H+ San Francisco 2012 – December 1-2, 2012

IEET: Biopolitics of Pop Culture Fantastic fiction shapes the

public’s thinking about emerging technologies

Frankenstein, Brave New World, Gattaca, Terminator

Fantastic fiction depictssocial and philosophical issues in abstracted form, more often with implicit bioconservative messages

We need more sophisticated pop culture images of the future

Myths Also Shape the H+ Imagination

A deeper mythic architecture shapes our own H+ imagination and storytelling

These pan-cultural myths and narrative structures introduce cognitive biases

Naming and channeling these myths will make our futurism and advocacy stronger

The Millennial Mythos The transcendent

importance of our time in eschatology

Apocalypse, then Millennium

Repent, Terminator Is Coming The End of History is Nigh

Millennialist Cognitive Biases

Over-optimism

Over-pessimism

Fatalism (Historical Inevitability)

Messianism (Magical Thinking)

Ray Kurzweil

Hugo de Garis

Eliezer Yudkowsky

Rapture of the Nerds Millennialism always promised the lowly will be

exalted, and arrogant and blind cast down The beneficiaries of this Rapture will be more

affluent than most

More Deep History

We need more stories that place us in the flow of time

The events of today have a long back story and future, not discontinuous

Prometheus vs. Pandora Science and human curiosity as exalted versus

tragic error Are we only partisans of Promethean narrative?

Pandora gets a lot more narrative traction

Beyond New Atlantis vs. Hubris Telling stories of the complex outcomes of scientific

progress

Gattacca is Not an Argument Its not evil to help

parents have healthier kids

That future could fix his heart

Lying to NASA so you can die in space is not heroic

Evil, Tragic, Repentent Immortalists Gilgamesh was a quitter

Only sanctioned salvation can provide immortality, otherwise its evil

Upbeat Immortality Most images of people who want more life

are negative

Heroic Individualism It is harder to tell stories of collective action

Great Man Theory of History Passover is about a whole people throwing off

of their chains, but superhero Moses gets all the credit

Messianic Solutions

Friendly AI idea a messianic magical thinking solution (god from a box) to a real problem seen through an apocalyptic distortion filter (devil from a box)

AI risks may be small, cumulative, not singular

Mitigating AI risks has to be a collective political project

Bellamy’s Looking Backward A vision of a high-

tech socialist future achieved through peaceful social change

Inspired 160 Nationalist clubs between 1888-1892

A Transhuman Polity Collective action uniting diverse

peoples through technology

Meta-Mythic Storytelling Original vision of cyberpunk: to break with utopian and dystopian

visions, with millennium or apocalypse, and depict a gritty future

Moral complexity, tech successes and failures, a social story not just heroic individuals, part of past and future history

Culture creators and audiences can be as sensitive to mythic tropes as they are now to racist images

Don’t eschew the tropes, creatively channel them