Thank you for the compliments, and apologies for doing my usual "say what happens to pop into my head" thing regarding your presentation.

Regarding Humanity 3.0, note the question mark in that section's title, and the multiple conditionals and branches in that part of the scenario. If I had to bet on whether human-like intelligence and consciousness are possible on non-organic substrates, I would say yes, for lack of any convincing counterargument. But something may yet come out of left field.

Your suggestion of a mind which "shifts back and forth between biological and electronic" is curiously reminiscent of something an old friend suggested a few days ago, but I wouldn't know how to turn off the organic part and then back on (the main problem being the second step...). My own preferred scenario would be gradual substitution of organic circuits with artificial ones without ever interrupting or duplicating consciousness.

If Humans 3.0 are possible, they would still not be a final goal, at least not in the form described. But I wouldn't worry about them taking over our world, for the same reason that I rarely get into fights with birds over who gets to eat a particularly juicy worm.

Essentially, I don't expect Humans 1.0 to get much beyond Earth, or Humans 2.0 to get much beyond the solar system. Maybe the nearest stars, if they really push it. But a Human 3.0 could realistically aspire to go anywhere in the galaxy and beyond. Why bother with the very special niches required by organic life forms, if you can go to the galactic center and feast on energy densities which would kill them instantly? Let them eat their worms.

If I must worry about takeovers, I would worry about Humans 2.0. They will still need relatively scarce water and carbon compounds, just like us, and they will be nearby. The day could come when they raise the question why Earth's inhabitants insist on making such poor use of their most valuable natural resources. Some 98% of my body mass is pure animal. If we insist on staying like this, we may eventually have to produce credible deterrence against our neighbours in space.

As for market testing, I think we are seeing the results already, at least as far as FQXi is concerned: a nanny-state dystopia might be acceptable, but dropping the Cro-Magnon body is so completely out of the question that it doesn't even deserve to be rated. :D

Of course, I just had to post my reply in the wrong place. Please see post below yours. Sorry. :/

Tommy,

When I spotted you name on the list I smiled. Is it two years you've been away? You haven't lost your style and sure didn't disappoint. From wading through some essays begging them to end, even baling out, yours ended too soon, at once relevant, insightful, irreverend and a bunch of other adjectives.

But lets talk future. I think I have a way to get there quicker, using a quantum leap in science (in my essay). From the same foundations, as an astronomophysicist, a paper on cyclic galaxy and cosmic evolution finds yes, we are indeed doomed, at least in our current cycle, but there's a possible escape hatch, and anyway we just keep on coming back forever re-ionized (a bit like the Enterprise transported but AGN powered).

Ok 10 Bn times we may be rocks or gas, but forever is a long time so it's inevitable our brain cells eventually form part of some other sentient beings brain. Eventually we'll be everyone and everything, just one at a time. And if being dead is like as sleeping, we wont see the time pass so it's be immediate. Of course we may not remember much...

Fantasy? Ok. Perhaps. But there's an extraordinary amount od f evidence (check out the likeness between a quasar jet outflow and the cosmic 'axis of evil' flow, and the dynamics, helicity etc compared to the CMB anisotropies).

The 'escape hatch' is to jump a local outflow, then the big one, because some outlying 'halo' matter doesn't get accreted and recycled (7 galactic anomalies resolved right there!). So we may have a choice. Keep this garb for the next ride, or jump in the carousel to see where we end up next. Crazy? Perhaps we have to be! But the science is dead serious.

Now as you've been completely ignored here I'm honoured to have the chance to kick you off with a bang. Of course your first score can't be a 10, but an honest score puts you in the lead as the trolls have struck and will hit you too. I could wait...but lets' get you going. Now our first task is to unify physics so we can get out of this 100 year rut. The science is no problem (see essay), but are our brains well enough evolved to recognise it. Many not so far it seems. Cest la vie. Tell me what you think.

Best wishes

Peter

    You might be interested in my essay which discusses some related matters. I illustrate possible limits to these types of future ideas.

