Academician Asmolov spoke about the genetic revolution: how technology can harm humanity

New Zones: Cozy and Stinky

— Alexander Grigoryevich, it is planned to build “15-minute cities” in Russia. We are talking about zones where everything necessary for life and work will be within walking distance. At first glance, it looks like a boon: people do not need to use transport, they save time on the road, and this will improve the environment. But they will actually be tied to these zones. And here everything can be even tougher than the story with covid restrictions (including because the restrictions will become permanent). In general, it is remotely similar to a concentration camp. What do you think of it?

– I remember a story that one of my wonderful friends, Vladimir Voinovich, told me. Alexei Nikolaevich Tolstoy was brought a gift home, to his palace. It was a bag in which wonderful piglets grunted. They wanted to shake them out on the carpet, on the parquet. Then Tolstoy said: “Do not throw the pigs out of the bag, they are comfortable and stinky there.”

So, some modern projects are similar to an attempt to make bags in which people will be like pigs, who will be “cozy and smelly” there and will not want to get out of there. Such architecture cannot be a stimulus for human development. Therefore, it is imperative to look at whether the project is like this or whether it helps a person become a person, “the cause of himself.”

— And how to understand it?

– First of all, look at what tasks he solves: anthropological or totalitarian? And then you will find the answer to the question “how to relate to the project.” I’m talking about those markers that will help you understand, as in Andrei Voznesensky’s poem: “What for is this being done?” I conduct a motivational analysis of what is behind any social project. In this case, architecture.

In general, architecture is a source of unique risks associated with human development. The city is a living organism. The “philosophy of biourbanism” approach implies that it has an environment that does not put pressure on a person. In Izhevsk, such a project has appeared, it is called “Living Cities – Incredibly Important”. This and other similar projects are trying to make the city an assistant to personalization. In such a place, a person can get the opportunity for self-realization, self-development – something about which the great poet Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin wisely said: “a person’s self-reliance is a guarantee of his greatness.”

But next to these projects there have always been others that dealt with the deindividualization of human life. For a long time they existed in the Soviet Union. There are many studies that show that, for example, gray five-story buildings (which all had “the same face”, which beats the plot of the film “The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath”) is the path to depersonalization. Such urban structures become factories of social conformism, a factory of unification, when people can be controlled and predicted in any of their movements.

— In the urban planning of the USSR, were projects won where a person turns into a cog?

— Absolutely. A. Zinoviev’s term “manhill” (like an anthill) fits here perfectly. Everything is huge, and a person is nothing against this background, his role is reduced to a minimum. And life in such conditions is built according to strict rules.

It would seem that a completely unrelated topic – why did the Egyptian pyramids, the Great Wall of China, the White Sea-Baltic Canal appear?

– Is that a question? If yes, then I will answer. Great construction projects designed to show the greatness of the state.

“They are ‘great employment’ projects by nature. And when you get involved in such great construction projects, the task of controlling the masses becomes pushed to the limit. The pharaohs built a rigid totalitarian system along with the pyramids. The same applies to China. When the Great Wall of China was being built, it did not solve the problem of protecting (the wall can be bypassed), but occupied the masses of people with constant hard work. Labor at such construction sites is a formula for dehumanization. And how many lives have been lost!

– And yet, returning to the “15-minute cities.” After all, they were tested in Paris and Oxford, which are difficult to blame for dehumanizing.

— One and the same project in different countries can be implemented with different tasks. When it is implemented in a democratic system, this is one thing. The social structure of France is such, everything is directed to the individual. Therefore, 15-minute cities can be created so that a person has everything at hand for creativity.

But in some other countries it becomes a means of defining a person in a corral. In the words of Vysotsky, there are red flags that you cannot go beyond.

We are now in fear of the word “zone”. A whole stream of associations immediately arises, including the Stalker zone. I do not know the plans of the builders of the “15-minute cities”. But we (society) definitely need to find out.

Russian “Gattaca”

– In Vladivostok, children are now enrolled in sports clubs through a genetic test. It reminded me of the dystopian film Gattaca, about a society where all newborns are DNA tested to determine their future. The “imperfect” have no chance of getting an education and a good job.

“This is one of the most important stories that shows how the data of powerful discoveries can be used for social discrimination and breaking human destinies. From the standpoint of modern evolutionary biology, no amount of DNA knowledge alone can predict who you will be. DNA is only one of the prerequisites that in one way or another can guide human development.

