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Progress for The Longevity Meme Folding@home Team – Update of August 4, 2014 – by G. Stolyarov II

Progress for The Longevity Meme Folding@home Team – Update of August 4, 2014 – by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 4, 2014
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I am pleased to announce significant progress for The Longevity Meme Folding@home team – a group of volunteers who donate their computing power to perform protein-folding simulations that could one day result in cures for major diseases and the lengthening of human lifespans.

Statistics for the full month of July 2014 show significant improvement compared to both May and June – a total of 3,957,851 points earned by team members, up from 2,368,216 in June (a 67.1% increase) and from 1,624,448 in May (a 143.6% increase). The number of workunits processed has risen even more astronomically, from 1,396 in May to 1,963 in June, to 7,814 in July – a near-quadrupling in one month. Here is a summary of monthly production for The Longevity Meme team from the Extreme Overclocking statistics page. Longevity_Meme_Folding_Statistics_8-4-2014The increase is attributable to a rise in active member participation. Many previously active members have resumed folding, and new contributors have joined us. My offering of five tiers of Open Badges for contributors who reach certain point thresholds has attracted at least one user thus far – RonnyR (Ronny Risøen), whom I would like to thank for his tremendous contribution thus far – nearly 2.5 million points in just three months! He is The Longevity Meme team’s most rapid producer at present. Other substantial contributions during the recent months were made by users ralmcruz, TMichael, Gennady Stolyarov II (myself), LongandLasting, Volcanic, dreilopz, and sigma957. All of these users have earned Open Badges for their work and should contact me at gennadystolyarovii@gmail.com so that I could send them a code for claiming their badges.

Participation in protein-folding initiatives such as Folding@home is an excellent way to promote the message of indefinite life extension and to personally accelerate the advent of research breakthroughs that could actually lengthen our lives. We have made impressive strides forward, but we still need additional contributors to raise The Longevity Meme team’s ranking on the Folding@home leaderboard and thereby raise the prominence and reach of life-extension ideas. Join us today!

An Overview of Involuntary Bodily Functions and Cellular Regeneration (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

An Overview of Involuntary Bodily Functions and Cellular Regeneration (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 26, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2004 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 4,700 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 26, 2014
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Two of the mechanisms essential to sustaining human life as we know it are the brain’s coordination of involuntary bodily activities and cellular regeneration. This paper explores such phenomena.
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The brain is responsible for coordinating all involuntary bodily mechanisms, which, in themselves, occupy a far greater amount of the body’s functions than conscious activities. This involuntary activity includes facilitating digestion of food, the movement of muscles, and the reception of sensory signals, and responses such as pain, hunger, or the adrenaline rush.

At present, my brain is facilitating my capacity to see, though the specific items I concentrate are determined by my personal choice. I may choose to touch the keyboard, but the sensation this creates on the tips of my fingers is engineered by the brain without my consent. My heart beats involuntarily; I would not be able to engage in many other activities if I were forced to consciously guide it through its every motion.

The majority of human cells regenerate both to repair damage to a given tissue and to ensure a lifespan beyond that of the given cells. Since human beings will inevitably suffer from a wide variety of minor harms and accidents throughout their lives, it is useful for the body to possess the ability to partially repair itself.

The walls of the stomach, after being eroded by stomach acid, can grow back to their former thickness. A cut can heal by the generation of new skin cells. In the event that white blood cells suffer heavy casualties when resisting microbes, new ones can take their place. These cells are generally short-lived and last for a few years at the most. They must be replaced in order for the human organism to continue existing for decades.

If heart and nerve cells possessed the ability to regenerate, two of the leading causes of “natural” death, brain atrophy and heart failure, would be eliminated, as new vitality would be imparted upon these organs by successive creation of new cells to take the place of old and declining ones.

There are no apparent negative drawbacks to the regeneration of heart cells, but the regeneration of nerve cells may hold the potential of memory loss. If a particular neuron in the brain were responsible for storing a particular datum of information, that datum might be lost once that cell atrophied, though the organism could continue functioning and acquiring new information by the use of the fresh neuron that would arise in the old one’s place.

Of course, in a technological society, where forgotten information can quickly be recalled by the reading of books or the viewing of audiovisual records of multiple varieties, this drawback would not be substantial to bring about complete amnesia or loss of personality within the individual.

An Analysis of Ethical Issues in the Film “Jurassic Park” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

An Analysis of Ethical Issues in the Film “Jurassic Park” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 26, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2004 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007.  The essay earned over 18,000 page views on Associated Content/Yahoo! Voices, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time.  ***
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 26, 2014
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The central ethical dilemma of the 1993 Steven Spielberg film, Jurassic Park, hinges on the question of whether man should employ his knowledge of genetics to revive a species that had become extinct as a result of natural processes. The scenario presented by the film is one of utter pandemonium and devastation after carnivorous dinosaurs, such as velociraptors and Tyrannosaurus rex defy security measures and trample on the human-built infrastructure of Jurassic Park. From this arises a more complex series of questions: to what extent should man manipulate genetic information? Which species can he legitimately revive, and which must he refrain from reanimating? At which point is it proper to state that one has taken sufficient precautions against potential threats and proceed with a given project?
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John Hammond is the founder of Jurassic Park, an entrepreneur who wants to give his visitors an absolutely genuine experience in observing revived dinosaurs and omit no element of the Mesozoic era, even the carnivorous dinosaurs that view humans as prey. Hammond introduces a group of scientists to Jurassic Park and seeks to convince them to give their professional endorsement to the endeavor as a means of mollifying his investors. He repeatedly ignores warnings from Dr. Malcolm and others that the situation is likely to go awry and arranges the tour to take place when there is a high likelihood of a storm occurring. In the meantime, Dennis Nedry, who programs the security systems in Jurassic Park, seeks to steal valuable dinosaur embryos and sell them on the black market. In order to escape and cause havoc in Jurassic Park, he disables the security systems and lets the dinosaurs loose during the storm. By the time the security systems are reestablished, the dinosaurs have already penetrated the main compound.

Dr. Ian Malcolm is a chaos theorist who constantly warns that Hammond’s seeming control over the course Jurassic Park will follow is a mere illusion, that there are numerous factors that cannot be foreseen when two species separated by 65 million years of evolutionary history collide. His prediction is realized, as the all-female contingent of dinosaurs finds a way to reproduce by spontaneously changing sex, as their frog DNA permits. Drs. Grant and Sappler, specialists in the fauna and flora of the Mesozoic, display concern about Hammond’s introduction of certain species into the park which would not be able to adapt to an age in which they do not belong and behave as if they were still in the Mesozoic.

