Category: Significance

“So it says here that you’re proficient in C++, code assembly for multiple processor architectures, and . . . that you are a cyborg?” – Silicon Valley

What a Transhuman might see?  Or way too many filters?

Friday’s discussion of Ray Kurzweil’s (LINK) work on immortality was just part of a bigger picture:  it is one of the foundational principles of Transhumanism.  One definition of Transhumanism is the use of biology, information technology, nanotechnology, and cognitive enhancements to consciously and dramatically evolve humanity in a short period of time.  I know, I know, it sounds like a villain’s plot out of James Bond, but there are a dedicated group of people who are working to bring this about right now.

Transhumanists even have a magazine (LINK) called H+.  H+, for humanity plus, is also the abbreviation that is used by some for the movement to indicate Transhumanity.  And they’re working on achieving H+ now.  One of the more recent articles was referencing a study showing that planarian worms keep their memory after being frozen – something that might be important if you are researching how to bring yourself back after being frozen, like Kurzweil plans for after he dies, if he’s not immortal by then.

We talked about biology on Friday, and getting people to live forever (or a really long time) is part of the movement.  But it’s not just living longer, it’s also increasing life quality.  Inevitably, the idea of uploading a human consciousness (maybe after getting thawed out?) into a machine comes up, since human life is frail and we could build a robot body that’s tougher than a refrigerator, and faster than one of those shaky little Chihuahua dogs.  Having a cool steel body would allow you to be either a Prius® or a Corvette©, depending on if you liked the metric system or not.

But if you had your brain already uploaded into a machine, why bother at all with an actual body?

That’s a second possibility – just upload your consciousness and live in a hard drive.  Some folks, like me and Elon Musk consider it more than a little likely that we live inside a simulation right now.  My first post to discuss this idea was here (LINK) where it becomes the explanation for why we haven’t been contacted by aliens.  We’re either living in a simulation or we’re non-player characters in a very detailed video game.  At least you might be a non-player character, I know I’m real (not as sure about you).  Maybe it’s a multiplayer game?

The other frontier of study that is impacting Transhumanism is nanotechnology.  For about a year, everything was “nano” in every magazine, every news story.  It think that’s been replaced (for now) with “sustainable.”  But, outside of a cool techno band name, what does nano mean?  Roughly it speaks to structures between 0.000000001 meters and 0.0000001 meters in size.

“Nano” had its start when Dr. Richard Feynman put together a lecture that was titled, “There’s Plenty of Room at The Bottom.”  You can find it here (LINK).  In it, Feynman sets the stage for manipulation and eventual mechanization of really, really small machines.  In it he referenced biology as a template – we know that these small machines can exist at that scale, because cells exist and are functional at that scale.

Another place that H+ folks are working on is cognitive improvement – concepts on how to better improve the functioning of the human brain and make us smarter, either biologically, chemically, or through fusion with technology.  And not smart like “vodka Saturday night,” but really smart.  Chemical enhancement has gotten a majority of the attention when discussing the subject, but I would suggest that Google® has already provided a significant cognitive enhancement.  I recall having conversation in 1998 when The Mrs. and I were having an argument about something so important I don’t even recall the subject now.  My friend Matt looked at us and said, “Why are you arguing about a fact.  Look it up.”  After booting up the computer and connecting to the internet via a modem, one Hotbot.com search later, and we had a factual answer (this was before Google™ took the world by storm).  We haven’t had an argument over a searchable fact in years.

I argue that the most significant cognitive enhancement in human history so far has already occurred.  The Internet provides a massive amount of factual knowledge and computing power.  This power makes us all smarter, and gives as a much more of information far faster than at any point in history.

By nature, this vast variety of views makes us drift further apart as a nation.  When I was a kid, there were three networks, plus PBS.  Everybody in the seventh grade talked about the same show – we were all watching it – after all, Fonzie.  Cable existed, but it was mainly a way to get The Three Stooges©.  Now, it’s very rare to go in to work and be able to talk about a television show – I’ve got 200 channels, and I’m certain that nobody I work with is watching Escape from New York right now.  Given DVRs and on-demand, people might not even watch the same show in the same year as you.

