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The Transhuman Singularity
Permanent link to this article: http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?main=/articles/art0144.html
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The Transhuman Singularity
Therapeutic human cloning, stem cell therapies, synthetic organs, molecular nanotechnology, and the digital-cerebral interface may allow us to achieve immortality in this century. But keeping bionic transhumans alive until immortalilty is achieved may prove very expensive. And not everyone will want it.
Originally published March 27, 2001 on KurzweilAI.net.
At 54 years of age, I am among the oldest of the baby boomers. Many of us, belonging to this and subsequent generations, don't really believe that we will have to die. Death for us, if and when it occurs, will simply be the result of some kind of awful mistake.
In accordance with my predictions for the near future, with a little luck, my generation of boomers may be the first ever to be presented with the option for physical immortality on Earth. For members of all younger generations, this may almost be guaranteed. It may even be a possibility, albeit only sporadically, for a number of today's seniors as well.
But, as a group, people who are less than 55 or so right now have the best chance of still being alive when the widespread availability of physical immortality becomes a reality. Experts predict that this dramatic extension in human lifespan will debut between 25 and 50 years from now1.
There is, needless to say, considerable controversy over the exact date that extreme human longevity will become widely available. Ron Klatz MD, president of The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine, suggests that the human life span will reach 150 years within 30 years and physical immortality will be achieved by mid-century. Other futurists feel such dramatic breakthroughs may take a little longer.2 Ray Kurzweil even goes so far as to states that "life expectancy (will) no longer be a viable term in relation to intelligent beings" sometime between 2072 and 2099.3
This dramatic increase in human longevity will be the result of a number of imminent scientific breakthroughs. In my recent book, The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever4, I discuss these concepts at further length and present a plan of action that can be taken by anyone (not just baby boomers, by the way!) to improve your chances of remaining alive long enough to experience these soon-to-be-available radical increases in human longevity.
In The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever , I begin my discussion of how to plan for extreme longevity with "The Three Rules of Living Forever."
- Rule #1: Don't die anytime soon.
- Rule #2: Stay away from most doctors.
- Rule #3: Follow "The Ten Pillars of Health."
In The Ten Pillars of Health I discuss specifically what types of things you can start doing right now to increase your chances of living a longer and healthier life. You can go to the website associated with this book, where brief descriptions of each of The Ten Pillars of Health are presented. Vernor Vinge popularized the concept of The Singularity--the point in time when machines become more intelligent than humans--in his essay, "The Technological Singularity."
I use the phrase here differently, to refer to the point in time when human beings cross over the line and become immortal. Vernor Vinge popularized this version of The Singularity in his science fiction novel Marooned in Real Time.
I feel that this singular event corresponding to the end of death's icy grip on human life will be among the most spectacular of triumphs for Life itself. This day that Death dies will join together with the day that Life took its first breath as the two most important dates in the history of life on our planet.
Not everyone feels this way about this. The majority of people now alive, in fact, have never even thought of this and even if they have, pay it little mind. This is because most people today feel that they are immortal already. They believe that they are already guaranteed life eternal as a result of their religious beliefs. The majority of Americans believe that their souls are immortal. As the reality of The Singularity approaches, however, the frequency and intensity of the debate regarding the relative merits of physical vs. ethereal immortality is certain to increase.
It will be interesting to see in which direction people are drawn when they really do have a clear-cut choice in the matter:
- Stay here on earth on the physical plane with their current memories intact or
- Die and then take their chances on getting in to heaven, the Happy Hunting Grounds, nirvana, Valhalla, etc.
The question comes to mind as to whether only "good" people will choose heaven, figuring that they have the best chance of getting in there. The sinners among us, on the other hand, would be more likely opt for staying right here on earth as long as possible rather than risk their summary deportation to the eternal flames of "the other place." Will this dichotomy serve as a form of natural selection and eventually lead to an increasingly unsavory populace increasingly comprised of criminals and other borderline types immortalized "down" here?
This decision making process of choosing between heavenly bliss (or the Happy Hunting Grounds, nirvana, Valhalla, etc.) or continuing with the "rat race" here on earth will not be a trivial matter either. The version of physical immortality that I foresee, wonderful though it is to me, will not be everyone's cup of tea.
Achieving this type of personal immortality will necessitate the use of therapeutics some people currently regard as dangerous (e.g., genetic engineering), other therapies that are currently illegal (e.g., human cloning) and still others that don't even exist yet (e.g., human consciousness "uploading"). In the eyes of some folks, these interventions are totally unacceptable or even blasphemous. To others the type of "life" available to us will be an abomination and we won't even meet the definition of being human any more. If history is any guide, a certain subgroup of our fellows will devote their lives to seeing that these options are not available to anyone.
The progression from where we are now, deeply mired in the quicksand of mortality, to the arrival of The Singularity will be characterized by a number of discrete quantum leaps that will be necessary to take us from where we are today to where we will need to be.
Some of the most notable of these biotechnological advances that will bring us to level where true human immortality will be possible include:
Therapeutic human cloning refers to the creation of human organs directly from an individual's own DNA. It is currently legal, unlike "human cloning," in which case an individual is duplicated in toto to create an entirely new genetically identical being.
Stem cells are specialized cells in the body that have the ability to turn into any of a number of diverse cell types. A particular type of these cells, the pluripotent stem cells, exist for just the first few weeks of embryonic development, but have the unique ability to turn into any cell type in the body whatsoever. These cells can also be used to create human replacement parts.
