True Humans vs. Transhumans

Noodling out a proper future ideological conflict. I do not like 1:1 allegories like Marvel mutants = gay/civil rights or robot slavery = human slavery. I like the idea that human nature never changes and thus similar conflicts will arise throughout history, all the way up until we have the ability to change human nature.

I am not taking sides for or against, simply pointing out that once we are able to do something, we always end up doing it. Some people will embrace radical new ways of being and living, others will reject. We will have revolutionaries and reactionaries and thus good conflicts for stories.

Human Nature

I believe human nature arises from the biological template evolution has given us (homo sapiens sapiens, the species so nice we named us twice) mediated by the collective baggage of our culture. I believe good and bad boils down to what makes life more or less enjoyable; lacking any external god-thing telling us what to do, good and bad is about what makes our own experience in life better or worse. We are communal animals. We exist within a social environment. Family, friends, colleagues, we are rewarded and punished by how well we negotiate our interactions. All of this is mediated by the demands placed on us by our evolutionary history. We are social creatures. We want good families and good friendships because it helps our genes propagate into the next generation. Why do we want babies? Because we want to propagate our unique genetic identity. If given a choice between raising a natural child and adopting, why does a couple prefer their own children? Because of biological imperative. What we are ignorant of is frightening and the unknown is impossible to humanize. Once the unknown threat has a name, a face, we and they can share a conversation and a beer, we're not so different, we're all human. Maybe we can avoid a pointless conflict.

No matter what we think and believe, from a first world tycoon to a third world serf, we're all human. Our magnificent, throbbing brains are capable of creating elaborate justifications and deceptions to work around animal emotions. Monkeys throw feces, we throw h-bombs. The fundamental motivations are more similar than we care to admit. We're all animals and some of us are human. For now. 

Posthuman Nature

And so we enter the thorny topic of "what constitutes humanity?" When we are modifying the brain, can we even say human nature is retained? The genetic difference between modern humans and the chimpanzee is 2%. Project our ability for self-modification into the science fiction realm and the options are wide-open. Orthohuman and transhuman. Now we're not just talking about a culture gap but a mental gap.

Bog-standard humans have a hard enough time playing the social game. Autistic individuals lack the social skills to interact properly and come across as robotic and creepy. Sociopaths lack any capacity for empathy but can fake interactions to pass for a happy member of the tribe. We have trouble humanizing people who are 100% genetically identical to us, who only differ in superficial ways. What happens when the differences are real, profound, and potentially irreconcilable?

A shark will never be a thing of warmth. It serves a role in the ecosystem, as an apex predator is a model of evolutionary perfection, and while most species are not harmful to us, some are and can gobble us up without remorse. It's a hard fight to convince people that the shark has a place in nature and that attacks are nothing personal, you just happened to look like food. When other humans present an existential threat, we begin the process of dehumanizing them, making them other, making them acceptable to kill. When the threat isn't recognizably human to begin with, it won't take much convincing to go to war.

Where are Lines Drawn?

Good liberals like to flatter themselves as being open-minded, receptive to new ideas. I know for myself, I always want to be on the liberal side of any debate. Even if I may not agree with what you say but will defend your right to say it. But there are always edge cases that try my convictions. This is the the very heart of a good controversy, where you become uncertain of which side you belong on. Things get messy when general principles are translated into policies. I believe parents should have a right to raise their kids according to their beliefs. At what point does parental prerogative become child abuse? An atheist could argue raising a child religious is abusive just a easily as a religious person could argue raising a child atheist is the same. What if parents believe girls should not be taught to read and write and should only be trained up to be mothers and wives? Who gets to determine what abuse is? Who enforces the rules? What recourse is there to appeal decisions?

Black and white issues aren't fun. No thinking is required. It gets interesting when you can see where both sides are coming from and identify with either argument. What would the armed camps look like in this dispute?

Human Identity Philosophy

Only true humans have a valid existence and those who pervert humanity are sinful. Lacking religious texts to define what human is, we are left with cultural biases dressed up in pseudoscientific drag. Ideals are set forth as to the properties of the ideal human mind and body. Modifications to correct for evolutionary defects are permitted but anything that violates the morality of human existence is anathema and forbidden. Straight Human Identity sects refuse all mental and morphological modifications. Reform Human Identity sects allow for morphological modifications but preserve mental patterns.

