Simon,

This post is the full realization of my primary critique of transhumanism.

CP...I truly feel bad for you... maybe you could find a social group/hobby with a joint common interest. It also might lead to some romance, if not it's a good way to meet new people regardless. Good luck to you brother.

Robot

Well, in order to say that alienation is a goal of human improvement, you must first define "human improvement." Your argument only holds if your definition of human improvement is to have *fewer* and *less meaningful* relationships. This is not my definition, which is one that sees the ability to get closer to people and have more intimate and meaningful relationships as a goal of human improvement--and this is the fundamental driver behind much of technological development, such as telecommunications. Furthermore, I would argue that socialness serves an essential purpose in coordinating group behavior, and that groups of social people would beat groups of antisocial people in any game of survival, as they would be better able to coordinate activities.

While I do agree that "nerdism" and autism can be beneficial in some contexts (and that neither represents a "defective" mode of being), I do not think that utter alienation ought to be a universal goal.  Autistic people have tended to be isolated due to not sharing demeanor and/or interests in common with those in our immediate proximity, however, the advent of such things as the Internet has made it possible for people to find common ground and kindred spirits with people that aren't necessarily local.  Autistic isn't the same thing as schizoid, and introversion isn't the same thing as misanthropy.

I have never really put much stock in hierarchies or authority for authority's sake, and I have no doubt that my autism is a contributing factor toward this.  However, I've never wished to be completely and utterly alone, all the time (though I do lack the need for constant affirmation and contact that is seen in quite a few nonautistic people).  People are interesting, and some of them are worth communicating with.  But I do think that superficial "social skills" and the ability to sense and form hierarchies are overrated and not necessary for the sake of leading a good life.  

I think there's a lot wrong with how human societies tend to organize themselves, and you only need look at the amount and magnitude of bullying in elementary schools to see that being nonautistic doesn't automatically grant a person superior empathic faculties.  As a child I was taunted relentlessly for being different, to the point of physical assault, all by people who supposedly had "better social skills" than I did.

<I>Thus not only extreme intelligence and enormous life spans, but total alienation from others should be a goal of human improvement.</I>

I'm pretty sure you mean this literally, and it follows that you'd rather be hooked up to a VR machine than actually interacting with others.

In which case, this is the nth time on nth thing I disagree with you on. Part of me wonders if you make controversial posts just because you crave interaction of sorts. In effect, this would completely negate your post, unless you think EVERYONE would be better off isolated. And my position on this is perfectly clear: Bullsh*t.

We need courageous individuals to buck 'group think', test cultural theories, and develop a new and improved road to happiness for humanity ;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Group_think

While I agree that nerdism and such is something that could be beneficial in the long run, I do not agree about the alienation. What would be the point in that? Changing the system into conciously constructed social networks would be useful, IMO. However, how does that constitute as alienation? It would simply be changing the ways of social interaction (something I would support).

>Could autism or at least "nerdism" actually in the long run prove >beneficial?

In four words: I don't think so.

In a few more than four words:

Food confusion production benefits does not necesitate that social confusion will produce benefits.  

When I imagine a world filled with autistic and/or nerdy individuals.  I imagine a world of communication breakdown, depression, isolationism, and misunderstanding.  Brilliance is only worthwhile when it can be shared.  

On a personal note: I suffer from "geekishness", a variant of the nerdism affliction.  I can go to social events and always without fail end up in a corner unable to meaningfully interact with strangers.  Fortunately, my wife is a charismatic socializer.  With her on my arm to break the ice, I can better interact with people and show my worth and viewpoints.  I makes all the difference in the world to have instinctual social grace.  I have learned to improve my social skills, but it will never come natural, which can be painfully evident at times.

Extremism is bad (mmmm'Kay).  Assuming you can take the benefits of nerdism/autism and ignore the negatives is a mistake.  That's like saying "Hmm, fire is good.  I can cook my food, keep warm, and see at night with it.  Let's burn everything."  

Moderation in all things.  It helps, not hinders, brilliance to come forth.

And I for one welcome our new nerdy overlord masters!

Seriously though, even tho I am a complete and total extravert, I have always had a soft spot in my heart for introverts (In fact I married one). They are more likley to think before they act, more thoughtful, more meticulous, and in my opinion much harder to fool. Thier watchers, not leaders... however thier insight is INVALUABLE.

Introverts get marginalized in this Type "a" world. Thats too bad. They think rather than react.

Its rather amazing how extroverted I am when you consider how my mother made me live under the porch so the neighbours woudn't see me.

Having a nerd/geek for the main guy might prove to be a good thing. They would by nature spend a lot of time considering the ways to make better decisions, and always try to make the best decisions that could possibly be made. Another point is that they, also would lack that instinctive grasp of hierarchy.

