credit: Baris Simsek

This is a really interesting article about body and mind which I recently read. I wanted to share it with my readers:

The New York Times | “I am not this body”

Here is a compelling excerpt: “I do not identify with my body. I have a body but I am a mind.

“My body and I have an intimate but awkward relationship, like foreign roommates who share a bedroom but not a language.

“As the thinker of the pair, I contemplate my body with curiosity, as a scientist might observe a primitive species. Though I identify with mind, the mind itself is matter.

“My relation to my body resembles a privy council’s relation to an adolescent king. I am thoughtful and wise and know best what to do, but my capricious body possesses the power and final authority, and I must tiptoe round its whims.”

Best,
Ray Kurzweil

credit: stock image

Mr. Kurzweil,

I’m currently in the middle of How to Create a Mind. I’m struggling with this one a bit more than you’re other books, but it’s very enjoyable and elucidating.

You have for some time predicted human level machine intelligence arriving by 2029.

However, in Mind you estimate the speed of a computer necessary to simulate the brain at 100 trillion cps, and state that the latest supercomputers achieve this speed.

Which means that very soon we will have a machine with twice the necessary power, then quadruple, and so on.

If four or five years from now we have a computer of ten times the necessary power AND there emerges a well-funded, collaborative effort to simulate a brain on such a machine, would you amend your prediction of the emergence of strong AI?

I guess what I mean to ask is, what developments would you look for to determine that strong AI is only a few years away?

Regards,
Sean

Sean,

I’ve always expected to have the hardware sooner. By 2020, the requisite hardware will be very inexpensive. The software is the gating item.

Developments such as Watson should give us confidence that we are on track.

Best,
Ray Kurzweil

credit: stock image

Dr. Kurzweil,

My name is Stanley. I too was born and bred in Queens, New York. I am also an Alcor member since 1992. I was part of the New York stabilization team and was part many cryonic cases.

I I am currently experiencing an extreme case of death terror.

I am 45 years old and am desperate not to require cryopreservation, and live to be uploaded.

I so want to live forever, though as a human I can’t conceive of eternity.

I never want to lose my stream of identity and prefer an uploading scenerio which involves replacing my neurons with chips, rather than uploading into cyberspace, in which case the uploaded me would think it’s me, but the me that is writing to you today would die as my brain dies of hypoxia.

Dr. Kurzweil, can you please write to me, and calm this horrid, Emily-Dickinson-like anxiety.

— Stanley

Stanley,

I discuss the issue you raise –– which is called the “identity issue” in the chapter “Thought Experiments on the Mind” in my latest book How to Create a Mind.  I can send you a complimentary signed copy if you send me a land address.

My vision of the future is that we will start to augment our brains with nonbiological intelligence starting in the 2030s. We are already doing that with devices and cloud computing outside of our bodies.

Some people such as Parkinson’s patients already have computers connected into their brains that have wireless communication allowing new software to be downloaded from outside the patient.

In the 2030s, nanobots will travel into the brain noninvasively (no surgery required) and connect our neurons directly to the cloud. In the book I describe how our neocortex (the region of the brain where we do our thinking) has about 300 million modules each of which can recognize, remember, and transmit a pattern and can also connect itself to other modules to create new patterns.

We will be able to expand that number (300 million) by creating synthetic neocortical modules in the cloud. Our biological thinking is more or less fixed in capacity whereas the cloud being pure information technology approximately doubles in capacity each year.

So as we get to the 2040s our nonbiological intelligence will predominate.  That portion of our thinking — which will become essentially all of it — will be backed up.

In the book I argue that our identity is preserved if there is continuity in our pattern which the above scenario maintains.  So we can gradually transform into a nonbiological intelligence that will be backed up.  That is the scenario that avoids cryopreservation and the path I am seeking to follow.

Best,
Ray Kurzweil

(credit: stock image)

Dear Professor Kurzweil,

I was hoping for your views on the potential elitization of Singularity that could lead to exacerbation of class/opportunity/economic division.

The ongoing quest for extending human life and artificially enhancing its quality testifies to our instincts for permanence and survival at all cost.

Technologically acquired supremacy breaks the well accepted paradigm that improved life span, physical and cognitive performance is possible only with practice, studious effort and a healthy lifestyle.

Enhancement made accessible to all holds potential to eliminate interpersonal rivalry, covetousness and even war, by equalizing life span and quality. All of us would be “first (beings) among equals.”

However, the more likely scenario is trenchantly divisive, with those who cannot afford such impressive enhancements being at risk of being outdone, outlived, if not exploited, by enhanced beings. A brave new world where talent and effort becomes obsolete and perfection is for sale is morally transgressive.

— Joseph

Joseph,

There is an approximately 50% deflation rate for all information technology. That is why mobile phones were only affordable by the wealthy 15 years ago and now are dramatically better yet very inexpensive, so much so that there are approximately six billion cell phones in the world and about a billion smart phones.

Technology starts out affordable only by the rich at a point where it does not work very well. By the time a technology is perfected it is almost free. Even physical devices will become almost free with the advent of 3D printing.

Best,
Ray Kurzweil

related:
National Nanotechnology Initiative | “Ethical, legal and societal issues”

I would like to begin by stating that I am a huge fan and supporter of yours. I read your book The Singularity Is Near last year, and I was enchanted by all of your ideas on the exponential development of human technology and science. I am 100% singularitarian.

I understand that you are a very busy man, but I would tremendously appreciate it if you could take a moment of your time to read this email and respond with your own thoughts on the issue I am about to present to you.

I have recently read an article which discusses your views on the challenge of eliminating the process of aging. As I read the article, a disturbing thought came to my mind: What if humans were to completely eliminate the process of aging in, say, the next ten or twenty years (probably before the technological singularity)?

What would be the worldwide consequences of such a development? Would the elimination of aging, and thereby the elimination of death, ultimately, have good or bad consequences?

I believe that the consequences of such a development would be terrible for the entire human race in general.

I will present to you my personal prediction of what will occur. If, say, 15 years from now, the solution to death had been found and made available to all, mostly everyone would be eager to obtain it.

Once humans have been cured of aging and death, they will probably continue their lives and still reproduce with each other: this creates an obvious problem. The world’s population, already growing incredibly fast, will become enormous.

Less resources will be available for everyone, and the world’s average standard of living will greatly decline.  Naturally, people, seeing that they do not have enough resources to care for their children, will gradually stop reproducing, and less and less children will be born each year.

