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I have the tremendous, tremendous
honor and pleasure
to introduce to you, Savai'i
the Savior.
He's going
to help us.
He's a researcher in political science
and from that perspective,
he's going to show us
a view, that paradox
there in the future.
The Transhumanist one.
I reckon you will
start to open new
chapters of human
history.
So I gave him a warm applause, a
warm welcome like
the Fuze put it in place.
Hey, so I'm going to try in the next 20
minutes to live up to that introduction.
Let's try and open a new chapter of
history. But first, I just want to make
sure we're all on the same wavelength.
So let me ask everyone here.
How many of you here would except
say a US government issued
US government constructed laptop?
OK, I see one lonely hand in the air and
it looks pretty sarcastic and
and if I were to come up to you and say,
hey, I'm a member of the US government, I
just want to run a quick virus scan on
your computer, how many of you would let
me do so
again?
A couple of lonely, sarcastic hands,
so.
I think we're going to get along great,
because today I'm going to tell you why
we need more political involvement in
technology so wide up hackers.
Right.
So what is the paradox?
I'm going to talk about today,
the paradox is very simple.
We live in states, liberal states
that protect individual liberty,
but they're completely oblivious to the
fact that technology
is radically transforming the environment
in which we exercise that liberty.
Or to rephrase the paradox
in terms of a question.
What good is individual liberty, what
good is the liberty that is protected by
a state if someone else
designed the playground in which you
exercise it?
Now, when I speak of playgrounds, when I
speak of environment, what exactly am I
talking about?
What is an environment?
An environment is nothing more
than the parameters of the possible.
It is what gives us rules of what can and
cannot be done.
So to make it somewhat more concrete
and more familiar.
We all know plenty about our natural
environment. And first and foremost,
the first environment, which limits
us and gives us rules for our lives
is our body.
And the rules of our body are the rules
of our lives.
They are the rules of how we think,
how we talk, how we move,
how we interact with one another.
Our body is a primary and first
environment, and then we have the larger
natural environment, the physical laws,
the earth on which we live, which is the
larger environment in both cases.
We've lived with this for all of human
history. So we take it for granted
that the rules of our body are the rules
of our lives.
Well, recently we've added political
environment and the political environment
are simply the laws we agree
to as a society.
We're used to this as well.
But what does it mean when we talk about
technological environment?
What it means is that as we live
more and more of our lives in
and through technology, as more of our
lives become dependent on technology,
we increasingly rely and must follow
the rules and parameters of the
technology we use.
What to phrase it,
we could say, how does technology
create this environment?
Well, first of all, each new piece
of technology requires
the reorganization of the world around
it.
Let's get more specific.
We've had cars for over a century now,
and at first cars, like most
technologies, was a way of helping us
to transcend our natural environment,
help us transcend our bodies, the fact
that we can't move faster.
And yet the technology of the car also
required in order for it to function, in
order for it to be useful.
It required a complete reorganization of
the world around it.
First of all, in the forms of what
we've cut, the topography of the world
up into votes.
We've paved the world so
that our cars could be useful and
function.
You go into any modern city
and you immediately see that the city,
the modern city is built around the car.
The way we move today, even when
we're not in the car, when we're in the
city, it's built around sidewalks, it's
built along zebra stripes, it's built
along the walls necessary for the car
to function.
But even more than that, OK, because of
a, quote, big deal, but it also
requires the reorganization
of the world itself of the planet we live
on itself.
It requires the reorganization of the
world into resources,
which is, as we
can see right here in this picture.
And when it comes to cause
this is mostly the case when it comes to
oil. But it's not just oil, not just the
fact that we have to pillage the earth
for oil and gas.
It's also the fact that a car is made
of many different particular elements
magnesium,
iron, aluminum, all
these different elements are needed to
make a car.
So in order for us to have a car economy,
we need to have a global economy because
all these different elements are present
in different parts of the world.
So we see just in terms of the car,
a simple device that helps us transcend
our bodies in order to move faster,
we have to completely reorganize the
world.
And just for the car,
we live in a different type of
environment. We live in a technological
environment.
But the car is an old technology.
We hardly think of it as technology
today. Today, when we think of
technology, we think of computers, we
think of Internet, we think of artificial
intelligence.
We don't even really think of the car
anymore.
But with the car shows us is that much
of human history, certainly in the last
couple of centuries, can be said to be a
replacement of our natural environment
with a technological playground, the
replacement of the natural environment
where the technological environment
and this is going to about to get
much more obvious to us.
