2) I suppose your strongly value-laden choice of words reflects some sort of personal aversion to... actually, I am not sure to what. Right now you are participating in a discussion on a virtual forum which only exists in a computer somewhere, quite possibly (I'm too lazy to check) on a virtual machine spun out to one or more physical machines as the need arises. Is this discussion we are having a "virtual sham" and not really happening, since we are not having it by old-fashioned paper mail? Or would it really need to be carried out in person, using (instantly dispersed) sound waves to count as part of "priceless reality"? How about by phone? There would still be sound waves involved, but along the way they would be converted to analog electric signals, then to digital ones, then to light pulses carried by optical fibers, and then back again by the inverse chain. Would that discussion be made less real by transiting through the digital realm?

Again, my view is that the information pattern is what counts, not the particular substrate currently being used to carry it.

3) If your purpose is exploration, you obviously need to go get the data. Of course, you will generally want to use better sensors than the very limited ones which come with a natural human body, and we already do. But maybe you mean something else; maybe you mean to say that the purpose of venturing into space is something like tourism, to experience the thing firsthand, with your own senses. If so, I am afraid your experience will be a very brief one: pick any currently known destination, and it will be over in less than twenty seconds. That's being optimistic, assuming that you just wanted to experience vacuum. The most physical and survivable experience you could have is the inside of a space suit. The sound would be that of your own body, mainly your breathing and pulse, and of your comm radio. The sight would be what you can expect through a thick visor plus a head-mounted display. Your skin and muscles would mostly be complaining about how surprisingly laborious it is to move inside one of those things. If you have any sense, you will prefer to stay in your shirt sleeves, inside a cozy cabin, and interact with what's outside through machines.

Having said all that, the primary purpose of the expansion into space which I and others have written about would not be exploration. The primary purpose would be economic and ultimately existential, i.e. to ensure our long-term survival. Exploration would be a necessity, just like oil prospecting is a necessity for oil companies and (currently) to keep our technological infrastructure running.

4) Artificial bodies capable of satisfactorily replacing ours are both harder to create and less desirable than the Matrix. They are harder to make because they require the same life support system and BCI, plus a mechanical body (with associated control and sensor systems) capable of powering and carrying them around within the size constraints of a human body, and good enough to match the performance of a natural one. That's a very tall order; I would definitely not be happy with a half-measure like Robocop's body. They are less desirable, because such a body will be at least as bulky as a natural one, probably heavier (so no gain for space), and less secure, less versatile and consequently more expensive than the Matrix.

The Matrix will be created first simply because it's easier, and for reasons which initially will have nothing to do with space. It will then dawn on its creators and residents that the separation of psychological requirements (satisfied by a virtual body in a simulated world) from physical infrastructure allows optimization of the latter for the task at hand. I remind you again that space is not what our bodies are built for. A mechanical body built specifically for space exploration and exploitation would not look like a human being; it would look like a space probe. You could put a human brain in such a body, but that brain would go nuts. The same brain will be quite happy living in a familiar-looking, simulated body, and working a job using whichever hardware device its current task in the physical world happens to call for. It's the difference between driving an excavator and being turned into one.

In case you wonder about the "less secure" and "less versatile" part, it comes down to the same reason we have data centers now: resource sharing. Put a bunch of brains in a common data center, and they can share common shielding, power and life support systems more robust and with more built-in redundance than what would fit in a human-sized body. They can also share physical devices instead of having a full set each; assign them to three 8-hour shifts, and even if everybody needs to use the same kind of device, there need only be 1/3 the number you would need if everybody was soldered into one. And it will always be safer to control a big heavy machine doing mechanical work from some distance, rather than being right next to (or inside) it.

5) Your final objection is analogous to saying that people should not have nice houses, because if they did, they would no longer be interested in going outside. Maybe there is some truth to that, but it turns out that getting and keeping those nice houses requires money, which is typically obtained by getting out the door and/or interacting with others through electronic communication networks (you know, virtually). I guess this objection is related to number (3), i.e. the idea that experience-seeking exploration is the main purpose of expanding into space. But it won't be. Space will be where the residents of the Matrix go to work.

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  • Post #45

Tommy,

I have to say I avoided reading your essay because I think moving off the planet in any serious technological fashion is delusion, for many of the reasons you list in your essay. Yet having read various of your comments on other threads, it's obvious you are an extremely intelligent person and this essay doesn't disappoint. I still think it's delusional though. Though we may be the mechanism by which elemental biology does project itself to other worlds, it isn't as an organized and recordable method.

