Forbidden Knowledge: Part 1

Toward a Christian Ethic of Technology

“…for they established their dwellings in Middle-earth during the years of Sauron’s domination, and they worshipped him, being enamoured of evil knowledge.” - JRR Tolkien, The Return of the King

    Surely I spoke of things I did not understand,
    things too wonderful for me to know. Job 42:3

The Human Genome Project, an international scientific effort to produce the first ever sequence of the entire human genome, cost over $2 billion in current dollars and took almost 13 years (1990-2003). Today, the cost for personal genome sequencing can be as little as a few hundred dollars and can be done in a few days. Such economic improvements have been made possible by advances in technology. The economics of gene sequencing matter because, to cite just one example, personalized gene sequencing can facilitate customized medical treatments that yield better outcomes. Cancer treatment is one such area that benefits.

I was first made aware of genetically customized medicine when was on a conference call a few years ago with a researcher from Stanford Medical School. I was asked to participate because the discussion revolved around an aspect of my own expertise, which involves large-scale computation. The researcher’s interest was in exploring ways to exploit the massive computational capacity of cloud computing infrastructures to perform genomic analysis. The challenge he was facing was regulatory, not medical, and he was seeking ideas on technological solutions to the regulatory obstacles. There may be nothing more personally identifiable than the unique genome of an individual, and the call was arranged to discuss how publicly shared cloud computing platforms could be used for genetic analysis while still complying with the regulatory requirements for maintaining patient privacy.

Many technologies - artificial intelligence is one such example - have myriad applications. AI is widely expected to improve medical diagnosis and treatment. Computational medicine is making significant strides and mostly in ways that are beneficial to human flourishing.

I call attention to all of this merely to highlight the fact that, though many of us have the creeping sense that we are being monitored, tracked, banned, seduced, distracted, and generally robbed of our human agency by technology, that is not the full story. Our worst suspicions regarding the malevolent effects of certain applications of technology are inescapably true, but there also remain humane and moral pursuits toward which technology is being directed. One of the challenges we face is how to reliably differentiate between “good” technology and “bad”. How do we avoid uncritical acceptance of technology on the one hand, and undiscriminating rejection on the other?

I’ve been noodling on these questions for a while, especially since moving my writing to Substack. There are some amazing writers on Substack who are grappling with vital adjacent questions involving how to manage and/or reduce the detrimental effects of attentional technologies.

Peco

and

Ruth Gaskovski

, writing at School of the Unconformed, are a great example of this.

What I want to explore in this post is less about useful tactics for fending off the unhappy practical effects of this or that problematic technology, and more about how to construct a general framework for morally differentiating between technologies. What are the inherent attributes of a particular technology that makes it something we should, or should not, pursue? As someone who is not just a consumer of technology, but also an inventor of it, I want to develop a more explicitly structured, less reactive moral calculus regarding technology in general. I’m reaching toward something that can inform my own inventive work and that is more explicit and less dependent upon intuition.

I do not suggest that I have any of this exactly right. I am only proposing some ideas and working through my own thoughts by writing what follows. I am not claiming to have arrived at a comprehensive and final answer.

Enamored of Evil Knowledge

The Judeo-Christian origin story in the Bible’s book of Genesis explains the tragic circumstances of our existence as being the result of the very first man and woman’s pursuit of knowledge that exceeded their moral capacities. The concept of forbidden knowledge is therefore by no means foreign to Judeo-Christian thought. The very context of the Christian gospel is as a remedy for the downstream consequences of humans having acquired knowledge which we are morally incapable of wielding. And it is noteworthy that the immediate effect on the first human beings for having acquired this forbidden knowledge was an explosion of self-consciousness.

The biblical text goes out of its way to make the point that, prior to eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, human self-consciousness was so absent from their lives that people were unaware even of their own nakedness. But as soon as the forbidden knowledge was acquired, there began a veritable avalanche of pathologies which placed the self at the center of human interests. Beginning with blame-shifting, followed by self-absorption, and culminating in self-worship, the history of human behavior began to revolve around the satisfaction, protection, and promotion of the self.

