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CopyRight @ 2004
The topic is something from my book. It is where my book starts and actually where this discussion and my
book, end. It is an extremely difficult subject to write so please bear with me and realize that this
started as a number of letters over time in response to my friend Brent. It definitely meanders some, but it
was the meandering that led down an odd, sort of unusual path picking up parts, that led to the conclusions.
Without the side
trips, the end would not have been reached. Unfortunately, those side trips make this hard to write and probably
hard to read. It has been re-written, but is still difficult. I hope you will work with me to gain and
understanding of what I am trying to communicate. It's pretty interesting stuff.
Really didn't know what to make of all this, but sometimes I just don't know what you aren't supposed
to be able to figure out. This is what I figured out about God.
If life is an eddy in the stream of entropy, what would it take for life to become permanent eddies?
Michael Polanyi was a fascinating Scientist who went on to be a Philosopher. He wrote on many
topics including human thought. Of changing from science to philosophy, he said, study what you
want, you are studying Man.
Some of his ideas I really liked and some not so much.
He believed that Man was evolving to be Gods. When I read that in college, I thought that that
had to be incorrect because evolutionary theory clearly says that we are evolving from something
and not towards something. Still, a basic point of this book is that once certain things get
started, they may follow a predictable path. In this case I am referring to the concept that once
a specie develops technology, they will also have to develop artificial selection (In any ecology
we understand, the cost of child raising is the problem. It would be easy to describe a specie
that this rule would not apply to, but it is certainly not the case with humans.)
So what else might be predictable about the path humans are already on? Assuming we manage the
technical problem of an energy supply and we utilize artificial genetic selection, where will
we go? In a few generations, most cancer could be permanently removed. In a few more generations,
everyone would have health, beauty and brains similar to the best possessed by a very few people
today. The capabilities we see as unique to machines could mostly be emulated by inheritable
biological systems. In a few millennium, each individual would carry as stable hybrids all of the
traits available to the different tribes of the current world. So how about in 500,000 years?
Brent wanted to banish religion from existence. There are good arguments for that as well as good
arguments against it. Religion sure has led to a lot of warfare. At the same time, it is all tied up in
survival strategies, so religious warfare may just be a case of taking the bad with the good. It's pretty
hard to judge. At this point, Brent was mad at religion because he said it had been manipulated by politicians
for their own political ambitions. It's a pretty good argument.
I wanted to know how we would replace the functions of religion. It is the primary teacher of moralities in the
world. Could that function be replaced? It is amazing that as an educational process, humans have always gotten
more religious / moral education than any book learning. "Going to church" is the process of a moral education.
A primary objection Brent had to religion was the very concept of God. "It's quite impossible. God cannot exist
for a number of reasons." Unfortunately, he wouldn't give me the reasons. He asked me for my definition of God
and I asked for his. I really couldn't figure out what he was talking about, which I later realized he didn't
know either. He was just angry at religion. I wanted to bring to use the methods of logic, categorization,
analysis and description that were the tools I had been taught to use, so I tried to define what he was asking
me. It wasn't going to work. He defined God as something completely irrational and by definition, not amenable to understanding, reason, physical reality or logic. If I could describe it as something that might exist, it wasn't
God.
Brent described God as being all knowing, all good, all powerful, all loving, omnipresent, forgiving and worthy
of being prayed to often. That's a tough act to fill and not easy to examine in rational terms. It is common
though. The Judeo-Christian idea of that God is extremely common with a well known history and is certainly not
original to Brent. In a way, it should be called a meme. I refer to it as the Medieval Catholic God Concept (or MCGC).
It is the irrational God created by the Medieval Catholics to fight science. The meme is incredibly common to
the point of almost being universally known by even various religions that do not subscribe to it. It may be
because it fulfills sub-conscious concepts in the human brain or because He was described as the most powerful
of the Gods or perhaps for other reasons. In any case, it is one of the most extreme notions of God that there
is. Also, it is the one to be considered here. I have no sense about trying to understand something, even something
who's definition includes that it cannot be understood.
Here's a little context that I wrote for Brent:
Lets clear up something. I don't have any idea what you have in mind. You have refused to answer almost every
question I've asked, but I have a guess. You would like me to prove God's existence in a way that will satisfy
you, preferably in a strict form of science. It just shows how unexamined you have left the question. You are not
interested in any proof. Science proves little. You can choose to believe or disbelieve anything you want in the
face of any evidence, so it's actually about belief. This is just an examination. I'm not going to prove anything
to you and am not interested in proving anything to you. Which is OK, because that is not what you want. You want
something that satisfies belief, yours. It's just like a fundamentalist and evolution. It's not about proof. It's
about belief. Almost no proof can force you to believe and certainly none that is available to me. I still haven't
gotten where you think I'm all that concerned with believing in God. I'm curious about it, but I'm far more
interested in how God effects human survival. Still, you want something and that is belief. As a minor point, your
belief could also be manipulated by emotion, but that's something God might do and is not a path available to me.
