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Longevity Logistics: We Can Manage the Effects of Overpopulation – Article by Franco Cortese

Longevity Logistics: We Can Manage the Effects of Overpopulation – Article by Franco Cortese

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The New Renaissance Hat
Franco Cortese
November 5, 2013
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This is a more popularly-oriented version of a scholarly article in review for the Journal of Evolution and Technology.

By far the most predominant criticism made against indefinite longevity is overpopulation. It is the first “potential problem” that comes to mind. But fortunately it seems that halting the global mortality rate would not cause an immediate drastic increase in global population; in fact, if the mortality rate dropped to zero tomorrow then the doubling rate for the global population would only be increased by a factor of 1.75 [1], which is smaller than the population growth rate during the post-WWII baby-boom.

Population is significantly more determined by birth rate than by death rate, simply because many people have more than one natural child.

This means that we should not see an unsustainable rise in population following even the complete cessation of death globally for a number of generations. We will run into problems 3 or 4 generations hence – but this leaves us with time enough to plan for overpopulation before we’re forced to resort to more drastic solution-paradigms like procreation-bans and space colonization.

Moreover, there are a number of proposed, and in some cases implemented, solutions to existing, contemporary problems that can be utilized for the purpose of minimizing overpopulation’s detrimental effects on living space and non-renewable resource constraints. These contemporary concerns include climate change and dependence on non-renewable energy sources, and they are only increasing in the amount of public attention they are attracting.

While these concerns and their potential solutions were not created by overpopulation or with overpopulation in mind, the potentially negative effects of an increasing global population can be effectively combated all the same using such contemporary methods and technologies.

Thus we can take advantage of the solution-paradigms developed for such contemporary concerns as climate change and dependence on non-renewable resources, and borrow from such movements as the sustainability movement and the seasteading movement, so as to better mitigate and effectively plan for the negative repercussions of a growing global population caused by the emergence of effective longevity technologies.

In a session with The President’s Council on Bioethics (as it was composed during the Bush Administration), S. Jay Olshansky [2] reported calculations he performed indicating that complete cessation of the global morality rate today would lead to less population growth than resulted from the post-WWII “Baby Boom”:

This is an estimate of the birth rate and the death rate in the year 1000, birth rate roughly 70, death rate about 69.5. Remember when there’s a growth rate of 1 percent, very much like your money, a growth rate of 1 percent leads to a doubling time at about 69 to 70 years. It’s the same thing with humans. With a 1 percent growth rate, the population doubles in about 69 years. If you have the growth rate — if you double the growth rate, you have the time it takes for the population to double, so it’s nothing more than the difference between the birth rate and the death rate to generate the growth rate. And here you can see in 1900, the growth rate was about 2 percent, which meant the doubling time was about five years. During the 1950s at the height of the baby boom, the growth rate was about 3 percent, which means the doubling time was about 26 years. In the year 2000, we have birth rates of about 15 per thousand, deaths of about 10 per thousand, low mortality populations, which means the growth rate is about one half of 1 percent, which means it would take about 140 years for the population to double.

Well, if we achieved immortality today, in other words, if the death rate went down to zero, then the growth rate would be defined by the birth rate. The birth rate would be about 15 per thousand, which means the doubling time would be 53 years, and more realistically, if we achieved immortality, we might anticipate a reduction in the birth rate to roughly ten per thousand, in which case the doubling time would be about 80 years. The bottom line is, is that if we achieved immortality today, the growth rate of the population would be less than what we observed during the post-World War II baby boom.

We would eventually run into problems, of course, a century down the road, but just so you know the growth rates would not be nearly what they were in the post-World War II era, even with immortality today.

In other words we will only have increased the doubling-time of the global population by a factor of 1.75 if we achieved indefinite longevity today (e.g., a doubling time of 140 years in 2000 compared to a doubling time of 80 years). This means that we will have two to four generations worth of time to consider possible solutions to growing population before we are faced with the “hard choice” of (1) finding new space and resources or else (2) limiting or regulating the global birthrate.

An alternate study on the demographic consequences of life extension concluded that “population changes are surprisingly slow in their response to a dramatic life extension”. The study applied “the cohort-component method of population projections to 2005 Swedish population for several scenarios of life extension and a fertility schedule observed in 2005,” concluding that “even for a very long 100-year projection horizon, with the most radical life extension scenario (assuming no aging at all after age 60), the total population increases by 22% only (from 9.1 to 11.0 million)” and that “even in the case of the most radical life extension scenario, population growth could be relatively slow and may not necessarily lead to overpopulation.” [2]. The total population increase due to the complete negation of mortality given by this study is significantly lower than the figure calculated by Olshansky.

