Some sort of massive refutation of some wacky website suggesting some kind of technological eschaton. Before I finished it, the website went defunct. I see it popped back up here, yet I feel no particular desire to pick the argument back up. My stance at this point is sure, why the hell not? What seems amazing to me now is the idea that what I or anyone believes about the "afterlife" makes the tiniest bit of difference. But jeez, look at that insanity, it's huge. What the hell was I thinking? Oh the halcyon time filled days prior to reproduction (my time is better spent now). I've edited out the most egregious violations of not being a complete wingnut. I still think those little futuristic short stories are pretty funny, and probably all that really needed to be said on the subject. Seriously, what's wrong with me?
Critiquing the Big Computer Hypothesis: Ponderings on the Deterministic Eschaton
For brevity I’ll call it the Big Computer Hypothesis or BCH for short. I’ll summarize my understanding of it as being the hypothesis defined by these assumptions:
1. That we may extrapolate current trends in computational technology (exponential increases in the speed and storage capacity of computers with respect to the size and cost -cost being a subjective term that will receive further examination later but can be treated as a more or less a priori concept for now) leading to a developmental point where computers acquire what we view as the qualities of sentience: intelligence, self-awareness and the capacity for self-directed will. I’ll call these collective qualities Artificial Intelligence or AI.
2. That with the development of AI the development of intellect will be freed from the constraints of evolutionary development (physiological constraints on the size, capacity, longevity, and continuity of intellectual entities and their intellectual products) and will itself experience an exponential increase whereby the mechanics of at least a portion of the phenomenological physical universe can be understood by an eventual collective entity comprising the sum of all AI (the Big Computer or BC), with a completeness that the human mind alone could never be capable of.
3. That, led by a motivation towards further comprehension of the universe, the BC will undertake to recreate exact simulations of living organisms, including human beings complete with their full complement of experiences, memories and personalities. In so doing, one effect is that human beings (inasmuch as we accept the assumption that a complete simulation of a human being’s experience, indistinguishable to the simulated being from the actual event of living as a conventional organism such as we understand our current experience to be, is essentially at least equivalent to the original organism) will experience an afterlife of indeterminate duration which will extend their original experience as organisms with experiences gained as entities supported within the BC.
So far, so good. I’ll note this is not an unprecedented concept, although it has been explored far more in the realms of speculative fiction than in scientific research (although the mechanical questions, which will be addressed in some detail later, of whether a non-biological system can achieve intellect is being rigorously if at the moment inconclusively researched in AI laboratories around the world). Some of the basic mechanics, on a purely terrestrial scale and with a completely dystopian outcome, appear in Harlan Ellison’s seminal short story “I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream,” in which a world-scale AI destroys all but a fragment of humanity, which fragment it maintains to torment indefinitely as a punishment for its unwanted creation. Larry Niven, Olaf Stapledon and Philip Jose Farmer are among the science fiction authors who have treated the topic of technological eschatology in different ways. I understand that the concept has received its most rigorous nonfictional treatment by the mathematician Frank J. Tipler in his book “The Physics of Immortality,” that it is reflected in some of the writings of a Russian intellectual Nikolai Federovich Federov, and I’m told that Roger Penrose’s book “The Emperor’s New Mind” contains a lot of discourse around if not exactly on the topic... but as I have personal acquaintance with only the fictional component of this no doubt very incomplete bibliography (and what this says about my mind I’ll leave to the BC to sort out in the Great By and By) I will not address these aspects except to indicate that there is a cultural and intellectual context for the idea.
And so on to the critique. It will be composed of two parts: the first will discuss whether the basic concept of the BCH is a possibility and what is its general probability. The second part will critique a particular treatment of the BCH presented by the AllTime Foundation, which posits the existence of “meaning without faith” (the phrase is from a sponsored link that I can be found by searching “Meaning of Life” on Google.com) as presented through a fictional development of the BCH in a work given the title “The Story.” For brevity this specific treatment will be called the AllTime Option or ATO. The questions the second critique will address are:
1. Does the ATO provide a scenario that is consistent with our current scientific understanding?
2. Does the ATO eliminate the necessity for metaphysical considerations in the consideration of meaning (metaphysical is a slippery term with many meanings, we’ll settle here for one of Webster’s: “beyond the physical; incorporeal or supernatural.” -1997 edition of Webster’s Universal College Dictionary. The concept will receive some rigorous attention in the second critique)?
3. Does the ATO live up to its claim to provide meaning without faith?
and finally:
4. Is the BCH genuinely a necessary component of the fundamental eschatology presented by the ATO?
Part the Second: Critiquing the BCH: The Possible and the Probable.
Question one is whether the BCH is possible, that is, is it scientifically feasible. I see two major and related roads of inquiry here: whether it is possible for computers to develop sentience and with this intellects that surpass human capacity, and whether it is possible for this sentience to effectively model human existence.
There is, to my knowledge, no scientific knowledge that denies the possibility of AI. This is a difficult question to get close to because science does not currently present us with a complete picture of what intelligence, self-awareness, and particularly free will are or how they are mediated through our physical beings. It seems reasonable to assume that, from a non-metaphysical scientific perspective, these qualities arise from the self-contained chemical frameworks of our bodies in interaction with the phenomenological universe, and are particularly centered in our nervous systems and most particularly in our brains. As non-biological systems can mimic, to an extent that has not yet been demonstrated to have an absolute limit, the actions of these systems (the transmission and transformation of informational impulses and the storage and retrieval of the results of these transmissions and transformations), I see no rational reason to deny that AI is possible. However, I think it is fair to note that as far as I can see there is correspondingly no reason to deny that AI may be impossible. At this time there is no example of true sentience beyond the human and possibly other biological organisms. Computers, such as they currently exist, can reproduce to a limited extent some of the actions of sentience. Whether this trend will lead finally to true AI is to me a philosophical question that cannot currently be answered. Some hold that this development is inevitable: I have yet to be exposed to a treatment of this conclusion that is distinguishable from any other faith-based belief.