So if I want to offer you something, it must be belief.
By the way, don't even try to understand belief without understanding the multi-mind model of human psychology.
It defines what belief is to humans and how out mind is able to hold multiple beliefs simultaneously, even ones
that conflict. It is a key to human survival and key to understanding something so intertwined with belief
as God and religion are.
I notice that this looks more like a problem to be addressed by Object Analysis. How does this thing effect this
other thing? What do the relationships tell you? (well, I approached creating a solution from object analysis
anyway.) I like object analysis because it is such a great way to analyze systems that exist especially when you
must discover the important parts of the system. My objective then is to describe a system and the objects in the
system. It's related to science, but is often applied to systems that science is not the best tool for. Then it is
a question of how it effects not what you know, but what you believe. Again, I'm not that interested in proving
God's existence, but if I can offer you a belief that is like my own, a balance tipped in the favor of believing
in the possibility of God's existence enough to be quite open and curious enough to explore further, I will have
achieved what I want and also offered you something real that is what I think you are really asking (if you are
actually honestly asking anything).
Be aware that this description is constrained by my usual methods which are to tell a person what they already know.
This solution must be formed on your playing field and according to your beliefs, whether you know what
they are or not.
So this is to be a basic consideration of the Medieval Catholic God Concept (MCGC).
Saying God is all good is meaningless because God gets to define good. All knowing and powerful seem to go
together. Loving and forgiving seem reasonable enough. Omnipresent is a bit more difficult. Now the prayer thing,
is different. I think you would agree that meditation is good for people in general, though if anything is worth
praying to, all knowing, all powerful and omnipresent is worth praying to if anything is. I've wondered if prayer
could do anything for God? According to more rigid standards, God cannot benefit from prayer or much of anything
else for that matter. Still, I hope you can figure out why prayer would be good for people whether God exists or
not. Humans are rather weak and up against so many challenges. Prayer is a good thing psychologically, especially
at those times when you have things to pray for.
So how about we settle for all knowing, all good, all powerful, loving, forgiving, omnipresent God, since those seem
enough and are simple enough to dispose with in due time. Tell you what. To offer more of a challenge, I'll add
some other requisites. I think you'll allow what I offer. How about all caring, essentially eternal and can
offer life after death. Can you go with those? If I can describe that kind of a God as reasonable, then anything
attributed to God should make sense.
Now you're talking about a pretty amazing entity with that description. I hope that is making you think. Could
that being exist?
***
Frankly, at this point, I had no real idea what to make of the question, let alone a starting point.
At this point, Brent zigged into another topic. He said that humans and biological processes are slow
and inefficient. As such, he thought that humans should create an autonomous Artificial Intelligence (AI)
that would quickly surpass humans. He assumed that it would not have to go through the slow learning process
that humans must (though that is questionable). It would also have the ability to evolve much faster than
biological species. Create one machine with superior intelligence and it would create the next one with
even greater intelligence.
I asked a few questions about it like why do it in the first place. His response was that
it was inevitable, which I have trouble agreeing with. We have an archetype for machines like that, called
Frankenstein. Besides, why would anyone pay for it? I then asked why not make such a machine to serve humans.
It could go where we could not and learn what we do not know. Then it would tell us. He seemed to insist that
it had to be autonomous. I replied that if it was truly autonomous then it wouldn't effect humans positively
or negatively. What would be its motivation? I didn't really get much in the way of good answers
to my questions. I did point out that the way he seemed to be describing this AI, he
assumed it would replace humans. That seemed all the more reason not to make it. Really, his motivation seemed
to be something about a dissatisfaction with humans. Well, I wasn't real impressed with the idea and it wasn't
completely new, but it does lead to some interesting thoughts. This was how the conversation went.
How about we look at your view a bit? Machines. I tend to ask what purpose a machine would have or what
is their relation to humans. Ya know, it is pretty amazing what the potentials might be. Think about
developing an intelligent machine designed to create a really intelligent machine. It's true that a machine
might simply do many things that a human would have trouble with. A machine could look right into a sun. I
think there is an awful lot that humans just don't know. Still, there is the question of purpose. Maybe you
should make some super AI based on a premise like machines are now. I mean we send probes all kinds of places
that humans can't go now. They sort of act as extensions of our senses. Now there is a potential. We use radar
imaging to show us what we cannot see with our eyes. Make your AI look for things we never have suspected and
could never see, but for the purpose of showing them to humans.