Finding innovative solutions to new and old problems is what humanity does. We have a variety of possible viable options to increase the resources and living space available to humanity already. Moreover, there are several other contemporary concerns that are invoking the development of technological and methodological solutions that can be applied to our own concerns regarding the effects of overpopulation. Surely we can conceive of optimal solutions to these problems (and the more pressing a given problem is, the more funding it receives and the faster the solution to it is accomplished) – and take advantage of the growing methodological and technical infrastructure being developed for related and convergent problems – within the time it will take to feel overpopulation’s effect on living space and resources.

We could, for instance, colonize the oceans [3, 4, 5], drawing from the engineering, construction techniques used to build, maintain, and safely inhabit contemporary VLFSs (Very Large Floating Structures). 75% of the Earth’s surface area is, after all, water. This would increase our potential living space 3-fold – and I say “potential” because we surely don’t currently maximize living space on the 25% of the Earth’s surface occupied by land. Furthermore, humanity has as yet barely ventured beyond the surface of the earth – which is a sphere after all. There is nothing to prevent society building higher and building deeper. Indeed, with contemporary and projected advances in materials science and structural engineering, there is no theoretical limit to the height of structures we can safely build – the space elevator being a case in point. And while there will indeed be a maximum size wherein building higher becomes economically prohibitive (a limit determined to a large extent by the materials used), contemporary megastructures [6] indicate that very large structures can be built safety and cost-effectively. Underground living [7, 8, 9, 10] is another potential solution-paradigm as well; underground structures require less energy, are protected from weathering effects and changing temperatures to a much greater extent than structures exposed to the elements, and are less susceptible to damage from natural disasters. Furthermore, there are a number of underground cities in existence today [11], with existing techniques and technologies used to better facilitate contemporary underground living, which we can take advantage of.

In fact, the problem of limited living space is a contemporary problem for certain nations like Japan, and active projects to combat this growing problem have already been undertaken in many cases. This means that there will be an existing host of solutions, with their own technological and methodological infrastructures, which we can benefit from and take advantage of when the problematizing effects of growing global population become immediate. Not only can we take advantage of the existing engineering methodologies developed for use in the construction of VLFSs, but we can also take advantage of the growing body of knowledge pertaining to megastructural engineering and even existing proposals for floating cities [12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18]. Another possible solution is artificial islands [19].

Furthermore, in recent years the topic of Very Large Floating Structures [21, 22] has experienced a surge of renewed interest occurring in tandem with the increasing interest in seasteading [23, 24], – that is, the creation of very-large-floating-structures for reasons of political sovereignty as well as to allow corporations to get around the laws of a given nation by occupying an area outside of exclusive economic zones. This renewed interest can only increase the amount of attention and funding these concepts receive, in turn increasing the viability of VLFS designs and their underlying structural-engineering and energy-production concerns.

Another contemporary movement that will prove advantageous for our own concerns with the effects of overpopulation on living space, working space, and resource space is the growing green movement and sustainability movement. The problem of resource scarcity is already upon us in many areas, and there exists contemporary motivation for finding more resource-efficient ways of making energy and producing goods, and for lessening our dependency on non-renewable energy sources. Climate change has only become an increasingly predominant concern in international politics, and many incentives exist to lessen our dependence on non-renewable energy sources as well as to lessen the environmental impact of contemporary civilization, which is itself another oft-touted problematic concern possibly resulting from overpopulation. Developments in these areas are only set to continue, for reasons wholly unrelated to the effects of overpopulation, and when those effects come to the fore we will have a collection of existing methodologies that can then be harnessed to lessen the impact of overpopulation on living space and resource scarcity.

The predominance of these problems, as well as the amount of attention and funding they are expected to receive (and thus the viability of their potential solutions), will only increase as we move forward into the future. The solutions we have to the potential problems of overpopulation – namely resource scarcity and lack of living space – will not only increase as the effects of overpopulation get closer, but the technological and methodological infrastructures underlying those solutions will also become more tried, tested, and robust, fueled by contemporary concerns over decreasing living space, climate-change and resource scarcity.

While space colonization is the most frequently proffered technological solution to the possibility of future overpopulation, I think we will turn to various Earth-bound solutions to increasing humanity’s available living space, as well as the space available for agricultural labs, that is the manufacture of food-stuffs, or indoor farming systems [25, 26, 28], before colonizing the cosmos becomes an economically optimal option. I think these sorts of solutions will be employed long before humanity is forced to either regulate the birthrate or move into the cosmos.