In our current moment - and this is no doubt impolitic to even say right here at the peak of our cultural obsession with empathy - the self has metastasized to the point that some of the most toxic pathologies exhibited by the poor are sometimes the result of neither economics nor injustice, but of having never developed genuine interests in anything outside of themselves.

“In the schools, young children are no longer taught in whole classes but in little groups. It is hoped that they will learn by discovery and play. There is no blackboard and no rote learning. Perhaps the method of teaching by turning everything into a game can work when the teacher is talented and the children are already socialized to learn; but when, as is usually the case, neither of these conditions obtains, the results are disastrous, not just in the short term but probably forever.

"The children themselves eventually come to know that something is wrong, even if they are not able to articulate their knowledge. Of the generations of children who grew up with these pedagogical methods, it is striking how many of the most intelligent among them sense by their early twenties that something is missing from their lives. They don’t know what it is, and they ask me what it could be. I quote them Francis Bacon: “It is a poor centre of a man’s actions, himselfe.” They ask me what I mean, and I reply that they have no interests outside themselves, that their world is as small as the day they entered it, and that their horizons have not expanded in the least.

“But how do we get interested in something?” they ask.

- Theodore Dalrymple, Life at the Bottom: The Worldview that Makes the Underclass

The degree to which a person is narrowly focused on himself no doubt varies by individual. But in essential ways, being able to function in the world is an artifact of suppressing our tendency toward devotion only to ourselves and, instead, developing genuine interests in the larger world around us. A profound lack of interest in anything beyond ourselves, or perceiving the world only through the lens of the way we ourselves feel, is the shortest pathway to misery.

If the tragic events underlying our very existence manifest themselves, at least in part, as an obsession with the self, then perhaps we can articulate a moral principle regarding technology that takes the nature of our existence into account.

It is evil to pursue the development of any technology which would serve to compound self-absorption, or to amplify the self-regard to which people are inherently prone.

Restorative Pursuits

If we have so far concluded that those technologies are evil which nurture the monstrous self-regard lurking in every human heart, what principles might be discovered that, by contrast, establish a positive moral framework for discerning the technological good? We have a little more to unpack before we get there.

For much of my life I read the New Testament gospels through a kind of bi-focal lens that was part moral-therapeutic and part psycho-therapeutic. I conceived of what I was reading as being primarily concerned with my moral and psychological rehabilitation and well-being. But something I could never really avoid seeing within the text, but also never really understood, was the echo of a larger cosmic conflict playing out for which humanity was not exactly tangential, but was nevertheless perhaps less active than my self-regard had always lead me to assume. This cosmic clash always seemed equal parts fantastical and puzzling, since its presence in the text clashed with my fallen human inclination to suppose that everything in the world revolves around me. While I still believe that we are a central point of the story, it is only in the same sense that prisoners of war are central to a movie adaptation about their daring rescue: we may be the beneficiaries of all the action, but we ourselves are neither the heroes nor the main attraction. It is the window into this ancient cosmic conflict, and the goals of the actual combatants, that I think may offer some helpful clues in developing a framework for distinguishing between virtuous technologies, and malevolent ones.

Near the beginning of the gospel of Luke, as Jesus prepared for a three year odyssey toward his eventual execution, he retreated to the wilderness for an intensive period of prayer and fasting. During his time in the wilderness, Satan himself showed up and engaged Jesus in a contest of will and wit. Satan appeared to suspect Jesus’ true identity, but several things about his actions in that story give the impression that Satan was not entirely sure. Three times he challenged Jesus to directly or indirectly affirm his identity as the son of God, and all three times Jesus refused to comply. At one point, Satan offered to give Jesus all the kingdoms of the world if only Jesus would bow down and worship Satan. I have lately suspected that this is what a poker player would call a “tell”. This proposal by Satan probably revealed something about the essential question being contested within the cosmic conflict: Satan desires to trade places with God. That may seem like an audacious thing to want, but even Satan is not alone in conceiving of himself in that way.

