Max More's Strategic Philosophy

My new responsibility as CEO of Alcor Foundation

2010-12-24T18:16:00.002-06:00

After an exhaustive set of interviews and background checks, the board of directors of Alcor Life Extension Foundation have given me the position of CEO, starting January 1, 2011. This is a challenging and exciting opportunity, especially since it's a kind of return -- I started a cryonics organization (with several friends) in England way back in 1986.

The official announcement is here: Alcor blog

The Perils of Precaution, full version

2010-09-01T09:35:00.002-05:00

The combined six blog posts are now available in a single essay, with notes, on my main website: http://www.maxmore.com/perils.htm

Perils, Part 6: Fatal to the Future

2010-08-23T10:46:00.002-05:00

Fatal to the Future

The precautionary principle is ultra-conservative. “Conservative” here does not mean “right-wing”, nor does it refer to the Republican Party in the USA or the Conservative Party in England. I mean it in the most literal sense: that which conserves the existing order. Factions of widely differing agendas may share an interest in the status quo. In the USA, this makes sense of the unholy alliance of religious conservatives and extreme environmentalists in their attack on biotechnology.

The ultraconservative nature of the principle explains support for it both by environmentalists and large political and even commercial bodies. Some businesses are highly conservative and opposed to innovation—those who lack confidence in their ability to innovate or don’t want to bother. These organizations can use the principle to lock down the status quo, protecting their position from disruption by new and potentially superior technologies.

Sonja Boehmer-Christiansen, environmental policy specialist and editor of the journal Energy and Environment, noted that “Virtually all scientific and technological discoveries create, initially at least, powerful losers who can activate the prevailing ideological and political system against the new.” The precautionary principle serves as a pretext for activists with anti-technology and anti-business agendas. Once the principle of precaution is in place, defenders of what is only have to raise the barest possibility of a harm to block the creative activity of the forces of what could be.

Defenders of national economic interests (as they see them) can easily invoke the precautionary principle. The protracted dispute between the European Commission and the United States and Canada over restrictions on hormone-treated beef cattle is a case in point. The EC explicitly argued that the precautionary principle justifies restricting imports of U.S. and Canadian beef from cattle treated with particular growth hormones. Perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that the World Trade Organization (WTO) comes under heavy attack from environmental precautionists, given that this body ruled in favor of the United States and Canada. The WTO pointed out that even the EC’s favored scientific studies failed to demonstrate a real or imminent harm when these hormones were used according to accepted animal husbandry practices. This finding has not stopped the EC from enforcing restrictions on hormone-treated beef. The European Commission has promised that it will not allow the precautionary principle to be abused. Apparently the EC believes that promises are made to be broken.

Organizational learning experts have converged on the view that we learn best by experimenting, by learning in action. This is why companies shelling out their own money for corporate learning programs now favor learning on the job and simulations rather than traditional classrooms or standalone online learning courses. The precautionary principle is fatal to the future because it prevents us from learning by experimenting. Earlier in the chapter, we saw that the principle would have blocked most of the scientific discoveries of the past, as well as the technologies they enabled. Scientific and medical research necessarily gets going before we have all the information. We learned about some blood groups, for example, only by doing transfusions.

The precautionary principle, by halting activity, reduces learning and reinforces uncertainty. When the FDA responded with excessive precaution to the 1999 death of a patient in a University of Pennsylvania gene therapy trial for a genetic disease, work in gene therapy throughout the country and beyond was set back by years. The FDA might instead have taken measures to ensure more thoroughly informed consent, or have put additional safeguards in place without halting all research. We will uncover a wider range of both potential harms and benefits through action learning—what organizational theorist Karl Weick has called “looking while leaping.” Allowing a diversity of directions for technological advancement produces more learning and problem-solving than a single direction imposed by a centralized policy-making institution.

Practically all advances with a scientific basis come with some risk. If the mere possibility of harm—to someone, somewhere, somehow—is held up as sufficient reason to stop activity, we would have to say goodbye to all medical, engineering, and technological advances. Nor can precautionists reasonably require innovators to demonstrate the “necessity” of any particular advance. For one thing, necessity is in the eye of the beholder. The extreme environmental activist will judge just about every technological advance to be “unnecessary”.

Besides, each technology invariably forms a bridge to later technologies with even greater benefits and lower costs. We complain about burning fossil fuels for energy, understandably enough. But they are far cleaner than burning wood, may well be made cleaner, and without them we would not be able to invest the resources and knowledge necessary for the transition to the solar-hydrogen-nuclear future.

We saw that, compared with regulations for traditional breeding techniques, the regulation of gene-spliced crops is inconsistent, arbitrary, and not apportioned to risk. This has the effect of slowing innovation in impoverished parts of the world. Crop breeders who use traditional techniques test thousands of new genetic variants every year. When it comes to gene-spliced crops, however, requiring regulatory review of each and every variant effectively stifles research conducted with the most advanced and precise methods.

Lying next to the almost-dead body of agricultural biotechnology we find medical biotechnology. Carl Djerassi, emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, is the father of the modern contraceptive Pill. According to Djerassi, “The precautionary principle is also the principal reason why we still have no such [contraceptive] Pill for men.”

Talking of dead bodies, if the precautionary principle is used to block genetic modification of insects and bacteria, bodies killed by Chagas’ disease will continue to pile up. This disease—accompanied by a resurgence of malaria, dengue fever, and yellow fever—has erupted in Latin America, infecting 12 million to 18 million people out of the 90 million in the area. Once infected with the protozoa Trypanosoma cruzi, carried by several species of insects, between 10 and 30 percent of people develop chronic, life-threatening maladies such as heart failure. Already, 50,000 people die from invasion by this organism each year.

No vaccine or cure exists for Chagas’ disease. That could change if the precautionary principle is kept at bay. Scientists hope to augment conventional public health measures with genetically modified insects and bacteria. They want to use the “sterile-insect technique” to combat Chagas’ disease—but will governments mouthing the precautionary principle allow the release of these genetically modified bugs?

Many medical techniques and technologies now familiar to us, such as open-heart surgery, and X-rays, had to pass through what Norman Levitt described as a “heroic stage.” This will be just as true of future medical technologies. Consistent application of the precautionary principle would halt developments in their heroic, experimental, poorly understood phase, preventing them from ever becoming the standard techniques. Levitt goes on to say:

At a more basic level, research programs in molecular biology would have been badly crippled. The now-standard tricks associated with 'genetic engineering' - restriction enzymes and the polymerase chain reaction - would have had a difficult time making their way into the armamentarium of investigators.

Change happens regardless of the precautionary principle. If we stifle changes initiated by our brightest, most creative minds, we will be left with inadvertent changes. The direction of those changes is far more likely to be one that we don’t like. The asymmetrical nature of the precautionary principle ignores natural, unchosen changes that have their origin in nature, chance, or the environment. But changes, advance, and progress that come from science are treated as the enemy.

As Ingo Potrykus, emeritus professor of Plant Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology, and the inventor of Golden Rice, said: “The application of the precautionary principle in science is in itself basically anti-science. Science explores the unknown, and therefore can a priori not predict the outcome.”

The future is the realm of the unknown. We can do much better to understand, anticipate, and prepare for the possible futures that lie ahead, but a large element of the unknown will remain. If we are to continue improving the human condition—and possible even move beyond it—we must remain open to the unknown. We must throw out the precautionary principle. Friends of the future will see how the principle would prevent us from developing and applying practically all of the emerging technologies for enhancing and transforming the human condition: genetic techniques, neuromedical implants, nanotechnology, biotechnology, machine intelligence, and so on. Had the precautionary principle been in effect at any time in the past, today would never have arrived. The precautionary principle is the enemy of extropy.

If this principle should be avoided by policymakers and executives making a decision about the development, deployment, regulation, or marketing of a new technology, what are the alternatives? They should start out by thinking about the kind of decision they are making, then identify the optimal way to make it. This requires a structured decision-making process. The wisdom of ultimate precaution turns out to be false. Real wisdom comes from structure.

Perils, Part 5: Failures of the Precautionary Principle

2010-08-23T09:27:00.003-05:00

Failures of the Precautionary Principle

Having seen the precautionary principle in action, we can identify its shortcomings quickly. Before I get to two of the problems with especially strong anti-innovation effects, I want to examine eight other defects that render the precautionary principle capable of generating only dangerously distorted conclusions.

Failure of Objectivity: Any decision procedure adequate for handling the complexities of technological and environmental risks affecting multiple parties must be objective. Objectivity here means “following a structured, explicit procedure informed by the relevant fields of knowledge.” Those fields include risk analysis, economics, the psychology of decision making, and verified forecasting methods. In the absence of a well-designed, structured procedure, assessment and decision making will be distorted by cognitive and interest-based biases, emotional reactions, ungrounded public perceptions and pressures from lobbyists, and popular but unreliable approaches to analysis and forecasting. The precautionary principle does nothing to ensure that decision makers use reliable, objective procedures. Several of the points below detail ways in which the principle lacks objectivity.

Distracts from Greater Threats: The precautionary principle distracts citizens and policy makers from established, major threats to health. The heavy emphasis on taking precautionary measures for any proposed danger, no matter how speculative, draws attention away from any comparative assessment of risks and costs. The principle embodies the imperative to eliminate all risk from some proposed source, ignoring the background level of risk, and ignoring other sources of risk that may be more deserving of action. Environmental activists usually target human-caused effects while giving the destructive aspects of “nature” a free ride. Nature itself brings with it a risk of harms such as infection, hunger, famine, and environmental disruption.

We should apply our limited resources first to major risks that we know are real, not merely hypothetical. The more we attend to merely hypothetical threats to health and environment, the less money, time, and effort will remain to deal with substantial health problems that are highly probable or thoroughly established. The principle errs in focusing on future technological harms that might occur, while ignoring natural risks that are actually occurring.

Vague and Unclear: Everything about the principle is easily interpreted in differing ways. As the authors of the May 2000 paper in Science, say, “its greatest problem, as a policy tool, is its extreme variability in interpretation.” The Treaty on European Union gives the principle great importance by referring to it, yet does not define it. Once given a specific interpretation, the principle is simple. Simplicity is the source of its appeal. Simplicity is a virtue—so long as it does not come at the expense of adequacy.

The precautionary principle is too simple. In versions that mention “irreversible harm”, no account is given of irreversibility. Most environmental changes can be reversed, though it may be costly to do so. Even when effects are truly irreversible, that fact alone does not make the changes significant. The principle lacks clarity also because it leaves us without any guidance in cases where resulting harm arrives along with benefits—and this is the rule rather than the exception. The principle leaves us in the dark as to how we should go about preventing harm. As we have seen, precautionary measures can themselves be harmful and costly.

Lack of Comprehensiveness: Any procedure that claims to be both rational and equitable in assessing the desirability of restrictions on productive human activity must be comprehensive. This means taking into account the interests of all affected parties with legitimate claims. It also means considering all reasonable alternative actions, including no action.

A comprehensive decision procedure balances the benefits of restricting an activity that brings with it possibly harmful side effects against two factors: the benefits of the activity in question, and the costs and risks of the restrictions, regulations, or prohibitions. If a proposal has been made to restrict a technology, responsible decision makers will estimate the opportunities lost by abandoning it. If needs that were being met by the technology or productive activity will be met by other means, the costs and risks of those alternatives should be estimated. When making these estimates, decision makers should carefully consider not only concentrated and immediate effects, but also widely distributed and follow-on effects.

The precautionary principle, with its typically agenda-driven, single-minded approach, fails the test of comprehensiveness. Officials and activists who use the principle routinely inadvertently or deliberately ignore costs and side-effects of regulations and prohibitions, as well as the potential benefits of a technology, both in the near term and as it might develop over time. As we saw in the case of drug regulation, regulators who start out doing something intended to be beneficial face incentives that encourage them to regulate excessively. The precautionary principle serves as a rationalization and an encouragement for regulators in making Type II errors.

Inappropriate Burden of Proof: The precautionary principle illegitimately shifts the burden of proof (“reverse onus”) by requiring innovators and producers to prove their innocence when anyone raises “threats of harm”. Activists enjoy a favored status since they can raise the prospect of precautionary measures with no more evidence than their fearful imagination. All they need to show is that a possibility of harm exists. No, not even this. All they need to show is that questions have been raised about the possibility of harm. Inventors and producers must then devote effort and resources to answering those questions.

Proponents of the principle portray it as a value-neutral procedure for deciding on policies. Yet it gives the trump card to the status quo and against productive activity and innovation by default—no real evidence is needed. Producing and innovating become de facto crimes whose perpetrators are guilty until proven innocent.

The content—even the very name—of the principle positions environmental activists as friends and protectors of the common citizen. By shifting the burden of proof, advocates of precaution position themselves as responsible protectors of humanity and the environment, while positioning advocates of proposed activities or new technologies as reckless. By using reverse onus, the activists can impose their preferences without providing evidence, and without being accountable for the results of overly-cautious policies.

To add to the fear-inducing power and chilling effect of the reverse onus, activists and regulators who invoke the precautionary principle invariably assume a worst-case scenario. Any release of chemicals into the environment might initiate a chain of events leading to a disaster. Genetically modified organisms might cause unanticipated, serious, and irreversible problems. By imagining the proposed technology or endeavor primarily in a worst-case scenario—while assuming that preventing action will have no disastrous consequences—the adherents of the principle immediately tilt the playing field in their favor. By combining reverse onus and catastrophic scenario-spinning, precautionists guarantee that managing perceptions of risk becomes more influential in policy-making than the reality of risk.

Asymmetrical: The precautionary principle inherently favors nature and the status quo over humanity and progress, while routinely ignoring the potential benefits of technology and innovation. As an example of this—meant only partly in jest—I would point to an odd dichotomy. Many environmentalists have been obsessed with opposing nuclear power. After all, to them, it represents advanced technology and humanity’s triumph over the vagaries of nature. At the same time, when have you ever heard environmentalists and fellow precautionists raising concerns and urging public action over the dangerous act of sunbathing? If this question seems a little peculiar, consider what sunbathers are doing: They are lying prone and helpless directly beneath a gigantic, unshielded nuclear fusion reactor!

The entirely serious point I want to make here is that the precautionary principle fails to treat natural and human threats on the same basis. Users of the principle routinely ignore the potential benefits of technology, in effect favoring nature over humanity. The principle does not account for the fact that the risks created by technological stagnation are at least as real as those of technological advancement. As biochemist Bruce Ames of UCLA has demonstrated, almost all of our exposure to dangerous chemicals comes in the form of natural chemicals, such as aflatoxins in peanuts—which are among the most carcinogenic substances known. Yet fear and attention are primarily directed toward synthetic chemicals. A particular chemical has the same effects regardless of whether its source is natural or synthetic. Despite this, activists treat human-derived chemicals as guilty until proven innocent, and naturally occurring chemicals as innocent until proven guilty.