CP: I actually think you're on to something here, and I do get what you're saying now (though it does seem that you have a pattern of posting something that sounds provocative, only to explain it in less dramatic terms in response to replies).

Basically, you're suggesting it might be better if a majority of people learned social nuances from the ground up, so that they'd understand them more explicitly (rather than being "ruled" by them, often unconsciously).  In some very real ways, being innately "tuned in" to typical primate-signals makes a person vulnerable, particularly to various sorts of irrational argument and manipulation.  However, people who are "tuned in" in this way can learn to recognize coercive tactics in the same manner that autistic people can learn to communicate effectively with nonautistic people -- by studying how the communication styles tend to differ and maintaining that awareness in discussion.

Hmmmm. Your essay seems to be a weakly connected series of generalizations, CP. Nerdish behavior, if we can even define that behavior rigorously, isn't always associated with autism or vice versa.

I wouldn't lay any bets on which of the huge range of human personality types is most suited for the future. We don't know how future society might change so we can't say which personality trait will have the best endurance in the changes to come.

Besides, I think your generalizations are based on a poor understanding of evolutionary biology. Biologists tend to stay away from terms like superior when comparing organisms. If we are talking about sheer biomass and endurance throughout Earth's eons, this is still an epoch overwhelmingly ruled by bacteria. In the long Age of Bacteria, humans, insects and dinosaurs are mere flashes in the pan.

Are humans or bacteria superior? Depends about what your talking about and what context you're in. It's like trying to compare apples and oranges. Intelligence and culture matter a great deal to us but do they really matter to the universe at large? If so, why do the vast majority of replicators seem so simple?

Takes all kinds to make a world.

(By the way, it's been a long time since I said anything here because I've got a new job and I'm very busy these days. Future posts will be rare.)

It would appear that the core idea that can be salvaged from your post boils down to this:

Advocating...... "Freedom from the grip of percieving the world through social instincts..."

This is commonly referred to as "Critical Thinking Skills".

I can and do, wholeheartedly support the spread and use of Critical Thinking Skills.

As far as the rest of your theory, the assumptions , conclusions and the way it all was packaged and hangs together... I find most of that lacking.

For example, when you say,

"Just as people with scant food instincts but high intelligence have become able to exploit many more resources than chimpanzees, so such persons would build much more complex and beneficial societies."

This does not logically, or even necessarily follow. You are using a rather weak analogy here. The basis I use for determining this, (the strength of the analogy), is:

1.) Do the things compared share a large number of RELEVANT similarities ?

2.) Do the things compared exhibit a large or decisive number of Relevant differences ?

If I can say Yes to #1, and No to #2, then the analogy "holds" and the greater the numbers for #1 and the lesser for #2, indicates the relative strength of the analogy.

If, however, the reverse case presents itself (No to #1, Yes to #2) then the analogy doesn't "hold" and is deemed to be weak.

To me, (just my opinion here), your theory lacks accuracy, precision, relevance, depth, breadth, and to a certain degree logic.

When you strip away the inaccuracies, the false analogies, assumptions and conclusions, as I said above, you are left with

Advocating...... "Freedom from the grip of percieving the world through social instincts..." also known as Critical Thinking.

So, ummm, great post ! Keep up the good work.

Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned by most people.  Some people are more oriented toward critical thinking, but even people who start off with a less rational bent can learn to become more rational.  It's a matter of learning how to educate people more effectively.

I find this post very interesting. I've had similar thoughts, but have not organized them into something I could write out. So, before I give my own thoughts on the subject, I would say that it is not alienation per-se that is desirable; but rather the "blank slate" of these hypothetical future people. It will be necessary in the future to treat different types of sentient life the same way you treat human beings. The innate social skills given to us by evolution are not sufficient for this; they divide the world into an "us" and a "them". This served us well in the past, but now is largely a hindrance. This "blank slate" is not to be left empty, but rather filled with something thought out by the individual logically.

The main question for me is, what is the ideal level of social skills for the species? It is not clear if the current situation is the ideal. Take a look at a peacock's feathers, they take a lot of nutrition to make them so colorful. We humans can rightly see this as a waste and no more than the animal version of conspicuous consumption. The female peacocks see it as highly desirable on a basic instinct level, even though the colorful feathers do not aid the animal in survival. In fact, they do the opposite because they draw attention. Likewise, human females find men who have "it" attractive, where "it" is some sort of social secret handshake that involves saying the right things in their company. Ask a women what "it" is precisely and they won't answer, because they don't know themselves. They just know they are attracted to "it". This "it" factor crops up in other areas of life, like in politics. Politicians are often, sadly, selected on their ability to BS people rather than tangible ability. There is no doubt that if the majority of people respond to something, then you *need* to have that something yourself; not because it is necessary, but because other people put value in it. After a few million years of this you end up with a social species with the social equivalent of the peacock's feathers; a lot of useless rituals, beliefs, customs, attitudes and prejudices. In the parlance of computer programming, cruft. It's also true that some level of social skills are needed, but I don't think most people could make an objective evaluation of what in their heads is needed and what is something they are merely preprogrammed into believing is good.

