WTA To be a member (email kept confidential):
transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
IF YOU WANT TO CONTACT US IN SKYPE, CONNECT TO: RUI.BARBOSA.PORTUGAL
Messages from the WTA founders:
"Dear Professors: It is our honour and pleasure to invite you to visit our blog"
Rui Barbosa, PhD in Engineering
"Great! Very best wishes, Nick"
Director, Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, Faculty of Philosophy & James Martin 21st Century School, University of Oxford
"Hi Rui, Absolutely superb! Congratulations! Very best wishes and thanks, Dave" David Pearce, Independent Researcher
Message of James Hughes, bioethicist and sociologist, Trinity College in Hartford Connecticut, Executive Director of the
Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies, producer of the IEET's syndicated weekly radio program, podcaster of Changesurfer Radio: "Excellent news. We look forward to the rapid growth of transhumanism in the Iberian Peninsula!"
We translate below some posts of the chapter; if you are interested in videos you can see them in the main page of the
Portuguese version. Also for all the other features.
Terça-feira, 10 de Novembro de 2009
To Insert Technology... in our Body
Rui Barbosa*
It should become possible to correct or to increase our faculties. Let’s focus some of the less known technologies for that.
This possibility comes in the sequence of our previous chronicles: to become, materially, more than what we are, that is, “men+”.
Gareth Branwyn says that (1) “the technologies of prosthetics and neuronal interface of today can be divided in 3 main categories:
- Auditory and Visual:
“So far, the most succeeded implants have been in the area of the Ear. The sick people and members of the respective families who I interviewed spoken to me of their desperation during their years of Deafness and emphasized how much they appreciated this technology that changed their lives”. Visual: although a minimum number of blind people has already obtained some very elementary vision, the truth is that “the visual prosthetics has still a long way to go”.
- Neuromuscular Functional Stimulation (2)(3) (“the systems of cerebral neuro-muscular stimulation are in experimental application in cases in which certain damages of the spinal marrow or infarcts ruined the linking of the brain to the nervous central system”).
- Control of prosthetic members through interfaces of these members with the neurons.
Gareth Branwyn still says: “we know that the Future will be `wired'. The linking through `hardware' of neuronal prosthetics is already here and will continue to develop in the direction of implanted systems completely controlled by the brains of the users… Whatever the time such comes to happen, this technology will become, eventually, a commonly enabling option for those that have special necessities, and, at a certain point, the people will surely start to speak about using that same technology for a selective expansion of the capacities of the human beings.”
Michio Kaku (4) foresees that it should become possible to implant natural brains until 2050…. An extreme implant that Minsky (5) foresees is that of the brain in its totality, that is, its total replacement by an artificial brain, “in order that we can think a million of times faster than we do currently”.
Questions that were made to me:
- With the changed body, the brain also would change, and with the brain the control on the actions.
- When you change the heart of someone, the person changes… for better (otherwise such would not be made). That person is better or worse of what was before?.
The insertion of Technology in our bodies will have however its costs (that could be compensatory or not…): Gareth Branwyn says: “For sure that the most enthusiastic neuronal navigators will not want to be subject to repeated surgeries of the Brain just to get the last version of the cerebral interfaces.” And he adds: “The Science Historian Donna Haraway in its essay `the Cyborg Manifesto', suggests that the great handicapped are often the first ones to appreciate the fruitful couplings of the human beings with the machines”. Will it happen that people will really want their heads open to the exterior and ‘wired'? How will they pay such procedures that will be certainly be expensive? And wwhat to say about the obsolescence?”
Those who will replace parts of their bodies with artificial ones, i.e. who will be cyborguized (6), if we refer to what António Carvalho says in “Transhumanism and interculturality” (7), will lose “agency”, i. e., capacity to act in an independent way and to make their own choices freely (Wikipedia). They will become more dependent on the others…
In one future chronicle we will approach the pretention of man to become materially imoprtal.
Totality of my chronicles: Humanity+ Portugal.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher has more than than 30 years in Informatics Artificial Life, transhumanismo@sapo.pt. Citations
(1) Will we live you see our brains wired you gadgets? How about today? Brains Wired You the Gadgets, By Gareth Branwyn Magazine WIRED 1.4 (2) “There it comes Artificial Health”; Jornal de Notícias, Portugal; 7-3-2002
(3) De nouvelles expériences concernant les implants cérébraux; http://www.automatesintelligents.com/actu/041231_actu.html#haut#haut; JPB/CJ; 05/12/04
(4) Michio Kaku, known Scientist who interviewed some of his top of the World colleagues, among them 15 Nobel Prizes; “Visions - As Science Will Revolutionize the XXI Century”
(5) Minsky, http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html (6) “Cyborg” is a cybernetic organism. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cyborgization
(7) António Carvalho: http://transhumanismo.blogs.sapo.pt/12627.html
I'm feeling: 
Perplexo
Music: Modern Times by Charlot
Terça-feira, 13 de Outubro de 2009
The Content of our Brain… In a Humanoid
Rui Barbosa*
It is called “Mind Uploading” (1).
Admitting that we come to produce “living” and “evolving” humanoids, we should become able to transfer the content of our brain to the one of one of those humanoids, in way that its brain behaves practically in a way not distinguishable from ours (1)…
That such only become possible much after 2100 when the total knowledge of the Human Brain (2) would be obtained, because, naturally, it will be necessary to know this one to make a copy of it to which we could transfer the cited content…
What would be the advantage?
Let us see some questions made to me about this topic.
- A future chip that would mirror the individual brain (and also the Conscience) and that added objective knowledge, will be capable to differentiate and finally to judge and to take both the subjective and the objective parts in consideration, in order to define and to follow a goal?
- The possibility of an objective knowledge of the conscience of ourselves is a real problem that seems at first sight not totally soluble as I already said in a previous chronicle: Somebody will be capable to observe the effect and not the source of the conscience of itself in someone else (Klaus Hepp, ETH Zurich); by definition, only its owner would be able to know totally its conscience of itself but even this would be an infinite process… This problem also appeared before in History, with Psychology: It was thought that the psyche of a given individual could be solely at the reach of that individual; later, Experimental Psychology was invented and now we know so much on Human Psychology! Even with Experimental Psychology, we cannot reach the totality of the psyche of an individual (remember Wittgenstein who said that there are many things that cannot be verbalized…).
Really, if we became capable to make “live” and “evolving” artificial humanoids and such beings evolved until becoming conscientious, I do not see any reason why they could not acquire, as in the case of the Natural Evolution, the conscience of themselves…
- It will be also possible to join and to mix the consciences and knowledge of others?
- I do not think that this should be the goal: Following our current way to organize information (see Internet), the best solution would be to have, in each one, access to the information of the others; not the concentration of all the information in all; since the relevance and the dynamics of the information depend on who is going to use it.
- What would happen when practically all the decisions were taken by computers but were the men the responsible ones?
- The same that in a company in which men use the computers; the level is different: A decision concerning going or not to the Skopije Festival of the Arts, is one of a human being, a decision concerning the best flight to get would be that of a computer (not far from becoming possible, but also only possible for people who dominate the functioning of the computers, the criteria that the computer uses to decide, and so …); all is a question of decision levels.
- A computer cannot be accused nor punished… what would mean then the morality? And the individuality? This takes us to the Soul ...
- I think that the computers have a material morality (without Soul); the punishment being its reprogramming (3). The human being will have to supervise the Humanoids, since the communication with God must impose itself to the ethics of the machines. If we will be able to build “living” humanoids and be able to transfer the knowledge of our Brain (for instance of a Rescuer Fireman) to their Brain, we will be able to transfer to those humanoids excessively demanding tasks (in the example, in Rescue).
Moreover, it should be possible to put our brains communicating with their brains without the need of verbal communication (written, or another one of this type…) (4).
In the next chronicle, we will approach the subject: should we replace deficient parts of the Body by technological devices?
Totality of my chronicles: Humanity+ Portugal.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher for more than 30 years in Artificial Informatic “Life”, transhumanismo@sapo.pt. Citations
(1) Article of Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mind_uploading#cite_note-Roadmap-0#cite_note-Roadmap-0
(2) For Edelman, Nobel Prize of Medicine, each brain is a different brain and would be necessary 32 million years to a human being to read all the cerebral connections…
(3) http://uhaweb.hartford.edu/anderson/machineethics.html
(4) Brain-Computer Interface http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Brain%E2%80%93computer_interface&oldid=315715766
I'm feeling: 
In rest
Segunda-feira, 12 de Outubro de 2009
Artificial... brains
Rui Barbosa*
Minsky (1) (as already said, Materialist and great Visionary), when fighting for another humanity, considers that we should go beyond our enormous material limitations of intelligence (which could exempt us of the need to do many attempts, with the consequent failures, through which we evolve… since it would allow us to better understand the reality encircling ourselves…).