Human Identity is adamant about individual freedom (except for freedom of self modification) and rejects slavery (mind control, mind clamping, hypnotic conditioning) and thrall creation (creating a being who wants to be enslaved or has a limited intellect and is only good for a task). Even Reform groups that believe human identity is a choice and are not hostile to transhumans as a matter of doctrine will find the imposition of the way of life on individuals who have not reached their age of majority to be anathema.

Transhumanity is generally seen by HI as evil and immoral and described with provocative terms. Twisted, perverted, bent, unclean, degenerate, cursed, unforgivable, sinful, evil. Neutral or positive naming conventions are avoided. 

From our 21st century perspective, the negative aspects of HI would be authoritarian, dogmatic, judgmental, inflexible and oppressive. The most positive aspect of HI is that we would find them warm and personable compared to the more outre Transhumans. A seeming contradiction in HI thought is the protection of individual freedom of existence by defining how they are allowed to exist. The debate between what is permissible and what is not leads to the major schisms between HI sects.

Transhuman Identity Philosophy

There is no human ideal, only what satisfies the needs of an individual or a community of the like-minded. HI aesthetics are arbitrary and no more valid than any other competing aesthetics. Everything is open to debate. While TI cultures outnumber HI cultures, they are more fractuous and thus present a weak front in the face of HI unity.

Consensual Transhumanists believe in informed consent. Nothing is done that is not requested and the participant is competent to provide legal consent. Nothing is imposed. 

Non consensual Transhumanists do not believe in the concept of individual rights and only the imposition of will. Is it wrong to breed one dog with another to produce puppies without uplifting their minds to human consciousness? Is it any more sinful to start from human genetic stock and create an intelligent yet limited servitor being? Right and wrong become a matter of ability. Being able to do something means it is right and not being able to do so means it is wrong; the wishes of the subject are irrelevant. 

This is where we come upon concepts of mind-horror and body-horror in a previous post.

So, how would these transhuman horrors be expressed? My starting point is imagining if the monsters of our own history had access to genetic engineering that worked. 

Mind Control

We're used to the idea of Svengali and hypnotism. But consider the hangups of Christian thought, Jesus admonishing: "If your eye offends you, pluck it out." Some Christians have avoided sexual sin by castration. Western doctors promoted circumcision as a way to prevent masturbation. Lobotomies and electro-shock therapy were thought to have curative effects. Orwell's Ingsoc had the idea that changing the language could change thought and make rebellion literally unthinkable. 

If we revisit the world of magic and folklore, could there be anything more insidious than a love potion? It not only obliterates freewill, it makes the victim feel every genuine human emotion towards the attacker. And what would be worse, a love potion that is entirely effective or one that leaves a remnant of the original personality to scream and rebel in horror as the body willingly responds to the rapist-suitor? 

The techniques could be varied from memetic weapons that attack the mind through the senses to a physical alteration of the brain's behavior such as with mind-control parasites we see in the real world. 

Thrall Creation 

This would be the creation of a genetically-engineered human-derived creature. In a sense this could be called mind-binding, robbing a human of fullest potential to be used for some purpose. 

HI is seen by transhumanists as reactionary, backward-looking, and shackled to outmoded ways of thinking. TI's will alternately treat HI's with pity, contempt, or hatred. 

From our 21st century perspective, the negative aspects of TI would be mind-horror, body-horror, and utter shock at completely alien ways of thinking and being. Even as we intellectually believe in self-determination and expressionism, the results strike us like a freak show. We may find ourselves grudgingly on the HI's side when faced with non consensual transhumanists. The positive aspects are whatever ideas of theirs we can see value in. 

Mind Remodeling

Transhumans who have been so heavily remodeled that their thinking process has become completely alien to orthohumans. Some may have cybernetically integrated their brains into the computer systems of starships, becoming starships. Ascetics might do away with their bodies and all outside sensation to become disembodied minds of pure intellect, even though they're essentially brains in vats. Some might long for a closer connection to their fellows and fashion themselves into a eusocial form living in densely packed warrens, constantly buzzing from the intoxicant pheromone glands that are a part of their new bodies. One attempt at a hive mind could be the negation of self, cybernetic implants reshaping thought until it is consistent with the orthodoxy, where I becomes WE and they no more need speak to each other than fingers of a hand do to hold an object. People with body dysmorphic disorder feel that pieces of their body do not belong and will resort to amputation to set things right. With sufficient technology, they can add and subtract. 