It must be kept in mind that, although the cure for age-related death has been found, death will still occur due to other factors, such as starvation. Thus, people will continue to die and be replaced by means of reproduction, and the world’s population will eventually level out. However, people everywhere will be living in terrible conditions, as, once the population has leveled out, there will be just enough resources in the world to support this population.

Although age-related death has been eliminated, billions and billions of people will be living in absolutely horrid conditions. Given these possible developments, would it not be best for a scientist who has found a cure for aging not to reveal his discovery, for the good of all mankind?

In your response could you please tell me what you think of the accuracy my prediction, or if you totally disagree with it, what your own personal prediction is? If my prediction is somewhat accurate, what can be done today to prevent such a disastrous outcome? I am deeply unsettled by this issue, and any response would be enormously appreciated. Thank you very much for your time.

— Rish Vaishnav

Hi Rish Vaishnav,

The same technologies that will radically extend human longevity will radically expand available resources.  For example, we have 10,000 times more free energy from the sun falling on the Earth than we need to meet 100% of our energy needs.

Total solar energy is doubling every two years and is about seven doublings from meeting all of our needs.  There are similar scenarios for water, food, housing.  Try taking a train trip anywhere and you’ll see that almost all of the land is unused.

— Ray

Ray,

Thank you so much for your response! I feel much better now about this issue, knowing that you have a much more optimistic (and definitely much more accurate) prediction than I do. I guess that we can also take into account that with a greater population, there will be much more people (along with more advanced technology) available to collaborate in the search for more and more resources to support the infinitely growing population. Once again, thank you so much for your response.

— Rish Vaishnav

Related:
SENS Research Foundation — “reimagine aging”

Albert Einstein

Ray,

I just finished reading How to Create a Mind. I found it both interesting and informative. At the end, I believe that there is an inherent difference between a human brain and an AI system, a difference that can’t be overcome by any amount of added speed and capacity. To illustrate this difference I have included a thought experiment:

Take the most powerful artificial brain in existence. Include all programs necessary to make it function as an independent, self-conscious entity. Let it read everything in existence up to, but not beyond, the birth of Albert Einstein.

With no further human intervention of any kind, how long do you think it will take this artificial brain to develop the theory of relativity?

Feel free to use the artificial intelligence capability you think will exist in 2029; but, again, limiting the knowledge input to that which was available to Einstein.

It is my belief that the actual human brain is sufficiently different from an artificial intelligence system that without any human intervention this theory would never be forthcoming. If you believe otherwise, I would be interested in seeing the process modeled.

Again, since the artificial intelligence system is a self-conscious entity, presumably capable of self-direction, I would expect no human intervention whatsoever in this process.

— Bob Caine

Bob,

Interesting point but keep in mind that all — biological — human brains at the time (except for Einstein’s) did not come up with relativity either.

Einstein’s brain was ahead of the curve, but nonbiological intelligence will continue to improve both in hardware and software (algorithmically) past 2029.

So perhaps it is the AI of 2035 or 2040 who would be able to come up with relativity in your thoughtful thought experiment.

— Ray Kurzweil

My point in using Einstein’s Theory of Relativity in my thought experiment on AI equivalence to the human brain was not related to whether or not Einstein had the support of others or how exceptional his mind was.

Rather, it had to do with the ability of an AI system to have a “sense of purpose” of its own without human intervention. My question had to do with how an AI system would decide, without human assistance, that there is any reason to want to know the exact relationship between matter and energy; the relationship between the speed of light and the relative motion of those observing that light; or, for that matter, the relationship between the cosmic microwave background and the Big Bang.

Given the task, I can readily see the role an AI system could play in deriving a solution. But how would it decide on its own that studies such as these should even be undertaken and then design, execute, and assess the related research to arrive at a verifiable theory?

— Bob Caine

About Asimov’s “The Last Question” — I was captivated by Asimov’s story as a child, and again some 50 years later in reading Ray’s version of the answer in The Singularity Is Near.

Looking forward to getting his new book!

Thank you,
Ron Eckhardt

Dear Ronald,

Thanks. Yes, the evolution of intelligence runs counter to the second law.

Best,
Ray

Related:
short story | “The Last Question”
Wikipedia | second law of thermodynamics

About “The Last Question”

Wikipedia | “The Last Question” is a science fiction short story by Isaac Asimov. It first appeared in the November 1956 issue of Science Fiction Quarterly. It was Asimov’s favorite short story of his own authorship, and is one of a loosely connected series of stories concerning a fictional computer called Multivac.

SPOILER ALERT:

In conceiving Multivac, Asimov was extrapolating the trend towards centralization that characterized computation technology planning in the 1950s to an ultimate centrally managed global computer.

After seeing a planetarium adaptation, Asimov “privately” concluded that this story was his best science fiction yet written. ”The Last Question” ranks with “Nightfall” and other stories as one of Asimov’s best-known and most acclaimed short stories.

The story deals with the development of computers called Multivacs and their relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historic settings, beginning in 2061. In each of the first six scenes a different character presents the computer with the same question — namely, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted.

The question was: “How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?” This is equivalent to asking: “Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be reversed?”

Multivac’s only response after much “thinking” is: “INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

The story jumps forward in time into newer and newer eras of human and scientific development. In each of these eras someone decides to ask the ultimate “last question” regarding the reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time, in each new era, Multivac’s descendant is asked this question, and finds itself unable to solve the problem. Each time all it can answer is an (increasingly sophisticated, linguistically): “THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER.”

In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity (the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans that have spread throughout the universe) watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as the universe finally approaches the state of heat death. Humanity asks AC, Multivac’s ultimate descendant, which exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before humanity merges with AC and disappears.

AC is still unable to answer, but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. Eventually AC discovers the answer, but has nobody to report it to; the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to show the answer by demonstrating the reversal of entropy, creating the universe anew. The story ends with AC’s pronouncement — and AC said: “LET THERE BE LIGHT!” And there was light.

(Credit: NASA)

How do you find motivation to want to live forever? How do you find comfort in your father’s death, knowing you may never truly see him again — only an avatar of what he’d represent?

— John Hansen

John:

I have the motivation to live to tomorrow, metaphorically speaking. I think everyone has that motivation. As we get to times in the future, we’ll have more powerful tools to get to the next stage. As for the death of my father or anyone else, I don’t find it comforting, but rather I consider it a tragedy.