Minsky says that such limitations could be explained by:
- Insufficiency of education,
- The use of only one part of our brains, and the
- Lack of time necessary to learn more, what could only be satisfied with a bigger longevity…
Although Christian de Duve has said that the current size of the Brain could not yet be the definitive one, Minsky says that “the Brain, as the other finite things, will have forcibly to have limits of what it can learn, limits that we do not know; perhaps, if we had more longevity, our brains could remain learning for centuries; however we will have to increase the capacity of our brains to become effectively wiser…”.
The solution would be to build artificial brains. How (2)?
“One day could become practicable to build the Memory in a so small device as a pea, using the Nanotechnology… ½ minute could seem to those brains so long as one year for us, and one hour as long as the entire life of a human being…”.
“Many thinkers keep firmly that the machines never will have thoughts as ours, because whatever the way of construction of the artificial brains, these will always lack some vital ingredient, which one calls different names - Sensitivity, Conscience, Spirit, or Soul ".
Effectively, as we said in our last chronicle, the artificial intelligence derived from an artificial evolution producing humanoid “living” creatures would be essentially different of the human one, since the human body is animated by the Soul that is granted by God exclusively to Man. Among other characteristics, the Soul is capable to communicate with God.
While the Artificial Intelligence of one autonomous humanoid is not, and it will not be able to cease of being, more than the result of the functioning of an artificial body (as a touch of a mobile phone is), without communication with God, the Human Intelligence being, by the fact of being able to communicate with God, uses very different strategies of understanding the Reality; it is capable, namely, to distinguish the thoughts that come from God of those that come from the Devil or from its own instinct (3).
One “living” humanoid, even if it could receive indirectly (through human beings), thoughts from God, could not by its own distinguish between them and its own “instinct”… this is an exclusive quality of the Human Soul. Such humanoid would understand the Reality in na indiscriminate way in terms of these thoughts, i. e., it would give the same importance to ones and to the others, what immediately remembers the robot of the film “I Robot”… (that evolved partially out of the human control and that, at a given moment, found that it would be good to kill its own designer… for reasons, as much as I remember, theologically incorrect).
It is of those cold machines that, namely through Literature and Cinema, the Humanity is afraid of…. Therefore, the Human Intelligence is better than the Artificial one. And it is necessary to denounce the confusion abundantly divulged by scientists who defend something that is not of the domain of Science but of the one of the Religion… The ones that defend the “superiority” of Artificial Intelligence in relation to the Human are speaking about the biggest material power of Artificial Intelligence, since this is capable to execute an incomparably bigger number of operations in a given period of time. Such happened, effectively, when the computer Deep Blue defeated the World-wide Champion of Chess… But this power was used indiscriminately in the sense we referred behind…
In 15 days, we will speak of the transfer of content of a human brain to the brain of an “alive” Humanoid……
Totality of my chronicles: Humanity+ Portugal.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France),
Researcher for more than 30 years in Informatics Artificial Life, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) http://web.media.mit.edu/~minsky/papers/sciam.inherit.html (2) “Artificial Minds” of Franklin, Stan; http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&tid=5724 (3) “What it is the Soul? ”; Pierre Dumoulin; Ed. Paulus
I'm feeling: 
Looking for... + intelligence
Music: Enigmatic classical contemporary music
Terça-feira, 15 de Setembro de 2009
Transhumanism and interculturality?
António Carvalho
PhD Student in the University of Exeter
Science and the technology are absolutely crucial for the contemporary societies. The model of linear evolution, associated to the galloping proliferation of new instruments, techniques and easiness in the mediation between human beings and nature, must, however, be questioned. Instead of thinking in terms of continuity, linearity and teleological consumption, we can incorporate some ideas extracted from the debates within philosophy, history and sociology of Science and Technology that contribute for the quarrel with terms such as paradigm, rupture, localization, situation or ethnicity.
A certain tension is associated with questions such as: What is knowledge? Who can produce it? Where shall it be developed? Who shall take usufruct of it? It is also notorious the constraint provoked by the dissemination of other knowledge and cultures with distinct epistemological conceptions.
Transhumanism, assuming itself as a movement aiming at reaching the post-human-being state, must take into account the existence of other approaches, that can be designated as non-technological, to the human improvement. The integration of these other conceptions can confer an intercultural and universal load to the improvement of the human being, rejecting the conception of Transhumanism as a by-product of the advances reached in the “orthodox” Science and Technology of the “developed” countries.
Being impossible to catalogue all the non-western forms of approach to Transhumanism (and some of them are even western, however in a state of “anachronism” or non-conventional), we can allude to the practices connected to Yoga, meditation, the control of breath, the alteration of the corporal functions through all a series of exercises that transform the being of the subject. These practices, united under the aegis of what Foucault called “technologies of the self”, depend on an investment of the human will in which the individual takes for itself the full responsibility of its performance: they are, in this sense, an intensification of the agency of those who practice them.
Although they are quite distinct (a naive vision on these “other” practices could lead to their simplification and crystallization), these procedures depend on the interaction between human will and (psychophysical) condition, with the aim to “improve” the last one. They are and integrant part of an approach to knowledge and spiritualitythat values the embodied and experiential dimensions through a project of access to the “truth”.
These visions of improvement, carried out by individuals throughout specific periods of their lives, and which result in an amelioration of the mental aptitudes, better physical performance or development of paranormal capacities, shall be placed side by side with narratives extracted from the genetic engineering, the emergent technologies and hypotheses extracted from imagined future applications. We can, through the intercultural relation with other approaches to transhumanism, identify some interesting indications to rethink one of the great ethical concerns associated to the technological transformation of the human condition: the loss of the agency. In fact, the aprioristic redesign of the human biology, the introduction of technological devices in the body or the chemical stimulation of the neurophysiologic processes for the creation of states of higher pleasure, can imply the dissolution of a will and a consciousness associated to the image of the rational animal. These concerns still promote bigger distrusts when dystopias, present in the popular imaginary, are glimpsed, in which technological innovations are recruited by authoritarian regimes to format the citizens, facilitating and speeding the investments of power. The promotion of interculturality must ally practices of intensification of the “will” to the appropriation of the possibilities offered by the non-human artefacts and devices, opening, on the one hand, new possibilities for the human agency but, on the other hand, maintaining the anthropologic referent , avoiding the risk of what an author designated as “the organic totality”.
The hypotheses of improvement of the human being, in a global society, doubtlessly reflect the perplexities generated by the multiplication of perspectives on what is Man and what must be the future of his condition. The hypotheses supplied by the scientific and technological applications must, in a multicultural paradigm, be allied to a panoply of procedures that are recruited by individuals to modify their condition as spiritual beings. However, we cannot ignore that new associations between humans and non humans will give rise to new synergies and, eventually, to the reconfiguration of what it is understood as Ethics.
Quinta-feira, 10 de Setembro de 2009
"Living" humanoids
Rui Barbosa*
Will ever Man be able to produce them?
We saw in the previous chronicle that it could be possible to cause the development, from a “primary artificial cell” consisting of a Molecular Robot, of “simple artificial animals”.
An “Artificial Evolution” could also probably lead to “embryos” in the line of the project “Artificial Embryology and Evolution” (1):
-“It concerns the study of principles of biological development that could be useful to make evolve modular artificial agents in physically realistic simulations, in order to produce agents each time with less trivial behaviors”. We could then ask: “Are the robots technological devices that have to be developed and controlled by an engineer, or could those same robots develop and control autonomously themselves?”. Such seems possible: “The robots built in this context should be able to adapt to the uncertain and incomplete information in constantly changing environments, and exists at least one technique of construction that consists of imitating the process of learning of an isolated natural organism.”
Such embryos would have to be able to evolve to adult artificial animals, according to the project “Morphology and Behavior of Virtual Beings” (1) and could probably also get to seem to human beings until the cellular level: the Battlestar Galactica series presented this idea that we also think is possible. These humanoids would have to know how to survive in eventually hostile environments (2) and to come to have complex and evolving behaviors (3)(4); not to mention the ability to replicate: the construction of a replicant macro-robot was at a time a long term objective (Renato Zacaria; U. Génova, Italy).
All these projects show that a Robot Sapiens (5) is already being prepared… But…
Until where would the Robot Sapiens be able to go?
I reproduce, in the following, excerpts of commentaries that I made to a post “Transhumanism in fiction” of José Pedro Magalhaes (6), about the TV Series “Battlestar Galactica”.
Appearance of Conscience:
I theoretically find as possible the appearance of conscience (using the term exclusively in the material sense… not involving the spiritual part of Conscience) in an informatics’ being, as a result of an artificial evolution imitating the natural one, since, according to the important and agnostic Biologist of Evolution Wuketits, the conscience would be a product of the Evolution.