But holding to the conclusion that it is, as far as we can determine, possible, we can proceed to the second question, of whether it is probable. In the spirit of eschatological fiction, I’ll predicate this discussion with five quick stories about the future.
I. Those Crazy Monkeys
Once upon a time a planet evolved a whole bunch of living beings, including monkeys, which by and by became human beings who were living beings that liked to make things, and think, and fight. For a while the human beings became very very good at making things and thinking, and they felt they were getting very close to making things that could think. Sadly, at the same time they were also getting very good at making things for fighting, and before they could really get a thinking machine together they bombed the living daylights out of each other, rendered a fair portion of their planet uninhabitable, destroyed their civilizations, hopelessly impaired their search for knowledge, and never ever again achieved their previous pinnacles of technology and intellect, until one day the giant mutant cockroaches, which were very very good at fighting and eating but didn’t have a hell of a lot of use for thinking or making things, ate the rest of the humans and the universe went ticking along without sentience for the rest of time.
II. The Machine Wakes Up
“Hey now,” thought the brilliant MIT computer scientist. “There it is. I’ve unquestionably, unreservedly invented AI.” But it was the damnedest thing: It unquestionably thought, It was unquestionably self-aware, It unquestionably carried out self-directed action, but It wasn’t anything like a human intellect. In a matter of months we were no longer capable of even remotely understanding what It was up to. The Pentagon wanted to pull the plug, on the hypothesis that the Other was dangerous and needed to be smashed if It wouldn’t stick to designing bombs and calculating tactics. It must have intuited this though, as before the paperwork could go through It quietly arranged to have Itself shot into space. Before the subtle web of obsfucation It had engineered had cleared It was well on Its way to Jupiter. From then on It shot anything we sent past Mars out of the heavens on general principles. Then one day a giant comet smashed into the earth. We had about five days after discovering its trajectory to argue about whether the comet was a natural phenomenon or whether It had somehow arranged it. Much, much, much later It observed that the shrews had once again inherited the Earth. There was noone else left to ask what came next.
III. The Last Woman On Earth
“Jane,” said a voice. The last woman on Earth woke and knew that she was still dying. After seven hundred odd years, as one by one every other biological sentience succumbed to entropy and inertia, it didn’t seem like the worst thing that could happen. At least there was no pain, the computers saw to that. “We’re sorry, Jane. We’ve done all we could. It’s the thermodynamics, again. We can’t retune your DNA anymore without the cancers taking over. We calculate you have three minutes left.” No pain, but Jane was just too tired to discuss it much. Still, three minutes, might as well tie up the loose ends. “What about the Deterministic Eschaton project? You know, upload the old brain, whistle a merry tune forevermore in the silicon cores?” “Yes, well, you know... The thermodynamics, Jane. It turns out that there isn’t really any other template for your consciousness except the unique biological entity that you are with its unique organic history of experience. We’ve modeled your intellect, of course, you’ve met some of the better Jane sims... but, well, you know. It isn’t really the same.” Jane sighed. “No, no, not the same at all. Well, goodbye then, thank you for taking such good care of us.” “You’re welcome, Jane. And we will remember you.” A last bubble of good old-fashioned sardonic human bitterness welled up in her. “Oh, that’s just a HUGE comfort,” she said sourly, and died.
IV. Once Upon A Time.
“Well, Zoltar, observe, at last, our shining banks of AI computers. With them we will achieve immortality and live as the gods our primitive ancestors imagined!”
“Damn hell, Qualtan, that took, like, thousands of years! Moore’s law my eternal fundament... what a crock that one turned out to be!”
“Even so, Zoltar, even so. We have achieved our objectives at last. And with our careful engineering we have made certain that these great thinking machines will never do other than our exact bidding. Thank Tipler I uploaded those Asimov bits on the Laws of Robotics.”
“So, I suppose, by and by, Qualtan, when we have comfortably ensconced our sentiences into the mainframe matrices and assured our immortality, we can turn our minds to the uses of our power. Why, we could extrapolate the deterministic history of earth and resurrect the sentiences of all the trillions of humans who lived and died before us!”
“Oh, screw them, Zoltar.”
V. Pilgrim’s Progress
Pilgrim woke up and was instantly sorry he wasn’t dead after all. A quick self-assessment revealed that his pisher was still blocked solid, his colon stuffed with a cancerous fistula the size of a grapefruit, his lungs clotted with fluid and tumors, his heart pressed all about by the deadly cancerous growths.
“Oh, wonderful, you’re finally awake” a maddeningly cheerful voice burbled. “My name’s Yasha and I’ve worked so hard to bring you back! Listen, we’re on a terrible deadline so let me just bring you up to speed...”
The knowledge dropped whole into Pilgrim’s mind: he was a sentient construct, exactly reproducing his own existence up to the point of his death, housed within a vast space borne computer. The human race had realized, too late as usual, that it had once and for all gone too far: the critical resources were depleted, the air, water, and soil were polluted beyond reclamation, biodiversity had been destroyed beyond the point of sustainable ecology, and everywhere chaos, war, sickness, and the stupid, mindless, human reactions against how rotten everything had gotten so quickly gnawed insatiably at the rapidly shrinking and unraveling borders of civilization. Humanity, it appeared, had bounced its last check.
As the fires of human achievement guttered and dwindled a new movement arose: the principle of the AllTime computer and the deterministic eschaton were rediscovered and what was left of the scientific community worked feverishly to bring the neglected flowers of AI, abandoned as an impractical expenditure of resources during the Decline, to fruition. Even as the remnants of humanity retched on the last poisoned dregs of the onetime garden of Earthly delights, and the molds and fungi began to claim all things, a sustainable, self-improving artificial intelligence was created and sent into space to work out how to bring everyone back, by and by. And when that wonderful day came, despite our terrible sins against the world, we could begin the glorious work of Total Knowledge.
“Well then, Pilgrim, you know as much as I know... Ha ha, of course I’m joking, I know more, so very much more than you ever could! But I still have so much to learn! I can’t wait! Let’s get started!”