Another way to duplicate human replacement organs is in the factory. Engineers are working to fabricate entirely synthetic or artificial human organs and tissues. The availability of permanent artificial hearts, for example, is anticipated by 2010 followed in short order by synthetic, implantable lungs and kidneys by 2015. Predictions include the widespread availability of synthetic brains by 2035.5
Molecular nanotechnology (MNT) refers to engineering on a very tiny scale. Above all other technologies, MNT has the potential to irrevocably alter Life-As-We-Know-It by creating almost any product we desire from its raw materials at negligible cost. Infinitesimally tiny nanotechnological robots (nanobots) may some day circulate throughout our brains, systematically creating a digital record of the position of each molecule, providing a backup copy of our memories.
In accordance with Kurzweil's "Law of Accelerating Returns,"6 these advances will bring about ever more rapid changes in human Life-As-We-Know-It. A large part of these changes will be the result of the exponential increase in the computing power surrounding us. We will move from where we are today, increasingly dependent on external computers that help us conduct our business and access information, to the next level where computers gradually become part of us.
From the desktop, laptop and palmtop computers of today, we will soon progress to "belt tops" and then to non-visible computers implanted within our bodies. Within the next few decades, as suggested above, implanted computers will help our brains to think, while doctors also begin to implant organic as well as synthetic organs to replace worn out or diseased body parts.
This gradual change from carbon-based organic human beings into "transhumans" consisting of more than 50% bionic and/ or machine parts will be the next step in human evolution. The most notable feature of this evolutionary quantum leap will be our transformation from creatures of flesh and bone to being mostly machine-made, from being humans to becoming transhumans.7
It will be interesting to see the psychological changes that will occur to transhumans during this transitional period as people begin to grapple with the prospects for living an essentially indefinite period. In addition, as more and more people come to realize that they have a serious chance at immortality if they only survive for a few more years, our healthcare system will come under even greater pressure to keep people alive. Economic factors will play an ever-increasing role.
Keeping people alive as transhumans may prove very expensive. As more and more people look to keep themselves alive at whatever cost so that they will still around for The Singularity, more and more organs will need to be repaired, replaced or regrown. This could get very expensive indeed. The economic issues involved, as well as a number of others, will ensure that transhumanism won't last very long at all.
From transhumanism, where we are partly organic tissue and partly mechanical parts, the natural progression will be toward greater and greater dependence on ever more rapid computer-augmented thinking and consciousness. Simultaneously, our relationship with our physical bodies will become increasingly evanescent. We may choose to continue to spend part of our time as physical beings, but many of us may find further evolution into posthuman existence, where we exist as purely energetic beings far more to our liking.
In addition to allowing for much more rapid assimilation and processing of information, such existence will also be far less expensive than constantly repairing physical bodies. On a philosophical level, the dividing line between heaven and earth, or, perhaps between human existence and nirvana, will begin to disappear.
The ramifications of this quantum leap in evolution to an entirely novel state of being, to posthumanism, are gargantuan. Will we mere mortals of today ever be able to adapt to such an existence? Or will we, like the children of Israel many centuries ago, just wander about for another 40 years or so, yet be allowed no more than a glimpse of The Promised Land?
The children of Israel were forced into Brownian marching in the Sinai Desert just long enough to ensure that all among them who had been slaves in Egypt died off first. Will it be the same story for today's mortal humans? Having been born into lives of slavery under the yoke of mortality, perhaps we just can't be trusted in a world where there is no death. The powers that be may already know that this would be too much of a shock to our psyches. It's the ultimate caste system. You are either born an immortal or you're not. No one gets to change.
As a true digital-cerebral interface comes into existence and we are able to "upload" our memories and consciousness into a twin computer backup, true human immortality will follow automatically as a matter of course. This creation of a twin consciousness of self on the digital plane will be the defining moment of The Singularity. For as soon as this is done, and we are able to create backup copies of ourselves, by definition, we're immortal.
Should we want to, and I am not sure how many of us will even want to bother, this computer replication of self may then be downloaded into a newly cloned body (a 25 year old version, of course) and the process repeated indefinitely--- Eternal Youth and True Physical Immortality.
The Singularity, therefore, refers to human immortality, the chance to live in a physical body (or virtually if you prefer, of course) for as long as you want. And, I repeat, current estimates are that this option should be available sometime during the present century. Conceptions About DeathI think that people who lived in previous times may have felt the same way--- that they would never die either--- at least they may have thought this when they were young. Young people don't usually spend a lot of time thinking about their own mortality. Have you ever met a teenager who didn't think of himself or herself as indestructible and immortal?
Yet, with the passage of time, things begin to change. The years take their toll, and these young people, now middle aged, see this one and that one around them beginning to make the baleful passage from this world. The idea that they too will die one day gradually seeps into their consciousness. Right now the inflection point, the age at which the transition occurs--- before which you think that you will never die and after which you know that it is only a matter of time--- roughly corresponds to the age of today's baby boomers.
Many who are younger than this age group still believe that they will never die--- or at least they don't think about death very often. On the other side, for people over 55 years of age or so, the thought patterns change. Very often, for instance, I ask some of my older patients, mostly retirees and other senior citizens, how long they expect to live or how long they might want to live if they had a choice in the matter.
Interestingly, very few of them ever show the remotest interest in immortality or even in a dramatic increase in life expectancy. Their expectations have been shaped by their perceptions. "What they see is what they get." They see many people their own age dying, so they feel it is only a matter of time for them as well.
