Doubt Transhumanism Until Memories Are Read from Dead Men

This year the web site of the magazine Forbes has published credulous piffle about transhumanism, the belief that technology will create a new breed of enhanced humans. An example was the August 22 article by John Nosta entitled “It's Official, the Transhuman Era Has Begun.” The sole evidence offered to support for this claim was that a press release had been issued by some organization called Gartner, a press release claiming, “Over the next decade, humanity will begin its 'transhuman' era: Biology can then be hacked, depending on lifestyle, interests and health needs.” How naive is that, to assume that we have entered a new era because someone issues a press release making vague predictions that something will happen in the next ten years?

Almost as credulous was another article on the Forbes site, issued on October 1 and entitled, “Human 2.0 Is Coming Faster Than You Think. Can You Evolve with the Times?” The article by Neil Sahota states, “The reality of transhumanism has not just caught on with the general public as a distinct possibility — it has become a living, breathing reality.” Sahota's evidence for the claim that we are on the brink of enhancing humans is merely stuff like the fact that Google has hired Ray Kurzweil, the fact that Elon Musk is spending some money on some company trying to make electronic links to the brain, and the fact that some country did the goofy act of giving citizenship to a robot. Knowing that tech mogul Paul Allen put many millions into a radio search for extraterrestrials that has not paid off, we shouldn't regard tech mogul investment as being much of a validation of something.

Rather laughably, Sahota tries to make Vernor Vinge (who coined the term “the Singularity”) look like a successful technological prophet. Sahota states the following:

To truly grasp the significance of Vinge’s thinking, it’s important to realize where we were as a society in the early 1990s. Back then, the invention of smartphones and social media platforms were years away. The Internet itself, now so vital to all aspects of our life — communication, commerce, and entertainment — was in its infancy. Yet, here was Vinge boldly proclaiming: “Within thirty years, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.”

But anyone willing to do a little math will figure out that what Vinge predicted in 1993 was that we will have “the technological means to create superhuman intelligence” by the year 2023, something that will almost certainly not happen, as we are nowhere close to doing such a thing. Sahota tells us, “Returning to Vinge’s prescience at the end of the 20th century, we can see he was imagining a future that would occur even sooner than he predicted.” To the contrary, he predicted superhuman intelligence by 2023, which will never happen.

Sahota quotes with approval a man named Goertzel who imagines a crazy scenario (apparently with no insight into how crazy it would be):

To put this dilemma in clearer focus, Goertzel advises considering the question, not from your perspective, but from your child’s. He paints a picture: “Imagine it’s eight years from now. All the other kids in your daughter’s third-grade class are way ahead of her because their brains are connected directly to Google and a calculator, and they’re SMSing back and forth by Wi-Fi telepathy between their brains while your daughter sits there in class being stunted because she must memorize things the old-fashioned way and can’t send messages brain-to-brain.”

Think of how nutty this would be, if it occurred. Somehow acquiring the astronomical sums for such medical procedures, parents would be arranging for surgery on the brains of their children, filling their brains with wires that might have who-knows-what terrible side effects down the road, all so that their kids can use Google and a calculator without using their hands, and send instant messages without using their hands, which would seemingly be no progress at all since the same tools can be easily used today by anyone who wants to use his hands on a little smartphone in front of himself.

There is currently no sound basis for believing that human intelligence or memory could be dramatically enhanced by technological means. Optimism about such possibilities comes from people with a very dubious philosophy of mind, the belief that the mind is a product of the brain, and that memories are stored in brains. See the articles at this site for many reasons for doubting both of these claims. 

But we can imagine something that might conceivably occur which would be an indication that transhumanist hopes are well-founded. I do not at all refer to current efforts that are sometimes inaccurately called examples of “mind reading software” or “mind reading machines.” Such software is actually merely engaging in neural perception prediction. For example, you can put someone's head in a brain scanner, and then try to figure out what the person is looking at by analyzing the contents of the part of the person's brain (such as the occipital lobe) involved in vision. Such efforts aren't actually “reading thoughts” or “reading minds” but simply picking up neural traces of visual perception.

But I can imagine two different breakthroughs that might give evidence that transhumanist hopes are well-founded. The first breakthrough would be the ability to actually read the thoughts of someone who is merely thinking of random content with his eyes closed. So imagine if a person was able to randomly imagine a green rhinoceros, and to then think to himself, “A green rhinoceros would attract many visitors at a zoo”;  and imagine that some brain reading machinery was able to tell that he had thought this exact thought that a green rhinoceros would attract many visitors at a zoo. And imagine that then the person had the completely random thought, picked out of nowhere, that a yellow flying car would be nice for flying to the tops of mountains, and that some brain scanning machinery was able to tell that he had had that exact thought that a yellow flying car would be nice for flying to the top of mountains. If such progress were made, it might be a sign that the hopes of transhumanists are well-founded, on the grounds that the brain really is the source of our minds.

I can imagine another breakthrough that might give evidence that transhumanist hopes are well-founded. Imagine if we were able to use neural technology to read the memories of the living or the dead. One possibility might be that an animal might be trained by one scientist to fear some particular symbol such as a blue triangle or a red square or a purple circle. Then imagine that another scientist (who did not know which of 50 possible symbol/color combinations was used in the fear training) was then given the animal, and was able to figure out (by dissecting or scanning the animal's brain) which of the 50 symbol color/combinations had been used for the training. If such a thing was repeated many times with, say, a 70% success rate, this might be good evidence that memories are actually stored in brains. Another possibility is that memories might be extracted from the brains of a dead human. So after a person died, we might be able to somehow scan his brain, and determine his correct ATM pin number, or his computer password. That would presumably be good evidence that memories are stored in brains. Once you had such evidence, it then might be reasonable to speculate about school children downloading into their brains new school lessons, as transhumanists sometimes do.

Something that is probably impossible

Nothing like these two things has ever happened. Neuroscientists have never got good evidence that brains produce thoughts, and have never got good evidence that memories are stored in brains.  Neural tissue and synapses have been extensively examined at very high magnification with tools such as electron microscopes, but no signs of stored information have been found outside of the chemical information in DNA (present in all cells). There are many reasons for rejecting claims that brains make minds and store memories, such as the fact that the proteins in synapses have lifetimes of only a few weeks, and the fact that when epileptic children have half of their brains removed to stop seizures, there is little effect on memory or intelligence.

If a scientist were able to do either of the things I have specified, we might call that scientist the Goddard of transhumanism. A century ago beliefs that humans would travel into space seemed in the realm of pure fantasy. No one had any proof that rockets could even rise high in the atmosphere. Then Robert Goddard came along, and showed in the 1920's that rockets could indeed reach high altitudes, and that the ideas of space flight enthusiasts were on sound scientific ground. As soon as he did this successful “proof of concept” experiment, there was strong reason to think that men would one day travel in outer space. A Goddard of transhumanism would be someone who showed that the idea of electronically enhancing human intelligence is on sound ground, by showing that brains really do produce minds, or that brains really do store human episodic and conceptual memories. No such person has yet appeared, and if all the many reasons that exist for rejecting such claims are not pointing us in the wrong direction, no such person ever will appear. You can't do a “proof of concept” experiment when the concept involves an incorrect assumption.