Could those humanoids become, in all terms, intelligent, reflective and self-conscient, beings:
Because of their absence of Soul, their intelligence and self-conscience would be essentially different from their homologous in the human beings, which derive from the Soul that is granted by God exclusively to Man; the reflection capacity is even exclusively human because, as the term indicates, it is a product of the reflection of the Spirit of God in the mind of the human being.
Let us assume that effectively a virtual entity reached self-conscience; could this entity develop a religious sense?
According to an important Evolutionist of the U. Cambridge (Broom), we met in the animals a feeling of the existence of a superior being (we are not evidently speaking of God…), what could make us suppose that the Religion has an evolutionary part (according to the Theologian Anselmo Borges “everything that is authentically religious is a human answer to questions which are deeply and radically human…”); because of it, the robots could reach, at least, the religious level of the non-human animals…
See you in 15 days, when we will write about the super-intelligence of “living” humanoids…
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher for more than 30 years in Informatics’ Artificial Life, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) The Artificial Ontogeny Project; http://www.ifi.unizh.ch/ailab/projects/emb/
(2) Biomorfo, Living Machines; Tilden, Mark; Los Alamos Laboratory of New Mexico
(5) “Robot Sapiens”; Menzel, Peter and D’ Alluzio, Faith; Ed. MIT Press
(6) PhD Student in Computer Science in Utrecht University, the Netherlands; second Author of the Portuguese Chapter of the World Transhumanist Association (“Humanity+ Portugal”)
I'm feeling: 
better than humanoids
Quinta-feira, 3 de Setembro de 2009
Informatic artificial "evolution"
Rui Barbosa*
We already wrote, in our previous post on Informatics Artificial “Life”, that we could become able to build “informatic artificial cells” - the Molecular Robots; robots that could become able to be replicated by an external mechanism, or, even, self-replicant.
These robots would become able to have the capacity of organizing themselves automatically (1)(2)(3): it was already demonstrated that “swarms” of micro robots, only communicating between themselves by very simple messages, can be programmed to mount structures that have been specified to them partially or totally; they would be even capable of self-organizing in structures analogous to the natural organs of the superior living organisms, and, in the limit, of the complex living creatures.
In the University of Edinburg (4) researchers started years ago to study “Artificial Evolution”; it’s due to Tim Taylor (5) one very interesting project aiming at producing an artificial evolution being “open-ended”, that is, without any a priori specific objective (according to Darwin, the Evolution would have he “objective” of allowing to the living beings to survive; according to Teillard de Chardin (6), the vector of the same evolution would be the increase of the conscience of the beings). Tim Taylor intended to create an artificial environment in which could happen an artificial evolution qualitatively similar to the natural one.
Tim Taylor worked inclusively in a system to apply these ideas: Cosmos (1996-1997), in which hundreds of computer programs, written in a special language, tried “to multiply” (to copy themselves) for new parts of the memory, in competition one another in what concerned the memory space occupied and the time of computation spent. From time to time, in the self-replication, mutations in the “genes” were introduced, in order to the following generation to be potentially qualified to improve, that is, to be most suitable to the fixed objectives of the evolution process (in an artificial evolution it is to Man to fix the objectives)(7)(8).
Another project implemented by Tim Taylor was Math-Engine: It was about the production, through artificial evolution, of some “digital artificial animals”, as for instance, a “crab-dog” (see video in the portuguese version of this blog).
Finally, the same living beings would have to be susceptive of self-organizing as the ants do in those paths that the house owners fear so much… (9)(10).
Many of the insoluble problems that Humanity faces will probably benefit of the contribution of Artificial Life and Evolution, because there are phenomena which need an undetermined amount of machines (replicated by an exterior mechanism or self-replicated) and also the capacity of the same machines to evolve to adapt themselves automatically to the tasks that they are intended to execute.
In 15 days, we will write not about small artificial living beings, but about… artificial living Humanoids.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(2) In an experience made in George Whitesides' s Lab, gold plates of 20-micrometers of width were piled up in fans of columns (Journal of the American Chemical Society)
(3) “Spatially evolving molecular information systems”; McCaskill, J.; Revista Biophysical Chemistry 66, 145 (1997)
(4) Artificial Life; U. Edinburgh, School of Informatics; http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/research/programmes/alife/
(5) Taylor, Tim; “The COSMOS Artificial Life System”; Technical report and guide to COSMOS, Departmental Working Paper No.263; October 1997 (Version 2.0: May 1999); U. Edinburgh Department of Artificial Intelligence
(6) “The Human Phenomenon”. Teillard de Chardin.
(7) Genetic Programming;
http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/research/genprog/gp2faq/gp2faq2.html#Q1
(8) Evolutionary algorithms; Tomassini, Marco; marco.tomassini@di.epfl.Ch
(9) Ant Algorithms; Ramos, Vítor; Instituto Superior Técnico, U. Lisbon
(10) Social Intelligence; Marco Dorigo; U. Libre de Bruxelles
I'm feeling: 
evolved
Terça-feira, 28 de Julho de 2009
Informatics artificial “life”
Rui Barbosa*
Teillard de Chardin, great Paleontologist and Priest, described the phenomenon of the appearance of Life from mega molecules (1); in 1999 it was announced in the scientific magazine “Science” that a group of Japanese scientists had discovered the nature of the spark that would have produced, in a molecules soup, the flash of Life and that “it got to produce some of the molecular components of the proteins of which life is made” (2). According to Catholicism, it was (is) God who created (creates) Life.
Very different of producing Life it is to produce “Artificial Life” (3)(4)(5), which consists of constructing systems with one or some characteristics of the natural living systems (to multiply, to put into motion themselves, to grow, to evolve, etc.) on the basis of artificial elements, that can be digital, created in test tube, mechanics, etc.
One of the possible starting points for such is Nanotechnology, that will not probably be operational before 2050, although the advances occurred in this area (6). “Nanotechnology is the understanding and control of the Matter in dimensions of approximately 1 to 100 nanometers (1 nanometer = 10-9 meters), where phenomena unique in Nature allow new applications: to the nanometric scale, the physical, chemical and biological properties of Matter in quantity, or the materials, differ in a fundamental way, and valuable, of the properties of the atoms and individual molecules.
Covering simultaneously the Science, Engineering and Technology of the nanomeasurable, Nanotechnology involves:
- The caption of images,
- The measurement,
- The modeling, and
- The manipulation (atom/molecules displacement, often made using electronic microscopes) of Matter at the nanometric scale.
The Research and Development of Nanotechnology are directed for the understanding and improved creation of materials, devices and systems, that explore the properties specific to the nanomatter” (7).
Molecular robots
A branch, already quite developed, of Artificial Life, is Molecular Robotics (8) which is “an emergent and highly interdisciplinary field that looks for producing new materials and devices at the nanometric scale, through the direct interaction with the atomic structures. While conventional Chemistry is based on phenomena involving many individuals, such as Diffusion, to create self-assembling structures, Molecular Robotics consists of devices that manipulate structures by applying external forces and locating atoms and molecules with precision; it is a revolutionary technology that tries to exert a fine control on the structure of Matter, analogous to what we can currently exert on the ‘bytes' of information".
Replication
If we take the molecular robots as the equivalents of the cells of the living beings, then we can ask ourselves if it will not be possible to make artificial living beings on the basis of themselves. There can theoretically have at least 2 forms to replicate molecular robots: by operation of an external mechanism (9), or by self-replication (6). Following Minsky, if we could come to use 1 self-replicating robot and needed one week so that it made 1 copy of itself, then it could produce 1 billion of robots in less than one year… (10).
See you again in 15 days when I’ll write about Informatics Artificial “Evolution”.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) “The Human Phenomenon”, Ed. Paulus
(2) Science; 5-2-1999; newspaper “Diário de Notícias” of 9-2-1999
(6) Kaku, Michio; “Visions – How Science Will Revolutionize XXI Century”; Ed. Bizâncio, Lisbon Portugal
(7) National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI); federal program of coordination of the Inquiry and Development made by some agencies in science, engineering, and technology to the nanometric scale
(8) Laboratory will be Molecular Robotics; Computer Science Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; http://www.cs.usc.edu/
(9) Requicha, Ari; Laboratory will be Molecular Robotics, Computer Science Department, University of Southern California, Los Angeles; http://lipari.usc.edu/~lmr/
(10) Replicant Molecular Robots; Molecular Robotics, U. Sussex, UK
I'm feeling: 
Surprised
Quarta-feira, 1 de Julho de 2009
To plan more ... the human evolution
Rui Barbosa*
Minsky, Materialist and Visionary (1) said:
“We are already evolving more quickly, even if not in the familiar darwinian way, which is slow. We can also design systems based on new types of non natural selection that will be able to explore explicit plans and objectives, and what we inherited; it took 1 century to the evolutionists to train themselves to prevent such ideas but now we can have to change these rules”.