On Friday I said that I thought that, even though the several aspects of immortality seemed to be pretty far off from a technical standpoint, I thought that there might be a way that some of the more crazy-sounding things might happen sooner than we’d think.

And there is – it’s called increasing returns.  Outside of standard medical science, which I think we can all agree is pretty stunted (LINK), there is a massive increase in technical knowledge going on.  If I can use an analogy – if you’ve ever done a really big jigsaw puzzle, it’s very slow to start with.  All the pieces fit with other pieces, but there are so many other pieces it’s difficult to find the connections.  But once a few connections start to go in, the picture starts to make more sense.  Eventually, as there are only a few pieces of puzzle left, they go very quickly.

And it’s been that way with technology throughout history.  Our knowledge as a species keeps growing over time – more links are made, and finally we solve one puzzle quickly.  We do run into physical and thermodynamic limits, like the total amount of energy one can get from a gallon of gasoline, or the amount of flavor that can be packed into a piece of Juicy Fruit®.

As we have more smart people on the planet now than ever before in history that can now pull information from the entire history of the world working on information system problems, we end up with far more than Uber – we’re near to having AI systems that that will be able to replicate most of the things that most thinking people do at work.  From truck drivers to managers to accountants.  A few key decision makers and people who do actual physical work that robots can’t do will be all that’s necessary to run a major corporation.  One corporation I was working at around 1999 got rid of hundreds of accountants – floors of a skyscraper were empty – not because business was bad, but because those people had all been replaced with accounting software, and purchasing software.

And this will increase with time, too.

The big idea of Transhumanism isn’t that we replace a bunch of accountants and purchasing managers – the big idea of Transhumanism is that we replace humanity with newly evolved Transhumans.  And there’s no fixed version of what the final, evolved version of us will be like.  It almost certainly will not look like us.  Beyond that, I’m not even sure what the viewpoint would be of 200+ IQ immortal cyborgs – what projects would they work on – how would they vote?  Would we even be able to communicate with them?  The final form of Transhumanity might be one where they instantly communicate, one to another.  They might look much more like Borg® than Boy Scouts.

Bought a t-shirt with this on it for The Mrs. – she still wears it.  No one wants to be late for the Singularity!  (H+ Magazine)

Greg Bear wrote a great story (that he eventually turned into a novel) about combining intelligence plus cells using nanotech – the original short story can be found here (LINK).  The story describes increasing returns in a pretty unusual and chilling way.

We can’t know what the final form of Transhumanity will look like.  There is a mathematical definition that describes when mathematics and logic break down – like one divided by zero, or a black hole where gravity overpowers all other forces.  We call this a Singularity – and it’s clear that we cannot imagine what an all-powerful humanity would look like.  I just hope that they don’t get me in the freezer too late during the Singularity – I would hate to still be in the microwave when the Singularity hits.  That’s just bad form.

“Morty, there’s nothing dishonest about what we’re doing.  Now slap on these antennae.  These people need to think we’re aliens.” – Rick and Morty

What an alien might look like.  Perhaps a bit too subtle in the orange suit?

“Where is everybody?”

That’s the simple question that Enrico Fermi asked at lunch in 1950 at the Los Alamos National Laboratory.  Everybody laughed, because on the walk to lunch, these eminent physicists (Edward Teller, father of the hydrogen bomb was one) had been talking about UFOs, and his comment a half hour later seemed to capture the idea that all of them had.  To my knowledge, none of these eminent men (except for Teller) lived in Mom’s basement or wore tinfoil underwear to bed, so it was a serious question asked by seriously smart dudes:

Where are the aliens?

Eventually this question became the foundation for what’s known today as the “Fermi Paradox.”  Stated simply, the Fermi Paradox says:

1. The galaxy has been around for billions of years so,
2. It’s unlikely that we’re the first civilization,
3. A civilization should be able to move across a galaxy in millions of years, so
4. Why don’t we hear them or see them? Why aren’t they in our solar system?  Is the food that bad here?