It's about to get much more dramatic
because technology today
is much more powerful than it's ever
been. In other words, technology's power
to transform the world is much bigger
than it's ever been before.
When we talk about trans humanism, what
is it? So most of you here know
what it is.
But just a quick reminder, transhumanism
is a movement or many movements
that think that is possible and desirable
to enhance humans using technology.
That is the basic claim, the basic wish
of the transhumanist movement.
There are plenty of subgroups within it,
but that is the basic wish of
transhumanism.
Now.
How would transhumanism
transform our environment?
Well, first, we already talked about how
the human body is the primary
environment of our lives, the human
body and its rules and
its limits, our rules and our limits
of our life.
And so by augmenting by enhancing the
human body, we are talking about
radically shifting
our primary environment.
Now, Transhumanist disagree
on how exactly we're going to enhance the
body, but what is clear
is that our human body is going to be
transformed using machines and therefore
many of the limits that we take for
granted today, about how we think about
how we move, how we interact with one
another will no longer be the same in a
transhumanist. What
many transhumanist movements also
based much of their movement on the idea
that eventually
virtual reality and virtual realities
will become so complex and so rich
that they'll be more attractive to us.
More interesting, more compelling
than analog reality, more interesting
than the reality we live in today.
So that's a second way in which we could
possibly completely change the
environment in which we live.
Finally, often
we think for 20 minutes and really to
get off the ground first, we need to
begin augmenting ourselves and
for us to be able to create, for example,
compelling virtual realities, we'll have
to create something akin or
approaching to a superintelligence,
which is to say we'll have to create a
machine that is more intelligent than all
humans put together.
And of course.
Creating a superintelligence would be
a bit like inserting a genie
or God into the universe.
It would completely change the rules
of our universe, of our environment.
And then finally, to make all this
possible, in particular, if we're
going to create a super intelligent, it's
most likely going to need enormous
amounts of energy.
And so one final things that
Transhumanist usually assume is that
we're going to have to colonize some
large part of this planet and maybe other
planets as well just in order
to feed the energy needs of the
superintelligence.
So, in short, a 20 humanist
playground is completely different from a
playground today.
The environment in which we could
exercise individual liberty and
the humanist playground is completely
different from that in which we exercise
it today.
Now, transhumanism makes it clear that
there are two types of liberty.
The one which Transhumanist will say
will be largely augmented due to
transhumanism is simply the liberty
to choose a specific action and a
specific situation.
And as we just saw,
humanism is all about augmenting this
type of liberty by enhancing our body
will be freed from the constraints of our
natural body, will have much greater
liberty in virtual reality, often
will be able to choose the parameters of
a virtual reality.
So we see that in terms of this first
type of liberty, transhumanism
greatly augmented.
But what we also see is that the very
idea of transhumanism, the idea
of technology so powerful that we could
fundamentally transform our bodies and
the world around us gives humanity
a second type of liberty, which is the
ability to design the environment
in which we exercise the first type of
liberty.
But although this is relatively clear
when we talk about transhumanism and how
it changes our environment,
both Transhumanist and liberals focus
on the first type of liberty.
So we all know Transhumanist
make great promises about how augmenting
our body will free us from natural and
biological constraints.
And that's the first type of liberty.
But I want to talk a bit also
about how liberals focus on the first
type of liberty. And to be clear here,
I'm talking about political liberty,
political liberalism.
So what do we mean by that?
What is political liberalism?
So first of all, political liberalism, it
only recognize the first type of liberty,
the liberty to act in a specific way,
in a specific situation, and
in order to protect this liberty,
it limits the function
and the power of the state.
So going back to the two types of
liberty, it only recognizes this first
type of liberty doesn't even consider the
second type, and it builds
the whole state mechanism around this
first type of liberty while ignoring
the second.
So how does the liberal state function,
how is it how is it structured to protect
this type of liberty and
the function of the state?
It's quite small.
The function of the state is to ensure
peace, protect individual liberties
and provide some basic services.
These are the functions of the state.
The state has no role in formulating or
enacting collective visions
and the power of the state, which is to
say the state's ability to carry out
its functions is further limited
by a constitution and individual
rights.
So this liberal state is based
and is built around this first type of
liberty, the individual liberty
to act in a specific way, in a specific
situation.
But of course, as we've just been talking
about 20 minutes, isn't
an individual choice.
Transhumanism is a collective choice.
What I mean by that is that what
is at stake with transhumanism
is our collective future and not just
individual future and therefore
individual liberty and individual choices
on adequate ways of
dealing with transhumanism.