    If humanity does push into outer space then it requires some sort of socio-economic reason. I think the most likely economic purpose manned space flight might serve in the near future is with the deployment and maintenance of solar power satellites. Intermittent space flights might turn into longer term visits with space station habitats. Eventually this might give way to the next big step which would be asteroid mining. That might pave the way for converting asteroid material into habitats.

    LC

      Hi again. Yes, almost two years - that seems to be the average time I end up hiding from the lynch mobs when I post something. :D

      It is nice to be welcomed back, and I appreciate the sentiment. Thank you.

      That said, I hope that in future, we will all keep the way we vote to ourselves. The vast majority of votes are cast anonymously, and making a subset of them public invites all kinds of trouble: suspicions of mutually back-scratching cliques, perceived pressure to return the favour, all the usual political nonsense which our species so excels at and which I really prefer not to partake in.

      My own strategy this year has been pretty much the opposite of the politically convenient one. If I really like a paper, I am likely to just give it a high score and move on without saying anything (what is there to discuss if we already agree?); if I disagree with or am puzzled by something in it, I may engage in a discussion before (maybe) rating it. And since I am less stressed out this time, I have been doing a lot more of it than back in 2012, trying to look at as much as I can, so I guess the lynch mob will be larger...

      You wonder if our brains are well enough evolved to recognize... well, here I run into trouble: my brain is clearly not evolved enough to recognize exactly what it is supposed to recognize. I honestly don't understand what the 'escape hatch' is which you refer to. :(

      The best response I can offer is a meta-one (which is guaranteed to make me even less popular with the FQXi crowd, if that is even possible): maybe we really should take a step back and get our priorities straight. I understand that you have a strong belief in the potential benefit for humanity of further advances in fundamental physics. I am less optimistic on that front. While I can not rule out big surprises (after all, we don't know) it seems to me that the "rut" which you speak of is a consequence of tremendous success; the theories we already have work very, very well, over a very large range of scales. The search for significant deviations from prediction has therefore been pushed to regions in parameter space very far removed from those relevant to current or plausibly near-future technological applications. Turn that statement around, and it says that further advances in fundamental physics are unlikely to have a significant technological impact, at least in the near future.

      You may counter that there are logical problems and inconsistencies in our theoretical edifice, and I would agree, but you would need to point out areas where those conceptual problems become of practical importance in order to sway me.

      Now, if it is true that humanity faces one or more existential crises in the near term, and if it is true that further advances in fundamental physics are unlikely to be relevant to the solution of those crises, then the sensible course of action would be to focus on less esoteric goals more likely to help us survive. Cheap access to the vast resources in space would be one. Getting smarter might be another (here finally get back to your train of thought). If larger brains, artificially augmented ones, or wholly artificial intelligences superior to those we have now are on the horizon, the best strategy may be concentrate on making them a reality as soon as possible, and then let them worry about the really hard questions.

      I agree wholeheartedly that space colonization will only happen if it makes economic sense, not because of superficial enthusiasm or political dictates. Satellite solar power is a big opportunity, and it was a big part of O'Neill's plans, but currently even the most advanced plans put it 25 years into the future. NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission looks set to happen sooner, and by then Planetary Resources should already be flying commercial missions. So I would put my money on mining first, solar later.

      Tommy,

      I suppose to fully understand the 'escape hatch you may have to read the galaxy recyling paper, but if you know what quasar outflows and jets are you're half way there, we just hop on for the ride. Only today one star was spotted leaving the Milky Way on the flow at a million mph. scitechdaily.com.

      I don't think we have any datum at all to measure 'successful' as all we know is all we know. We may be abject failures for all we know and 'should' be travelling the galaxy already. I can easily point out dozens of major anomalies in astronomy alone and scores of areas where we're suffering from failure of scientific understanding;

      We're still having to use fossil fuels and face a heritage of thousands of rusty wind farm spikes in out sea, batteries are 50 times as big and heavy as they should be, thousands are dying of cancer who shouldn't, and tens of thousands suffering unnecessarily from other illnesses, and I won't even mention RSI as voice recognition in rubbish, teaching, public transport.. I could go on ad infinitum, all due to our belief that our theories are exceptionally good so why bother to advance them!

