The Heuristics of the Hyperhuman

by Steve Neumann

How many men at this hour are living in a state of bondage to the machines? How many spend their whole lives, from the cradle to the grave, in tending them by night and day? Is it not plain that the machines are gaining ground upon us, when we reflect on the increasing number of those who are bound down to them as slaves, and of those who devote their whole souls to the advancement of the mechanical kingdom? — Samuel Butler, Erewhon: or, Over the Range (1872)

As a guide dog mobility instructor, I’ve had the opportunity over the years to attend the annual conventions of the two largest membership organizations of and for the blind in the United States: the American Council of the Blind and the National Federation of the Blind. It was at the 2006 convention of the latter organization where I watched futurist Ray Kurzweil unveil his K-NFB Reader that provides portable text-to-speech technology for the blind. At the time, I had read Kurzweil’s The Age of Spiritual Machines, and had just finished reading his The Singularity is Near. 

I’ve always been a fan of science fiction, ever since I read Asimov’s Foundation series in junior high school. I think what appeals to me most about science fiction is the fecund ingenuity and unabashed experimentalism. So Kurzweil’s writing resonated on that level. And truth be told, I was pretty much on board with many of his predictions about future technology, if not with the time frame for them. But I just couldn’t wrap my head around the idea of the Singularity itself.

I assume readers of this blog are familiar with the concept of the Singularity, but here’s a simple definition just in case: the creation by humans of a superintelligence that exceeds our own so significantly that we can’t even fathom what will happen after it occurs. Or as Sheldon Cooper put it, “when man will be able to transfer his consciousness into machines, and achieve immortality.” Whatever the merits or demerits of the concept of the Singularity may be, there has been an increasing amount of coverage of it and its implications, primarily with regard to “existential risk.” One of the standard bearers of the futurist camp, Nick Bostrom, was recently interviewed about his work at the Future of Humanity Institute at Oxford University; philosopher Russell Blackford at Talking Philosophy posted about the forthcoming book The Transhumanist Reader, for which he himself contributed a chapter; and author Matt Ridley gave his assent to Kurzweil’s latest book, How to Create a Mind, in the Wall Street Journal. However, philosopher Colin McGinn has a rather scathing review of How to Create a Mind.

The overall transhumanist consensus, it seems clear to me, is that the Singularity is a foregone conclusion, with discrepancies within the movement only concerning the timing of it. It eerily reminds me of talk of the Rapture when I was growing up in a fundamentalist Christian church: the Rapture would be sudden and indescribable. And while futurists are optimistic about the progress researchers have been making in the two most relevant Singularity disciplines of computer science and neuroscience, they’re much less optimistic about the potential consequences of the event. Their primary concern is about risks. As Bostrom put it in the above linked interview in Aeon:

[these are risks] for which there are no geological case studies, and no human track record of survival. These risks arise from human technology, a force capable of introducing entirely new phenomena into the world.

And thinkers like Bostrom believe a superintelligence is precisely the kind of phenomenon that could easily introduce them. They’re not simply referring to things humans have already introduced or are about to introduce into the world, like dangerous new materials or superbugs for which we have no natural biological defenses. Bostrom and others are trying to think past these more commonplace maladies.  

The main motivation for attempting to come up with strategies and remedies for hard-to-imagine existential threats, potential species-ending threats, seems to be primarily a moral one. Bostrom again: 

Toby Ord is wrestling with a formidable philosophical dilemma. He is trying to figure out whether our moral obligations to future humans outweigh those we have to humans that are alive and suffering right now.

Even if the Singularity-Rapture doesn’t come to fruition as expected, the prospect of significant existential change can be used as a sort of case study for the moral evolution of our species. 

We humans seem to have enough trouble trying to work out the moral calculus involved with current utilitarian concerns, even within our own countries. Additionally, Americans in particular seem to have difficulty walking the line between obligations to ourselves and obligations to others, between the individual’s interests and those of society. 

And how do we fulfill our perceived obligations to others? I suppose there are two ways: actively and passively; or, in other words, performing actions that benefit others (+A), and refraining from performing actions that harm others (-A). For simplicity’s sake, +A generally include the sacrifice of one’s time, effort and material resources, or any combination of the three, for the benefit of others. One may have plenty of time but be incapable of physical effort and possessed of no significant material resources; or, conversely, one might not have the time but have a surfeit of material wealth. And so forth. But even when we benefit others, we naturally adjust the variables in our moral equation with a view to balancing it. The wealthiest philanthropists don’t give away all their wealth; the poorest philanthropists don’t give away all their time (unless, of course, it’s their job and they’re supported by the charity of yet others; or they actually work for a charity). So even when we attempt to fulfill our duties to others we seem to be mindful of fulfilling our duties to ourselves. 

What I’m getting at here is that, while I may agree with Bostrom, et al., that it is certainly wise to spend time pondering potential existential threats and their solutions, I think it would also be wise to spend an equal amount of time pondering how to prepare ourselves morally and psychologically for future exigencies. Within the context of this topic, however, I would regard morality and psychology to be essentially synonyms. 