I have to say I approach the world situation from a much more bottom up, organic process/direction and I perceive projections upward and outward as cyclical and presuming to project our current progress as to continue compounding out among the stars as overlooking a lot of the negative feedback currently built up in this system. I suppose you might pigeonhole me as a doom and gloomer, but I think there is a great deal of opportunity in this situation as well. There is a lot of energy and potential leverage in collapsing systems and as the concept of punctuated equilibrium argues, these are the best opportunities for real change. As such I think any issue of steering humanity for our generation, or the next several, would be much more planetary, than cosmic.

Personally, if the way biology functions is any lesson, life on this planet would be evolving toward being a global organism, with human civilization as its functional central nervous system. Currently though, we are simply top predator in a collapsing ecosystem and to change that will require much more introspection of who and what we are, than trying to project current methods and assumptions in a forward fashion. For one thing, there is a great deal of conceptual diversity built into the system, to where we do already function quite well as either hive minds, or individual operators, depending on circumstance. It is almost an electromagnetic function.

I think there are numerous unexamined aspects of how we function. In my own entry I point out the dichotomy of energy and information is manifest in our physiological dichotomy of an information processing central nervous system and energy processing in the digestive/respiratory systems, with the circulatory system as its delivery mechanism. This primarily to lead up to what I see as the current major fallacy in our civil functioning, ie. treating money as a commodity, rather than a contract.

There are many other aspects to physiology reflecting reality. For another, I see the two hemispheres of the brain as a thermostat(scalar) and clock(linear) processor. Primarily we like to have enough information/energy coming in to be interested, ie, not bored, but not so much as to get frustrated/angry/overheated.

So if we want to begin to peel away the layers of what it means to be alive, it isn't so much a function of simply expanding our mental processing out to ever more area, but understanding the dichotomy of awareness and knowledge. Our sense of awareness is that innate sense of self, which knowledge is the information it absorbs and manifests. You might say awareness is like an energy constantly expanding outward, while information is the form and structure it manifests and which give it shape. This sets up a conflict actually, as the sense of awareness is constantly testing and pushing the boundaries of this form, while the form tends to restrain and define it. So if you were to start packaging this sense of self into forms it can corrode and break down, it will. As the old saying goes, life is the leading cause of death.

Which all goes to say that while some of your hypotheses may be valid, in the distant future, there are significant hurtles to overcome.

Regards,

John Merryman

    Thank you for calling me delusional (twice) and for clearing up a lingering doubt induced by your dispatch from May 1:

    And on a conceptual level, it does seem many of these entries are out of 20th century science fiction. We haven't been back to the moon in forty years and how many of these entries are going on about populating the universe and moving off the planet after we have finished trashing it!!!! Do these people even bother to go out side and look up at the sky and really appreciate just how far away everything is and how little there is that we can actually work with?

    The doubt being, of course, whether you had actually read the entries in question.

    I would also be remiss were I not to express my deep gratitude for disclosing, after you finally found the time to read my humble contribution, that

    while some of your hypotheses may be valid, in the distant future, there are significant hurtles to overcome

    This shocking revelation was more than worth the effort of parsing the 615 words preceding it. It goes without saying that my inability to extract any further information from your, I am sure, absolutely brilliant, well argued, deeply knowledgeable and extensively referenced critique is entirely due to failings of my own.

    Tommy,

    Sorry to not be on the bandwagon, but the devil is in the details.

    Regards,

    John

    Bandwagon...? Oh well, if you could divine those devilish details two weeks before even reading the thing, I guess you can see a bandwagon coming, too. Two weeks again? I can't wait! :)

    Tommy,

    We live in a world where enormous resources are used primarily for creating ever more elaborate weapons of war and extravagant expressions of ego. How is that not an overriding issue in any discussion of how to navigate the future? Yet you seemed shocked I question the need to project extremely far into the future and out across space!

    There is a very evident mechanism and process by which value is extracted from all forms of interaction and exchange by monetary systems design for private gain, rather than public utility. Go back to Andrew Jackson and his feuds with the bankers. Right now we have hundreds of trillions in derivatives and other forms of debt and leverage, built into an economy with annul world productivity in the tens of trillions. It is a system, a effectively mechanical system, operating according to generally understandable mathematic principles, by which the health, not just of the planet, but the human economy it supposedly intended to support, is being sacrificed to production and accumulation of this notational value, which far exceeds any ability to actually make good on it.

