Goodness

Mike Anissimov threw a few rocks through the paper-thin arguments of the wasps over at Futurisms, resulting in their version of an angry swarm (comments and a blog post). The initial post itself is pretty funny, because, in short, Futurisms argued, with a picture and a headline, “We like one of the most likable actresses to ever exist, but the people we critique think she needs to be made into a borg to be of value.” Just to clarify, we transhumanists love Hepburn, but think it’s sad that she 1.) had lots of miscarriages and 2.) died, so we argue for technology that would have fixed those problems. The back and forth is largely uninteresting, because neither party explores what is at stake here: goodness vis-a-vis humanism. Transhumanists are humanists and those at Futurisms claim to be humanists as well. So we have a problem of interpretation, not of standards of “goodness.”

I’ll make three quick points.

1. Humanist/Enlightenment standards of “goodness” have not changed, but have been consistently reinterpreted over the past 300 years. I can guarantee that no humanist in 1750 would have argued that all human beings are equal and have understood it the same way a humanist would in the year 2010. For example: the concept of “homosexual” didn’t even exist, so how could inclusion/exclusion goodness/badness even be considered in 1750.

2. The focus has never been “human beings” so much as it has been intelligent, rational adults. For a long time, only white, landowning, men could be considered intelligent, rational adults, with everyone else being too simple to be morally responsible/autonomous. All transhumanism does is expose the original criterion – intelligence, rationality, and sentience – and point out that the boundary isn’t drawn by DNA but by something emergent. Rights are a case by case situation.

3. The “goodness” of Hepburn is an interesting case because no mention is made of what makes Hepburn so good she can’t be better. She was a fantastic human being and remains iconic, but why? Is it because she is beautiful? Smart? Kind? A humanitarian? Because she was a great actress? Her fashion sense? She was a smoker, is that good? She had miscarriages, would remedying that situation lessen her? Not only would there be a debate over what actually makes her good, any agreement (say, her fashion) would lead to debates over someone who is better at that aspect (Jackie O, Gaga, Coco Chanel).

I agree that moral relativism is a problem. I also agree with Anissimov’s point that our morality and sense of goodness are innately connected to how our minds evolved (not each individual mind, but the whole species), and neuroscience has been kinda-sorta proving the Categorical Imperative.  But for the writers of Futurisms to come to the conclusion that ah! the late 20th century version of humanism is THE version to stick with, is willfully ignorant.

Processing Beauty

Oh computer scientists, is there nothing they won’t try to quantify? Amit Kaigen of Tel Aviv University and his team have developed a computer algorithm to recognize beauty:

In the first step of the study, 30 men and women were presented with 100 different faces of Caucasian women, roughly of the same age, and were asked to judge the beauty of each face. The subjects rated the images on a scale of 1 through 7 and did not explain why they chose certain scores. Kagian and his colleagues then went to the computer and processed and mapped the geometric shape of facial features mathematically.

Additional features such as face symmetry, smoothness of the skin and hair color were fed into the analysis as well. Based on human preferences, the machine “learned” the relation between facial features and attractiveness scores and was then put to the test on a fresh set of faces.

The article is well written, fair, and Kaigen is keenly aware of how early on this study is, as well as his own personal beauty failings. What struck me was that the same data wasn’t drawn on male faces, and furthermore that the numbers were so low, only 100 images and 30 participants. I appreciate the goal of Kaigen and his team, but would really like to see the same study done online, anonymously. Just put up 100,000 pictures of people from around the world and have each person sign in with vital statistics. I understand that the data wouldn’t be up to research standards, but it would give the algorithm much more data to work with and present a much broader understanding of beauty.