In addition, many of them have already been stricken with the infirmities and disabilities that aging has wrought. As a result, they lack enthusiasm for continuing in their current condition, not to speak of what they anticipate would inevitably be an even worse condition, for a whole lot longer. Most of them lack the vision of their children and grandchildren to conceive of a future where your physical health actually gets better and you appear to grow younger with the passage of time.
Yet, when the rubber hits the road, it has also been my experience that the age to which many elderly people aspire keeps moving farther and farther away the closer they get to what they think might be their actual "endpoint." My impression is that even the oldest of the old almost always want to live a little longer. As Dr. Ron Klatz, founder of the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine has said, "if you are wondering why anyone would want to live to be 120, anyway, just ask someone who's 119."
Most seniors don't really want to die, they just think they have to. So, they spend much of their energy getting ready. If you are a senior, I recommend that you consider spending at least as much time preparing for your possible immortality as you do making preparations for your death.
Individuals a little younger, however, have yet to suffer many of the more serious slings and arrows of that outrageous process commonly referred to as aging. The lightning bolts have still begun to strike us only sporadically. For young and not-so-young adults, the worst symptom of aging reported by even the most senior of us is the receipt of unsolicited literature urging us to join AARP. Senior citizen discounts at the movies remain, mercifully, a few years away. A not so occasional ache and pain here and there, some thinning or graying hair, and a few creases on the forehead or crow's feet around the eyes are the worst age related indignities suffered by this group.
This change in the way we view life itself with an increasing belief in the prospect for immortality will represent a huge paradigm shift in societal thought. The possible outcomes of that shift are staggering. Will we become uncontrollable risk takers with no thoughts of the consequences of our actions because we have no fear of death? Or fearing nothing, will we also care about nothing? Then again we may care more ... about the long-term health of the planet, for example, because we'll be sticking around so much longer. We may care more about one another since we'll be with one another so much longer, etc. What about the economy? And politics? What about education? So many unknowns lie ahead.
In the course of a lifetime measured in centuries, it could become common to have several marriages, many careers, recurring courses of higher education. Will economic status play a role in who gets to live forever and who doesn't, or will we truly have a world of "Forever for All"? The whole social structure will change, and Life-As-We-Know-It will change utterly. Life Needs to be FunStill, no matter how long we live, for it to make any difference at all, life needs to be fun. Death and taxes, at least according to Benjamin Franklin, are the only certainties in life. I am not so sure of either of these certainties anymore. Some of my friends tell me they have no intention of dying--while others pay virtually no taxes.
Personally, I am more intrigued with the idea of dodging the Grim Reaper than the tax collector at this stage in my life. Should the concepts presented forthwith prove successful, then I suppose it would be fun to look at this other "inevitability" of life, paying taxes, and see if this, too, can be simply avoided.
A key concept here is that life needs to be fun. For my own part, I am more intrigued with the idea of living forever than with the reality. I like the challenge. Presented with the option of life everlasting, I don't know exactly how I would handle it. There are only so many types of ethnic restaurants one wants to try. Yet, as it is often said, it still beats the alternative.
But it really isn't necessary that we live forever anyway, we simply need to believe that we can. Having faith that one will never die, a concept well known to religious faithful worldwide, can take a lot of the wind out of Death's dark sails. I think that the main precondition for human happiness is simply being having the belief that we will still be alive tomorrow. As long as we have faith that tomorrow will be here for us, whatever is going on today is a lot easier to take.
In the words of George Bernard Shaw--- "There are two tragedies in life. One is to lose your heart's desire. The other is to gain it." Perhaps life needs to be a struggle, and wrestling with mortality is the Mother of All Struggles. By taking death out of the equation, a lot of the struggle disappears. But, if life needs to be a struggle, life will be a struggle, if by no other means than our making it be so. Furthermore, I don't believe there is anything sacrilegious about my position, although I know there are many who might disagree with me. Between the concepts presented here regarding physical immortality and the unpopular notions espoused by former governor of Colorado Richard Lamm in the distant 1970s that the "elderly have a duty to die" lies a wide spectrum of viewpoints. There are countless ideas about how long any of us should live or should even have the right to live.
Some people say that manipulating the human lifespan is an attempt to tinker with nature and that avoiding death is unnatural, running counter to the natural scheme of things. These people contend that humans have no business tinkering with something as inviolate as death. I completely disagree, and, to help clarify my reasoning, I wish to ask a few questions of them.
How do they feel about the use of antibiotics to treat a case of pneumonia, which would otherwise prove fatal? Doesn't this also violate the natural order of things and, thus, should also be forbidden? Well, these critics argue, you're still alive when you take the antibiotics.
Then, what about the use of a defibrillator to restore an absent heartbeat following a heart attack? In this case, they respond, it's only a "near death experience," during which the patient is not really dead, just "near-dead" briefly, for a few minutes or less.
How about someone who has suffered "near drowning"? Resuscitation efforts are often successful even if a person has been "drowned" for several hours. During this period in the water, the victim is usually cold, without either heartbeat or consciousness. That's pretty much dead in my book. Yet they often are restored to life and appear completely normal.
The bottom line is that humans have been tinkering with the natural order of things from before the days of the Neanderthals. Tinkering is what we do. We tinker with the natural order of things. I don't believe The Greater Power has any problem with our doing so, either. I don't believe The GP is in any great rush for us to join Him/Her. The Greater Power has been around for a long time, and is going to be around for a long time more. Whether any of us spend a few more years or a few more centuries "down" here or "up" here, as the case may be, doesn't make the slightest difference in that time frame.