— Ray

Dear Ray:

I think it’s probably true to say, from my limited understanding, that it is in our biology to want to survive. We are probably naturally motivated to want to live as long as we can.

The future will probably be fantastic for people who have never experienced loss — but what about those of us who have? We will be in paradise — but what about our deceased family/friends?

How can we fully enjoy a eternal future when there will always be that human part of us that misses our loved ones?

John:

If I were to create an avatar of my father (using superintelligent AI to help me do it) based on all of the information I have about him and my and others’ memories of him, that avatar would be more like my father was (at age 58, which is how I remember him) than he would be today (at age 100), had he lived.

Ray:

“It is not demeaning to regard a person as a profound pattern (a form of knowledge), which is lost when he or she dies.”

I agree and think it possible that future AI could produce a replica that is a 99.9% clone of that person. At what stage of AI will you be satisfied with the recreation of your father?

“Death is a tragedy.”

It is a tragedy in that we seemingly no longer get to experience the universe, and our loved ones are left to experience it without us.

To try and convey my idea, consider this somewhat petty argument: if you’re going to be recreated in the future, why do you bother ‘fighting’ death? Not just because you don’t want to leave your loved ones, you enjoy living – but maybe because their is an uncertainty that there is and will only be one Ray?

We can prevent death — do you think it possible that future AI could undo it entirely? Has our understanding of time not been apart of our evolutionary process?

John:

These are some good insights and a revealing thought experiment.

I would accept a mental clone of my father if it passes a “Fredric Kurzweil Turing test,” that is when I cannot distinguish it from my father.  It is a somewhat unfair test, however, in that my biological father is not here to compare to, and my memories of him have faded.

Your thought experiment reveals that we are not confident that when a future AI based avatar does pass a Fredric Kurzweil Turing test that it will represent a continuation of his identity.  It will be better to scan our brains while we’re still here.  My preferred scenario is to merge with AI and over time the AI portion of me will become dominant.  It will be backed up and it will ultimately understand the remaining biological portion well enough to back that up as well.

Best,
Ray

Have you seen this Twilight Zone episode, “A Nice Place to Visit?” I think it is a good illustration of the likely consequences of our future.

I’m eager for my 12-year-old son to watch Transcendent Man with me. I think it’s important for him to understand the implications of free will.

— Resa

Thanks. Yes, I’m very familiar with that episode of Twilight Zone. Rest assured that is not where we are headed. Remember technology is a double-edged sword and will remain so. We will continue to have challenges. We are doubling human knowledge every 13 months or so and that is a challenge.

— Ray

What did you perceive as the message of that episode? I interpreted it as an illustration of the living hell that is created when man succeeds in finding a way to get everything he wants, including knowledge of everything. What if the result of this double-edged sword is the cutting of our own throats?

In our relentless quest to outsmart, manipulate, and exploit nature we may very well destroy the magical, ethereal, unnamable energy that allows humans to deeply feel and be emotionally vulnerable. Life is more than atoms, electrons, and chemical reactions.

Death is more than losing everything you love. It is the experience of deep visceral knowledge of love. Personally, I don’t believe death is the loss of everything you love. I believe our spiritual energy of love is everlasting and this energy is indestructible.

So, as I continue to correspond with you, I recognize that my fear of a future where humans lose complete sight of what it means to be human is not necessary. It is simply the final phase of the awakening that we are spiritual beings trapped in a human body.

— Resa

— Ray

(A graphical representation of the Arecibo message, sent as radio waves into space in an attempt to communicate human existence to alien civilizations. credit: Wikipedia)

Hello Ray,

This may seem asinine but I had a thought regarding the Fermi Paradox and the Singularity. (Wikipedia: “The Fermi paradox is the apparent contradiction between high estimates of the probability of the existence of extraterrestrial civilizations and the lack of evidence for, or contact with, such civilizations.”)

As you well know there is nowhere near enough life in the galaxy (as we see it now), and almost all tool building cultures would eventually build computers.

My thought is that perhaps the Singularity already occurred on many, many worlds. And of course that’s where the model breaks down. For an endless multitude of reasons, the “other” species either stopped communicating or disappeared.

My personal theory is … species evolves tool-making skills → species designs computers → species undergoes the Singularity → species’ non-biological intelligent creations decide to take themselves and their creators to a better level of existence → species ascends.

So what do you say? Plausible or not?

— Clairette A. Chambers

That’s the “transcension” scenario, in which post-Singularity civilizations essentially disappear by transcending space and time, or create their own universe. It’s plausible but it requires that every single civilization that develops computer technology do this. According to the common SETI interpretations (or estimates) of the Drake formula, there should be thousands or millions of these in each galaxy. That’s what seems implausible to me.

Also, there would still be remnants left behind from these civilizations that we would detect. Even if civilizations transcended “our” laws of physics, they still would have broadcast and emitted signals at a pre-Singularity stage that would still be spreading across the universe today — unless they go to a lot of trouble to clean that up. But, again, every single civilization would need to do that, which seems implausible.

Best,
Ray

Wikipedia | The Arecibo message was broadcast into space a single time (not repeated) via frequency modulated radio wavs at a ceremony to mark the remodeling of the Arecibo radio telescope on 16 November 1974. It was aimed at the globular star cluster M13 some 25,000 light years away because M13 was a large and close collection of stars that was available in the sky at the time and place of the ceremony.

The message consisted of 1679 binary digits, approximately 210 bytes, transmitted at a frequency of 2380 MHz and modulated by shifting the frequency by 10 Hz, with a power of 1000 kW. The “ones” and “zeros” were transmitted by frequency shifting at the rate of 10 bits per second. The total broadcast was less than three minutes.

The cardinality of 1679 was chosen because it is a semiprime (the product of two prime numbers), to be arranged rectangularly as 73 rows by 23 columns. The alternative arrangement, 23 rows by 73 columns, produces jumbled nonsense. The message forms the image shown on the right, or its inverse, when translated into graphics characters and spaces.