Perhaps some transhumanists wish to be a pair of ragged claws scuttling across the floors of silent seas. Maybe he wants to be an apex predator hunting in the steaming jungles of a distant world, not doing it in simulation but genuinely experiencing it. Or maybe he echoes Cavil's rant from the new Battlestar Galactica: "I don’t want to be human. I want to see gamma rays, I want to hear X-rays, and I want to smell dark matter. Do you see the absurdity of what I am? I can’t even express these things properly, because I have to — I have to conceptualize complex ideas in this stupid, limiting spoken language, but I know I want to reach out with something other than these prehensile paws, and feel the solar wind of a supernova flowing over me." 

Hard and Soft Dystopia

Neil Postman on 1984 vs. Brave New World: 

What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egotism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance. Orwell feared we would become a captive culture. Huxley feared we would become a trivial culture, preoccupied with some equivalent of the feelies, the orgy porgy, and the centrifugal bumblepuppy. As Huxley remarked in Brave New World Revisited, the civil libertarians and rationalists who are ever on the alert to oppose tyranny "failed to take into account man's almost infinite appetite for distractions." In 1984, Orwell added, people are controlled by inflicting pain. In Brave New World, they are controlled by inflicting pleasure. In short, Orwell feared that what we fear will ruin us. Huxley feared that our desire will ruin us.

I think that both HI and TI will see elements of Orwell and Huxley in each other. 

Outside of those two armed camps will exist the rest of humanity that borrows what they find useful from each side but refuse to take part in the wars. 

Because there are varying sects, the conflict in any given locale could be amicable or intense. Reform HI and consensual TI could exist peacefully enough. Evangelistic activity by either side could be cause for war. 

Good Fences Make Good Neighbors 

Cheap access to space is necessary in this setting. With hypersail technology, the early ships might have required decades to travel between stars in the lowest clines and made for an effective means of isolation. Only centuries later did slowly advancing technology begin to make the known universe a smaller place. Now cultures that saw themselves on the furthest edges of space have become neighbors with the cultures they fled. And this is the fuel of good drama and conflict. 

So What Are They Fighting About in a Semi-Solid SF Setting Anyway?

Most space opera is pretty much the modern world dressed up in a space setting. You have farmers, even if they are harvesting moisture with vaporators. You have mines and miners, merchants, peddlers, pawnbrokers, doctors, politicians, bankers, clerics, soldiers of fortune, princes and princesses, either entitled royalty or their new money equivalents. You have countries, kingdoms and nations and thus you have trade routes, territories, and regions of influence.

The economics are so familiar that nobody actually gives them much thought, anymore than people give serious thought to explaining what food is, why bathrooms are necessary, and how those two things are linked. Explaining money, resources and scarcity is no more necessary than going into gravity or breathing.

But if all a space opera does is translate modern problems into a setting with spaceships and rayguns, is there really any point? A Song of Ice and Fire could be translated to a space opera easily enough. Star Wars could be recast as a fantasy. The choice of setting is little more than aesthetic. But sometimes there's a compelling reason to pick a genre. Lord of the Rings would feel different if the magic was just sufficiently advanced technology. Frankenstein's monster could have been a homunculus or golem but those would have been monsters of the occult, old and familiar. The Creature must be a product of modern science, a magic not stolen from the gods but of man's own devising. Gepetto making Pinocchio out of wood relegates it to fairy tale but Noonian Soong making Data out of a positronic brain and blinky doodads makes it science fiction, somehow more plausible.

I'd like to have conflicts that remain believable but require a scifi setting. Star-crossed lovers? That could be in Verona or LA. Two brothers struggling for control of the family business? That could be Memphis, either Egypt or Tennessee. But the lovers might not be of different classes or races but different species. A freeborn prince of the financial empire falls for a genetically-engineered pleasure slave? Different. The brothers are actually a series younger clones and their "father" pits them against one another to see who is the worthy successor? A little more interesting. 


So, what are the conflicts? 

Practical   

It comes down to something that makes sense. Nobody has to take a lot of time explaining it.


Economic. You want a new market to sell your products to, access to raw materials, or transit through a region to get there. Someone stands in your way. Or you don't feel you're getting a fair shake and you can't settle your differences in the marketplace. 


Territorial. They have land you want. Access to markets isn't enough, you want it all. 


Practical Politics. Who is in charge, who calls the shots? I subscribe to von Clausewitz's suggestion that war is politics by other means. "To jaw-jaw is always better than to war-war," as Churchill said, but sometimes the only way to get what you want is to take it. This could lead to war between polities or civil strife within a polity. Power struggles often turn ugly. 