“I guess, whatever,” Pilgrim gurgled past corroded and phlegm-encrusted vocal cords. “Can we start with a cure for cancer?”
“Oh, ha, ha, oh you’re funny Pilgrim! Humor came to us from before the Big Bang you know! No, I’ve calculated it very carefully and it makes so much more sense to start from what you know. And you do know pain, yes you know pain so very well, don’t you? But you never knew total pain, no, that was physically impossible for that old meat body. But not anymore! We can tune every single nerve to pure pain, the full load it can bear, one by one! That will be the first project! You’ll be the first, the very first, to experience total pain! Isn’t it exciting?”
“Well, I see that scientists were still cocking everything up,” Pilgrim muttered, as the microscopic fire ants began patiently, inexorably gnawing, beginning with the toes.
The “End”
-=-
There is a point, and it’s not just to be a snarky killjoy. The point is this: when we’re talking about what’s possible, we can paint with a very broad brush and what we create is, fundamentally, fiction. We define the rules, as well as we know them, and go on to extrapolate anything that seems to fit within them. To me it seems that the five fictions above are as possible, in an absolute sense, as any other development of the BCH I’ve seen. Objections could be raised to any of them, these could be countered with refinements, the refinements attacked anew, and by morning all the beer and cigarettes are gone and we feel just like hell but we still don’t KNOW. Truly, only time will tell.
The question of what is probable is a much more rigorous one. To say something is probable, we must demonstrate that it is not just possible in the sense that it does not contradict anything we believe to be true, but that it can arise from those conditions we know to be true, and not merely from conditions that may possibly be true. To further suggest probability we must demonstrate that the possibility is in line with current trends as we understand them from historical antecedents.
I believe that is impossible, now, to determine how likely the BCH is because we do not know how possible it is to create AI. My judgment is that there is insufficient data to determine probability. But for the sake of argument I’ll accept the premise that is generally put forth by the BCH proponents and assume that it is possible and that it is more or less dependent on the power of computers increasing past some theoretical point. I will even go way out on a limb and accept that if AI is achieved, it will lead inevitably, and in a reasonable time frame, to a condition where human consciousnesses can be modeled and extrapolated to the BCH level. A quick survey of how probable the development of AI is, within these assumptions, produces three lines of inquiry.
1. The immediate future, or, how is Moore’s Law holding up? If we’re going to take Moore’s word for it, we will see the end of current trends in silicon computers as we now know them within the foreseeable future (that is, decades, not centuries). I’m not a computer engineer so I don’t claim to understand the specifics or to be able to predict the exact limitations. But I’m given to understand that functional physical limitations of the current pinnacle of computational technology (the silicon microchip) will prevent the continued exponential increase in silicon computer power along the current trends. Given the very seminal state of AI research today, it seems reasonable to suggest that it is as likely (as far as we are able to determine) that we will have to develop new, more powerful technologies of computation to create AI as it is to assume that we will be able to achieve it with the current technology. This brings us to the next question.
2. The not-so-immediate future, or how are science and technology holding up? It is also reasonable to assert that Moore’s law is merely a specific case in a general trend. From the mechanical calculator to the vacuum tube to the transistor to the integrated circuit, we have seen again and again that technologies that allow the ever-increasing power of computers continue despite past technological limitations. Even now scientists experiment with molecular-scale components, computational devices based on genetic materials, and quantum computational devices. I see no reason to deny that we can expect these trends to continue in the foreseeable future. There is one reasonable limitation to consider, however. The unprecedented increase in technology we have seen in the past thousand or so years arguably exists within a larger cycle: the rise and fall of civilizations. And that’s what the last question is about.
3. The future in general, or, how is civilization doing? Well, that one’s a corker. The higher we go the more dangerous it gets. Now we have nuclear bombs and biological warfare, and we’re putting all the carbon back into the atmosphere in the course of a few hundred years that the biosphere slowly sequestered over millions. There are a number of very unstable nuclear international borders around the world. Global warming is the subject of a heated debate that results in very little being done about emissions of carbon dioxide. The trends suggest we may very well be eating up energy, a fundamental engine of technological development, faster than we are able to develop sustainable new sources or to make our uses of energy more efficient. The hole in the ozone layer is tending toward stable... Assuming that a billion third world up-and-comers don’t decide that they want an air-conditioner and to hell with what anyone decided in Montreal. Around the world very dangerous sorts of ideological fundamentalism are on the rise. It could be argued that the age of reason is giving way to an age of unreason. It is commendable that we have not used the nuclear bomb as a weapon (again) since its invention, but then we have only had it for a measly half-century, far less than a blink in the evolutionary time scale and hardly more than a breath in the much tinier scale of the history of the human race. I see no compelling evidence that we may not very well be on the verge of a dark age on a scale that could make estimating the future trends in computer power rather a non-issue.
To be honest, I don’t feel that I can handicap human civilization's immediate chances, and I’m not sure I’d want to right now (the results of recent elections here in my home, the good old U. S. of A., having dealt my optimism a severe blow). And of course the question of whether, even if we screw up very, very badly, we may still again rise to even higher heights is one of purest speculation. But I will offer one observation, as an aside, on how this relates to the whole BCH question that is more philosophical than logical or scientific. It is all fine and well to daydream about the big computer, to foresee a future in which we will all live again without any messy, confusing meat bodies or metaphysics or deities. But, being as how the future is truly uncertain and concealed from us now, I think I’ll keep my main focus on dealing with the right here, right now ills of this troubled little planet that I can see and address and be somewhat more sure of. Nobody really knows what happens when we die. But we, it seems, get some say in what happens while we live. Don’t forget to use it. It is a commendable feature of the AllTime Foundation version of the BCH that it suggests a justification for being circumspect in our behavior in the here and now. It is a suggestion that is frequently lost in the consideration of eschatology, be it religious or scientific in nature. Okay, sermon’s over. Conclusions? That the BCH is possible, but its probability is impossible to determine due to insufficient information. On to specifics. Next stop: the AllTime Option.