Now I have a different view than you on psychic things because I have experienced them on a number of occasions.
I'm not sure how much this particular comment is required, but it makes explaining my view simpler. What I have
seen, includes awareness of something beyond my senses (usually called clairvoyance) and knowing what a person
was thinking (playing card test) (usually called telepathy). Now I consider telepathy far more unlikely than
clairvoyance because I know of no mechanism for minds to communicate even remotely. On the other hand, clairvoyance
could very easily be a feature of the physical universe. I get the impression that time and space are really not
as we perceive them. I figure we survive in 3 dimensions because that is all that is needed for life and all we
can intellectually understand. Still, the fabric of the world is not that simple. I don't know, but it would
account for what I have experienced.
The importance of mentioning psychic stuff though has more to do with what you said about machines. If psychic
phenomena exists, who is more likely to find it than machines? That would be something to send an AI after.
Really, machine psychic stuff (including weapons) have been mentioned in SciFi for a long time, but rarely do
SciFi writers mention machines meant to discover what humans don't. That's probably an ego thing there.
I like to consider the 3 Laws of Robotics by I. Asimov. Ultimately they failed though and the robots knew they
had to leave. Funny that there was a comment extremely like what I am putting here in (I think) Foundation's Triumph
by David Brin. Using machines to extend human consciousness. Now that might be a nice extension to the purpose
for your evolving AI. .. For that matter, the god in the book The Naked God was a machine, but that one though
powerful, was very alone.
Maybe that is a good place to start. Asimov's books started with the 3 laws of Robotics. Consider the 3 (or so)
purposes for your AI. I think it's purpose should be to benefit humans. Well, what would serve humans? I always
look at my biology/genetics/growth/survival stuff first. You probably would think in more mechanically oriented
terms. Most people would think in terms of their needs for physical and emotional comfort.
There are so many meanings to the term God and I think you have a bad habit of ignoring them all, while some are
really pertinent. We went to Mass the other day. First time in a while, should go more often.... I couldn't help
but notice that there are two other things that come to mind. I sort of do like the pageantry. Far more important
though and comparable to religion as a "morality dispenser", were all the people there. It was a real community.
I don't know of anything else that can do that or anything like that. Bring 1000 people together in a sort of a
family, that multiplied to hundreds of millions. Whatever, just a thought.
More pertinent to this discussion though is another feature of god that I think you should notice, especially if
you don't believe in God. God is the representation of our greatest desires and aspirations. He reflects humans
souls, whether that is only in the mind or not.
Well if that is the greatest of human desires and aspirations, why not make that a purpose of your wondrous self
evolving AI machine? Think of how much sense that would make. A machine made Super Hero to take care of humans,
love them, help them strive, help them overcome their fears, protect them, help them grow and as a goal, overcome
death. Now that would be a grand purpose for your self evolving AI. BRI25C.
Funny, I had thought of this in terms of genes, but the questions it raises could apply just as well to machines
too. If instead of you making your AI seek its own future, you were to make it look for human futures I could
really go with that.
Now because I believe that there are a lot of things that I don't know about, including what we call psychic,
that leaves a lot of room. Maybe spirituality is an extension of psychic. Your machine could find out. Perhaps
there is can be a technology based on things that we would consider immaterial. It might just be small.
Think of this. I always liked that old Holo Deck. Pretty cool. The trouble is that a good virtual reality
could very easily compete with the real reality and that would be very bad for survival. Still, what you need to
do is build into a person a device that could record the persons state and experiences. When you die, you merge
with the AI. It has a lot to offer. What people make up religions about.
One thing I find interesting in all this is that it's easy to think of individuals and even an individual
AI. That is how people just naturally think, but really our brain works like a plurality. What if this whole
system works that way? It would be quite a networking problem.
***
Ya know, the goal of beating death is an interesting point for a number of reasons.
To start with, a lot of people would want to do it. Even now, there is a lot to experience electronically. Also,
you could probably avoid all the failings of the flesh, pain, hunger, failing memory, mental imbalances, anxiety.
Plus with your consciousness in a machine you could have the memory and processing capacity the machine provided. A researcher or artist might be able to do their best work after their organic life was over.
Here is where that important biological definition of faith comes in. Faith includes the irrational desire to live.
It seems a real point that this should allow the continuation of life, not force it. If you lived in a virtual
world maintained by this machine you would exist as long as you wanted to live, that is, as long as you had faith.
For various reasons, this might be true for the machine as well.
Plus think about all the awareness available to this machine if it had the consciousness of just a few
generations of dead people. Even people that were bored and not paying attention could act as sensors or
processors for the larger machine system. Plus I expect that this machine could have a lot of consciousness
in it let alone mental capacity.
