The Transhumanist Bill of Goods

Depending on your point of view, the intellectual movement (and now political party) that goes under the name of "transhumanism" is either a set of fringe beliefs held by a small number of people who can be safely ignored, or the leading edge of something that will completely transform human life as we know it.  The truth probably lies somewhere in between.  One of transhumanism's intellectual fathers is Ray Kurzweil, who coined the term "the Singularity" to mean the moment when artificial intelligence, cyborgs, and uploading peoples' minds into software converge to create a kind of Big Bang of superintelligent activity that will make everything everyone ever wanted come true, and will also render ordinary biological human lives obsolete.  Significantly, Kurzweil now holds a high-level position at Google, and other tech leaders such as Elon Musk have promoted transhumanist ideas.

Not satisfied with the Silicon Valley reins of power they already hold, the transhumanists have formed a political party and issued a Transhumanist Bill of Rights.  The first version (called 1.0, naturally) was delivered to the U. S. Capitol on Dec. 14, 2015.  Its subsequent fate did not make the news.  In a recent piece reprinted in the Human Life Review, Wesley J. Smith noted that version 2.0 contains enough wacky ideas to wreck the economy, violate fundamental religious freedoms, and erase the difference between people and machines. 

For a group that tends to ignore the past and live mentally in the future, the writers of the Transhumanist Bill of Rights clearly acknowledged some historical precedents.  The very title, Bill of Rights, comes from that 230-year-old set of amendments to the U. S. constitution of the same name.  Their preamble says they "establish" the Bill to "help guide and enact sensible policies in the pursuit of life, liberty, security of person, and happiness."  That phrase goes one better than Thomas Jefferson's in the preamble to the U. S. Declaration of Independence—he left out "security of person."  And at the very end, almost as an afterthought, in Article XV (25, to those of you who can't read Roman numerals), they incorporate by reference all the rights in the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which was enacted by the then-new U. N. in 1948.

Like the U. N.'s declaration, the transhumanist Bill is aspirational, not legally binding.  And here is where the vast differences between the U. S. Bill of Rights and this document show most vividly.  The people who gathered in 1789 to debate how best to carry their young experiment in democracy forward were elected leaders of a real nation.  In a sense that the transhumanists don't seem to appreciate, they held their future in their hands.  The fate of a country that they and their compatriots fought for, and many had died for, depended on the wisdom with which they reconstituted their republic, which at the time was suffering from serious problems.  Looking back, we can say that while they didn't do a perfect job—the canker of slavery would have to be removed from the body politic in a horrendous Civil War two generations hence—the constitution they forged has withstood the test of time. 

Contrast what those founding fathers did with what the transhumanists are doing with their Bill of Rights 2.0.  For one thing, the transhumanist Bill's direct effect on the actual politics of the nation has been nil.  Despite the window-dressing of Roman numerals and references to historic documents, the actual content of the Bill reads like something out of a speech at a Comic Con convention.  One can come closest to being able to predict the things most desired by transhumanists by imagining a teenage boy of exceptional intelligence but limited experience, and asking him what his ideal world would be like, given unlimited technological resources and a free imagination.  The answers might go something like the following:

           

Gee, well, nobody would be poor (Article XVIII:  "Present and future societies should ensure that their members will not live in poverty solely for being born to the wrong parents.").  And there wouldn't be any discrimination or prejudice (Article XVI:  "All sentient entities should be protected from discrimination. . . "), and everybody would be healthy (Article VII:  "All sentient entities should be the beneficiaries of a system of universal health care.").  And (snigger) there'd be plenty of sex (Article XII:  "All sentient entities are entitled to reproductive freedom. . . . ").  And college should be free (Article XX:  "Present and future societies should provide education systems accessible and available to all . . . ").  And we wouldn't have nutcases like Trump running the government (Article XXIV:  "Transhumanists stand opposed to the post-truth culture of deception.  All governments should be required to make decisions and communicate information rationally and in accordance with facts. . . .").

Maybe Kurzweil, Musk, and their fellow transhumanists are experts in their deep, narrow pursuits that require specialization in technical fields and a certain amount of leadership and management expertise.  But in politics, they seem to think that if you take some half-baked left-wing notions, mix them with some technospeak, put Roman numerals on them, and quote a few well-known historical documents, the public will come flooding to your door and ask to join.

On the other hand, perhaps we should read this document not as a step in a democratic process that involves persuading the sovereign public to accept one's ideas, but more as a manifesto of what an elite, powerful group of people plan to do once they manage to dispose of all the stupidity and traditionalism of the vast majority of people in the world and run the place the way they know (from their superior expertise) that it ought to be run.  Wesley Smith worries that transhumanists in power would establish a communist-like society.  And I think he is right.  If transhumanists by some means gained real power to implement their ideas, the totalitarian government that would result might very well end human life as we know it—and leave nothing in its place but some buzzing machinery that would run down faster than anyone expects.

Sources:  Wired published the Transhumanist Bill of Rights 2.0 at https://www.wired.com/beyond-the-beyond/2018/08/transhumanist-bill-rights-version-2-0/ on August 21, 2018.  Wesley J. Smith's article "The Transhumanist Bill of Wrongs" appeared in the Fall 2018 edition of the Human Life Review on pp. 91-93, and was reprinted from the American Spectator.

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115 Years Young?

