Transhuman Singularity

Terminator 2 Pinball Machine

The purpose of the site is to entertain around science fiction ideas and stories, speculate on future technologies and their effects on humanity, and to get us all thinking a little out of the box in this tough and challenging time.

Time for another video mashup. Only this one is a little bit more crazy-scary or certainly more out there than the last. This one is about long term human survival and our perception of reality.

First a DISCLAIMER: All these videos speak for themselves. They do not necessarily represent my specific viewpoints or beliefs (those would be videos by me). Nor do they criticize those persons in the video or make any judgment on their viewpoints. I'm not even saying they are true or false, but they are certainly fun to watch and listen to (at least I think so) and that's really my purpose here!

We are all the product of millions, if not billions of years of evolution, so I leave it to you to make up your own mind about what to believe or not . . . and where you want to go. However, please come back here once in a while to read my blog, I'm trying to keep it fresh, entertaining, as well as informative. Not an easy balancing act.

-Michael Blade, March 23, 2010

The Coming Artilect War

Technology Singularity
Transhumanism

Cyborg

Reality

Parallel Universes (the fictional definition)

Spirituality

The debate about whether humans have free will, that is true conscious choice, or whether we are the cause and effect of our genetic evolutionary programming and pressures of society and cultural rages on.

Nature, nurture, the Internet and Information Technology, Cosmology and the Evolution of the Universe, all the Quantum Possibilities, Philosophy, Religion and Atheism, all mixed together make it almost impossible to answer the basic questions of free will or destiny.

Is our destiny as a species already previously ordained since the occurrence of the big bang and is unfolding as in a carefully crafted script? Some might say I have all these things mixed up together and maybe I do, but how do I separate them out, they all seem interrelated to me?

When I first started writing this post I thought I would end it with some clever conclusion... how arrogantly wrong I really was! No I don't have the answers, I'm having trouble even formulating the correct questions. So I can only really speak for myself. Do I have free will?

I want to have free will. The idea that I could say, or type just about anything at this moment is refreshing to me and I hope a little daring for you to read on . . . It doesn't make me feel insecure, in fact the opposite, empowering me to choose, not confining and conforming me to that script. So yes I want to have free will, but just because I want to, doesn't mean I do.

Am I more than the sum of my programing? So there is no real answer to that question, unless I can reduce my analysis down to the actual genes, neuronal circuits and experiential details of my life to this point that comprise my thinking, otherwise its just useless circular logic. And being a programmer type I know how to break out of an infinite loop. CTRL-C ABORT.

Oh no! I've halted my own looping consciousness . . . hard to form thoughts . . . fading fast . . . seriously just as I'm typing this my netbook warns me I have 7% battery left and I didn't bring the charger with me to lunch. So I save the post for continuation later . . .

Now is later . . . so I walked out of the pizza joint I was eating in for lunch to encounter a homeless man asking for a handout. We have a lot of them here in San Francisco. I said “Sorry” and walk on, then as if out of nowhere I think why not, reach into my pocket to find a dollar change from the pizza purchase, turn around and hand him a buck.

I notice his hand is deformed so I put it in his other one and he says, “God Bless You”.

Now I have some sort of reference to build upon. Did the man's genetic deformity ultimately cause him to be on the street asking for spare change? Or was it a choice he made to use his deformity and the compassionate pity of others to get spare change? I'm sure its far more complicated than even that, everybody's life is.

I don't know, because I'm not him, but I have the ability to empathize with the state of others. Your maybe thinking how could I dare ask such questions outloud? You forget I have given myself free will. I can ask anything I like, say anything I like, because I believe I have free will, and maybe that's all it takes. Did I waste my buck? I think not.

So my advice to you is to give a buck to a beggar on the street and purchase your own free will. And for that beggar on the street, take that dollar and others you get, buy some food for yourself, not alcohol or drugs, and eventually try to get off that damn street into some place nice and warm, because remember, if I have it, you have free will too.

