LS7 - Dr. Calvin Mercer Talks Transhumanism Science

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It's my pleasure to welcome Dr. Calvin Mercer to the show. He teaches religious studies at East Carolina University, and I wanted to have him on particularly, not just because of his many books and articles and so forth, but particularly because he focuses on an area in the radical life extension and transhumanism community of the social and religious implications of this stuff, which very few people talk about. So I think this will be a fascinating topic today and we want to welcome him. Kelvin, welcome. How are you?

I'm just fine. I have a head cold. But I think we can do this. And I appreciate your interest in this topic.

Yeah, yeah, very interesting topic. And you sound pretty good, cold notwithstanding. So, you know, tell us what your thoughts are. You know, first, I think for the audience, there may be a few people out there who don't know what transhumanism is. And did you want to explain that?

Transhumanism, feminism is, I guess you could say, a scientific and cultural movement that is designed to use various technologies and therapies to enhance those qualities and traits that we consider desirable, physical, mental, emotional, and to minimize those that we don't like anything from baldness to can't play a piano. We want to enhance those qualities that we consider desirable.

Now, but in the transhumanist movement, they're thinking of this, I think, in a slightly different or additional way, which is the idea of not necessarily living forever in the body one has now, but sort of downloading that information that that brain has into potentially another body or a robotic type situation. I mean, it gets a little weird. Any comments on that area of transhumanism?

Well, transhumanists are a big community and they have their disagreements. I mean, I guess you could speak about the more radical wing, which is interested in the kinds of procedures that you're talking about where you identify what a human being is, is their memory and personality. And if you identify that and can map it, then you can then perhaps download it into some sort of computer format. Other transhumanists are not interested in that more radical scenario and they just simply want to maintain the same structure of the body or humanity that we have and enhance it. This gets into religious questions too. You know, what is a human being? And in fact, I think that religionists are probably. That's one of the ways in which they're going to divide up is that they're going to suggest that once we drop the body, to use a Hindu term, that that's a radical move for humanity and maybe even leaving humanity behind as we know it. So again, there's different camps within the transhumanist community.

Right. And it just begs the question, you know, I believe that a human is the consciousness that they have. And, you know, if you were to be able to download all your memories into some sort of, you know, computer or biological machine, if you will, for lack of a better word, I don't know what to call it. I don't know that that would be you. You know, it's not necessarily the same thing. So these, these are, you know, very debatable issues. And Ray Kurzweil and some of the Google folks are talking about or working on this stuff. It's pretty interesting, you know, so it begs the question, what is a human?

Well, I'm certainly not going to answer that question, but I will say that I think that's one of the reasons I want the academic religious community to be involved in this conversation, because they can help address that question. What is a human being? Certainly, you know, to define a human being as a memory and personalities or information, the information that's recorded in our brain is, you know, a way to think about it. But there are those who would suggest that's not a holistic way of thinking about, you know, what our humanity has meant to us in the past.

Yeah, yeah, certainly. Well, talk to us about some of the social and religious implications. I mean, and when you talk about radical life extension, maybe before you start, define what you mean there. I mean, what are people in this community talking about? Are they Talking about living 120 years, 150 years, or a lot longer than that?

No, I think it was in the 1850s. Folks lived like 40 years and now it's 80. So we've doubled. But that's not what we mean by radical. We're talking here about body part replacement, tissue regeneration, merging of computer technology and human biology, robotics, to give indefinite extension to life. So we're talking hundreds, potentially thousands of years. And so that's what we mean by radical. And I think that the public is not anywhere near kind of an awareness of the kinds of questions that we're going to be facing. Really, the only question I turn to the scientists to give me, you know, feedback on all this. But the question, it seems to me, is when is not if this is going to happen, but when some of these technologies and therapies are going to come online. And my approach to all this has been to foster a conversation. I think even if it's, you know, 50, 100 years from now, we're nowhere near in our society ready to address the kind of implications. I know you have interest in fiscal matters, and it's critically important for people like you to be engaged in this conversation and look at the enormous, just the fiscal implications of these kinds of changes that are coming.

I couldn't agree more. I mean, we already have a Social Security system that is essentially bankrupt. You know, now granted, if people can keep working forever, not that everybody wants to do that anyway, you know, it's probably okay if they live longer. There are, of course, you know, the environmental people out there will have a problem with this because they want to see the Earth's population decline. And, you know, that's sort of a whole different discussion, which I think is rather scary. But yeah, it has big fiscal implications. Tell us some of the others. I mean, is that what you were thinking of in terms of fiscal implication?