Vannevar Bush, the head of the U. S. Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, tells the story of how during the war he was trying to gain more funding from Congress for medical research.  Hoping to further his cause, he convinced A. Newton Richards, President Roosevelt's chairman of the Committee on Medical Research, to testify in favor of more funding before a Congressional committee.  As Bush recounts, "It was towards the end of the war, and Richards was feeling tired and a bit old.  One of the congressmen asked him, 'Doctor, will all these researches you are carrying on tend to lengthen the span of human existence?'

'God forbid,' said Richards, smack into the record."

While not every medical researcher shares Dr. Richard's reluctance to lengthen human longevity, Dr. Jan Vijg of the Albert Einstein College of Medicine thinks he has discovered the true limit to how long humans can live.  It's about 115 years, he says.

According to a recent New York Times report, Dr. Vijg and his colleagues studied the mortality records of a number of countries to see which age group experienced the most rapid growth in recent decades.  As the general level of health care in industrialized countries has improved, the average lifespan has increased, but Dr. Vijg guessed that if there was a natural limit, it would show up first in the leveling off of the age of the fastest-growing group of old people.  For example, in the 1920s in France, 85-year-olds were the fastest-growing group, but by the 1990s that honor belonged to 102-year-olds.  In the last decade or so, the trend has stagnated at about 115.  There are exceptions, of course, such as Jean Calment, who before her death in France in 1997 at age 122 was fond of retelling her recollections of meeting Vincent Van Gogh.  But statistically, Dr. Vijg has strong evidence that no matter what specific diseases we conquer, we have a built-in expiration date of about 115 years.

Lots of people disagree with Dr. Vijg, of course.  One of the scientists who collected data used in Dr. Vijg's study deplores his conclusion, calling it a "travesty."  But we should distinguish between a descriptive study, whose purpose is simply to give us insight into what is in fact happening, and a claim of proof.  Not even Dr. Vijg is claiming to have proved nobody can live longer than 115, if for no other reason than the fact of Ms. Calment's achievement.  What he presents is persuasive statistical data that, unless we discover the root causes of aging and get a handle on how to manipulate them, we are unlikely to push the maximum lifespan higher than 115.

It's curious, but a friend of mine has been going around for some time claiming approximately the same thing on the basis of a sermon he heard.  I didn't hear the sermon, but evidently the preacher was looking forward to living to 120 on the basis of a Bible verse in the Old Testament.

He was probably talking about Genesis 6:3, which reads in the King James Version, "And the Lord said, 'My spirit shall not always strive with man, for that he also is flesh:  yet his days shall be an hundred and twenty years.'"

Now, this passage occurs in the midst of a number of other sayings that are, to say the least, hard to interpret—things about the sons of God marrying the daughters of men, giants in the earth, and so on.  Some interpreters say this passage has nothing to do with a limit on human lifespans; rather, it refers to the time during which God put up with man's increasing misbehavior before he decided to put an end to it with the Flood, which only Noah and his fellow shipmates survived. 

Whatever the meaning of the Genesis passage, it has historically been a truism that everyone's going to die sooner or later, and society has been arranged with that assumption in mind.  Dr. Vijg's claim that we shouldn't expect to live longer than 115 years or so just confirms what nearly everyone assumes, and puts a number on it.

However, these ideas are rejected by a small but vociferous group called transhumanists, who increasingly put their faith in the idea that humanity is shortly going to figure out how to extend useful, fruitful life indefinitely.  They don't always say "forever," but many of them mean that.  One type of transhumanists called "immortalists" in particular seem to think that we can figure out how to live forever.  While I understand why a person, especially one who doesn't believe in God, would get interested in extending human life—it's the only show in town, on their view—the danger in this movement is that in trying to move us toward a glorious paradisacal future, they will unwittingly turn the present into Hell on earth.  This sort of thing went on during the Cold War, and continues in some places today, as millions were subjugated by Communist regimes which promised a wonderful future of abundance at the price of sacrificed freedoms now.  Lest we dismiss the transhumanists as a powerless fringe group, one of their leading lights, Ray Kurzweil, currently holds a high-level position at Google. 

Perhaps the best thing is not to focus just on how long we can live, but how long we can live well.  Dr. Vijg takes this approach, saying that even if there is a natural limit of 115, there's a lot we can still do to prevent diseases such as Alzheimer's, osteoporosis, and other age-related maladies from robbing us of the enjoyment of those later years.  So the news that we can't live past 115 is not a counsel of despair, by any means.  Still, for those who think death is the end, it's not good news either.

However long one lives, the length matters less than what you do with it.  Old paintings of philosophers would sometimes show a human skull prominently displayed in the philosopher's study.  It represents a reminder that life is limited, and every minute is one of a finite number of minutes we will have, so we should make the most of them.  Some of the best advice along these lines, for believers and non-believers alike, is from Psalm 90, which says "So teach us to number our days, that we may apply our hearts unto wisdom."

Sources:  The New York Times article describing Dr. Vijg's work appeared on Oct. 5, 2016, at http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/06/science/maximum-life-span-study.html.   The quotation from Dr. Richards is from Vannevar Bush's book of memoirs Pieces of the Action (NY:  William Morrow, 1970), p. 130.  The patience-of-God interpretation of Genesis 6:3 can be found at http://www.versebyverseministry.org/bible-answers/are_people_limited_to_120_years_of_life.  I also referred to the Wikipedia articles on transhumanism and Ray Kurzweil.