In order to protect visitors from the dinosaurs, Jurassic Park possesses a system of security fences and remote feeding, which allows goats and other medium-sized mammals to be airlifted into the dinosaur cages while keeping humans out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, this does not take into account the fact that carnivorous dinosaurs are instructed by their instincts to hunt their prey, not ingest passive critters that are delivered to them. When Nedry disables the security systems, the dinosaurs have their chance to lunge at the tour vans in search of more active, human prey. They have also begun to feed on one another, the velociraptors consuming small dinosaurs and being in turn hunted by T. rex. The velociraptors are the most agile, coordinated, and intelligent of the dinosaurs, and have even learned to open door handles, surprising even the initial skeptics of the Jurassic Park endeavor. During the course of the dinosaurs’ siege of the Jurassic Park compound, Hammond’s hopes to revive Jurassic Park with enhanced security measures are shattered, and the objective of the humans becomes, as Dr. Sappler suggested, to save the lives of those endangered by the catastrophe. Hammond is not thrilled with the destruction of his most ambitious dream, and regretfully eyes the fossilized mosquito at the tip of his cane, but he must eventually come to terms with the reality of his experiment’s failure.

Jurassic Park’s failure results in numerous fatalities, including that of the visiting lawyer, the chief programmer, and the man in charge of feeding and containing the dinosaurs. Other lives are placed on the line, including those of Dr. Grant, Dr. Malcolm, and Hammond’s own grandchildren. Even after security is established, no place on the island is safe, as the velociraptors penetrate into the main compound and a helicopter is summoned to evacuate the survivors. Aside from the human toll, the consequences of leaving an unmonitored dinosaur ecosystem in place are problematic, to say the least. The dinosaurs are able to breed and entrench themselves on the island. The films which follow Jurassic Park explore the situation on the island after humans return to it to face a far stronger and more aggressive dinosaur population. Moreover, The Lost World depicts a threat to the mainland human population as a T. rex is illegally imported into the United States. These problems were, obviously, not foreseen by Hammond and other creators of Jurassic Park.

The creation of Jurassic Park was an attempt at beneficence, intended to grant visitors of all economic standings an experience hitherto closed to them, a glimpse at an era 65 million years in the past. Moreover, Hammond sought to exercise his autonomy in employing scientific knowledge of genetics to engineer new species in order to earn profit and personal satisfaction. However, the principle of nonmaleficence was neglected in this process, since, though Hammond did take security precautions intended to avoid harm to visitors, he did not fully consider other potential threats and carried the project forward without analyzing possible implications of blending dinosaur DNA with that of frogs or subjecting the park’s security to the control of the unstable and unreliable Dennis Nedry.

An alternate course of action to the swift establishment of Jurassic Park would have been to proceed at a more cautious pace and be more discriminatory as to the features included in the park. Herbivorous dinosaurs alone would not have posed a dramatic threat to human lives, and would likely have been docile enough to be contained by the security measures that the park possessed. This is supported by the fact that Dr. Grant and Hammond’s grandchildren were able to pet a gigantic herbivore and only received a burst of mucus in the face.

Moreover, a more selective process for employment at Jurassic Park might have been able to weed out individuals like Nedry, who was principally responsible for security failures. Every field of human existence has its blackguards and deceivers. This does not justify curtailing endeavors in those fields, but it does warrant a more stringent approach toward keeping those individuals out of positions of power.

As for employing the DNA of frogs, it might have been possible to locate a species that does not spontaneously change sex and use its genes to fill the “gaps” in dinosaur DNA. Dr. Malcolm’s ideas of a complex interplay of factors determining the outcome of a given event should not deter individuals from undertaking endeavors as novel and ambitious as Jurassic Park, but the complexity, which I think is perfectly within the grasp of human cognition, does need to be taken into account. This would fit the ethics of principlism, as Jurassic Park already fulfills the standards of beneficence and autonomy, and nonmaleficence can be achieved by taking stricter precautions to control the dinosaurs and the security measures of the park. The principle of justice would necessitate that individuals like Hammond have the right, like all others living in a free country, to use their property and create a profit-making venture (this can be termed comparative justice in a paradigm where the right to free enterprise exists in a majority of cases).

Eden is an Illusion (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Eden is an Illusion (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published April 2, 2009
as Part of Issue CXCI of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 23, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CXCI of The Rational Argumentator on April 2, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014
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Many Western and non-Western cultures alike are contaminated by a highly dangerous idea with destructive consequences – the idea of man’s “fall” from some “higher” state – an Eden, if you will. Different groups holding this idea give it different incarnations – but the implications are the same. The myth of the Fall is detrimental to human ambition, flourishing, and improvement; it stifles attempts to find creative solutions to the dreadful problems that have been plaguing humankind since its very beginnings. But beyond being destructive, the Eden myth is simply false. There never was a “better” state from which human beings have “descended.” We shall explore why the Fall is an illusion that ought to be abandoned.

The myth of the Fall is held by often mutually antagonistic groups, all of which pose considerable obstacles to the progress and flourishing of many individuals. On the one hand, fundamentalist religious conservatives see man as literally fallen from the Garden of Eden, where God had designed for him a “perfect” existence. I fail, of course, to see anything perfect about an existence where man had no technology, no love of learning, and no knowledge of good and evil. But this very existence is also embraced by people who claim to be on the opposite side of the political spectrum – radical left-wing environmentalists, who have their own vision of Eden.

Like the Eden of the religious conservatives, the Eden of the environmentalists involves no technology and no active, systematic progress of human knowledge and capacity. Rather, man’s “unity” with “Nature” is celebrated in this vision. According to the environmentalists, there was once a time – probably the pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer days – when man existed in “harmony” with this strange entity called Nature, which seems to encompass everything other than man. Allegedly, humans did not disturb the “balance” of ecosystems and took good care of the Earth in those days – whatever that means. Alas, there was never such a balance to begin with. We shall see that both the religious and environmentalist visions of Eden are plainly wrong.

Life for early man – far from being blissful or even remotely enjoyable – was, in Thomas Hobbes’s words, “nasty, brutish, and short.” Life expectancy in the Paleolithic period was anywhere from the mid-teens to the mid-twenties. Food was continually in short supply, as there was no guarantee of plentiful game to hunt or berries to forage. And if a plentiful catch did occur, there were scant safeguards to prevent the food from spoiling. Predators and disease were rampant; sanitation and health care were non-existent. Without a scientific method, a person with even the best of intentions often ended up hurting one’s fellow human beings while intending to help them.