The will to take the helm of the Evolution is not against Catholicism because Teillard de Chardin, a Priest, invoked it positively in its “The Human Phenomenon”. But it is necessary that we remain cautious about its limits…
Minsky says:
“This article bears on our rights to have children, to change our genes, and to die if we so wish. No popular ethical system yet, be it humanist or religion-based, has shown itself able to face the challenges that already confront us:
- How many people should occupy Earth?
- What sorts of people should they be?
- How should we share the available space?”.
It is not truth: the Catholicism, at least, pronounced itself frequently on these subjects; although not always in concrete terms … as, by the way, it would not compete to it to do …
Minsky goes on:
“Clearly, we must change our ideas about making additional children. Individuals now are conceived by chance. Someday, though, they could be 'composed' according to considered desires and designs.
Furthermore, when we build new brains, these need not start out the way ours do, with so little knowledge about the world. What sorts of things should our mind-children know? How many of them should we produce - and who should decide their attributes?”
We reported in a previous chronicle a declaration of the Vatican of 2002 (2) in which it is said that “to change the genetic identity of Man while human person, through the production of an infra-human being, would be radically immoral” implying, as it would, that "Man would have full right to make use of its own biological nature". We consider that it is only valid to eliminate of the body of the children everything that could come to cause suffering or impotence in relation to the Cosmos; the Transhumanists argue that the parents have a moral responsibility called “beneficence of procreation” if and when it proves to be reasonably effective and secure to make their children the most healthful possible. They add that this responsibility is a moral judgment that should preferably be left to the individual conscience instead of being put in law, in all the cases except in the extreme ones. In this context, the emphasis in the freedom of choice is called “procreative freedom” (2).
On the contrary, for the parents to compose their children according to their desires (to design blond children, for instance), since they are not their property, would make them “infra-parents” thus infra-human beings … Eugenics again …
Minsky goes on:
“Moreover, when we build new brains, these do not need to start in the same way that ours started, with so little knowledge on the World. What kind of things would have the minds of our children to know? How many children should we have?”
Here Minsky considers artificial selection as convenient for the adaptation to Cosmos, and we fully agree with him.
Minsky goes on:
“Traditional systems of ethical thought are focused mainly on individuals, as though they were the only things of value. Obviously, we must also consider the rights and the roles of larger scale beings - such as the super-persons we call cultures, and the great, growing systems called sciences, that help us to understand other things.
How many such entities do we want? Which are the kinds that we most need? We ought to be wary of ones that get locked into forms that resist all further growth.
Whatsoever that the Future can come to bring us, we are already changing the rules that made us. Although the majority of us will fear the change, others will certainly want to escape to our present limitations.”
In 15 days we will continue to analyze the fracturing proposals of this great visionary…
Totality of my chronicles: World Transhumanist Association - Portuguese Chapter (
Humanity+ Portugal).
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Researcher on Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#cite_note-Cole-Turner_1993-89
I'm feeling: 
More secure
Music: Bach
Quarta-feira, 17 de Junho de 2009
To improve the human body ... deeply
Rui Barbosa*
The Evolution is processed, generically speaking, through random mutations of the genes that, facing the Environment, or persist passing to the following generations, thus assuring the survival of the individuals, or are discarded…
We “already were” hunting in the African Savannah to get to feed us and the Evolution adapted us to this situation; currently we keep many rests of this adaptation, in spite of the fact that we live now in a very different environment.
Bostrom, one of the 2 Founders of the World Transhumanist Association (1), considers that we should adapt to the new situation instead of simply living passively the natural evolution. How?
Bostrom says that the evolved complex systems, as the Human Body, are difficult to improve and that our attempts to make it often fail face to a wisdom of Nature that we cannot reach. Against this conservative attitude and its opposite (adventurer), Bostrom tries an intermediate one that allows to identify promising improvements: he shows that important exceptional cases exist in which we could expect to be able to improve Nature using current or future Science. Bostrom says that, when trying to improve a system (developing the functioning of some subsystem beyond its healthful normal functioning, for instance long term memory, or adding a new capacity, for instance a 6th sense), the questions to put are:
1 Why is it that the system is as it is?
2 Why is it that it doesn’t already possess the characteristics that we would want it to have?
Bostrom says afterwards that, if Evolution did not make it and we think to be able to make it, it could be because of 3 reasons:
1 The Environment to have changed in relation to the archaic environment to which we would still be anachronistically adapted, because of the availability of new resources and of the appearance of new demands from the part of the Human being. For example, the abundance of food: the Brain spends 20% of the energy proceeding from this food; because we ceased to need so much to look for food (which does not require much brain) and, on the other hand, we need bigger cerebral activity, could eventually be useful interventions that caused an increase of the availability of mental energy…
2 Our values to be different of those “of the Evolution”: for instance the contraception: although being against the natural evolution, it allows to control the reproductive system thus making easier the familiar planning… but it can be harmful: remember that China made birth control of women and that currently it come across an excess of men of certain ages…
3 To have new tools at our disposal: we could wait to obtain new things because we can make use of new tools, new materials, etc.; example: the Evolution doesn’t give us eyeglasses when we need…
Bostrom concludes that if, for some interventions that we could be intending to carry in the Human Body, we will be able to find justification in the 3 types of reasons that we referred before, for others, however, we will not be able to make it: The first ones do not defy the wisdom of Nature and have greater probabilities of success, whereas the second are suspicious and it could be imprudent to try to make them.
Christian theologians consider that it could obligation for Man to improve its nature in certain domains (2). According to a Declaration of the Vatican of 2002, Man would not have full right to make use of its proper biological nature. Let us not forget, finally, that “the attainment of the fullness and happiness of Man are relative purposes of the Creation” (3), that is, are not the main purpose of the same Creation…
The Combonian Missionaries today commemorate the Day of the African Child: the development of this child could be prior (“Love your neighbour as yourself”) in relation to the improvement of the Human Body in a developed country…
Read me again in 15 days…
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
References
(1) The Wisdom of Nature: An Evolutionary Heuristic will be Human Enhancement, (2007), Nick Bostrom, Anders Sandberg, Oxford Future of Humanity Institute, Faculty of Philosophy & James Martin 21st Century School, Oxford University
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#cite_note-Cole-Turner_1993-89 (3) Encyclopedia Catholic Advent
I'm feeling: 
Deeply interested
Music: De Profundis
Quinta-feira, 4 de Junho de 2009
Evil attains ... the good (corrections)
Rui Barbosa
Cornelia Holsten from Germany to whom I answered some questions, wrote me to correct the following parts of that dialogue:
I said:
- A certain excess of evil, more gratuitous, and more unexplainable, due to some original deviation or “catastrophe”, according to Teillard de Chardin, can only be studied and explained by Theology; for the moment, the answer I know it is that it is a mystery. Nowadays, we know that Cosmos has a primitive unexplained asymmetry; would this have something to do with it?
- For me this explanation sounds too weak ... and rather like an escape.
Later,
I said:
-Again the criteria of good and bad for God is different from the human: Christ said “blessed those who suffer because they will be relieved…”. The Evil explains as far as I know the existence of Suffering. The point is: either we consider that Matter is, with no creator, from infinity, restructuring itself and producing disabled and favoured people and that’s only a matter of hazard; in this case, the disabled just would regret their bad luck, with no hope. Or we consider that if Matter has laws, it couldn’t legislate itself, and then there was a fist being, God; the result is the same for the disadvantaged with the difference that they know a reason for their suffering … Transhumanism has an important role to play in trying at maximum to eradicate suffering: if God loves us He cannot deny us that effort, otherwise He must explain why not (?)...
- Supposed Transhumanism will succeed one day in eradicating suffering: What motivates God then to continue his evolutionary plan? Or will evolution not be necessary then anymore? Will transhumanists finally adopt God's role as for the permanent improvement of the material parts of human beings? (I was particularly referring to "eradicating suffering".....!)
I'm feeling: 
Sorry
Terça-feira, 2 de Junho de 2009
To clean … the genes of the living beings
Rui Barbosa*
David Pearce, Agnostic, one of the Founders of the World Transhumanist Association (1) says in his Abolitionist Project:
“The Abolitionist Project outlines a strategy to eradicate suffering in all sentient life. The abolitionist project is ambitious, implausible, but technically feasible. It is defended here on ethical utilitarian grounds.
Genetic engineering and nanotechnology allow Homo sapiens to discard the legacy-wetware of our evolutionary past. Our post-human (Note from Rui Barbosa: transhuman) successors will rewrite the vertebrate genome, redesign the global ecosystem, and abolish suffering throughout the living world.”
Question I made to David Pearce:
- Reading your manifest, I wanted to raise a question: how can Man, as part of the ecosystem, remodel it? Isn’t it a recursive process? And if it is, how can we devise the limits?
- I can't do full justice to your (excellent) question. However… First, consider, say, an African national park. Should elephants be culled to prevent overpopulation and habitat destruction? Or should we use depot contraception instead (it's more expensive, yes; but hunting is cruel). Thus we're already remodelling local ecosystems.