We can see an excellent example of the asymmetrical favoring of nature over humanity—in other words, the condemnation of conscious creative activity—in the wildly divergent attitudes of hardcore environmentalists and other precautionists toward gene-spliced crops and their more traditional counterparts. Proponents of the precautionary principle—if not utterly opposed to gene-spliced crops in their public pronouncements—encourage authorities to apply a heavy regulatory burden. When it comes to conventional crops, the same precautionary regulations are never urged. This makes sense, precautionists will say, because genetically modified crops introduce new and poorly understood risks. But is this true?

Gene-splicing is simply the most scientifically advanced method of generating new plant varieties. More specifically, compared to other techniques, gene-splicing is more precise, restricted, and predictable than techniques devised earlier. Anti-technologists would have us believe that modern genetic techniques break radically with past practice. In reality, gene-splicing technology is a refinement of the less accurate, more uncertain techniques of the past. Those older methods—such as hybridization and induced-mutation breeding—lie behind the many new plant varieties introduced every year. No scientific review is required of them. No special labeling is required. Yet, because they are less precise, they bring potential hazards greater than those from the more precisely targeted method of gene-splicing.

Often these more traditional products result from “wide crosses”—applications of hybridization in which many genes are transferred from one species to another in a way that does not happen in nature. Wide crosses have many benefits such as introducing the hardiness of wild rice into cultivated rice, or integrating yellow dwarf virus tolerance and resistance into cultivated oats. But they could also lead to problems. By introducing thousands of foreign genes into an established plant variety, the result could be the accidental introduction of toxins or allergens, or qualities such as increased invasiveness in the field.

Similarly, a method in common use for the last 50 years called induced-mutation breeding, lacks the precision of gene-splicing. In this approach, plants used as crops are exposed to ionizing radiation or toxic chemicals in order to stimulate genetic mutations. No way exists to select the mutations; it is essentially a random process that leaves breeders with little idea of which mutations occurred or which ones produced a desired effect. Over the decades in which this method has been used, between one and two thousand mutation-bred plant varieties have been brought to market without any regulation to speak of. Although the results have typically been safe, problems have occasionally cropped up.

If the precautionary principle were actually a useful tool, we would expect to see stricter precautions being applied to these less accurate, less predictable types of genetic modification. But the opposite has been the case. Activists and regulators have put all their energies into severely regulating gene-spliced products out of all proportion to their risk. The regulators not only inflate the risks of gene-spliced or “genetically modified” foods, they ignore the ways in which the newer technique can actually reduce risks.

Aside from minimizing the dangers of introducing toxins, allergens, or other unwanted qualities, this technology makes it far easier to remove many natural allergens from the food supply. In addition, gene-spliced crops enable farmers to drastically reduce the use of pesticides. Unavailability of the better technology especially hurts farmers in poor countries, who continue to suffer from continual exposure to pesticides.

Fails to Accommodate Tradeoffs: The way in which the precautionary principle shifts the burden of proof is no accident. Many proponents of the principle fully intend its nature-deifying, human-denying values to force the innovator and producer onto a rocky path. Another consequence is the inability of the principle to handle tradeoffs between harm to humans and to the environment. Since unaltered nature is implicitly an absolute value in the principle, no tradeoffs are to be allowed. The precautionary principle is all about avoiding possible harm—and human-caused harm, and primarily harm to the environment—rather than respecting a wider set of values.

As the precautionary principle has come to be applied, all other values must bow to that of the precautionary activists. Anyone who expresses willingness to forego perfect environmental protection in favor of an easier life, greater health or wealth, or other values, needs to be shown the light according to the precautionist. In this way, the precautionary principle tends toward authoritarianism. If those poor, ignorant fools (no doubt blinded by the dark power of commercial advertising) cannot see what they should do, the activists will force them to do the right thing. Just as Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin saw themselves as the vanguard of the proletariat, who knew the interests of the Russian workers far better than did the workers themselves, the precautionists wish to protect us from ourselves.

The precautionary principle, in its absolutist, univalued approach, conflicts with the more balanced approach to risk and harm derived from common law. Common law holds us liable for injuries we cause, with liability increasing along with foreseeable risk. By contrast, the precautionary principle bypasses liability and acts like a preliminary injunction—but without the involvement of a court. By doing this, the precautionary principle denies individuals and communities the freedom to make trade-offs in the way recognized by common-law approaches to risk and harm. No other values are admitted as reason not to pursue extreme precaution.

Vulnerable to Corruption: The inconsistent, discriminatory nature of precautionary regulations (as we saw in the case of gene-spliced foods) puts a kink in the rule of law. By giving regulators the power to insist on any degree of testing they choose, the precautionary principle opens up opportunities for corruption—undue influence, unfair targeting, and regulatory capture. It is the principle’s vagueness, inconsistency, and arbitrariness that appeals to regulators who enjoy expanding their powers and wielding them selectively. An increase in corruption and arbitrary regulatory power is further ensured by making precaution and prevention the default assumption.

Perils part 3, The Tyranny of Safety

2010-08-23T09:12:00.002-05:00

The Tyranny of Safety

The precautionary principle rides atop the wild horse that is our fundamental drive to avoid harm. I readily grant that caution is a perfectly sensible practice to adopt as we go about our lives. We get into trouble only when we elevate caution and cautionary measures to the status of an absolute principle—when we endow it with a crude veto power over all other values and over the use of maximum intelligence and creativity. Caution, like suspicion or anger or confidence, enjoys a legitimate place in our toolbox of responses. But it cannot serve by itself us as a comprehensive, judicious, rational basis for making decisions about technological and environmental concerns.

There’s a simple but telling way to appreciate the threat to progress and human well-being posed by the precautionary principle: Take a look back at the scientific and technological achievements of the past, then ask: “Would these advances have been sanctioned or prohibited by the precautionary principle?” Consider a small sample of historical achievements that have improved human life:

The airplane: Planes crash, don’t they? Serious or irreversible harm results without doubt.

Antibiotics and sulfa drugs: Disallowed due to risk of side-effects.

Aspirin: Along with aspirin’s wide range of beneficial effects come some significant adverse side-effects. Today’s level of regulation—which falls well short of the precautionary principle—might deny approval to aspirin.

CAT scans: Disallowed from the start by precaution due to risk from X-rays.

Chlorine: A tremendous public health boon when used for disinfecting water, producing pharmaceuticals, and making pesticides. It’s also a poison gas.

The contraceptive pill: One of the most powerful forces for social change would have been banned due to its association with an elevated risk of some cancers.

DDT (dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane): This oft-maligned substance, discovered in 1939 by Paul Hermann Mueller (and for which he won the Nobel Prize in medicine), saved the lives of millions threatened by malaria. Throughout the Mediterranean region, DDT transformed malaria from ugly reality to fading bad dream. In 1970, The National Academy of Sciences declared: “To only a few chemicals does man owe as great a debt as to DDT.”

Digitalis: When William Withering extracted digitalis from the foxglove plant (Digitalis purpurea) in 1780, he delivered the first effective drug in medicine. The precautionary principle might have locked down such a highly toxic substance, never allowing its highly beneficial effects on the heart to see the light of day.

Drugs: Do any medical drugs have a proven absence of side effects?

Electrification: Providing electricity to people across the land requires power plants and transmission lines and creates pollution. Each step of the way clearly violates the precautionary principle.

Energy: Production and use of fire, electricity, microwaves, and all forms of energy contravene the precautionary principle. The causal link between accidents with, or misdirected, energy and resulting harm is clear. To prevent the possibility of harm, the principle would prohibit all forms of energy production capable of powering any useful work. Back to living in caves, without fire!

The Green Revolution: This has enormously boosted food production and averted famine throughout much of Asia and elsewhere. The Green Revolution would have been strangled in its crib by the precautionary principle. Genetically modified crops are running up against the principle, yet GM crops are created through a far more precise process. The crops of the Green Revolution were arrived at by randomly mutating seeds and selecting plants with enhanced characteristics. No guarantee could have been given against any possibility of serious harm to humans or ecosystems.

Knives: Enabled humans to eat, build shelter, and develop tools and cultural artifacts. Can also be used for destructive purposes. Say no more.

Nuclear research: The dangers of radiation, illustrated by Marie Curie’s death, would lead the precautionary principle to block the development of NMR imaging, nuclear power, and nuclear physics.

Open-heart surgery: This life-saving surgery might have been blocked early on, since it obviously carried a risk of causing death and opening a path for infections.

Organ transplants: Early recipients often died—a little sooner than they would have otherwise.

Penicillin: Dr. Gail Cardew of the Royal Institution in London has noted that this “wonder drug”, tested early on a human, turned out to be toxic to guinea pigs. A more precautionary approach at the time probably would not have allowed penicillin to be tried on humans.

The periodic table: Systematizes knowledge that can—and has—been used to make explosives for offensive purposes.

Physics research: Study of the principles of motion culminating in work by Newton might have been prohibited. That knowledge created the basis for ballistics.

Radar: If the precautionary ethos, rather than wartime necessity, had prevailed, we would never had enjoyed the benefits of radar. The microwaves emitted by high-powered radar can harm or kill a person standing in front of the antenna.

Railways: When travel by rail first became a real option, some critics warned that people would die when they exceeded 30 mph. Some early travelers attributed their real or imagined sickness to their railroad trip.

Vaccines for rabies, measles, polio, smallpox: Consider that, for instance, Salk’s polio vaccine was a live culture. The probability of protection brought with it a 5% risk of contracting the disease. All vaccines carry a small risk of harmful infection. If Jenner was experimenting with inoculation today, he would be attacked for transferring tissue across species boundaries, and his work shut down as contravening the precautionary principle.

X-rays: Before safe doses had been determined, early researchers into X-ray medicine died.

Just about every human activity could “raise threats of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment.” Had the precautionary principle been imposed throughout history, we would still be living poor, nasty, brutish lives—if humans still existed.

The precautionary principle, if applied to real innovation throughout our past, would have stifled progress. As many of the historical examples indicate, this means not only losing the benefits of creativity, but also suffering the natural harms that would continue and multiply unchecked. We need not look to the past to see harm being done. Patients who could benefit from xenotransplantation continue to suffer because of overblown fears about the possible transmission of porcine retroviruses. Neurological disease continues to run its devastating course while drugs that might help are blocked by people fearing a pharmacological “underclass”. Long term storage of nuclear waste continues to be blocked by groups feeding fears of remote, theoretical risks, while they ignore the current, real problems they keep alive.

Recently, a study was published that found an increased incidence of multiple sclerosis (MS) among people who had received hepatitis B shots in the 3 years prior to disease onset. If advocates of the precautionary principle jump on this result, they could cause much needless suffering and death. The kind of fear that drives the principle will ignore the fact that this result comes from a single, unverified study. It will also ignore the crucial information that MS affects about 2.5 million people, but hepatitis B affects 350 million people.

Whether it’s in the name of the principle, or the simple visceral reaction that has the same effect, scared people turning down the hepatitis B vaccine would be a health disaster. Exactly this kind of unmeasured, fearful response to vaccines has already popped up many times, a recent example being parents who refuse to have their children vaccinated with a new combination vaccine.

Consider the case of the rotavirus vaccine. Rotavirus is the most common cause of severe diarrhea among children. According to the Centers for Disease Control, it results in the hospitalization of 55,000 children annually in the United States, and the death of 600,000 children annually worldwide. That’s the death of one child every minute. These children are pushed over a rocky path on the way to death, enduring vomiting and watery diarrhea along with fever and abdominal pain.

Although the disease was discovered three decades ago, no rotavirus vaccine for this devastating disease was available until 1998. In 1999, after just nine months on the market, Wyeth Laboratories voluntarily pulled their vaccine, RotaShield, because it was associated with a slightly increased risk of intussusception (bowel obstruction). In wealthy countries, this can typically be treated, but in places where it isn’t, the result can be a very severe disease or, occasionally, death.

No rotavirus vaccine was available anywhere for five years, even in the developing world, where one in every two hundred and fifty children dies from the disease. The precautionary agency in this case was the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP). This is a horrifying example of caution that kills. Several years after the withdrawal, it remains unclear whether the Rotashield vaccine really causes additional bowel disorders. Even if it does, the risk is small. According to a report by NIH scientists in the Journal of Infectious Diseases, that vaccine might have led to 1 excess case per 32,000 vaccinated infants. More than ten times that number (around 1 in 3,000 infants during their first year) develop intussusception anyway. This report found an overall decrease in intussusception among infants under a year old during the period of exposure to the rotavirus vaccine. The bottom line in the developing world: the precautionary blocking of a vaccine has killed millions of children.

Another upshot of this episode is noteworthy. For half a century, new pharmaceutical products have been introduced first in the United States and Europe, only later reaching the developing world. This is changing. In planning ahead for the launch of its vaccine, Rotarix, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK) held its half-dozen trials in developing world countries including Mexico, Brazil, South Africa, and Malaysia. GSK plans to make Rotarix available in Mexico right away. When it comes to a rotavirus vaccine, it is now the United States that is the third world country. After Wyeth’s experience (albeit with a differently-derived vaccine), GSK has no plans to request approval from the US food and Drug Administration.

The point here is not that precautionary restrictions are never justified. It is not that unfettered innovation is always best. It is not that environmental concerns are to be dismissed. It is that an excessive focus on preventing one perceived problem can create even worse problems. Nor is this a counsel of despair. Better decision processes are available.

Perils, Part 4: The Paradox of the Precautionary Principle

2010-08-22T20:53:00.005-05:00

The rotavirus case illustrates what I call the paradox of the precautionary principle: The principle endangers us by trying too hard to safeguard us. It tries “too hard” by being obsessively preoccupied with a single value—safety. By focusing us on safety to an excessive degree, the principle distracts policymakers and the public from other dangers. The more confident we are in the principle, and the more enthusiastically we apply it, the greater the hazard to our health and our standard of living. The principle ends up causing harm by diverting attention, financial resources, public health resources, time, and research effort from more urgent and weighty risks.

Adding insult to injury, in practice this rule assumes that new prohibitions or regulations will result in no harm to human health or the environment. Unfortunately, well-intended interventions into complex systems invariably have unintended consequences. Only by closely examining possible ramifications can we determine whether or not the intervention is likely to make us better off. By single-mindedly enforcing the tyranny of safety, this principle can only distract decision makers from such an examination.

Our choices of modes of transport provide a simple example of the paradox of the precautionary principle. What image comes to mind when we hear the words “airplane crash”? A terrifying plunge, an enormous smash, hundreds of dead bodies, billows of black smoke. On hearing news of a spectacular plane crash, some travelers choose to go by car instead. (A smaller number of people won’t take a plane at any time, though they rarely claim this to be a calmly rational choice.) The same effect has been observed in the case of train accidents. Plane and train crashes are dramatic events that impress themselves on our minds, encouraging us to believe that those modes of travel are intolerably risky. The facts are otherwise—as most of us know, if only vaguely.