Every conceivable vice, social problem, weakness, and fallibility of human beings today has always existed throughout human history; the only difference is the magnitude of such problems, which were most certainly greater in prior eras. Without the benefits of technology, education, and the relative safety and comfort of our times, people were far more prone to engage in violent conflicts over resources and to allow emotional clashes to escalate into bloodshed. Rape, slavery, female subjugation, ceaseless wars, adultery, substance abuse, murder, theft, and other detestable conduct were more common then than now – as there were fewer alternatives to such conduct, and fewer disincentives from it. Every problem facing mankind has always existed in some form – due to hostile natural forces or the irrationality and stupidity of many humans. But the solutions to many of these problems could only come in the form of technological and societal progress – a departure from the non-Eden of the past.

The Eden myth in all of its incarnations originates from the rather strange notion that there is something written in the cosmic laws of nature that the default state of human beings is to be happy, comfortable, justly treated, and in “harmony” with their surroundings. There is no natural law which guarantees this or even tends toward it. The term “comfort” did not even acquire its present usage until the 17th century, and what the ancients meant by “happiness” differs dramatically from prevailing modern views. To suggest that human beings are guaranteed anything good by God, Nature, or what have you, has no evidential support; indeed, all the evidence speaks to the contrary. Humans are faced with millions of perils, injustices, and vulnerabilities. Survival is far from guaranteed, and people of merit and virtue rarely get the rewards they deserve. When natural disasters, political oppression, and disease strike, they rarely discriminate between the good and the evil. There is no natural justice, goodness, or equilibrium, and 99.9% of all species ever existing are now extinct. There is no special protection given to humans from the forces that wiped out many of their distant relatives.

The Eden myth suggests that there is natural guarantee of happiness and justice given to humans, but humans have chosen to stray from the origins of that guarantee – God, Nature, or an analogous reified entity. Therefore, humans suffer – but not because suffering is the default state, but rather because humans did something wrong in rejecting the bliss of the default state. The Eden myth might state that humans deserve lifelong suffering for the sins of Adam and Eve or their ancestors or post-Renaissance Western civilization – but it is in some ways much less grim than reality. The appeal of the Eden myth to many people is that it suggests the existence of an underlying balance and goodness about the world as such – implying that somehow, beneath all that nastiness, everything is fundamentally all right. It is not.

There is nothing to suggest any guarantees given human beings with regard to anything pertaining to their survival, happiness, or fulfillment. There is no cosmic justice and no cosmic “balance.” Rather, whatever justice people wish to obtain, they must create the conditions for. Human technologies, social systems, and esthetic and intellectual accomplishments erect a fortress of civilization which enables us to somewhat resist the onslaught of the elements. The fortress is currently quite shabbily built – with numerous gaping holes and inadequate structural support. Moreover, it is far from complete; indeed, even its foundations have not yet been completely laid. Humanity is still in a state of general barbarism – unable to even figure out ways to prevent individual humans from dying and to prevent human social and political systems from degenerating into either tyranny or chaos. But for all of our massive problems, our ancestors had it worse.

If we are to overcome the extremely genuine and massive threats to our existence coming from virtually all directions, it is essential not to take comfort in the demotivating illusions of a cosmic balance. The longing for a fictitious past bliss leads many to stifle the ambitions of some humans to create a better future. The advocates of the Eden myth seek to thwart the advocates of technological and societal progress – seeing them as taking humankind even further away from its original bliss. But only progress can help us avoid the gruesome destruction and oblivion that are currently in store for every single living individual, unless human ingenuity can enable us to pursue a better path – one which we must follow to push back the hostile aspects of nature and humankind alike and create a safer, happier, more prosperous existence.

Read more articles in Issue CXCI of The Rational Argumentator.

“Human Nature” is Tautological (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

“Human Nature” is Tautological (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published March 10, 2009
as Part of Issue CLXXXIX of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 23, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CLXXXIX of The Rational Argumentator on March 10, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 23, 2014
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What is meant by the term “human nature”? In one sense, it is supremely uninformative. The “nature” of any existent can be defined simply as “that which that existent is.” To say that “X is human nature,” is simply to say “X is what humans are and/or do.” This is fine by itself, provided that it is not used as an explanation for any particular human characteristic or activity. X may be human nature, but X does not occur because of human nature. To say that human nature is the cause of any phenomenon is to say that such a phenomenon causes itself. To say that “some people steal because of human nature” is to say that “some people steal because they steal” or that “some people steal because that is the way humans are.” This is not particularly enlightening as to why some people actually steal.

The striking fact about uses of “human nature” in discourse is that the term is virtually never invoked to account for all the wonderful things people do. Few, if any, people say that humans build great buildings, create art, invent machines, and save lives because “that’s just human nature.” But when it comes to some humans killing, stealing, lying, raping, and committing a host of other abuses, “human nature” virtually never leaves the discussion. This leads me to suspect that a lot of presuppositions are smuggled in under the umbrella label of “human nature” which are not implicit in the term. Namely, most people whose discussions are peppered by the term frequently presuppose that all human beings somehow have even the worst vices “in their nature.”

If “human nature” is “the way human beings are,” then it is clearly contrary to empirical evidence to suppose that killing, stealing, lying, and other vices are inherent in human nature. We can find numerous examples of good, upstanding people who have never killed or stolen – and even a few whom we cannot imagine lying. Surely, “the way they are” is such that they do not kill, steal, or lie. This is as much a part of their human nature as killing, stealing, and lying are a part of the natures of genocidal dictators in North Korea, Iran, Zimbabwe, and Sudan. There is no reason to suppose that anyone is capable of any vice just because some people have been observed engaging in some vices.

The facts that some people do commit vices that others do not commit and that no vice is universal to human beings indicates to us that no vice is inherent to human nature – the way humans are. Rather, every vice is incidental to human nature. That is, the natures of some humans happen to be vicious, just as the natures of some cats happen to be white (not that there is anything wrong with white cats). But vice is no more an inseparable part of humanity than whiteness is an inseparable part of cathood. It may well be that some people will always be irreparably vicious, no matter what external stimuli short of death are applied to them. This is why it may be reasonable to advocate killing genocidal sadists and other comparable entities. But this is no commentary on all the other humans of this world.