Moreover, people who wish to have children will have incentive to support politicians running on policies promoting new solutions to decreasing living space. Consider the number of U.S. taxpayer dollars spent during the Space Race, with no immediate material or scientific benefit (other than to prove it could be done, as well as to maintain rough militaristic equality with the USSR to some extent, as the state of rocket technology was indicative of the state of ballistic technologies like missiles). If humanity is forced to choose between having children and receiving the medical treatments that will keep them from dying, surely people will be motivated to fund initiatives and projects aimed at solving the problems of decreasing living space and increasing resource constraints due to a growing global population.

It is important to remember that the largest increase in life expectancy we have experienced historically was followed by a drastic decrease in birthrate over the next few generations thereafter. Before the Industrial Revolution, English women had on average 6 children. In 2000 the average was less than 2.

Figure 1: Fertility Rates in England, 1540-2000

Note: GRR = Gross Reproduction Rate, NRR = Net Reproduction Rate
Source: Wrigley et al. (1997) p. 614. Office of National Statistics, United Kingdom.

The drop in birthrate following the industrial revolution has several causes. Chief among them is the fact that children were considered to some extent as assets, helping with maintaining the family livelihood, often by doing agricultural work on a family farm or helping with household chores (which were much more extensive then). Another large determining factor is a high rate of child mortality; thus families would have multiple children in anticipation of losing some to death. But with a rise in living conditions, the child mortality rate dropped drastically – and as a result we stopped having more kids in anticipation of some of them dying. Moreover, we started treating children less as assets and more as people to nurture and raise for their own sake. Longer lives, and less susceptibility to death in general, appears to have made us better parents.

Thus it is not only possible but probable that we will see a similar drop in the birthrate as a consequence of a significant future increase in average lifespan, with people having children much later in life, when they are more financially stable and when they have done all the commitment-free things they’ve always wanted to do. Without a looming limit on one’s available reproductive lifespan, there will be no pressing motivation to have children “before it’s too late” – and this alone could very well facilitate an unprecedented decrease in the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the global population.

Evidence indicates that the drop in birth rate was neither limited to England, nor an isolated result of the Industrial Revolution. A net drop in the TFR seems to be a longer-term trend concurrent across the globe. It is likely that the drop in the TFR is due to the same factors as the drop in birth rate following the Industrial Revolution – increasing life expectancy and continually improving living conditions allow people to have children without expecting a portion of them to be lost to death, to have them for the sake of having children rather than as assets to aid in maintaining the family livelihood, and to have children later in life due to the increase in one’s reproductive lifespan that comes with increasing life expectancy. The fact that the drop in TFR is not an isolated historical event is advantageous because the global population is affected by birth rate much more than by the mortality rate. Hence we may see a continuing decrease in the TFR occur in tandem with increasing life expectancy, leveling out the imbalance created by a mortality rate of zero by a larger than has been heretofore anticipated. (Source: U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, World Factbook.)

Let us suppose, for a moment, the worst: that indefinite longevity is achieved and we completely ignore (i.e., fail to plan for) overpopulation until its effects start becoming readily apparent. Even in this seeming worst-case scenario, overpopulation is not likely to result in any great tragedies. In such a case we would be forced to limit the global birthrate until we are able to implement the solutions that would allow us to sustainably procreate again. If people have a strong enough desire to continue having children, then they will express their demand and politicians will consequently base their policies upon deliberative initiatives to increase available living and agricultural space – and get elected if the desire to freely procreate is strong and widespread enough. Failing to plan for overpopulation will simply be a wake-up call, letting us know that we should have been planning for its effects from the beginning, and that we had better start planning for them now if we want to continue to freely procreate.

Thus while overpopulation is the most prominent and most credible criticism against continually increasing lifespans, and the one that needs to be planned for the most (because it will eventually happen, but it will lead to sustainability, resource, and living-space problems only if we do nothing about it), it is in no way insoluble, nor particularly pressing in terms of the time available to plan and implement solutions to shrinking living space and resource space (i.e., the space occupied by resources such as food, energy production, workplaces, etc.). We have a host of potential solutions today, ones we can use to increase available living space without regulating the global birthrate, and decades following the achievement of indefinite lifespans to consider the advantages and disadvantages of the various possible solutions, to develop them and to implement them.

