Our relationship got off to a rather fiery start.
Back in 2006 I discovered that a prominent UFOlogist had been linking to a number of articles on my blog. Even more startling was the realization that the blog in question, Posthuman Blues, was an effort to bridge transhumanist discourse with that of the UFOlogists.
Eager to break the memetic linkage between the two seemingly disparate schools of thought, I penned the article, "Unidentified Flying Idiots." It was typical of my rants, a vitriolic diatribe directed against a group of know-nothing X-Files zealots who were giving legitimate scientific studies a bad name.
And my angst was directed at the head perpetrator himself: Mac Tonnies. In the article I wrote:
Tonnies’s legitimate content is offset by his misguided focus on UFOlogy. As a result, the transhumanist movement may have a harder time gaining public acceptance and support with this kind of negative association.
I’m sorry, folks, but you can’t have your cake and eat it to. You can’t choose and pick the science that appeals to you and then attempt to tie it in with bogus and unfounded speculations. It's like Fox Mulder in the X-Files who has a poster on his wall which reads, "I want to believe." Well, I also want to belive in UFOs. I also want to belive in Jesus and the tooth fairly, but wanting to believe in those things ain't gonna make it so.
Needless to say it did not impress the UFOlogists who reacted by hammering me in the comments and through emails -- including Tonnies who remarked, "A very poor showing, George. I'm as leery of the lunatic fringe as anyone -- probably more so than many people unfamiliar with the UFO inquiry. But the whackos -- and they are legion -- don't define the very real questions posed by UFOs and related phenomena."
You'd think that would be the end of it, but it actually marked the beginning of a three year relationship, one that ended tragically this week with Mac's untimely death.
Rather than dismiss each other outright, we maintained a civil correspondence over the years. Neither of us wavered from our positions, but we bonded over our shared passion for the answer to one simple question: What is the true nature of extraterrestrial life? Moreover, we felt that the answer to this profound question resided somewhere within futurist studies. By trying to look deep into humanity's future we both thought that we could unveil some clues about the makeup of advanced extraterrestrial life.
But where I considered such things as Von Neuman probes and Dyson Spheres, Tonnies looked to flying saucers and little green men. To be fair, though, Mac's viewpoint was more sophisticated than that. "I'm uncomfortable with the concept of "belief" when dealing with unusual topics such as UFOs," he wrote, "Technically, no, I don't "believe" in UFOs (in the sense that UFOs require any sort of faith). But it isn't necessary to "believe" in UFOs in order to discuss them meaningfully; empirical evidence shows that UFOs (whatever they are) exist. There are plenty of professional "skeptics" who will refute this. But there remains a core phenomenon that begs disciplined study."
There's no question that his views were 'out there.' Mac argued that aliens once resided on Mars and that they currently dwell among us.
But despite these fringe views, Mac's futurism was closely aligned with that of the transhumanists (another group often accused of being 'fringe'). Tonnies contended that,
Consciousness is a potential technology; we are exquisite machines, nothing less than sentient patterns. As such, there's no convincing technical reason we can't eventually upload ourselves into matrices of our design and choosing. It's likely the phenomenon we casually call "intelligence" will cease to be strictly biological as we begin to merge with our machines more meaningfully and intimately. (Philip K. Dick once wrote that "living and nonliving things are exchanging properties." I suspect that in a few hundred years, barring disaster, separating the animate from the inanimate will probably be an exercise in futility.) Ultimately, we have two options: self-mutate by venturing off-planet in minds and bodies of our own design, or succumb to extinction.
Tonnies thought he was on the right side of science and history. "I spend an inordinately large portion of my time pursuing unpopular ideas and esoteric theories with what I sincerely hope is balanced skepticism," he wrote. The perpetual outcast, Tonnies envisioned himself as being the true skeptic.
Mac and I never really did see eye-to-eye when it came to our theories on the true nature of extraterrestrial intelligence, but our differing viewpoints didn't get in the way of our mutual respect. We became good friends via social media, with Twitter acting a great go-between. We frequently sent each other links and article ideas that didn't quite fit into our own communities and we regularly riffed off each other's sites. Deep down inside I think we both hoped that, through open and mature discourse, our ideas would eventually sway the other. But it was not to be.