But let’s comeback to the original data set for a second: 30 Caucasian women. In short, Kaigen’s team preselected what were already “beautiful” people – white women – and then had people select from there. Having computers able to process a huge volume of data seems utterly wasted on pre-selecting the data-set with such an extreme bias towards race and then further restricting it to a single sex. Here are some ideas I’d love to see Kaigen and his team try in their research:

1. Add other races.
2. Add men.
3. Take a data-set and alter the skin tone of the pictures, so that light-skinned people are dark-skinned, and visa versa.
4. Mix and match facial features. Create deliberately androgynous faces and see what happens.
5. Add false “aggregate scores” to see how much influence the opinion of others affects perception of beauty.
6. Using blending software, create faces that are “beautiful” or “medium” or “ugly” but not unique, to see if minor flaws contribute to beauty, as well as if synthesizing levels out or undermines perceived non-beauty.
7. Increase sample size dramatically, gather data from those who live in non-Western and/or non-Caucasian regions.
8. Conduct the experiment with data/subject race correlation that isn’t Caucasian, then use the “beautiful” faces with non-correlating  data/subject groups.

Any other ideas? I don’t mean to argue here that this sort of research isn’t useful, but as aesthetics is an incredibly constructed and fickle form of judgment, there is a lot more work to be done here. Also, perhaps with a reasonably large and comprehensive data set, we can start to see where biological attraction and social attraction overlap and separate.

[h/t J. Hughes]

No Concept of Perfect

I’d like to take a moment to correct the record on perfection.

The above image has been kicking around the net for the past week or so, with the allegation that by combining all the most beautiful women in the world, you get the most definitively beautiful woman in the world. Counter-intuitively, combining all of these images (and one could take issue with the initial roster, of course) results in a face that is both lovely and, well, boring. Take the final face and compare it with any of the real women at the top. The little nuances of difference, the minute flaws, the subtle skin shades, eye shapes, blemishes, asymmetries, and oddities of the real women make them more attractive than the “perfect” combination at the bottom.

The chart is a great demonstration of how a “norm” works. The woman at the bottom probably is what the normative ideal of a woman (in the white, Western mind) looks like. But no one looks like that. No one can. The ideal is impossible. According to the photo chart, all of the women at the top still fall short of the ideal. Yet when the ideal, the normative definition of perfection, is achieved, it looks weird and is unappealing. The ideal is, well, not ideal (take that Baudrillard). Transhumanists are acutely aware of the unreality of perfection.

Yet transhumanists and technoprogressives are often (mis)portrayed as perfectionists; as if we are disgusted by every flaw and hiccup in the human body with a fanatic desire  to make everyone perfect. Though describing transhumanists as perfectionists is wrong, fearing “perfection” and those who seek it is not. “Perfect” will inevitably be someone else’s definition and people will be forced to get surgery or take drugs or who knows what to become the totalitarian definition of “perfect.” The scenario becomes even more frightening when we realize that, as with the example above, perfection is impossible.

Instead of moving towards perfection, thus operating under a teleological philosophy built on ideals, transhumanists try to move our society away from the worst problems. Debilitating genetic diseases, fragile bodily systems, aging bodies, and limited brains are all things we can improve. Our definition of improvement isn’t moving towards perfection but on the much better, more tangible and testable movement away from problems. Less pain, less disability, fewer limits, more time, and more options, these are our goals.

In many ways, transhumanists, technoprogressives, and our technophillic cohorts differ, disagree, argue, and clash over any number of problems. But the above sentence is one we all hold dear. It stems from an understanding that there are so many problems in the world that can be solved technologically regardless of your philosophical or political system. Whether you are Christian, atheist, Communist, anarchist, or whatever, a plane still gets you from New York to Beijing faster than a car and penicillin will help your bacterial infection. Because of this problem-centric mindset, transhumanists are more resilient to the desire to create systems based on ideals. By not seeking an ideal, but instead focusing on eliminating problems, the possibilities for solutions become incalculably diverse.

And because of that diversity, transhumanists are obsessed with choice and consent. All changes a person makes to him or herself, be it treatment for a disease, the use of a prosthetic, a decorative tattoo, or taking a cognitive enhancing drug should be a voluntary, educated choice.

Transhumanists and technoprogressives don’t imagine or want a perfect world, they imagine, want, and work towards a world with fewer problems and more choices.