Consider that in 2000, the world’s commercial jet airlines suffered only 20 fatal accidents, yet they carried 1.09 billion people on 18 million flights. Even more remarkable, if you add up all the people who died in commercial airplane accidents in America over the last 60 years, the number you will arrive at is smaller than the number of people killed in U.S. car accidents in any three-month period. These totals are telling, but the most relevant figures compare fatalities per unit of distance traveled. By that measure, in the United States you will be 22 times safer traveling by commercial airline than by car. (This conclusion is from a 1993-95 study by the U.S. National Safety Council.)

Air travel has become much safer since 1950, bringing down the number of fatal accidents per million aircraft miles flown to 0.0005. To put your risk of death into proportion, consider that in 1997 commercial airlines made 8,157,000 departures, carried 598,895,000 passengers, and endured only 3 fatal accidents. While switching from road to air reduces your risk 22 times, if you were to switch from train to air, you would reduce your risk 12-fold.

You’re considerably more likely to die while engaging in recreational boating or biking than while traveling by air. Given that you need to travel, by taking a precautionary approach that leads you to avoid the possibility of a spectacular air crash, you would be exposing yourself to a greater risk of injury or death. Be cautious with precaution!

In comparing the fatality rates of air travel and road travel, we have been comparing like with like. The paradox of the precautionary principle becomes even more dangerous when a preoccupation with one value, such as safety, distracts us from other values. We may be able to improve an outcome according to one measure, but it will often come at the cost of worsening an outcome according to a different measure. In that case we will face choices that the precautionary principle is poorly equipped to handle. To see this, consider the Kyoto protocol.

The Kyoto protocol is an international precautionary commitment to reduce the emission of gases suspected of causing global warming. Supporters of Kyoto typically favor forcing down emissions of these gases by raising fuel economy standards for cars and trucks. The effects of enforcing similar fuel economy standards in the United States has pushed automakers to come out with smaller, lighter, more vulnerable cars. According to a study by the Harvard School of Public Health, this results in an additional 2,000-4,000 highway deaths per year. In this case, we are buying some climate remediation at the cost of many lives. We are improving outcomes according to one measure but worsening them according to another measure.

Regulation of economic activity—whether precautionary in origin or not—involves a more general and well-established tradeoff. Known as the “income effect”, this tradeoff is shaped by a correlation between wealth and health. Implementing and complying with regulations imposes costs. Political scientist Aaron Wildavsky observed that poorer nations tend to have higher mortality rates than richer ones. This correlation is no coincidence. Wealthier people can eat more varied and nutritious diets, buy better health care, and reduce sources of stress (such as excessively long working hours) and thereby reduce consequences such as heart attacks, hypertension, depression, and suicide.

In counting up the anticipated benefits of regulations, we should therefore also consider what they may cost us—or cost poorer people in countries affected by international regulations. Some regulations will amount to a lousy deal. Although precise numbers are hard to pin down, a conservative estimate from the research suggests that the income effects leads to one additional death for every $7.25 million of regulatory costs. Many regulations impose costs in the tens of billions of dollars annually. That implies thousands of additional deaths per year. Safety is not free. Regulatory overkill can be just that.

If only activists would appreciate this point as they move from opposing chlorine to opposing “endocrine disruptors” and phthalates (used to soften plastics). The story of the antichlorine campaign does not offer much hope. The price of precaution can be exorbitant, especially for developing countries. Toward the end of the 1980s, environmental activists had focused their attention on purging society of chlorinated compounds. As part of this campaign, activists spread disinformation in all directions. They worked especially hard to persuade water authorities in numerous countries that allowing chlorination of drinking water amounted to giving people cancer. In Peru, they succeeded. The consequences were dire.

Finding themselves in a budget crisis, Peruvian government officials saw in the cancer-risk claims a handy excuse to stop chlorinating the drinking water in many part of the country. They could cover their backs by pointing to official reports from the US Environmental Protection Agency that had alleged that drinking chlorinated water was linked to elevated cancer risks. (The EPA later admitted that this connection was not “scientifically supportable.”) Soon afterwards, cholera—a disease that had been wiped out in Peru—returned in the epidemic of 1991-96. 800,000 suffered and 6,000 died in Peru. Then it spread to Columbia, Brazil, Chile, and Guatemala. Around 1.3 million people were afflicted, and 11,000 or more were killed by the disease.

The drinking water system had been deteriorating before this, so we cannot place the entire blame on the single decision to stop chlorinating. But chlorinating the water would probably have prevented the epidemic from getting started. Absence of the treatment certainly made the situation far worse. The high price paid for that precautionary measure is not unusual or surprising in poorer countries. The elimination of DDT further illustrates the point.

DDT ended the terrible scourge of malaria in some third-world countries by the late 20th century by ending malaria-carrying mosquitoes. But environmentalists targeted the pesticide, claiming that it might harm some birds and might possibly cause cancer. Malaria control efforts around the world quickly fell apart. This devastating affliction of nature is rapidly gaining strength in earth’s tropical regions. Malaria epidemics in 2000 alone killed over a million people and sickened 300 million. Once again, those least able to bear it were the ones to pay the high price for precautionary tunnel vision.

Have aggressive environmental activists learned from these experiences and changed course? Hardly. “Green at any price” seems to be their motto as they mutter speculations of doom while trying to strangle the technology of gene-spliced (or “genetically modified” or GM) crops. In this case, there may be hope. Late in 2004, both China and Britain looked set to approve gene-spliced crops, despite well-organized and funded opponents—opponents who don’t hesitate to destroy crops being grown for research. And in 2005, the FDA began loosening its restrictions on bioengineered rice.

If these countries open the way for this vital part of agricultural biotechnology, it will mean a reversal of years of public policy that has restricted and raised costs of research and development. The result should be to spur innovation and to renew food productivity growth in the developing countries., ushering in a second Green Revolution.

These are just a few of the many cases illustrating the dangers of the precautionary principle. Environmental and technological activism that wields the precautionary principle, whether explicitly or implicitly, raises clear threats of harm to human health and well-being. If we apply the principle to itself, we arrive at the corollary to the Paradox of the Precautionary Principle:

According to the principle, since the principle itself is dangerous, we should take precautionary measures to prevent the use of the precautionary principle.

The severity of the precautionary principle’s threat certainly does not imply that we should take no actions to safeguard human health or the environment. Nor does it imply that we must achieve full scientific certainty (or its nearest real-world equivalent) before taking action. It does imply that we should keep our attention focused on established and highly probable risks, rather than on hypothetical and inflated risks. It also implies an obligation to assess the likely costs of enforcing precautionary restrictions on human activities. Clearly, we need a better way to assess potential threats to humans and the environment—and the consequences of our responses. In order to develop a suitable alternative, we first need to appreciate the full extent of flaws in the precautionary approach.

Perils, Part 2: Pervasive Precaution

2010-08-22T10:35:00.006-05:00

Pervasive Precaution

The precautionary principle, as defined by Soren Holm and John Harris in Nature magazine in 1999, asserts:

When an activity raises threats of serious or irreversible harm to human health or the environment, precautionary measures that prevent the possibility of harm shall be taken even if the causal link between the activity and the possible harm has not been proven or the causal link is weak and the harm is unlikely to occur.

The version from the Wingspread Statement, 1998:

“When an activity raises threats of harm to the environment or human health, precautionary measures should be taken even if some cause and effect relationships are not fully established scientifically.”

The precautionary principle has taken many forms, but these definitions capture the essence of most of them. Starting life as the German Vorsorgeprinzip (literally “precaution principle”), this rule assumed a role in institutional decision making in the North-Sea conferences from 1984 to 1995, and in the deliberations leading to the Rio Declaration of 1992, the UN Framework Climate Convention of 1992, and the Kyoto Protocol. Formulations of the principle do vary in some important ways. The fuzziness resulting from this lack of a standard definition causes trouble, but is also the very characteristic that appeals to advocates of technological and environmental regulation. They have come to favor the precautionary principle—in whatever form best helps them maneuver policies so as to further their goals.

In its most modest form, the principle urges us not to wait for scientific certainty before taking precautionary measures. Considered out of context, that policy is entirely reasonable. We rarely achieve the high standard of scientific certainty about the effects of our activities. But this fact applies just as much to actions in the form of restrictions, regulations, and prohibitions as to innovative and productive activities. By recognizing the frequent necessity to act or refrain from acting in conditions of uncertainty, we are not thereby committed to favoring a policy of restrictive precautionary measures. This message about certainty and action therefore tells us little. And the rest of the principle provides no further guidance about choosing under uncertainty.

Its roots in the German Vorsorgeprinzip mean that the common use of the principle goes well beyond urging preventative or prohibitory action based on inconclusive evidence. An attribute more central to the principle is the judgment of “better safe than sorry”. In other words, err on the side of caution. While this sentiment makes for a perfectly sound proverb, it provides a treacherous foundation for a principle to guide assessments of technological and environmental impacts. As a proverb, “better safe than sorry” is counterbalanced by opposing—but equally valid—proverbs, such as “he who hesitates is lost”, or “make hay while the sun shines.”

Precautionary measures typically impose costs, burdens, and their own harms. Administering precautionary actions becomes especially dangerous when the principle says, or is interpreted as saying, that those actions are justified and required “if any possibility” of harm exists. In this (typical) interpretation, it becomes ridiculously easy to rationalize restrictive measures in the absence of any real evidence. Clearly, this pushes the principle far beyond dismissing the need for fully established cause-effect relationships.

Statements of the precautionary principle vary also in whether or not they specify that the principle deals with threats of serious or irreversible harm or damage. Problems arise with the usage of “serious” and “irreversible”, but at least this clause limits the application of the principle. More demanding versions of the principle, such as the widely-quoted Wingspread Statement, call for precautionary measures to come into play even when the possible harm is not serious or irreversible.

Statements of the precautionary principle may include a cost-effectiveness clause. This happens all too rarely in practice, perhaps because most advocates of the principle aim to stop the targeted technology or activity, not to maximize welfare. The Rio Declaration of 1992 stands out by incorporating such a clause:

“Where there are threats of serious or irreversible damage, lack of full scientific certainty shall not be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures.”

Some worthy attempts have been made to improve the principle by adding to it. In 2001, the European Environment Agency issued a document conveying “Late Lessons from Early Warnings”, which issued twelve accompanying guidelines. These included some excellent recommendations, such as “Identify and reduce interdisciplinary obstacles to learning”, and “Systematically scrutinise the claimed justifications and benefits alongside the potential risks.” Unfortunately, advocates of the principle have not paid attention to these suggestions, and many of them co-exist uncomfortably with the main thrust of the principle. Another noteworthy attempt at amelioration is a May 2000 Science paper titled “Science and the Precautionary Principle”. This set out five “Guidelines for Application of the Precautionary Principle”: Proportionality, nondiscrimination, consistency, cost-benefit examination, and examination of scientific developments.

With or without patches, the deeply flawed precautionary principle can cause trouble. It already has. Awareness of the pervasive, profoundly restrictive force of the principle is all the more remarkable for its relative obscurity, especially outside Europe. Even among widely read people, a large majority do not recall ever having heard the term—although they have certainly heard “better safe than sorry”. Yet the dominant influence of the principle can be found everywhere.

Consider, for a start, the central role of the precautionary principle in shaping environmental policy in the European Union. The foundational Maastricht Treaty on the European Union states that “Community policy on the environment…shall be based on the precautionary principle and on the principles that preventive actions should be taken, that environmental damage should as a priority be rectified at source and that the polluter should pay.” The United Nations joined the precautionary bandwagon when the UN Biosafety Protocol led the way for other international treaties by incorporating the precautionary principle. Some other examples of the principle explicitly at work:

Protocol on Substances that Deplete the Ozone Layer, Sept. 16, 1987, 26 ILM 1541.
Second North Sea Declaration.
Ministerial Declaration Calling for Reduction of Pollution, Nov. 25, 1987, 27 ILM 835.
United Nations Environment Program.
Nordic Council’s Conference.
Nordic Council’s International Conference on Pollution of the Seas: Final Document Agreed to Oct. 18, 1989, in Nordic Action Plan on Pollution of the Seas, 99 app. V (1990) .
PARCOM Recommendation 89/1 - 22 June, 1989.
The Contracting Parties to the Paris Convention for the Prevention of Marine Pollution from Land-Based Sources:
Third North Sea Conference.
Bergen Declaration on Sustainable Development.
Second World Climate Conference.
Bamako Convention on Transboundary Hazardous Waste into Africa.
OECD Council Recommendation C(90)164 on Integrated Pollution Prevention and Control, January 1991.
Helsinki Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses and International Lakes.
The Rio Declaration on Environment and Development, June 1992.
Climate Change Conference (Framework Convention on Climate Change, May 9, 1992).
UNCED Text on Ocean Protection.
Energy Charter Treaty.

The influence of the principle has been felt in South America too. Transgenic crops have been prohibited throughout Brazil since 1998. In that year, a judge made an interpretation of the version of the principle included in the Rio Declaration on Environment and Development—a statement coming out of the 1992 Earth Summit held in Brazil.

The precautionary principle is followed even more widely than it might seem from official mentions, especially in the United States. We often find the principle being applied without disclosure or explicit acknowledgment. Perhaps this happens because the principle ably captures common intuitions that grow out of fear fed by lack of knowledge. Our first reaction to an apparent threat is usually: Stop it now! We may disregard the costs of stopping the threat. Our sense of urgency may blind us to considering whether we might have better options at our disposal.

When the United Kingdom faced the appalling, if over-inflated, menace of bovine spongiform encephalitis (BSE), people quickly demanded that authorities require proof of virtually zero risk for any substance that might have BSE contamination. Professor James Bridges, chair of the European Commission’s toxicology committee, referred to this “extreme precautionary approach in the context of other food risks” and noted it had “involved enormous costs”. Of course, if such proof could be provided (which it surely cannot) and at a low cost, the demand would be reasonable. But the actual reaction lacks any sense of proportionality and objective risk assessment.

In the United States, the President’s Council on Sustainable Development affirmed the precautionary principle, without using the term explicitly, in its statement:

There are certain beliefs that we as Council members share that underlie all of our agreements. We believe: (number 12) even in the face of scientific uncertainty, society should take reasonable actions to avert risks where the potential harm to human health or the environment is thought to be serious or irreparable.

The United States has made extensive use of precautionary prevention—sometimes quite sensibly—even if no mention is made of a principle. Sometimes precautionary prevention has been applied earlier in the US than in Europe. The European Environment Agency publication “Late Lessons from Early Warnings” notes four examples: The Delaney Clause in the Food, Drug and Cosmetics Act, 1957–96, which banned animal carcinogens from the human food chain; a ban on the use of scrapie-infected sheep and goat meat in the animal and human food chain in the early 1970s; a ban on the use of chlorofluorocarbons (CFCs) in aerosols in 1977, several years before similar action in most of Europe; and a ban on the use of DES as a growth promoter in beef, 1972–79, nearly 10 years before the EU ban in 1987.