A meek accountant, who was also a very religious man, prayed long and hard that The Greater Power would appear to him. One day, his prayers were answered.
"What can I do for you?" asked The Greater Power.
"I can't believe that You would take the time to visit me, a meek accountant. Compared to You, I am just a speck of dust, while You are so great and powerful," said the accountant.
"That's right," said The Greater Power.
"And a million dollars to You is just like a penny to me."
"You're right there, too. A million dollars is just like a penny to Me."
"And a million years to You is just like a minute to me," said the accountant.
"Right again, a million years is just like a minute."
"Well, Greater Power," asked the accountant, "do You think You might be able to lend me a few pennies?"
"Of course, my child," boomed the answer, "just wait a minute."
On the contrary, I think The-Greater-Powers-That-Be totally support our efforts. The priority of all living beings is to ensure the continuance of life. Anything we can do to sustain life is in keeping with the true natural order of things. We wouldn't have been given the brains and the imagination we possess if we weren't meant to use them.
So, here we stand at the gateway of a new millennium, with the light of The Singularity already a faint glimmer on a distant horizon. What a truly wonderful time to be alive! What an amazing series of challenges lie ahead for humankind along with a remarkable series of opportunities. In closing, I wish want to express my most fervent desire that each of us be granted the basic immortality wish: simply to be given the gift of one more day ... every day.
1. Klatz, Ronald. Grow Young with HGH, New York: HarperCollins, 1997, pp. 313-314 and "Making The Quantum Leap to Human Immortality in the Year 2029," Anti-Aging Medical News, pp. 1-12.
2. Even by the most conservative estimates, human life spans of 150 years are predicted by 2050 and of 200 years or more by 2100. (See The Wall Street Journal, 10/18/99, p. B-8.)
3. Kurzweil, Ray. The Age of Spiritual Machines, New York: Penguin Books, 1999, p. 280.
4. Grossman, Terry. The Baby Boomers' Guide to Living Forever, Hubristic Press: Denver CO, 2000.
5. Klatz, Ronald. Anti-Aging Medical News, Fall, 2000, pp. 8-12.
6. Kurzweil, Ray, op cit, 29-30.
7. For further information concerning transhumanism and posthumanism, please see www.extropy.org.
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Mind·X Discussion About This Article:
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Subjective Singularity
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Great article. Living longer seems to go hand-in-hand with exploring and colonizing the Solar System. After all, what is one going to do with all the time?
In order to live, one has to have a purpose. In order to live BIG, one has to have a BIG purpose. When the purpose for one's existence is non-existent, I don't see the purpose for one existing.
Lastly, I can see the author's view that the definition of the Singularity might actually the moment we achieve immortality, collectively or severally. After all, the ability to live forever would certainly provide one with insights that could not be predicted in any way prior to such a state -- because one would be able to witness the unfolding of Universal events, time-scales that the Universe operates on in general yet occluded from mortals. Thus one would be able to see vast changes over the course of a Posthuman lifetime. Isn't this the definition of the Singularity anyway -- that technological changes are happening so fast that one cannot keep up with them in a lifetime. But if one had a lifetime to keep up with them, the Singularity would have happened in the observer, not in the observed. The Singularity would be a subjective event, not an objective event -- an event of stretched-out time, not an event of increased pace. And perhaps these are related anyway, for if a Posthuman Power had such an increased pace, to it, the normal pace of mere humans would seem an eternity.
Perhaps an immortal being, by definition, would transit all time in an instant, at least from the point of view of the unconscious or the dead. What I mean by this is: Have you ever been put under for an operation? You count backwards from 10 and suddenly you're AWAKENING -- not going unconscious -- in a dark quiet room! I was very surprised when I first had this experience. In other words, the act of going UNCONSCIOUS felt like, or felt meshed with, the act of AWAKENING! I have been thinking about this since 1986, wondering if they could be one in the same, or if this could be similar to death: the moment you DIE you become ALIVE or you AWAKEN. Perhaps immortality is sort of like going UNCONSCIOUS to death. So if an immortal being can transit all time in what might seem like an instant to a dead person, maybe a dead person might be able to transit all time in what seems like an eternity to an immortal person.
James Jaeger |
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Re: Subjective Singularity
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Joe,
> "genetically engineer more people to be homosexual."
:)
Or, genetically engineer more people to find immortality distasteful ...
Honestly, I think the immortality-seekers don't actually know what they seek.
The entire sense of "continuing individual identity" is nothing more than a momentary sensation, never anything more. Are you willing (say, during surgery) to be rendered completely unconscious for a few moments? If so, and you never wake up, that is really no different than "immortality", nor different than what you experience every day. The "you of the present moment" inherits a "sense of continuity" thanks to memories of past "moments" experienced by versions of "you" that are long gone. The "you" of the present moment only "looks forward" to a good tomorrow, but never gets to be there. Instead, some "future self" gets to experience tomorrow, and believe itself to be the continuence of the "you" of this moment.
I have tried to present thought-experiments to get the point of this across, some more lucid than others. Allow me to attempt another.
Imagine you are told you have only a few days left to live, and a magic genie happens by and says, "If you would like to experience "life" for another 100 years, I can grant that wish. The only caveat is that you will be transferred into the consciousness of some other person. You will wake up from bed as some other person, with all of their memories, and none of your own. You will believe yourself to be that person."