      It will almost certainly be fatal, eventually. Martin Rees agrees we're complacent with his 'within a century' prediction. The moment the planet is destroyed and we're all killed I'll point you directly at which of the many failings caused it! In the meantime I think I may try to advance understanding even if it's uphill as most think we're brilliant already. Do you?

      Best wishes

      Peter

      Thank you for clarifying what you mean by 'escape hatch'. How do you propose to safely "hop on" an object going by at a million mph?

      I think we do have a way to determine if a scientific theory is successful: check if it produces correct predictions. The examples of undesirable conditions which you mention are all about technology and/or policy. To the extent that they are failures, they are failures in the application of scientific theories, not failures of scientific theories.

      As for us being brilliant, I wouldn't be suggesting that we concentrate on creating better minds than ours if I were impressed with the current level of human intelligence.

      That makes sense. Your essay improves as I read your comments, here and elsewhere. It's now one of the most interesting I've read. But I begin to see a tension between the virtual and real worlds. "Life in the [virtual world of] the Matrix could be literally anything you imagine." (p. 4)

      Except it cannot be authentic. The virtual cannot be real. Priceless reality can only be attained by escaping the virtual sham. You do speak of Matrix-ians experiencing reality (pp. 3-4). Your thesis depends on them successfully exploring and colonizing the real galaxy, then living in that reality (just as colonists always do, I would add). So why not offer (or sell) just that?

      After all, the facility to fantasize (where wanted) is already a part of reality. It comes with the territory. This goes without saying. But we wouldn't deliberately build the equivalent of opium dens (if that's not too strong a metaphor) into our colony ships, ports, towns, etc. - Mike

      Where do you draw the line between real and virtual? As I write this I am surrounded by a completely man-made environment, a building in a town, and I am focusing on a computer screen. It's all artificial. If I were experiencing the same environment in a computer simulation, I suppose you could claim that it is "even more artificial", but the distinction would make little sense to me. I would experiencing the same thing - or probably something more pleasant, since it would be so much easier to modify at my whim. I could be sitting on a sandy beach, dipping my toes in the ocean while dictating these words and watching them appear on a screen floating in front of me. Maybe throw in a nice sunset while I'm at it. :)

      The primary reason for "selling" the Matrix is, again, cost. Our big, bulky bodies are not built for space, they are terribly expensive to get out there and terribly expensive to keep alive. The immense difficulty of colonizing Mars or building O'Neill-style habitats all comes down to that. Get rid of the Cro-Magnon body and the cost problem is solved. Do it in a way which keeps the brain happy, and you'll find plenty of volunteers.

      The Matrix would not be an "opium den". It would be the house and the town. If I were in it now, enjoying the sunset over the ocean while dictating these words, I might decide to take a break from this task and check on progress in the physical world. At my command, the screen floating in front of me would expand and deepen to a box containing a 3D display produced by real stereo cameras. Flicking through multiple views from different locations, one might catch my attention. A new command would cause the box in front of me to expand further, taking over my entire field of view. Engaging motor control, my limbs would be mapped to the machine's actuators, and I would be fully immersed in the physical world. Maybe we'll call it Augmented Virtuality.

      Thanks for making me read it, it was better than I thought based on the abstract, and I had some fun with it.

      Regarding ratings, I rate essays which I have read and have a quantifiably strong opinion about, such that I do not feel bad about actually clicking "OK" in the confirmation dialog. Whether, and if so how, the author has or will rate my own scribbling is immaterial. Since I realize that some people are less principled than me, I try to make it easier for everybody to do the right thing by not disclosing which essays I rate, and how. (Yes, it's plain to see that there's a lot of horse-trading going on, and maybe if the prize were in the seven figures I'd be tempted to join. Or not.)