The most formidable manifestations of the precautionary principle in the US may be found in the regulatory practices of the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). It’s not the only US government agency applying the principle, usually without naming it—and without calculating its costs and benefits. The EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) bound itself to the principle in developing and enforcing regulations on synthetic chemicals. US regulators have taken an even more strongly precautionary approach than Europe to some kinds of risks, such as nuclear power, lead in gasoline, and the approval of new medicines—which takes us back to the FDA.

Precautionary FDA regulation may have the most drastic impact on human well-being of any mentioned so far. The FDA has successfully sought to extend its powers over the decades, first solidifying its authority to determine when a new medication could be considered safe, and later to determine when it could be considered effective. If the agency were using a purely rational approach to regulation—one that accurately aimed at maximizing human health—it would fully account for both the risks of approving a new medicine that might have damaging side-effects, and the dangers of withholding approval or delaying approval to a potentially beneficial medicine. In practice, this is far from the way the FDA operates.

In reality, the FDA consistently follows a path close to one that the precautionary principle would prescribe: It puts all its energies into minimizing the risk of a new drug that might be approved, then goes on to cause harm. Very little energy goes into considering the potential benefits from making the new treatment available. Regulators can make mistakes on both sides of this balance.

If they approve a drug that turns out to be harmful, they have made a “Type I error”, as it is called in risk analysis. They might also make a Type II error by making a beneficial medication unavailable—by delaying it, rejecting it for consideration, by failing to approve it, or by wrongly withdrawing it from the market.

Both types of error are bad for the public. For the regulators, the risk of Type I errors looks much more frightening that Type II errors. If they make a Type II mistake and prevent a beneficial treatment coming to market, few people will ever be aware of what has been lost. Probably the media will be silent, and Congress will join them. Regulators have little incentive to avoid Type II errors. But what of the prospect of making a Type I error? This is a regulator’s worst nightmare.

Suppose you are the regulator, and you approve a promising new drug that turns out to be another Thalidomide, causing horrible deformations in newborns. Or, consider what it felt like to be one of the regulators who approved the swine flu vaccine in 1976. The vaccine did its job, but turned out to cause temporary paralysis in some patients. Such a Type I error is immediately obvious and attains a high profile as lawyers, the media, the public, and eager politicians pile on, screaming at you with rage and blame. We’ve seen this more recently in the cases of Vioxx and Celebrex.

You will hardly be a happy official, and your career may be destroyed. You approved the drug according to your best judgment, but your error is not forgiven or forgotten. Given these asymmetrical incentives, regulators naturally tend to err far on the side of being overly cautious. They go to great lengths to avoid Type I errors—a factor that has raised the cost of new drug development and approval into the hundreds of millions of dollars and added years to the process. (The only effective countervailing force in recent history has been the focused pressure of activists to speed approval of AIDS drugs.)

Regulators, then, will not make an objective, comprehensive, balanced assessment of both Type I and II risks. The overall outcome is a regulatory scheme driven by incentives that bias it strongly against new products and innovation. Some of the regulators themselves have recognized and publicly expressed these uneven pressures. Former FDA Commissioner Alexander Schmidt put it this way:

In all our FDA history, we are unable to find a single instance where a Congressional committee investigated the failure of FDA to approve a new drug. But, the times when hearings have been held to criticize our approval of a new drug have been so frequent that we have not been able to count them. The message to FDA staff could not be clearer. Whenever a controversy over a new drug is resolved by approval of the drug, the agency and the individuals involved likely will be investigated. Whenever such a drug is disapproved, no inquiry will be made. The Congressional pressure for negative action is, therefore, intense. And it seems to be ever increasing.

The writings of well-known prophets of gloom provide further evidence of the pervasiveness of precautionary thinking. Consider Bill Joy’s much-discussed essay in Wired, “Why the Future Doesn’t Need Us.” Joy proposed that we apply a precautionary approach to a limited number of technologies—but technologies with a powerful reach and impact. He labeled the inventions that frightened him as “GNR”, standing for genetic engineering, nanotechnology, and robotics. Joy focused on these three areas, but his fears apply to any form of technology endowed with the power of self-replication. In his manifesto, he warned of what he saw as immense new threats:

Our most powerful 21st-century technologies - robotics, genetic engineering, and nanotech - are threatening to make humans an endangered species… Thus we have the possibility not just of weapons of mass destruction but of knowledge-enabled mass destruction (KMD), this destructiveness hugely amplified by the power of self-replication.

And if our own extinction is a likely, or even possible, outcome of our technological development, shouldn't we proceed with great caution?
I think it is no exaggeration to say we are on the cusp of the further perfection of extreme evil, an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond that which weapons of mass destruction bequeathed to the nation-states, on to a surprising and terrible empowerment of extreme individuals.

Just like other advocates of precautionary measures, Joy concluded with a call for restricting or relinquishing technology. Going further than many (at least in their public statements), Joy also called for “limiting our pursuit of certain kinds of knowledge.” He also mentioned that he saw many activists joining him as “the voices for caution and relinquishment…” I will return to Joy’s proposed precautionary measures and their effects near the end of the chapter. In a later chapter, I will consider the views of Leon Kass, Francis Fukuyama, and Michael Sandel, all of who take precautionary approaches to enhancement technologies, which include Joy’s GNR trio.

The Perils of Precaution

2010-08-22T00:40:00.003-05:00

This is the first in a series of entries of what is chapter 2 of my book-in-progress, The Proactionary Principle. I will post a new section of that chapter every day or two. Following that will be sections from chapter 4, The Proactionary Principle (my alternative to the precautionary principle).

When you hear the word “mother”, what comes to mind? If you are like me, mother stands for comfort, for love and, above all, for protecting and nurturing the young. Those lurid and repellant news stories of mothers who murder their children revolt and fascinate us precisely because they violate our expectations so brutally. We expect mothers to watch over their offspring, to safeguard them, to take precautionary measures. When we see mothers filling this age-old role, all feels right with the world.

But what if a mother is killing with kindness? What if, by protecting her child from a perceived danger, she is opening the door to a greater danger? What if the overprotective mother encourages thousands of other mothers to follow her example? How do we feel then? Her excessive—or misdirected—precaution now puts in peril a multitude of innocents.

In the process of writing this chapter, I came across a website that claims to reveal the truth about vaccines. The mother who runs this site had her son vaccinated with the usual treatments, starting at two months of age. At fifteen months, one week after being vaccinated for several dangerous conditions, the boy starting having seizures. No definite connection was established with the vaccine, and reactions typically occur more quickly. This unfortunate woman is now devoting herself to broadcasting dire warnings about the vaccine menace. To the extent that the conviction of her personal voice succeeds in influencing others, she will be responsible for greatly raising the risk of serious illness in numerous children.

The mother had read a fact sheet explaining that a vaccine can cause serious allergic reactions, and induce seizures in 6 out of 10,000 cases. She writes that, “like so many of us, I never thought it meant my child.” This comment indicates a failing in the thinking of this mother—a failing that sparked such appalled outrage in me that little room was left for sympathy. First, she read about the small odds of an adverse reaction but ignored it—because it didn’t mean her child. (Why not? Because believing something comfortable was more important to her than seeing reality?) Then, after the misfortune of her son being one of those suffering adverse reactions (assuming the vaccine was the cause), she ignored the dangers for which the vaccine was prescribed and set about encouraging other women to refuse to vaccinate their children.

This aggressive ignorance typifies the danger of allowing caution without knowledge and fear without objectivity, to drive our thinking and decision making. When we overly focus on avoiding specific dangers—or what we perceive to be dangers—we narrow our awareness, constrain our thinking, and distort our decisions.

Many factors conspire to warp our reasoning about risks and benefits as individuals. The bad news is that such foolish thinking has been institutionalized and turned into a principle. Zealous pursuit of precaution has been enshrined in the “precautionary principle”. Regulators, negotiators, and activists refer to and defer to this principle when considering possible restrictions on productive activity and technological innovation.

In this chapter, I aim to explain how the precautionary principle, and the mindset that underlies it, threaten our well-being and our future. The extropic advance of our civilization depends on keeping caution in perspective. We do need a healthy dose of caution, but caution must take its place as one value among many, not as the sole, all-powerful rule for making decisions about what should and should not do.

I will show how the single-minded pursuit of precaution has the perverse effect of raising our risks. Then I’ll point out many ways in which the principle fails us as a guide to forming a future with care and courage. That will set the stage for an alternative principle—one explicitly designed for the task.

Our Endangered Future
Continued technological innovation and advance are essential for our progress as a species, as individuals, and for the survival of our core freedoms. Unfortunately, human minds do not find it natural or easy to reason accurately about risks arising from complex circumstances. As a result, technological progress is being threatened by fundamentalists of all kinds, anti-humanists, Luddites, primitivists, regulators, and the distorted perceptions to which we are all vulnerable. A clear case of this shortcoming is our reasoning about the introduction of new technologies and the balance of potential benefits and harms that result.

Most of us want to do two things at the same time: Protect our freedom to innovate technologically, and protect ourselves and our environment from excessive collateral damage. Our traditional thinking has shown itself not to be up to this task. If we are serious about achieving the right balance of progress and protection, we need help. Suppose your friend wanted to make your favorite meal for you, and you knew he was clueless about cooking. To improve the chances of enjoying a delicious feast, while minimizing wasted ingredients, damaged utensils, and hurt feelings, you might gently urge him to use a recipe. Reasoning about risk and benefit is similar. Only we call the recipe structured decision making.

One recipe for making decisions and forming policies about technological and environmental issues has become popular. This decision recipe is known by the catchy name of the precautionary principle. This principle falls far short at encouraging us to make decisions that are objective, comprehensive, and balanced. It falls so far short that cynics might wonder whether it was devised specifically to stifle technological advance and productive activity.

Regulators find the principle attractive because it provides a seemingly clear procedure with a bias towards the exercise of regulatory power. The precautionary principle’s characteristics suit it well for the political arena in which regulators, hardcore environmental, and anti-technological activists pursue their agenda. Their interests, and the nature of the principle, practically guarantee that no consideration is given to an alternate approach: making decision making less political and more open to other methods. With rare exceptions, political decisions ensure that for every winner there is a loser. That’s because political decisions are imposed by the winners on the losers. Decisions made outside the political process typically enable all sides to win because there are multiple outcomes rather than just one.

Some well-intended people who genuinely do share the goal of a healthy balance of progress with protection have attempted to salvage the precautionary principle. In the absence of a more appealing alternative, they hope to reframe it and hedge it so that it does the job.

Before setting out a positive alternative for making decisions about the deployment or restriction of new (or existing) technologies, I want to make completely clear why I consider the precautionary principle not only inadequate but dangerous.

The Myth of Stagnation

2009-11-07T01:10:00.005-06:00

The philosopher Bernard Williams once wrote a piece on “The Tedium of Immortality”. Although I have long thought his view reeked of sour grapes, he expressed similar sentiments to those I’ve heard many times over the years. “The Myth of Stagnation” is my rebuttal to those sentiments.

This is a slightly-edited excerpt from a chapter (“The Psychology of Forever”) I wrote back in 1996, but which has never been published. Although I might write some of it a little differently today, I haven’t changed my views about any of the ideas expressed here. You will find this essay along with related thoughts as a chapter in the forthcoming book, Death and Anti-Death Volume 7, edited by Charles Tandy.

"Growing old is no more than a bad habit which a busy man has no time to form."
André Maurois, The Art of Living, “The Art of Growing Old” (1940).

Life is good, some will grant. Life offers numerous paths and possibilities. But isn’t life good only because it is limited in length? If we lived indefinitely, potentially forever, wouldn’t we eventually stagnate, lose interest, become bored?

Certainly this belief has been pushed at us for centuries through stories, from Jonathan Swift’s Struldbruggs in Gulliver’s Travels (1726), Eugene Sue’s The Wandering Jew (1844-5), and Karel Capek’s The Makropoulos Secret (1925), to more recent tales as presented in John Boorman’s 1974 movie Zardoz.

The world of Zardoz, set in the distant future, has been divided into two realms: the Vortex, where dwell the immortals, and the Outlands, home to the short-lived Brutals. The decadent, impotent immortals have lost their vitality. An especially intelligent Brutal, played by Sean Connery, invades the Vortex, introducing chaos, destroying their society, and returning the immortals to a natural state. That is: dead. Even in the heroic Highlander movie, the grand prize for the sole surviving immortal (“There can be only one!”) is wisdom-with-death.

I suspect this cultural tendency to see indefinite lifespan or potential immortality as a curse serves as a psychological defense against the historically undeniable fact of human mortality. So long as mortality was an unalterable part of the human condition, it was understandable if we fooled ourselves into believing that physical immortality would be dreadful. I am suggesting that mortality no longer need be accepted as inevitable. If indefinitely extended longevity is achievable, continuing to cling to the immortality-as-curse myth can only destroy us.

To begin uncovering the errors fueling opposition to extreme longevity, consider first the distinction between seeking immortality and seeking indefinite lifespan. Suppose we were to grant that we might become bored of life, whether it be centuries, millennia, or eons from now. We might even grant that boredom was inevitable given a sufficiently extended life. Granting these suppositions for now, what follows? Only that literal immortality—living forever—would not be desirable. But forever is infinitely longer than a billion years. If there were, in principle, some limit to the length of a stimulating, challenging, rewarding life, we could not know where it lies until we reached it.

If immortality should not be a goal, indefinitely long lifespan can be. If, one day we find ourselves drained, if we can think of nothing more to do and our current activities seem pointless, we will have the option of ending our lives. Alternatively, we might change ourselves so radically that, although someone continues to live, it’s unclear that it’s us. But we cannot know in advance when we will reach that point. To throw away what may be a vastly long stretch of joyful living on the basis that forever must bring boredom and stagnation would be a terrible error.

Stagnation sets in when motion ceases. Motion, change, and growth form the core of living. We will stagnate if we either run out of the energy to stay in the flow of life, or if we exhaust all the possibilities. I suggest that while some people run out of energy at any age, doing so is not inevitable. I further suggest that life’s possibilities are literally unbounded. Certainly we can see this to be true for millennia to come.

Theoretically arguments from physics, cosmology, and computer science indicate that even true immortality and infinite variety cannot be ruled out. First, then, why do many people run out of energy and settle into a stagnant decline? If we survey the diversity of personalities around us, one thing will become clear: People get bored because they become boring.

Sadly many people don’t wait for old age to become boring. The prospect of extended longevity repels them since even their current lives are dull. What makes them become weary? They make themselves that way in several ways.

Continue on the full text of this essay.

Why Catholics Should Support the Transhumanist Goal of Extended Life

2009-09-09T18:02:00.001-05:00

Why Catholics Should Support the Transhumanist Goal of Extended Life

(A talk being translated to Italian and delivered to a Catholic conference on "The idea of earthly immortality: a new challenge for theology", September 2009).