    Yet of all these supposedly bright and clever people, who are well versed in math and other forms of abstract logic, there are only two entries which even mention it directly, mine and Stefan Weckbach's, while a few others hint at it obliquely.

    Human society is a great mechanism. Why cannot we examine it as such and determine where it might be broken? The way we are going, we are like those Easter Islanders, who destroyed their environment to create their totems. Yet people just get mad or ignore me when I try to point out these are issues which need to be discussed and addressed. If you are going to intelligently postulate the future of multiple civilizations arising from this one, it would seem small potatoes to consider some elemental financial plumbing issues which are driving this one to ruin. Is it just not worth your time?

    Regards,

    Jon

    Hi Tommy,

    I admire high aim. You have got it.

    Thanks for your interesting essay on technology.

    Don Limuti

      Tommy,

      Congratulations on a very interesting essay! I enjoyed your writing style, and your tongue-in-cheek remarks such as "To those who really think that the world would be better off without people, all I can say is: after you" or "If you think we have a global warming problem now, just wait another billion years". The tone of most of the essays in this contest is sooooooooooo serious...

      What I like the most about your essay is that it does not suffer from "Failure of Imagination" (as defined by Arthur C. Clarke, as you mention): when thinking about the future, I deplore the fact that too many people fail to even take into consideration the possibility that Humanity 1.0 may fairly soon no longer be the only way to be human. It is difficult to know in advance what Humanity 2.0 will look like, but you certainly have presented many intriguing possibilities. I also like how you stressed the importance of the expansion of humanity in space, while being critical of some scenarios (like a Mars colony without a clear "business plan").

      I think your essay deserves to make it to the finals, and I have rated it accordingly. Good luck!

      Marc

        Well, now we misunderstand each other completely. I pressed my point too hard. Here it is plainly: your essay would be stronger if you dropped the virtual reality.

        Not that I'd characterize your essay as weak. I now think it both brave and rash.

        One more question please, Tommy. - You claim on page 6, "A human mind which works 106 times faster needs a body which moves 106 times faster." - Why? - Mike

          How do you propose to keep a disembodied brain happy without virtual reality?

          Let's make the thought experiment that I have a magical button which, when pressed, makes your brain work 10^6 times faster than normal. I press it. What happens?

          For all practical purposes, your world freezes solid. One second of wall time is now 11.6 days of your subjective time. Unless your brain has been hacked to handle this situation, you suffer immediate sensory deprivation; even sensory neurons firing 100 times a (wall) second to tell your brain what's going on are now only firing once every 2.8 of your subjective hours, so you are effectively blind, deaf and floating in space without a body. Within a few subjective hours you lose the ability to think clearly, you become emotionally unstable and then you start hallucinating. If I let go of the button after just one second, you will have set a new endurance record, but you may now be irreversibly insane.

          Let's assume that your brain has been hacked to overcome the sensory problem: when I press the button, you don't go blind and deaf, you just see a still image of the world, and maybe I stream you some music and some faked sensory information to keep you from going nuts. So you feel a little better, but only a little, because you are suddenly locked in concrete. Normally, you are constantly moving. Your eyes dart around, you blink, your fingers twitch, your body shifts back and forth, redistributing the load between muscles. Most of it is borderline conscious until you start thinking about it. Now it just stops. You are completely paralyzed, unable to do anything. Your immediate, instinctive reaction is to fight the force which suddenly seems to be restraining you, but nothing happens. By the time you've rationalized what's going on and calmed down, several subjective seconds' worth of maximum force control signals are on their way to your muscles. Those are between 0.1 and 1.5 meters away, so travelling at 100 m/s, your orders will reach them in 1000 to 15 000 subjective seconds. After half an hour you start getting sensory feedback telling you that your first commands were executed, followed by increasingly painful reports of the consequences, spread out over the next 8 hours. From the outside, it looks like you are having a violent fit, flailing about uncontrollably, and probably harming yourself badly in the process.

          You can't control a body with such long lag times. Even without panicking about it, having to wait hours to get feedback on an order to move a finger completely breaks the normal control loop "move a little towards target, compare new position to desired location, repeat if necessary".

          Thank you. It's funny how polarizing this essay seems to be. It's either love or hate, not much in between. Maybe the cheeky style is one of the causes. It seemed like the right choice for an in-your-face optimistic view of the future, which I thought was the assignment... though looking at most other contest entries, I can only agree with you. They are very serious, concerned, and rarely particularly optimistic.