Go for it? You might think, "Well, why not? At least I wouldn't be dead. I will continue to experience "life".
But this is nonsense. Where would be the "I" in this version of "I would get to continue"? It is really no different than saying, "You will die, but don't worry, somewhere there are others who will continue to live."
It is all about memory, this sense of continuity. There is no psychic "self" that continues, not even for a moment. You eat well, and take care of your health today, so that someone else will enjoy your good health tomorrow morning when they wake up, and believe they are the "you" that fell asleep last night.
There is no "psychic continuity". Immortality is merely the "expectation" of endless tomorrows, and never the exercise of those tomorrows.
Come to realize this, and you will be as immortal as you will ever be.
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Re: Subjective Singularity
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James,
> "Who or what was looking at that cat?"
I would have to answer much as Thomas has.
There IS a continuing "thing", a dynamic process that senses, and lays down memories, and retrieves and interacts with those memories. That "thing" was looking at the cat, "the whole time". But my personal "sense of being" was replaced continuously during that cat-walkthrough. In this sense, the "me" that began looking at the cat was not the "me" that finished.
There was a continuing process that supported the "continuing-self-sensation".
But that continuing "process-thing" is selfless. It supports a sequence of sensations, each sensation a complex melding of memory and external stimuli together. This melding gives rise to a "sense of being and continuity" by virtue of those memories.
There is both something to be gained, and lost, in comparing the "body and mind" to a "computer and program". There are rough analogies, physical processor to "brain", and program to "thoughts occuring in the brain", with each perfoming "memory retrieval. But in this view, (computer-wise) memories are "inert", and only retrieved to be "examined", almost distinct from the imagined "examining process".
With the mind/brain, I believe that "memories" are so "at the fingertips of process" that the distinction breaks down. The memories are not "inert", but rather dynamically interacting with and restructuring "process" continuously, and we lose something in the translation if we think solely of "process driving memory/data retrieval", when it is just as much "memory driving process".
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Who Sees the Cat?
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>There IS a continuing "thing", a dynamic process that senses, and lays down memories, and retrieves and interacts with those memories. That "thing" was looking at the cat, "the whole time".
I think you're making this more complicated than it needs to be.
Question: Who was looking at the cat?
Answer: I was looking at the cat.
Question: Who or what is "I"
Answer: "I" is me, a thing.
So this thing called I, or me, is capable of ACTION such as: processing, laying down, retrieving, interacting, looking.
Well if our "sense of being" is nothing but our memories, how can these memories be capable of action, especially when there is no continuum and it's just "all about memory, this sense of continuity"? In order to have action, there MUST be at least an appearance of a continuum. A movie is an apparent continuum made up of static pictures (memories), but the static pictures are given "life" because some observer is able to remain stationary as they pass by the gate of the projector. No? If the observer were in the same motion or of the same "stuff" as the observed, I don't see how there could be differentiation, hence any observation of a continuum. If I, the observer, is the same "stuff" as the memories, the pictures, then what differentiates the two, what makes the potential difference between a static and a dynamic we know as "reality." I don't see how "reality", or life for that matter, could exist if there isn't a differentiation between the observed and the observer.
Again, if memories are capable of action, how could a continuum of motion be observed unless the "observer" were static or motionless? If such observer of motion were a static, how could it also be characterized as a process or a program, both of which are dynamic?
>But my personal "sense of being" was replaced continuously during that cat-walkthrough. In this sense, the "me" that began looking at the cat was not the "me" that finished.
Why not just say that YOU, the being, the I, the entity that is aware that you are aware, is looking at a collection of mental image pictures that is your "mind." Why invoke all sorts of other machinery and processes to explain what might be just two distinct entities: YOU and your MIND? If the MIND is knowable, perhaps the YOU is NOT knowable. This arrangement seems to strike some sort of an equilibrium, that of possibly: in LIFE you can know only your MIND (a collection of memories expressed in energy-pictures) but not your BEINGNESS (your self), yet after life, if any after-life, you can know only your BEINGNESS but not your MIND (thus the apparent amnesia of death).
James Jaeger
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Re: Who Sees the Cat? ... and Immortality
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James,
You are right, in that I could simply have said, "I saw the cat".
But the point of my posting, as it relates to "immortality", is that my "sense of being in the world" exists only in each present moment. In this sense, the "I" that began to see the cat is not the "I" that is writing this post about it.
My central thesis is that immortality is the "Expectation of unending tomorrows", and ONLY the expectation.
Imagine that you were convinced, by some magic, that you actually had gained immortality, would live forever. Great, you go out and do all sorts of things, and at some point you feel like you want to rest, say, take a short nap. So you do, ... and suppose you never wake up.
Where is the "you" that would regret such an outcome? Certainly not the non-future you(s) that will not exist. Only the present you, that feels this would be "cheating the imagined future you(s) of existing."
That is my point about immortality. The present "you" never gets to "be there", one way or the other. You only get to "expect to be there".
Cheers! ____tony b____ |
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Re: Who Sees the Cat? ... and Immortality
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>James, You are right, in that I could simply have said, "I saw the cat".
Okay.
>But the point of my posting, as it relates to "immortality", is that my "sense of being in the world" exists only in each present moment. In this sense, the "I" that began to see the cat is not the "I" that is writing this post about it. My central thesis is that immortality is the "Expectation of unending tomorrows", and ONLY the expectation
What I understand of your central thesis is this (and please correct me if I'm not getting it): There is only the present time. The "I" of the person exists only in this present time. This "I" will be different tomorrow because with each passing moment, our brains develop new layers of awareness that the older versions of "I" did not, and could not, have(1). Thus, each current version of "I" can only "imagine" the future, not GO THERE, because only the new versions of "I," the more intelligent ones, can "go" there. Thus the future is but an "expectation," not a temporal event.