Intellectual honesty is extremely important to me. Therefore, I must say at the beginning that I am not religious. As the founder of modern transhumanism, I am a rationalist and do not see good reason to believe in the existence of a being who is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good. At the same time, I have studied and understand religion in general and the Catholic faith in particular. I have studied and taught philosophy of religion for many years—including Mount St. Mary’s in Brentwood, California, and have engaged in discussions with many Catholic philosophy students. In addition, I have enormous respect for St. Thomas Aquinas—undoubtedly the greatest of all Catholic theologians.

For Aquinas, faith and reason are compatible and should lead to the same answers, so long as we use our God-given reason carefully. This is a core part of Scholastic philosophy and its blending of revealed wisdom with Aristotle’s philosophy. Aristotle appeals to me for several reasons, the main one for our current purpose being his virtue ethics. It is from a perspective of a virtue ethics of human flourishing that I will argue that Catholics should adopt a generally favorable attitude toward transhumanism and, especially, the pursuit of greatly extended maximum life spans.

Catholic theologians and other thinkers have long been strong defenders of the sacredness of life. They have opposed terminating the life of fetuses and have resisted the resort to suicide. The core transhumanist goal of extended life in the physical realm is thoroughly consistent with this pro-life stance. I prefer the term “extended life” (or “indefinite life span” or “agelessness”) to the term “physical immortality”. I am far from sure that genuine immortality—living literally forever—is possible. Even if we live until the far-future decay or implosion of the universe, that falls infinitely short of forever. A trillion years is but an infinitesimal fraction of eternity.

Even if we succeed in fully understanding and conquering the aging process—as I believe we probably will in the coming decades—our life spans will continue to be limited by factors such as accident, murder, and wars. In a world without aging, we are likely to focus on continuing to reduce the death rate. But, for any period of time—whether a year, a century, or a millennium—we will face a certain probability of death. By “death”, I mean a permanent physical death; loss of personal continuity beyond the point where it can be restored by the medical science and practice of the day.

Literal physical immortality, then, is probably not an option. Agelessness or indefinite life may well be. A substantial and growing number of gerontologists see this as a realistic goal. In part, it’s for this reason that I say that immortality is not truly the goal for most of us as transhumanists. The goal is indefinite life spans. We aim to continually improve ourselves and enhance our capabilities. That makes degenerative aging and involuntary death our mortal enemies. We want to live for now and for the indefinite future. But we cannot know whether we will want to continue living far in the future. Perhaps, after centuries or millennia, we will choose to restore the aging process and allow our physical lives to reach an end. (I believe Catholic moral philosophy may not see this as suicide, but as choosing to move on to the afterlife.)

Transhumanists seek radically extended lives as part of a philosophy that affirms continuous improvement of ourselves, not only intellectually and emotionally but also morally and what might be called spiritually. This goal seems consistent with Catholic views about virtue and the duties of human beings to serve and glorify God. This would not be true if it were possible to point to passages in the Bible—especially in the literal text of the New Testament—that declared longer lives to be contrary to God’s will or to His plans for us. In fact, there is nothing in the Bible that rejects extended physical lives. The Bible appears to be neutral on the topic.

We might even interpret it to have a favorable attitude if we focus on the stated life spans of many early people in the Bible. A major effort to combat physical aging is run by the Methuselah Foundation—named after a man reputed to have lived for 969 years, narrowing exceeding the life spans of several others, including Jared (who lived to 962) and Noah (who lived to 950). The longest-lived person for whom we have reliable records in modern history was Jeanne Calment, who died at the age of 122 years, 164 days. The Bible mentions no fewer than 33 people who lived beyond the age of 123. Whether we take those ages literally or metaphorically, the Bible seems to suggest that our current life spans are not as long as those of people clearly favored by God. And why should a life span of 78 be any more privileged and accepted than historical life spans of 40 or even 30?

In other words, the current average longevity of human beings has varied greatly over time. There is no reason to accept the current state of affairs as uniquely right or divinely commanded. The Catholic Church has no objection to the historical progression of science and technology that has gradually reduced the death rate and extended our lives. In fact, Catholics naturally stand behind efforts to alleviate the suffering of disease and aging and the maintenance and restoration of the healthy, flourishing physical being gifted to us by God.

The Catholic Church should no problem supporting the extension not only of the average life span, but also the maximum life span. At least since Pius XII’s 1950 encyclical Humani Generis, it has become clear that there is no conflict between evolution and the doctrine of the faith regarding man and his vocation. As Pope John Paul II put it: “Today, more than a half-century after the appearance of that encyclical, some new findings lead us toward the recognition of evolution as more than a hypothesis.”

This is especially important in the current context, because the maximum human life span is a product of morally arbitrary evolution, not the result of any divine edict that has ever been communicated to us. Aging and biological senescence and death are the products of evolution. As such, they have no special moral status, whether naturalistic or divine. Aging is essentially a disease process. It results from the failure of our evolved biological mechanisms for cellular repair. We have been endowed with rational capacities unique in all the world. I can see no reason why we should not direct those rational faculties toward improving on what nature has so wonderfully but imperfectly developed. The goal, of course, is not an extended period of decrepitude but an extended period of healthy and vigorous life.

It would be enough for the Catholic Church to support anti-aging efforts simply by acknowledging that this involves relieving suffering and infirmity, and that senescence is not a divinely-commanded condition. But there are positive arguments for actively combating the ravages of aging and the inevitability of biological death. One of these might come from taking the lead of Jesus, who repeatedly urged us to “do as I have done”. Jesus did not look at physical weaknesses and sickness and say “My Father has commanded it. Accept your suffering and impending death.” On the contrary, Jesus made it a core part of his mission to heal the sick and even raise the dead.

This implies that, while suffering may have value, the kind of involuntary, guiltless suffering imposed by age-related illness and senescence is not inherently noble. We can grant that suffering might improve us and can have a valuable place in our lives, without accepting every kind of suffering. Suffering comes in many forms, so reducing or even eliminating suffering due to aging and death still allows plenty of room for a salutary or redemptive role for suffering.

Catholics faced with disease and suffering do not hesitate to support medical research even as they minister to the spiritual needs of victims. I believe that, as it becomes ever more feasible to prevent and reverse the diseases of aging, our moral responsibility to help in doing so becomes greater. Extending the maximum human life span has not seemed feasible until recent years. As more evidence accumulates showing that we can successfully combat aging and the inevitability of biological death, I would expect to see the Church actively supporting or conducting research.

A final observation: From a specifically Christian perspective, extending the maximum healthy life span of humans beyond the current limit of around 123 years would have another major benefit: It would give us more time to develop virtue, to do good works, to serve God, and to save souls. This alone should be reason enough to vigorously support the quest for ageless bodies and indefinite life spans. Few of even the most optimistic transhumanists expect the world to ever be perfect. To the extent that the world remains imperfect—and far inferior to Heaven—a longer existence in the physical world might perhaps be regarded as a milder form of purgatory. It can be seen as a divine blessing: an extended opportunity to improve ourselves, do good works to redeem ourselves, to glorify God, and to more fully earn a place in Heaven.

Climate Consensus? Maybe, But About What?

2009-08-08T16:28:00.003-05:00

(This is a slightly edited version of a post I made to the WTA-Talk email list on July 31, 2009.)

James Hughes posted [on the WTA-Talk email list] the results of one particular survey that reported apparently strong agreement on something or other. James especially highlights the figure of 97% agreement. That does indeed sound very impressive. I do think that such a tight consensus among a group of scientists would be something to give considerable epistemic weight to -- at least in the absence of major objections, say from a neighboring discipline. I’m perfectly willing to be persuaded that a consensus on some clear point exists that I currently disagree with. So far, however, I haven’t been given sufficient reason to do so. Let's look at little more closely at this particular survey and my reasons for doubt.

>Two questions were key: Have mean global temperatures risen compared
>to pre-1800s levels, and has human activity been a significant
>factor in changing mean global temperatures?
>
>About 90 percent of the scientists agreed with the first question and 82 percent the second.

These numbers are lower than the most impressive one of 97%, but still high.

>The strongest consensus on the causes of global warming came from
>climatologists who are active in climate research, with 97 percent
>agreeing humans play a role.

Agreement was lower in certain groups:

>Petroleum geologists and meteorologists were among the biggest
>doubters, with only 47 percent and 64 percent, respectively,
>believing in human involvement.

Why would agreement be higher among the climatologists than among other scientists, including meteorologists and physicists? One plausible answer is that it's because the climatologists can make better judgments. (Although evidence-based forecasting shows that expert forecasts of future changes cannot be trusted with this kind of problem.) Another plausible answer is that groupthink is at work, as it is in so many areas of human activity. This is hardly an arbitrary suggestion, given all the accusations of "denial" and "planetary traitors" and the strong pressures being exerted against skeptics.

Of course there are other surveys, which produce different results. Climatologists are only one group qualified to answer these questions. But l'll set that aside here.

One question that comes to mind is; How were the people to be questioned selected? What percentage of the total does the 3,100 or so represent? From what I've seen, some 10,200 earth scientists were contacted. Only 3,100 replied. Now, these may be representative, or they may not be. Anyone with an academic background in the social sciences, or statistics knows that samples can and often do misrepresent the whole. Given the thousands of scientists who have signed dissenting opinions, I'm not terribly confident that the percentages of respondents in this survey accurately represent the whole group. It seems, for instance, that earth scientists working in private industry were ignored. Given that government-funded scientists may have an incentive (above and beyond the obviously heavy peer-pressure) to agree, the results may not give an accurate picture of all relevant scientists.

These questions come to mind especially because of the highly politicized nature of this discussion. Also, specifically, because of misrepresentations such as seen with the IPCC report, where a small group of people claim to speak for a much larger group. (Compare the summary of the IPCC report to the actual details of the report...)

Other surveys have yielded different percentages. You can see that just from the Wikipedia article.

But, set aside these concerns.

Much more troubling are the questions and the conclusions so quickly drawn from them. Consider the questions. What exactly were those surveyed being asked?

1. "Have mean global temperatures risen compared to pre-1800s levels?"
1800 was around the time that we began to recover more quickly from the Little Ice Age. So what does this tell us? Not much about today or about human activity. It does show that climate scientists agree that the global temperature changes over time. Who is going to disagree with that?

2. Has human activity been a significant factor in changing mean global temperatures?
So, 82% said yes to this. Is this anything to get excited about? Should it impress those of us who are a bit skeptical about warming catastrophe stories? Suppose you are entirely certain that carbon dioxide released by humans is not the cause of global warming. You would still easily grant that global mean temperatures has risen due to the urban heat island effect.

In addition, the question is very vague, certainly if "significant" is taken in the sense of statistical significance (as it presumably is by these scientists). If those climate scientists believed that only 2% or 5% of observed warming could be attributed to human activity, they would still agree with that statement.

How many would still agree if the question was:
-- Do you agree that warming was almost certainly primarily due to human activity? (Not just "significant".)
-- Is global warming principally or quantifiably due to human activity?
-- Are you certain or almost certain that human activity would cause a degree of future warming that constituted a catastrophe?
-- Do you believe that large cuts in carbon dioxide would be effective or cost-effective?
-- Do you believe that the Kyoto Protocol is a sensible solution?

Claiming consensus -- even if entirely justified -- on such vague questions that few skeptics would disagree with is an easy victory that gets us nowhere with any discussion that matters. Once again, dumbing down the issue to a "consensus" of some vague kind isn't useful.

Aside from the foregoing points, I have to say that given the inaccuracy of climate models (as shown comparing them to the past), being impressed by a supposed (or even real) consensus of climate scientists doesn't look too different from relying on a consensus of astronomers. (I would have equally harsh things to say about economists, when they model whole economies...) Granted, that's overstating it. But not by a whole hell of a lot. Again, see my previous post pointing to an audit of the forecasting methodology of the IPCC report, which is considered the gold standard.

I just can't see climate modeling as having attained the status of a hard science at this stage. Even if there was a rock solid consensus on some point of interest (rather than on statements that I have no problem with at all), I would not feel rationally compelled to assent to it as I would, for instance, in the case of a consensus among particle physicists who tell me not to worry about strangelets as they start up the Large Hadron Collider.

My Current View of the Global Warming Controversy

2009-08-08T15:09:00.005-05:00

In the raging debate over global warming (or climate change), each side contributes to polarization and misrepresentation of views. Too many of those who see themselves as part of the “consensus” about anthropogenic global warming (AGW) have a habit of ignoring the differences among those who disagree with them. These people are eager to slap the label “denier” and “anti-science” on the skeptics. (Both those labels have been applied to me by Mike Treder, who has consistently proven the most dishonest and arrogant example of what I’m talking about.)

We skeptics (okay, “planetary traitors” if you prefer) actually hold a wide range of views. I’m tired of being labeled a “denier” of some unspecified received truth. I do not deny, for instance, that there has been some global warming this century. My doubts about the claimed (and possibly real) consensus concern other beliefs. To set the record straight (and to make it a bit harder for people like Treder to misrepresent me), here are my current views, as of early August 2009:

• It’s highly probable that there has been some global warming this century—probably about 0.7 degrees C.

• The climate is dynamic and is continually changing. Further, it changes in different ways in different places. For instance, it may be warming in some areas while it cools in others. Local, specific examples are not good evidence for a global trend.

• There has been no warming over the past 12 years—despite continued human-related emissions.

• Over the next century, it’s extremely uncertain how much, if any, further GW/AGW to expect.

• Climate models are not proven reliable or accurate. Climate modeling is still an infant science.

• GW is far from the most urgent or important global issue for us to deal with. (See the work of The Copenhagen Consensus. Also see this [yes, it’s from a Cato blog, so start up your ad hominems]. Some problems that are more deserving of attention: Hunger, malaria, and unsafe water.

• Enormously expensive actions to reduce/stop GW by severely restricting CO2 emissions are premature. (Global wealth decades in the future will be far higher than with restrictions; mitigation is vastly more efficient, to whatever extent it might be needed.)

• Given the considerable uncertainty (and also taking in account geopolitical and health considerations), it probably makes sense to move strongly toward nuclear power (and more solar, wind, and wave power where feasible) and to encourage or even subsidize research into alternative energy sources.

• The extent to which global warming is anthropogenic is much more uncertain than asserted by the “consensus”/orthodoxy.

• The extent to which a consensus actually exists is not clear, nor is it clear on what exactly the consensus agrees (beyond the fact of some warming over the last century and some contribution by human activities).

I reserve the right to change these views as I continue to study this interrelated set of complex issues.

BMI: Badly Misleading Information

2009-07-26T22:36:00.005-05:00

Metrics can be helpful in tracking progress and measuring adherence to processes. One process that is important to many people is that of losing weight or, more precisely, reducing their level of body fat. A simple metric for that purpose would certainly be helpful. At the same time, such a metric could help private and public agencies assess the prevalence and degree of obesity nationally and internationally. “But such a metric already exists!” you might exclaim. It’s the Body Mass Index (BMI).

