I'm back, to class if not fully to form. We're behind, obviously, and need to catch up. All who had their presentations postponed, be ready.
And: Happy Opening Day! Expectations for my team are low, but today they begin the year in first place. Let's go!
Presentation: Michael, Sawyer, Madi, Martha
1. In this touted Age of Genomics, what frequently follows the hopeful hype about gene therapy?
I'm sorry to report I'm still sick (but improving). Do continue to stay on track with the assigned readings and your posts. And sign up for Final Report Presentations (which will now probably begin late).
Just in case we need it to get caught up, save the date (from our designated final exam schedule): Thursday May 8, 3:30 - 5:30 pm
Time to SIGN UP for final report presentations, beginning Apr 1 (no foolin'). We'll do one or two presentations per class. Indicate your preferences in the comments space below.
Presentation to be complemented with a final report blog post,* discussing and elaborating the main points of your presentation, due May 2. Everyone will need to sign up as an AUTHOR on this site. Post an early draft for constructive feedback or to use in your presentation.
* 1,000 words minimum, plus bloggish content: embedded links, relevant images/video etc.
APR
1 Beyond 28-31; Codebreaker Parts Seven, Eight-The Moral Questions, Dispatches from the Front.
3 Beyond 32-34; Codebreaker Part Nine-Coronavirus.
8 Beyond 35-36; Future Part I-The Long View
10 Beyond 37-39; Future Part II-Trajectory Changes
15 Beyond 40-42; Future Part III-Safeguarding Civilisation
17 Beyond 43-50 Future Part IV-Assessing the End of the World
22 Beyond 51-54; Future Part V-Taking Action.
24 Final report presentations conclude (or we'll have a study/review day)
29 Last class. Exam 2 (NOTE: Exam 2 is not a "final exam," it is the exam covering material since Exam 1.)
MAY
2 Final blogposts due (post early draft for constructive feedback)
"…My own safety wasn't my chief concern. Doing everything I can to protect my fellow human beings who cannot be vaccinated — babies too young for the vaccine, people with compromised immune systems, people who are allergic to the components of the vaccine — seems to me to be the only moral thing to do for anyone living in close community with other people. And that's almost all of us.
Community is a concept that the MAGA movement is working overtime to undo, but human beings are a social species. We depend on one another for safety and survival. When we vaccinate our children, we are keeping them safe, but we are also keeping those who cannot be vaccinated safe. It's part of the social contract..."
Ray Kurzweil, meet Epictetus and Carl Sagan...
"The astronomer Carl Sagan, one of my scientific role models when I was a kid, invited us to reflect on the fact that we literally are stardust: the chemical elements of which we are made originated after the explosion of a supernova somewhere in the neighborhood of the solar system, and billions of years of evolution later such matter became the very molecules that constitute our bodies. It is a wonderful, awe-inspiring thought.
But the converse of that is what Epictetus is getting at: we will, again literally, return to dust, recycling our chemicals, allowing new living beings to take our place in the workings of the universe. It doesn’t matter whether those workings have a point or whether they are just what they are: either way, we came from cosmic dust and we will return to cosmic dust. If anything, this should make us even more appreciative of the infinitesimal interval, from a cosmic perspective, during which we are alive and we eat, drink, and love. Regret at the anticipation that this interval will end is not just irrational but entirely unhelpful.
And yet, some people are not persuaded of this at all. On the contrary, a number of techno-optimists think that death is a disease that should be cured, and they are investing good money in the effort. Broadly speaking, they call themselves “Transhumanists,” and quite a few of them can be found among the white male millionaires in Silicon Valley, where many of the world’s most influential tech companies are located.
Perhaps the most famous and influential of the bunch is Ray Kurzweil, a futurist (someone who thinks he can study and predict the future) currently working at Google to develop a software capable of understanding natural language. Kurzweil has a number of important achievements under his belt, including the development of the first omni-font optical character recognition system. Age sixty-eight at the time of this writing, he has been arguing for some time that the way to immortality will be to upload our consciousness into a computer, which he claims will be possible any day now. Indeed, we better manage that feat before the so-called Singularity, a term invented by the mathematician Stanisław Ulam to describe the moment when computers will outsmart people and begin to drive technological progress independently—and perhaps even in spite—of humanity itself.
This is not the place to explain why I think the whole idea of a Singularity is predicated on a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of intelligence, or why “uploading” our consciousness to a computer is extremely unlikely to ever be possible, since consciousness is neither a thing nor a piece of software. Here I’m more interested in the chutzpah displayed by people like Kurzweil as well as by his almost cultlike following, who think of themselves as so important that they ought to, godlike, transcend the laws of nature itself, never mind the fact that they are spending inordinate amounts of money and energy that could be directed toward ameliorating actual, urgent problems the world faces right now, or the disastrous ethical and environmental consequences of their success (if it were possible).