Well, that's an. Yes, but keep in mind that one of the misconceptions about radical life extension is that we're going to have a lot of the frail people hooked up to tubes. That's not at all what kind of scenarios we're talking about. We're talking about the indefinite life. And that's a whole different scenario which has not only economic but political social implications. I mean, I think this is the. There will be a point, I think, in our society when this will trump global climate change and terrorism or budget matters as the number one issue. We're not there yet, but I think it's going to be that revolutionary with respect to religion. Let me speak just a bit about that. What we're going to see in religion is we're going to see strange bedfellows. Typically, you can divide religionists up into liberal, conservative, but it's going to get very, very complicated because the fundamentalist and I've written about, in another area of my research, I've written about fundamentalism. Fundamentalists tend to be anti science. And so they accuse the transhumanists of playing God. And they're going to be joined by liberal or mainline religionists and theologians who have a concern about the transhumanist scenarios because they think it's going to be the privilege of the wealthy class and the politically powerful class. So that's going to be a strange bedfellow. On the other hand, the liberal mainline theologians and thinkers are open to science and medicine if it can help relieve human suffering. And I think they're going to be joined by some fundamentalists who, at a very basic level, have a desire for survival. I mean, that's a fundamental human instinct, apart from your religion. So it's going to get very kind of interesting and complicated in the religious community, I think.

Yeah, I agree with you. I agree with you. Well, talk to us more about, I mean, that's how the, you know, people on different sides of the aisle might come together or, you know, come apart. But, you know, what are the religious and social implications? Let's kind of drill down on a few of those if we can. You know, I mean, we talked about defining what a person is, and this just is so reminiscent of the abortion debate. When life begins. Well, here we've got to, I guess, figure out when it ends. If the body dies and the consciousness or the memories are still alive, is the person dead? It's a very fascinating topic.

Well, let me speak to that in kind of another slant. It's going to be impossible to generalize how the religions of the world are going to respond to this. They're going to respond in different ways. But one, if I at this point discern one kind of emphasis, is that the religions are going to critique transhumanism and saying that this movement focuses inordinately on the quantity of life rather than quality. Now, I actually think that is a bit unfair to the transhumanist. I hear the transhumanists saying that they want quantity of life, hundreds of years or whatever, in order to have more quality of life that lasts a longer time. But this is going to be. If there is one general thing that the religions are going to weigh in on, it's going to remind us that the quality of life is important. And by quality we mean moral, spiritual development, and not just quantity. Here's another little interesting side point about religion is that, as I've observed the transhumanist movement, they've become very savvy with the understanding that their programs and processes need to be accepted by the general public. And the general public, for good or bad, is heavily influen by religion. And so the transhumanists, for example, they don't talk, at least in recent years, in My view, as much about immortality, that word used to be used more. And I think they understand that this can create problems for some religious types who feel like that if you're trying to offer immortality, you're playing God. And so you get arguments that what these therapies and technologies are doing is not offering immortality, but simply doing exactly what traditional medical science has done, which is extend life, but simply doing it in a quantitatively much more radical fashion.

Okay, so I've just got to ask, where do you stand on this, if you're willing to share that?

Well, my main focus in my writings and in my work organizing has been to get the conversation going. And there are sort of lines of positions that are beginning to emerge. One is therapy versus enhancement. In other words, you could say that if you are performing therapy on your body to bring it to its normal functioning, that's one thing. But when you're enhancing it, that becomes abnormal. I'm much more open to enhancement. I am, however, I have to say, leery of enhancements that eliminate the physicality of our human experience. I'm not saying we shouldn't go there, but I'm saying we need to think really, really long and hard before we take that step, because that is a significant step that changes everything. Another thing, that sort of position that is drawn sometimes is the distinction between enhancing yourself and making changes, perhaps genetic, that alters all future generations. And that, that is.

Very, very. That's a very interesting point because it, it alters genetics for your progeny. Wow.

And so many people will draw the line there. Okay, we're fine with enhancing yourself, making your life better, but you can't put something into the gene pool that's going to alter humanity. That's another issue.

Okay, yeah. Well, so what would some of those examples be? You know, like, what would one do? They would. I mean, they would change their sperm and egg to. I mean, when they change something about their own body that's genetic, does that change? I guess it. Well, I mean, the eggs are already all produced at birth, so, you know, does it change the sperm? Is that how it's carried to the next generation?

Well, you're asking a science question. I'm less, I'm less. You know, I'm not sure I want to talk too much about the science because I'm not a scientist, but the term here is germline genetic engineering. Germline genetic engineering means altering the genetic material in a way that, that impacts, you know, our progeny. So that, that's the line there, I think.