For those of us still using bizarre imperial units, the BMI is calculated by measuring your weight in pounds and your height in feet. You then multiply your weight by 4.88 and divide the result by your height squared. For a 6’ 00” person weighing 200 lbs, their BMI is 27.1. So, yes, we have a simple metric, but this BMI is Balmy Metric Idiocy. It’s Badly Misleading Information.

The Proactionary Principle urges us, when making decisions, to strive for objectivity and to use evidence-based methods—not simply methods that are widely accepted and used. The great disparity between the high popularity of the BMI and its low level of objectivity and accuracy serves as an object lesson. It’s not just that millions of dieters use the BMI. It has been used and recommended for years by nutritionists, trainers, and official health, wellness, and fitness organizations. Governments are using it to define many millions of people as overweight and obese for the purposes of crafting health policy. The US National Institutes for Health (NIH) starting use BMI in 1985 to set cut-off points for weight and health.

So, what’s wrong with the BMI? I first realized one of its shortcomings when I ran the calculation for myself. I had been working on regaining some lost muscle mass. In doing so, I had put on a couple of pounds of fat along with the muscle. Despite the small gain, I know that I was still fairly lean. This was confirmed by having the gym staff (on more than one occasion) use their more expensive version of the Tanita bioelectrical impedance scale I have in my bathroom. The result: 12.5% body fat. This was a bit lower than the result on my cheaper Tanita scale at home, but close. Given that result—and the fact that I could easily see my abdominals in the mirror—I should expect the BMI to come out clearly below 25, right?

Using the BMI calculator at MSNBC (and verified by my own calculation), I discovered that my BMI was 27.1 According to that, I was overweight. At the same time, the BMI calculator complained that my waist size was “not typical”. I take it that “not typical” means that I had more muscle than most people. That is one major problem with the BMI: It utterly fails to distinguish between fat and muscle.

Take a slightly more non-typical example (but not at all an unknown one): An athlete or bodybuilder with 10% body fat weighing 225 lbs and standing 6 feet tall. At that body fat level, the BMI should be no more than around 20 (the lower end of normal). In fact, it might well be under 20, since few people have that low a level of body fat. Instead, the BMI comes out as 30.5. The BMI is telling this highly conditioned, wonderfully lean athlete that he is in fact obese!

It’s true that the BMI is a pleasantly simple metric. Simplicity is good, but not at the expense of necessary accuracy and information. Because it considers only height and weight, the BMI doesn’t discriminate between fat, muscle, organ, and water. As such, it’s a foolish way to define normal, overweight, or obese. It doesn’t take into account body frame, making it blind to the differences between men and shorter women. Studies show that BMI does a particularly poor job when applied to children, especially when comparing children of differing ethnic groups. For instance, “Slight Sri Lankan children in Australia have more body fat than white Australian children with the same BMI."

Another fatal weakness of the BMI is that it tells us little about people’s health status or probable future health. One reason for this is that it makes no distinction between the places where fat is stored on the body. It’s now known that abdominal fat is a better indicator of future health problems than fat in other areas, but the BMI is oblivious to this finding. The numbers of the BMI yield a misleadingly precise classification, despite the fact that it’s hard to see any difference in increased risk for premature death or serious illness between those who are of normal weight (BMIs of 20-25), overweight (25 to 30), and obese (over 40).

Risks only go up for those classified as underweight (BMI < 18) or as morbidly obese (BMI < 40). If you have a BMI between 25 and 26, you’re classified as overweight. Yet studies by Flegal at the US Center for Disease Control found this group had the best longevity prospects. A study by Gronniger found that moderately obese men (as classified by the BMI) had the same mortality rate as men of “normal” weight.

The BMI is arbitrary in the way it classifies people as normal, overweight, and obese. No scientific basis has been found for labeling people as overweight or obese on the basis of their BMI. What the BMI really does is to codify someone’s subjective views of overweight and obesity into a pseudo-objective metric. I don’t say this to make things easier for fat people. Personally, I work at staying reasonably lean and I have a strong aversion to body fat in other people. My own arbitrary measures would be at least at strict as those embodied in the BMI—were I to attempt to force my preferences onto everyone else, under cover of science.

As I have argued in the context of critiquing the “precautionary principle”, activists like arbitrariness. Arbitrary measures and principles are easily manipulated by special interests. Politicians can use the arbitrariness of the BMI to hype a “war on fat” and to troll for votes by exaggerating health risks. The weight loss industry and those who sell weight loss drugs can do the same.

The BMI is a simple, slim measure, but it’s too simple to do the job. A better approach will, of necessity, be a little better filled out with information and wisdom. If you hadn’t considered these points before, now you know. Don’t be a Bloody Moronic Idiot by continuing to use the BMI.

6 Ways to Mismanage Risks

2009-07-22T23:17:00.000-05:00

How did so many financial companies do such a poor job of risk management during the recent financial crisis? Numerous factors contributed to the problems including (as I argued in an earlier blog entry) problematic government regulation. In a March 2009 Harvard Business Review article, Rene Stulz offers his own insightful take on “6 Ways Companies Mismanage Risks”.

As we’ve seen in responses to previous crises, organizations both public and private have not done well at making the kinds of changes that effectively prevent a different set of problems cropping up in future. Attention to the six problem areas Stulz discusses would probably help. These are: 1. Relying on historical data. 2. Focusing on narrow measures. 3. Overlooking knowable risks, such as those outside the class of risks normally associated with particular units, and those related to the hedging strategies used to manage risks already identified and assessed. 4. Overlooking concealed risks. 5. Failing to communicate. 6. Not managing in real time.

Stulz concludes by calling for “sustainable risk management”. This includes using scenario analysis to take into account catastrophic risks. You can find my more detailed review of Stulz’ article and a link to the article itself here.

Singularity and Surge Scenarios

2009-06-21T17:50:00.004-05:00

How fast will the future arrive? How will that future differ from the present? We need to have a good sense of the possible and plausible answers to those questions if we are to make smart decisions about technology, the economy, the environment, and other complex issues. The process of envisioning possible futures for the purpose of preparing more robust strategies is often called scenario planning. I prefer scenario learning or thinking, because scenarios foster prepared minds by “learning from the future”, and they provide a forum for integrating what has been learned into decision making.

It’s important to realize that scenario learning is not a forecasting method. Its purpose is not to pinpoint future events but to highlight large-scale forces that push the future in different directions. If we are to develop robust strategies, policies, and plans, we need a sufficiently diverse set of scenarios. In recent years, the success of the Singularity concept has narrowed the range of scenarios pondered in many discussions. The Singularity was conceived and developed by Vernor Vinge (inspired by I.J. Good’s 1965 thoughts on “the intelligence explosion”), Hans Moravec, and Damien Broderick. Over the last few years it has become strongly associated with the specific vision expounded in great detail by Ray Kurzweil.

Responses to Kurzweil’s bold and rich Singularity scenario have often been polarized. To some readers, the Singularity is obvious and inevitable. To others, the Singularity is a silly fantasy. My concern is that the very success of Kurzweil’s version of the Singularity has tended to restrict discussion to pro- and anti-Singularity scenarios. Just as the physical singularity of a black hole sucks in everything around it, the technological Singularity sucks in all discussion of possible futures. I’d like to open up the discussion by identifying a more diverse portfolio of futures.

We could chop up the possibilities in differing ways, depending on what we take to be the driving forces and the fixed factors. I choose a 2 x 5 matrix that generates 10 distinct scenarios. The “5” part of the matrix refers to five degrees of change, from a regression or reversal of technological progress at one extreme to a full-blown Singularity of super-exponential change at the other. The “2” part of the matrix refers to outcomes that are either Voluntarist or Authoritarian. I’m making this distinction in terms of how the trajectory of change (or lack of it) is brought about—either by centralized direction or by a primarily emergent or distributed process, as well as by the form it ends up taking.

As a transhumanist, I’m especially interested in the difference between the Singularity and what I call the Surge. In other words, scenarios 9 and 10 compared to 7 and 8.

So, we have five levels of change, with each level having two very broadly defined types, as follows: [click to enlarge]

Level 1 is the realm of Regression (or Reversal) scenarios. In “U-Turn”, civilization voluntarily abandons some or all technology and the social structures technology makes possible. It’s hard to see this happening on a global level, but we can imagine this happening due to cultural exhaustion from the complexities of technologically advanced living (this is the “Mojo Lost” variant. A religion or philosophy might arise to translate this cultural response into action. In the “Hard Return” variant, a similar outcome might result from global war or from the advent of a global theocracy.

Level 2: Stationary. Bill Joy’s advocacy of relinquishing GNR (genetic, nano, robotic) technologies is a partial version of this, at least as Joy describes it. A more thorough relinquishment that attempted to eradicate the roots of dangerous technologies would have to be a partial Level 1 scenario. Some Amish communities embody a partial Stationary scenario, though most Amish are not averse to adopting new technologies that fit their way of life.

The Steady State scenario seems to me quite implausible. It involves everyone somehow voluntarily holding onto existing technology but developing no new technologies. This might be slightly more plausible if hypothesized for a far future time when science has nothing more to discover and all its applications have been developed. The Full Stop variant of the Stationary level of change is more plausible. Here, compulsion is used to maintain technology at a fixed level. Historically, the western world (but not the Islamic world) experienced something very close to Full Stop during the Dark Ages, from around 500 AD to 1000 AD (perhaps until 1350 AD).

If extreme environmentalists were to have their way, we might see a version of Full Stop that I call Hard Green (or Green Totalitarianism) come about. A more voluntarist version of this might be called Stagnant Sustainability.

Level 3: Linear Progressive. This level of change might also be called “Boring Future”. It’s a scenario of slow, gradual advance in traditional areas that we see in most science fiction—especially SF on TV and in the movies. Technology advances and society changes at a linear pace. The recent past is a good guide to the near future. Most of us seem to have expectations that match Level 3. Kurzweil calls this the “intuitive linear” view. I don’t feel much need to distinguish the Voluntarist and Authoritarian versions, except to give them names: Strolling and Marching.

Level 4: Constrained Exponentially Progressive (Surge scenarios). This level of scenarios recognizes that technological progress (and often social progress or change) is not linear but exponential, at least some of the time and at least for many technologies and cultures. The past century is therefore not a good guide to the century to come. Overall, despite setbacks and slowdowns, change accelerates—technology surges ahead, sometimes then slowing down again before surging ahead once more. We can expect to see much more change between 2010 and 2060 then we saw between 1960 and 2010. To the extent that this change comes about without centralized control and direction, it’s a scenario of Emergent Surge. To the extent that a central plan pushes and shapes technological progress, it’s a Forced Surge.

Level 5: Super-exponentially Progressive (Singularity scenarios). The Singularity scenarios arise when we project the discontinuous arrival of superintelligence, or otherwise expect double-exponential progress. Yudkowsky’s “Friendly AI” is a clear instance of the Humanity-Positive Singularity, though not the only possible instance. There are other ways of distinguishing various Singularity scenarios. One way (going back to Vinge) is in terms of how the Singularity comes about: It might be due to the Internet “waking up” augmentation of human biologically-based intelligence, human-technology integration, or the emergence of a singular AI before humans exceed the historical limits on their intellectual capabilities.

By defining and naming these scenarios, I hope to make it easier to discuss a fuller range of possibilities. We might use these scenarios (suitably fleshed out) as a starting point to consider various questions, such as: Is continued technological progress inevitable? Could we plausibly envision civilizations where progress halts or even reverses? What factors, causes, and decisions could lead to halting/stagnation or regression?

My own main interest, for now, lies in considering the differences between the Surge and the Singularity scenarios. They may not appear to be very different. I believe that there is a quite a difference in the underlying view of economics and social, psychological, and organizational factors. I will explore the Surge vs. Singularity issue more in a later post, and in the sixth chapter of my forthcoming book, The Proactionary Principle. I will consider, for instance, factors favoring a Surge rather than a Singularity, such as adoption rates, organizational inertia, cognitive biases, failure to achieve super-intelligent AI, sunk costs, activist opposition, and regulation and bureaucratically-imposed costs—nuclear power in the USA being a good example.

Spurring Executives to Think Longer-Term

2009-05-31T13:32:00.005-05:00

While I think there is value in the high-level discussions of what caused the financial mess and ensuing economic contraction, not enough attention has been given to the specifics. While I agree with those who point the finger at government policies (see previous blog entry), I also agree that the market economy does experience swings. These are not necessarily bad, but smoothing them out a bit is probably good -- making economic coordination easier and reducing the costs of misallocated resources.

I don’t mean heavy-handed government intervention that acts in a way that prevents the circuit breaker from blowing. On the contrary, many of the most important ways of moderating the swings consist of removing and preventing government interventions of the kinds I listed in my previous entry.

More relevant are means of helping us learn more quickly, thereby reducing the magnitude of the problems resulting from failure. Designing institutions and learning processes to learn from “fast failure” through many modest experiments (as well as developing better means of anticipation) seems to be a promising approach. This is really just a practical implementation of pancritical rationalism, and was nicely described in some detail by Stefan H. Thomke in his book Experimentation Matters.

We won’t really make major progress in moderating the business cycle until we can find better ways of reducing the endemic biases in human thinking. We also need to continue improving our understanding of feedback systems and problems resulting from imitative behavior. (Imitation may be why all major mortgage debt rating agencies used the same flawed ratings models for poorly-understood derivatives, though that may have more to do with SEC regulations.)

One factor that no doubt contributed to the problems is the way executive compensation has been incentivizing executives to take on excessive risk in pursuit of short-term gains. That is not inherent in the market system; it's a result of the specific compensation schemes used. Four authors have recently published a working paper suggesting a better compensation scheme. My review of “Dynamic Incentive Accounts” is here.

Stress Testing Government Regulations

2009-05-30T14:41:00.003-05:00

Given that the economy will only grow more complex in the future, I find it disturbing how so many of us still run to Great God Government for top-down solutions to the intricacies of complex economic systems. I do believe there are many opportunities for improving the functioning of markets in the economy – for turning markets-as-we-find-them into what I call “smart markets” (or designer markets). But we continue to turn too quickly to poorly thought-out regulation to solve problems, often unaware of how previous poorly designed regulations created or contributed to the problems.

There’s been talk recently about “stress testing” the banks to determine their financial strength. It seems odd to me that we don’t say much at all about the need to stress test government regulations and institutions. Two of the tenets of the Proactionary Principle is to take a comprehensive and maximally objective look at proposed actions, policies, regulations, and institutions. Perhaps we need a constitutional amendment to require the stress testing of proposed regulations. They should be carefully tested under widely varying assumptions and scenarios.

Those looking for easy and centralized answers to current financial and economic problems have renewed the ideological attack on free markets… or on anything remotely close to free markets in our very heavily regulated economy. I have long since repudiated the “libertarian” label as inadequate to describe my economic and political views. Even so, I think the best answers to economic matters almost always reside in the smart design and use of markets rather than in direct government intervention. Since I don’t want to be taken to support the latter in the current situation, I feel compelled to list here some of the ways the government has caused or strongly contributed to the financial and economic problems.