So then: where to from here? Overpopulation is still the most prominent criticism raised against indefinite longevity, and if combated, the result could be an increase in public support for the Longevity movement. You might think that the widespread concern with overpopulation due to increasing longevity won’t really matter, if they turn out to be wrong, and overpopulation isn’t so insoluble a problem as one is inclined to first presume. But this misses a crucial point: that the time it takes to achieve longevity is determined by and large by how strongly and in how widespread a manner society and the members constituting it desire and demand it. If we can convince people today that overpopulation isn’t an insoluble problem, then continually increasing longevity might happen much sooner than otherwise. At the cost of 100,000 deaths due to age-correlated causes per day, I think hastening the arrival of indefinite longevity therapies by even a modest amount is somewhat imperative. Hastening its arrival by one month will save 3 million lives, and achieving it one year sooner than otherwise will save an astounding 36.5 Million real, human lives.

Thus, we should work toward putting more concrete numbers to these estimates. How much more living space can be feasibly created by colonizing the oceans? How deep can we really dig, build and live? How high can we safely build? Is there a threshold height or depth where building higher or deeper becomes too economically prohibitive to be worth the added living, working or resource space? What are the parameters (e.g., material strength/cost ratio, specific structural design) determining such a threshold?

First, we need to collect and analyze the feasibility studies that have already been undertaken on floating cities, artificial islands, VLFSs and the new solution-paradigms that are emerging to combat the contemporary concerns of sustainability and resource scarcity. In short, we need to compile data from the feasibility studies that have already been done, and the projects already implemented. Then we need to plan and commission further feasibility studies, undertaken by engineers and geologists, to build upon the work already accomplished in feasibility studies pertaining to existing designs for floating cities and other Very Large Floating Structures. We need to put some numbers to the cost the additional space for food, resources, work and living necessitated by widely available life-extension therapies. We need to do some hard calculations to show that the effects of overpopulation are problems that can be solved using existing megascale engineering and construction techniques and materials, safely and economically. We need to show the world that it has more space than it ever thought it had, and that such solution-paradigms as cosmic colonization and procreative regulation are neither the only ones, nor necessarily the most optimal ones. We need, in short, to show them that, in this case, where there’s a will there’s a way, and that the weight of waiting is too high a price to pay.

Franco Cortese is a futurist, author, editor, Affiliate Scholar at the Institute for Ethics & Emerging Technologies, Ambassador at The Seasteading Institute, Affiliate Researcher at ELPIs Foundation for Indefinite Lifespans, Fellow at Brighter Brains Institute, Advisor at the Lifeboat Foundation (Futurists Board Member and Life Extension Scientific Advisory Board Member), Director of the Canadian Longevity Alliance, Activist at the International Longevity Alliance, Canadian Ambassador at Longevity Intelligence Communications, an Administrator at MILE (Movement for Indefinite Life Extension), Columnist at LongeCity, Columnist at H+ Magazine, Executive Director of the Center for Transhumanity, Contributor to the Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology, India Future Society, Serious Wonder, Immortal Life and The Rational Argumentator. Franco edited Longevitize!: Essays on the Science, Philosophy & Politics of Longevity, a compendium of 150+ essays from over 40 contributing authors.

References:

  1. Presidents Council for Bioethics: Transcripts (December 12, 2002): Session 2: Duration of Life: Is There a Biological Warranty Period? 01.
  2. L. A. Gavrilov and N.S. Gavrilova. “Demographic Consequences of Defeating Aging”. Rejuvenation Research. 2010 April; 13(2-3): 329–334.
  3. Ibid.
  4. McCullagh, Declan. “Seasteaders” Take First Step Toward Colonizing The Oceans.” CBS News, October 9, 2009. 02
  5. Pasternack, Alex. “Bioengineer aspires to colonize the sea.” CNN, January 12, 2011. 03
  6. Banham, Reyner. Megastructure: urban futures of the recent past. London: Thames and Hudson, 1976.
  7. Tsuchiyama, Ray. “Ocean Colonies as Next Frontier.” Forbes, April 24, 2011. Accessed August 1, 2013. 04
  8. “Inside Underground Cities.” Before Its News. 2013 March. 05
  9. South, D. B., and Freda Parker. “Underground Homes – Good or Bad?” Monolithic, January 22, 2009. 06.
  10. Good Earth Plants & Greenscaped Buildings. “Underground Living.” Last modified May 6, 2013. 07.
  11. Kelly, J. “10 Amazing Underground Cities”. Listverse.com. January 22, 2013. Accessed August 1, 2013. 08
  12. Gammon, Katharine. “Building Artificial Islands That Rise With Sea.” PopSci, June 8, 2012. 09
  13. Cottrell, Claire. “A Survey of Futuristic Floating Cities.” FlavorWire, November 2, 2012. 10
  14. “Cities on the Ocean.” Technology Quarterly – The Economist. Q4 2011.
  15. Bonsor, Kevin. “How the Floating Cities Will Work.” HowStuffWorks. n.d. 11.
  16. DigInfo TV. “GREEN FLOAT – a Floating City in the Sky.” Accessed August 6, 2013. 12.
  17. National Geographic. “Pictures: Floating Cities of the Future.” Accessed August 6, 2013. 13.
  18. Emerging Technology News. “Self-Sufficient Floating Cities Planned for 2025: Japan.” Accessed August 6, 2013. 14.
  19. “An artificial island in Hambantota.” News.LK, August 2, 2013. 15
  20. Goodier, Rob. “The World’s 18 Strangest Man Made Islands.” Popular Mechanics, n.d. 16
  21. E. Watanabe, C.M. Wang, T. Utsunomiya and T. Moan. “Very Large Floating Structures: Applications, Analysis and Design”. CORE Report No. 2004-02. Centre for Offshore Research and Engineering National University of Singapore. 17
  22. C.M. Wang, and Z. Tay. Very Large Floating Structures: Applications, Research and Development. In The Proceedings of the Twelfth East Asia-Pacific Conference on Structural Engineering and Construction — EASEC12. Edited by LAM Heung Fai. Singapore: Department of Civil Engineering, National University of Singapore Kent Ridge, 2011. 18
  23. World Architecture News. “Seasteading, United States.” Accessed August 6, 2013. 19
  24. The Seasteading Institute. The Seasteading Institute Annual Report 2008. Rep. n.p., n.d.
  25. Nagy, Attila. “14 High-Tech Farms Where Veggies Grow Indoors.” Gizmodo, June 17. 20.
  26. Meinhold, Bridgette. “Indoor Vertical Farm ‘Pinkhouses’ Grow Plants Faster With Less Energy.” Inhabitat. Last modified May 23, 2013. 21.
  27. TerraSphere. “Urban farming 2.0: No soil, no sun.” Accessed August 1, 2013. 22.

  28. The Vertical Farm Project – Agriculture for the 21st Century and Beyond. “Vertical Farm Designs.” Accessed August 6, 2013. 23

 

Refutation of RockingMrE’s “Transhuman Megalomania” Video – Essay and Video by G. Stolyarov II

Refutation of RockingMrE’s “Transhuman Megalomania” Video – Essay and Video by G. Stolyarov II

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The New Renaissance Hat
G. Stolyarov II
August 11, 2013
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Video

Essay

As a libertarian transhumanist, I was rather baffled to see the “Transhuman Megalomania” video on the Rocking Philosophy YouTube channel of one, RockingMrE. Rocking Philosophy appears to have much in common with my rational individualist outlook in terms of general principles, though in not in terms of some specific positions – such as RockingMrE’s opposition to LGBT rights. The channel’s description states that “Above all Rocking Philosophy promotes individualism and a culture free of coercion. Views are based on the non-aggression principle, realism, and a respect for rationality.” I agree with all of these basic principles – hence my bewilderment that RockingMrE would attempt to assail transhumanism in extremely harsh terms – going so far as to call transhumanism “a mad delusion” and a “threat looming over humanity” – rather than embrace or promote it. Such characterizations could not be more mistaken.

In essays and videos such as “Liberty Through Long Life” and “Libertarian Life-Extension Reforms”, I explain that  libertarianism and transhumanism are natural corollaries and would reinforce one another through a virtuous cycle of positive feedback. If people are indeed free as individuals to innovate and to enter the economic and societal arrangements that they consider most beneficial, what do you think would happen to the rate of technological progress? If you think that the result would not be a skyrocketing acceleration of new inventions and their applications to all areas of life, would that position not presuppose a view that freedom would somehow breed stagnation or lead to sub-optimal utilization of human creative faculties? In other words, would not the view of libertarianism as being opposed to transhumanism essentially be a view that liberty would hold people back from transcending the limitations involuntarily imposed on them by the circumstances in which they and their ancestors found themselves? How could such a view be reconcilable with the whole point of liberty, which is to expand and – as the term suggests – liberate human potential, instead of constricting it?