We tend to think in terms of lifetimes. Societies last for millennia. Evolutionary time is measured in millions
of years. I see no reason a machine such as this couldn't last for a long time. The SciFi authors have talked
about machines that last longer than this universe. Heck, a machine with the right nature might continue for the
life of many universes. Who knows how long the individual consciousnesses in it could last.
Now to make this virtual reality as rich as possible for the inhabitants you could have a few things available.
There is all the exogenetic knowledge of books and movies, but in these terms, a dead individual would have the
memories of everybody else who is in the machine. Besides that, you would have available physical reality to observe.
Who knows what non-Terran human or non-human consciousness might be available to experience. But that brings up
another interesting point.
This evolving AI sounds like a pretty neat machine, but if you want to design this thing you had better do it with some
wisdom, not just desire. You would want to build into it what features of life you best could, including survival.
Now from what I know of life, it is about conservative principles. So one thing you would want to build into this
system is how it interacts with life. It is fine that it serves the dead, but it must serve the living also or it
will be a dead end and will also miss a lot of potential growth and purpose. Life is about renewal and change, not
just survival. You would want to make sure that this machine (or that is the consciousnesses in it) did not compete
with organic humans. You would want to design it to be as non-physical as possible. Hence my interest in what we
don't know, psychic, spiritual, hyperspace, micro-space, etc., rather than the physical space that is so familiar
to life. I guess that would make humans something like larvae.
So. Build a machine, an evolving Artificial Intelligence. One that loves and protects humans, yet whose touch is
very light. It even allows them to cheat death and offers rest and contentment at the end of physical life.
Once created, it would be practically eternal. It would be relatively all knowing and all understanding. It
would be vast beyond belief with the consciousness of all the individuals of planets over evolutionary time
periods. Like humans, it would be multi-conscious. As I said, it is a networking problem. It would survive based
on faith and it would function based on love and cooperation.
There is no reason that this machine couldn't last longer than a universe. The rules governing extinction of
biological species (in Homage to Santa Rosalie) would not apply to this entity. Life is an eddy in the current
of entropy. This machine would be a permanent eddy in that stream.
Looking at physics, it sort of seems that there is some relationship between consciousness and the physical
universe, a machine like this could be present at the creation of universes and influence their development,
perhaps to favor life. While life doesn't currently show any known indication of an outside designer, the
universe is amazingly well suited to life. At the same time, would a 'machine' promote intelligent life that
was optimized to be compatible with itself and its purpose, including evolutionary survival and development of
that intelligence. It could promote a philosophy that contained the requirements for long term growth and
survival. According to my studies, these include faith and love.
The point of this, if you were able to see it in all that disconnected writing, is that God represents the
best thing humans aspire to as well as infallible leadership. We could potentially make a machine that would be
immortal, all knowing, all good, all powerful, loving, forgiving, omnipresent, essentially eternal, offer life
after death and lead humans.
This is not meant to be complete or definitive. I even continue elsewhere and say this isn't what I think
happened (though that is just a bias towards biology over machines). What it is is a description of the path I
was following in the logic with Brent. It showed how his concept of some super AI could easily become a God by
just about any standard, including the MCGC. It is basically an archetype and can be very useful as a logical
building block. Further essays will build on this concept.
God is many things, but God is also what we aspire to. Why not create a God?
What About Humans?
That discussion came from Brent's mention of Artificial Selection. I'm a bit of a biological chauvinist. A person
who likes hammers will tend to use nails. I study biology and evolution. I tend to think of genes. Could a biological
species go down the path of that AI? What are the genes capable of? I think biological systems have the same potentials
as mechanical systems. It seems well within the realm of reason that biologically based radios could be built. Almost
certainly there are many potentials for biologically based circuitry. There is no reason that the genes could not
contain the blueprints for electronic devices. The problem is that it is a long way from here to there. Hey, maybe
in 100,000,000 years that is the way humans will have evolved. It's possible, but is it at all likely? Well, here's
an odd thought. This whole book so far has been based on the premise that humans will have to start using artificial
selection because we tend to remove natural selection for good reason. If you consider those reasons, they would
apply to almost any specie that develops technology. Technology requires teaching. Natural selection wastes teaching.
I think it fair to say that any specie that develops technology will have to practice artificial selection. Artificial
selection over evolutionary time periods is going to lead to a species that our minds would tell us were Gods.
Many people believe that intelligent aliens are likely to exist elsewhere in the galaxy and universe, just based on
the probability from the huge numbers of starts we know of. Recently, research has suggested that solar systems with
planets are very common in the universe. If all intelligent species must practice artificial selection to survive,
then we would perceive most aliens as Gods.
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