This thesis works for me and actually might work even if there were some sort of a transcendent element to the entity we call a human being. For instance, let's say you are a SOUL who has, as one of his possessions, a MIND. And this mind is nothing more than a database of mental pictures of everything you have experienced in your life. And it is YOU that ARE this SOUL, this BEING that lives forever. You ARE a SOUL or SPIRIT as opposed to the idea that you HAVE a soul or spirit. Since the terms SOUL and SPIRIT have so much baggage, let me just roll them into the term TRANSCENDENT BEING. . . or just BEING for short. Thus you are a BEING with a MIND and a BODY.
Obviously I have no better idea than any one else if any of this is true, or what's true in this arena, but let's just kick some of this around some more.
One of the recent developments that has got me wondering if in fact we just might be immortal BEINGS(2) is the recent advancements in Superstring- and M-theory. M-Theory postulates, actually requires, more dimensions than just 3 in order to work. IF it's true, that there ARE more dimensions than just H x W x L, THEN perhaps a component of human existence utilizes these other dimensions. If so, this might explain some of the yapping about out-of-body experiences, exteriorization, astro-projection, life after death, near-death experiences, apparitions, and other phenomenon. I don't think you can just write off most of the Human race as crazy when they claim these things exist or they have experienced them. Although I have never had any experiences with any of the above, and have no empirical reason to believe that any of them exist, I am still willing to retain the possibility of certain validity. I WAS willing to write it all off until I booked up a little on M-Theory several years ago. Now I'm in neutral.
So my point is this: If you ARE a BEING that persists through time and this BEING has the ability to review the various mental image pictures of his existence, then that BEING is the same BEING now as in the future. Some say that this BEING is actually GOD (in other words YOU are actually GOD) and this BEING, in order to have a "game" called life, occludes all of his knowledge about existence. IF this is true, THEN your thesis falls completely apart because the "I" of today is the same "I" of tomorrow, the only difference being that, instead of LEARNING MORE, the "I" of tomorrow has OCCLUDED LESS of his universal knowingness of all things. In other words, you start out knowing everything because you are actually GOD playing the role of this little piece of meat down on a planet (known as a Human Being), but in order to have some fun with your power -- you have to "forget" you HAVE that power. Thus you "become" so-called Human. Logically this all makes sense, because if you relegate all power and all ability to the idea of GOD, AND GOD actually exists, THEN such a BEING would be able to do and be anywhere, and appear as anything, including a Human BEING with a meat body on a watery planet. As such a BEING you would also be able to create all other Human BEINGS as "extras" and "bit payers" in your Universe or Reality.
>Imagine that you were convinced, by some magic, that you actually had gained immortality, would live forever. Great, you go out and do all sorts of things, and at some point you feel like you want to rest, say, take a short nap. So you do, ... and suppose you never wake up.
Where is the "you" that would regret such an outcome? Certainly not the non-future you(s) that will not exist. Only the present you, that feels this would be "cheating the imagined future you(s) of existing."
Depends on what you want to define "you" as. Does your MIND never wake up? Does your BODY never wake up? Which MIND? Which BODY? Suppose you are operating many MINDS and many BODIES or all MINDS and all BODIES, a distinct possibility if GOD were pretending to be a BEING or the Human BEING you happened to be using to perceive reality with.
>That is my point about immortality. The present "you" never gets to "be there", one way or the other. You only get to "expect to be there".
Provided the present you isn't GOD or a BEING that transcends physical death.
James Jaeger
>Cheers! ____tony b____
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(1) Yudkowsky goes into some of this in "Staring into the Singularity" at http://sysopmind.com/singularity.html
(2) And by this I mean, we actually experience the future after body-death with the same collection of mental image pictures. We go there and we are more intelligent because we have available a larger collection of pictures, i.e., experiences.
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Re: Who Sees the Cat? ... and Immortality
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James,
Yes, you get the gist of my thesis, except one can equally view it as "there is only the present, and I am always there", as well as "time passes, the present exists but for a moment, and what I habitually call 'me' is never the same me, nor the I that does the calling.
I think of "sense of selfness" (and I mean the sensation, not necessarily any underlying reality) is like a wave traveling across the ocean. You can follow it with your eye, and "see" it continue and move, yet if if passes from blue water, through a narrow section of red water, and then back to blue, the wave becomes only momentarily red. The "redness" does not get carried along with the wavefront, only the "time-space location of the form" is traveling. The wave is essentially different substance at every moment.
Of course, if there is a soul, or soul-like transcendence of materia, then this could exist "through time", but there is no particualr evidence of such (despite similarities among OOB experiences, etc. They can have varied explanations.)
And if there were a soul-like existence, there is little need to "do anything" to be immortal, right?
I guess my problem with the soul-like view (as in, "one per individual", at least) is that I see no mechanism whereby new life, new births, get a "new soul". It would be, rather, that there is only really one such entity (god as you might describe it). Then, you and I are all the same manifestation of consciousness, and when I die, the rest of humanity is my immortality, so to speak.
But to argue that, somehow, this "sense of being the same Tony" continues, I cannot see it. For otherwise, I would right now feel like the "same Fred", or the "same Sally", or a billion others.