Dr. Frank Drake, then at Cornell University and creator of the famous Drake equation, wrote the message, with help from Carl Sagan, among others. The message consists of seven parts that encode the following:

1. The numbers one (1) through ten (10)
2. The atomic numbers of the elements hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, oxygen, and phosphorus, which make up deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA)
3. The formulas for the sugars and bases in the nucleotides of DNA
4. The number of nucleotides in DNA, and a graphic of the double helix structure of DNA
5. A graphic figure of a human, the dimension (physical height) of an average man, and the human population of Earth
6. A graphic of the Solar System
7. A graphic of the Arecibo radio telescope and the dimension (the physical diameter) of the transmitting antenna dish

Because it will take 25,000 years for the message to reach its intended destination of stars (and an additional 25,000 years for any reply), the Arecibo message was more a demonstration of human technological achievement than a real attempt to enter into a conversation with extraterrestrials. In fact, the stars of M13 that the message was aimed at will no longer be in that location when the message arrives.

According to the Cornell News press release of November 12, 1999, the real purpose of the message was not to make contact, but to demonstrate the capabilities of newly installed equipment

(credit: iStockphoto)

Dear Mr. Kurzweil,

My name is David Gonzalez, and I am a high school senior. I have been doing extensive research on the Singularity and the technologies used to bring about these changes and plan to major in bioengineering in college. I have some concerns as to the nature of our technological progression towards the eventual dawning of the Singularity. 

You have mentioned that the exponential growth of technology will eventually lead to the creation of machines that will match and inevitably surpass human intelligence capabilities.

I find myself confused on the matter of “IA” (intelligence amplification) vs. “AI” (artificial intelligence). Are we creating the next generation of “humans” in these superior machines? Or, are we using these technologies to augment our own intelligence, as well? Are they simply the next generation of AI — are they destined to become our “replacements”? 

Personally, I would like to see that our own intelligence matches that of our machines, but maybe I am thinking about this the wrong way. Any input you are able to give would be greatly appreciated.

— David Gonzalez

Your question is a good and important one. In my view the purpose of AI is IA. We can see that already. Look at how much smarter we are already as a result of our computers. And even though most of those computers are not yet in our bodies and brains (although a few are), they are very close to us.

The size of computers is shrinking, and when they are the size of blood cells (in about 20 years), they will routinely go inside our bodies to keep us healthier and make us smarter (IA). The AIs are not a race apart, we are already a human-machine civilization. I’d be happy to send you a complimentary inscribed copy of The Singularity is Near.

Best,
Ray

I have an even more pressing question that I wish to ask regarding the coming of the Singularity, and I would like to know what your thoughts are on it. With all of these wondrous new technologies fast approaching, I find myself very fearful of the possibility of a growing schism between the “haves” and “have nots” in society. There are those like myself, fortunate enough to be able to pursue a college education, and there are also those who do not even have access to drinking water. Then there are also the wealthy and societal elites who enjoy a disproportionate amount of wealth in the United States economy. 

Just how much of a divide can result from these technologies being on the market with people being able to upgrade themselves? I fear the gap between rich and poor — and even the gap between wealthy and middle class — will grow exponentially in the coming decades.  What are your thoughts on this and how do you think these issues can be avoided, if at all?

— David Gonzalez

The law of accelerating returns implies a 50 percent deflation rate in all information technologies. Look at how dramatically this has played out in the area of cell phones and mobile computing, both of which are now ubiquitous. A kid in Africa with a smartphone (increasingly ubiquitous) has access to more information than the president of the United States had 15 years ago.  Half of the farmers in China and 30 percent of Africans have mobile devices now of one kind or another, and most will have smartphones within a couple of years. 

The increasing use of the Internet is revolutionizing access to medical care, education, and, of course, politics. These are deeply democratizing technologies. These exponentially growing information technologies will provide access to clean water, to very inexpensive clean energy, and abundant healthy food through new nanotechnology-based capabilities.

They also lead to greater wealth throughout the world. These trends are already well underway. The number of years of schooling that a child receives in his or her childhood has more than doubled everywhere in the world over the past half century. All nations have become much wealthier. I have the graphs that demonstrate these trends. 

Best,
Ray Kurzweil

A disturbing thought occurred to me recently: given that we are on the cusp of personal immortality and the entrance into the age of conscious information (for lack of a better term), it seems that there will eventually become a real resource shortage at the most fundamental level.

Wikipedia | Galactus is a fictional character from Marvel Comics. Galactus was originally from the planet "Taa," in a universe that existed before the Big Bang. When the impending cataclysm killed all life in his universe he didn't die, but was transformed through a bonding with the "Sentience of the Universe." After gestating for billions of years, he emerged in our universe but must consume the energies of entire worlds to survive.

What I’m suggesting (and you’ve probably already considered) is that as individuals make the transition to electronic form, whatever the actual substrate for each individual consciousness is, there will over time be a steady and massive amount of matter required to accommodate each individual’s memory and processing needs.

Just as hard drives in today’s PCs get bigger and bigger, the memory and processing requirements of immortal individuals will over the course of millions and billions of years become so large that each individual will eventually seek to claim entire stellar systems or galaxies to grow their “body” —  just to act as the substrate for their ever-growing demand for more physical medium for memory and computation.

This suggests a grand conflict will emerge between ever-larger individuals over the course of future history.

And it also suggests disturbing limits on the possibility of continued existence for beings anything like us in our current form, as our physical environments are subsumed within galactic-scale individuals (an interesting parallel to Galactus’ planet-devouring habits in the Fantastic Four comic book series).

Any thoughts on these rampant speculations?

— Tam Hunt

Also see:
Tam Hunt’s blog: Thought, Spirit, Politik
Science: “Speculating in Precious Computronium,” by Ivan Amato

First of all we have a “disturbing limit” on our capacity right now. Our neocortex is only capable of mastering about a billion patterns and is equivalent to about 10 to the 16^th power calculations per second. By my calculations we will expand this a billion fold by 2045 through merging with the nonbiological intelligence we are creating. So while we will still be “limited,” we will have vastly expanded our capabilities. There will always be limits but they won’t be very limiting by today’s standards.

That being said, you are nonetheless articulating a key insight, namely that the primary resource we will care about in the late 21^st century will be the capacity of our thinking substrate, not energy or water or housing or any of the things people worry about today. It is for that reason that we will then expand away from the Earth to find more matter and energy suitable to convert into “computronium” (the optimal substrate for computation / thinking). Through this process, we will ultimately saturate the Universe with our intelligence.

Best,
Ray

I agree entirely with our current resource limits and I really appreciated your discussion on energy in Singularity. My day job is in renewable energy policy and I’ve written a fair amount on peak oil. For a non-energy expert, you really nailed it.