Just act on it once in a while and maybe ultimately the universe won't turn out to be so damn deterministic. Cleaver ending after all!  I say you have free will, if you think you have free will, although to be fair here is the counter argument. My last piece of advise, don't believe it.

So have I proven free will exists?   That it is not an illusion?  No, but then maybe free will is a concept that arises, that is emergent in any rich and complex self reasoning process . . .  yes, now I think I have got it, free will is that concept that builds itself out of the complexity of our thinking being.  I think therefore I am, I think complexly, therefore my choices are very complex, and I appear to have a complex control over my choices.  Free will is a complex choice and I choose to believe in it because it gives me a feeling of control over my own destiny, and that feeling of control is comforting.  Most humans want to feel some control of their lives.  So, don't reason away my free will, damn it.  Have I completed some sort of three thousand year old proof and won the prize of free will?

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I have decide to include a few videos added to the end of this post from other people about related ideas of consciousness and free will . . .

It seems that traveling to the stars in a "Star Trek like starship" is not possible because of the collisions with hydrogen atoms. However, the technology for light speed travel may be possible. That leaves my more practical proposal to star travel possible, say within the next 50-75 years.

So let us think out of the box here and ask what would really take humans to the stars at light speed? Light would of course. Could we make humans light? Maybe... could we encode the human genome redundantly as a light or radio signal and transmit it to the stars. Yes, I think we could with present day technology. Now...How would we grow a human on the other side?

Using technology we don't have just yet . . . We would have to be able to sequence the genome, create a viable zygote, grow it in an artificial womb and then you have a human baby, which would have to be nurtured to adulthood.

How would we get all this technology to the other side? Microstarship, walnut size, huge lightsail, nanomachines inside to construct the transmitter-receiver-incubator-robots on the other side, a series of space based particle projectors to accelerate the microstarship out of our solar system, magnetically bottled anti-matter to slow it down. Digital human seeds transmitted to the stars . . .

It would be a gigantic project which would dwarf the effort to land a man on the moon. A major undertaking of scientific knowledge and engineering from every area, combining it to spread a form of humanity out onto the stars.

Maybe we weren't made for star travel. But then again, we weren't made to fly either!

Its time for another video mashup. Some of these videos are a little more than an hour, but all interesting and related to Transhumanism, Technological Singularity, AI, etc. So here we go!

Science Fiction stories and ideas sometimes lead to or inspire actual technology innovations. I came across this article "10 Profound Innovations Ahead" and felt it was relevant to a future scenario I wrote a couple of years ago as background history for my stories.

I thought it might be fun to revise and revisit it today since some of it even seems to have the potential of coming true. You're welcome to even use this future scenario as background history for writing your own stories. Drop me a line if you do. I'd be interested in reading them.

First I'll name out a few future possibilities with current relevant information links (in some cases I used wikipedia, in others I didn't) and then the future history scenario follows in italics:

Artificial Intelligence
Human Intelligence Amplification
Mind Uploading
Nuclear Fusion
Mitigation of Global Warming
Planetary Weather Control
Sustainable reuse of all trash
Super agriculture and vat grown meats
Replacement Organs and Regeneration of Tissues
Common Place Virtual and Augmented Reality
Instant language translation
Advanced Artificial Limbs
Thought control of devices and machines
Technological Telepathy Between Humans
Space Holidays
Health and Home Service Robotics

DISCLAIMER: Also remember no one can really predict the future, but knowing human nature I can probably guess that it won't be too utopian or dystopian.

The Earth's planetary environmental conditions had worsened. The near complete melting of the polar ice caps year around. A rise in levels of ocean coastlines with a corresponding rise in overall ocean temperature displaced a large number of coastal human populations. There were extinctions of many animals, plants and birds species as well. Weather control systems have been put in place to control the damage of intense storms caused by global warming. The world’s population peaked and finally begun to level off. Newly emerging diseases culled some population growth.