Moreover, it is essential to recognize that prevailing trends with regard to behavior change over time. 300 years ago, if two Western, upper-class males had a dispute, it would often culminate in a duel to the death. Today, the disputants would be more likely to sit down and quasi-civilly discuss their differences. The statistical prevalence of each kind of behavior has changed dramatically. Moreover, the change has been an unambiguous improvement. “What humans are” does not need to be static and set in stone. Rather, as incentives, institutions, and motivations change, so does behavior – and the sum of our behaviors constitutes our “natures.”

The view of “human nature” that I have presented thus far is fully in accord with the principle of individualism. This principle asserts that each human being is fundamentally different and should be judged on his or her own qualities, and not on the qualities of other human beings who happen to share some direct or indirect association. Moreover, individualism holds that each human being can control his or her own behaviors to a substantial extent. Each person is free to choose virtue but is just as free to choose vice, and each person must be prepared to be judged by the rest of us on the basis of his or her choices. The question remains, of course, what would motivate people to choose virtue as opposed to vice?

Granting that people always have free will to act virtuously or viciously, what would lead people to want to pursue either course of action? Earlier, I described some incentives for moral behavior that motivate people to pursue virtuous and beneficial courses of action with regard to themselves and others. On the other hand, what motivates vice? The kinds of vice that do damage to others – killing, stealing, infliction of injury, and deception – all seem to stem from some sense of personal inadequacy. Either one does not have enough things and wishes to take away the things owned by others, or one feels slighted, deprived, or persecuted in some manner by others and wishes to correct this perceived victimization by destroying its perceived source. Harm that people do to themselves seems to stem either from a conviction that their lives are not quite worth living or from a simple failure to consider all of the long-term harmful consequences of their decisions.

Exploring the common human motivations for committing immoral acts might lead us to an understanding of how to alter these motivations and direct the “natural” desires of more people toward virtue. For instance, if a person is motivated to steal by a lack of food, then if this person had food, he might not resort to stealing (provided, of course, that he recognizes the change in conditions and does not continue to resort to stealing due to the inertia of habit). On the other hand, the new-found presence of food might get the person to focus on some other attribute he believes to be lacking in his life – say, a car – and steal that. How might it be possible to get such a person to refrain from stealing? Clearly, all people perceive some kinds of inadequacies in their lives. The ways that people’s incentives are structured will lead them to consider whether moral or immoral means are the best ways to compensate for such inadequacies.

The proper incentive structure to give to each person is such that the costs of any vicious act will be greater than its perceived benefits. I note that these costs can be both external – such as any kind of punishment – or internal – such as a feeling of self-loathing and disappointment for having committed an immoral act. Well-developed internal aversions to vicious conduct reduce the need for external incentives to encourage virtue. A wide variety of institutions, technologies, and patterns of interaction shape both people’s external and internal incentives. Yet what is most important to remember is that we are not fated to be locked into any particular configuration of incentives, motivations, and outcomes. These continually fluctuate and sometimes experience radical directional shifts. In shaping these incentives, we ought to lose the defeatism of those who claim that “human nature” will forever sentence us to suffer evil instead of correcting it. Rather, we must act such that our individual, incremental effects are for the better rather than for the worse.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CLXXXIX.

The Victory of Truth is Never Assured! (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

The Victory of Truth is Never Assured! (2009) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published February 4, 2009
as Part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 22, 2014
******************************
Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CLXXXVI of The Rational Argumentator on February 4, 2009, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014
***

Many advocates of free markets, reason, and liberty are content to just sit back and let things take their course, thinking that the right ideas will win out, by virtue of being true and therefore in accord with the objective reality. Sooner or later, these people think, the contradictions entailed in false ideas – contradictions obvious to the free-market advocates – will become obvious to everybody. Moreover, false ideas will result in bad consequences that people will rebel against and begin to apply true ideas. While this view is tempting – and I wish it reflected reality – I am afraid that it misrepresents the course that policies and intellectual trends take, as well as the motivations of most human beings.

Why does the truth not always – indeed, virtually never, up until the very recent past – win out in human societies among the majority of people? Indeed, why can one confidently say that most people are wrong about most intellectual matters and matters of policy most of the time? A few reasons will be explored here.

First, the vast majority of people are short-sighted and unaware of secondary effects of their actions. For instance, they see the direct effects of government redistribution of wealth – especially if they are on the receiving end – as positive. They get nice stuff, after all. But the indirect secondary effects – the reduced incentives of the expropriated to produce additional wealth – are not nearly so evident. They require active contemplation, which most people are too busy to engage in at that sophisticated a level.

The second reason why truth rarely wins in human societies – at least in the short-to-intermediate term – is that people’s lifespans are (thus far in our history) finite. While many people do learn from their experiences and from abstract theory and recognize more of the truth as they get older, those people also tend to die at alarming rates and be replaced by newer generations that more often than not make the same mistakes and commit the same fallacies. The prevalence of age-old superstitions – including beliefs in ghosts, faith healing, and socialism – can be explained by the fact that the same tempting fallacies tend to afflict most unprepared minds, and it takes a great deal of time and intellectual training for most people to extricate themselves from them – unless they happened to have particularly enlightened and devoted parents. If all people lived forever, one could expect them to learn from their mistakes and fallacies eventually and for the prevalence of those errors to asymptotically approach zero over time.

The third reason for the difficulty true ideas have in winning is the information problem. No one person has access to all or even a remote fraction of the truth, and certainly no one person can claim to be in possession of all the true ideas required to prevent or even optimally minimize all human folly, aggression, and self-destruction. Moreover, just because a true idea exists somewhere and someone knows it does not mean that many people will be actively seeking it out. Improving information dispersal through such technologies as the Internet certainly helps inform many more people than would have been informed otherwise, but this still requires a fundamental willingness to seek out truth on the part of people. Some have this willingness; others could not care less.

The fourth reason why the truth rarely wins out is that the proponents of false ideas are often persistent, clever, and well organized. They promote their ideas – which they may well believe to be the truth – just as assiduously, if not more so, than the proponents of truth promote their ideas. In fact, how true an idea is might matter when it comes to the long-term viability of the culture and society whose participants adopt it; but it matters little with regard to how persuasive people find the idea. After all, if truth were all that persuaded people, then bizarre beer ads that imply that by drinking beer one will have fancy cars and lots of beautiful women would not persuade anyone. The persistence of advertising that focuses on anything but the actual merits and qualities of the goods and services advertised shows that truth and persuasiveness are two entirely different qualities.