Wikipedia | Computronium is a material hypothesized by Norman Margolus and Tommaso Toffoli of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to be used as "programmable matter," a substrate for computer modeling of virtually any real object.

That said, I’m curious if you agree with my speculation that we will eventually face a future of a number of extremely large individuals competing over increasingly limited computronium? And will that process eventually lead to just one individual, “God,” emerging victorious?

And what will existence be like for this God who can contemplate nothing more than its components because it will consist of literally everything?

Speculating even further, is this process inevitable? And if so, can we arrive at a proof of God in this manner? Are we right now existing as a simulation within God as an entity that began much like us, and eventually became the entire universe?

Is this process duplicated in a nested manner such that each universe becomes a single being over time and then simulates/creates new universes for mental and emotional stimulation? (“Simulation” and “creation” are synonymous in this context because there is no distinction between simulation and creation —  it’s all just reality, whether we call it simulated or not.)

— Tam

That’s not the trend we see today. Rather, we see these resources become ever more widely distributed. A kid in Africa today with a smart phone (which are increasingly ubiquitous) has access to more information and cloud computing services (such as Google) than the U.S. President did just 15 years ago. 

I believe we will continue to exist as individuals but will also have the ability to merge when we wish to become super individuals. Computers do that today effortlessly.

Best,
Ray

It seems to me that the inevitability, or lack thereof, of the scenario I outline, in which one universal individual emerges from a grand competition for matter in the universe is inevitable only IF the transition from biological to electronic life is made by just one civilization in the entire universe.

By transitioning from biological to electronic life, the timespans for life become effectively indefinite, so interstellar space travel loses much of its limitations even if faster than light travel is never discovered.

Under this reasoning, there is no strict “proof of God,” but there may be a conditional proof. We can’t currently know if we live in a universe that sprang in some manner from pure nothingness 13 billion years or so ago (though the anthropic principle suggests that we are not in a first generation universe — far from it), or if it is instead the latest in an eternal cycle of banging and crunching universes. If the latter, then it would seem that this “proof of God” would hold. But if the former, maybe we are just now kicking off the process of becoming God.

These are certainly not issues that should worry us too much today, but interesting to contemplate nonetheless.

Thanks!
Tam

It was nice to see you again at the Transcendent Man film screening. I enjoyed the movie and the discussion. The way I see it, over time we have been discovering the intelligence that is manifested in nature. This intelligence is much greater than our own —  however, piece by piece, we have been stitching it together.

The point is that we have been making these discoveries at an ever-accelerating pace and in 40 years we will discover God!

Warmest regards,
John

That’s a very thoughtful way to put it. So you agree with my final thoughts in the movie. I would put the discovering God part a little later in this century, but that’s a detail.

All the best,
Ray

Since I was 13, I’ve thought that religion isn’t a serious way of discovering God. I stumbled through life to find science (eventually physics) as a possible route to understanding the marvelous wonder that nature presents to us. It is because we are a part of nature that we have this unique opportunity to unravel the mysteries of life and existence. It’s really a true romantic adventure.

Curiously enough, science and religion both were created at the same time as a result of an emotional reaction to this amazing grand design. They just took different routes to discovering God. Now science and technology will get us to a point where we will have a better understanding of what God really is. You have made a profound contribution to the path to this understanding. I hope people appreciate this.

Best,
John

No one can dispute that ideas about God and spirituality reside in our brains even if one feels that their origin transcends and precedes human thought. Science is supposed to describe reality, so if we regard spiritual thoughts as real, there is no reason why science cannot provide us with a deeper understanding of them.

— Ray

Insightful and true!

— John

I have been thinking about self-organization and how pervasive it is in the universe. We generally associate this with biological systems, but I believe that there are examples in physical science. For example, I believe the periodic table is an example of this as well as the shell model of the nucleus, the quark model, etc.

What are the underlying principles which give rise to this? They are the existence of discrete energy levels, the principle of indistinguishability (you cannot distinguish identical particles in quantum mechanics) and the Pauli Principle, which is deeply rooted in the spin statistics theorem in quantum field theory. You can explain all of this self-organization based upon these three facts of life.

Furthermore, chemical bonding also follows from these principles — so my guess is one can make sense out of biological self-organization, as well, from these principles. Could self-organization have a deeper meaning than even this?

Some have speculated that self-organization also applies to space-time. If you think of space-time as made up of 4 dimensional volume elements and you make up space-time from these through a Monte Carlo simulation you find that the universe is infinite dimensional.

However, if you require that the time axes of these volume elements be stitched together according to the causal axis of time, then space-time is 4 dimensional. In this approach, space-time is smooth down to the Planck mass, and below that it becomes infinite dimensional. So causality, if assumed, leads to this description of space-time as a self-organizing system. In other approaches to space-time, such as Hawking’s, the goal is to derive causality as a consequence of a theory of space time.

Anyway, I believe that self-organization may be a fundamental property of the universe, and we may be getting closer to understanding the fundamental principles that govern this phenomenon.
 
— John

Those are some interesting reflections on self-organization and emergent properties. Laws on one level arise from emergent properties on a lower level.

Consider thermodynamics, which models the inherent unpredictability of molecular movement in a gas but nonetheless results in “laws” that are surprisingly predictive to a very high degree of accuracy.

As an interesting aside, the evolution of intelligent systems is not inconsistent with the second law which implies increasing entropy (actually, it implies no decreases in entropy). One of the enabling factors for evolution, therefore, is sufficient chaos to provide the choices for evolutionary progress.

Incidentally, my law of accelerating returns is similar to thermodynamics in this regard, in that the inherent unpredictability of individuals and individual projects nonetheless gives rise to a predictable phenomenon in terms of the smooth exponential increase in basic measures of price-performance and capacity.

The key enabling factor in our universe that allows evolution at any level is the ability to encode information. Fairly simple rules can then result in substantial self-organization.

Wolfram showed how a simple cellular automata rule can result in many of the patterns we see in nature.

Subatomic particles can encode information, and organize into atoms and the repetitive properties of the periodic table, as you point out. Atoms organized into molecules provide rich opportunities for encoding information — especially the carbon atom, which can form connections in four directions. This gave rise to biology with information encoded in a particular molecule, DNA.

The evolution of organisms (as guided by DNA) gave rise to structures such as nervous systems and brains that could encode information in neural structures. Those brains combined with an opposable appendage gave rise to tools and the evolution of technology with information encoded in the tools, most notably computers.