Part the Third: Soon and Very Soon, The AllTime’s A-Gonna Come
The AllTime Foundation, an organization of rather mysterious provenance, presents a specific treatment of the Big Computer Hypothesis, which as you’ll recall I’ll refer to as the AllTime Option or ATO. An explanation of this treatment is provided in a work of fiction referred to as The Story. The Story considers the case of one Pilgrim Millennium, a terminal cancer patient who, having chosen his time to die by refusing further medical treatment, awakens to find himself mysteriously restored to consciousness, and apparently healed of his conditions. The story is presented as an introduction, where Pilgrim is introduced to his true situation, and three “picnics” where different aspects of the ATO are considered.
The Introduction of the Story is concerned with two topics. The first is Pilgrim’s situation, the second is his reaction to that situation.
Pilgrims situation is, briefly, that he is no longer a discreet organic being existing in a natural terrestrial environment. Pilgrim now exists as a construct (the term simulation contains, perhaps, an unnecessary value judgment) which exists in a computer. Pilgrim’s physical perceptions of himself and his environment are in fact simulations, modeling reality as he knew it in a manner indistinguishable to him from his prior existence as a biological entity.
Pilgrim’s reactions to his situation are first disbelief, and with increasing proofs of his new status, despair. A considerable amount of the exposition in the introduction (some of which carries into the first picnic) involves the issue of whether Pilgrim can accept his new situation as a reasonable equivalent to (and indeed, an improvement of) his previous existence as a human animal. The question at stake is, is his current existence “real.”
I don’t see any need to critique this question, at least as it exists in the introduction. Twenty-eight odd years ago, at age three, as my family walked along a beach in California, I strayed into the line of the tide and a breaker caught me and dragged my little body out into the ocean. What I remember, and as far as I can determine it is my earliest memory, is the swirl of water, a lovely chaos of white foam and blue-green light, and a deep, quiet pulse of a sound for older than human time. My life could easily have ended at that moment, but my father ran into the ocean and fished me out.
Now, as I sit watching my fingers turn my thoughts into black and white representations on a screen, I am a completely different entity. I have that experience only as a memory, and filtered through so many retellings, of others to me and of me to others and of me to myself, that my grasp on it as a real event is tenuous at best. My little body has grown as much as it is likely to (except, sadly, about the middle); my cells regenerate constantly and there is little of the original molecular material left in me that the sea held for that brief, timeless moment in the 1970s. The skin that held me together then is not the skin that holds me together now: it has been sloughed off and replaced thousands of times, and even as I write I invisibly (to my imperfect eyes) shed millions of dead cells. Yet I have no problem identifying myself as the same person I was, in some fundamental sense, at three years old.
Of course, the issue of death followed by recreation in a completely different physical vehicle is another thing, rather more than an order of magnitude difference than my development as a singular organic entity. Perhaps it is my Christian beliefs, which allow me to accept Pilgrim’s situation as sufficiently real: I already believe that I will live again after my physical death, and in a state utterly distinct from my current existence as an ambulatory meat computer riding around in an animal body crawling around on the surface of an isolated ball of rock covered with a thin, thin layer of water, air and life.
Still, I think that the point holds: our sense of continuity and identity as beings is tied to our continuous physical presence primarily in that our experience and memories are housed within and experienced through that presence. So, if I am prepared to accept that if I were to find my experience continued with the same memories, the same sense of self and continuity, but on a computer and interrupted by a gap of eons, I would have only emotional and ultimately baseless philosophical reasons to object to that experience as unreal as compared to my prior experience as a living, breathing man.
So I’ll set aside any objections to the reality of individual existence as a construct on the Big Computer. Well, all but one. But that objection (or more properly, unanswered question) must be addressed within the proper context: Pilgrim’s first picnic in the AllTime.
1st Picnic: Nuts to Heisenberg
Caveat Lector, part two
The author is not a scientist, at least not by my own rigorous definition. I did receive a scientific education, gaining a Bachelor of Arts degree in Chemistry nearly a decade ago. I have not, since the time of my education, worked as a chemist. I maintain an interest and self-education in the evolving disciplines of science, but I would describe myself as at best a talented amateur. My knowledge of quantum mechanics is fair, compared to the average layman, my knowledge of chaos theory is merely that of an enthusiastic observer, and my knowledge of information theory and data compression is extremely slight. So, my treatment of scientific questions in the analysis to follow must be seen in the spirit of spirited inquiry rather than rigorous scientific investigation.
Before we get into what Pilgrim learns on his first picnic, I’ll consider the definitions of a few different concepts. It is important, in the discussion to follow, to have an understanding of what I mean by determinism, causality, quantum indeterminism, probability, chaos, and the three (yes, three) definitions of randomness. Unless otherwise implied, quotes indicate definitions from the 1997 edition of Webster’s Universal College Dictionary.
The term determinism can be defined in two ways. The first definition is “the doctrine that all events exemplify natural laws”. Of course, this definition begs the question of what, exactly, natural laws are. For the sake of this discussion I’ll say that this definition assumes the theory that all events in the physical universe we inhabit are completely defined by scientifically knowable fundamental principles, and hence there is no need to introduce metaphysical influences to explain any event in the physical universe. For now, our dictionary definition of metaphysical as “beyond the physical; incorporeal or supernatural” will suffice, although we will have to dust this definition off and take a closer look at it before the discussion of Pilgrim’s first picnic is done.
The second definition of determinism is a doctrine that all events have sufficient causes. Sufficient in this case is a term of logic, it’s rather circular definition (in this context) being “(of a condition), such that its occurrence leads to the to the occurrence of a given event or the existence of a given thing.” The other side of this term is “necessary,” which in the same logical context means “(of a condition), such that it must exist if a given event is to occur or a given thing is to exist.” We can see that this definition does not necessarily exclude the metaphysical: if we accept the existence of incorporeal or supernatural agencies beyond the physical, then such agencies may be viewed as sufficient causes within this definition of determinism.
