RQ" - religiousity quotient. Even if RQ had a large genetic component (which does not seem to be the case), kids engineered for high RQ would still fall on a spectrum. Some of them would be no more religious than the norm, while others would be so religious they might even apall their parents...

3 - Any genetic alteration of behavior will have broad ripples and side effects

In some ways, what Randall's arguing reminds me of an argument Bill McKibben makes in Enough. McKibben is a nature lover and wants his daughter to be too. He spends time with her in the woods around their home to try to pass this trait on. But he's frightened of the idea that parents might genetically engineer their kids to pass on values and preferences like this.

Well, I don't think he has much to fear. There's no gene - or collection of genes - for loving nature. Now, there is a well documented genetic contribution to scores on the personality test axis that personality psychologists call Openness to Experience. So probably we could engineer children to be more open generally. But you can't guarantee that this will manifest as a love of the woods. It may very well nudge the child towards some other behavior - world travel, psychedelic use, role playing games, theatre - who knows?

The point is that the behaviors we tend to think about are usually caused by the interplay of a large number of genes plus the environment. And every one of those genes affects a large number of other behavioral traits. So using genetic techniques to create super-obedient children, even if the motivation were there on the part of parents, seems to me unlikely.

Transhumanism, Parenting, and Identity

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Thu, 10 Mar 2005 01:10:00 +0000

Marginal Revolution has had a very interesting conversation about transhumanism, parenting, and identity. Tyler Cowen asks if parents would make a change to their unborn children to make them 1% happier if it meant that those kids would be radically different from their parents.

I think not. One of the points I make in the book is that humans are wired to make more radical choices for themselves (especially at certain ages) but more conservative choices on behalf of their children. I think we'll see far more 20-somethings undergoing radical gene therapy than unborn kids who's genes are altered to the same degree.

Technically, it's much more challenging to alter an organism after it's been born. Altering trillions of cells is an engineering nightmare compared to modifying the genes of a single fertilized egg or 4-cell embryo.

But despite that, I think the parental instinct towards concern and safety and the late-adolescent / early-twenties push towards differentiation will result in the most aggressive uses of the technology being in relatively young adults, rather than the unborn.

Chris Mooney

noreply@blogger.com (Ramez Naam) — Wed, 09 Mar 2005 23:18:00 +0000

Chris Mooney encouraged his readers to check out More Than Human yesterday.

If you haven't read Chris's blog, I highly recommend it. It's a constant stream of commentary on the intersections of science, politics, and public policy. Popular topics are stem cells, environmental policy, and embryo research. Good, highly analytical stuff.