Customer Reviews

The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution

5 star:		(9)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The author succeeds in providing the reader with a scientific view of how genetic technology advances might change our deepest belief, i.e. what we think we are. It is not a vision, rather a crude analysis of how the possibilities offered by scientific advances may alter our notion of identity. Very large but finite numbers quantifying the self along physical dimensions such as the brain and coded information lead the author to a fantastic discussion on the concept of identity and associated distance between selves. All this plus a fascinating though perfect writing style.

This book is essentially an exercise in unchecked speculation - and don't get me wrong, there's nothing wrong with looking ahead and attempting to see where we, as a species and as a society, are heading, it's just that this book is a very poorly executed attempt to do so. The author repeatedly makes statements to the effect of "while we can't do that yet, we should be able to in the next fifty years." For some of these statements, he explains why; for many, however, he does not - leaving these statements without any basis in fact whatsoever. The issues he considers - cloning, brain-machine interfaces, etc. - are extremely timley and important to humanity, it's just that he doesn't do a good job exploring them thoroughly or expressing himself clearly (and it's not just that I'm a layman and it's too technical - to the contrary, the book is too simplistic in many areas). The author also seems to get too caught up in the "nature vs. nurture" debate, and posits bizarre hypotheticals such as attempting to recreate the environment of a cloned child's life exactly by also cloning their parents, siblings, and friends, building an exact replica of the child's childhood home, etc., in an attempt to make sure that the "nurture" side of the equation is balanced with the "nature" side. There are better books out there if you are interested in these topics. Check out "The Age of Spiritual Machines" by Ray Kurzweil, or "Our Posthuman Future" by Francis Fukuyama.

This wonderful book is a great companion to The Age of Spiritual Machines and in many respects, updates some of the science of that volume. But of interest to me is the discussion of all the competing moral values that we will have to face as we move forward with genetic manipulation of our genetic material and that of other animals and plants.

Baldi has achieved his goal of making the book very readable for the lay person while compiling additional details in the appendices for those a bit more interested delving into the details. His thoughts are clear and articulate as he lays out the pros and cons of several competing moral values we face now and those we might face in the future.

Baldi does not shy away from the long controversial or taboo subjects. His comments on sex are cogent and up to date. For example, he states; "Sexual and reproductive issues have long affected our societies in ways that created tensions between 5the sexes and were not always favorable to women. After all, even today in many countries men earn higher salaries than women for the same jobs. This is hard to justify from first principles in democratic societies, which are supposed to be founded on equality among humans." He then goes on to explain how cloning technology will further strain the relationship as the sexual act itself becomes unnecessary for evolution or preservation of genetic material.

We are also warned that, "In this new reality [biotechnologies and the internet] of more or less continuous genotypes and phenotypes, all kinds of new creatures are beginning to pop up at a rapid pace, forcing us to revise our concepts, our laws, and our sense of whatever makes us human." This book should be on the must read list for any person interested in the establishment of ethical processes and models that allow us to choose between competing moral values.

"We do not know who we are, but we know enough to know we are not who we think we are."

This quote on page xiii (from Baldi himself, I imagine) sets the tone for this extraordinary book which is an excursion into the future of ourselves and the world we are making. The emphasis is on biology, genetics, computer science and information technology including brain science and how discoveries in these fields are changing our lives and our very concept of self.

What Baldi does so very well is to take current tendencies in these fields to their logical conclusion, and to look fearlessly at the results. This will be unpleasant reading for some, especially for those who see our species as fixed, a permanent endowment from a supernatural being. Baldi's general point is that we are forever changing. With the end of natural evolution upon us, so that we feel the full force of cultural evolution, the pace of change is rapidly accelerating. The result of this will be that, come some not too distant future, we will indeed be something strikingly different from what we are now.

In progressive religious circles it is said that we are "becoming." Usually it is not said what we are becoming, because that is not known. Baldi makes the same statement from the viewpoint of science. Through the rapidly accelerating power of culture evolution, we are in the process of "becoming" that which we cannot as yet clearly see.

"[O]ur notions of self, life and death, intelligence, and sexuality are very primitive and on the verge of being profoundly altered...It is this shattering...that forms the central thread of this book." (p. 3) The idea that "each of us is a unique individual delimited by precise boundaries" is wrong. With the advent of technologies stemming from science we will see that these boundaries are artificial as we are cloned and joined with silicon parts and machine intelligence, and as we become more and more attached to the Internet.