          I also agree that the next iteration of humanity could be even more varied than my 2.0. The branch which I focused on is the one which I think will be most relevant to space (initially at least), but it is certainly possible that things like genetically engineered and/or technologically augmented minds and bodies will play a big role here on Earth already within a few decades. I have a doubt though, which I think is hinted at by some of the comments: there are those who just feel that such far-reaching modification is wrong, even if they can't articulate exactly why. Given our propensity to kill each other over trivia like language, clothing and skin color, I can't help but wonder how tolerant we will be of truly radical diversity. Even a small minority of haters can be a serious problem, and I am afraid we will see such tendencies. The outcome I hint at in the essay is that the people of Earth will change only slowly, while new variations on the theme will be tried out in space, where there is plenty of... well, space for everybody to stay out of each other's way.

          So that's another reason to go colonizing, besides natural resources and long-term survival: it will allow humanity to evolve faster.

          I picture remote sensors, motor functions and such (call it "remote reality"). You briefly touched on something like this in your essay, but I think it deserves more attention than virtual reality. Not only is it more practical in the general scheme of things (e.g. for space exploration), but more likely to be valued by the "disembodied" person himself (or herself), who's no longer actually disembodied in this case, but rather separate from his body (or "bodies", as there may be many).

          I guess I should have spoken for the positive side of the coin right from the beginning. I once made the mistake (in my own work) of attempting to build a whole theory on top of negatives. It failed miserably (I present the positive alternative in my own essay), so I should have learned my lesson by now. - Mike

          I did not "briefly touch" on access to the physical world, I identified it as a key issue, and explained why.

          I have also repeatedly explained in this discussion why virtual reality is a key element to Humanity 2.0. Go back to post #7 in this thread and you can see yourself saying "Sure, I understand that much". Yet you keep coming back to this point. We are going around in circles here. :(

          Myself, when I'm thinking, I like to find a quiet place away from distractions. Sometimes I'm outwardly inactive, or sometimes I engage in a repetitive activity such as jogging. My thoughts float above me and I become almost unconscious of my physical environment and activity. It would not help me to jog faster, of course, nor to perceive faster. I concentrate on my thoughts.

          Even in thought itself speed isn't everything. I want my thoughts to be correct, which doesn't necessarily mean fast. Instead of speeding up the "computer clock" (or in addition to it), one could add more memory, for example; or improve the I/O, as with new forms of perception; or improve the network that interconnects the nodes (i.e. discussion among people).

          Anyway, I want to thank you for answering all my questions so patiently. Your essay's very interesting to read and discuss. It makes me think a lot (if not faster or better!). Seriously, it deserves to do well in the contest. Thanks also for reviewing my own essay. I'll be rating yours (together with all the others on my review list) some time between now and May 30.

          Mike

          Yes, you think virtual reality necessary to "keep them happy". Yes, I understand.

          No, I don't agree. I suggest you drop the virtual reality. Your essay would be stronger.

          Anyway, I must sign off now. I can be reached through my own forum. - Mike

          If I were to drop virtual reality, I would have to give everybody a human-like robot body. It would have similar mass (larger, I would guess), similar volume, and similar requirements on living space, again leading to city-sized habitats. The order-of-magnitude cost reduction of Humanity 2.0 would therefore be lost, as would the greater adaptability allowed by the separation of concerns between virtual reality (for living) and physical reality (for work involving physical manipulation). So no, dropping virtual reality would not make the essay stronger. Quite the contrary.

          Thank you for the discussion. We got a little circular towards the end, but I've seen much worse. :)

          Dear Anderberg,

          I agree your statement:

          "If you think we have a global warming problem now, just wait another billion years (Ga); by then, the oceans will have all but evaporated, CO2 levels will be too low to sustain photo-synthesis, and the biosphere will collapse (yes, the long term problem is too little CO2, not too much)."

          As per 'Eigen-rotational Clusters of String-matter paradigm of Universe', decay and extinction of carbon and life forms is descriptive by the homeomorphic dynamics of the segments of Holarchical Universe in eigen-rotational string-matter continuum. This eventuality can only be delayed by specific environmental regulation strategies, but not be preventable.