RockingMrE criticizes transhumanists for attempting to reshape the “natural” condition of humanity and to render such a condition obsolete. Yet this overlooks the essence of human behavior over the past twelve millennia at least. Through the use of technology – from rudimentary hunting and farming implements to airplanes, computers, scientific medicine, and spacecraft – we have already greatly departed from the nasty, brutish, and short “natural” lives of our Paleolithic ancestors. Furthermore, RockingMrE falls prey to the naturalistic fallacy – that the “natural”, defined arbitrarily as that which has not been shaped by deliberate human influence, is somehow optimal or good, when in fact we know that “nature”, apart from human influence, is callously indifferent at best, and viciously cruel in most circumstances, having  brought about the immense suffering and demise of most humans who have ever lived and the extinction of 99.9% of species that have ever existed, the vast majority of those occurring without any human intervention.

RockingMrE characterizes transhumanism as a so-called “evil” that presents itself as a “morally relativist and benign force, where any action can be justified for the greater good.” I see neither moral relativism nor any greater-good justifications in transhumanism. Transhumanism can be justified from an entirely individualistic standpoint. Furthermore, it can be justified from the morally objective value of each individual’s life and the continuation of such life. I, as an individual, do not wish to die and wish to accomplish more than my current  bodily and mental faculties, as well as the current limitations of human societies and the present state of technology, would allow me to accomplish today. I exist objectively and I recognize that my existence requires objective physical prerequisites, such as the continuation of the functions of my biological body and biological mind. Therefore, I support advances in medicine, genetic engineering, nanotechnology, computing, education, transportation, and human settlement which would enable these limitations to be progressively lifted and would improve my chances of seeing a much remoter future than my current rate of biological senescence would allow. As an ethically principled individual, I recognize that all beings with the same essential faculties that I have, ought also to have the right to pursue these aspirations in an entirely voluntary, non-coercive manner. In other words, individualist transhumanism would indeed lead to the good of all because its principles and achievements would be universalizable – but the always vaguely defined notion of the “greater good” does not serve as the justification for transhumanism; the good of every individual does. The good of every individual is equivalent to the good for all individuals, which is the only defensible notion of a “greater good”.

RockingMrE states that some of the technologies advocated by transhumanists are “less dangerous than others, and some are even useful.” Interestingly enough, he includes cryopreservation in the category of less dangerous technologies, because a cryopreserved human who is revived will still have the same attributes he or she had prior to preservation. Life extension is the most fundamental transhumanist aim, the one that makes all the other aims feasible. As such, I am quite surprised that RockingMrE did not devote far more time in his video to technologies of radical life extension. Cryonics is one such approach, which attempts to place a physically damaged organism in stasis after that organism reaches clinical death by today’s definition. In the future, what is today considered death may become reversible, giving that individual another chance at life. There are other life-extension approaches, however, which would not even require stasis. Aubrey de Grey’s SENS approach involves the periodic repair of seven kinds of damage that contribute to senescence and eventual death. A person who is relatively healthy when he begins to undergo the therapies envisioned by SENS might not ever need to get to the stage where cryopreservation would be the only possible way of saving that person. What does RockingMrE think of that kind of technology? What about the integration of nanotechnology into human bodily repair systems, to allow for ongoing maintenance of cells and tissues? If a person still looks, talks, and thinks like many humans do today, but lives indefinitely and remains indefinitely young, would this be acceptable to RockingMrE, or would it be a “megalomaniacal” and “evil” violation of human nature?  Considering that indefinite life extension is the core of transhumanism, the short shrift given to it in RockingMrE’s video underscores the severe deficiencies of his critique.

RockingMrE further supports megascale engineering – including the creation of giant spacecraft and space elevators – as a type of technology that “would enhance, rather than alter, what it means to be human.” He also clearly states his view that the Internet enhances our lives and allows the communication of ideas in a manner that would never have been possible previously. We agree here. I wonder, though, if a strict boundary between enhancing and altering can be drawn. Our human experience today differs radically from that of our Paleolithic and Neolithic ancestors – in terms of how much of the world we are able to see, what information is available to us, the patterns in which we lead our lives, and most especially the lengths of those lives. Many of our distant ancestors would probably consider us magicians or demigods, rather than the humans with whom they were familiar. If we are able to create giant structures on Earth and in space, this would surely broaden our range of possible experiences, as well as the resources of the universe that are accessible to us. A multiplanetary species, with the possibility of easy and fast travel among places of habitation, would be fundamentally different from today’s humanity in terms of possible lifestyles and protections from extinction, even while retaining some of the same biological and intellectual characteristics.   As for the Internet, there are already studies suggesting that the abundance of information available online is altering the structure of many humans’ thinking and interactions with that information, as well as with one another. Is this any less human, or just human with a different flavor? If it is just human with a different flavor, might not the other transhumanist technologies criticized by RockingMrE also be characterized this way?