I find ludicrous the claim that our problems result from a lack of regulation. The real situation is one of continuing heavy regulation but with decreased effectiveness and ever less accountability. As economist Tyler Cowen put it, “That’s dysfunctional governance, not laissez-faire.” He points out that, just in the regulatory category of finance and banking, inflation-adjusted expenditures have risen 43.5 percent from 1990 to 2008. The Federal Register puts out something like 70,000 pages of new regulations each year.

Between 1980 and 2007, the highest growth rate in regulation was in "homeland security". The second-largest growth rate was in regulation of finance and banking, where spending almost tripled, rising from $725 million to $2.07 billion. (See this for more details.)

Some of the worst things happened in the highly regulated housing and bank mortgage lending sectors, including among the government-sponsored mortgage agencies. Banks are regulated by rules and agencies including the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the international Basel accords on capital standards, state authorities, the Federal Reserve the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, and particular laws such as the Sarbanes-Oxley Act.

I don’t doubt that problems can arise in financial markets through poor decision making and herd behavior. But that doesn’t mean that regulation is the answer in most cases. In genuinely free markets, or anything close to them, problems will usually reveal themselves before they grow as large as the recent Western financial problems. They only grow monstrous if the government won’t allow the fuse to blow.

Some of the specific problematic regulations and institutions, in my view:

The Federal Reserve, formed by the government, played a central role in the financial crisis with its insistence on keeping interests too low for too long. The government thereby contributed to what economists call moral hazard.

The longstanding mortgage interest deduction encouraged overinvestment in real estate.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were formed by the government and given a legally-enforced monopoly over “conforming loans.” These institutions contributed to the credit crisis by pushing money at borrowers who wouldn’t otherwise have received loans.

The Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) reinforced this problem when the government pressured banks to loan lots more money to people with bad credit. The mortgage market collapsed when many of those people could no longer repay the loans. The CRA, passed in 1977 and strengthen in 1995, compelled banks to extend loans in high-risk areas. If they refused to do so, they would be liable for fines and would find it harder to get approval for mergers and branch expansions.

The federal government added to the subprime problem through a change in regulations by the comptroller of the currency in December 2005. This triggered some mortgage borrowers to default.

In 1975, the SEC created a credit rating cartel by mandating that debt be rated by a Nationally Recognized Statistical Rating Organization (NRSRO). By establishing the NRSRO, the government raised barriers to entry, leaving those in the favored group protected from competition in the ratings business. It also spurred the inflation of debt ratings. How? Before the NRSRO, it was the debt buyers who had to go to the ratings agencies to evaluate what they were buying. After the NRSRO, it was the issuers of debt who sought out the ratings. Naturally they sought out the highest rating possible. [See this.]

Those are just a few of the bad moves originating in government regulations and institutions. I could also point to increased uncertainty created by inconsistent actions, such as the government bailing out AIG but not Lehman. The government even spurred the use of securitized mortgages through federal regulations allowing the banks to hold much smaller loan loss reserves on the condition that they used securitized mortgages.

The point here is not that the market works perfectly. Nor is it that all regulations necessarily make things worse. It is that regulations have unintended consequences and that therefore we should be applying much smarter and more critical thinking to how we design and evaluate them. I believe that the most promising role for regulation is in helping markets work better, that is, in creating smart markets. But the regulations listed above are of a different kind: they attempt to directly force the highly complex system that is the economy to produce outcomes desired by politicians and interest groups in the name of the public interest.

A Letter to Mother Nature: Amendments to the Human Constitution

2009-05-25T16:24:00.009-05:00

It's about ten years since I wrote the following piece (and read at the EXTRO 4: Biotech Futures conference in Berkeley, California). I'm thinking of including it in the book I'm working on (or possibly another book to follow right after that, focused on transhumanism). If you have any feedback on what you think works and what doesn't work as well as it might, I'd like to hear from you.

A Letter to Mother Nature
From Max More
August 1999 (undergoing revision May 2009)

Dear Mother Nature:

Sorry to disturb you, but we humans—your offspring—come to you with some things to say. (Perhaps you could pass this on to Father, since we never seem to see him around.) We want to thank you for the many wonderful qualities you have bestowed on us with your slow but massive, distributed intelligence. You have raised us from simple self-replicating chemicals to trillion-celled mammals. You have given us free rein of the planet. You have given us a life span longer than that of almost any other animal. You have endowed us with a complex brain giving us the capacity for language, reason, foresight, curiosity, and creativity. You have given us the capacity for self-understanding as well as empathy for others.

Mother Nature, truly we are grateful for what you have made us. No doubt you did the best you could. However, with all due respect, we must say that you have in many ways done a poor job with the human constitution. You have made us vulnerable to disease and damage. You compel us to age and die—just as we’re beginning to attain wisdom. You were miserly in the extent to which you gave us awareness of our somatic, cognitive, and emotional processes. You held out on us by giving the sharpest senses to other animals. You made us functional only under narrow environmental conditions. You gave us limited memory, poor impulse control, and tribalistic, xenophobic urges. And, you forgot to give us the operating manual for ourselves!

What you have made us is glorious, yet deeply flawed. You seem to have lost interest in our further evolution some 100,000 years ago. Or perhaps you have been biding your time, waiting for us to take the next step ourselves. Either way, we have reached our childhood’s end.

We have decided that it is time to amend the human constitution.

We do not do this lightly, carelessly, or disrespectfully, but cautiously, intelligently, and in pursuit of excellence. We intend to make you proud of us. Over the coming decades we will pursue a series of changes to our own constitution, initiated with the tools of biotechnology guided by critical and creative thinking. In particular, we declare the following seven amendments to the human constitution:

Amendment No.1: We will no longer tolerate the tyranny of aging and death. Through genetic alterations, cellular manipulations, synthetic organs, and any necessary means, we will endow ourselves with enduring vitality and remove our expiration date. We will each decide for ourselves how long we shall live.

Amendment No.2: We will expand our perceptual range through biotechnological and computational means. We seek to exceed the perceptual abilities of any other creature and to devise novel senses to expand our appreciation and understanding of the world around us.

Amendment No.3: We will improve on our neural organization and capacity, expanding our working memory, and enhancing our intelligence.

Amendment No.4: We will supplement the neocortex with a “metabrain”. This distributed network of sensors, information processors, and intelligence will increase our degree of self-awareness and allow us to modulate our emotions.

Amendment No. 5: We will no longer be slaves to our genes. We will take charge over our genetic programming and achieve mastery over our biological, and neurological processes. We will fix all individual and species defects left over from evolution by natural selection. Not content with that, we will seek complete choice of our bodily form and function, refining and augmenting our physical and intellectual abilities beyond those of any human in history.

Amendment No.6: We will cautiously yet boldly reshape our motivational patterns and emotional responses in ways we, as individuals, deem healthy. We will seek to improve upon typical human emotional excesses, bringing about refined emotions. We will strengthen ourselves so we can let go of unhealthy needs for dogmatic certainty, removing emotional barriers to rational self-correction.

Amendment No.7: We recognize your genius in using carbon-based compounds to develop us. Yet we will not limit our physical, intellectual, or emotional capacities by remaining purely biological organisms. While we pursue mastery of our own biochemistry, we will increasingly integrate our advancing technologies into our selves.

These amendments to our constitution will move us from a human to an transhuman condition as individuals. We believe that individual transhumanizing will also allow us to form relationships, cultures, and polities of unprecedented innovation, richness, freedom, and responsibility.

We reserve the right to make further amendments collectively and individually. Rather than seeking a state of final perfection, we will continue to pursue new forms of excellence according to our own values, and as technology allows.

Your ambitious human offspring.

Oxford University Entrance Exams 1983

2009-05-25T13:26:00.002-05:00

Looking through old diaries and memorabilia recently, I came across the exam papers for my Oxford University Entrance Exams. I took these in November 1983, and heard that I was accepted on December 16, 1983. On the exam papers, I marked the questions that I answered. I was interested to see these; perhaps some of you will be too.

GENERAL PAPER
Section I
The passage printed below [from J.S. Mill’s On Liberty] contains nearly 1200 words. Summarise it in not more than 250 words, and answer ONE of the questions following it.
4. Should there be any limits to “absolute freedom of opinion and sentiment on all subjects”?

Section II
10. Is the existence of evil irreconcilable with that of a loving, omnipotent God?
23. When, if ever, is it justifiable to break a law?

ECONOMICS
1. Why is unemployment in Britain so high?
14. Does the effect of a budget deficit depend on whether it is financed by printing money or borrowing from the public?
16. What is meant by “supply side” policies? Would they be effective?
22. Does the “natural monopoly” argument justify the present degree or nationalization in the UK economy?

POLITICS
1. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his means.” Is this a good principle by which to allocate rewards and burdens in society?
3. Is there a sense in which democratic government is “government by consent”?
11. Has the modern Conservative party justified its claim to be the heir to the Liberal tradition?
16. “How far a Prime Minister dominates the cabinet is more a matter of personality than of the institutional resources as his or her disposal.” Do you agree?

Comics of Transhumanist Interest

2009-05-17T19:19:00.012-05:00

You're a transhumanist, or you're fascinated by the possibilities of a future grander than the past. You're really smart. You may be uneasy about asking which comics/graphics novels are worth reading. It's for you that I present: "Everything you always wanted to know about transhumanist comics but were afraid to ask."

Transhuman, by Jonathan Hickman and J.M. Ringuet. Not great, but worth reading as a very recent work.

Transmetropolitan, by Warren Ellis. A dozen volumes following the gonzo future journalist Spider Jerusalem. The early issues include great treatments of cryonics and uploading.

Squadron Supreme, by Mark Gruenwald. Explores what might happen if a super-powered group (modeled on DC’s Justice League of America) took over running society, with a utopian agenda.

Lots of stuff by Warren Ellis, including

--the Planetary series, superbly illustrated by John Cassaday. Each story draws on a classic myth or literary figure or other classic trope.

--Ministry of Space: An alternate-reality Britain goes into space. Superbly illustrated by Chris Weston.

--Ocean: “Sometime in the future, the UN sends weapons inspector Nathan Kane to a space station above Jupiter, where an exploratory team has made an alarming and ominous discovery: beneath the icy exterior of the planet's ocean moon, Europa, are coffins containing members of a sleeping alien race and guns capable of destroying an entire planet. As Kane and the station crew investigate, they are threatened by the sinister representative of a powerful software conglomerate seeking to exploit the discovery for its own purposes.” Among other fun aspects of this story are the “corporate humans” with company-designed personality templates installed for the duration of their contract.

--Orbiter: Dedicated to the astronauts of the ill-fated Columbia on mission STS-107, this is the story of a space shuttle missing for a decade that mysteriously returns… covered in a strange skin, with Martian soil in its landing gear. If you love space and are unhappy at the end of manned space missions, you’ll enjoy this.

--Doktor Sleepless (mad scientist who uses mildly future-tech to disrupt the social order).

--Stormwatch: A cynical, clever modern take on technologically-advanced super-teams who take a ruthless approach to solving problems. Volume 1: A Force of Nature. Volume 2: Lightning Strikes. In Volume 3, Change or Die, a Superman-level, ageless man known as The High leads a team of metahumans determined to radically change the world, not just to solve problems as they arise. This includes using nanotechnology to create the Nevada Garden (where treelike devices grow anything you want) and the abolition of government and war. The second story in this volume involves a conflict with a radical offshoot of an American Cyborg religion, the Church of Gort—cyborg fundamentalists with shared minds. In Volume 4: Final Orbit, Stormwatch fights off the aliens from the Alien movie.

--The Authority. This is a continuation of Stormwatch, with some of the same characters, but with the concepts and settings turned up higher. The team includes the tough, gay couple The Midnighter (an enhanced Batman-like character) and Apollo, as well as The Engineer, whose powers are self-created through nanotechnology. Every super-group has their HQ, but the Authority’s is the most amazing. It’s an alien space-city-spaceship 50 miles long and 35 miles deep and powered by a caged baby universe.

From the introduction by Grant Morrison to the first volume, Relentless: “Because traditional superheroes always put the flag back on top of the White House, don’t they? They always dust the statues and repair the highways and everything ends up just the way it was before… But what “IF”? What if the superheroes decided to make a few changes according to a “higher moral authority”? What if they started to act the way WE might act faced with impossible problems? What if every problem was a solution in disguise? What if WE began to think like superhumans, on a scale we never imagined before?”

Warren Ellis engages in plenty of big concept adventures in his Authority adventures, including an invasion from an alternate universe and the return of Earth’s creator (who wants the planet back, minus all life on it). His writing is beautifully complemented by Bryan Hitch’s penciling, Paul Neary’s inking, and Laura Depuy’s coloring. It could have been a disaster when he left the title, but happily he was replaced by Mark Millar and artist Frank Quitely who set out on their controversial (and occasionally censored run). The transition is in the middle of the volume appropriately titled, Under New Management (starting with #13 in the single issues). Even more so under Millar, The Authority set out to change the world drastically, not just to save it from threats.

Book 3 is Earth Inferno and Other Stories, followed by Book 4: Transfer of Power in which the governments of the world attack The Authority, in fear of losing their own power to abuse their citizens.

--Ultimate Human (the modern “Ultimate” universe versions of Iron Man/Tony Stark and the Hulk/Bruce Banner). Here they represent the triumphs of biotechnology and nanotechnology. The somewhat narcissistic but brilliant technology-inventor Stark gets the better deal; Banner is cursed with an insanely strong and id-driven alter ego whose physiology adapts to any environment.

Miracleman by Alan Moore (first 16 issues) and Neil Gaiman (17 to 24). Moore’s run culminated in the apotheosis or superhumanization of humanity. Both Moore's and (even more) Gaiman's issues ponder the implications for humanity of posthuman beings who can transform the world, "uplift" regular humans, and even (to a limited extent) resurrect the recently-dead.

Paradise X. Physical immortality.

Ultimates 1 and 2. For a thoroughly modern take on super-powered teams.

Ultimate Iron Man (written by Orson Scott Card; the Ultimate line is Marvel’s more recent line (starting in 2000), unencumbered by decades of continuity). This is a technologically-enhanced Tony Stark, whose body is genetically-enhanced before he even puts on his advanced armor.

Ultimate X-Men: Volumes 1 to 6, written by Mark Millar, and 7 and 8 by Bendis. These entertaining issues (the series goes downhill from issue 46/volume 9) has some transhumanistically interesting aspects, including Magneto’s war on homo sapiens. Some quotes: Prof. X: “But there aren’t nicknames, Storm. You’ve just been rebaptized as a post-human being.” “Post-human problems require post-human solutions, Peter. I teach rehabilitation at my school, not revenge.” Seville at the Hellfire Club on an article given him by Prof X.: “Oh, just some stupid article from the London Times. It’s a piece by Stephen Hawking about mutants being man’s last hope against the evolution of artificial intelligence.