The negotiations in the wilderness over the kingdoms of the world don’t go well for Satan. Jesus’ response was (I paraphrase), “Pound sand.” But it was after Satan’s departure that I found what Jesus did illuminating. We would be wise, I suspect, to understand his actions, not as random events, but as part of the narrative context being developed by the gospel writer. Immediately after his contest of wills with Satan, during which Jesus rejected Satan’s offer, he proceeded to the synagogue of his home town and read aloud the following passage from the prophet Isaiah:

“The Spirit of the Lord is on me,    
because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.
He has sent me to proclaim freedom for the prisoners    
and recovery of sight for the blind,
to set the oppressed free,     
to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor.”

Following the reading of this part of Isaiah, Jesus sat down and made clear to the congregants that he himself was the one to do this, and he no-kidding intended to. More specifically, Jesus announced that he was going to unwind the imprisonment, repair the injury, and put a stop to the oppression that characterized human life. In other words, he intended to recover and expand freedom in the world, and to restore the intended functioning of human bodies which had gone awry.

Now, in what sense, exactly, was all this freedom and proper functioning going to take place? Once again, I think it’s important to go by the narrative being developed by the writer. Immediately after reading this passage from Isaiah, Jesus proceeded to a nearby village and rescued someone held captive by a demon. Then he proceeded to heal the sickness and injury of many others, as well as kicking more demons out of their hosts.

So the sequence of events is as follows. Satan offers to give Jesus the kingdoms of the world in exchange for being worshiped. Jesus says “No”. Jesus proceeds to announce that henceforth he himself will be forcibly setting people free and healing their injuries. He then wanders throughout the region, kicking demonic backsides and taking names. Taken as a whole, the Luke narrative comes across as Jesus demonstrating to Satan that he never had any intention of negotiating for the release of the P.O.W.’s - he was always going to take them by force.

There’s an interesting aspect to Jesus’ encounter with the first demon. If Satan was still unsure about Jesus’ true identity during the contest in the wilderness, by the time Jesus reached Galilee, word had evidently gotten out among the demonic horde. The first demon Jesus encountered after reading in the synagogue began to loudly announce Jesus’ identity as “the holy one of God”. Jesus said to the demon, “Be silent!”. Readers of English tend to read this as a request, or perhaps a demand, for the demon to comply. But the verb form the writer uses is in the passive voice. He does not have Jesus asking or demanding silence from the demon — he has Jesus imposing it. The mere power of his words is such that, without any appeal to the demon’s will, he imposes compliance. Jesus, in effect, forcibly muzzles the demon.

For purposes of establishing a moral framework for technology, I want to suggest that there are morally loaded agendas reflected within these events that are worth considering. First of all, Jesus’ initial reading in the synagogue is foundational to providing the context for his earthly actions. And I want to argue that Jesus’ actions immediately following the reading in the synagogue were putting into effect the contents of the passage he had just read. In doing so, Jesus pursued two related but distinct agendas: the expansion and return of human freedom, and the restoration of human bodies to enable them to function as they were intended. He freed those who were captive or oppressed by demonic powers, and he healed human injuries and disease.

So perhaps another principle, with which to guide the development and use of technology, might be stated something along the lines of “technologies which amplify true human freedom are affirmatively good, and the pursuit of such technologies is both moral and desirable”. A related principle might be stated as “technologies which restore the right functioning of the human body for its purpose in the world, are both moral and desirable”.