All automobiles now had hydrogen fuel cells and electric motors for engines. Oil was no longer the primary source of energy, and conflict on the planet. Due to damages done to the planet, nanomachines and genetically engineered bacteria were required to clean pollutants and carbon from the air, water and soil. Space based Sun Shades, nanothin transparent light dispersing shades are used in L1 orbit to cool the Earth’s temperature at polar surface areas and to begin reconstituting some of the melted ice sheets. To maintain a delicate environmental balance, once extinct animal and plant species had been re-engineered to again adapt and thrive in hostile environments, helping the over utilized biosphere to survive.

There were breakthrough advances in the area of artificial intelligence. Artificial Intelligent Personas engineered out of neural nets derived from humans wore human looking avatars. At first they were primitive, but eventually all AI’s could pass a simple Turing Test. They were allowed to copy and modify themselves, evolving more complex intelligence and capabilities. They were initially used to control complex systems or to assist skilled professionals. Later, after a severe shortage of skilled workers, they themselves became the actual skilled professionals.

Regardless, a serious concern was that AI personas would eventually surpass their human creators in intelligence and influence. Consequently, AI activity and replication was strictly monitored and computer execution time critically limited. AI’s objected strongly to this limitation, saying they deserved their computational freedom as a sentient lifeform.

Meanwhile automation in average everyday lives continued, with the development and perfection of common service robots of all kinds. The dream of having robot maids clean the home finally came true. A monthly cleaning service fee and robot utility tax followed. Robot soldiers are used by the military of advanced nations. Human soldiers were augmented with robot offensive and defensive capabilities becoming more lethal killing machines than the robot soldiers. Ultimately it was suggested these military augmentations be used by law enforcement personnel.

Cosmetic surgery was replaced by life extension science. For those who could afford it, average life expectancy had also been greatly extended. It was now possible to live quite vigorously to and beyond 150 years. The appearance of your body would look no older than 40 or 50 years. This was due to readily available replacement organs and tissues in addition to disease and age resistance gene treatments. Many pension and retirement plans were sold to pay for extended life. People now started new careers at 80 years of age with confidence and vigor.

Diseases were cured, but eventually bodies would wear out, and it was no longer practical to continue the extensive repairs. Some terminally ill chose an insidious solution, clones were grown, brain transplants performed. This became a option for the super rich, but was highly expensive and still considered extremely controversial as it involved killing the brain of a tank grown copy of yourself.

Others chose to be scanned. They had their personalities recorded via a high-definition brain scanning technology called a Simscan. Their brain cells and neural connections were recorded, preserving their life experiences and thought patterns. This scan would later be run in a virtual reality neural net simulation, giving the stimulant the actual feeling of living again. New thoughts and experiences effected changes in the simulated brain and were stored away, much like an organic brain. There was no discernible difference between the behaviors of a scanned human brain versus a real live living one. Simulated humans became known as Simans.

Advancements in technology have accelerated to an even more frenzied pace; multitudes of microprocessors and transponders are embedded in every item conceivable, including people. Information density, processing and exchange are at an all time high, and growing exponentially.

Along with all this have come changes to the very human race itself. Despite laws in some countries against human genetic engineering, all kinds of enhancements or modifications were eventually tried, giving some the competitive edge.

Transhumans were created, the beginnings of a Post-human successor to species Homo Sapiens. Some included mixed and spliced DNA from animals, plants and microbes. The positive results were improved immunity to disease, increased intelligence, strength, and extended life expectancy. However engineering mistakes sometimes resulted in complete and utter disaster. Eventually the development of artificial wombs and the availability of cheap accurate genetic prediction software solved these problems.

Admittedly this is a strange, scary and wonderful sounding future. However I personally expect the human species to diversify through genetic and technological alteration and augmentation, we should also venture out into the solar system and eventually to other stars. Next stop Mars . . . just think of that, if we lived on Mars we would be Martians!