Flipping A Coin To Choose Your Kid

Julian Savulescu does a great interview with Dilemata:

I think this is just a basic principle of rational choice applied to reproduction. What surprises me is how much resistance there is, that people really think you should toss a coin when you have information about which embryo is better. Embryologists of course do this when they look at embryos and try to pick the one which looks best. But why do we resist it? There are of course many reasons, but I have argued they are bad reasons.

It is normal that parents look for the best schools, training activities and diets to make their children better people and increase their opportunities in life. However, why do you think that people do not accept so easily the improvement of our children through biological interventions?

The Man Made of Memory

New Scientist talks about creating “Immortal Avatars,” which, in essence, are like Zoe Graystone from Caprica; not so much a replica as the best approximation of you as possible from the given data. Data could include photos, correspondence like email, blogs, facebook and even essays and personality tests written and taken specifically for the memory bot:

Lifenaut’s avatar might appear to respond like a human, but how do you get it to resemble you? The only way is to teach it about yourself. This personality upload is a laborious process. The first stage involves rating some 480 statements such as “I like to please others” and “I sympathise with the homeless”, according to how accurately they reflect my feelings. Having done this, I am then asked to upload items such as diary entries, and photos and video tagged with place names, dates and keywords to help my avatar build up “memories”. I also spend hours in conversation with other Lifenaut avatars, which my avatar learns from. This supposedly provides “Linda” with my mannerisms – the way I greet people or respond to questions, say – as well as more about my views, likes and dislikes.

A more sophisticated series of personality questionnaires is being used by a related project called CyBeRev. The project’s users work their way through thousands of questions developed by the American sociologist William Sims Bainbridge as a means of archiving the mind. Unlike traditional personality questionnaires, part of the process involves trying to capture users’ values, beliefs, hopes and goals by asking them to imagine the world a century in the future. It isn’t a quick process: “If you spent an hour a day answering questions, it would take five years to complete them all,” says Lori Rhodes of the nonprofit Terasem Movement, which funds CyBeRev. “But the further you go, the more accurate a representation of yourself the mind file will become.”

The Last Generation?

Peter Singer in his usual, counter intuitive way, asks if the next generation would be better off not-existing:

One of [South African philosopher David] Benatar’s arguments trades on something like the asymmetry noted earlier. To bring into existence someone who will suffer is, Benatar argues, to harm that person, but to bring into existence someone who will have a good life is not to benefit him or her. Few of us would think it right to inflict severe suffering on an innocent child, even if that were the only way in which we could bring many other children into the world. Yet everyone will suffer to some extent, and if our species continues to reproduce, we can be sure that some future children will suffer severely. Hence continued reproduction will harm some children severely, and benefit none.

Benatar also argues that human lives are, in general, much less good than we think they are. We spend most of our lives with unfulfilled desires, and the occasional satisfactions that are all most of us can achieve are insufficient to outweigh these prolonged negative states. If we think that this is a tolerable state of affairs it is because we are, in Benatar’s view, victims of the illusion of pollyannaism. This illusion may have evolved because it helped our ancestors survive, but it is an illusion nonetheless. If we could see our lives objectively, we would see that they are not something we should inflict on anyone.

The NYT article asks some questions to which the readers are invited to respond, most of which are fairly interesting, but my general response is two fold. 1) The idea of “suffering” is entirely too broad. Benatar takes a kind of cynical Buddhist perspective in that life itself is suffering, therefore to alleviate suffering, we have to remove life. While taking life to end suffering is less desirable than not creating life, Benatar seems to have no trouble with the concept of species suicide. Kill of the species in the name of the rights of the un-conceived. Edelman is probably punching his cat as he reads the article. Given our collective functioning and the universal subconscious (I’m going to butcher Jung here for a second) that our species shares in the form of monomyths and parallel histories, it would seem that while not giving birth to a new generation is not wrong for that generation, it is wrong for the species and humanity because a Form of Life would be terminated. 2) The function of human history has been to slowly eliminate suffering. The process is excruciating, almost unnoticeable, and hugely subjective, but it is difficult to argue that there is not a real, significant number of  people who lead lives with less suffering now than they would have if born five-hundred years ago. Why Benatar doesn’t advocate a global cull or some other situation that would reduce the population so dramatically as to make it possible for modern life to continue at a sustainable rate for the lucky few, I’m not sure.