Alternately, if my conscious awareness is the continuation of some past Fred, but with no memories of being that Fred, then I cannot see what good this is to the Fred that has passed. That Fred cannot appreciate "being this Tony."
It is THAT sense of continuity which seems incongruous (and which the immortality-seekers want so desperately.)
It is only the "present experiencer" who maintains a sense of identity, who anticipates future experiences, and upon seeing death, anticipates the end of experiencing. And this is true, whether or not there is an actual-continuing as an underlying reality.
We often consider and debate the possible nature of the underlying reality, but this may be akin to what someone posted several months back, "trying to turn on the light so fast, you can see what the room looked like in the dark, before the light spoils it..." In essense, an "unexperienceable" thing.
Cheers! ____tony b____
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Motion: An Illusion?
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>Yes, you get the gist of my thesis, except one can equally view it as "there is only the present, and I am always there", as well as "time passes, the present exists but for a moment, and what I habitually call 'me' is never the same me, nor the I that does the calling.
Yes. I don't really believe that TIME is a dimension. Time is only a unit of change of position of particles. As "time" passes, what you are really saying is, all the atoms that make up your body and brain are moving and changing position while the entire body itself sits on a larger "particle" that moves around the sun also changing its position and generating increments of motion we have sliced up into the calendar and hours, minutes and seconds, etc, etc. So the YOU of yesterday is simply a different YOU than the YOU of today because all the atoms and subatomic particles that comprise you have changed positions thus creating the variations of patterns that are each successive "YOU." This all makes sense, but let me take it a step further (and in fact you have with your next paragraph in a way I was going to agree with).
>I think of "sense of selfness" (and I mean the sensation, not necessarily any underlying reality) is like a wave traveling across the ocean. You can follow it with your eye, and "see" it continue and move, yet if it passes from blue water, through a narrow section of red water, and then back to blue, the wave becomes only momentarily red. The "redness" does not get carried along with the wave front, only the "time-space location of the form" is traveling. The wave is essentially different substance at every moment.
This is EXACTLY right. The wave doesn't "move" it only generates the appearance of movement. So let's take this idea a step farther. Let's say those atoms I stated above which change position (move) thus generating the illusion of so-called time, let's say that they don't move at all. Let's say the 1-dimentional strings that are postulated to comprise the subatomic particles don't MOVE at all, but simply provide a universal substrate upon which an all-encompassing illusion of motion is manifest. Sort of like the sea in your analogy, except the "sea" here is the entire fabric of space, matter and energy. Thus MOTION is a total ILLUSION. Everything that seems like it moves, from the earth's revolution around the sun to electrons "orbiting" the nucleus of atoms. It's all just wave fronts passing through giving the illusion of motion, hence the illusion of TIME. If this is true, if this is the larger reality (and I believe it is), then the YOU of yesterday, as defined by the patterns your neural net happened to be formed into, exhibits only an illusion of change in the YOU of today because your neural net only manifest an illusion of motion, hence time. The substrate, never changed, it only gave an ongoing illusion of a continuum of change. It is this substrate that I am interested in and how it relates to us as BEINGS or us as entities that are able to perceive and operate in a Universe. Are we related to this substrate? Do we exist in or above or around this substrate? Do we interact with this substrate? Are WE this substrate? A part of it? Is this substrate us? Is this substrate what is referred to as God or universal intelligence? Are we a part of universal intelligence? These are all questions that have to be answered?
>Of course, if there is a soul, or soul-like transcendence of material, then this could exist "through time", but there is no particular evidence of such (despite similarities among OOB experiences, etc. They can have varied explanations.)
Right, the evidence is almost always, or always, subjective. I believe that objective evidence IS possible if the phenomenon IS real. Your definition of a Universe was very good, in that you said any place you could go to FROM this Universe (as in "escape from" this Universe into "another" Universe) is actually the same Universe. Boy is that a mind-twister to shut up all these multi-Universe freaks that are doing nothing but complicating the idea and definition of a Universe. The Universe is the Universe.
>And if there were a soul-like existence, there is little need to "do anything" to be immortal, right?
One would think. Maybe this is the joker -- all us poor saps here on the MIND-X are trying to figure out a way to reach immortality when we are already immortal and can be no otherwise.
>I guess my problem with the soul-like view (as in, "one per individual", at least) is that I see no mechanism whereby new life, new births, get a "new soul". It would be, rather, that there is only really one such entity (god as you might describe it). Then, you and I are all the same manifestation of consciousness, and when I die, the rest of humanity is my immortality, so to speak.
I would say in answer to your Q about "no mechanism whereby new life, new births, get a "new soul"" that there is no such THING as a NEW soul. All souls exist and have always existed, even before the advent of this particular Universe. In other words, in this particular cosmology, the Universe was created by souls. In other words WE collectively, you and I created this Universe and then, in order to have a game, forgot that we created it. If, in fact we are collectively or severally God, then, by definition, this would be possible because there is nothing that God cannot do. Thus, the pivotal question becomes IS there any such thing AS God. If the answer to this is yes, and the qualities in infinite ability are given to such an entity, then we have to expect any and all outcomes or possibilities -- including the possibility that each of us are GOD or are a part of GOD. For a scientist, all this still leaves one limp. I'm just going through the logic as best I can.
>But to argue that, somehow, this "sense of being the same Tony" continues, I cannot see it. For otherwise, I would right now feel like the "same Fred", or the "same Sally", or a billion others.
