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Uplifts/provolves and ethical dilemmas
Shanadeus
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
From Wikipedia:
Orion's Arm, a worldbuilding sci-fi project, has a better explanation:
"Intelligence" here refer to a number of traits such as self-awareness, abstract thought, future planning and much more that together enable the individual lifeform to build a civilization, create as well as use tools and much more.
Basically, do what we humans are already doing.
Humanity is alone, she is without an equal peer. With the great ape species as the nearest possible contender for the throne of sapience, she has no friend nor partner to marvel at creation with.
Alone in the universe, with possibly no other intellectual beings within earshot, we have to turn to the cradle that birthed us - and with our wisdom and power create an equal.
Instead of aimlessly searching for alien life in space we could just turn our focus inwards and search this planet for potential candidates that we could "uplift".
Other reasons to uplift species could be out of scientific curiosity, in particular when it comes to the nature of consciousness which might have some light shed on it if we have more than just one, human, perspective on this phenomena. We could also gain a lot of benefits from creating sapient and intelligent individuals out of animals that might use their innate strengths to excell in areas where humans are less able, such as Canine provolves which can use an improved sense of smell combined with an intelligence to be even better at detecting threats to innocents or Dolphin uplifts who will be able to better navigate various vessels thanks to their innate ability to understand 3D space (yes, that's stolen straight from Brin).
Which brings us to the downsides of uplifting non-human animals.
Is it "right" to create intelligent life when it entails experimenting upon and sometimes causing suffering (okay, most likely causing suffering) to animals of various sapient capacity that range from more intelligent than modern-day animals to human-equivalent sapience and self-awareness?
Is it "right" to create another lifeform that will now have to face the various existential problems and fears humans are facing (which is kinda similar to the the missionary dilemma in Christianity?
Then of course we run into practical problems such as the inevitable specist attitudes and feelings towards the uplifts, the risk for these uplifts to be treated as less-than-equals and as property to be used for corporate profits and much, much more.
Discuss!
In science fiction, uplift is the development or transformation of animals into an intelligent race by other, already-intelligent beings. The concept appears in David Brin's Uplift series and other science fiction works.
Orion's Arm, a worldbuilding sci-fi project, has a better explanation:
Provolution is a term for the use of technology to enhance or augment the intelligence of a subsophont species to full sophonce. The word is a shortened form of the Old Anglish term "pro-active evolution". Sometimes "provolution" is also used to describe further enhancements, such as the creation of bright or superbright versions of humans from baseline stock. Most restrict the term to the act of increasing the intelligence of an animal (or sometimes plant) species, but sometimes robots which have been boosted in intelligence to become vecs are also known as provolves.
"Intelligence" here refer to a number of traits such as self-awareness, abstract thought, future planning and much more that together enable the individual lifeform to build a civilization, create as well as use tools and much more.
Basically, do what we humans are already doing.
Humanity is alone, she is without an equal peer. With the great ape species as the nearest possible contender for the throne of sapience, she has no friend nor partner to marvel at creation with.
Alone in the universe, with possibly no other intellectual beings within earshot, we have to turn to the cradle that birthed us - and with our wisdom and power create an equal.
Instead of aimlessly searching for alien life in space we could just turn our focus inwards and search this planet for potential candidates that we could "uplift".
Other reasons to uplift species could be out of scientific curiosity, in particular when it comes to the nature of consciousness which might have some light shed on it if we have more than just one, human, perspective on this phenomena. We could also gain a lot of benefits from creating sapient and intelligent individuals out of animals that might use their innate strengths to excell in areas where humans are less able, such as Canine provolves which can use an improved sense of smell combined with an intelligence to be even better at detecting threats to innocents or Dolphin uplifts who will be able to better navigate various vessels thanks to their innate ability to understand 3D space (yes, that's stolen straight from Brin).
Which brings us to the downsides of uplifting non-human animals.
Is it "right" to create intelligent life when it entails experimenting upon and sometimes causing suffering (okay, most likely causing suffering) to animals of various sapient capacity that range from more intelligent than modern-day animals to human-equivalent sapience and self-awareness?
Is it "right" to create another lifeform that will now have to face the various existential problems and fears humans are facing (which is kinda similar to the the missionary dilemma in Christianity?
Then of course we run into practical problems such as the inevitable specist attitudes and feelings towards the uplifts, the risk for these uplifts to be treated as less-than-equals and as property to be used for corporate profits and much, much more.
Discuss!
Shanadeus on
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That's a special kind of cruelty
or at least all we will have left to choose from will be sheep, pigs, cattle and rats
Sheeple!
I am uncertain of any way to genetically engineer sentient animals that would not involve the above. So I don't think there's really an ethical roadmap that leads to real-life furries running around.