The fifth reason why the truth has a difficult time winning over public opinion is rather unfortunate and may be remedied in time. But many people are, to be polite, intellectually not prepared to understand it. Free-market economics and politics are not easy subjects for everybody to grasp. If a significant fraction of the population in economically advanced countries has trouble remembering basic historical facts or doing basic algebra, how hard must economic and political theory be for such people! I do not believe that any person is incapable of learning these ideas, or any ideas at all. But to teach them takes time that they personally are often unwilling to devote to the task. As economic and technological growth renders more leisure time available to more people, this might change, but for the time being the un-intellectual state of the majority of people is a tremendous obstacle to the spread of true ideas.

It is bad enough that many people are un-intellectual and thus unable to grasp true ideas without a great deal of effort they do not wish to expend. That problem can be remedied with enough material and cultural progress. The greater problem, and the sixth reason why the truth has difficulty taking hold, is that a sizable fraction of the population is also anti-intellectual. They not only cannot or try not to think and learn; they actively despise those who do. Anti-intellectualism is a product of pure envy and malice, much like bullying in the public schools. It led to the genocides of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union under Stalin, Communist China under Mao, and Communist Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge. In Western schools today, it leads to many of the best and brightest students – who know more of the truth than virtually anyone else – being relentlessly teased, mocked, suppressed, ostracized, and even physically attacked by their jealous and lazy peers as well as by some egalitarian-minded teachers.

But enough about why most people are unreceptive to true ideas. Even those who are receptive have substantial problems that need to be overcome – and most often are not overcome – in order for the truth to win. The seventh reason why the truth rarely wins is that most of the people who do understand it are content to merely contemplate it instead of actively promoting it. They might think that they are powerless to affect the actual course of affairs, and their sole recourse is simply the satisfaction of knowing that they are right while the world keeps senselessly punishing itself – or the satisfaction that at least they are not an active or enthusiastic part of “the system” that leads to bad outcomes. This, I regret to say, is not enough. Knowing that one is right without doing anything about it leads to the field of ideas and actions being wholly open to and dominated by the people who are wrong and whose ideas have dangerous consequences.

Everyone who knows even a shred of the truth wants to be a theorist and expound grand systems about what is or is not right. I know that I certainly do. I also know that theoretical work and continual refinement of theories are essential to any thriving movement for cultural and intellectual change. But while theory is necessary, it is not sufficient. Someone needs to do the often monotonous, often frustrating, often exhausting grunt work of implementing the theories in whatever manner his or her abilities and societal position allow. The free-market movement needs government officials who are willing to engage in pro-liberty reforms. But it also needs ordinary citizens who are willing to write, speak, and attempt to reach out to other people in innovative ways that might just be effective at persuading someone. To promote the truth effectively, a tremendously high premium needs to put on the people who actually apply the true ideas, as opposed to simply contemplating them.

Read other articles in The Rational Argumentator’s Issue CLXXXVI.

Progress: Creation and Maintenance (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Progress: Creation and Maintenance (2010) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
Originally Published March 8, 2010
as Part of Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator
Republished July 22, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally published as part of Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator on March 8, 2010, using the Yahoo! Voices publishing platform. Because of the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices, the essay is now being made directly available on The Rational Argumentator.
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 22, 2014
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One frequently encounters the identification of human creativity and inventiveness as driving forces for progress in technology and society. In part, this identification is correct: it is through the human creative faculty – the ability to bring forth new combinations of matter and new ideas – that improvements to the human condition arise. But while creation is a necessary component to progress, it is not a sufficient component.

Consider that the human creative faculty has existed since the emergence of our species; even cave dwellers exhibited it, to the extent that they could take even a little leisure time in their highly dangerous, subsistence-based lives. Cave paintings and tools from several tens of thousands of years ago show clearly that our remote ancestors had the ability, and the desire, to reshape the world in an attempt to improve their condition. And yet, for the vast majority of human history – up until the 18th-century Enlightenment and the subsequent Industrial Revolution – real progress has been so slow and minuscule as to be virtually imperceptible within an ordinary person’s lifetime. This was the case despite the fact that every generation had its share of great thinkers, artists, and even mechanical tinkerers.

The other necessary component of progress is maintenance of what has already been created. While creation is an ever-present ability within human beings, there are also destructive forces that counteract and diminish its fruits. Nature itself is the source of many such forces: disease, decay, and death are omnipresent unless counteracted by arduous and continual human effort. Just as billions of lives have been lost in complete oblivion to the ravages of “natural causes” – from catastrophic disasters to senescence – so have innumerable works of art, architecture, literature, and technology been lost to these perils. Consider that even the extant works of great known philosophers such as Aristotle or composers such as Georg Philipp Telemann are a fraction of what these great men of the past are known to have created, but which was buried by the sands of time. Imagine, also, what the pitifully short lifespans throughout most human history did to diminish the output of creative geniuses, who, in better times, might have continued to innovate for decades more.

Maintenance is the ability to preserve and transmit existing knowledge, techniques, and objects. It can be performed through sheer effort of will – but only to a point. A European monk or an Arabic scholar in the Middle Ages could spend a lifetime meticulously copying by hand a single book from centuries before his time, only to have it vandalized by one of his successors some generations hence. Even the work of Archimedes was subjected to such savage mistreatment.

Since the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the Information Revolution, the techniques for the preservation of physical goods and knowledge have become tremendously more reliable than was possible in premodern societies. The ability to make multiple copies of an object and potentially inexhaustible copies of an idea – and to maintain detailed visual, textual, and auditory records of particular times, places, and activities, with little effort by historical standards, has preserved many of the accomplishments of prior and current thinkers for the creative faculties of humans to expand upon.

It is doubtful that we, in our time, are inherently more creative than our ancestors. But we do have a much more diverse and advanced subject matter to which to apply our creativity. Where we are free to do so, we may arrange these building blocks of innovation in much the same way that our ancestors arranged sticks and stones – except that the consequences of our actions are much more powerful, life-enhancing, and durable. Our infrastructure and our methods for maintaining and transmitting knowledge separate us from our ancestors to the extent that, to them, we would be as gods.