I want to make clear, at this point, that I am not suggesting that the totality of Jesus’ purpose can be expressed in terms of human freedom and restoration. Ultimately, the gospels make clear that Jesus came to save us from our sins. What I am trying to grapple with is not the ultimate question of human salvation, but rather to tease out overarching principles that might illuminate the distinctions that should be made between moral and immoral technological pursuits. I’m relying on Jesus’ reading in the synagogue as a moral explainer of his subsequent earthly actions, on the assumption that doing so might illuminate a moral path for those of us who, in our own meager way, hope to follow in his footsteps behind him.

Of course, working out the particulars of applied technology can be problematic. Many technologies can facilitate the moral goods we have identified above, but those same technologies may also be put to immoral uses. Artificial intelligence can be used to defraud, but it can also be used to heal. The same technologies used to surveil and censor can be used to expose those who make plans to diminish human freedom. There is even a hilarious new AI engine which modifies online images of scantily clad women by adorning them with more modest attire. One begins to suspect that, in many cases, it isn’t the technology itself but the application of it that matters.

In a recent Substack post, pondering the announcement of Neuralink’s first human trial,

Andrew Klavan

had this to say:

The first [brain-computer-interface] implants will be irresistible because they’ll let blind men see and lame beggars walk or some such useful thing. But pretty soon, people will be popping these buggers into their brains like eating M&M’s until everyone is transformed into a human-machine hybrid with Klaus What’s-his-Face secretly reprogramming us to eat caterpillar grubs.

In his characteristically good natured and hilarious way, Klavan puts his finger on the essential paradox: many technologies can be used for both good and for ill. The distinction is simply a matter of how they are applied.

Perhaps the distinction between evil knowledge and virtuous knowledge, then, is in whether such knowledge can ever facilitate the restoration of God’s design and purpose for human life on earth, or whether the only possible uses thwart the human telos.

It is simply not possible to define a moral framework for assessing technology in the absence of making foundational assumptions regarding what human beings are, and what we are for. If making blind men see, or lame beggars walk, are indeed worthy pursuits, we must ask ourselves “why?”. The answer must be that we are presupposing blindness and lameness are themselves contrary to the good. There must be a reference point, then, which stands behind such an assumption and against which any notion of the good can be evaluated and understood.

If using surgical technology to mutilate the genitalia of children is wrong, it is not wrong simply as a matter of informed consent, but because doing so transforms a human body into something literally un-human, in the sense that it is made into something other than what a human being should be. Gender transitioning is thus morally indistinguishable from blinding a child, or cutting off one’s own ears. The human body has a form given in service to a particular purpose. Accordingly, surgeries which dehumanize, by undermining the body’s purpose, are immoral since they are elementally destructive rather than restorative. They cause harm rather than healing.

But, of course, it is only possible to say such things if there is a transcendent standard for the embodied human form against which we can assess any alternatives. Similarly, if the moral foundation for human sexuality is more than merely the satisfaction of momentary psycho-sexual human desires, then homosexuality, transgenderism, and pedophilia are wrong for a reason. But if there is no telos against which notions of the good can be evaluated, then we are adrift in nothing more than a swirling sea of competing opinions and appetites.

“If there is no God, everything is permitted.” - Fyodor Dostoevsky

So if, as a technology, brain implants are capable of having a restorative effect on the transcendently determined purpose of the human body, then the knowledge of such technology is inherently good. However, if brain implants are useful only to subvert, say, human agency and freedom, then pursuing such knowledge is unavoidably evil.

In principle then, only those technologies which in some way further the telos of human existence can be considered moral. Of course, if the moral application of technology is confined only to those things which further the moral ends of human existence, the morality of human preeminence is simply being assumed.

The following video engages this question of human preeminence. It’s from a post I did over a year ago and used as a vehicle for experimentation as a scripted video. But it is germane to the groundwork I have been laying in this post up to this point.

This has all been an explanation for why I have come to believe that moral technologies are those which discourage self-consciousness, amplify human freedom, and are restorative of human purpose.

In the follow-on installment, which will be some days from now I’m afraid, I’ll try to use these three principles as a lens through which to apply a moral evaluation to some of the widely used technologies which are culturally ascendant just now.