In “Transhumanism, Post-Humanism, and the Delusions of Billionaires” held in the Hilton 313-314 on Saturday at 10AM, Dr. Greg Hodgin and lawyer Sarah Malkin argued that if any of us were worth billions of dollars, we might think that we too could establish a libertarian utopia. And like other billionaires before us, we’d be suffering from delusions of grandeur. 

Citing the game Bioshock as a case study, Hodgin, the CEO of the ZC Institute, suggested that billionaire funded government-free utopias would devolve into ruin in fairly short order. Malkin agreed, but for different reasons. 

Hodgin argued that the cooperation and guard rails government provides are protective. On a macro level, the notion that billionaires can leave society and plan their own special insular government fails to understand this. It’s all well and good to establish your civilization on a remote island, but eventually someone has to take out the trash and clean the toilet. The more money one has, the less often they have occasion to clean a toilet which is why when science fiction is exploring utopians, they are often cautionary tales, not social models. 

Malkin looks at the problem from the standpoint of ethics and legal precedence.

On the question of ethics, incredible wealth is insulating against accountability. Without exception, people struggle to see ourselves with clarity, and we all need someone to look at us and say, “Dude. What are you thinking?” 

Laws follow technology, and ethics seems to lag even further behind.

It’s tempting to opt out of governance and regulation in order to explore interstellar travel, life on Mars, or human augmentation because accountability is pesky, ethics are sticky, and again, someone has to take out the trash, but what about those questions?

Well, according to Hodgin, Mars is a dead wasteland and there is no way back with our current technology. Any attempt to go would be a death sentence. 

If someone did attempt interstellar travel, Malkin reminded the audience they would be far outside of any laws or jurisdictions. They would effectively live in the Wild West where murders go unprosecuted. 

When asked about projects closer to home, there are exciting projects on the horizon, and science is already developing helpful biological enhancements and augmentations. 

Neuralink could prove to be amazing for quadriplegics. Drugs like Ozempic (and Viagra) have undoubtedly changed society, but the law lags technology. Malkin gave the example of fertility laws. There are few laws around reproductive technologies like surrogacy and IVF. No politician wants to put their name on a controversial law that may have unintended or unpopular consequences. From a legal standpoint, the question of designer babies remains unanswered as well as the unintended consequences of fiddling with someone’s genome. 

If people began voluntarily augmenting themselves or switching a human limb for a bionic limb, that opens a whole can of worms our legal system isn’t ready for. Say a person uploads their consciousness to a USB, Hodgkins suggested, are they still human? Do they retain their “will”? and if their biological body dies, who gets the house? 

The overall message of the panel came down to fundamental aspects of community—you can’t build your own island or spaceship or Mars colony and escape the messiness of being human, and the human body is still the most advanced machine we have. 

While uploading our consciousness isn’t happening any time soon, real breakthroughs are on the horizon, but as to the questions of ethics? 

“Technology is always neutral,” Hodgin said. “Do we make swords or plowhshares?”