      Hi Tommy,

      Well put. I respect your policy of not disclosing which essays your rate. In the overall context of rating, I think you will agree with many of the points in the following postscript I'm putting on everyone's page.

      Aaron

      ...

      P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

      10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

      9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

      8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

      7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

      6 - slightly favorable indifference

      5 - unfavorable indifference

      4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

      3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

      2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

      1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

      After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

      The following is a general observation:

      Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

      I am a strong believer in enlightened self-interest. The irony I see is in the undignified scramble for a short-sighted (and frankly illusory) goal, to the detriment of what could otherwise be a nice little forum for the exchange and discussion of seriously geeky ideas.

      Tommy,

      The first three sections of your essay confused me as I couldn't see reflected in them the optimism-filled title of your essay and Clarke's quote that begins it. But, starting in section four, I began to understand your optimism.

      Wonderful job on the essay. Loved it. Thanks for "This could change" (Sec IV, para 5)

      Would love your comments on my essay (here). I hope you agree that imagination and ingenuity, available only in the billions of minds and hands of the human race, will keep humanity going in ways and places we cannot even dream of today. We just have to believe and work at it: As Ford said:"Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right"

      - Ajay (another through-and-through optimist)

        Dear Tommy,

        Many thanks for commenting on my essay: A Space Age on Earth. Your essay really takes off where mine ends. I believe that we would both agree that in order to aspire to Humanity 2.0 and eventually to Humanity 3.0, Humanity 1.0 will first need to make it through this critical moment in its history - a "window of opportunity" that may be open for only a few decades at the most, if it has not already closed. As you say and the end of your essay: "What we Humans 1.0 can meaningfully do here and now is focus on writing our own part of the story."I liked that and your suggestions about what we should do very much.

        Assuming humanity does so, I found your speculation about the future of humanity to be well crafted and well explained.

        It does, however, stimulate some questions which are not intended to be critical of your essay but rather on the philosophical and perhaps practical side. If one considers humanity to be embedded into Earth's web of life - the dominant species to be sure, but nevertheless interdependent and interconnected with all other life sharing our planet - what role would the rest of life play in the Humanity 2.0 and 3.0 future scenarios? In other words, to what degree can humanity ever be detached from the life support system that has mutually evolved over millions of years to its current integrated state and still remain human?

        I realize that this is outside the scope of your essay but I would nevertheless appreciate your thoughts if you have any.

        Thanks again for a stimulating essay and best regards,

        Arthur

          Thanks. :) Be sure to check out Ellen Jorgensen's talk on biohacking if you haven't already, I think what she is describing is very close to what you wrote about.

          That's a very good question. I think there are at least three different aspects to it: philosophical, psychological and practical.

          The first category is one which I am more than happy to leave for others to ponder.

          Psychologically, I have witnessed vastly different attitudes toward other living creatures: from people treating pets as full-fledged family members, through indifference to outright cruelty. The kinder, gentler attitude seems to be a modern phenomenon, more common the further removed one is from the realities of the food chain (a "fun" factoid I just looked up: some 25 million chickens are slaughtered every day in the US alone, and I think we all know how most of them live; there is nothing kind or gentle about it). There is a widespread belief that kids benefit from growing up with pets, and some evidence that it may actually be true. Based on what I saw growing up with a sequence of dogs, a bunch of birds, miscellaneous rodents and the occasional reptile, I think it would be pretty straightforward (and more humane - I was a lively kid...) to replicate the experience using virtual pets. It may be hard to fool a real dog into thinking that a simulated one is real, but fooling a human is pretty easy.

          The practical aspect is the serious one. Flavio Mercati has written an essay which pays homage to currently fashionable views (and which therefore can be expected to do very well in the contest) and advocates "solutions" like only eating game meat, but which also gets some things right. One of them is that there are vast amounts of energy of raw materials awaiting exploitation in space. Another is that the biological diversity of Earth is truly rare, and therefore precious. He is sticking to the 60s script of space colonization, with humans turning other planets into new Earths by terraforming, and in that model, the more species you have to work with, the more likely you are to find a viable mix capable of supporting a robust biosphere in the new environment. The script is dated, but he does have a point: diversity is good.

