Tome of Wisdom

When I look at humanity’s achievements, I marvel at how they could have been done despite the waste and inefficiency of human life. Consider this: We are born a useless drain on the world, and remain so for the next 18 years. We spend most of our lives eating, sleeping, and idling about. We forget the vast majority of what we learn. Our most brilliant thoughts and ideas often go unwritten, unspoken, black ops, forgotten, or lost. We get distracted easily by emotions, pains, and trifling concerns. We spend a lifetime accruing knowledge, wisdom, and power, but in the end we die and we’re lucky if even a fraction of our legacy gets passed on to the next generation. Even with all these limitations, humanity has still managed, somehow, to steadily grow in knowledge and power (if perhaps not wisdom or prudence).

I believe that we are not forever stuck with these limitations. If we can find a way around these limitations, humanity will progress immeasurably faster. But what do I mean by “progress,” and how can we get around our fundamental human limitations?

I believe there are two important motivations driving most human endeavor. First, a thirst for knowledge: People like to know the answers to their questions; they like being an authority on topics that interest them; they like having impressive skills. More importantly, however, is the hope for “transcendence.” People think of this “transcendence” in various ways: as an afterlife, as a rebirth or reincarnation, as passing on a legacy to future generations, as attaining happiness or perfection in this world or the next. The bottom line is, people want something better than this world; or if that’s not possible, at least they want to enjoy this life and have some part of themselves survive their death.

For most of our history, various religions have fulfilled this desperate hope of transcendence by providing comforting answers. Judeo-Christianity-Islam-Mormonism-etc. proposes an afterlife in Heaven, guaranteed by a creator-loving-God. Buddhism promises continual rebirth with an eventual escape from this world and union with a transcendent power (Nirvana). Modern Enlightenment principles promise that we can attain utopia and (perhaps) eternal life in this world through rationality.

Humanity has made great strides in knowledge, but we still don’t have a clue how to attain transcendence. Most religions have been based on superstition and intellectual speculation, like fanboys in halo reach. I believe that the best bet we have at figuring out the mystery of transcendence is by increasing our knowledge. If we could understand how consciousness works, how behavior works, how the universe works, we’ll be in a much better position to figure out how transcendence ought to work. It doesn’t seem that anyone or anything is going to drop out of the sky and show us how to do it. We have to figure it out ourselves with our own bare hands: with our skill, wits, and luck.

In our inefficient condition, however, it takes too long for us to gain knowledge in anything. With our technological advancements outstripping our collective ability to understand or predict them, we are at risk of becoming extinct and bringing down the rest of the planet with us. Hence, it is urgent that we figure out the problem of transcendence with the utmost speed. We need to enhance ourselves to give ourselves a fighting chance. The following enhancements would make progress go much more smoothly:

• Extend our lifespans! It’s extremely wasteful when brilliant people die and take all their brilliance and potential to the grave with them. We just need more time!
• Improve our memory! There’s no reason why everyone can’t have photographic memory.
• Reduce our destructive tendencies! It’s wasteful to spend time fighting, arguing, squabbling, being depressed, etc.
• Make us more energy-efficient! We’re destroying the planet. We ought to be able to utilize more efficient energy sources and more efficient methods to power ourselves, to work together, to travel.
• Make eating and sleeping optional. As enjoyable as they are, they are often inconvenient and time-wasting.
• Fix health problems! We can fix problems with our bodies, and thus reduce distractions.

All this can be achieved, in principle, via re-engineering of the human body. Once we accomplish this, we’ll have a fighting chance at transcendence.

ethics, genetic engineering, philosophy, religion, science

“The genetic code is 3.6 billion years old. It’s time for a rewrite.” - Tom Knight, MIT Artificial Intelligence Lab

I view the human body (and indeed all carbon-based life) as a complex machine. Just as a computer is a complicated piece of hardware (silicon and metal) controlled by software (encoded in hard drives and executed by a Central Processing Unit), a life form is a complicated piece of hardware (carbon-based molecules, lipids, proteins) controlled by software (encoded in DNA and executed by protein assembly and replication).