I consider myself to be a type of virtue ethicist, though other virtue ethicists may not consider my taxonomy of virtues to be virtues. As a virtue ethicist, I’m concerned with the individual first, and then with others; but I would note that this focus is closer to a Nietzschean conception rather than the more popular (at least among politicians of a certain temperament) Objectivist one. I do think that one has to be a certain sort of person before one can effect any kind of durable change in others or in circumstances. And while I believe that a philosophical education is essential to this end, I’m not advocating an oligarchy of philosopher kings, Zeus forbid. And I should also point out that I don’t necessarily agree with thinkers like Savulescu and Persson who argue for “moral bioenhancement” where 

[o]ur knowledge of human biology – in particular of genetics and neurobiology – is beginning to enable us to directly affect the biological or physiological bases of human motivation, either through drugs, or through genetic selection or engineering, or by using external devices that affect the brain or the learning process.

I do agree, however, that moral education can “enable us to act better for distant people, future generations, and non-human animals.” But at what is this education aimed, and which normative approach is preferred or being deployed — deontological, consequentialist, or virtue-ethical? 

The predominant approach seems to be consequentialist. In other words, futurist thinkers are asking what the consequences of our current decisions regarding the transhumanist movement will be for posterity. As a result, their efforts are focused on the nature of the new technologies themselves. For example (and in its simplest form), they’re asking questions like, How can we program artificial intelligence to have a favorable regard for biological human existence? While I think this is something to be concerned with to some degree, I’d like to see an equal focus on individual character.

Here I’d like to make a distinction between the Transhuman and what I’ll call the Hyperhuman. The former is best represented by the essays in The Transhumanist Reader, noted at the beginning of this post; while the latter is closer to Nietzsche’s conception of the Übermensch. The conception of the Hyperhuman is similar to Nietzsche’s in that one must be able and willing to cultivate one’s psychological “raw material” into something better, where “better” means “overcoming oneself.” The idea of overcoming oneself is, at least in my opinion, the essence of morality. 

For brevity’s sake, to overcome oneself is to subdue or sublimate one’s animal nature into something more humane; and this, to my mind, involves engaging with the uniquely human projects of philosophy, certain forms of asceticism, and the various arts. It’s a little difficult to say with more precision exactly how the conception of the Hyperhuman is similar to Nietzsche’s because, while he certainly had a project in the works devoted to fleshing out the details of his vision of the Übermensch, he lost his mental faculties and died before he could finish it. So all we have left are his notes about “discipline and breeding” and the like, and often contradictory secondary literature purporting to know what he would have gone on to think and to say. 

From what he had published in his lifetime, however, it seems Nietzsche espoused a type of virtue ethics inspired by his affinity for classical Greek culture:

“You shall always be the first and excel all others: your jealous soul shall love no one, unless it be the friend” — that made the soul of the Greek quiver: thus he walked the path of his greatness. — Thus Spoke Zarathustra

In other words, we might say that the ancient Greek sought to bring all his mental and physical capacities to bear on the project of making himself into a better person, and thereby inspiring both envy and possibly a motivation for the “others” to do the same. And this would apparently create a type of “moral arms race” that would elevate the cultural standard in general. So under this conception, even a focus on oneself has salubrious effects on others. 

Bostrom, in his paper A History of Transhumanist Thought, briefly mentions Nietzsche as a potential philosophical precursor of the transhumanist movement, but notes that what Nietzsche had in mind 

was not technological transformation but a kind of soaring personal growth and cultural refinement in exceptional individuals.

This is undoubtedly correct; but at the same time I’m inclined to wonder what a mind like Nietzsche’s, which existed in a 19th Century world, would have thought about the effects of 20th or even 21st Century technology on the moral psychology of the individual. I would say that current and anticipated technological developments could be a stimulus for the kind of personal growth and cultural refinement Nietzsche encouraged. The recipe for personal growth is necessarily different for each individual, so I don’t think there can be any top-down plan for building the type of character required to meet the challenges of future technological change. 

Is authentic moral education even possible, or are we merely stuck with a superficial veneer of improvement and enhancement? And if all we’re left with is appearance and not authenticity, is that enough for our species to be equal to future existential challenges, whether they come from a superintelligence or from a super-catastrophe? 

Though I’m certainly no technological expert, I believe that the predictions of the futurists are overstated; so I think our species has the time if not the proper motivation to overcome itself in time for any near-Singularity type of change. And while Bostrom believes that “philosophy has a time limit,” I’m more inclined to agree with his interviewer that “[c]omputer science could be 10 paradigm-shifting insights away from building an artificial general intelligence, and each could take an Einstein to unravel.”

But if, as Nietzsche seemed to believe, the most fulfilling objective of one’s life is a type of self-realization, doesn’t the increased mechanization of life and society threaten to hamper the chances for such a life-project? As a lover of science fiction, I have a certain affinity for the practical and existential possibilities of technological advancement; but I worry that the increasing pace of those advances will seduce us into a slavish dependence and fascination that will tear us away from the project of self-realization, which is what I believe will be necessary to flourish in — or even survive — the future we ambivalently anticipate. As much as I love my Macbook, my iPhone, Google, and all the other fruits of the Internet and software application developers, I must confess that it requires increasing exertion on my part to remain focussed on the “life of the mind.” Quantity all too easily dethrones quality. And the effort to focus on what’s important seems to have become not a daily battle but a moment-to-moment battle.