          With best wishes,

          Jayakar

          I have read your essay again and I am impressed again. You have hit (and enhanced) almost all of the notes; an impressive grasp of this literature; I learned a few things. I questioned your "humanity 3" in my previous post, but I agree that it may deserve to be part of your smiley-face utilitarian integral, and we need to face that issue if we are serious about maximizing because it adds a lot more maximum. Your vision deserves a shot at the next stage in this contest, a shot I think you have now unless the numbers change. Your essay deserves more than that. Even if it is not recognized here, I advocate making sure it gets a good megaphone elsewhere, in a respected venue if possible but not hidden behind a copyright wall if possible. I also advocate that you keep writing in this vein. The quest is that we might really be able to implement some of your integral; a humongous expected value (probability times value) because of the humongous value even if the probability is fairly low, which hopefully it is not. (I have got to find some better way to sell that pitch, if it is saleable.)

          Incidentally, have you any interest in being an Advisory Board Member of the Lifeboat Foundation? That is more or less their standard membership category in a large (2,500) and very diverse group some of whom are top notch. The size and the diversity can be advantages. Lifeboat is to a standard think tank like Burning Man is to a staid art museum. What may be another advantage is that they are as blue sky as your essay, if you want to be that way. I can't make an official offer of membership, but I'll bet I could get you in, and I'll bet you would add to the group. My email is on my essay.

          Dear Tommy,

          Imaginative and fun but serious essay at the same time. I enjoyed very much reading yours.

          You want to recreate biological humans into Human 3.0, "nonbiological humans within a decade or two." You wrote: "Assuming, as most workers in artificial intelligence and neuroscience seem content to do, that the mind is completely encoded by the connectome and does not depend on deeper physical (or supernatural) properties of the brain, this suggests the possibility of entirely nonbiological humans within a decade or two. Let's call them Humans 3.0."

          In my KQID theory, I believe we are already made of what I called Founding Omni-principle Giving first Taking later that is actually our Ancestor FAPAMA Singularity Qbit (00, +, -) that computes, simulates and projects its Einstein complex coordinates into relativistic stage Ψ(iτLx,y,z, Lm) hologram Multiverse. Yes, I believe we are holograms living in virtual reality. We are made of bits-waves that cause biological bodies that we experience. Please review and comment my essay.

          I rated your imaginative work a full mark 10.

          I would like we be friends, my email is leo@shi.com. Please contact me.

          Best wishes,

          Leo KoGuan

          Hi Tommy,

          An interesting, thoughtful, and inspiring essay; thank you for putting it together. My co-author and I (along with many other community members here, I'm sure), share the trans-human vision of a brighter future, and from one "transhumanist" to another, I want to extend my gratitude for your thoughtful examination of what it means for our species to expand beyond the bodies and minds that the natural selection of eons past has provided.

          You pose some exciting ideas, many of which I hope will come to fruition. In this essay contest and in all other endeavors, I wish you the best.

          =)

          8 days later

          Hi Tommy,

          The quality of this essay has caused me to go back and print out your "Forgotten Landscape". As I see it you're well on your way to understanding how the world works.

          I'm generally averse to the "virtual mind" scenarios, but if I lived in a ruined, paralyzed body, I'm sure I would feel differently, so I support research along the BCI lines. I spent enough time in Second Life to feel that it's (at least the public spaces) pretty disappointing. I think most must come there for virtual sex, although there are real artists at work on the creations.

          I have a pretty well-developed (but not very well known) theory of consciousness and it is not very compatible with 3.0. The reasons why are spelled out in comments in my other earlier essays.

          Anyway, I like your style and your mastery of the topics you're interested in and that's worth a 10. But it's too late in the game to help you much. I suspect the "Matrix" turns people off and that this has influenced their votes.

          If you find time I'm interested any comments you might have on my essay. I look forward to your next essay.

          My best regards,

          Edwin Eugene Klingman

          Tommy, your essay is really original and far-reaching. My essay made some of the same conclusions as yours--civilization may not be able to rebuild if it collapses because the easily exploited natural resources are gone, we need to go into space soon, and Mars is bad. After that you went for life simulated in computers. That may be a good solution for avoiding the extremely difficult problem of finding another Earth. I discussed using genetic engineering to adapt humans for living on alien worlds, but I think it is computationally unfeasible. But it would also be very hard to download a brain into a computer. The brain is so complex and delicate that I do not know how the whole state could be transferred, especially without destroying the brain. It was really interesting learning about neuromorphic computing and the current state-of-the-art.

          Thank you for writing your essay!

          Brent

          Happy Path

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