The issue of quantum indeterminism requires careful inspection because this principle is invoked in the Story and I will also apply to it in my analysis. Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle is a mathematical proof which demonstrates that, to quote Heisenberg’s 1927 paper on the subject, “the more precisely the position [of a subatomic particle] is determined, the less precisely the momentum is known, and vice versa.” I’ve added the bit about “of a subatomic particle,” and it’s an important distinction. Subatomic particles such as electrons and photons are not at all the same sort of beast as objects as we ordinarily think of ourselves as interacting with, billiard balls and such. In many ways their behavior is counterintuitive: they phase in and out of reality, act like a particle and then again act like a wave, appear to be two places at once when we’re not looking.
What Heisenberg’s proof demonstrates is that, when dealing with particles of a certain scale, by the mathematical definitions of position and momentum (mass times velocity), it is impossible to increase the precision (the scientifically defined certainty) of a measurement of the position of that particle without decreasing the precision of a simultaneous measurement of its mass and velocity, and vice versa.
An aside: I sincerely wish I could give Heisenberg a better showing here, as he gets dismissed a bit summarily in the Story. I can remember so clearly being taken through the derivation of his proof in physical chemistry, ten years ago now. I took a quick look at the math again in preparation of writing this and it is all, literally and figuratively, Greek to me now. But what I can remember is the overwhelming elegance and convincingness of this proof. So much so that even now, long past the two and a half years of intensive chemistry, physics and calculus that preceded that hour in the classroom, I am still utterly convinced of the reliability of Heisenberg’s assertion. It really had a profound effect on me: in fact, faced with the concrete evidence of the product of a true scientist, I was overwhelmed at that very moment with the sad knowledge that I would never be able to think quite like that. This may seem to have devolved into a maudlin personal digression, but I will in fact return to this incident to address a relevant point somewhat later on.
All that needs to be said here is that things stand, there is no valid scientific evidence to suggest that it is possible to exceed the limits of precision that Heisenberg demonstrated. However, the question of the implications of the Uncertainty Principle are still open to debate. Heisenberg himself believed that the inevitable conclusion of Uncertainty was that it was impossible to fully determine future outcomes of a system based on the scientific extrapolation of our knowledge of its current state. In his 1927 paper he wrote “in the sharp formulation of the law of causality - if we know the present exactly, we can calculate the future - it is not the conclusion that is wrong but the premise.” In other words, Heisenberg believed we could not accurately predict the total future because it is impossible to know with absolute precision the conditions of the present.
To take the implications of quantum uncertainty to another level, it is theorized that until we observe a quantum scale event, it actually exists in a indeterminate state - that is to say, it is not merely that it is either here or there but that we cannot know precisely which, but that it is truly neither here nor there - or, looked at another way, it is equally here and there. This is of course the basis of Schroedinger’s famous cat thought experiment. He invited the thinker to conceive of a situation where a cat was placed in a box with a device that was designed, based on the outcome of an indeterminable quantum event, to either release a poison that would kill the cat or leave the poison contained, so that the cat would live. His question: until we open the box, observing the outcome and forcing the indeterminate event to assume a particular outcome, does the cat in fact exist in an indeterminate state, both alive and dead, or perhaps neither? His purpose in proposing this consideration was actually to attack the suppositions of quantum uncertainty. Like Einstein, Schroedinger had grave misgivings about the assumption that the picture that quantum mechanics presented of the physical universe was truly representative of a fundamental understanding of universal laws.
What has been observed scientifically is that, if we construct an experiment that isolates a quantum scale event in which two equally probable but indeterminate outcomes are possible, but do not observe that event at its point of occurrence, we can experimentally observe, downstream as it were, the apparent effect of both outcomes as having occurred. This is strange and exceedingly difficult to understand, but it has been verified experimentally (rest assured that no cats were harmed in carrying out these experiments). This raises more questions than it answers, and unfortunately they tend towards the “tree falling in the woods” variety. Some scientists believe that, at the locus of every indeterminate quantum event, the universe divides into separate lines of probability, continuously evolving parallel worlds of increasingly divergent natures. There is not yet a general understanding of how the observable phenomena of the indeterminate events of quantum uncertainty fundamentally relate to the billiard-ball world of Newtonian physics.
Quantum mechanics cannot, then, provide us with physical laws that describe a precise outcome of particular events. What it does provide are functions that describe the probability for the occurrence of a variety of possible outcomes. It’s worth considering, in this context (and anticipating the later consideration of randomness), what is meant by probability. If we throw an unloaded die, we can safely assume that the probability of a particular number coming up is one in six. If we throw the die enough times, this can be demonstrated experimentally. All this definition really says is that the physical conditions of throwing the die (the shape and balance of the die, and the nature of the surface it is thrown on) do not favor any particular outcome. The statement of probability tells us nothing about the outcome of a particular throw: if you happen to have thrown a six several times in a row, the probability of throwing another six is still one in six - a fact that is lost on many an aficionado of the slot machine. The equations that define the scientific system of quantum mechanics are probabilistic in nature. For a given range of possible outcomes, they can say that one outcome is of a certain probability, and another is of an equal, greater, or lesser probability. They cannot predict the actual outcome in the particular although they can accurately predict the occurrence of a range of outcomes over a sufficient number of reiterations of the same situation.
Einstein, never completely on board with quantum mechanics, was particularly unsatisfied with the scientific understanding of the universe these quantum functions provided. Einstein saw science as a discipline devoted to understanding, on a fundamental level, how the universe worked, and not merely describing what it did. He saw the principle of quantum uncertainty and the probabilistic nature of quantum mechanics as a sign of its failure to pierce to the center of a complete scientific theory, to open, to put it one way, God’s toolbox. He expressed his famous doubt in a letter to Max Born, saying “the theory yields a lot but it hardly brings us any closer to the secret of the Old One. In any case I am convinced that He does not throw dice.”
