The Post-human Distinction

The topic of what makes a post-human came up in the recent meeting and, like any good discussion, no consensus was reached.

A wolf-dog hybrid

Rob brought up a biological distinction: if one group of beings can trace their lineage back to humans, but can no longer reproduce with humans, then they are post-human. In evolutionary terms, this is speciation (like humans from ancient apes); it takes millions of years, therefore irrelevant to my interest. Even if we work hard at it, through selective breeding practices, it would still take many thousands of years. A poodle can breed with a mastiff. A dog can breed with a wolf with little loss in fertility.

What if a group of people have the technology to alter their bodies in a way that they can no longer have reproduce with un-altered humans? If they have the means to do that, then they can certainly find a way to enable what the techies call "backward compatibility". Use artificial sperm or external gestation chambers if they have to.

So what makes someone post-human?

Will enhancements make us post-human? No. Go through the list of comic book superheroes. Which one is post-human? None of them! If you can describe someone as "human with this special ability" then he or she is still human. Even Superman.

This is a man with superpowers.

Being stronger or smarter doesn't make you post-human. Seeing in the dark? No. Can fly? No. Doesn't age? Nope. Teleport? No but getting closer. Shapeshifter? Almost, but not quite. A cat that talks and thinks and acts like a human is not a cat. That's just a human who looks like a cat.

What is human anyway? Describe to an alien what it's like to be human. Tell them what their medical sensors can not detect: the human experience. We see in colors and shapes and shades, hear sounds and tones and words, touch hot and cold and textures; we feel pain and pleasure, smell coffee and the rain. We can love and hate and be sad or happy. We can remember things that happened in third grade English class. We forget to water the plants. We make terrible mistakes and regret them. We can learn and think and imagine, and we can express ourselves in so many ways. That's what makes us human. It doesn't matter if we are made of cells and DNA, or if we are bits of code in the Matrix. The human experience is platform-independent.

This is a post-human. Not her, the blue one.

Dr. Manhattan (from The Watchmen) is probably the most well known example of a post-human in the media. Here he is, having sex with Laurie. He's in two bodies for double the fun! But he's also in the lab working at the same time. He's also on Mars. I can tell you what he's doing, but nobody can tell you what it is actually like to be in those multiple bodies at the same time. You can't even imagine that experience; try it. Oh, he is also in the future and in the past. Not just see the future and the past - anybody can imagine that. The future-self and past-self are all one single perspective. So he's actually having sex with Laurie in multiple time-instants, simultaneously!

Being post-human is about having experiences that can not be shared by regular humans. Try describing Picasso's paintings to someone who has always been blind. Tell a deaf person what a piano sonata sounds like. Futile! Every time we talk, we assume the other person is hearing, thinking, feeling; we just take for granted that they see life mostly in the same way we do. From a slightly different perspective, sure, but most of it is the same. A blind person can still hear, and taste, and get lonely. What happens if a huge part of your experiences can not be communicated to others, because they simply can't comprehend it? You'd be a post-human.

It doesn't mean that you have to give up any human senses or emotions. They would just be a small fraction of your life. Compare a dog's life with mine: we can both run around and get tired; we can both feel hungry or full. I didn't give up any of those animal urges. But I spend my time working, and thinking, and planning. And I can laugh at jokes. If a dog can laugh at jokes, it will be a post-dog.

Review of Mr. Green: why sci-fi needs to grow up

Remember my post about giving people the power of photosynthesis? Someone already made a short film about it; Mr. Green by Greg Pak is a movie from the site Future States, and it's been described as "thoughtful, intelligent sci-fi". I disagree. At best, it's a poorly-researched and misguided attempt at environmental activism; at worst, it's the kind of fear-mongering that we've all seen in the machine-uprising movies, but without any cool robots.

Recap (Spoilers ahead): Climate change is real, and it's too late to fix it.. Attractive female scientist just lost funding for her project, so she seduces the head of the appropriate government agency, takes him to her hotel room, drugs him (why the date rape undertone here?), infects him with a virus that gives him plant-like powers. He finds out next morning when he sees that his hair is starting to turn green. So he confronts her, and she convinces him by spewing irrelevant data and showing him how nice it is to be a plant. Having been recruited, he spreads the green virus to other important government figures.

The poorly-researched: Sea levels are unlikely to rise by more than 1 meter until 2100. Even if it does by the year 2020, the US will be fine; we can wall it off like in New Orleans (hopefully without Katrina type failures). Besides, once past the tipping point, carbon emissions will be the least of our worries, and might not make much difference at all.

The misguided: "End the consumption of meat in America and you reduce our carbon dioxide emissions by..." What kind of selfish, America-centric thinking is this? So much of the world won't even have food, let alone meat. The poorest countries will be the hardest hit by climate change. Low-lying regions like Bangladesh, Vietnam, and India might lose access to farmland and fresh water, and without ability to rebuild their infrastructure, millions could starve. On the other hand, America will continue to have plenty of food, since our grain and corn belts are far inland and the Mississippi River does not originate from a glacier.

Her technology can ensure that the less fortunate will never face starvation. Her cause should be a humanitarian one, not environmental. I don't care if it will make people feel more connected to nature.

The fear-mongering: Bio-terrorism is not the best way to push an environmental agenda. If her tech is so amazing, why didn't she tell people about it, give them a choice, sell it to them? So it worked on that guy she met at the bar; does she really think that the President will be happy if someone tampers with his genes? No; she'd be arrested and the CDC will take away one of the most important inventions ever. She can wave that Nobel Prize goodbye.

Is the filmmaker confusing angst with idealism? Or does he think that scientists are entirely unaware of ethics? What is the message here?

And if the movie is actually a warning about the dangers of bio-engineering, well, I've had enough of "beware the new technology" stories, especially ones with the stereotypical misguided mad scientist. At least Terminator had badass robots. The transhumanist technology in Mr. Green has the potential to save millions of lives; don't fuck it up with a juvenile and misguided message.

From scratch: algorithmic complexity

I feel like reiterating a point from my last post. The code that describes a human being has very little impact on the actual complexity of a mature human being. Here's a math example for you:

Circumference divided by diameter.

Those four words encode the infinite number of digits of pi (perhaps you've seen videos of a 10th grader reciting it out to 10 thousand digits). Four words precisely and uniquely defines an object of infinite length, which has an infinite amount of data in it. The length of that description is called Kolmogorov complexity, or algorithmic complexity.

You can write a finite length computer program (less than 100 lines of code) that will calculate pi out to arbitrary length. It will run on its own without any additional input, and spit out millions and millions of digits. Human beings, while inside the womb, develop the same way! That genetic code of the baby will unfold itself and generate something far more complex: bones, muscles, organs, integrated nervous system, brain, blood vessels, all of it.

(Heck, we're all probably described in the digits of Pi somewhere. Infinity is a funny thing.)