New Deus Ex: Human Revolution Trailer

Won’t embed. But it’s up on Kotaku.

Assorted Links

1. Hooray? I never know how to treat vasectomy news.
2. Moralism, responsibility and teenage pregnancy.
3. “There is no great invention, from fire to flying, which has not been hailed as an insult to some god.“
4. Cannibalism is not your best bet for surviving Armageddon.
5. Another voice arguing for dolphins to have rights.
6. Stinky pits + silent staring = <3 foreva.

Cyborg Music

Two videos for y’all

First: Christina Hendricks dismantles herself for a dream in Broken Bells’ “Ghost Inside”

And then we come to the amazing Janelle Monae. The album is called ArchAndroid, Janelle’s character in the album is an android (gynoid for the nit-picky) and the chick with the relaxed hair who kind of looks like Wanda Sykes does a mean robot dance:

UPDATE: Commenter “Will” noticed I left out Monae’s “Many Moons.” I had posted it on an oooooold post, but now that YouTube embed is gone. The link to Monae’s “Many Moons.”. And, for a couple more songs, check Common and Pharrell’s “Universal Mind Control” and Lupe Fiasco’s “Daydreamin‘,”

Also – Is anyone else upset that Christina Aguilera’s new album Bionic didn’t produce a sci-fi music video? Not to mention Lady Gaga hasn’t gone there yet (SHE WILL DON’T DOUBT HER).

The Canon: Futurama

“Good news, everyone!” – Professor Hubert J. Farnsworth

The year 3000 in Futurama is Louis C.K.’s famous “Everything is great and nobody is happy” statement taken to its illogical, animated conclusion. Fry, the Professor, Lela, Zoidberg, Bender, Hermes, Amy, and a host of other ancillary characters (like poor Zap and Kif, picture) take the logic of Star Trek, combine it with a Flash Gordon-esque retro-future, a plethora of transhumanist tech (heads in jars, cryonics, nano, cloning, ad nauseam) and a huge grain of nuttiness, and you have what might be one of the best shows to ever be on television.

Futurama does Star Trek one better, however, in the category of making you forget anyone is different. The shows  have rough analogues: Professor:: Picard (bald leader); Zoidbert::Worf (alien); Bender::Data (robot); Fry::Wesley (child); Lela::Troy (pseud0-alien). Listen, I get it, the analogies aren’t perfect, you see the similarities. But while Star Trek hammers us constantly with the “Worf is a Klingon and therefore quite different from normal humans” and “Data is an android and therefore perplexed by things like laughter and figurative language” routine, Futurama goes in the opposite direction. All of the characters, human or otherwise, are so bizarre and ludicrous that we simply see their quirks as a virtue of who they are, not what they are. Bender is filled with vice, Zoidberg is a freak, and the Professor is a madman not because robots are amoral, aliens weird, or humans crazy, but because that’s just how those characters are.

In short, Futurama is the best example of, uh, entity-type-blindness; personhood, the value of the mind and person, is central to allowing the weirdness of the show to shine through. Can’t wait for the new episodes at the end of the month.

Mecha Monkey

Oh my goodness:

via io9

See You In A Year and a Half

Today starts the 520-day Mars mission simulation by the Russian State Scientific Center. This only makes me thing of two things. The first is the above image, which is one of many concept pictures for a potential Mars base. I wanted to be on Mars soooooo bad when I was 12.

The other thing it makes me think of is Rocketman, a wonderfully awful film with Harland Williams. Just watch:

Marine Mammal Merlin Loves Magical Device

Aaaaaaaaah! couldn’t resist the alliteration. Sorry.

Seriously, though, a dolphin named Merlin is learning to speak using the iPad, so says Michael Leddy of Orange Crate Art:

[Jack] Kassewitz [of SpeakDolphin.com] explained the requirements of the technology. “Waterproofing, processor speed, touch-sensitivity, anti-glare screens, and dolphin-friendly programs are essential. As this database of dolphin symbols grows — we’ll need fast technology to help us respond appropriately and quickly to the dolphins.”

The research was being conducted at Dolphin Discovery’s dolphin swim facility in Puerto Aventuras, Mexico, along the picturesque coast now referred to as the Riviera Maya. The dolphin, Merlin, is a juvenile, born at the facility only two years ago. “Merlin is quite curious, like most dolphins, and he showed complete willingness to examine the iPad,” said Kassewitz.