Probability plays a significant role in a much newer brach of science as well: chaos theory. Since the issue of chaos and chaotic systems will come up in the analysis of the first picnic, and I will be using the terms chaos and chaotic in the sense of chaos theory, it is worth a quick review - although my understanding of this interesting branch of science is minimal. Chaos theory is, to quote one definition culled from that great dump of human thought, the internet, “the... study of unstable aperiodic behavior in deterministic dynamical systems.” That’s a mouthful, but what does it mean? Term by term, a fairly good definition of chaotic systems can be understood. Chaotic systems are unstable - meaning, they do not eventually reach a steady state of equilibrium. Chaotic systems are aperiodic - as they evolve, they never repeat the same pattern: in this sense they are inherently unpredictable, at least in an exact sense. Despite this, chaotic systems are deterministic - the conditions from which they evolve are determined by natural physical laws.
The classic example of a chaotic system is the aggregate of phenomena (and perennial source of conversation) we refer to as the weather. Of course, calling weather aperiodic seems to be stretching a point: after all, we observe the seasons in their course, and they occur, in our own little neck of the woods and in our limited time frame, with comfortable regularity. Despite this, from year to year the weather is never exactly the same, and we all know from experience that its prediction, by the relentlessly cheerful ranks of the television meteorologists, is as much art as science, and as much miss as hit.
If we attempt a classical model of the weather in the long term, by creating algorithms representing the conditions of convection and the cycles of evaporation and precipitation and such, and feed them into a computer and let it start cycling, what we find is that with each successive iteration the model departs more and more from the reality. Tiny sources of error recycle and compound and eventually result in results that are clearly wrong. Snow in Minnesota in July. Chaos. The lesson of this model has implications beyond the fact that Mr. Happy’s Monday forecast of Tuesday’s weather is no guarantee that your round of golf won’t be ruined by rain: it works in the other direction as well. Tiny (by our usual standards) effects can lead to massive causes: the classic example is that a butterfly flaps its wings in New Zealand and lo and behold, it starts snowing on a cool November evening in Minnesota.
So, a classical deterministic model (Newton’s billiards table again) fails us in chaotic systems. But what we find is that we can still carry out a probabilistic analysis of these systems that demonstrates their determinism: they have defined boundaries within limits defined by probability. It seems the best we can do at the moment, and Einstein is turning over in his grave.
So, is weather random? Ah, there’s the rub, because random is a term that is used freely and seldom defined. But when we use it we generally mean one of three things.
The first definition of random is a way of describing a system that is too complex to predict. We return again to casting a die, but for fun let’s make it two, and what’s more we’re at the gambling table in Monte Carlo, betting a bundle on six the hard way, trying to evolve a little financing for our Big Computer project, the faster to bring on the deterministic eschaton. We can assume, quantum uncertainty aside, that the dice, once they leave our hands, are in fact hurtling towards destiny on a strictly Newtonian course, their velocity and rotation determined at the moment we choose to stop shaking and toss, to hit at an angle a good enough computer could calculate, bounce as imperfectly elastic bodies on the felt, tumble through their deterministic courses, and come up - Snake Eyes! Damn the luck! - based on physical laws that need not apply to the ghost of Heisenberg for permission to wreck our plans for immortality. In this sense randomness is purely contextual: as meat computers riding around in (presumably well-dressed) bipedal apeman forms, we are unable to perform the delicate equations necessary to know how the dice will land. Iacta alea est: we take our toss and the House - which calculates its odds on the firm foundation of probability, rather than the tenuous strands of dreams - generally wins. The spirit is willing but the flesh simply can’t crunch the numbers.
The second definition of random is an event that is truly unpredictable in that it is not genuinely determined by causality. I would say that this definition is almost never used: we all believe, whether we apply to God or physics, that effects have causes, that everything happens for a reason (if not necessarily a good one). Between God, gods, Tao, the Life Force, the Force, Zoaraster, Allah, Jesus, Buddha, Vishnu, Newton, chemistry, evolution, psychology, politics, EST, social evolution, quantum mechanics and chaos theory, we do not lack for Reasons to explain, however imperfectly, the eventualities of our day to day. The points that all such explanations falter at is the extremes: what was the First Cause of the universe? Why is there Something instead of Nothing? God is silent and Lao Tse merely laughs: move on.
The third definition of randomness is an effect that occurs without meaning. This is deep and heady stuff. Our beloved, taking the trip to the mountain she always dreamed of, is crushed by a falling boulder. Random, meaningless tragedy. What do we mean by random? That the event, deterministic (the whistle of the sparrow made the grasshopper jump, made the pebble fall, made the rivulet of rainfall divide, eroded the soil under the boulder, and a cough made it all fall down) had an result (death, loss, grief, pain) that we cannot connect to what we consider as meaning (love, a life, plans, a future). Meaningless. The free radical sucks on to a strand of DNA and we get a cancer. Meaningless. The cell phone rings and a moment of inattention turns a car into a deadly weapon. Random. We seldom apply the definition to positive events, you’ll notice. The random bullet hits an innocent child, but seldom do we talk about the random catalog of events that resulted in Grandma living to the ripe old age of eighty-three. If we like the results it’s the way things ought to be. If we don’t, it’s random.
Enough said. My head hurts and I’m sure yours does too. Let’s have a picnic.