Thankfully, a large number of people (some of whom also live in their Mom’s basement) have spent a lot of time thinking about this.  Per Wikipedia (LINK), here are the best answers:

• Extraterrestrial life is rare or non-existent: This is the first explanation.  But it’s lame.  Really lame.  Everywhere we look in interstellar space, we see signs of chemicals that are clearly precursors to life.  And life showed up pretty quickly on Earth, and perhaps even earlier on Mars.  I don’t buy this one.  If you’ve seen the inside of my fridge, you know that life is everywhere.
• No other intelligent species have arisen: I have to give this one a possibility.  As far as we know, intelligent, tool making life has existed only for 0.01% of the lifetime of the planet.  That’s not a lot of time.  Could it be that intelligence beyond a certain point actually results in an evolutionary disadvantage?  Maybe all the intelligent lizard-people were eaten by Tyrannosaurus Rex while arguing that the means of production should be shared by all dinosaurs, and that T. Rex was a greedy member of the 1%?

From XKCD.

•  Intelligent alien species lack advanced technology: I can see lots of ways this could be.  A planet with low metal content so no circuits.  It’s pretty hard to build a bamboo radio telescope that works.  For that you also need kelp, and an electric eel.
• It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy itself: Are you talkin’ to me?  Hmm?  Well, I’m the only one here.  I thought so.  I looked up the main causes of death in the world in 2015.  People killing people was not in the top 10.  So, while it might be fun to beat up on yourself and on how bad humanity is, that’s simply not the case.  Mankind rocks.
• It is the nature of intelligent life to destroy others:   With a sample size of zero, it’s hard to say one way or another.  Even a small number of alien species bent on destruction of all other species would be significant.  But wouldn’t we have seen a sign of that, like a big moon gun shooting at us?
• Periodic extinction by natural events: It’s undeniable that happens here on Earth.   There have been five mass extinctions, with the most recent being 65,000,000 years ago, which is longer than many people live, so you might not remember it.  It’s the one that killed all the dinosaurs, remember them?
• Inflation hypothesis and the youngness argument: This one is bogus.  Even the author (Future Nobel Prize Winner Dr. Alan Guth) argues that in his paper (LINK).  I don’t suggest you read it, since he gives away all the spoilers in the Abstract.  The relevant quote about the Fermi Paradox is:

Thus, if we know only that we are living in a pocket universe that satisfies Eq. (12), it is extremely improbable that it also satisfies Eq. (13). We would conclude, therefore, that it is extraordinarily improbable that there is a civilization in our pocket universe that is at least 1 second more advanced than we are. Perhaps this argument explains why SETI has not found any signals from alien civilizations, but I find it more plausible that it is merely a symptom that the synchronous gauge probability distribution is not the right one.

Translation:  This result makes no sense.

• Intelligent civilizations are too far apart in space or time: Yes, but they can cross the entire galaxy in a few million years.  Unless no civilization ever does this, we should see something.  An interstellar Outback® or Jimmie Johns™ on Mars.  Something.  I’m calling this unlikely.
• It is too expensive to spread physically throughout the galaxy:   Time is on your side, and something like a self-replicating robot could easily get through the galaxy in a million years and spend time creating “My Robot Went to Cygnus X-1 and Only Got Me This Lousy T-Shirt” t-shirts for the inevitable tourist trade.  This is nearly within our ability, so, unlikely.
• Human beings have not listened long enough: This is a good point.  We’ve only been able to listen for the last 80 years or so, and most of the time we weren’t listening.  Unless the aliens bought commercial air time during the Super Bowl®, they could have been broadcasting instructions on how to build an interstellar drive for a space ship or how to make creamy PEZ® and we would never have heard.
• We are not listening properly: My first grade teacher accused me of this.  In writing.  On my report card.  “Johnny likes to talk and can’t sit still.”  That’s because I was a boy, silly.  That’s on the warning label, along with the bruises, cuts, and torn jeans.  But back to aliens.  We listen on the radio spectrum, mostly.  And mostly on a particular spectrum, as defined by the Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence (SETI) Institute’s website (below).  What if that’s just a convenient place to look, and not the one aliens have settled on?  What if they use lasers, or the even more potent laser/shark method?  What if they text?  What if they use fundamentally different timescales (much slower or faster)?  This is likely, in my opinion.