Doctrinal 

This is not going to be a necessary conflict, though the people involved may feel differently.

Religious. Something about what the other guy believes is so repellent they must be disabused of it by any means necessary. Could be an understandable moral failing like slavery or something silly like sexual practices.

Philosophical. Presented as more reasonable than a religious belief. Slavery can be presented as evil in light of reason but the same righteous reason can be applied to a conflict over eating toast butter-side-up or butter-side-down, something that is ultimately quite silly. And while one person argues capitalism vs. communism has the same weight as slavery, another will argue it's buttered toast. I would also call this impractical politics.

The practical stuff is all familiar. Hitler wanted another country for lebensraum, Space Hitler wants a planet. Same difference. Imperial Japan wanted access to oil and raw materials, Space Japan wants access to antimatter and magnetic monopoles. The United States sends Nixon to China to normalize relations and open markets, Space America sends Bat Durston to the Empire of Space Amazons. It's all familiar. Maybe Space Germany is flooding the market with cheap automation machinery that ruins the value of labor on your planet. That last one is called the luddite fallacy by economists who insist new jobs will always open up for the displaced. We're entering an era of structural unemployment where there simply aren't enough jobs and entire classes of people will be shut out of the economy. It's actually going to be a very immediate problem and not something for the realm of scifi.

I think that Doctrinal disputes will be the avenue for the most esoterically scifi of conflicts. We can see culture shocks and conflicts where ideas are seen as poisonous. What happens if biological immortality is discovered? What if brain backups and clones allow multiple copies of the same personality operating in a society? What happens if a post-scarcity society exists in the same geopolitical space as a scarcity society? We flip out over polygamy, homosexuality, incest, certain sex acts, cannibalism, etc. Blasphemy and apostasy are hot buttons for other contemporary cultures.

Could transhumanism cause the same level of disgust as transexualism does today? First and Last Men brought up the idea of creating successors to our own humanity and Brave New World had not just ubermenschen but untermenschen created to serve society. While it may be worrisome to imagine designing a superman, it feels as repugnant as foot-binding to cripple a human mind to make for a better service animal. Dune gave us a jihad against thinking machines. When what it means to be human becomes fluid and open to debate, some might decide to say "NO! It's not up for debate!" and tell us what the answer is. This sort of thing was postulated in the Night's Dawn Trilogy where those who embraced advanced biotechnology along with consciousness and memory transfer came to be known as Edenists and those who rejected it were Adamists. 

There's thinking that certain scifi technologies could be considered too dangerous such as causality-violation weapons, certain kinds of nanotech and bio-chem weapons. David Langford created the concept of an image that could hard-crash a human mind just by looking at it, something he called a basilisk. Other ideas that have been floated are perfected brainwashing techniques that could be every bit as effective as love potions from fairy tales. Simulation as Lotus Eater Machine and virtual reality =  the ultimate drug have come up before. Red Dwarf's take on the fatally addictive game Better Than Life is a personal favorite. It's easy to imagine a Women's Christian Temperance Union going after VR saloons.

So, this is not new, the idea of things that are taboo because they are too inherently dangerous, morally corrosive, or distasteful to be tolerated. But this is the future. Can we think of really good new ones? Or bring up old ones that have been forgotten?

Interstellar Travel in the Age of Hypersail

So I've gone into why classic space opera makes no sense. I've also given one example of how we could try to get around that, the Into the Void setting.

The Age of Hypersail is another special case that tries to work with a limited number of assumptions to provide for a properly operatic setting without insulting our intelligence. I want to have stealth in space. Humans must remain important, not easily replaced with machines. The individual commander's initiative can shape the course of events. There are no push-button ships or push-button wars. This isn't going to be hard SF but semi-solid. Ships need to radiate heat, orient themselves with gyros and reaction control systems, burn rockets to move in realspace, don't have shields or artificial gravity, and, except where duly noted, operate according to the laws of physics. But the special case assumptions are clearly not hard SF. That's fine. I just need everything to be self-consistent and avoid obvious plot holes like having a genie in a lamp and not wishing for more wishes.

My notes on the concept of hypersail are a work in progress and by no means complete. But they're sufficiently progressed to invite discussion. I have them shared via Google Docs. Assuming permissions are correct, anyone should be able to view it without the need to sign in. 

Click here to enter the Age of Hypersail. As always, discussion is welcome.