Yeah. Yeah, very interesting. Okay, well, you know, what else do you want us to know about this topic? We've got a few minutes left. I mean, I don't know exactly where to go, but it's fascinating for sure. You know, just anything you want to discuss on it.

Well, I think I heard your interview, excellent interview with Sonya, and you raised a question a couple times about population. And I just wanted to add a couple things about.

Yeah, yeah, good, good. And then, by the way, just for the listeners, that's an interview I did on the Creating wealth show with Sonja Arison, who I can't remember the title of her book, but it's something about living to 100, I believe, as I recall. And she was a fascinating interview. So. And I think that might have been, I can't remember the episode number, but 290 is what I want to say, but go ahead.

100 plus. It was the name of her book, I think. But just a couple of quick points about that, since you did raise that a couple of times, is one you could, I mean, this is. Nothing's going to be this simple, but you could have a law that if you're going to participate in these therapies that are going to have you live indefinitely, you can't have children. And if you're going to be a quote unquote normal rather than an enhanced human being, then you can have children. And another point that some have made is that, are you saying to me that the unborn have more rights to live than a fully functioning human being? So, you know, just a couple of points about the population. Another kind of interesting thing is we do not have the kind of social science data that we need to know how this is going to play, how this is playing out in society. My anecdotal information, and by that I mean, you know, talking to the dental assistant while she's working on my teeth. When I've been working on this over the past years, what I found, again, this is non scientific, this is anecdotal, is that women are less likely to be open to these kinds of therapies and technologies than men. It won't be this simple. But if you say to a man, here's a pill that can have you live 500 years, would you take it? The men in general tend to say, damn right, give me some water. The women, the women say, oh, no, I don't think so. And when you inquire about that, what they say is, you know, I don't want to live 500 years if I don't have my children and my husband and my family with me. Now, if you say, okay, what if all of them took the pill, then they're much more open. So the gender approach to this is very, very, very interesting to me.

And I think we need it is the men are willing to be lone wolves and the women want to be with. Very interesting. Go ahead.

Yeah. Well, here's just another interesting aspect to all this is because I've been to these conferences. The first one that I went to was many years ago, the alcor, the cryogenic leading cryogenic organization. They brought me in to give a presentation on religion. I was very interested to see who was at the conference and who are the enthusiasts at these various futuristic conferences. And you might think that it's okay aging hippies who don't want to die, and they're trying to figure out how to avoid that. But really a lot of the transhumanist community at these various conferences are younger people, computer scientists, engineers, information technology. And this puzzled me at first a few years ago when I started looking at all this. It really puzzled me as what's going on here. And as best I can figure, you know, we've settled the west and we've been to the moon. This is one of the next frontiers. And it's just fascinating to people who are in a line of work that might make some of these things unfold.

Very interesting, very interesting, interesting stuff. Well, this subject will be hotly debated in the upcoming years and decades, I am sure. Give out your website if you would, Calvin, and tell people where they can find out more about your work.

Well, I think that probably the best way is to just Google my named Calvin Mercer. I'm also a local politician here in my region and so if they just get to my university website, that's probably to just Google Calvin Mercer and East Carolina University and that'll take you to my website. And I will, after this interview, update it to make sure it's updated. Do I have time to mention one of my projects?

Sure, absolutely.

So one of the most interesting projects is I've just signed a contract with Palgrave McMillan to co edit with a scholar from the UK what's called Palgrave Studies in the Future of Humanity and its Successors. And this is not going to be a series just devoted to religion. It's going to be playing on Palgrave's expertise in humanistic and social sciences. So it's going to take the science that we've been talking about as the background here and talk about the social implications and humanistic implications of this. And we intend for this to be the premier series of books that will really work on all of these kinds of questions that we've been talking about today.

Yeah, that'll be fascinating. So that's definitely something to check out. Do you have an estimated completion date?

Well, I've got two co edited books coming out later this year myself and one of them is going to be the first book in this series. We'll be putting out several books a year and the first one will come out in this fall.

Fantastic. Well, Dr. Calvin Mercer, thank you so much for joining us today. Google Calvin Mercer, East Carolina University, and you can get a lot more information about his work. And thank you so much for joining us.

Well, thank you. And again, we do need people in various areas like you to bring these kinds of questions about the economics of this and the politics of this to these developments that are coming. It's very, very important.

Fascinating stuff. We'll keep talking about it, I can assure you that. Calvin Mercer, thank you for joining us.

Thank you, sir.

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