Why?
Because the transhumanism movement
and all the movements within it,
they would affect us all as a
group. They wouldn't just affect the
individual who made the choice to enhance
himself using a specific technology.
It would affect us all.
So on the one hand, and most obviously
what is at stake with transhumanism is
the future of the human species itself.
In other words, how
so, let's say, OK, first of all, are we
going to enhance the human species
using technology and if so, how what
types what types of enhancements
will we use and will particularly
when enhancing the human body?
What is the essence we're trying
to keep?
Is there some human essence that must
be retained in order for us to remain
human or do we even care about being.
So it's clear and that case is it
transhumanism is a question about the
human species.
How are we going to change it?
Is it going to be surpassed or merely
augmented?
Anyone who's ever tried
to live in modern society, say
without a phone or laptop or a
car, knows that technology
is increasingly sort of an
entering pass into modern society.
And so transhumanism is also a question
about the future of society, because
ultimately, if enhancements
become the norm for specific enhancement
becomes the norm, it will probably become
an interesting pass into
the society of the future.
And finally, as we already talked about,
the energy needs of the computers of the
future will be such that the chances
are that transhumanism is also
a question about the future of the
planet.
If we're all living in virtual reality,
we may not care that much if the planet
is colonized for its energy needs,
but some of us might.
So we see here that transhumanism
is very much a collective choice and
that whatever happens, our technological
future will affect us all.
It will not just affect those who choose
to augment themselves.
Now,
going back to what we were first talking
about in terms of playgrounds and
environment, if we increasingly
live in a technological playground, as
we would in transhumanism, because in
transhumanism, even a body
would be primarily technological.
So if we increasingly live in a
technological playground, if the rules
we live by are increasingly
technological, if the limits we have
to adhere to are increasingly
technological limits, then shouldn't
we have or should we all have a say
in the design of this playground?
Shouldn't we all have a say in what the
rules are going to be for this new
playground?
Then the question becomes, OK,
so humanity
in a sense, is faced with a collective
choice about our technological
future.
How what is the technological
environment? We want to live our future.
But then the question quickly becomes,
OK, so we all want to have a voice in
this, but we're
not all hackers.
We're not all working on AI.
We're not all going to be directly
involved with the technological
revolution that's going to make it
happen. So how can we be heard?
The liberal solution, the solution
that we're currently slouching towards.
Is the market one,
so what does it mean to leave technology
to the market or to leave it to
the individual?
Because that's how rarely do we hear
leave it just to the market?
And they always say leave it to
individual choice.
But what is individual choice in
this case mean? What does it mean to
leave technological development up to
individual choice?
What is the individual choice we're
talking about here?
The individual choice when it comes to
new technology is essentially whether
to buy something or not.
And so the real choice is made before.
When we decide, when people decide what
technology to develop, what
research to fund.
And as you guys all know, who
are the primary funders of, let's say,
probably the most important
research field at the moment?
Artificial intelligence, certainly one of
the most popular and the one that could
possibly create a form
of super intelligence to who funds
this type of research.
We all know about Amazon and Apple and
Google.
And most of you also know that, of
course, perhaps the biggest funder of the
mall is the US Department of Defense.
So when we talk about leaving
technological or technological future
up to the choice of the individual, let's
be very clear that we're talking about
letting the individual decide whether
or not to buy the technologies that are
brought to us by Amazon, by Google,
by Apple and by the US
Defense Department.
And there's another problem with leaving
the choice of a collective
future up to the individual,
because a sum of individual choices,
a sum of individual choices to buy
something for themselves, a choice that
they make with themselves in mind, that
doesn't equal a collective decision.
It's not saying just by aggregating
individual choices, we don't create a
collective decision
now.
So the paradox we're getting to here.
Is it?
Transhumanism can't simply be left
to the individual because leaving it up
to the individual isn't really giving the
individual much of a choice at all,
simply giving him the choice whether to
buy something or not, something
that was created without any input from
him.
So it seems
on the one hand that politics
must be the means by which you decide
because what is politics?
Forget specific government for
a second. Politics from
the very beginning is the means by which
humans make collective choices about
the organization, about the environment
in which they live, about their futures.
So in other words, if transhumanism
on a technological future is a
choice about the collective environment
in which we wish to live, we wish to
live, then politics would seem
the natural way, the natural way
to decide upon this collective choice.
Except that we don't just live in
a political society.
We live in a liberal society,
politically liberal society.