          That won't matter to inorganic Humans 3.0, but it could bite Humans 2.0. Their life support system will need to provide them with things like glucose and amino acids. Ideally, those would be synthesized, but initially at least they could come from a handful of plant species (Soylent is essentially based on rice, oat, canola and microalgae; in The Millennial Project, Savage was big on blue-green algae). Since they will be working with a completely engineered environment, it will be tempting to optimize everything, down to cloning a few particularly productive organisms, and call it a day. The result would be a monoculture, with all that entails: very efficient as long as it works, but very fragile when something goes wrong. So as a purely practical matter, it would be in their interest to maintain a larger selection of species.

          I think that line is already drawn for us by the definition of "virtual". It means not physically existing as such, but made to appear so (Oxford dictionary). So it's not a question of artificial vs. natural. The English castle inhabited by Stanley Kubrik was artificially constructed but nevertheless real, while the fairy-tale castles offered in your Matrix are virtual and thus unreal.

          Nor is it a question of retaining vs. shedding the "Cro-Magnon body". An artificial body can still experience reality, which is mostly what matters when it comes to exploring real space. Here the virtual hardly matters at all. Any human (0.3 - 3.0 and beyond) can experience the virtual when there's a personal need for it. This goes without saying. But the systematic provision of self-indulgent fantasies is likely to prove counter-productive when promoted as part and parcel of the real business of exploring and colonizing space. Do you see what I mean?

          You raise multiple objections. Let's disentangle them:

          1) Things which exist physically are real, things which do not exist physically are "virtual and thus unreal".

          2) In your previous comment you used the words "priceless reality" and "virtual sham". You also compared virtual reality to fantasizing and to "opium dens". I take this to indicate a strong rejection on your part of any experience that is not physical.

          3) You point out that experiencing reality "is mostly what matters when it comes to exploring real space".

          4) You claim that an artificial body can do the job without virtual reality.

          5) You fear that being able to experience what you want in virtual reality will reduce interest in going out and experiencing and colonizing space.

          My responses follow separately, since we seem to have hit some post length limit here. :/

          1) I guess you are not big on philosophy. That is not necessarily a bad thing, but you should at least be aware that you are implicitly endorsing a particular philosophical position, and that others exist. Plato might ask why you confer greater reality to the imperfect physical world than to the digital one. I will more modestly point out three things:

          1a) Objects created in a virtual world have a physical basis too. With enough work, I could point out exactly which circuits and memory cells are used to store the properties of any such object. Those are made of atoms, just like the things you consider more real. You could counter that those atoms don't matter much, since they will be swapped out as the virtual object is moved around in memory; I would counter that the atoms which make up your own body don't matter much either, since they are continuously being swapped out too by your breathing, eating etc. What makes you you is an information pattern, not the particular atoms currently used to store it.

          1b) You do not experience physical reality. No, you really don't. What you experience is an internal model maintained by unconscious parts of your brain, puzzled together from inputs provided by your sensory organs; your own biologically generated virtual world, if you will. Cognitive scientists have fun ways to punch holes in the illusion that you are perceiving things as they are, like various optical illusions. You could also ask yourself if the basic building blocks of your experience of physical reality, such as "color", really make sense outside your mind. Sure, a color usually (see that color illusion) corresponds to some set of wavelengths, but your perception of it is an enconding which only exists inside your head, and quite possibly differs from my or somebody else's encoding of the same set of wavelengths.

          1c) You seem to be taking for granted that the physical world is not itself a simulation.

          As an aside, the first version of my essay included a comic chosen specifically to remind readers of all this. Unfortunately I had to remove it after the organizers got nervous about potential licensing issues. :(