The kind of world-wide ecosystem redesign I describe - involving rewriting the vertebrate genome and global ecosystem remodelling - is much more ambitious. And as you note, it involves our own species. So we can't "step outside" the ecosystem we're remodelling.... I think the biggest challenge will come from human population growth.
2nd question to David Pearce:
- To re-write the Human Genoma would be to write it from zero, thus writing the genoma of something different from Humans… It wouldn’t ameliorate the human condition…
Answer from David Pearce:
- Yes, you are right. When does proofing become editing, editing become rewriting, and rewriting become creating something totally new? I think that we will ultimately become posthuman (note from Rui Barbosa: transhuman) as our entire genome is progressively rewritten. But this rewrite will be a gradual process spanning hundreds and perhaps thousands of years. If you think human nature is fundamentally good, this is a scary prospect. However, the way that members of our species behave - both to each other and members of other species - often makes me ashamed to be human....
Continuing with the Abolitionist Project: “Why does suffering exist? The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise evolved only because they served the inclusive fitness of our genes in the ancestral environment.”
There is an evil unexplained by Science and Religion says that Evil is a mistery, therefore the assertion of David Pearce is limited.
Pearce goes on: “Their ugliness can be replaced by a new motivational system based entirely on gradients of well-being. Life-long happiness of an intensity now physiologically unimaginable can become the heritable norm of mental health. No theological itch should want to destroy it …”
The Transhumanists and other supporters of human genetic engineering accept the dangerousness of the genetic manipulation, “because a high degree of uncertainty about the probable effects of the experiences of the genetic manipulation on humans. However, there are hypothetical ethical solutions (2)(3).
Wikipedia points out an important religious limit (declaration of the Vatican of 2002 “Communion and Service: people created to the image of God”): “To change the genetic identity of man while human person through the production of an infra-human being would be radically immoral”, implying, as it would, that "Man would have full right to make use of his own biological nature".
We’ll meet again in 15 days…
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
References
(1) “Evil Genes”; Barbara Oakley http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Evil_Genes&oldid=284274669
(2) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transhumanism#cite_note-Hughes_2004-23#cite_note-Hughes_2004-23
I'm feeling: 
Joyful
Music: Hymn to Joy by Beethoven
Terça-feira, 19 de Maio de 2009
The evils of Evolution
Rui Barbosa*
Pursuing our dialogue of the precedent chronicles with Cornelia Holsten from Germany, she asked:
- Considering these questions I should rather become desperate and contest the existence of God: There is a contradiction for me: I do not deny there is a creator of men and nature generally ("source") but how can this creator leave us alone when we had badly needed his care? I know there is no answer.
- No, there is a positive answer: we are never alone; even the most bad persons. As I told, the grace of God is always and forever inside all men; they can accept it or refuse it and then they pay the consequences because God doesn’t change the laws of Nature because of Man. When the ancients said that some catastrophes were punishments of God, in fact they were speaking of a violation of the laws of Nature; and then we should ask ourselves: should God, the Creator, change the laws of everything to satisfy His limited creatures? I know by my own experience that often the path of God is different from my own path, and my path lead often to bad directions meanwhile the God’s would lead to a good one. We can see it in social polemics, for instance Abortion: considered as absolutely inocuous and desirable by materialists, Humankind has been discovering its evils like psychological disturbances and so…and we can see it in the Market Crisis; the Pope told, before the Iraqi War, that those making it would suffer from it: that’s it
- Supposing that Transhumanism got one day to eradicate suffering: what would then motivate God to continue his evolution plan? Or Evolution would cease to be useful? The transhumanists will adopt finally the role of God in what respects the permanent improvement of the material parts of the human beings?
- Transhumanism is a group of philosophies that defends the ethical application of technology to the universe in general, namely to the Evolution Tree (not only in what concerns humans but also the other non-human beings …). Humanity, among the created beings, is at the top of Evolution, which means, for Teillard de Chardin (1), one of the best Palaeontologists of ever, at the point of the Conscience vector, which, on its turn, means, for Teillard, of the Self-conscientiousness. The Universe is bending itself in the increasing Self-conscientiousness of Humankind tending to an omega point which will combine, at the end of the World, the individual consciences, self-conscientiousness’s included.
Suffering and Impotence in relation to Cosmos are the most critical aspects of the material human condition; therefore, Transhumanism wants to heal them as much as it is convenient … and possible. The role of the Transhumanists being analogous to that of the Ecologists, meaning a proposal for the Society to debate and the Politicians to adopt or not, considering that it is the function of the Politicians to govern … the Polis.
As we saw (1) there is a Primordial Evil whose cause Science doesn’t know and that Church calls Original Sin; it can flow (2) to “a void in the non loved person with a consequent feeling of guilt (not to be worthy of the love of the other person). Such feeling being susceptible of leading to the discovery in himself of the reasons of that un-love converting itself in a healthy capture of control on his own destiny, or in a dreamed up power of control on his own life with a consequent hate to himself”. Remedy: “We have to see what we do one another and try to be sincere with ourselves.” This evil, if non solved by those who caused it, can be relieved by those who suffer it by demanding more Democracy (which would diminish Disease, Hunger, War), better Environment, more Economical Efficiency and less Mass Production Work until 2020. Another evil, Work, could be considerably relieved until much after 2100. In what concerns the other evils,
- Tentative and Error
- Disease and Death
- Loneliness and Anguish
Will it be possible that we cease suffering from them? We will write about it in the next chronicles, starting.
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
References
(2) Arno Gruen, Psychoanalyst; Conference in ISPA, Lisbon, Portugal; António Carvalho, Newspaper Diário de Notícias of 8/12/1997
I'm feeling: Expecting
Evil attains the good
Rui Barbosa*
Why?
In the context of a dialogue with Cornelia Holsten from Germany, we referred 3 kinds of evil which were identified by Teillard de Chardin (1) as tools of the Cosmic Evolution: Work, Tentative-error and Decomposition (Illness and Death).
The last question put by Cornelia Holsten was:
- For the disadvantaged individual it is no comfort at all to know he is necessary as a tool while others are favoured.
What evidence does he have to know there is an evolutionary plan behind which might be only 'effective' when he
has been dead for decades or even centuries? Why should he believe and trust in God?.
- Again the criteria of good and bad for God is different from the human: Christ said “blessed those who suffer because they will be relieved…”. The Evil explains as far as I know the existence of Suffering. The point is: Either we consider that Matter is, with no creator, from infinity, restructuring itself and producing disabled and favoured people and that’s only a matter of hazard; in this case, the disabled just would regret their bad luck, with no hope. Or we consider that if Matter has laws, it couldn’t legislate itself, and then there was a fist being, God; the result is the same for the disadvantaged with the difference that they know a reason for their suffering …
A certain excess of evil, more gratuitous, and more unexplainable, due to some original deviation or “catastrophe”, according to Teillard de Chardin, can only be studied and explained by Theology; for the moment, the answer I know it is that it is a mystery. Nowadays, we know that Cosmos has a primitive unexplained asymmetry; would this have something to do with it?
- For me this explanation sounds too weak ... and rather like an escape.
- It is my possible answer. I think that the Revelation of God attained its maximum in the person of Christ; you look and listen to what Christ said, and know what God wants. Secondarily, the Revelation confirms the existence of God
- Why does God admit suffering and dying of young/religious/trustful … people? (Why are bad people often lucky people?) Which sense is behind?
- The freedom to do the Good (as told by the interior presence of God in ourselves) or the Bad, exists for each man and the good or bad consequences fall in himself and the others: we can ask ourselves why the poor Birmanese suffered so much the floods; but we can also ask why they or the powerful people having the possibility of helping them, challenged the laws of Nature, therefore the laws of God, therefore God. I think that the answer is in the solidarity that God would like for Humankind; whose maximum example is Christ, a pefectly religious and good man, God himself, who was crucified and ressurrected considering that the eternal life is what matters...
- You mean: suffering/dying though young/innocent ... is a result of bad behaviour of others? An accident caused by a drunken driver kills a baby. The baby dies while the drunken man is not even hurt ...Why doesn't God punish the bad others instead of the innocent? If you were the father of this baby would you still think it was finally and probably a wise plan/sign?
- Nature (Quantic Field) is a set of forces relating bodies one another; it is built as solidaire in all domains; Hans-Peter Dürr explained it very clearly: materially we cannot isolate anything from the rest, it’s impossible. Even if at our eyes the bodies are separable…
- I don't agree because my example (above) was very concrete: If God is (our) fair judge why is he so unfair to punish the innocent instead of the guilty person? For Him it should be the same - if he needs suffering as punishment for bad behaviour....
- He will reward the victims of other’s evil; and punish these.
- Why does he admit that His human beings destroy themselves (in wars etc)?