We are now in what I call the fifth epoch, in which we are unlocking the secrets of biology and using these biologically inspired paradigms to guide our technology.

How did the universe first adopt this ability to encode information? Some people have hypothesized an evolutionary process of universes. Those that failed to encode information never evolved anything interesting and thus either die out or just remain boring universes.

There are various versions of the anthropic principle to explain how we got here. For example, if we didn’t live in such a universe, we wouldn’t be here talking about it.

You mention an infinite dimensional space from which our 4 dimensional space-time is an emergent feature. I can imagine n dimensional spaces and that is only because of our powers of analogy. The novel Flatland, describing a two dimensional spatial world, did a good job of illustrating that analogy. I have difficulty imagining an infinite number of dimensions.

For one thing, that would require an infinite amount of information to specify one point (unless there were rules that limit the amount of information as we see in quantum mechanics).

— Ray

I noticed in one of your recent essays (on IBM’s Watson) you say “I, for one, would then regard it (an AI) as human.” I, for one, find that to be your most controversial statement in that article. Apparently, Jeopardy! champion Ken Jennings did you one better the next day when he wrote on his screen (as part of his final written wager) before being defeated by Watson: “I, for one, welcome our new computer overlords.” There is an element of irony in that statement, since humans still monopolize that type of humor — at least for now! 

Below: This is the now-famous Ken Jennings clip from Jeopardy! 

His quip is a takeoff on a famous line from The Simpson’s episode “Deep Space Homer,” where a panicked newscaster named Kent Brockman (upon seeing an artificially enlarged image of an insect in space walking across a camera lens) says “I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords.” 

Below: Scenes from The Simpson’s episode “Deep Space Homer” — ants escape aboard the spacecraft and panicked newscaster Kent Brockman thinks it’s an alien-insect takeover. 

“I for one, welcome our new insect overlords.” 

That statement is meant to show full submission and obedience to an oppressive/destructive authority, with the hopes that somehow you will be spared by the new masters or elevated to some “middle management” role! 

Seriously, doesn’t passing a Turing test just indicate that an AI has intelligence equivalent to a human, rather than equaling a “welcome-to-our-human-civilization card” being handed out to a race of AIs? 

— Steve Rabinowitz

Literally, yes. But if you think deeply on what the implications would be of an entity passing a truly valid Turing test, it means that you are truly convinced that it is human-like. You are unable to tell the difference between this entity and a human, without being told. I believe that people (including you) will then accept these entities as human. You could argue that people will accept them as “human equivalent” rather than “human,” but that is a very slim distinction, bordering on being meaningless. The emphasis here is on a “valid” Turing test, which by definition means that you are convinced. 

— Ray

Conversely, if a mentally challenged person couldn’t pass, would you deem him not human? (Dangerous territory.)  What if we programmed the computers to believe they were inanimate and properly subservient to us?  If they didn’t object, would there be a rights violation? 

— Steve 

The converse statement definitely is not true as you point out. Lots of humans are unable to pass a Turing test: sleeping humans, humans in a coma, humans in an alcohol or drug stupor, pre-literate humans, humans who do not have command of language at an adult level due to developmental issues or learning disabilities. The real issue here that we are talking about is consciousness. And I believe that non-humans are conscious (such as higher level animals are, who are also in no position to pass a Turing test). 

A computer “programmed to believe it was inanimate” probably would not pass a Turing test, although some humans are indeed trained to act subservient to others. 

— Ray

As to your comment “Such as computer probably would not pass a Turing test”: The machine I have in mind could fool humans with its eyes closed. How hard could it be to fool a few humans? 

Unless, of course, you mean that it would not want to fool the humans, since subservience was built into it? This to me is the central point. Humans are preprogrammed with certain instincts that give rise to our desires: survival, procreation, growth, domination, and maybe enjoyment and love. (I am not sure if enjoyment is an instinct of its own, or just what we feel when the other instincts are satisfied). And I think it is these desires that make us “alive.” 

No doubt we will preprogram our machines’ initial instincts and desires — perhaps to be the same as ours, perhaps not. But that kind of programming is easily rewritten. 

Famed science fiction author Fred Saberhagen’s “berserker” robots were originally constructed by a race that was facing annihilation by its enemies. The berserker robots were programmed to destroy those enemies. Once created, the robots themselves detected “imperfections” in their own programming, and made certain “improvements.” The new programming called for the destruction of all life. (The berserkers did not consider themselves to be “alive.”)  

If the machines start rewriting their desires, will they be bound by the “instincts” we originally programmed them for?  

I think if the answer to that question is no, all discussion of whether they are “alive” will end. If they are bound by what we set them up for, it is a closer question. They’ll look like us and talk like us, but will they be us?  Of course you could argue that if we are bound by our instincts, why shouldn’t they be? 

— Steve

You’re missing a few things I said. I used the adjective “valid” to describe Turing test. “Fool[ing] a few humans” would not constitute a “valid” Turing test. 

As for our instincts, that is something we inherited from our animal forebears. However, we also evolved a neocortex capable of symbolic (i.e., abstract) reasoning, so we are capable of sublimating our instincts into higher levels of achievement — such as writing or performing Hamlet or Beatles’ songs or creating new scientific knowledge. We are capable of transcendence, and in doing so we create new knowledge, from music to engineering. In that regard we are continuing the process that evolution began. These machines will do the same thing. This is something that transcends the primitive instincts that you mention. In that regard we are creating machines in our own image. 

You continue to talk about these machines as if they were a race apart. But they are already an integral part of our human-machine civilization. 

— Ray 

So where does love fit in?

— Steve 

Love is the supreme example of human intelligence. Human intelligence is not just logical intelligence.  Computers already greatly exceed humans at that.  

— Ray 

Steve J. Rabinowitz, of  Phillips Nizer LLP, is a real estate transactional attorney with a 29-year professional career encompassing the purchase and sale of commercial and residential properties, loan transactions, and the negotiation of complex commercial leases representing luxury brand retailers and high net worth individuals.

Congratulations!  I saw you yesterday on PBS NewsHour. I had no idea that teaching a computer to win at Jeopardy was so much harder than teaching it to play chess. You explained it well. The computer has to appreciate jokes and irony, which is much harder than making logical deductions.

