Uplift, evolution, biotech... and Yuval Harari's worries.

Putting aside politics... at least till the end... you may enjoy this video of a cool Clarke Center event: an evening with Freeman Dyson and Gregory Benford. Fascinating topics.  

If so, a possible game changer: A scientist working for the U.S. Navy has filed for a patent on a room-temperature superconductor, built using a wire with an insulator core and an aluminum PZT (lead zirconate titanate) coating. Others claimed to have invented a room-temperature superconductor in the past. Last year, two Indian scientists pointed to wire with particles of gold and silver. Other physicists are using pressurized lanthanum and hydrogen. In Earth I speak of perovskites, which recently held the record... and make up the most common mineral in the mantle. Um... so far it's sci fi.

== Uplift: pro vs. con ==

This rumination on animal uplift is interesting - citing me and others re: the ethical quandaries involved. It also points out the tradeoffs that nature faced, as each species reached an equilibrium between smarts and reproductive strategy: “Those species moving toward higher intelligence by way of larger brains must balance that increase against the deficit of fewer children. In the midst of a genetic arms race, ten less-intelligent children is better than one brilliant one, so long as they survive to pass on their genes.” A tradeoff portrayed in the idiotic-fun-yet-thought-provoking film “Idiocracy.”

Initial experiments show that “the uplifting of non-human animals to a small degree, through the use of technology, selective breeding, and genetic engineering, has already been achieved. Supposing a continued increase in these areas of research, it's reasonable to assume that the level to which we could increase brain function of humans and non-humans will continue to rise.” 

Of course, this leaves out work being down in secret labs in Siberia and Xingkiang.

Excellent summary. Though in fact, Knapp's argument against Uplift is the best argument in favor! Since the original species would be preserved, fallow in a natural ecosystem (that we should fight to save/expand) there is no harm done to that original species. No "insult" and no replacement. The newly sapient sub-species would have its own destiny, conversing, imagining, arguing with a wider diversity of opportunity and wisdom on a planet no longer dependent on just one (human) way of seeing things. 

And if neo-dolphins and neo-chimps use their new political power to help secure jungles and clean oceans, speaking for their fallow cousins, so?  And your complaint is?

Consider, if you had one child, who decides to ditch her human body and head to the stars as a cyborg, you might be sad.  You'd likely feel different if she could both send a duplicate and remain here on Earth with ypu and your grandchildren. 


Yes, there's plenty of moral hazard, e.g. the first few dozen generations of such a project would necessarily entail mistakes, and most likely some pain. Indeed the latter outcome is the only argument against uplift that stands up to scrutiny; it certainly makes me uncomfortable!  As for the "colonialism" dig, well, those making it are themselves examples of a new maturity that is enabling humanity to face its old mistakes. Without that gradually emerging wisdom, I'd be the first to say: "don't do this!" But ironically, the objectors exemplify why we may be (almost) ready.

See my earlier posting: Will we uplift other species to sapience?

== Bio & Biotech ==

DNA's ingredients, called nucleotides, are four components called adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine that fit together in sequences making up the genetic code. New kinds of synthetic DNA include those components as well as four others in a new double-helix structure that works to store and transfer information. Hachimoji DNA, in Japanese, means "eight letter." This kind of research can shed light on potential kinds of alien life. But there are implications you won’t read about in the science press.

First, this has implications for the future of experimental life design. If new, potentially dangerous life forms are required to utilize at least a few, vital proteins that can only be made using these new codons, then those life forms – or related nanomachines – will be utterly dependent on “nutrient” materials made only in a few human run factories. Such bottleneck control could prove crucial in the event of a blunder. And blunders happen.

Second, before we get all misty about the likely variability of life across the cosmos, note that the same sort of nutrient restriction might bar us from colonizing far-off interstellar worlds, if the native ecosystem provides nothing colonists can eat.

Only I’m not sure I buy it. The reason is… adenine, one of the four nucleotides we use in DNA and RNA. It’s the easiest on to make – almost trivially in Miller-Urey-Orgel experiments. It’s also the backbone of the other main chemical of life, ATP which mediates use of energy from sugars. 

I doubt and water-carbon-light based life will forego use of this keystone molecule. Which means that thymine (which pairs with adenine in DNA) and uracil  (which pairs with adenine in RNA) are likely prevalent, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if there are then dynamic/chemical reasons why cytosine and guanine would also be favored (look at how they nestle next to Adenine and thymine) leading to pretty much standard DNA and RNA.

If  you find bio beings using other codons, I'd suspect they had artificial ancestors.

== Philosophical musings ==

From Yuval Noah Harari’s tome Homo Deus: “Our new-found knowledge leads to faster economic, social, and political changes... Consequently we are less and less able to make sense of the present or forecast the future.” And yet, in fact, humans have led far more predictable lives than any of their ancestors.

Harari does envision a glorious expansion of human capabilities: 
“Homo sapiens is not going to be exterminated by a robot revolt. Rather, Homo sapiens is likely to upgrade itself step by step, merging with robots and computers in the process.” 
But he cannot bring himself to see a win-win. Rather, this tech-apotheosis is portrayed happening in a way that mimics the past calamities. 
“Once Google, Facebook and other algorithms become all-knowing oracles, they may well evolve into agents and finally into sovereigns.”

Oh, it’s true enough that 6000 years of dismal, recorded history shows this happening time and again. Wondrous capabilities do seem often to be monopolized or hoarded by elites, or used as tools of oppression. Likewise, these new tools might be gathered up by topmost hierarchs like kings, priesthoods or Googles. 

What is missed by Yuval Harari is not that darkly obvious extrapolation, but any seeming awareness that we have alternatives and some recent experience using them. Like the democratization of powerful technologies. Today, every citizen carries sophisticated instrumentalities, starting with powerful cameras, but soon to include chemical and environmental sensors. (In the U.S., their right to aim them at authority is now “settled law.”) Hence, it is at least conceivable that we may incorporate Google-developed tools of info-management not in a centralized-dystopic way, but as dispersed agents who are loyal to each of us, even as additional personal organs, the way that humans layered-in the prefrontal cortex quite recently (in evolutionary terms). 

Again, as in many other potentially Orwellian trends, the deciding factor may be a matter of social choice. (I depicted this possibility long ago in a story “Stones of Significance.”)


== Political lagniappe ==

Just a reminder of what pundits have been too stupid to point out... that the only thing the Mueller Report "cleared" Donald Trump of was direct collusion with Kremlin acts of war against the American Republic during 2016. The Trump Tower meetings and WikiLeaks and calling publicly for Russian hacking... they were bad, but always the weakest parts to prosecute.

That's it. Nothing else is exonerated. And the following jpeg is way obsolete -- a couple of months old. The counts are still rising.