And yet, none of the wonders that enable progress in our time are ever guaranteed to continue, though not due to inanimate nature and lower life forms alone; those have always been in a steady retreat wherever human reason and productivity were unleashed at anywhere near their fullest extent. But the folly, ignorance, sloth, and envy of other men can all too easily slow the growth of progress-nourishing infrastructure to a crawl, or even reverse it and usher in a new Dark Ages. Coercive policies, economic misconduct and capital consumption, massive wars, widespread prohibitions on peaceful and productive activities, superstitions and irrational taboos, pervasive and disproportionate fears – as embodied in the “Dark Green” environmentalists’ progress-killing “precautionary principle” – and a desire for “security” over liberty, for “tradition” over growth, and for stasis over innovation, are all forces that counteract and threaten the maintenance of our civilization. In most times and places, only a handful of people have been immune to deleterious anti-progressive beliefs and their consequences, but there is no reason why we cannot all rise above such anti-life thinking. We all have the creative faculty in us, and we can all think.

The importance of maintenance to human progress can be carried into the life of the individual with profound consequences that can produce massive personal growth and productivity via a change of habits. A mere creation of reproducible records of one’s past achievements – and their publication on the Internet, where possible – can create a formidable store of knowledge to which the creator and others can refer and which they can build upon. The concepts of open-source software and distributed computing, for instance, are built on this elementary principle, but it can be applied to so many more areas of life. The creative faculty is with us every day, and every day it produces original ideas and methods for improving our lives. But, without adequate maintenance – including the establishment of a concrete form for these innovations – these gifts from within our minds will fade away into insignificance, much like the ruins of antiquity. Developing an improved infrastructure for the products of one’s own mind may be the first step toward revitalizing the infrastructure of civilization itself.

Click here to read more articles in Issue CCXXXVIII of The Rational Argumentator.

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LEV: The Game – Play to Win Indefinite Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

LEV: The Game – Play to Win Indefinite Life – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 20, 2014
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LEV: The Game is a work in progress, whose potential to spread the message of indefinite life extension to the general public encourages me greatly. Developed by a team from Belgium – consisting of Anthony Lamot, Mathieu Hinderyckx, and Maxime Devos – this Android mobile game is currently in its Alpha phase. The creators have initiated an Indiegogo fundraiser to raise 6000 Euros (approximately 8100 US dollars at July 2014 exchange rates) in order to greatly expand the game and add its most complex and engaging elements. You can watch their video introduction to the game and the fundraiser here.

The premise of LEV: The Game is the same as the aim of those of us who wish to extend our lives without end. One’s character is challenged with living for as long as possible and attaining longevity escape velocity by reversing the damage of senescence at a faster rate than it accumulates. Every year in the game, the character receives an allotment of energy points with which to purchase power-ups, such as stem-cell therapies, applications of nano-medicine, cybernetic enhancements, or simple increments of diet and exercise. Each power-up can either increase the remaining expected lifespan, increase the rate at which energy points accumulate (called “productivity” in the game), or reduce the character’s rate of bodily decay. The player needs to achieve a delicate balancing of these power-ups to avoid expiring before he/she accumulates enough energy points to purchase the next life-extending advance.

Becoming an Alpha tester of LEV: The Game is absolutely free, and I was pleased to be able to participate in mid-July 2014. After eight attempts, I succeeded in getting a character to reach the age of 200, which is the game’s current victory condition. If the developers can raise their desired funds, they anticipate extending the gameplay to enable one’s character to reach the age of 1000.

LEV_Maximus_VIII_ScreenshotTo become an Alpha tester, you will need to join the LEV: The Game (Alpha) Google Group, using a Google account that is also linked to a mobile phone or tablet that runs the Android operating system. After you join, you can download the game from the Google Play store here. Remember to click the “Become a Tester” button to enable the download to work. When testing the game in this early stage, make sure you un-pause it first using the speed settings in the top-left-hand portion of the screen, before navigating to any of the other available windows.

Why LEV: The Game is Immensely Important

Our ability to achieve indefinite life extension personally will depend on the amount of resources and support from the general public invested in the overcoming of age-related bodily damage. Most people, unfortunately, continue to either be resigned to the inevitability of death, or to argue against the desirability of indefinite longevity due to extremely basic misconceptions. Even apart from the absurdly false boredom argument, overpopulation argument, and “playing God” argument, there is a more basic fallacy – the Tithonus error, which posits that becoming chronologically older necessarily means becoming biologically more decrepit. Yet the only way indefinite longevity could be achieved would be for people to remain biologically young, so that their susceptibility to deadly diseases does not increase beyond that of people in their twenties today. How could longevity advocates get the general public to understand this? Convincing people through arguments alone may often fail, simply because the Dragon-Tyrant of death is so ubiquitous and so overwhelming that many people will grasp at any straw, no matter how flimsy, to avoid being confronted with the grave injustice of their current predicament.

But a game gives a fresh, different, and engaging way to see and experience what indefinite longevity would truly entail. Anyone playing LEV: The Game would quickly see that becoming increasingly frail is no way to increase life expectancy. Your character will die if he/she experiences sufficient biological decay. You will be able to see a graph of the character’s remaining life expectancy and the rate at which decay is expected to proceed during the years they have left. If you apply the most effective combinations of power-ups, you will also see the life-expectancy curve shift upward – sometimes slightly, at other times by massive jumps. The latter situation reflects what can happen once humans begin to undergo periodic rejuvenation therapies to remove age-related damage, as posited in Dr. Aubrey de Grey’s SENS approach.

Furthermore, LEV: The Game encourages its players to engage in paradigm-shifting thinking about their own future trajectories. Instead of planning for gradual debilitation and eventual death, as most people do today when projecting their careers, retirements, finances, and family lives, a strikingly different mindset can take hold – the quest for perpetual maintenance and a return to youthfulness that may be possible at any chronological age, with sufficient technological advances and vigilance regarding one’s health. I admire the integration in LEV: The Game of biomedical treatments, cybernetic enhancements, and simple prudent habits – such as a healthy diet, regular exercise, cognitive activity, and access to relevant health information (even “Quantified Self” is a power-up that one can purchase). We should all strive to live the most informed and healthy lives possible, given present technology, in order to maximize our chances of surviving to the next wave of breakthroughs on the way to longevity escape velocity.

Not a day passes when I do not think about innovative ways to reach the general public with the message of indefinite life extension. For years, I have advocated the gamification of this literally vital idea as one of the most powerful ways to catalyze cultural change on this issue. I am immensely pleased to now witness such an effort taking off, due to the excellent work of Messrs. Lamot, Hinderyckx, and Devos. I donated to the Indiegogo fundraiser to help propel LEV: The Game to its hopefully world-changing final version. I hope that all readers of this article will be able to do the same.