The Time magazine cover mentions immortality. I am convinced that through your work, science is leading us towards the conclusion that man is immortal; your experiments with health and your writings on longevity are demonstrating that only the body dies but the essential being that resides in the body is immortal. In principle, one could preserve the body indefinitely and the essential being who dwells within would continue to manifest. I know you don’t look upon it in this way. But whichever way you look at it, man is immortal.

This is what Vedanta says also. And it does not merely say it; it claims that this Truth can be experienced by a pure mind. This is what Yoga means — union with the divine. We just need to wake up from a state of ignorance about who we are in reality.  Although I have never experienced this awakening myself,  I have been closely associated with at least one person who I believe has experienced this  ”illumination.”

Best,
Cyrus

[ Dr. Cyrus Mehta is president and co-founder of Cytel Inc., a leading provider of clinical trial design services, software and specialized statistical applications primarily for the biopharmaceutical, medical device, regulatory and academic research markets. Information about Cytel and Dr. Mehta can be found here at Cytel's website.]

Related reading:
“Immortality” by Swami Vivekananda

I agree with you that the “essential self” can live on as our body changes, even dramatically. Indeed this happens normally anyway. We are a completely different set of particles within a few months. There is a continuity of pattern, and I think that identity is linked to this continuity. I fully appreciate both the Western view (that fundamental reality is matter and energy, which has evolved into minds) and the Eastern view (that fundamental reality is minds, which bring matter and energy into reality).

Interestingly, quantum mechanics appears to meld the two views, in that particles do not really manifest themselves until a conscious observer observes them. I look forward to further discussion on this.

All the best,
Ray

Sri Ramakrishna

Sri Ramakrishna | Sri Ramakrishna, 1836-1886, represents the core spiritual realizations sought by the seers and sages of India.

Regarded by his devotees as an incarnation of divinity, his life was spent in uninterrupted contemplation of “universal consciousness,” and he and his chief disciple, Swami Vivekananda, were influential figures in the Hindu Renaissance of the 19th and 20th centuries. His life and teachings have been widely discussed.

Having experimented with other religions, notably Islam and Christianity, he said that they “all lead to the same God.” His central message was the living “attainment of God-consciousness” by all people.

“Drawn by the magnetism of Sri Ramakrishna’s divine personality, people flocked to him from far and near — men and women, young and old, philosophers and theologians, philanthropists and humanists, atheists and agnostics, Hindus, Christians and Muslims, seekers of truth of all races, creeds and castes.

“His small room in Calcutta became a veritable parliament of religions. Everyone felt uplifted by his profound God-consciousness, boundless love, and universal outlook. His greatest contribution to the modern world is his message of harmony of all religions through their common goal: communion with God.” — Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York

The Mahamrityunjaya Yantra

Mahamrityunjaya Yantra | The “Mahamrityunjaya Yantra” from Indian spiritual tradition, shown at left. Yantras (geometric pictograms) are used as visual and mental focal points of concentration while meditating or chanting. This yantra is the symbolic embodiment of the eternal energy of the god Shiva as “Conqueror of Death.” Meditating on this yantra is supposed to invoke protection from illness and accidents and bring prosperity and long health. Each fold of the symmetrical geometry is a symbolic representation of a different layer of mind.

I was wondering if I could get a comment from Mr. Kurzweil. I know he thinks Watson will win the Jeopardy! match — I agree. Professor Noam Chomsky has told me that Watson is not good AI, though, and I’m curious how Kurzweil would respond to Chomsky’s words, found here.

I read your article in PC Magazine, which is what persuaded me to contact you. With regards to Chomsky, are you basically saying he’s right? It sounds like your position is that Watson may not be AI, but remains a very important step.

Sincerely,
Gavin Schmitt

Gavin,

The interview you had with Chomsky is interesting but his answers are so brief that it is difficult to understand what he is trying to say. I would say that Watson is clearly not yet “strong AI,” but it is an important step in that direction. It is the clearest demonstration I’ve seen of computers handling the subtleties of language including metaphors, puns and jokes, something people had said would not be possible. I don’t agree with Chomsky that Watson is not impressive, in that regard.

It’s not yet strong AI. As long as AI has any flaws or limitations, people will jump on these. By the time that the set of these limitations is nill, AI will have long since surpassed unaided human intelligence.

Best,
Ray

Blind Driver Challenge (Image: The National Federation of the Blind)

Hi Ray,

I will be attending a gathering of National Federation of the Blind leaders in Daytona, Florida, on the evening before the Blind Driver Challenge event early on Saturday, Jan. 29 before the start of the Rolex 24 Race.

This high-profile event will be the first public demonstration of a blind person driving a vehicle without any form of guidance provided by another person. Obviously this will be an historic happening.

Driving for blind people is almost certainly something we will experience in our lifetime even without factoring in the plan to live forever. Based on what we know, the problem is not so much the technology as it is the laws and social/political acceptance, but those barriers will also crumble!

Best,
James Gashel
Secretary, National Federation of the Blind

Google's self-driving car prototype on a road test. (Image: Google)

James,

Sounds exciting. The technology is coming into place. It will happen within about ten years. Google cars are driving experimentally in California  (although they still manned by trained operators). And it is not as if sighted people are doing such a great job of driving cars, with hundreds of thousands of deaths each year worldwide.  When we get to the era of blind people driving, it will be much safer.

Best,
Ray

The Blind Driver Challenge

The National Federation of the Blind (NFB) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, College of Engineering (Virginia Tech) partnered in July to demonstrate the first street vehicle equipped with technology allowing a blind person to drive independently.

The groundbreaking Blind Drive Challenge initiative of the NFB Jernigan Institute challenges universities, technology developers, and other interested innovators to establish NFB Blind Driver Challenge (BDC) teams — in collaboration with the NFB — to build interface technologies that will empower blind people to drive a car independently.

“The challenge was not the development of an autonomous vehicle that could drive a blind person around, but rather the creation of nonvisual interfaces that would allow a blind person to actually make driving decisions,” said Dr. Dennis Hong, Director of the Robotics and Mechanisms Laboratory at Virginia Tech.

Also see:
A history and survey of automated and driverless cars

(credit: Ray Kurzweil & KurzweilAI)

Dear Ray,

I’ve written a book about the future of software: After the Software Wars. I talk about Linux primarily, but it has implications for things like how we can have driverless cars and other cool technology faster.