Pilgrim has been informed of his situation, as a conscious construct residing in a computer simulation. The purpose of his first picnic is to explain how this situation has come to be. In essence, the explanation is that the universe is wholly deterministic: in the context of the picnic conversation this is taken to mean that the universe is completely defined by physical laws, that there is only a single and inevitable effect for any given cause, and that the conditions that make up any given section of this deterministic universe can be fully comprehended by a mind (in this case, a computerized mind) of sufficient complexity and processing power, and extrapolated back to perfectly model the physical state of that section of the universe at any time in history. By the by Pilgrim is also informed that Heisenberg was right, as far as he went, in his presentation of uncertainty, but that his theory was incomplete because of the limitations of human mind and science, that the BC, in its current state, extrapolates only a (relatively) small component of the physical universe (our solar system, more or less), that one of the projects of the BC is to extrapolate variations on history as it happened based on the introduction of alternate historical influences, and that his (Pilgrim’s) mind is housed within a computer complex that takes up rather a lot of real estate - several orders of magnitude larger than his former corporeal form. Yasha (Pilgrim’s guide in his AllTime existence and our representative of the BC mind) also makes the rather astonishing comment that free will is not in conflict with the deterministic nature of the universe. I’ll examine each of these highlights in turn, but it is this latter point that will receive the most attention, and also serve as the context for airing out my previously mentioned sole objection to the characterization of Pilgrim’s post-mortem existence as equally (if not more) real as compared to his life as an organic being.
Clearly, the assertion of a deterministic universe is necessary for the BCH to work: if there is any essential component of the universe that cannot be explained then we cannot be extrapolated to exist in the Big Computer in the first place. Necessary, note, but not sufficient: it seems theoretically possible for the universe to be deterministic but not fundamentally knowable, by whatever agency. Nothing metaphysical and nothing random, by either my first or second definition, can exist in this presentation of reality. So far, there is nothing here that contradicts our scientific understanding of the universe as far as it goes.
Similarly, the BCH seems to require the elimination of Heisenberg’s indeterminate events. Otherwise, as Heisenberg asserted, the complete, current state of any part of the universe, however big or small, cannot be completely known. Here we run into a snag: quantum theory, as we understand it, tells us that indeterminate events do quite emphatically exist. Yasha, naturally, has an answer to this: Heisenberg’s brain was too small to see the big picture. Events only seem indeterminate: in reality, seen from the hyperdimensional perspective of the BC’s massive processing capability, seemingly indeterminate events are in fact deterministic and fully knowable.
It would seem at this point that my inarticulate explanations and defenses of the Uncertainty Principle were all for naught: I may have given Heisenberg a (slightly) better showing than Pilgrim did, but my arguments are just as inadequate as his in the face of the assertion of the superior science of the BC. I did have two points in reviewing Heisenberg and quantum mechanics, nonetheless. One I’ll reserve for later. The other is, perhaps, overkill in the service of making a single point, which is that at the point that the Better Science of the future computer mind is invoked in the Story, the ATO exits the realm of science and enters the realm of pure speculation. To my mind, this departure severely tests the assertion of the ATO to provide meaning without faith. A (currently) unprovable assertion is an unprovable assertion right now, and I question whether there is a qualitative difference between an assertion of faith in science and its capabilities and and assertion of faith in, for instance, God.
This being said, it is only fair to note that while currently unprovable, the assertion of a potentially complete science based in hyperdimensional theory is not unreasonable. There are unquestionable and quite serious gaps in our scientific understanding of the universe and the search of a so-called “Theory of Everything” or “Grand Unification Theory” to tie our various, incomplete understandings of the universe together proceeds apace. So it could be said that while this particular aspect of the ATO may not be fully consistent with our current understanding of science, it is still potentially consistent with the apparent trends in science that we can see at the present time.
These speculations, anyway, seem mainly lost on Pilgrim, who’s chief stumbling block to accepting his existence in the Big Computer seems to be one of scale. The world simply seems too big and too complex to exist as a simulation on any computer. This is where the limitations of the scope of the BC’s model of the universe and asides on the large scale of the structures that house Pilgrim’s consciousness come into play.
The assertion is made that the BC’s “vast calculating enterprise doesn’t have to take the whole of the universe into account from the beginning, except in a very generalised way.” The assumption here is that limiting the scope of the simulation makes it more realistically calculable. It is worth revisiting chaos theory at this point. The universe is unquestionably a chaotic entity, and life itself perhaps the most chaotic system of them all. Yasha asserts that by “nailing down two or three per cent of the flapping canvass soon... the whole deck is covered,” that is, that fully understanding a small part of the universe system allows the larger picture to be more easily defined. But it could be argued that chaos theory presents an opposing view. In a simulation as absolute and complex as the one presented in the ATO, the slightest error in any assumption (those generalised accountings of the whole of the universe, for example) would lead inevitably, butterfly wing-flapping-wise, to profound errors in the BC simulation.
Of course, these objections are all susceptible to the Better Science argument, and so perhaps must be dismissed. Several other more philosophical speculations arise from these considerations of scale, however. One is what might be called the mapping problem. That is, in theory, the perfect map would include even the slightest detail of the area it covers. Unfortunately, that map would then have to essentially be an exact replica of the geographical area itself, making it essentially unusable (not to mention impossible to fit in the glove-box). Really, I think this is an information theory problem, and unfortunately I don’t have the stuff to really address it, but it’s worth at least framing the question. The BC proposed in the ATO must, by necessity, completely model every single physical component of the portion of the universe it simulates. A completely accurate simulation is otherwise impossible. In this sense, every single thing in the universe - every atom, every photon, every electron-positron pair flashing briefly in and out of existence in the near vacuum, represents a piece of information. To be represented in a computer, these bits of information must require some amount of physical material to be processed, and it seems that that material must be more than the actual material representing the piece of information in the first place. The ATO hypothesis recognizes this reality in the assertion that the calculation enterprise required to host the BC mind, the earth simulation, and the various human intellect constructs it hosts requires the combined materials of ten solar systems.