Running a Marathon on an Elliptical Trainer (2008) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Running a Marathon on an Elliptical Trainer (2008) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 10, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay, on the subject of my first elliptical-trainer marathon, was originally written and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2008. I seek to preserve this article as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time. 
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Since 2008, I have run three additional elliptical-trainer marathon or ultramarathon sessions. They are as follows:
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* December 1, 2012 – Marathon (42.2 km.) – 4:30:05
* February 2, 2013 – Ultramarathon (50 km.) – 5:10:50
* September 14, 2013 – Ultramarathon (55 km.) – 5:25:24
s***
~ G. Stolyarov II, July 10, 2014
***
On August 31, 2008, I ran a marathon. That by itself was not particularly extraordinary; many people run marathons these days. My time for completing the 42.2 kilometers (26.2 miles) of running was slightly above average for my age – 4 hours, 24 minutes, and 51 seconds. The unique aspect of my marathon experience was how and where I ran it. This marathon was not an official event, and no one else participated in it. I simply went on an elliptical trainer in a nearby sports complex and ran the entire distance on the machine. It was a highly safe, beneficial, and rewarding experience – which I recommend to anyone who is considering running a marathon.
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Why an Elliptical Trainer?

There are many advantages to running a marathon on an elliptical trainer instead of using the conventional method.

First, one does not fall prey to the vicissitudes of weather. Scorching heat, sun in one’s eyes, rain, excessive cold, snow, dust, fog, or dirt will not interfere with one’s marathon experience when one runs on an elliptical trainer.

Second, one does not risk one’s life by involving oneself with car traffic. Naturally, one cannot be run over by car while exercising indoors on an elliptical trainer.

Third, if one should by any chance feel unwell or unable to complete the marathon, one can stop immediately and seek help nearby. There is no risk that one might become stranded in the middle of the course without any way to obtain assistance for urgent conditions.

Fourth, one can always ensure that one’s body is well-supplied with water and energy. While running the marathon, I had four bottles of water and energy drinks on hand – all of which I consumed. I also brought a pack of salted almonds to keep my body supplied with salt and protein, as well as two energy bars for all other nutrients. I needed all this food, too, as I ended up burning 2665 calories in the course of the run, which for me is significantly more than a typical day’s food intake. For conventional marathon runners, dehydration and a shortage of salt in the body can often pose major problems, which running on an elliptical trainer can easily avert.

Fifth, an elliptical trainer is superior to a treadmill and to ordinary long-distance running in that one does not experience any jarring or severe impact as one’s feet repeatedly hit the floor. One’s body does not need to endure any collisions when one uses an elliptical trainer, which is supremely kind to its long-term health.

Sixth, an elliptical trainer does not make noise in the manner of a treadmill, and one does not have to contend with the environmental noise to which one is exposed when one runs outdoors. When running on an elliptical trainer, one could choose to have a quiet, peaceful atmosphere or to enjoy listening to music of one’s choice. Throughout my marathon, I listened to my favorite works of classical music on my iPod in order to keep my mind from focusing on the physical challenge of the run.

Seventh, many elliptical trainers have shelves on which one can put reading material. Because elliptical trainers do not involve a lot of jarring or bouncing, one can focus on a page of text without discomfort. During the course of the marathon, I read over 120 pages of Scott Gordon’s Controlling the State: Constitutionalism from Ancient Athens to Today – a highly engaging book on how various societies’ constitutional structures have functioned throughout history to protect individual freedom. I now run six to eight miles on an elliptical trainer every day, during which time I either read printed material or listen to audio books. In this way, I combine exercise, work, and leisure and make the most efficient possible use of my time. By reading, as by listening to music, I am able to distract my mind from thinking about the physical discomfort brought about by the exercise.

Eighth, running long distances on an elliptical trainer is unconventional and gives one something that sets one apart from the crowd. Not many people have the imagination, curiosity, and willpower to try an elliptical trainer marathon – but a brief consideration of its advantages ought to convince many reasonable people that this approach to marathon running is preferable to dealing with all the vicissitudes and unnecessary stresses of the conventional method. By running an elliptical trainer marathon, you can become one of the pioneers of this new, efficient, rational method of intense and supremely healthy exercise. I like to tell people that, by running a marathon on an elliptical trainer, I was able to engage in pure running, isolated from all the environmental inconveniences that often accompany it.

My Motivations and the Marathon Experience Itself

Prior to my elliptical trainer marathon, I had never run a distance nearly that long. My longest prior distance was 16 miles – or about 25.7 kilometers. I had, however, been running regularly for approximately eight years prior to undertaking this endeavor, so any distance under ten miles does not stress me considerably. I am not a competitive runner, nor have I ever been on a track or cross-country team; I am a pure individualist when it comes to exercise, as its sole purpose, in my judgment, is to secure and maintain my health. I know that I will never set records; my only goal in this realm is to live as long as possible and to enable my body to serve me without pain or discomfort. I saw running a marathon as the ultimate test of my health and fitness; being healthy does not require that one run a marathon, but running a marathon does indicate that one is healthy.

The entire marathon went smoothly for me; there was not a single instance when I felt any pain – though a degree of exhaustion was naturally unavoidable. However, I never once felt myself functioning on my last stores of energy, likely because I took care to continually replenish my body’s energy stores and to keep myself well-hydrated. During most of my run, I simply thought about the music I was listening to or the book I was reading; occasionally, I performed mental calculations regarding how much time I had remaining. The elliptical trainer told me the distance I had traversed, and my Polar F6 Heart Rate Monitor informed me of how many calories I had burned, my heart rate at any given time, and the cumulative time of my exercise, so I always had abundant data with which to monitor my progress and on which to base my expectations. At the end of the marathon, I felt that I could have run another ten miles without substantially affecting my condition. I was able to speak coherently, move with my usual dexterity, and analyze the book I had read without any impediments. I therefore suspect that most severe problems experienced by conventional marathon runners come not from the running itself, but from all the environmental stresses of running outdoors for a protracted period of time without having ready supplies of food and water on hand.

If you are in any shape to run, you, too, can run an elliptical trainer marathon. As for any long-distance event, it will be necessary to train for some period of time by running shorter distances and building up your endurance as well as developing a pace that will not exhaust you within the first few miles of running. Just remember to put safety and some baseline of comfort first and to work at your own rate, taking up challenges only when you feel confident that you will be able to overcome them. Exercise is not about being tough or meeting other people’s expectations; it is about health and long life. If you keep this in mind, a lot of innovative possibilities will be open to you.