When they say that one person is an introvert and another is an extrovert, it only implies that the former is more prone to certain activities, the latter to others.

A textbook example is Demosthenes, who could not speak well, but built his communication in such a way that he overcame defects and became one of the greatest orators of the world. A relatively recent example (within the framework of history): a journalist came to my teacher, the great psychologist Alexei Leontiev, to talk about the nature of personality and asked him the question: “Are you an extrovert or an introvert? How do you analyze yourself? He smiled and said, “I’m a well-compensated introvert.” This is not just a beautiful answer, but a substantive answer to your question. Whatever the natural, biological, anthropological inclinations of human development are, these are only prerequisites. I have been teaching this in a course in personality psychology for many years. That is why even such a wonderful science as eugenics (the science of giftedness) was not understood. The gene, or DNA in general, is a field of possibilities, but the life path of the individual is not a ball that is beaten to fall into a certain pocket. Therefore, such projects are flawed from the outset.

In Soviet times, there were projects where this was driven to madness. Where do criminals come from? “These are the birthmarks of capitalism, this cannot be in our country!” people in power said. According to their logic, it turned out that if the father was a thief, then you will become a thief. This rabid illiteracy is a road to nowhere, on which they are trying to make money. And so such projects appear time after time.

Three years ago, when school murders began, the question was asked: is it possible to find out with the help of computer diagnostics whether a child has the prerequisites for committing a crime? And immediately there appeared structures that said: give 1.5 billion, and we will quickly do it. But what will happen in the end? Already in sociobiology, when studying social insects, variants of the ways of their development depending on the environment are clearly demonstrated. That is, even in bees and ants, behavior is not rigidly predetermined only by DNA. And in newly minted projects, it turns out, they can easily point to a person as a potential criminal based on DNA analysis. These projects are in themselves a great social danger: science can serve as the basis of social inequality, discrimination and segregation, since the result is the stigmatization of the “God’s grace” of DNA. And the conclusions about the fatality of DNA are made either by scientifically virgin people, or by those who have some kind of interest (commercial or political). This is immoral.

Is it possible to put these achievements at the service of man?

– For sure. Modern research in bioinformatics and genetics is brilliant today. But no matter how much we study the human genome, we cannot determine its (human) path. The genome does not determine the fatality of our existence. This is just a premise. Our individuality, through its courage, can triumph over the individual. Remember pilot Maresyev? On the other hand, no “bad” DNA gives you the right to be a bastard. Here I cite the example of the hunchback Richard (from Shakespeare), who says that he is twisted from birth and his injury allegedly gives him the full right to vile deeds.

– When I saw maniacs in colonies for life sentences, I could not understand: why they are not being investigated in order to draw up tests based on their data to identify aggression and deviations in a teenager. It turns out that I was wrong and this will not help, but will only bring harm?

– Not really. I believe that an accurate analysis of outliers is needed in order to try to build a motivational portrait of them that will set the characterology. A motivational profile is a key characteristic of understanding a person. Knowing this profile, we can predict and predict many things, but this is a prediction. When there is one or another motive, the methods of solution can be completely different. For example, a strong sexual motive in one will lead to the appearance of Chikatilo, in another – to the creation of castles in the air for the woman he loves.

Identified does not mean guilty

— To be honest, I’m personally worried about the face recognition system. There are more and more cases when a person is detained on the basis of the fact that he was identified by a computer. At the same time, the testimonies of witnesses that he was at that time in another place are not taken into account. The police and the courts believe in artificial intelligence, not people…

– There is not a single face recognition project that would suggest with a hard probability that this is exactly the person. There are no such methods.

In forensics, there has long been a dream – to identify by voice. And Solzhenitsyn’s entire book “In the First Circle” is devoted to this issue (let me remind you that in the “sharashkin offices” they are trying to develop such a recognition system). Today we are promoting this ideology throughout the country, described by “In the First Circle”.

Can people be recognized by the facial recognition system? They can, but it’s never definitive. This is always (!) a probabilistic forecast, not a hard statement. And when a forecast turns into a tool, a tool that leads to the breaking of human destinies, it is incredibly dangerous.

– And what to do?

— Prohibit the legislative decision based on the findings of such a system.