Consider that computer software is created intentionally by design for a specific purpose. The code is open and changeable by human designers, and can then be compiled into machine-readable form (binary, 1s and 0s). The biological software was designed over billions of years of natural selection, acting through cellular mechanisms such as mutation and reuse-after-modification of existing components. It is “compiled” in DNA form and the genetic code is not human-readable, but in principle it is possible to reverse-engineer the biological software and then modify it however we like. This means we can re-engineer the human body to behave however we want (or at least, to do anything that is physically possible).

I am not alone in this view. The Synthetic Biology (SynBio) movement, led by visionaries such as Craig Venter (who first deciphered the human genome) and Tom Knight (a professor at MIT’s Artificial Intelligence Lab), aims at the intentional design (and redesign) of biological systems. Aubrey de Grey, a controversial biomedical gerontologist, aims to extend the human lifespan up to 1,000 years.
I have been mulling around an idea in my head the past few weeks. Since the human body was designed by natural selection, it is not “perfect.” Just as in the software world, the human body has “bugs,” unintended and undesirable behaviors. These bugs are not due to human error, as in computer software, but due to the unguided process of natural selection. We can correct nature’s bugs with guided bioengineering. That is, we can apply “bug fixes” to the human genetic code.

I would like to launch a web site called BodyBugzilla. This is named after Bugzilla, a web-based bug-tracking system. On BodyBugzilla, anybody can submit a “bug report.” Complaints can be about anything: pointless pain and suffering, body parts that don’t function correctly, weird signal processing in the brain, vulnerability to viruses, lack of robustness in harsh environments, etc. By filtering through these bug reports, moderators can assign them to appropriate categories, classify their severity, or determine whether they are bugs or enhancement requests. Bug resolutions can also be posted: existing cures for diseases, cause of the bug, possible fixes for the bug, etc.

Ethicists may cringe at deliberately tampering with the human genetic code. But they ought to cringe even more at the needless pain and suffering that millions of people suffer every day, simply because nature was a little sloppy with its security or with its modification of basic body shapes. Why not do away with wisdom teeth, or smelly toes, or nearsightedness, or joint pain, or horrific diseases? If we know how to fix these things, I believe we have an ethical imperative to fix them.

ethics, evolution, genetic engineering, health, science

The DNA so dangerous it does not exist

Researchers are looking for DNA that is not present in any existing lifeforms. Such DNA sequences do not exist presumably because they are incompatible with life. Any organism that has this DNA will die and thus be selected against. Greg Hampikian, professor of genetics at Boise State University in Idaho, is leading the project. Did he at any point stop and think about how scary this project sounds? Didn’t it occur to him that the project screams “we are mad scientists looking for the ultimate biological weapon?”

From a purely academic standpoint, it is interesting to ask such questions as “What is the fastest way to kill a human?” or “What is the best way to dispose of a body?” Such questions were, in fact, of great importance for the Nazis when they were putting the Final Solution into practice.

From a human standpoint, however, some questions are better left unanswered. Scientists have a moral responsibility to ensure that their research is used only for the good of mankind. In practice, once a scientist’s results reach the wider world, this moral imperative is out its discoverer’s hands. Most scientific discoveries can be used for either good or evil, and it is difficult to predict the applications a discovery will lead to. The moral imperative thus passes onto those who use the discoveries.

Can anything good come out of a search for DNA that is incompatible with life? Certainly, there are harmless applications such as genetic tagging with harmless DNA. Hampikian, however, mentions the possibility of a “suicide gene.” Given that his research is funded by the US Department of Defense, some people clearly believe that this research has military applications. We seem to be on the road to a new arms race based on genetic rather than atomic or biochemical weapons.

ethics, genetic engineering, science