Dinner with Portillo [main course]

A criticism of the ‘transhumanist’ point raised in Michael Portillo’s prandial discussion of morality and science.

The Dinner with Portillo TV series continues to fascinate me - this time his guests were discussing the moral status of scientists. If you need someone to miss the point, ask for Susan Greenfield. Mr Portillo’s decision to invite her to his dinner party discussion was a point-missing case in point – but if you want more evidence for my hypothesis you can look to her widely published scepticism about the web, which has always struck me as poorly reasoned too.

In this circumstance it’s not fair to single her out though, because all the guests seemed to fumble with an important nub of the transhumanist issue.

In case you haven’t delved into this topic yourself, transhumanism is simply the idea that technology might be used to radically change and improve human capabilities beyond those bestowed on us through the natural biological processes. In a common example, computer memory might be implanted in your brain, with the revolutionary effect of preventing you from losing the car keys (or perhaps more importantly preventing you from forgetting anything at all).

There are, as you might imagine, some proponents of the idea who fall into the mad scientist trope – for example Aubrey de Grey; but it’s an idea to take seriously too - Nick Bostrom is a good place to look to find a robust defence. (He has a great website here.)

Professor Bostrom, as a surefooted philosopher, would quickly have taken Suzanne to pieces. Her argument held that because we could not specify what a perfect human looked like we could not take transhumanism seriously. This is of course rubbish. We don’t know what the perfect painting looks like - doesn’t mean we aren’t able to rate painters, or strive to improve our painting ability. Portillo did try to tell her this, and predictably she wasn’t interested in hearing it.

But the underlying assumption of the discussion, the enthymeme in the room, was that transhumanism is somewhere in the future. Are we not already, in an important way, transhuman? In the previously noted example, there was horror at the thought that a computer might be implanted to give greatly enhanced cognitive abilities. What is really qualitatively different here between me reaching into my pocket for the calculator on my phone and accessing a mathematical faculty that has been prosthetically added to my brain? I can do a sum that even 50 years ago was beyond the reach of even the most powerful computer in either case. The difference is a question, basically, of ergonomics. Right now I need to have the phone with me, in the future I may have direct mental access. Surely, the most important upgrade in human faculties has already happened. Being able to do the sum in my head would be the icing on the cake, not the beef in the beef wellington.

The same must surely be true of so many other things. I don’t have an artificially improved memory, but I do have the internet in my pocket, which has a similar effect on my ability to recover certain kinds of information.

I will admit that there is a big psychological barrier around the idea of having your actual body enhanced, as opposed to using a device to get the extra functionality, but reality is that there would be little difference in practice.

I think a great example are the recently developed augmented reality goggles which give mechanics information on the things they are looking at and guide them through various repairs and procedures using terminator-style graphic overlays. If someone suggested mechanics be implanted with an automotive knowledge chip Susan Greenfield would probably organise a press conference to condemn it. But the goggles, which do exactly the same thing in all practical respects, barely warrant a ripple in the media.

It’s a shame that Susan Greenfield is so leery of enhancement, because it’s beginning to look like she might benefit from some herself… OK, I don’t mean it – I’m sure Baroness Greenfield, Professor of Synaptic Pharmacology at Oxford, deserves more credit than I’ve given her.