The book starts with a quote by John McCarthy, the inventor of Lisp: “Some people think much faster computers are required for Artificial Intelligence, as well as new ideas.

 My own opinion is that the computers of 1974 were fast enough if only we knew how to program them.”

I’ve put a few posts on the Lifeboat.com blog that summarize the book for the futurist audience. (This is the most important post to read, I think: “H+ conference and the Singularity, faster.”)

I believe that we could have had the benefits of the Singularity years ago if we had done things like started Wikipedia in 1991 instead of 2001. There is no technology in 2001 that we didn’t have in 1991, it was simply a matter of starting an effort that allowed people to work together. Proprietary software and a lack of cooperation have been terrible for the computer industry and the world, and its greater use has enormous implications for the Singularity.

I believe your dates are wrong because they should be in the past! Once you understand that, you can apply your fame towards getting more people to use free software and Python.

I am curious to hear what you think.

Warm regards,
Keith Curtis

I agree with you that open source software is a vital part of our world, allowing everyone to contribute. Ultimately, software will provide everything we need when we can turn software entities into physical products with desktop nanofactories (there is already a vibrant 3D printer industry and the scale of key features is shrinking by a factor of a hundred in 3D volume each decade). 

It will also provide the keys to health and greatly extended longevity as we reprogram the outdated software of life. I believe we will achieve the original goals of communism (“from each according to their ability, to each according to their need”), which forced collectivism failed so miserably to achieve. 

We will do this through a combination of the open source movement and the law of accelerating returns (which states that the price-performance and capacity of all information technologies grows exponentially over time).

But proprietary software has an important role to play as well. Why do you think it persists? If open source forms of information met all of our needs why would people still purchase proprietary forms of information. There is open source music but people still download music from iTunes, and so on. Ultimately, the economy will be dominated by forms of information that have value and these two sources of information — open source and proprietary — will coexist.

Best wishes,
Ray

Free versus proprietary isn’t a question about whether only certain things have value. A Linux DVD has 10 billion dollars worth of software. Proprietary software exists for a similar reason that ignorance and starvation exist, a lack of better systems. The best thing my former employer Microsoft has going for it is ignorance about the benefits of free software. Free software gets better only as more people use it. Proprietary software is an inferior development model and an anathema to science because it hinders people’s ability to work together. It has infected many corporations, and I’ve found that PhDs who work for public institutions often write proprietary software.

Here is a paragraph from my writings I will copy here. I start the AI chapter of my book with the following question:

Imagine 1,000 people, broken up into groups of five, working on two hundred separate encyclopedias, versus that same number of people working on one encyclopedia? Which one will be the best? This sounds like a silly analogy when described in the context of an encyclopedia, but it is exactly what is going on in artificial intelligence (AI) research today.

Today, the research community has not adopted free software and shared codebases sufficiently. For example, I believe there are more than enough PhDs today working on computer vision, but there are 200+ different codebases plus countless proprietary ones. Simply put, there is no computer vision codebase with critical mass.

We’ve known approximately what a neural network should look like for many decades. We need “places” for people to work together to hash out the details. A free software repository provides such a place. We need free software, and for people to work in “official” free software repositories.

“Open source forms of information” I have found is a separate topic from the software issue. Software always reads, modifies, and writes data, state which lives beyond the execution of the software, and there can be an interesting discussion about the licenses of the data. But movies and music aren’t science and so it doesn’t matter for most of them. Someone can only sell or give away a song after the software is written and on their computer in the first place. Some of this content can be free and some can be protected, and this is an interesting question, but mostly this is a separate topic. The important thing to share is scientific knowledge and software.

It is true that software always needs data to be useful: configuration parameters, test files, documentation, etc. A computer vision engine will have lots of data, even though most of it is used only for testing purposes and little used at runtime. (Perhaps it has learned the letters of the alphabet, state which it caches between executions.) Software begets data, and data begets software; people write code to analyze the Wikipedia corpus. But you can’t truly have a discussion of sharing information unless you’ve got a shared codebase in the first place.

I agree that proprietary software is and should be allowed in a free market. If someone wants to sell something useful that another person finds value in and wants to pay for, I have no problem with that. But free software is a better development model and we should be encouraging / demanding it.

I’ll end with a quote from Linus Torvalds:

“Science may take a few hundred years to figure out how the world works, but it does actually get there, exactly because people can build on each others’ knowledge, and it evolves over time. In contrast, witchcraft/alchemy may be about smart people, but the knowledge body never ‘accumulates’ anywhere.

It might be passed down to an apprentice, but the hiding of information basically means that it can never really become any better than what a single person/company can understand. And that’s exactly the same issue with open source (free) vs. proprietary products. The proprietary people can design something that is smart, but it eventually becomes too complicated for a single entity (even a large company) to really understand and drive, and the company politics and the goals of that company will always limit it.”

The world is screwed because while we have things like Wikipedia and Linux, we don’t have places for computer vision and lots of other scientific knowledge to accumulate. To get driverless cars, we don’t need any more hardware, we don’t need any more programmers, we just need 100 scientists to work together in SciPy and GPL ASAP!

Regards,
Keith

Also see:
After the Software Wars
Keith Curtis’ Blog
Posts by Keith Curtis on the Lifeboat Foundation Blog

The False Mirror, by René Magritte in 1928. Oil on canvas. (Image: MoMA)

Hello Ray,

In the last few years I have been basically writing in Persian and hardly anything in English. One thing I’ve been recently discussing that I thought may be of interest to you is that it seems to me the next stage of human consciousness will be about being self-aware of ourselves in a different body.

Maybe recognizing ourselves in the mirror after plastic surgery is the first in a series of steps that with augmenting human body artificially and with possibility of upload and download of the brain will continue. Just as we are amused when we look at the smarter monkeys who can recognize themselves in the mirror.

Maybe future humans will have a much different sense of self-awareness than we do and will be amused to watch us. Especially recognizing music tunes as part of one’s identity or self-”finger”-print!

Best Regards,
Sam Ghandchi

It is remarkable how much people identify with their visual appearance. When I changed myself into Ramona for my 2001 TED presentation, even though the technology was fairly crude by today’s standards, it did give me the idea that my true identity is not my visual appearance, that we can and will change that. We need deeper mirrors.

All the best,
Ray

In Persian there is an expression that says if you do not like what you see in the mirror, break yourself — not the mirror. Apparently our self image in our internal mirror is something worth investigating.

Take care,
Sam