RockingMrE does not even see any significant issues with virtual reality and mind uploading, aside from asking the legitimate question of whether a copy of a person’s mind is still that person. This is a question which has been considerably explored and debated in transhumanist circles, and there is some disagreement as to the answer. My own position, expressed in my essay “Transhumanism and Mind Uploading Are Not the Same”,  is that a copy would indeed not be the same as the individual, but a process of gradual replacement of biological neurons with artificial neurons might preserve a person’s “I-ness” as long as certain rather challenging prerequisites could be met. RockingMrE’s skepticism in this area is understandable, but it does not constitute an argument against transhumanism at all, since transhumanism does not require advocacy of mind uploading generally, or of any particular approach to mind uploading. Moreover, RockingMrE does not see virtual copies of minds as posing a moral problem. In his view, this is because “a program is not an organic life.” We can agree that there is no moral problem posed by non-destructively creating virtual copies of biological minds.

Still, in light of all of the technologies that RockingMrE does not consider to be highly concerning, why in the world does he characterize transhumanism so harshly, after spending the first 40% of his video essentially clarifying that he does not take issue with the actualization of many of the common goals of transhumanists? Perhaps it is because he misunderstands what transhumanism is all about. For the technologies that RockingMrE finds more alarming, he appears to think that they would allow “a level of social engineering that totalitarians could only dream of during the 20th century.” No transhumanist I know of would advocate such centrally planned social engineering. RockingMrE aims his critique at technologies that have “the potential to create human life” – such as gene therapy, which can, in RockingMrE’s words, “dictate the characteristics of life to such an extent that those making the decisions have complete control over how this forms”. This argument appears to presuppose a form of genetic determinism and a denial of human free will, even though RockingMrE would affirm his view that free will exists. Suppose it were possible to make a person five centimeters taller through genetic engineering. Does that have any bearing over how that person will actually choose to lead his life? Perhaps he could become a better basketball player than otherwise, but it is just as possible that basketball would not interest him at all, and he would rather be a taller-than-average chemist, accountant, or painter. This choice would still be up to him, and not the doctors who altered his genome or the parents who paid for the alteration. Alteration of any genes that might influence the brain would have even less of a predetermined or even determinable impact. If parents who are influenced by the faulty view of genetic determinism try everything in their power to alter their child’s genome in order to create a super-genius (in their view), who is to say that this child would necessarily act out the parents’ ideal? A true super-genius with a will of his own is probably the most autonomous possible human; he or she would develop a set of tastes, talents, and aspirations that nobody could anticipate or manage, and would run circles around any design to control or limit his or her life. What genetic engineering could achieve, though, is to remove the obstacles to an individual’s self-determination by eliminating genetic sub-optimalities: diseases, weaknesses of organs, and inhibitions to clear self-directed brain function. This is no qualitatively different from helping a child develop intellectually by taking the child out of a violent slum and putting him or her into a peaceful, nurturing, and prosperous setting.

RockingMrE fears that gene therapy would allow “ideologues to suppress certain human characteristics”. While this cannot be ruled out, any such development would be a political problem, not a technological one, and could be addressed only through reforms protecting individual freedom, not through abolition of any techniques of genetic engineering. The vicious eugenics movement of the early 20th century, to which RockingMrE wrongly compares transhumanism, attempted to suppress the characteristics of whole populations of humans using very primitive technologies by today’s standards. The solution to such misguided ideological movements is to maximize the scope for individual liberty, so as to allow the characteristics that individuals consider good or neutral to be preserved and for individual wishes to be protected by law, despite what some eugenicist somewhere might think.