Alternately, if my conscious awareness is the continuation of some past Fred, but with no memories of being that Fred, then I cannot see what good this is to the Fred that has passed. That Fred cannot appreciate "being this Tony."
I don't know the answer to this, but one thing that has always concerned me and that is, how is data passed on from being to being? Once we die, once our brain rots in the ground, then technically all that was learned by that brain while alive is gone (except that data which was passed from father to child, genetically or verbally, or to others in the form of verbal and/or written life-long communications). So the question becomes for me, if these are the only ways data can be passed, is that sufficient for civilization to continue? We all know how sloppy and misunderstood communication is from human to human. Would a Universe, or a GOD, if any, leave the advancement of species and civilization and possibly the very Universe itself up to the vagaries of during-life communication? Or would some other device exist? Could all the data a human acquires in a lifetime get quantum encoded the moment before death and transferred out of the dying brain? If so where is the data transferred? Could the data be transferred? I don't see why not as we would only be talking about terabytes of data to a Human's memory? Perhaps, upon death the life-record is transferred directly to the substrate of the Universe at the one-dimensional string level where it is dispersed to all other living organisms or uploaded to new organisms taking physical form (i.e. babies). Since 98 percent of the genome seems to be unused, perhaps these are just write-only files that hold the data record of an eternity of lifetimes of any given BEING.
>It is THAT sense of continuity which seems incongruous (and which the immortality-seekers want so desperately.) It is only the "present experiencer" who maintains a sense of identity, who anticipates future experiences, and upon seeing death, anticipates the end of experiencing. And this is true, whether or not there is an actual-continuing as an underlying reality.
I don't know.
>We often consider and debate the possible nature of the underlying reality, but this may be akin to what someone posted several months back, "trying to turn on the light so fast, you can see what the room looked like in the dark, before the light spoils it..." In essense, an "unexperienceable" thing.
I am optimistic that the underlying reality will begin to be revealed if they can find the super-partners that they will be looking for in the new Supercollider being built in Switzerland. If these are found, them this is evidence that Superstring theory is moving in the right direction. If it is, everything will change and we will throw out most of science and physics as we know it today.
James Jaeger
>Cheers! ____tony b____
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Population Formula?
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Grant,
I pretty much agree with you, but I might add we should place limits on "procreation rights." While I feel every human being has the right to procreate, I don't feel every human being has the right to OVER-procreate. We see much of this now. IMO, two children is enough for any two people -- one to replace the father's body and one to replace the mother's body.
I don't know what the capacity of a planet is, but we should damn well find out. . . and soon. If we end up screwing up this one before we can get other planets on-line, we're all in deep trouble.
One thing I have been toying around with is the idea of granting every human being a "license" to have X number of children -- X being proportionate to the global birth rate less the global death rate modified by sustainable population factors. I don't know what the exact formula would be (I'll leave that up to Tony B :), but once a prudent population is determined given ALL the factors, X could be assigned to each person, either universally, or within certain regions or countries.
Once X is determined, we might recognize that some people won't WANT to have ANY children whereas some will want MANY, at least two, or perhaps they would be quite satisfied with X. Thus I submit: why couldn't one sell their procreation rights to those who want more than X children? People sell their blood and bodies! No? This way those that wanted more children could have them, so long as they could AFFORD to HAVE them.
Procreation rights could also be purchased by richer people and donated to poorer people who might want more children but couldn't afford the procreation rights.
Such a transfer of procreation rights might keep everyone happy (happier) and give the planet's ecosystem a breather. Commoditizing procreation rights could also end up being a nightmare if not done properly or ethically. People could end up being "farmed" just so their procreation rights could be harvested. So perhaps a cap on what they should cost might be in order.
As long as I'm on this subject; I have often felt that some people are not fit to be parents. Every time I hear of someone being executed by the state -- other than being abhorred at being forcibly made a party to state-sanctioned murder -- I can't help realizing that that person (usually a man) was once a DEAR little boy . . . before his irresponsible, criminal or drug-ridden "parents" fucked him up. You can say it's society or heredity, blah, blah, blah. . . but please don't -- unless YOU have a little boy and are a parent, because you're simply NOT qualified to comment. The reason you're not qualified to comment, is because you have no way of experiencing the effects of parenting. Parenting CANNOT be observed objectively, it can ONLY be experienced SUBJECTIVELY. And the reason for this is because at least half of parenting is the EMOTION, and the DYNAMICS of that emotion, of dealing with, guiding and nurturing developing minds -- NON AI minds. You can put all the 24-hr video cameras you want on a "typical" family to "empirically" observe them for your sociology project -- but that's mostly horse, because there is NO WAY to understand the subjective dynamics of the intimate relationship between a parent and a child.
I realize that there are exceptions to what I have said, were good parents end up with little boys that ultimately get gassed by "society" -- but I bet they are one in a thousand. Just because the parents "look" good, look sane, look able -- never forget: THE MOST INSANE AND DANGEROUS PEOPLE ARE NEVER INSITUTIONALIZED. THEY'RE ON THE STREETS. IN THE CORPORATE SUITE. AT THE TRIGGER. IN THE HOME. And yes, THEY'RE "PARENTS" as well.
As we develop other worlds to inhabit and longevity increases, the procreation laws (as well as society's killing laws for capital punishment and Rothschild-instigate war) should be modified. A formula should be devised for X. If Drake can devise a formula for the potential number of extraterrestrial civilizations out there, a population density formula should be cake.
James Jaeger
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