- The freedom of Man, who is always aware of the consequences because of the internal presence of God in himself, is a basic characteristic that God wants for Man; otherwise Man would have a much less value as a creature. That’s why Robots will never be like Men.
- Children, the most abused and fragile human beings, can't be aware of the consequences.
- I meant adults!
Reader! The dialogue must pursue in the next chronicle … Until it …
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
References
(1) “The Human Phenomenon”; Teillard de Chardin
I'm feeling: 
puzzled
Music: Dies Ira from the Fantastic Symphony by Berlioz
Quinta-feira, 7 de Maio de 2009
After the hyperconsumption, what?
Beja Santos
More eyes than stomach (or more consumption than the Earth can give)
The society of consumption fomented diligent consumers and negligent citizens. The hiperconsumption (not only the excessive consumption but also the excessive presentations of the goods of consumption) generated the hiperindividualism which made us preys of the purchase at any moment and in any festive atmosphere of our daily life, thanks to the bait of the bargains, surprises, discounting, promotions and reductions. We want everything at any time, there it is the credit to the consumption to facilitate our dream. Even in this new cycle of uncertainty, with more raised taxes of unemployment and new familiar obligations. The consumption became exactly this: to answer at the hour, to the necessity and the desire.
The citizenship is another thing: it is the contribution for the common good, it is the care with the others, it is the concern with the small farm where we live, it is the beginning of the tolerance, the preservation of the properties. It is a structural value, it is dependent on the force of bonds and of the moral partnerships.
The consumption is aesthetic, the citizenship is ethic.
We are, more than one decade ago, speaking about responsible consumption oriented to the sustained development. One is speaking about buying and consuming in a different way, it even generates the illusion of that our power of purchase could be perpetual, the elementary question will be to choose environmentally less aggressive and socially fairer goods of consumption. As it is expectable, the illusion does not take anywhere, the basis it is to reconcile the consumer with the citizen, to develop a mentality that makes the adhesion to ways of sustainable production and consumption possible. In order to that to happen, the State, the autarchies, the investors, the researchers and the citizens will have to agree to a consumption and to a sustainability made of tax policy (incentives and punishment), to define themselves clearly about what is sustainable and unsustainable, to promote values of the autarky without colliding with the principles of the positive globalization (that is, that globalization that does not jam the defenceless ones nor aggravates the social, environmental, cultural or economic problems).
The consumption as factor of cultural innovation
As the tension between consumption and citizenship is not disguisable, as there are conflicts in the local, biological and cautious agriculture in contrast with the mass one that covers all the continents, the same happening in the conflicts between the public and the collective transports, between the long course commercial transports which make a serious prejudice to the heating of the Earth, between the productive and multiplying of jobs investment and the purely parasitic speculation, it is up to the society to define what it is consumption (“consumo” in Portuguese) and where it distinguishes from stress and strain (“consumição” in Portuguese). If the consumer eagerly wants everything since the lowest prices, a still more ready and fast accessibility and the multiplication of the presentations of the goods, it is unthinkable that he (she) can act in conscience in taking an individual position in favour of sustainability, what interests him (her) is to consume more, whatever the cost, and without any sense of solidarity. To buy differently, for him (her), is a slogan, an expedient, the tranquilization, in a world where it is urgent to produce uniquely what is recyclable, recoverable, reusable. That consumer does not want to be wronged in what he stipulated himself to call “freedom purchase”: if he wants to buy shower gel, environmentally more harmful than soap, he (she) must make it, with no constraints. He has the freedom to become indebted, to buy dismissible products, 4x4 vehicles, to put on his (her) table, without question, food proceeding from the more far away regions. It finds that the world goes badly but does not authorize us to argue the way he (she) consumes.
To start by the education, the contracts of the common good to be defined
In the hiperselection we consume, by definition, each time more. The changes which were registered in the composition of our alimentary regimen also have to do with the biggest amount of foods that we consume. We want cheaper, that is, we want more subsidies to the agriculture, but fertilizing, more mass production. Our alimentary ways aggravated the environmental impact, have serious economical and social consequences. It is a highly protein based alimentary regimen, with increasingly exotic food, bottled, residues, overconsumption of fish resources, etc. However, it is entirely impossible to materialize one politics of social and environmentally responsible consumption without promoting obligations of the State, the conscientious adhesion of the citizens, its sensitization for the full output of the use of the goods.
Responsible consumption and sustainable development need politics, goals, imperatives, interdictions, prizes to the conception of products which have greater income of raw material, investments that prioritize the dignity of the worker, where the speeds are co-ordinated (the acceleration of the time is increasingly expensive, is paid in money, in environmental attack and more injustice).
The politics must reward socially more responsible technologies and environment goods, the consumers must pay more expensive the unsustainable, the companies who mobilize for unsustainable products must be more taxed. And it doesn’t worth to speak about social responsibility in a situation of voluntarism when what it is about are alternative energies, behaviours which are respectful of the involving environment and the condition of the workers, taking care of the other (who can be in the countries of the South, an enslaved worker of products of prestige sold in the occidental world).
Being citizenship ethical, it is indispensable to value all the practices of fair commerce that invite the consumer to adhere to the positive globalization, acting through the purchases, in the improvement of the situation of the producers, either in the countries of the South either in the procedures of irresponsible production.
At last, it competes to the State to stimulate gratuitous information on all socially and environmentally less aggressive goods, guaranteeing that one can make responsible choices, environmentally inductive of a conscientious consumption. While such doesn’t happen, we will live of good intentions but without the guarantee of workmanship and results lasting. This will mean that the more important social cause of the sustainable development will continue postponed.
Quarta-feira, 22 de Abril de 2009
Why Evil?
Rui Barbosa*
Being God who makes everything, including Evil, could Man, through the Transhumanist current (1), touch it in order to diminish Suffering and the Impotence relatively to Cosmos? We will approach this subject in successive chronicles: We will start by answering many questions asked by Cornelia Holsten from Germany; she said:
- I think that the transhumanist development needs, from the part of its authors, stable characters with clear opinions about ethic and democratic standards that respect the dignity of mankind and resist to any experiments that could distort nature. Religion might be a good tool to support these parameters.
- I think the only realistic one. The alternative view (materialistic) would lead us to make the materially best possible for ourselves, transhumanists, and survive the best, against God, our souls and eternal life!
- Is God good?
- As creator of everything, God must be good, otherwise what would be?
- You say God loves all men, he is good - what/who would be otherwise?
- I can’t imagine that the Well could be against the Creator of everything: a well at the human taste? Better not … The notion of God as the first being points immediately to our essential impotence to understand Him totally.
- I suppose that you suppose: Since God created all beings he must love them.
- It is not an assumption, but a deduction from the notion of God, which was confirmed by Christ (before, God was considered as the Creator asking Men something, Creator that Men feared).
- Consequently: loving them means helping/caring/sheltering ...
- God is naturally responsible for all His Creation with all these nuances you tell but interpreted in His way...
- This is very vague ... and might be used as an excuse (in God's name) for everything which can't be explained.
- Naturally God loves in His (and not our) way and there are 2 ways to understand it: the subjective and the objective; the objective is through His revelation, not as an extrapolation of human love. Christ told how much He loves us: “If the Father of Heaven loves so much the birds in the sky … and the lilies in the fields which have the most beautiful dresses, how couldn’t He love you?”
- Some questions referring to that: - creating them, does it also mean God is responsible for them? Or: once created men are responsible for all their deeds? No need for God anymore? No help ... anymore?
- God is responsible for Man namely, and wants Man free to a certain extent.
- To which extent are men/is God responsible?
- God is a presence inside every men, that Man can “listen” or refuse to: this is the freedom of Man.
- Why are most new-born children already disadvantaged?
- From the point of view of God, they are not disadvantaged, they are in advantage in His overall project; they are like that due to Nature which has its laws and probably to some primordial evil that I’ll focus later.
- Why did God create also bad characters and ill-minded men?
- There are several types of Evil (2), besides the referred Primordial one and that of the Necessity of working (this one focused in my previous chronicles); they are:
- The Necessity of evolving by Tentative and errors
- The evil of Decomposition namely death, and
- The evil of Loneliness and anguish.
Being the Necessity of working, Tentative and errors and Decomposition explained by Teillard de Chardin as tools for the Evolution; these types of evil are considered as necessary to the evolution of the World, namely Mankind.
- For the disadvantaged individual it is no comfort at all to know he is necessary as a tool while others are favoured.What evidence does he have to know there is an evolutionary plan behind which might be only 'effective' when hehas been dead for decades or even centuries? Why should he believe and trust in God?.