CP is right to point out that the real dangerous people in the world are those with expert social skills. Of course, if we ever have a nuclear Armageddon it will be the pocket protector Poindexters that will be blamed and not the smooth talking world leaders. It may be that a choice will have to be made. Humans in our current social mindset may be fundamentally unable to responsibly use advanced technologies. So we must choose between a "human" nature that is beloved by many and a more cool mindset were logic and reason are the defaults rather than something to learn.

Another point to consider is that people who have "bad social skills" may often appear to be dysfunctional in today's society just because they are like a sane person living in an insane asylum where the patients get to decide what "normal" is. If gasoline is ignited and causes an explosion, people want to find the element "to blame." Scientifically speaking, there is no one element to blame; you need a spark, fuel, and oxygen. Any one of these is "to blame." Humans define the context where blame is assigned. At a gas station where there is plenty of gasoline and oxygen, the blame is assigned to the spark. In someone's house where people are expected to make sparks or flames, i.e. fireplaces or smokers lighting matches, the blame is assigned to whoever brought gasoline inside. In a typical high-school where most people are the "good social skills" type, if there is a conflict between two students the one with "bad social skills" will be blamed and told to toughen-up or some other such nonsense. This is because whoever has the mindset that is in the minority is the undesirable element that must be removed to prevent social disruption. Afterwards, a fiction can be invented that makes the minority student understand the error of his ways, and that other student had a right to hit him. If he doesn't get that story he will instead get a "that's just how the world works" lecture. The philosophy of transhumanism rightly condemns "that's just the way things are" arguments as fallacious.

Oh, and if there is ever a situation where you have two space colonies, one with a typical assortment of socially conscious people, and the other with mildly autistic people, I would put my money on the autistic colony surviving. The overly social people will squander their resources through political games, while the autistic people will be too "socially retarded" to think of ways to game themselves to death.

CP:

In the interest of being fairminded, I don't want to distort or misrepresent your viewpoint. I do understand your underlying ideas. You feel that autism is, or at least could become, an evolutionary advantage.

This may have some truth to it. It falls within the realm of possibility.

With regards to Anne Corwin's comment:

"Critical thinking is a skill that can be learned by most people. Some people are more oriented toward critical thinking, but even people who start off with a less rational bent can learn to become more rational. It's a matter of learning how to educate people more effectively."

To this I would say :

While critical thinking skills CAN be learned by most people, the reality is that they simply aren't learned by most people. Even fewer people actually USE critical thinking skills.

And yet, if you ask a group of people if they use critical thinking, nearly all will answer "yes".  If you go on to ask those that claim they possess and use these skills to explain some of the component parts that make up critical thinking, they almost universally fail to identify "any" of the major and necessary underpinnings that are crucial to using critical thinking (1).  This includes educators that are supposed to be trained in and actually teaching these skills. Often people imagine critical thinking to be different from what it actually is. If you ask them about "Universal Intellectual Standards", they tend to look at you with blank stares, and then go on to equate them with totally unrelated areas of endeavor, or to deny that any such standards exist. Yet being aware of these standards and actually being able to apply them to everyday situations is essential to critical thinking.

(1)  http://www.criticalthinking.org/aboutCT/Research.shtml

My point is this, while constructing a way of dealing with reality (the world in general) from an assumed deficit of instincts, (which I've seen no proof as to their existence or nonexistence), any humans, nerds, autistic or otherwise, would benefit from employing critical thinking skills. Also, a worldview ( or society) constructed without utilizing these skills, in my opinion, would be much less progressive, open and free then it could possibly have been had these skills been introduced to a significant percentage of the population.

The relevance to this discussion, arises from CP's statement:

"Consider how the innate social behavior skewed reason and held people back....."

I believe that "skew" in reasoning results in or actually is a lack of critical thinking skills and associated intellectual traits.

Am I making a clear enough correlation here ? Or does this seem tangential ?

OK, let me frame the question this way.

If you could isolate the gene for autism, and miraculously this also turned out to be the same gene responsible for what you describe as "nerdism", let say it's a similar allele to the gene microcephalin (MCPH1), (perhaps MCPH2 or allele "E" instead of "D", that appeared 37,000 years ago as a variant of a gene that was present 1.1 million years ago), and yet this trait expressed by this gene appeared in only ___% of the current population after all those thousands of years......

How exactly do you envision spreading this trait to any significant portion of the population ?

Do you envision grafting the gene onto a retro-virus and then infecting millions if not billions of people with it against their will, in the hope they would somehow mutate when already fully formed ?