This is Aldous Huxley's Brave New World for real, but Baldi's is not a dystopian vision, rather his is a vision of great hope and excitement. He believes that "genomes, computations, and minds are...continuous entities, both in space and in time," and that we, individually, "are just samples of this continuum." (p. 4)

This is a startling view of the world and ourselves, an exciting one that promises gargantuan changes to come. Whereas many people are dismayed at the prospect of cloning human beings (and our government is currently against it). Baldi celebrates the prospect, writing that cloning, "At a minimum...provides a form of genetic immortality" that "may be reassuring" to some of us. (p. 61) He asks, what is "the chance of having twin Einsteins by natural means...?" He answers that it is a 100-billion to one shot, but "trivial to replicate with cloning techniques." Baldi even dares to mention the prospect of cloning for spare parts. (This might be called "partial cloning.")

Baldi believes that someday human intelligence "might be viewed as a historically interesting, albeit peripheral, special case of machine intelligence." (p. 113) He sees our neurons in direct interface with silicon intelligence, our memories and computational powers greatly enhanced.

He is trying "to imagine what can be done with intelligence and other faculties several orders of magnitude beyond our own." He writes: "Almost by definition, what can be done is in a blind spot that our brains cannot really see." (p. 114)

It occurred to me while reading this that by gradually replacing our brain cells...etc., we would never "die," at least not knowingly. We would change, perhaps drastically, over a period of time, but our subjective experience would note only small changes similar to the experience of watching grass grow. This would be a sort of death-defying immortality (with evolutionary change), the sort of thing that might work with human beings. Note how this fits in with Baldi's idea that we are not who we think we are. Indeed, we cannot really know who we are in a definitive sense. We can only know that we are part of a larger process.

I might note that in this sense science and religion are in the process of merging. Religion is the phenomenon of belief; science is the process of "knowing." At some point, off in the distance, there is a whole universe that invites belief without our having an ability to know. This is where science and religion merge.

Most of what this books says is reasonable, but not much seemed surprising, and it is cautious enough that I'm fairly certain that the changes it discusses will seem fairly minor 20 or 30 years from now.
For instance, he wonders whether the effects of growing up with 20, 50, or 1000 clones will be qualitatively different from the effects of twins growing up together. But when discussing the effects of direct interfaces between neurons and silicon, he stops short of wondering whether that will produce people with dramatically enhanced intelligence. Nor does he seem to think that machine intelligence will have dramatic effects, at least in this century.
He claims to believe that technological growth tends to follow exponential curves, but the magnitude of the changes he foresees suggests he tends to expect technological progress to be closer to linear.

I found this book really interesting, with challenging ideas, and very well documented. It's a gold mine whether you are an economist, a writer in search of script ideas for your next "Jurassic Parc", or just wanting to understand what is going on in the biotech and computer science revolution.

The author is clear and engaging. He devotes a few chapters to explain the various technologies so it is easier to understand the main message. He shows that, with the advances in biotech and computers, humans are acquiring new powers over their evolution far greater than that of natural evolution; whether we use them to change ourselves or not, they question our deepest beliefs and our notion of self. Some very cool pictures too.

Excellent. Gives the reader something to think about. Written so the average person can get a firm grasp on the information. I look forward to other books by this author. I will definatly recommend this book.

Insightful, well-written, and philosophical with the clarity of a mathematician. From an author who is passionate, knowledgeable, and active in many scientific areas.

Baldi's ideas are challenging, but this book is far too much science-fiction, far too little science.

Applying math and cs to some gene research (Baldi's research at UCI) does not qualify him to make some of his ridiculous claims on the progress and future of natural science.

This book outlines the scientific and technological advances that allow us to manipulate genomes at the level of single genes, develop machines that will surpass the human brain in computing power, and build an interconnected world of information-processing devices. The book makes a compelling and provocative argument that human control of our species genes will surpass the path of natural evolution. The thesis, that post-genomic biology will change the direction of human evolution, is both appealing and disquieting and poses a number of unanswered ethical dilemmas. The book is well-written with good sense of humour !