The uncanny guest of post-nihilism

Nietzsche delivers the message that ‘god is dead’ with a parable where a madman goes into a 19th century European marketplace with a lantern at high noon asking ‘where has god gone?’ to the atheist-filled marketplace (in The Gay Science). Whereas previously the church had provided meaning to life and an endpoint to the story (e.g.; salvation), god was now dead and the marketplace was taking the church’s place in providing value and meaning to life, and there was no endpoint to the story, just nihilism (nothingness, e.g.; life is meaningless). Nietzsche presciently predicted the arrival of nihilism as ‘Europe’s uncanny guest.’ (from remarks by Robert Harrison at the Roundtable on the topic of "Nihilism" on February 29, 2011)

One could then ask, in the figurative marketplace for the new faith, what next uncanny guest might be lurking as the successor to nihilism? Post-nihilism could be the turning back to ‘something’ from ‘nothing,’ perhaps as many subjective virtual somethings as there are and will be ‘individual’ intelligences. The inward-turning path to individual liberty, choice, and subjectivism continues to prevail as opposed to a regression toward normative objective truths. Degreed objective truth (akin to degreed belief) is merely a transport layer for convenience and social lubrication but not a content layer. Early clues of the move towards greater subjectivism can be seen in the modern economy 2.0. The marketplace continues as a literal and figurative metaphor with an important mechanism for commuting meaning being the increasing value of the new currencies: reputation, status, attention, intention, etc. supplementing and perhaps eventually superceding money and labor. The need for stories and endpoints has as much relevance as ever.

Ultimate possibilities for life and technology

Thinking really long term, what would it be like if all matter, including life, could be designed and built to specification with nanotechnology and synthetic biology? Form factor could become ephemeral and purpose-driven. An intelligence could embody as a human, as a fleet of starships, as a crane, as a school of nanoparticles, or remain digital.

Some interesting issues could come up, say from having multiple persistent copies of one intelligence. What would the social, legal, economic etiquette and governing laws be? Or would these words even make sense anymore? The notion of the distinct individual may become obsolete.

Transhumanism will be an interesting and certainly divisive step, when groups or all humans have radically enhanced capabilities as compared with today. Posthumanism, the moment of speciation, may be quite a shock.

What about utility functions? In a digital format, traditional biological functions make a lot less sense. And what about emotion? Is there a relevant adaptation for the digital substrate or is emotion just another biology-based information system?

What is intelligence and is it reflected differently in a digital medium without the sensory input context of the physical world? Maybe intelligence is nothing more than manipulating patterns of information.

Finally, what are the ultimate possibilities for life and technology once joined? What if any would the activity be? Would the focus be on aesthetics? Analytics?

Gene Encyclopedia of all Life

A tremendous resource would be an open gene database of all of the genes present in eukaryotic, archaeal and bacterial life. There are several open genomic databases now but the information is organized around genomes and organisms rather than specific genes and gene function.

A gene database of all life is in the same vein as E.O. Wilson’s Encyclopedia of Life, but at the next level of detail. The Encyclopedia of Life hopes to provide a webpage with scientific information for every known species on Earth. The gene database would provide a webpage and scientific details for each gene present in life and include other information such as a cross reference to all of the different species in which the gene is expressed.

Merge the Entrez Genome Project and the PartsRegistry
The foundations and perhaps the vision and obviousness of a gene database of all life exist but not its targeted pursuit as a funded research priority. Existing genomics databases such as the U.S. NCBI’s Entrez Genome Project database could be extended and merged into one database that is more explicitly searchable by gene function, possibly joining forces with the PartsRegistry from synthetic biology which provides a homepage, datasheet and genomic sequence by gene or biological function.

NCBI’s Entrez Genome Project database genomic catalog of all life

Unifying the work of E.O. Wilson, Craig Venter, Penny Boston and Drew Endy
An interesting project would be the unification of the Encyclopedia of Life, genomics-by-organism databases and parts registry-by-gene databases together with the aggressive pursuit of cataloguing and sequencing newly discovered organisms and genes. A gene encyclopedia could rapidly extend human knowledge and facilitate the era of personalized medicine as these novel genes could have extensive application in human therapies and pharmaceuticals, energy, climate management, agriculture and other areas.

Tremendous novelty and diversity remains unstudied with species (E.O. Wilson), with organisms in the sea (Craig Venter), and with extremophile life in caves (Penny Boston); 70-90% novel organisms, most of which have not had any gene identification and sequencing, functional assessment and cataloging.

A data resource like a gene encyclopedia could also uplevel the research focus to analytics. It will be interesting to see if an era of fully fungible genes across life arises, how easy it is to transplant function and how function expresses differently in different life forms.

Integration of life and technology

Life and technology are thought of as discrete but they are starting to converge (a detailed explanation is here) and could continue to become increasingly integrated, unified as is sought with the physical laws. Life sciences have evolved from being an art to a science to now an engineering problem. Life is complex but finite and it is quite possible that all biological processes, human and otherwise, will be understood and managed, including disease and death. All matter, including life, could be designed to spec in the future; the aims of synthetic biology, building genetically-precise organisms from the bottom up, programmable matter and molecular nanotechnology are early examples. In the future, form factor and embodiment could be temporary and determined by purpose.



The above graphic represents the evolution of human and machine intelligence. Given the faster pace of technology advancement, a crossover point, sometimes called the technological singularity is inevitable. Futurist Ray Kurzweil expects this point of machine intelligence surpassing [current] human intelligence in 2029. The two curves could merge (the Human’ line above), with humans reengineering themselves into technology that can learn and evolve as fast as information technology. In actuality, there may be many forms of biological life integrating with technology and more ‘human’ diversity than has ever existed.

Future of intelligence
It is not clear that there is anything special or inherently undesignable or unreplicable about intelligence. Intelligence may be nothing more than the manipulation of patterns of information, and presumably could be substrate agnostic and executor agnostic.