If we pretend there is, though - and who knows, I could be wrong - then you wind up in a situation where we have another breed of "people" who deserve the same basic rights as humans. And does anyone here honestly think that would be uncontroversial? So basically you'd be creating another lifeform that was guaranteed to be oppressed right out of the gate.
Not seeing a whole lot of upsides to this, outside of whoo science.
I believe the appropriate conclusions is, don't give intelligence to something you can't beat in a fight.
Yeah, except that gorillas can pull a human's arm off with almost no effort.
Seriously, if we grant equal intelligence to a physically superior specimen, we haven't created a peer, we've created a superior.
Which is why our society is dominated by the strongest and most physically perfect specimens, like Bill Gates and Karl Rove and Joe Leiberman.
So, if we had gorillas with shrewd business skills, the ability to grasp quantum physics and an entrepreneurial spirit with a Machiavellian manipulative ability, we'd be screwed*.
Personally, I welcome our new Ape overlords. Hail, Ultra-humanite!
*Not crediting any of the listed men with those abilities. Just listing the prowess we should be instilling into our Apelords.
Horses are assholes.
I think we owe it to women, non-whites, and homosexuals to create a sentient race that they, too, can persecute.
When it for an example come to the other great apes we already have a pretty robust foundation that we can improve upon with our own genes and get it over within maybe 50-60 years or so.
But how do you uplift an octopus, an elephant or a dolphin?
All relatively bright animals that lack in one or more areas such uplift-human-communication capability (though that one is debatable, as we might just have to learn a better language that we can use with these animals), manipulators for tools and fine work and various forms of mind traits.
Then we get to even harder projects such as insect colonies - is it possible to raise the group mind to the level of a human?
But yeah, whoo science as ElJeffe said.
If they ever learn to breathe air... well, I, for one, will welcome our new eight-legged masters.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p9A-oxUMAy8
Yeah, prosthetic arms wouldn't necessarily impact on the test subject's quality of life negatively (especially if they're super sleek and can be folded away against the body) once we've sufficiently advanced the technology required for this sort of procedure.
Or just set up an underwater city where they can perform all necessary duties for a working society without having to use manipulators (touch screens, sound activated machines?).
The latter would be very interesting to try out with great apes, as certain ape individuals seem to have integrated into human society in an interesting manner.
Now imagine a city or town designed for orangutangs and their particular capabilities.
As long as I can get a prosthetic prehensile penis.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
A different sort of mind to view the universe and everything through.
Sure, there might be a lot of similarities as we share a lot with them but there might still be enough differences for them to contribute in a way that humans are less likely to or can't.
I'm also of the opinion that rooks are one of the most freaky intelligent creatures on this planet outside of humans and the apes. Also those beady, beady eyes...
Birds in general strike me as more intelligent than the stereotype says, and after the great apes and other "obvious" candidates have been uplifted I'd expect some work in the area to be done on birds of various kinds.
But as it looks like it'd be a rather unpleasant process I'm afraid we'd only end up with "useful" uplifts, created by corporations or certain countries with no ethical qualms regarding the whole uplifting process with the intention of using the uplifted animals as slaves in servitude.
They'd probably go for intelligent bomb sniffer dogs, possible intelligent dolphins for more advanced underwater warfare activities (a capacity modern-day dolphins are already being used in) and completely skipping out on the uplifts which would be interesting because of the potential philosophical gain that could be had - such as whether or not we'd actually be able to understand the uplifted species should we grant them an increased brain complexity and means of communication with us.
He did.
Donald Davidson also said that something couldn't even think unless we could in principle understand it.
People say some wacky things.
Secondly, someone else in this thread mentioned how "alien" the uplifted species thinking would be. I think that in itself would be a great benefit. It would provide another perspective and increase diversity of the thought world.
Thirdly, if humanity were ever to be wiped out by say a terrible plague or something, the uplifted species would carry on as our children so to speak.
Finally, if we were to uplift a species it would force us to become even more accepting of what it means to be "human" or a person. Which if we were to ever come across actual aliens we would already have experience with an "alien" race and thus be better capable of handling a first contact situation.
I think all of these are strong enough reasons to pursue uplifting.
That's pretty silly.
If something speaks "English" that implies at at least on some vague level, English words signify the same concepts, and we'd be able to sort it out. It might be a little weird, like telegraphic speech, but it shouldn't be completely beyond comprehension.
That we can communicate with gorillas via sign language, dolphins via a push-button interface, dogs via spoken word (yes, I know there is controversy surrounding each of those examples) all imply that there would at least be some shared meaning, at least with the more intelligent mammals.
