Humanism, Transhumanism and Posthumanism

Humanity is an organic mass mess mass of 'thinking' machines, each one different from each other one and made so by genetic reproduction and other 'genetic' algorithms. This mass appears to have thoughts about itself; it thinks that it has norms, that it has ideals, and that it can have standard types as well as ideal types. It always thinks it can improve on itself.

The problem is that it has insufficient data to actually come to conclusions about what its norms (other than statistical ones, and these too are its own inventions) ought to be; it can have no legitimate idea as to its ideals, based solely on its own perception of self; and it can have no legitimate idea as to how to improve, not having enough data as to where it can improve towards. This mass, however, has elements which will disagree with such a diagnosis, even though it is obviously true.

Once upon a time, an element of this mass said to me (another element of this mass), "Well, it has to be true that making optimal use of energy would be an improvement." I'm not so sure. What is optimal use? Every such idea, ideal, improvement, boundary, definition, norm (etc, etc) is defined by this imperfect mass. As one element named Russell said some time ago, mathematics — which a fair number of elements think is the best (query: best?) mode of thought (query: thought?) — is built on the flimsiest of foundations. So he decided to be a logician, but his project failed too.

Humanism is a work in progress, then. But progress towards what? And if it is a work in progress, what can be said about trans- and post-humanism, which some elements of the human mass also talk about? They are imaginary work in imaginary progress.

Some human elements point out that evolution occurs, and we have strong evidence for it. Of course it does, and of course we do. But there is nothing to show 'fitness' except the promise that we are putatively 'better adapted' to a changing world. In truth, we are adapted, but we do not know if it is better, or will be so, because the genetic algorithms are future-blind. We are reactive, and hence we should have no claim to trans-anything or post-anything.

In fact, the only think we can know is that we are all headed towards thermodynamic 'heat death', and hence it seems good to try to stave it off. Hence the fixation(s) on information, energy, efficiency and effectiveness. But for what? Nobody seems to know. Some, however, have odd ideas about destiny and optimisation. Those too will pass.

In the end is the singularity, as at the beginning, some others say. The point really is that the singularity is the ideal to which all information (whether it is so, or merely an aberration in the energy transactions of the universe) goes, and once it is, nobody knows.

Is it any wonder that man imagines that he imagines God? Or that man (well, some portion or other of the human mass) imagines, "What is man, that [God is] mindful of him?" In the end, faith, hope and love abide; and if not, there is nothing.

Belief (in) Systems (Part II)

This is a sort of thematic sequel to a previous post, in which I wrote about some fundamental underpinnings of worldviews. In that post, it turned out that the punishment-reward or scoring sub-system tended to trump the altruism sub-system in human individuals. Some people think that is natural (it's like the concept of 'original sin') and some people think it is unfortunate (it's like evolutionary biology going up a dead end).

The world today is messy, but the thing about history is that we could have seen it coming a long time ago. Right now, there are five key belief systems out of the thousands of belief systems there are. These five key belief systems may not be important to everyone, but their sheer size (in terms of numbers of adherents), ubiquity (in terms of geographic spread) and significance (in terms of people and policies affected by adherents) make them worth looking at.

The five belief systems I am referring to are (in alphabetical order): Capitalism, Christianity, Globalism, Racism and Secular Humanism. It is quite possible for a person to believe in more than one of these, but it is unlikely that any given person will believe in all five, especially since some of them don't 'play nice' with the others.

Why are these five systems so important?

Capitalism, to begin with, is the child of that long and painful era known as the industrial revolution. Descended from the merchant cartels of the 16th century, it eventually became the guiding economic philosophy of empire-building. Its assertions that people should strive to control the means of production individually, in an environment of free choice (the 'market') and thus create prosperity for all, have been tested and sometimes found wanting. Nevertheless, it has been the dominant economic belief system of the 20th and 21st centuries so far.

Christianity, an eastern religion which sprouted from Palestine about 2000 years ago, is now the world's most widespread and influential religion. Monotheistic and proselytizing, it has butted heads with almost every other belief system on the planet. Although Jesus and his followers seemed somewhat socialist (if not communist) in ideology, for some reason American Republicans seem to conflate extreme capitalism with empire-building AND fundamentalist Protestant (there's an oxymoron for you) Christianity. It blows the mind.

Globalism seems like a modern trend. But it is a venerable belief system espoused by most ancient civilisations; it believes in things like the unity of the world under a single integrated programme (philosophy, creed, religion, whatever) in which individual cultures and ideas can flourish. The Pax Romana and Pax Britannica were pretty supportive of this ideal; the Pax Americana not so much. The United Nations and other international umbrella organisations are all children of this belief system.

Racism, unfortunately, is the extreme and somewhat common response to the Other. In racism, a group of humans believes that by virtue of their narrowly-defined genetic pool, they are superior to all others. This genetic virtue, already a somewhat dubious construct, is supposed to provide intellectual, moral, and even aesthetic superiority. It often co-opts other belief systems to establish itself, and has been shown to have a neurobiological origin in terms of the way humans differentiate between like and not-like.

Secular Humanism (as opposed to other kinds of humanism) is a creed which believes that a rational human, free of all supernatural influences and ideas, is a happy human. Although there are many flavours of secular humanism, the core ideals are a) secular—i.e. without religions or non-rational constructs, and b) humanist—putting human life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness first. It is an ancient creed, often veiled by the fact that earlier societies tended to pay at least lip-service to the idea of the divine, and to frown on those who didn't.

All five of these will crop up as the shadowy or not-so-shadowy influences behind almost every piece of news you encounter, in every medium of communication. I think it is not possible to find any news source which isn't influenced by at least one of these forces. This means that an educated human must at least be able to state and understand the basics of these belief systems, whether he or she (or zie) believes in them or not.