An Analysis of Ethical Issues in the Film “Gattaca” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

An Analysis of Ethical Issues in the Film “Gattaca” (2004) – Article by G. Stolyarov II

Comments 4 comments
The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
July 4, 2014
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Note from the Author: This essay was originally written in 2004 and published on Associated Content (subsequently, Yahoo! Voices) in 2007. It earned over 40,000 page views since, and I seek to preserve it as a valuable resource for readers, subsequent to the imminent closure of Yahoo! Voices. Therefore, this essay is being published directly on The Rational Argumentator for the first time. 
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~ G. Stolyarov II, July 4, 2014
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The central ethical dilemma of the 1997 Andrew Niccol film Gattaca concerns the manner in which an individual ought to be judged. Should it be by the composition of his genome, present at birth, or by the attributes of personality and ambition that are chosen by that individual? In the futuristic society depicted in the film, genetic engineering allows for the elimination of almost all physical defects in newborns, whose bodily characteristics later render them far more favorable candidates for employment than those whose genes had not been enhanced in this manner. Eventually, interviews are conducted not to assess an applicant’s character and determination, but his genetic code. The even more fundamental question that arises from this is, “What determines the essential identity of a human being? Is it his genetic code, or is it something else?”

Vincent is a child born in the obsolete manner, and thus his genome is riddled with “errors,” from which high “probabilities” of him obtaining certain ailments later in life are inferred. Nevertheless, these are probabilities only, and Vincent is healthy, athletic, and yearns to one day explore outer space. Unfortunately, he is denied admission to Gattaca, the facility of the space program, on the basis of his genome alone. Despite his splendid knowledge of astronomy and navigation, the best test scores in the world will not admit him.

Yet Vincent is not content with the position of janitor, and “borrows” the identity of Jerome Morrow, a paralyzed individual with a superb genome. A series of complex procedures is designed to allow Vincent to pass all the substance tests and gain admission to Gattaca under the name of Jerome Morrow. Jerome may have the genetic endowment to enter Gattaca, but he lacks the will, and thus harbors no objection to Vincent taking his place. Another employee at Gattaca, Irene, had also been born in the obsolete manner, but her genome is adequate enough for her to be permitted to work on minor tasks. She suspects that Vincent may be connected with the recent murder of the mission director, who was about to uncover Vincent’s actual identity. In the process, however, she enters a relationship with Vincent, and faces the dilemma of whether or not to disclose his identity to the police.

Vincent’s brother, Anton, is the inspector heading the murder investigation. Throughout his childhood, he sought to demonstrate his superiority to Vincent by virtue of his enhanced genetic endowment. Nevertheless, Vincent had once saved Anton’s life in a game of “chicken,” where Anton’s body had failed him, while Vincent’s was able to endure. Anton wishes to maintain the image of his superiority and is immensely jealous of Vincent’s successful aspiring to the heights of outer space.

Vincent attempts to deceive the security systems at Gattaca by pretending to be Jerome Morrow and presenting samples of bodily substances prepared by Jerome for various examinations. In the meantime, he studies and works diligently, and his level of performance at Gattaca is precisely what is anticipated of a man with a privileged genetic endowment. Thus, only a few people ever come to suspect that Vincent is a “borrowed ladder,” a fabricator of his genetic identity. Vincent is set to depart on a mission into space, after which his individual merits will overrule his genome conclusively, and he will no longer be subject to genetic security tests. However, the murder of the mission director subjects Gattaca to a series of extremely intrusive investigations by police that threaten to uncover Vincent’s true identity and even arrest him for murder, even though Vincent is innocent of the crime.

Vincent’s tenacity and resolve to enter space ultimately allow him to successfully endure turbulent times. Despite a multitude of close calls, he is saved from universal detection, though he is recognized by Irene, whose personal admiration for Vincent overrides the fact that Vincent had broken the law. Anton also recognizes his brother and threatens to arrest him, still acting on his childhood jealousy. However, a final game of “chicken,” in which Vincent saves Anton once again, proves that Vincent’s defiance of the inferior expectations imposed upon him by his society has enabled him to exceed in his abilities individuals like Anton, whom societal expectations had favored. The doctor at Gattaca recognized Vincent’s individual merits and decided to fabricate a “valid” test for him on the day of the launch. To people like the doctor, Vincent has proved his worth and his genetic composition has become irrelevant.

Vincent’s course of action, though in violation of the law, was not in violation of moral principles. Vincent had harmed no one by his attempt to pursue his ambitions at Gattaca and in outer space; thus, his action exhibited the principle of nonmaleficence. His exploratory endeavors are of immense benefit to both himself and the level of knowledge available to the general society; thus, his action fulfills the principle of beneficence. His action was an exercise of his individual autonomy and right to self-determination in the face of a hierarchical culture that repressed these rights. Finally, his action attempted to allow Vincent to experience the just treatment that he deserved on the basis of his merits, and which, absent the action, would have been denied to him on the basis of his genome. Thus, the action fulfills the principle of justice.

A rational society would have resolved the ethical dilemma of the proper criterion of judging an individual by eschewing determinism altogether. Vincent should not have initially been seen solely as the product of his genes, for a man is born tabula rasa where the mind is concerned. The human genome determines only the structural mechanisms that exist in the individual organism. How the individual employs those mechanisms is a matter of pure willpower and determination. Few genes can conclusively determine an individual’s fate; a high probability of heart disease can be reduced by strenuous exercise, of the sort Vincent engaged in. A low “intelligence quotient” is no obstacle to an individual reading, comprehending, and applying immense volumes of material, so long as the interest to do so is clearly seen.

Vincent should have been admitted to Gattaca on the basis of a one-on-one interview process that tested his knowledge, physical skill, and enthusiasm for space exploration, for, without these, the finest genetic endowment can still produce a Jerome Morrow, a man who is paralyzed not only in body (by an accident) but in mind (by lack of ambition). The theory that fits this solution is principlism. Vincent is not harming anyone by pursuing his own favorite field of exploration; thus, the action is nonmaleficent. He is amply benefiting himself and others through his skilled endeavors in the realm of space exploration; thus, the action is beneficent. He is allowed to exercise his individual autonomy and pursue his goals, regardless of societal prejudices. And, finally, he is entitled to the same freedom of action and opportunity that other members of his society (the genetically engineered individuals) possess, which passes the test for comparative justice.