Personally, I generally reject the idea that "higher" mammals think completely differently from humans, or don't have emotions, or memories, or whatnot. The brains of felines, canines, other primates, etc. aren't that different from ours; there's no rational reason to believe that they don't have at least similar cognitions going through their heads (even if those cognitions are not voiced in a verbal monologue).
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
When it comes to mammals I agree (as we're all derived from the same stock and pretty much identical when compared to other classes), but when speaking of "higher" non-mammals then they are bound to have different types of emotions, or memories, or whatnot. Maybe less so in the case of other social non-mammals as it seems that social animals need a similar set of qualities in other to work cooperately (empathy and the like). Maybe there's still less of a difference between the different orders within our own class (I'm certain we'd me more alike the other great apes than a mammal in a vastly different environment such as a dolphin for an example) but I too doubt it'd be that great of a difference.
The interesting question is how non-mammals would perceive the world and the questions/problems we find in it if uplifted as CasedOut mentioned. What would a cold-blooded reptile say about the "big" questions in science and philosophy that we're trying to solve today?
I think it'd do science a great lot of good to have a non-human mind process a particular problem. The potential problem arising from that might of course be that we might not necessarily understand that non-human mind's take on the problem in question though.
Evolution isn't about "getting better", it's about adapting to your environment--and sometimes being a dim-witted, tiny grasshopper who lays a million eggs is a better way to adapt and survive than by becoming stronger, bigger, or smarter.
Okay, semantic quibbles aside, has anyone really thought this through? REALLY? If you create a "humanly intelligent" dolphin, how do you react when it still acts like a dolphin--that is to say, when several male dolphins separate, harass, and mate with a female dolphin against her will? Or when they want to have social sex and engage in friendly penis-fencing in public? How about when their superior intelligence helps them drive other "non-uplifted" species to extinction? Yes, how awesome it would be if monkeys, too, had the ability to drive bulldozers and put up condos. Delightful.
What people really want isn't "intelligent" animal species, it's a human in an animal's body who perhaps has a few amusing but harmless quirks that make it seem exotic, but otherwise perfectly fits into human society.
If people really want to "uplift" animals, they should concentrate on reducing habitat fragmentation and destruction. If they want a human-like animal, they can get a dog.
First of all, we are the pinnacle of evolution at this point. We are the only animal that can live anywhere on the planet. We have adapted to the point where we can survive virtually anywhere. Our intelligence and curiousity are what have allowed us to do this. (and opposable thumbs).
Secondly, as to what would we do when these intelligent animals are doing shit we dont like, what do we do when other cultures/people do shit we dont like? The answer is of course it depends. So just because these intelligent animals would do shit we don't like is not a good argument for not making them, because you could use that argument as a reason to not make a human child.
As for the part I put in red, some people genuinely want intelligent animals to be able to communicate with them and gain insight from a perspective different than their own. It's the same reason cultural anthropology exists.
Also, I don't see how not destroying an animals habitat would qualify as "uplifting" them.
Simple fact, most animals are below us from an evolutionary perspective, if not they would be more effective at preventing us from ruining their habitat. We have out evolved most animals whether you like it or not.
Technically, the quote is "If a lion could speak, we could not understand him." So it doesn't mention English. I think the idea is something like: a lion's form of life is so different from ours, with such different interests and concerns, and ways of navigating the world, that any language they spoke could not be one we would understand.
I still think it's silly, and probably demonstrably false (as in the cases you mention), but not quite so plainly so.
Evolution doesn't have pinnacles. It's a fundamentally impersonal process. Calling humanity the pinnacle of evolution is like calling the grad canyon the pinnacle of erosion. There is something that we can all understand you to mean by saying either one, but it would also be a mistake to think that evolution or erosion is purposeful.
Would intelligent dolphins still rape each other with any more frequency than humans?
I find the scenario sufficiently outlandish that it's difficult to form any concrete opinions.
Why do pinnacles have to be purposeful? Also, you obviously knew I was speaking in metaphor when I said "pinnacle of evolution." You can provide a better metaphor if you like.
They don't "rape" each other. The society they live in does not have the concept or social construction that human society has of rape. We don't know what the male dolphins think or feel when they isolate a female (which they will do for months at a time--even if the female is already pregnant, so it's not just a breeding thing), we don't know how much or what kind of distress the female experiences, and we don't know if their actions are based off of instinct, socially learned behavior, or what.
If you assume that an animal is going to accept human social mores if you boost its intelligence, that is a very big and unsupported assumption. A fish that eats its own babies, a lizard that leaves its eggs under a rock and never thinks of them again, wolf that kills the pups of her rival, we don't know why they do what they do. Is it fair to ask them to change what they do, based on our own inconsistent rules which are based on our own evolutionarily created needs?