Transhumanism is about giving each person the power to control his or her own destiny, including his or her genotype; transhumanism is certainly not about ceding that control to others. Even a child who was genetically engineered prior to birth would, with sufficient technological advances, be able to choose to alter his or her genotype upon becoming an adult. Just as parental upbringing can influence a child but does not determine a person’s entire future, so can genetic-engineering decisions by parents be routed around, overcome, ignored, or utilized by the child in a way far different from the parents’ intentions. Furthermore, because parents differ considerably in their views of what the best traits would be, engineering at the wishes of parents  would in no way diminish the diversity of human characteristics and would, on the contrary, enhance such diversity by introducing new mixes of traits in addition to those already extant. This is why it is unfounded to fear, as RockingMrE does, that a transhumanist society which embraces genetic engineering would turn into the society of the 1997 film Gattaca, where the non-engineered humans were excluded from non-menial work. Just as today there is no one hierarchy of genotypes and phenotypes, neither would there be such a hierarchy in a society where genetic engineering is practiced. An even greater diversity of people would mean that an even greater diversity of opportunities would be open to all. Indeed, even Gattaca could be seen as a refutation of RockingMrE’s feared scenario that genetic modification would render un-modified humans unable to compete. The protagonist in Gattaca was able to overcome the prejudices of his society through willpower and ingenuity, which would remain open to all. While the society of Gattaca relied on coercion to restrict un-modified individuals from competing, a libertarian transhumanist society would have no such restrictions and would allow individuals to rise on the basis of merit alone, rather than on the basis of genetics.

RockingMrE further expresses concern that the unintended consequences of genetic manipulation would result in viruses that reproduce out of control and “infect” humans who were not the intended targets of genetic engineering. This is not a philosophical argument against transhumanism. If such a possibility even exists (and I do not know that it does, as I am not a biologist), it could be mitigated or eliminated through careful controls in the laboratories and clinics where genetic engineering is performed. Certainly, the existence of such a possibility would not justify banning genetic manipulation, since a ban does not mean that the practice being banned goes away. Under a ban, genetic engineering would continue on the black market, where there would be far fewer safeguards in place against unintended negative consequences. It is much safer for technological innovation to proceed in the open, under a legal system that respects liberty and progress while ensuring that the rights of all are protected. Certainly, it would be justified for the legal system to protect the rights of people who do not wish to undergo certain medical treatments; such people should neither be forced into those treatments, nor have the side effects of those treatments, when they are performed on others, affect their own biology. But libertarian transhumanists would certainly agree with that point of view and would hold it consistently with regard to any technology that could conceivably impose negative external effects on non-consenting parties.

RockingMrE thinks that “it is essential that the creation and destruction of life be protected by a code of morality that respects and recognizes natural law – natural law being values derived from nature.” He describes one tier of this natural system as comprised of relationships of trade, “where all individuals have unalienable rights derived from natural action, but free of coercion and the initiation of force, voluntarily associating with one another for mutual gain.” He then says that “only this sort of philosophy can truly prevent nihilists from justifying their evil intentions to play God and […] destroy or alienate any individual that doesn’t adhere to a rigid set of socially engineered parameters.”  The latter statement is a severe misrepresentation of the aims of transhumanists, who do not support centrally planned social engineering and who are certainly not nihilists. Indeed, transhumanist technological progress is the very outcome of voluntary individual association that is free from coercion and the initiation of force. I wonder whether the “fierce defense” envisioned by RockingMrE would involve the initiation of force against innovators who attempt to improve the human genome in order to cure certain diseases, enhance certain human faculties, and lengthen the human lifespan. It is not clear whether RockingMrE advocates such coercion, but if he does, then his opposition to the emergence of these technologies would be inimical to his own stated libertarian philosophy. In other words, his conclusions are completely incompatible with his premises.

Toward the end of his video, RockingMrE uses the example of three-person in vitro fertilization (IVF) as an illustration “of how far down the road of transhumanism we are”. What, dare I ask, is wrong with three-person IVF? RockingMrE believes that it is a contributor to “gradually destroying the natural definition of parenting” – yet parenting is a set of actions to raise a child, not a method of originating that child. If RockingMrE has any problems with children who are brought into this world using three-person IVF, then what about children who are adopted and raised by parents who had no part in their conception? Is that not even more removed from parents who contributed at least some of their genetic material? Furthermore, IVF has been available in some form since the birth of Louise Brown in 1978 – 35 years ago. Since then, approximately 5 million people have been created using IVF. Are they any less human than the rest of us? Have we, as a species, lost some fraction of our humanity as a result? Surely not! And if similar consequences to what has already happened are what RockingMrE fears, then I submit that there is no basis for fear at all. New techniques for creating life and enhancing human potential may not be in line with what RockingMrE considers “natural”, but perhaps his view equates the “unnatural” to the “unfamiliar to RockingMrE”. But he does not have to personally embrace any method of genetic engineering or medically assisted creation of life; he is free to abstain from such techniques himself. What he ought to do, though, as a self-professed libertarian and individualist, is to allow the rest of us, as individuals, the same prerogative to choose to use or to abstain from using these technologies as they become available. The shape that the resulting future takes, as long as it is based on these freedom-respecting principles, is not for RockingMrE to decide or limit.