Who, exactly, would have access to the new technology, and at what price? If we succeed in becoming physically immortal—the alternative to uploading hoped for by some Transhumanists—will we keep having children? If so, how would an already diseased planet sustain the thirst for natural resources of a population that grows so relentlessly and manage its ever-escalating production of waste products? Ah, but we will expand beyond Earth! We shall colonize other worlds! Never mind that we still don’t know of any other habitable worlds in the galaxy, or that we have no clue about how to get to them, if they’re out there.
The more I think about Transhumanism the more the word hubris, famously invented by the Greeks precisely for such thinking, seems awfully appropriate. The likes of Kurzweil simply don’t want to leave the party, it seems to me, no matter what the cost, and regardless of how privileged they have been while attending it. Which is why I imagine him having this conversation with Epictetus: “No, I wanted to go on feasting.” “Yes, those at the Mysteries too want to go on with the ceremony, and those at Olympia to see fresh competitors, but the festival is at an end. Leave it and depart, in a thankful and modest spirit; make room for others. Others must come into being, even as you did, and being born must have room and dwellings and necessaries. But if the first comers do not retire, what is left for them? Why will nothing satisfy or content you? Why do you crowd the world’s room?”"
"How to Be a Stoic: Using Ancient Philosophy to Live a Modern Life" by Massimo Pigliucci: https://a.co/bIKCHBh
How Bryan Johnson, Who Wants to Live Forever, Sought Control via Confidentiality Agreements
In a Netflix documentary released in January, Bryan Johnson, a tech entrepreneur turned longevity guru, walked people through his morning routine. After tracking his sleep, he would wake up early to conduct audio therapy and hair therapy, do an hour of exercise and take 54 different pills with a drink called "the green giant," he said.
Mr. Johnson also talked about his long-life start-up, Blueprint, which sells health supplements, blood-testing equipment and other products tied to his personal diet and recommendations.
"By doing Blueprint, one of the key objectives is to achieve the lowest possible biological age," he declared. He added that his health regimen had "reversed my biological age 5.1 years."
The Netflix feature was a breakout moment in Mr. Johnson's five-year campaign to become the face of one of Silicon Valley's most oddball fascinations: the pursuit of everlasting youth. The 47-year-old former Mormon missionary has become known for experimenting on his own body to defy aging, captivating the media and his nearly four million social media followers by receiving the blood plasma of his then-17-year-old son and repeatedly shocking his penis to increase his erections...
Time to sign up for final report presentations, and sign on as authors.
Presentations: Sawyer, Madi, Martha
1. What is the American Society for Reproductive Medicine's position on elective non-medical egg freezing?
 | The New Yorker (@NewYorker) |
Measles is highly contagious and potentially deadly—and entirely preventable through vaccination. So why would people choose to ignore the solid, evidence-based recommendations of the government and the health-care system? nyer.cm/NQ3Xj5h | |
In Victorian times, children were kept away from anything regarding sex or birth, but they sat at deathbeds, witnessed deaths, and helped with the care of the body. Now children may watch the birth of a sibling and never see a dead body … many people reach the end of their own lives having never seen a dying person.
Stay on track with reading and posting, and scheduled presenters plan to report on Tuesday.
"…In the aftermath of the pandemic, we've talked a lot about the loss of public trust in science, but the collapse of trust in government, especially among the young, might be even more worrisome. (The pandemic really did a number on us.) One result is that many more Americans now seem to believe they should be in charge not just of choices about their own health but also of the entire health information ecosystem that informs those choices, as well. Many regard well-being as something you can mold on your own at the gym or perhaps buy at the supermarket, in the supplement aisle — so long as you did your own research (at least listened to a good podcast) and brought your own list.
What is on that list isn't necessarily important, as long as it runs against the establishment grain. Mehmet Oz is about to be confirmed as the head of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, for instance, though only 21 percent of the health recommendations he offered on his television program were judged by a group of researchers to have even "believable" evidence to support them. Kennedy stated that "there is no vaccine that is safe and effective" (he later claimed that the quote was "misused") and has responded to the Texas measles outbreak not by urging everyone to get vaccinated but by shipping vitamin A. He has also praised steroids and cod liver oil — neither of which are part of routine treatment protocols, and neither of which have produced persuasive research suggesting they should be integrated into those protocols.
The MAHA movement rallies itself under the banner of reform, and it does raise undeniably important questions about why the richest country in the world is so much less healthy than its peers. But what it really heralds is a new age of public-health libertarianism, which is to say, a pretty explicit war on all the things that make health a "public" good, sustained by mutual aid, in the first place. At least, it marks the direction of change: away from solidaristic responsibilities and toward something both more suspicious and more solipsistic, by which individuals draw down biomedical capital accrued over many decades without feeling any real need to replenish the well..."