Or simply forced selective breeding over the next 37000 years ?

Or do you envision vast armies of lab grown nerds surreptitiously implanted into unsuspecting women worldwide ?

What kind of numbers are we talking about to overcome the existing 6 billion population AND the rate of current additional growth in population worldwide ?

Do you actually think you can outbreed the rising tide of Homo Sapiens that DON'T express this trait ?

Or do you envision a near term genetic bottleneck in the human lineage, where 99% of the worlds population die and of the 1% that survive this horrible holocaust (whatever it might be) that the majority of these are the robust survivalists Homo Nerdus,  who will then repopulate this barren wasteland of a world by mating with the second most prominent subgroup of survivors...bikini swimsuit models ?

I mean, how exactly does the squirrel propel this running wheel ?

Oh wait, don't tell me........The Singularity occurs and elevates ONLY nerds and the autistic to god-like creatures who then rule over the remade world benevolently.

Autism's DNA Trail: Gene variant tied to developmental disorder

(Excerpted from an article by Bruce Bower)

Levitt's group had explored how MET contributes to brain development. After learning that the gene lies on a stretch of chromosome 7 that other investigators had linked to autism, the group began its new study.

Consulting a large database, the researchers obtained genetic information from members of 204 families in which one or more children had autism. These children ranged from below average to average in intelligence.

The researchers then identified variants of MET. Study participants who carried two copies of a specific MET variant displayed autism substantially more often than the others did. Levitt's group later found the same association for children with autism in 539 additional families.

Further analyses indicated that the link between the MET variant and autism appeared primarily in families with two or more affected children, the researchers report online this week for an upcoming Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Laboratory tests showed that this MET form lowers the gene's activity and reduces its production of proteins that bind to various tissues.

If confirmed by other groups, these results would explain controversial reports that people with autism often have immune and gastrointestinal problems, according to Levitt.

Roughly 47 percent of the population carries at least one copy of the autism-associated MET variant. The researchers have yet to learn how it operates in the minority of that group that develops autism, which affects about 1 in 500 individuals, Levitt notes. In some people, beginning before birth, MET might respond to unknown environmental influences or interact with other genes to derail brain formation, Levitt theorizes.

http://www.sciencenews.org/articles/20061021/fob1.asp

Obviously, if the Singularity occurs all human minds autistic, nerd, normal et cetera will be made obsolete. A post Singularity consciousness would most likely not be interested in people. If a post Singularity consciousness was interested in human affairs, and wanted to help people, it would not bother changing the way their minds work. Instead, if the human race starts to swing in the nerd direction it will start out the way evolution always has. There is evidence that people in Silicon Valley have become a self-selecting experiment in "nerd" genes. Their numbers are increasing, thus lending credence to the theory that these traits are becoming more advantageous in the modern world. See this article from Wired:  

http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.html

The article points out the downside of how too many expressions of these genes in a child can result in extreme autism. Most likely, if a couple wanted to mitigate the downside they would need some genetic engineering to reduce the expression of these genes. Or you could try that bikini swimsuit model thing.

CP says:

"Possibly by then we will have isolated the gene for being a smartass and eliminated it from humans."

Yes, we all await that great and glorious day....LOL.

"Possibly by then we will have isolated the gene for being a smartass and eliminated it from humans."

How dull.

It's not going to be a case of runaway selection with regard to the autistic children of Silicon Valley engineers.  Extreme autism is a handicap in the game of sexual selection and reproduction.  What's happened here is that the environment has shifted to reward certain traits useful in IT careers, thus shifting the dynamic equilibrium.

It's also possible an autism gene may even function in a manner analogous to the gene which encodes sickle cell anemia.  A single copy has clear survival benefits, but two copies are detrimental.  Species survival is a matter of statistics.  If there's a boost in survival for 50% of offspring and a drop in survival for 25% of offspring, the gene may persist.  If so, the extreme is a dead end, an unwanted side-effect, not the logical conclusion.

I certainly did not imply that it would be simple Darwinian evolution, I merely pointed out that our environment is changing in such away that the desirability of these traits is increasing. This means that is not just a weird personal preference of some that this brain is the way of the future, these traits are being rewarded more today than in any time in history. If objective external environmental reward for this type of mind exists, in spite of the genetic dangers; then this is proof positive that this is an area where conscious engineering efforts (that mitigates the risks) would not be done out of an arbitrary preference. On the contrary, the desirability of such changes would be grounded in objective reality.

As far as equilibrium is concerned, the increasing use of the technologies invented by such minds may cause an even greater need for such minds in the future to make sense of an even *more* complicated world. The vast amounts of the typical human mind devoted to old-fashioned human social skills maybe needed for more important things. This would then leave a level of social interaction that is the ideal, an ideal stripped of useless rituals.