Magneto (mutant, anti-human terrorist): “Do not be afraid. Evolution is merely taking place. Just as man replaced ape, so now must you give way to your evolutionary masters… We are not murderers, we are not terrorists and our attacks upon human decadence are far from evil. The Brotherhood of Mutants is simply here to take our place at the top of nature’s food chain. I will keep this message brief because I disliking speaking to you. It feels ridiculous, like conversing with a toad or a common earthworm… you have six calendar months to surrender your world to Homo Sapien Superior. During this time, we will prepare your new society and decide which of your races should be kept as slaves, which should be fuel, and which should be saved for our larder. Magneto has spoken.”

The Surrogates, by Robert Venditti & Brett Weldele <http://www.amazon.com/Surrogates-Graphic-Novels/dp/1891830872/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1265598580&sr=1-1> I found the movie mildly entertaining, but not terribly engaging or intellectually stimulating. The original graphic novel is a little more interesting. I didn’t much like the illustration by Weldele, though it might be more to your taste (too lacking in detail for my liking). The strongest parts, for me, were the fictional ads for surrogate bodies (which seemed to have very much in common with Natasha Vita-More’s earlier “Primo Posthuman”) and related text on the ad campaign. We’re all extremely familiar with the idea of virtual bodies in virtual space.

Surrogates differs from the standard by envisioning a world of physical surrogate bodies that often look like de-aged and enhanced versions of people’s “real” physical bodies. The tone is lightly anti-transhumanist, alas. In reality, transhumanists might like to have such surrogate bodies, but surely they would also prefer to enhance their primary bodies, rather than to leave their sluggish, slobbish physical primaries stacked ungainly in the closet.

On religion and myth:

Garth Ennis’ Preacher series. 9 volumes; deeply offensive to traditional religions. “A tale out of Ireland, dragged through Texas with a bloody hard-on, wrapped in barbed wire and rose thorns. And it’s out to get you.” (From the introduction.)

Lucifer (volumes 1 to 11 by Mike Carey). An unconventional and engaging take on the Lord of Hell, who resigns that post."

Sandman (Neil Gaiman, books 1 to 10)

Other good comics/graphics novels, but not of specifically transhumanist interest:

Animal Man (by Grant Morrison--several volumes; lots of metaphysical fun)

Promethea, by Alan Moore. Delves deeply into magical and Kabbalistic symbols and systems and play with levels of mythic reality. I found the stories more turgid that other Moore work.

V for Vendetta, by Alan Moore.

League of Extraordinary Gentlemen (Alan Moore). Far more than the later movie, Moore’s LEG does a marvelous job of casting his characters (including Captain Nemo and the Invisible Man) in the late 19^th to early 20^th century.

Irredeemable, written by Mark Waid, illustrated by Peter Krause: This is a new title, starting in April 2009. It’s the utterly convincing and terrifying tale of a Superman-like, extremely powerful superhero who goes bad in reaction to the ungrateful criticisms of those he saves. “Let me tell you the kind of world I live in. It is a world of miserable paramecium who lash out at you in a state of perpetual rage for not solving their problems fast enough.”

Alias (great characters, written by Brian Michael Bendis).

Powers, by Bendis and Oeming (super-powered detective thriller series with excellent dialogue).

Fell, by Warren Ellis. (The first issues just came out in trade paperback). A dark but remarkably fascinating series of detective tales set in Snowtown, featuring the exiled Detective Richard Fell.

Batman: The Dark Knight Returns (Frank Miller -- most people like this more than I do, but it’s a classic)

Daredevil (about ten volumes written by Bendis). A sophisticated take on Matt Murdock/Daredevil.

John Constantine: Hellblazer. Lots of volumes, many by good writers, especially the Garth Ennis issues. For instance, the collection Fear and Loathing (#62-67). The grim runs by Jamie Delano are often excellent. Some good ones by Warren Ellis (Haunted, and Setting Sun) and Mike Carey. From Tainted Love: " You don’t accept death! You don’t humanize it!! And it’s not your frigging friend. “Old man death”! Listen to yourself! …I saw death. It’s not your friend. It’s a twisted, coiled, ugly little length of dogshit and you fight it to your last bloody drop- -- otherwise you’re nothing. Otherwise… why did you even bother in the first place?"

Starman (issues/collections by James Robinson, currently being put out in Omnibus editions)

All Star Superman (Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely). A 12-issue limited series that has lots of fun with the central themes of the Superman mythos.

Ex Machina and The Last Man (both Brian K. Vaughn). The first concerns the Mayor of New York, who can “talk” to machines. The second is about the last man alive in a world of women.

Fables. A nicely-done translation of dozens of classic myths into the modern world.

From Hell (brilliant story of Jack the Ripper by Alan Moore)

Joker (Brian Azzarello & Lee Bermejo). A beautifully-drawn graphic novel focused on Batman’s central nemesis.

Any Punisher collection by Garth Ennis (assuming you enjoy hilarious-but-violent), e.g. Welcome Back Frank.

The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman. An engaging apocalyptic zombie series that focuses not on the zombies but on the drama of the few remaining humans struggling to survive.

Red Son (what if Superman as a baby landed in the Soviet Union rather than Kansas -- Greg Burch loved this)

Fantastic Four: World’s Greatest (Millar/Hitch).

We3 (Grant Morrison; fantastic illustration by Frank Quitely). About a dog, a cat, and a rabbit, all hugely enhanced physically and cognitively for military purposes, who escape confinement and try to find home.

Doom Patrol (Grant Morrison). A bizarre, highly post-modern super-team with strange characters and entertainingly weird stories.

Amazon is a good place to get collections of these issues at low prices. If Amazon doesn't have an item, I can recommend this source: http://www.mycomicshop.com/

Doctor Who: Deontologist or Consequentialist?

2008-05-20T01:19:00.000-05:00

First, for those who aren’t familiar with the good Doctor: Doctor Who is a British TV series, originally beginning in 1963 and re-started a few years ago after a long absence. It’s about the adventures of a Time Lord (who is rather fond of Earth and humans, and often takes a human companion on his adventures). Early on, the series established his most persistent adversary and arch-villain as the only other surviving Time Lord, known as The Master.

In my view, the third season of the revived series is the best so far. Even so, there are some episodes I loathe, especially the one in which a (human) scientist finds a way to achieve physical immortality. Of course, he is portrayed as evil and power mad.

The last two episodes of Season Three revolved around a conflict with The Master. I found myself thinking about the actions and inactions of the Doctor in terms of two moral paradigms that have historically been popular among philosophers: the deontological and consequentialist approaches. (I have long preferred a virtue-based ethics, but it’s hard to get very far away from elements of the other two models of morality.)

In case you don’t remember those Moral Philosophy classes you took years ago, here’s an exceedingly brief recap:

Deontological ethics: The right is prior to the good. In other words, actions are only good if they are the right kind of actions. That typically means that good actions are those that conform to some moral rule (such as Kant’s categorical imperative). The outcomes of an action do not (directly) determine its goodness.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deontological_ethics

Consequentialist ethics: The good is prior to the right. In other words, the right action is the one that brings about the most good. (In the utilitarian version, that means bringing about the greatest happiness for the greatest number of people, or sentient beings.) For consequentialists, actions must be judged morally good or bad solely according to their outcomes, not according to motives or the character of the person carrying out the act.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consequentialist

Doctor Who has always been portrayed as an unyieldingly moral person. In particular, he doesn’t kill, no matter how sensible a move that seems to be in even the direst of circumstances.

[SPOILER WARNING]

In the last two episodes of Season Three, The Master uses advanced alien technology to mesmerize the population, getting himself elected Prime Minister of England, then essentially taking control of the entire world. From this base, he intends to expand outward and conquer other races on other planets. With enormous help from his companion, Martha Jones, the Doctor succeeds in toppling The Master after a year of merciless, murderous, dictatorial rule. Everyone in the vicinity (all of whom have suffered badly) desperately urge the Doctor to kill the master. (Being a Time Lord, the Master can regenerate after being killed. But the Doctor could overcome that ability.)

The Doctor will not kill The Master, even though that might seem an eminently sensible thing to do, to prevent future evils should The Master escape. Instead, the Doctor forgives The Master, and plans to watch over him, imprisoned in a (relatively) secure location. Once again, the Doctor displays an absolute refusal to take (intelligent) life. Given the enormous genius and driven psyche of The Master, it’s entirely possible he will escape and cause enormous misery and destruction, but this seems not to weigh at all in the Doctor’s decision.

This suggests that the Doctor lives by a clearly Kantian or deontological moral code. His actions are limited according to what Robert Nozick termed “side-constraints”. Yet, the Doctor also appears to be something of a consequentialist, in that he travels the universe and time eagerly engaging with trouble and righting wrongs. He’s also clearly a universalist, in that his moral concerns transcend species boundaries. Arguably, this is more a feature of consequentialism that of deontology. Utilitarian consequentialists count the pain and pleasure of all feeling beings equally in their moral calculations. Deontologists such as Kant limit the realm of moral concern to a narrow class of beings, usually those counted as capable of rationality.

The writers of this episode, however, either haven’t taken enough Moral Philosophy classes or else took an easy way out. Consider the Doctor’s great agony at The Master’s last move. The Master chooses to let himself die (after being shot by one of the nearby victims) in order to spite the Doctor. (The Doctor doesn’t want to be alone as the last of his race of Time Lords.) The Doctor’s personal desire not to be the last of his species is not universalist, but strongly favors a species-specific valuation of an immensely evil Time Lord over any number of individuals of other species. Nor is his response consequentialist. No principled consequentialist would put his own feelings above the implications of his actions for potentially billions of other sentient beings. It seems to me that the Doctor’s response in this final episode was a melodramatic one that betrays a quite clear deontic ethics.

The episode I detested, mentioned above, followed a long line of stories by numerous writers in taking exceedingly cheap shots at the goal of physical immortality. What underlies the Doctor’s opposition to immortality? Does it make any sense? He lives a long time himself (perhaps over 900 Earth years so far). What possible deontic objection could he have to a human being wanting to greatly extend his life, and those of others who so chose? Even if the Doctor is a closet consequentialist, merely masquerading as a deontologist, he cites no consequentialist objection.

Among us regular human beings, I strongly suspect much stated opposition to physical immortality (or superlongevity) is essentially rooted in resentment. If I can’t live indefinitely then, dammit, living indefinitely must be a bad thing. Having lived for centuries and apparently having enjoyed most of it, perhaps even Doctor Who lies to himself about this, being unable to face what he takes to be the inevitability of his eventual death.

The Proactionary Principle (March 2008)

2008-03-28T02:20:00.000-05:00

The Proactionary Principle emerged out of a critical discussion of the precautionary principle during Extropy Institute’s Vital Progress Summit in 2004. We saw that the precautionary principle is riddled with fatal weaknesses. Not least among these is its strong bias toward the status quo and against the technological progress so vital to the continued survival and well-being of humanity.

Participants in the VP Summit understood that we need to develop and deploy new technologies to feed billions more people over the coming decades, to counter natural threats—from pathogens to environmental changes, and to alleviate human suffering from disease, damage, and the ravages of aging. We recognized the need to formulate an alternative, more sophisticated principle incorporating more extensive and accurate assessment of options while protecting our fundamental responsibility and liberty to experiment and innovate.

With input from some of those at the Summit, I developed the Proactionary Principle to embody the wisdom of structure. The Principle urges all parties to actively take into account all the consequences of an activity—good as well as bad—while apportioning precautionary measures to the real threats we face. And to do all this while appreciating the crucial role played by technological innovation and humanity’s evolving ability to adapt to and remedy any undesirable side-effects.

The exact wording of the Principle matters less than the ideas it embodies. The Principle is an inclusive, structured process for maximizing technological progress for human benefit while heightening awareness of potential side-effects and risks. In its briefest form, it says:

Progress should not bow to fear, but should proceed with eyes wide open.

More flatly stated:

Protect the freedom to innovate and progress while thinking and planning intelligently for collateral effects.

Expanded to make room for some specifics:

Encourage innovation that is bold and proactive; manage innovation for maximum human benefit; think about innovation comprehensively, objectively, and with balance.

We can call this “the” Proactionary Principle so long as we realize that the underlying Principle is less like a sound bite than a set of nested Chinese boxes or Russian babushka dolls. If we pry open the lid of this introductory-level version of the Principle, we will discover ten component principles lying within:

1. Guard the Freedom to Innovate: Our freedom to innovate technologically is valuable to humanity. The burden of proof therefore belongs to those who propose measures to restrict new technologies. All proposed measures should be closely scrutinized.

2. Use Best Objective Methods: Use a decision process that is objective, structured, and explicit. Evaluate risks and generate alternatives and forecasts according to available science, not emotionally shaped perceptions, using the most well validated and effective methods available; use explicit forecasting processes with rigorously structured inputs, and fully disclose the forecasting procedure; reduce biases by selecting disinterested experts, by using the devil’s advocate procedure with judgmental methods, and by using auditing procedures such as review panels.

3. Be Comprehensive: Consider all reasonable alternative actions, including no action. Estimate the opportunities lost by abandoning a technology, and take into account the costs and risks of substituting other credible options. When making these estimates, use systems thinking to carefully consider not only concentrated and immediate effects, but also widely distributed and follow-on effects, as well as the interaction of the factor under consideration with other factors.

4. Embrace Input: Take into account the interests of all potentially affected parties, and keep the process open to input from those parties or their legitimate representatives.

5. Simplify: Use methods that are no more complex than necessary taking into account the other principles.

6. Prioritize and Triage: When choosing among measures to ameliorate unwanted side effects, prioritize decision criteria as follows:
· Give priority to reducing non-lethal threats to human health over threats limited to the environment (within reasonable limits);
· Give priority to reducing immediate threats over remote threats;
· Give priority to addressing known and proven threats to human health and environmental quality over hypothetical risks;
· Prefer the measure with the highest expectation value by giving priority to more certain over less certain threats, to irreversible or persistent impacts over transient impacts, and to proposals that are more likely to be accomplished with the available resources.

7. Apply Measures Proportionally: Consider restrictive measures only if the potential negative impact of an activity has both significant probability and severity. In such cases, if the activity also generates benefits, discount the impacts according to the feasibility of adapting to the adverse effects. If measures to limit technological advance do appear justified, ensure that the extent of those measures is proportionate to the extent of the probable effects, and that the measures are applied as narrowly as possible consistent with being effective.

8. Respect Diversity in Values: Recognize and respect the diversity of values among people, as well as the different weights they place on shared values. Whenever feasible, enable people to make reasonable, informed tradeoffs according to their own values.

9. Treat Symmetrically: Treat technological risks on the same basis as natural risks; avoid underweighting natural risks and overweighting human-technological risks. Fully account for the benefits of technological advances.

10. Revisit and Refresh: Create a trigger to prompt decision makers to revisit the decision, far enough in the future that conditions may have changed significantly, but soon enough to take effective and affordable corrective action.

Hello blogworld!

2008-03-26T23:17:00.000-05:00

Don't get all excited now, dear readers. This is just a test.