For interstellar communication, a particular range of radio frequencies, “microwaves” from 1 GHz to 10 GHz, are particularly good choices.  At lower frequencies our galaxy emits prodigious amounts of radio waves creating a loud background of noise.  At higher frequencies the Earth’s atmosphere, and presumably the atmosphere of other Earth-like planets, absorbs and emits broad ranges of radio frequencies.  The result is a quiet “Microwave Window” through which efficient radio communication is possible.

From XKCD

• Civilizations broadcast detectable radio signals only for a brief period of time: This was (kinda) my theory in 2000 when I emailed Frank Drake (LINK) and asked him – (his equation-The Drake Equation-is used to estimate the number of civilizations communicating in the galaxy).  In short, my hypothesis was that civilizations must have sufficient excess energy to spend the time and effort to broadcast to space and to listen for signals from space, and that having that excess energy from (like us) hydrocarbons like oil and natural gas and coal only last for a while.  And fusion is hard, and fission has waste problems.  A related post of mine is here (LINK).  Drake responded, and, sadly, that email account is no longer or I’d quote the response.  In one word, his answer was, “maybe.”  The other concept is that civilizations are “noisy” for a while until they learn to move on from high powered radio to lots of smaller low-power radios.  Earth has gotten a lot quieter since the 1970’s.

From XKCD

•  They tend to isolate themselves: It could be that the alien species are all introverts that like spending time in their room listening to music, or standing in the corner at a party until they sneak out and go home and hit the Playstation®.
• They are too alien: Aliens might be so different than us that we cannot mutually communicate – ever.  It would be like meeting a civilization composed entirely of ex-wives (or ex-husbands, your choice).  Hey, maybe that was why they called it the eX-Files®?
• Everyone is listening, no one is transmitting: Like us.  We’re not actively sending signals out, or at least not very often.  If someone did hear us, they’d look back to see if there was a signal, and they wouldn’t find a thing.
• Earth is deliberately not contacted (zoo): We’re like the hippos in the zoo.  People look, but you’re not supposed to disturb the display.  Oh, look what happens when you throw a hurricane at them!  Silly people!  Possible, but seems like a lot of work.
• Earth is purposely isolated (prank): Let’s take a civilization, and make it look like nothing’s going on outside their solar system (snicker).  And let’s magic marker their face.  Seems very unlikely, and way too much effort.
• It is dangerous to communicate: Maybe everybody looks out and says . . . “Where is everyone?”  Since there’s no good answer, they assume everyone before them got smashed by . . . something out there.  So, they shut up.  Maybe?  It’s what Hawking is suggesting as our best strategy now.
• The Simulation Theory: We live in a simulation, and they didn’t program in any aliens.  Very possible.  Our current level of technology could almost produce a realistic simulation, so it’s not too far off to expect that another million years of tech advancement would produce not only SuperUber with cabs that all driven by clones of NFL® legend Howie Long, but the ability to live your entire life in your Mom’s basement in a virtual reality.  And we’re all non-player characters.
• They are here undetected: They’re sneaky, and are all over, like tourists, and we just don’t know it.  Some silly Prime Directive or something.  I believe this is unlikely, because Kirk always ignored the Prime Directive whenever it was even remotely convenient.
• They are here unacknowledged: This is the true X-Files® X-Planation.  Government knows.  SETI™ knows.  Nobody will tell us.  This is one of the most popular with the tinfoil-wearing basement dwellers.  It’s solidly possible.  Blue Oyster Cult certainly thinks so:

1980’s at its best:  men in black, bad special effects, girls in furs, weird beards, and Flight 19 references.

What about . . . we are the aliens?  If you look at life . . . it’s got great computational power.  It’s got amazing resiliency to everything from meteor bombardment to super volcanos.  It has amazing memory storage capacity (think the amount of info in DNA alone).  It’s complex, but resilient.  Perhaps the galaxy has been seeded, with us and the things that live in my fridge.  And we’re the replicating critters that are supposed to send copies out into the cosmos.

When we manage to get out of Mom’s basement.