Reader! The size of my chronicle is becoming close to what was arranged, therefore we will have to pursue in the next chronicle … Until then …
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Reseracher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citações
(1) Internet: http://Transhumanismo.blogs.sapo.pt
(2) “The Human Phenomenon”; Teillard de Chardin
I'm feeling: 
Deceived
Music: Marylin Manson
Terça-feira, 7 de Abril de 2009
God and … Nature
Rui Barbosa*
As it was God who made the laws of Nature, will Man be able to touch them in order to diminish Suffering and his Impotence relatively to Cosmos?
Here are some of the questions asked by Cornelia Holsten, from Germany:
- A stone dropping down to the bottom might raise two questions: Is it because it just obeys to the gravitation law?
- Yes, because of that law
- Or was it primarily God's will to let it drop according to the gravitation law?
- It is because of an indirect will of God through a law He created … except if it is by an exceptional God’s intervention (miracle)
- The question behind these questions: Can it be true that the laws of nature explain us the world while these laws lack of explanations themselves?
- Their explanation resides in the will and intelligence of God
- Do we have probably not understood what it is if we had not understood how it came into being?
- The 2 problems are put in 2 different areas: Science and Religion
- Considering some things real and some statements true - this might be the way how we bring us into relationship with the world to comprehend it. The irrational, the secrets … but why should we believe it is God who is behind it? Is God just the fill-in for the unexplainable?
- No, and this was, for a time, a wrong argument for the existence of God (He would explain the unexplainable for Science); it is Religion that has to explain God.
- If God is responsible for the universe there must be an universal God. Most likely there will be no agreement about.
- God is no doubt universal.
- …
- Is the term "cultural identity" a vacuum cleaner which absorbs and mixes also genuine elements of religious experience, the effectiveness of faith and teachings, techniques of dissemination like rituals, books and pictures, as well as traditions to a "culture"? (except fundamentalists: they are ill-disposed towards art, but favour the paradox: top level technical standards and petrified religion.). There are two sights: How the individual sees his own cultural identity and the view from outside on peoples and different groups. But it remains the challenge for each individual: Which God and how much God do I need to feel secure and balanced but free enough to transform my skills in order to move something to the (hopefully!) better?
- God is only one and wants the best for Man in His way; nevertheless, the paths to Him can be multiple; the angel in the Crèche said: “to all men of good will” and not only “to the Jews”.
- Humanitarian ethos and philanthropic moral are characteristics of the Christian religions. They include not only the care for the relatives but also for the parish, even the outlaws - thus developing from the religious commandment to a cultural requirement with enormous social consequences. It opens space to identify with Christianity. But doesn't our disparate society calls for solidarity, anyway? It is a democratic right and duty...
- What sense would it have without a being above the Physical World? According to Darwinism, it would have no sense… only a loss of effort which was wasted in our quest for survival, the aim of Humankind according to Darwin…
- Nevertheless: Couldn't we do without a God? Would we/the world be worse then?
- Yes, because it would go without direction. The refusal of God by Dawkins on the basis that without Religion the World would be better, met 2 typical counterexamples: Hitler and Stalin where atheists …
- To conclude: What has it all to do with Transhumanism?
It has to do in the sense that Transhumanism is supposed to change very deeply the Human and Environmental Condition; then, are there limits? Until where should we act? That’s the reason I started my transhumanist proposals by stating clearly the context, as objectively as I could (1) …
We will write in the next chronicle about the reason for the existence of Evil.
*PhD in Engineering (U. Grenoble, France), Researcher in Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) http://transhumanismo.blogs.sapo.pt/977.html
I'm feeling: 
Interrogative
Music: Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony
Quinta-feira, 26 de Março de 2009
Creation and ... Transhumanism
Rui Barbosa*
Technology will allow a) mitigating some of the worse evils affecting Humanity, and b) to ourselves to become more powerful:
- Lack of Democracy (that causes Illness, Hunger and War), Pollution and routine Work of Mass Production (around 2020)
- Impossible or dangerous Works (around 2050)
- Unpleasant Works (much later than 2100).
But the obligation to work is not the only evil that makes Man suffer; in the next chronicles we will see how we will be able to try to diminish the other forms of suffering; to approach them, we need to revisit the process of the Creation.
From God, pure spirit, in-temporally sprouts a “blow”, everything that exists, according to an important Philosopher and Physicist (1). But what blow is that one? “Blow” remembers spirit because, in the Bible, “blow” was used to refer to an “immaterial principle of life”.
In temporal terms (since Time was born in the Big-bang), from God, infinite being, will have sprouted a kind of initial fire ball with energy also tending for infinite … Energy realized in force. And the Cosmos is a set of forces (2), according to many present day physicists, which, to the similarity of God even if only in the physical plan, is one, indivisible, omnipotent, and omnipresent … and that “coagulates”, in determined circumstances (namely in the presence of an observer), in the Matter… According to Teillard de Chardin (3), in the Universe, since its beginning, have actuated, alternatively, forces of re-ordering of the beings with other beings and of centring of the beings in themselves (for instance, in Atomic Physics, those connecting the electrons of different atoms or those making the electrons to turn around the nuclei); a re-ordering being followed by a centring and this being followed by a new reordering to a superior level of aggregation of the beings concerned; the vector of the Evolution being the increasing complexity of the beings with a corresponding increase of their respective conscience. The complexification of the human society constituting gradually a kind of supra-humanity gradually adding the consciences and self-consciousnesses that are coming to existence (and not only the consciences: it is not a synthesis of the individual contributions, but a personalized and additive “corpus” of all the individual persons that have existed…).
The Christ Phenomenon
Historically, Jesus Christ was conscientious to have brought the Kingdom of God defined in the Old Testament. And His disciples, after a short period of loss of heart, confessed to have seen Him resurrected (that is, with an alive body, after dead) and continued His preaching of the Kingdom of God, that would be accessible to Man through Christ, who was the Way, the Truth and the Life. Christ “divided” the Human Time in 2: before and later; Christ is therefore a unique man in His quality…
Christ stirred up Man to give more importance to a life that is not seen, nor smelled, nor herd, nor touched and still less tasted, than to the material life. That is the Spiritual Life, which is perpetual, which means without beginning or end (therefore not to confuse with a life that would only start after Death…).
Transhumanism
The use of Technology for the living beings to suffer less and be more powerful only can be inserted in this context and it cannot abstract from it. By the way, the Vatican emitted a declaration in which it says that the creation of a superman, or superior being, by human hands, is "unthinkable", because a true improvement can only happen through the religious experience and "carrying through more fully the image of God". For who is not convinced, we will remember that Religion is a valuable source of knowledge, because of the principle of Kant (we cannot deceive much people during much time)…
We will, in the next chronicle, write a little more about the relation between God and the Nature.
*PhD in Engineering (U. of Grenoble, France), Researcher on Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) Hans-Peter Dürr, PhD in Philosophy and former director of the Max Planck Institute of Physics and Astrophysics of Munich
(2) “Enigma of God Matter and Man”; Hans-Peter Dürr et altri; Daily Ed. of Notice
(3) “the Human Phenomenon”; Teillard de Chardin; Ed. Paulus
I'm feeling: 
Happy
Terça-feira, 10 de Março de 2009
"Sociable" and ... "Emotive" humanoids!!!!
Rui Barbosa*
That means capable of an interactive and communicative behaviour with Man. The objective is (1) “to surpass the social barrier Man-robot, and for that we are developing a robot having “own personality”, and that can behave according to the social conventions. The idea is that the communication of Man with Robots must become easy and pleasant, exactly as the first one was not trained for such communication … The new robots very developed in Japan will be sociable; or other more technical ones such as those for Search and Rescue, Attended Surgery, or Combat to Fires, which are destined to act in contexts which are inhabited by human beings, and not in contexts that require little (if some) interaction with them, as, for instance, in the inspection of petrol wells. On the other hand, if the robots will be able to come to practise some forms of social learning (as the imitation, the emulation, the actuation under guardianship, etc.), also would it would become easier to the human being to train them….”
Let us see some projects in this area:
- Anthropocentric robotics (2): it aims to improve the interaction Man-Robot using methods of research, which are proper of Anthropology, to study what people thinks of the robots
- Social Interaction between people and robots (3): it is about, in particular, a method of conception of robots to these to have the appropriate interaction with people
- Receptionist robots (4): useful assistants, competent, and socially enough convincing, to interact with humans during a long period of time; robots that, beyond giving information on the organizations and the offices, have “personalities” that go disclosing throughout time through the interaction with people and the telephonic conversations with families and friends…
- Living Robots that breathe (5): very diverse the robots being researched in this project: humanoid, synthetic brains, artificial agents inserted in multimedia clothes that cooperate with the human beings in order to learn; artificial creatures put in the world such as if they were flyers, or robots with social interaction of the type of the human, that are not yet “living beings”.
But…
Should the Humanoids come to also have emotions (Fear, Desire/anticipation, Hatred, Abandonment, etc.)?