And the specificity of liberalism
is it. It's a political doctrine that
refuses to endorse or enact substantive
collective visions of the future.
Or in other words, if politics
is the tool with which humans come
together and make collective decisions
about the organization and their future,
liberalism is the political doctrine
that is giving up this unique
possibility and power of
politics.
So.
Now, none of you guys wanted to accept
a government laptop.
I wouldn't either.
But one of the things that the example
of the laptops makes clear
and the fact that although none of us
here would necessarily accept a
government issued laptop, we're all
happy to use the Internet,
the darknet satellites,
all things that were mainly funded
by various governments, mainly the US.
So we're all relatively happy
to use these technologies
that essentially came from our
government.
And with the existence of all these
technology showed the fact that the
darknet, the Internet satellite,
virtually every major technology
can in some way be traced back to
government initiative.
Is that just because technology
isn't political, just because we
don't consider it political doesn't mean
the government doesn't have a Tandan.
What I mean by that is just because
we aren't coming together as a political
entity to decide upon, to discuss
and decide upon a technological future
doesn't mean that our government doesn't
have its hands everywhere
in our technological future
and present.
The difference is, is
it when technology is not
political, when technology
is not something around which we
gather to decide collectively, when
we ignore the fact that technology
is another type of collective environment
in which we all live.
When we ignore this, we don't
simply get the government outside of
technology.
It's just that the government pursues
technology for its own ends, for its
own ends and not.
For the ends of them collectively agreed
upon vision of the future.
So simplify
things drastically.
Most major government
technology initiatives, as we all know,
they come from the Defense Department.
Most of the government
initiatives in technology have something
to do with defense
or attack.
They have to do with war.
Um,
and so.
What this leads us to realize is that.
Making technology political
is not giving new powers to the
government, in a sense, it
can be seen as quite the opposite
because whenever something ceases
to become political.
The government simply has a free rein to
do what it will, and that's sphere
because there is no mandate from the
people, from the political entity about
what to do in that given sphere.
In a sense, only only
once we recognize that technology
is political, only once you recognize
that transhumanism would constitute
a new environment, a
new set of rules within which we would
live.
Only when we recognize this and
recognize, furthermore, that we all
would like to.
And I must have a say in the design
of this future environment.
Only then
can technology become something political
once again instead of being something
that is supposedly neutral,
which it is today, and something which
can simply be used according
to the whims and goals of specific
parts of the US government and all
governments, but especially the US
Defense Department, which has such
a lovely, such a large and untouchable
budget.
Um,
so to phrase it,
I think the essential transhumanist
paradox has to do with these two
types of liberties.
On the one hand, we have what could be
called the liberal liberty to liberty.
We think about when we think of the word
liberty and it's the liberty to choose
what to do in a specific situation.
That is the liberal liberty, that is the
liberty that our states are built
to protect,
but that liberty to choose what to do
in a specific situation.
It's nothing.
If we don't also have the liberty to
deliberate upon and choose our
common future for much of human
history, this, the simple fact has been
obscured by the fact that we haven't had
the technological means to decide
about the environment in which we live.
We've decided politically we've been able
to change the laws under which we live.
But the basic rules, say, of a body
and of the natural world around us, those
have been outside of our scope.
We haven't been able to deliberate upon
them because we couldn't do anything to
them.
But today we're entering.
We're just beginning to enter the era
where we will have that choice, where we
have the technological capabilities to
redesign the basic environment, the basic
rules and laws under which we live.
These are laws much more basic than our
political laws.
These are the laws of our body.
These are the laws of the type of reality
we live in.
And these are the laws
and the state of the earth we live on.
And so only if we recognize this basic
fact that we are growing
technological power.
We've also opened up a new type of
liberty.
Only if we recognize that this new type
of liberty demands input
from all of us and that it's a collective
decision.
Only then will we be able
to transcend what I like to call the
transhumanist paradox.
Thank you.
Whew,
we could probably be sitting here and
discuss this topic till
dawn.
So you really took my breath
away.
Guys, I suppose
we have a tremendous amount of questions
out there, isn't it?
Jesus or savior,
the savior?
Their police shoot.
So are you saying that
in order to have transhumanist
utopia instead of a dystopia,
we would simply
need to have software
and hardware, of course, as technology
as open as possible for
all kinds of people,
as well as well open
to modify and
democratically deliberate upon
by as many people as possible.
In theory, I agree.
But in practice,
by opening, by opening up,
by simply opening up, say, software and
hardware, aren't
you essentially putting our futures in
the hands of the most technologically
capable and the most technologically?