Should we, social mammals who MUST protect and love our young for them to survive, tell an intelligent lizard "don't murder your babies" . . . when its whole evolutionary history tells it, "You shouldn't give a crap about your babies, and that one over there looks yummy."?
Pinnacle is a normative term, and implies a standard of "best" being met. But evolution has no standards of best. We can impose our own standards, but those are not given by the process itself; nothing about evolution itself tells us whether alligators or swans are doing it better.
On the flip side, to assume that an animal with vastly increased intelligence isn't going to change its behavior is also absurd.
Seriously? You can demonstrate that humans are doing it better than most species, because they are going extinct and we aren't. If our genes continue and theirs don't, we are doing it better. Arguably some bacteria/fungus/insects etc, do it better, but when it comes to large mammals, we do it better than all the rest combined. That is we pass our genes on more succesfully than they do at this point.
This is a very interesting topic and one that reminds me of a particular short story where an advanced alien civilization have a widespread practice of eating their intelligent young. The solution in that story was simply to re-engineer them so that they could still continue to eat their young but only while their young hadn't developed self-awareness and a capacity to feel pain.
When we're talking about hypothetically "uplifting" (and I do prefer the term "provolve" for the reasons you dislike the term "uplift") animals then we would need the sort of technology and knowledge that might very well make the sort of genetic engineering illustrated above possible as well - enabling us to change them just sufficiently enough for them not to consistently commit acts that we deem too horrible.
Of course, if it turn out that these behaviours are just a result of their current condition and learned behaviour then we might not even need to tinker with them in this fashion just as we humans have managed to lower rape rates without tinkering with our own genome.
With behaviours that doesn't necessarily inflict undue harm on other intelligent beings, but only sound horrible to us, then we might just have to adjust our own morals and simply accept that that is their way of living.
Why should we for an example tell intelligent lizards to protect and love their young?
Or fishes to not eat their eggs?
If the young are intelligent enough then we'd just have to design their society to take care of their young on a wide scale in national programs. If their young are of the level of a human fetus then eating them shouldn't be stopped just because we find it disgusting.
So, basically, making humans in furry suits. We already have furry conventions, we don't need science for that.
I feel like there's a perception here that intelligence is something separate and magical that you just "give" a species, and suddenly they become like us and if we just teach them to read hand them the right secular humanist books they will become just like us because those books will show them The Truth. There is no natural "truth" and all our books were written by humans, with human biases, in response to human needs.
Our brains are biologically part of us; the speech center may be THIS big and the memory center may be THAT big, but what we are is also influenced by what we were, the kinds of animals we were, the kinds of needs we had to survive. If you take a different animal, with different evolutionary needs, a different brain, and "make it" intelligent--make the speech center THIS big and the memory center THAT big--you will end up with something significantly different from us.
I doubt success at evolution, at least in the popular mind, involves preservation of one's genes. After all, if a helpful random mutation were to be uptaken by the population at large, and in the process to displace some of our old genes, this would be considered a success not a failure (despite it preventing the continuation of some genes). Or, perhaps more dramatically, if we were to completely dismantle and replace our genes with something better, or to put ourselves into computers, or whatever, I doubt anyone would think of us as evolutionary failures, despite our genes failing to transmit.
Even if we assume that the metric of evolutionary success is survival, that entails that we're not doing any better than the common housecat, mushrooms, or the bacteria which lives in deep sea trenches. All sorts of things are surviving, or, at least, are continuous with things that are surviving. But usually, when people talk about humanity as the pinnacle of evolution, they are not thinking of housecats as quite the same.
Finally, it's true that we can always simply define 'evolutionary success' as whatever we want. Nothing stops us from using our words as we see fit. But whatever stipulative definition we give, it's unclear why that standard is anything we should care about at all. Success generally entails a positive, but there is nothing intrinsically positive about gene transmission, or about longevity, or whatever else we decide to denote by evolutionary success. So it would be, as such, a somewhat misleading way of talking.
This does not appear to be evidence that dolphins aren't raping each other, but rather, evidence that we can't really tell if they're raping each other. After all, you do not say the female isn't in distress, but rather, that we don't know whether she is.
You apparently take a rather poor view of moral reasons and our relation to them. I, by contrast, most certainly do not think that the contents of ethics are inconsistent rules based on evolutionary needs.
If they are intelligent, it is entirely fair for us to ask them to change what they do so as to follow the moral law. After all, according to some scientists rape is adaptive in humans, and, as such, our evolutionary history is 'telling us' to rape away. And infanticide is almost certainly adaptive, and also a widespread historical and even contemporary practice. But that does not, in general, stop us from demanding of one another that we neither rape nor practice infanticide. Nor does it stop us from abstaining from those practices. Regardless of what ancestral humans did on the savannah, I can recognize and respond to the moral reasons which command me not to rape.