Yes, to be able to interact socially in a convincing way, and, also, to survive, as it happens with the animals…
The “neurological circuits” of the Animal Emotion are widely distributed through the Brain (6): one uncovered that in this resides the centre of command of the cited emotions. How to implement the emotions in the robots (7)? Rodney Brooks, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), defined a methodology for it (8). With such humanoids, we will be able to deliver many activities to them that are boring for ourselves …
We saw until here how Technology will be able to help to diminish some of the worst evils that devastate Humanity and to become more powerful facing Cosmo:
- Lack of Democracy (cause of Illness, Hunger and War), Pollution, routine Work of Mass Production (until about 2020)
- Impossible or dangerous Works (until about 2050)
- Unpleasant Works (much after 2100).
But, the obligation to work is not the only cause of Man’s suffering. In the next chronicles we will see how we will be able to try to diminish the other forms of suffering. Totality of my chronicles: World Transhumanist Association - Portuguese Chapter (http://Transhumanismo.blogs.sapo.pt). *PhD in Engineering (University of Grenoble, France), Researcher on Informatics Artificial Life for more than 30 years, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) Breazeal, Cynthia; Robotic Life Group, Media Lab, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
(5) Living Breathing Robots, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) (6) Special Number on the Emotion; Science et Vie magazine (
(7) Virtual Agents with emotions, “own personality”, and “indeterminate” behavior; “software” Charlote; Fujitsu
(8) Lino, Tiago; Student of Psychology of the Autonomous U. of Lisbon; tiko.alex@clix.pt
I'm feeling: More accompanied
Humanoids could come to have … “conscience”
Rui Barbosa*
According to Michio Kaku (1), Computer Science, Molecular Biology and Quantum Physics might enable us to build entirely artificial brains. On the other hand, according to an emeritus Biologist of Evolution (2), the Human Conscience could be a product of complex sub-systems of the Brain. Therefore, if those artificial brains we referred to could come to imitate the natural ones, it should become possible to emerge from them a “conscience” similar to ours … Very interesting, in this area, the works to be carried through in the Santa Fe Institute, U.S.A., and those of the team of Luis Paulo Reis from the College of Engineering of the University of Porto (winner of 2 World Championships of Robotic Soccer Simulation). L. P. Reis, in an interview to the DN Magazine, reported the emergency of “conscience” in robots ….
Soul?
Reader, arrange yourself in your chair because I’m going to tell you the story of the film “I, Robot”, of the Twentieth Century Fox: Once upon a time, in the year 2035, had been conceived, by a scientist, robots that served of salesmen to the domicile, familiar assistants, and “men of the garbage”; such robots had been manufactured and distributed in mass and all the people of the Chicago of 2035 had a total confidence in them, because the respective hardware did not allow them to cause damages to any Human being, compelled them to obey orders given by the human beings except if they entered in conflict with the 1st Law, and to defend themselves except if such defence entered in conflict with the 1st or the 2nd laws…
Actually, such robots were dangerous: it happened that, at a certain instant, by natural evolution (3), random pieces of software appeared in them. Then, the scientist formulated to himself the following interrogations:
1. There have always been random pieces of software in computers
2. Random segments of software that grouped themselves to form unexpected protocols
3. These “free radicals” generate questions of Will, Freedom, Creativity, even of the nature of what one could call “soul”
Remark: what the scientist called “soul” is something very different from its theological notion; the Soul, according to Catholicism (4), is "the spiritual principle in Man, because of which he is more especially to the image of God". Therefore, the only common point between the robots and men was their freedom in relation to its own programmer, the scientist….
Still about the (im)possibility of existence of robotic souls, I comment below an interview given by Ray Kurzweil, one of the most known names of Transhumanism (5).
- Kurzweil said: “We don’t see anything (in Man) that can be identified as a soul – we see only a very complicated amount of neurons, but no conscience can be seen”.
- My answer: the Soul is not a material faculty, it is spiritual, therefore can never be seen.
- Kurzweil, because he’s not capable to see the Soul, deduces the following: “Therefore, the soul is an emergent property of a very complex system”
- My answer: Kurzweil does not refer to the Soul according to the encyclopaedias of Theology… I prefer to think that the Soul is not to our visual reach, and to believe, as the majority, in the Soul given to Man by God …
- Kurzweil goes on: “Therefore we will attribute conscience to the entities even if they do not have any biology, even if they are completely mechanical entities: they will seem human beings, they will seem to have conscience”
- I say: with this I agree. “They will seem” is the only usable term
- Kurzweil: “We will attribute souls to them; but this is not a scientific assertion”
- My answer: again, Kurzweil is speaking about something which is not the Soul; and as what he says is not a scientific assertion, what competence has he to speak about it when compared with the one of the Theologians?
* PhD in Engineering by the University of Grenoble, France, Researcher for more than 30 years in Informatics Artificial Life, transhumanismo@sapo.pt.
Citations
(1) Kaku, Michio; Visões - As Science will revolutionize the XXI Century
(2) Wuketits in “Enigmas of God Matter and Man”; Hans-Peter Dürr et altri
(3) Caused by Nature; in contrast with an artificial evolution of artificial beings produced by Man
(4) Catechism of the Catholic Church, paragraph 382; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soul#Christian_beliefs (5) Kurzweil: " Technology is double-edged sword" ; http://management.silicon.com/itpro/0,39024675,39345605,00.htm?r=4
Terça-feira, 10 de Fevereiro de 2009
Humanoids taking decisions ... alone
Rui Barbosa*
We already saw that a characteristic of Man it is that he has a Reflective Spirit instead of the Self-concept of the other animals; and that this spirit looks as it “manipulated” the Conscience (1), which is a kind of mental video that the Spirit winds back and forth in time, trying solutions for problems, in a virtual way (2), without having to try them in real life. It is the instrument of the capacity of conscient decision. The Reflective Spirit is therefore an evolutionary advantage because it allows the prevention of dangerous situations for the survival of its owner. Moreover, it is a work instrument: practically all the works that the human beings carry through, require capacity of conscient decision, even not mentioning those where this capacity is very critical, such as as in Aeronautical Pilots (ex.: the pilot of the airplane that landed on water in the Hudson river), Surgeons and Search and Rescue Agents…
Therefore, if we want the Humanoids to replace ourselves as much as possible in this kind of jobs, they must have a simulation, as much as possible, of the Human Reflective Spirit (in specific areas, it can be much more powerful than one’s spirit: just remember that a computer won to the World Champion of Chess…).
Much after 2100, according to Michio Kaku (3), we could have the possibility to know the totality of the human brain (however, Klaus Hepp, Emeritus Professor of the famous ETH of Zurich (4), where Einstein was a professor too, considers impossible, by definition, to know the Self-consciousness …).
Michio Kaku says also that it could then be possible to build humanoids taking decisions alone… free from human tele-command, and able to act as our stewards. The question that arises is then the following: Wouldn’t such humanoids be a danger for the human beings as well as for their properties? … To avoid this danger, it will be necessary that:
1 They will be built in accordance with the 3 laws defined by Asimov many years ago, and that we would expand for properties:
1.1 No robot will be able to cause damage to any Human Being, or property (in this case, except when asked by its owner), or, by inaction, to allow that such happens
1.2 All robots will have to obey the orders given by the Human Beings, except if those orders conflict with the 1st Law
1.3 All the robots will have to defend themselves, except if such defence conflicts with the 1st or the 2nd laws.
These laws will have probably to be implemented in the hardware of the humanoids.
2. Even built according to those laws, we should ensure the correction of those humanoids throughout all their conception and development (5)
3. Finally, their users should have always the possibility to disconnect them in case of bad functioning… (this rule is defended by most scientists).
If you look around, there are already many human tasks which could be executed by humanoids: “I am speaking with Mr.….”, “Have a good day Mr…., how are you, are you well?”, “What can I do for you Mr….?”, “The best flight is …”.
Some important references on the main world-wide projects of Humanoids can be found in (6).
In my next chronicle, in 15 days, I will show how the humanoids could become, besides our employees, our partners in life…
Reader, you can accede to the totality of my chronicles on Transhumanism, at this blog, which has the contribution of some personalities and has had visitors from more than 17 countries of several continents. For private questions, email me to transhumanismo@sapo.pt...
*PhD in Engineering by the University of Grenoble, France, Researcher for more than 30 years in Informatics Artificial Life.
Citations
(1) “Enigmas of God Matter and Man”; Hans-Peter Dürr et altri
(2) However, the Spirit is not the “I”, but it is in front of it, being able to almost dialogue with it
(3) Kaku, Michio; Visions - As Science Will Revolutionize the XXI Century
(5) Formal Verification of Autonomous Systems; Robotics Institute, U. Carnegie Mellon, U.S.A., http://www.ri.cmu.edu/projects and Automated Software Engineering Group, NASA Ames Research Centre
(6) World' s greatest android projects http://www.androidworld.com/prod01.htm
I'm feeling: 
In rest
Music: Kraftwerke