Yeah, it seems like, yes.
Well, OK. Well, you and I come at this
from different points of view because
you're very competent on a computer.
I could barely get my PowerPoint to one.
So I think we simply come at this
question from two different.
But are you avoided to take your computer
here on the stage so
you wouldn't hack it?
Exactly.
And thanks for the
talk. It was very interesting
what you mentioned about the
fact that people would not use,
as we saw, for example,
an American government issued a
computer.
It maybe forgets, forget support that
government already vets'
norms, standards already meets
guidelines, already is
implied in many, many levels
without even considering
the fact that they were behind the
beginning of a technology.
So can we still consider
that we are in the liberal,
in fact, on this?
But since we already have this
implication at
pretty much every level, be it
a first idea
or the way it's implemented
afterwards, but I think that's precisely
the point within a liberal framework
we have for liberty, because the
liberal liberty is simply the liberty
to choose between specific things.
In a sense, it ignores, like you say, the
larger environment in which all the
laptops we choose from, even if they
don't directly come from the government,
are vetted by them, or the fact that many
of the basic technologies that all these
things rely upon were initially developed
by them.
So, yes, the fact that the larger
environment is in many ways controlled by
the government is precisely what
liberalism can afford to ignore
that that was not what I
was aiming at
more than
is it a ruleset is it's our government
ruleset.
Is it is it something like you have
to right now the choice
to actually follow those guidelines
for a couple of things?
So you already as a liberal,
but that the government is still
employed, so which
does not render the paradox moot, but
the fact that we have the choice whether
to go along with it or not.
Yeah, well, but that's the thing.
As I talked about before, when
it comes to technology, first of all,
technology transforms what it means to be
a human. And second of all, when a
technology becomes adopted
widespread enough, then it becomes an
entry pass for society.
In other words, you can't really
meaningfully interact or
take part in a society without also
using these basic technologies that make
it up. So and that sense
that the choice whether to use or
not to use isn't much of a choice at all,
especially when we consider that
the larger choice that we're faced with
is multipolar.
It's not between using something or not.
It's a question of what are we going to
build in the first place?
Man, several questions
I start there, sir.
Yes, you, you, you, you.
Um, I would like to
ask, um, what if the transhumanist
technology will only be available
for the, um, for the rich?
So how will you prevent it?
Uh, development.
I mean, just, uh, a lot of interest to
keep it only to a small
amount of people.
And and I think that goes back.
I think that that's one of the big
worries about transhumanism.
And that's one of the that's yet another
argument against
dealing with technology within the
liberal framework, because if
we leave it within the liberal framework
of liberty, you have the choice to buy
something or not. Like you say, the
technology will initially
be exorbitantly expensive.
For example, it will be initially
available to those with the most market.
So and I think that's yet another
argument for not staying within the
liberal framework of simple individual
liberty.
Right.
Right, but I don't have a solution.
I'm not saying that I know exactly how
we're going to create the technology and
make sure it gets to everyone.
But I would say that making technology
political, making it a democratic choice
is surely a first step.
You're calling for a system reboot.
Be careful.
We have seen with strong cryptography
that government power to regulate
technology is not limitless.
What makes you think that we even have
this choice whether to regulate
transhumanism or not?
But it's not a question of regulation.
And I think that's a crucial point you
just made, because once a technology
exists, regulating it, like
you say, is more or less pointless.
Let's take the example of the Internet.
The Internet is a basic tool.
Basically, it's a tool for communication
and all efforts, even by governments such
as China, to regulate the Internet,
to squeeze it, to make it different from
what it was originally intended for,
generally fail.
Even someone like me can get beyond the
China censorship laws.
So I think it's precisely a question of
getting beyond regulation and
concentrating on what gets built in the
first place. So projecting ourselves into
the future rather than concentrating on
what already exists, traveling through
times, that's the answer.
Do we still have time for questions?
No, no.
We you know what?
If you have more questions for
the man in green. OK, one more one more
last one.
Do market is
working OK to market to have a
partner in the society you imagine
or capitalism.
It's not necessarily that they don't
it's not they don't necessarily not,
but they are certainly not the guiding
force that guides what technology is
created. So my argument isn't that
capitalism must be taken down.
It is simply it simply cannot be the
primary vector for which we decide
what to get built in the first place.
Guys, I have to apologize.
I have to shut down here because we would
be discussing this till dawn.
So I hope we will see
you next year again, because really this
opens up new chapters.
Thank you all for humanity.