I will sorely miss Mac's posts and unwavering commitment the problem that is the Great Silence.
And I'm devastated to know that he will never take part in the future he so often dreamed of.
- Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.13 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Limits to the biolibertarian impulse - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.15 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Neurodiversity vs. Cognitive Liberty, Round II - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.17 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cognitive liberty and right to one's mind - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- TED Talks: Henry Markram builds a brain in a supercomputer - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- And Now, for Something Completely Different: Doomsday! - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.19 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Oklahoma and abortion - some fittingly harsh reflections - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Pigliucci on science and the scope of skeptical inquiry - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.24 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.10.26 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- The Bright Side of Nuclear Armament - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Grieving chimps - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Elephant prosthetic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Mass produced artificial skin to replace animal testing - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Dog gets osseointegrated prosthetic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- NASA Shuttle-derived Sidemount Heavy Launch Vehicle Concept - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.02.02 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.04 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.05 - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- IEET's Biopolitics of Popular Culture Seminar - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Einstein and Millikan should have done a Kurzweil - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Affective Death Spirals - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cure aging or give a small number of disabled people jobs as janitors? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Would unary notation prevent scope insensitivity? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Cure aging or give a small number of disabled people jobs as janitors - unary version. - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- At SENS4, Cambridge, UK - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- SENS4 overview and review - how evolution complicates SENS, and why we must try harder - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- SENS4 top 10 photos - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research for this year - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Formal Logic - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Category theory and institution theory - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: The Semantic Web - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Features and Flaws of Logical representation - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- My AI research: Graphical models and probabilistic logics - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Hughes and More engage Italian Catholicism: Image caption competition - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Surprisingly good solutions, falling in love and life in a materialistic universe - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- What do you get when you cross slightly evolved, status seeking monkeys with the scientific method? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Seeking the optimal philanthropic strategy: Global Warming or AI risk? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Machine Learning - harbinger of the future of AI? - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- At the Singularity Summit in NYC - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Katja Grace: world-dominating superintelligence is "unlikely" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Normal Human Heroes on "Nightmare futures" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Anissimov on Intelligence Enhancement - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Yudkowsky on "Value is fragile" - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Response to Pearce - November 8th, 2009 [November 8th, 2009]
- Creative thinking lets you believe whatever you want - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Let’s get metaphysical: How our ongoing existence could appear increasingly absurd - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Linda MacDonald Glenn guest blogging in November and December - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.15 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Call 1-800-New-Organ, by 2020? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- IBM's claim to have simulated a cat's brain grossly overstated - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- John Hodgman pulls off Fermi Paradox schtick - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Deus Sex Machina - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- How Americans spent themselves into ruin... but saved the world - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- I am my own grandpa (or grandma)? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump for 2009.11.29 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The art of Tomas Saraceno - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.12.05 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The Harmonic Convergence of Science, Sight, & Sound - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Working on my website - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Transhumanism, personal immortality and the prospect of technologically enabled utopia - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- RokoMijic.com is up - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Why the Fuss About Intelligence? - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Initiation ceremony - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Birthing Gods - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- 11 core rationalist skills - from LessWrong - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The best of the guests - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- The best of Sentient Developments: 2009 - December 13th, 2009 [December 13th, 2009]
- Link dump: 2009.12.15 - December 15th, 2009 [December 15th, 2009]
- The Utopia Force - December 22nd, 2009 [December 22nd, 2009]
- Avatar: The good, the bad and ugly - December 23rd, 2009 [December 23rd, 2009]
- Singularity Institute launches "2010 Singularity Research Challenge" - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Transhumanism as a "nonissue" - December 24th, 2009 [December 24th, 2009]
- Hanson on "Meh, Transhumanism" - December 25th, 2009 [December 25th, 2009]
- Merry Newtonmas from Transhuman Goodness - December 25th, 2009 [December 25th, 2009]
- After proud knowledge - December 26th, 2009 [December 26th, 2009]