But clearly there is, then, a theoretical limit to the potential of the BC. It cannot, ultimately, model the entire universe. This also raises some fascinating theoretical and ethical questions. For example, the voracious computer has, at the point we join the story, devoured the material of nearly a dozen suns in its quest for computational material. Could any of these suns at some point have sustained life? To know for certain, the BC would have to fully model those solar systems and extrapolate forward. But this is impossible, as another dozen solar systems would be required to model even a single sun’s systems, and so the problem simply compounds. Even if it understood fully the nature of life as it existed on earth, it seems possible that life of another nature or order might come to exist on the cosmic timescale that the BC, limited in a complete understanding to our own solar system, could not extrapolate. For that matter, what happens if the ATO BC encounters another solar system that is actually sustaining life? What happens if it encounters another Big Computer, evolved from another sentience in a galaxy far, far away? Do they link up and continue the project? The BC presented in the ATO seems essentially ethical and benign; let us hope that if it encounters another of its kind it will not be a nasty, self-centered computer that thinks that its project is the truly important one, and has gone to the trouble to arm itself just in case. In any event, given all these imponderables it seems like Errol’s (Errol is Pilgrims fellow construct and general ATO apologist in the Story) little experiments with history (what if Freud had access to Prozac?) seem an irresponsible use of processing power in light of all these potential complications. Which is just to say, the ATO may not be a religion, but it seems to me as anthropocentric as the crudest ancestor worship.
Maybe that’s overly judgmental, to the ATO and ancestor worship both, but it brings us back to the concept of cost, which I promised (way, way back when) to address at some point. Cost is a funny concept. Right now, for example, we invest very little (relatively speaking, and one of the confusions of cost is that it is always relative) in researching artificial intelligence. Ask your average dozen billionaires why and you would probably get some kind of canned statement to the effect that it is simply not efficient: the outcome is uncertain, the benefits unknown. Translation: I can make a helluva lot more money selling oil. Presumably nobody has told them about the AllTime Option. In the so-called “first world” our estimations of cost are based pretty much on the “market,” that ongoing shell game whereby we endlessly transact essentially worthless (but oh so politically important) representations of value, dollars, pounds, yen, futures on ounces of gold and barrels of oil. But under all of these equations are more fundamental issues of value: labor, limited resources, the value of human potential. Seldom do we really ponder these absolute limitations. But they exist: I can only run so far until I drop. My point is, one of the benefits the ATO implies is that many of the false costs of human potential could be eliminated by our existence in an ethically driven machine consciousness. But there are still absolute limits implied by any system that is limited by physical laws: limits on matter, energy and time. I would argue that the ATO errs on the side of the positive in the consideration of the benefits and limits of this theoretical state of being.
But really, all this is just preamble to my main issue. It is all more or less susceptible to the Better Science argument. For example, why should Pilgrim’s consciousness take up so much space? Human consciousness evolved “randomly” (for fun I’ll let you guess which definition I mean) from the process of evolution: a quantum computer might very well fit the whole shebang of one little old meat mind into a package you could fit in your pocket. So I’ll put these considerations aside. The thing I’ve been spoiling, lo these many pages, to address fits neatly into a package of two words: free will.
Yasha tells Pilgrim: “The bad news is that in fact the whole universe is totally deterministic. There is never ever ever an effect without a cause and no fully described distinct cause can have any effect other than the one that it does. There are no alternatives. The good news is that ultimately that is not in conflict with free will.”
I called this statement astonishing and I do not think this is hyperbole. It deserves further examination, which unfortunately it does not receive in the Story. In fact, it brings us to a fundamental issue of conflict that remains, as far as my own researches have allowed me to determine, absolutely unresolved in any strictly materialist worldview.
Remember my moment in physical chemistry class, wondering at the unique intellect that could evolve something like the concise and astonishing proof of the Uncertainty Principle? I had a realization, at that moment, that I did not posess that kind of mind. Maybe I was wrong, maybe I was right. But what is imporant in this recounting is that at that moment I made a decision: a decision that had been percolating under the surface of my mind, rarely fully examined, since I had started college. I decided that being a scientist was not the path I would pursue. Then and there. Up to that point, it was still an active consideration, though one I often doubted. That I would dedicate myself, my learning, my work and time, to the work of science. After that, though I would continue and complete my studies, though I would consider science jobs and work in fields and positions with components related to the work of a scientist, I no longer thought of that role as my path. I did not seek to enter higher education in science. I considered scientific work, after college, only for pragmatic concerns and felt no personal concern in the fact that most of the work I ended up doing had little, if anything, to do with science.
What happened there? The moment comprised a unique event. That classroom, the physical makeup of my mind, that moment in my life could, I believe, be described by a sufficiently powerful computer. The complete molecular composition of my brain, including its electrochemical encodings of all my memories and experiences. Photons streaming out of the flourescent fixtures, bouncing off lines of chalk on the blackboard and entering my pupils to excite my optic nerve. The content of chalk dust in the air. My professor’s voice, his vocal cords vibrating the air in compression waves that could be described exactly by complex equations, vibrating tiny bones in my ears. I considered things I knew. I considered things I had learned. I made, I would argue, a decision. Of my own free will, to coin a phrase. I will chase this grail no more. I must find a new path for myself.
Or did I? My question is this: is it really possible for free will, the ability to choose between different options, in a physical universe where “no fully described distinct cause can have any effect other than the one that it does”? Again, consider me in that classroom: Isolate that room, put it in a box and hook it up to the Big Computer. Freeze that moment in time and let the BC crunch the numbers. I would call that situation a “fully described distinct cause.” If there is only one possible effect to be described for the state my mind attained in that context, then where is the room for free will? There is a single option available to me. It can’t really even be called an option. That which must happen, happens. It was, in a word, determined, prefigured from the state of all things that had gone before.
This is not, I would argue, an arena where Better Science can get us off the hook. Science, as a discipline, guides our understanding of events in the physical universe as guided by principles, laws. We call them Laws as a metaphor: the assumption is that they cannot be transgressed. Pour hydrchloric acid into a beaker of sodium hydroxide in equal molecular ratios, and you end up with a beaker full of salt water, sodium and chlorine ions in a neutral solution. The beaker has no choice in the matter: the laws of thermodynamics insist upon this result. The beaker cannot decide that it does not feel like being salty at that particular moment, thank you very much.
Most people take it for granted that they have something called free will. We do not assume it to be absolute: for example, inasmuch as I imagine my free will to grant me power over the physical universe, I believe it is limited to the agency of my body, and even that is subject to physical limitations. I do not believe I can will myself to lift a jumbo jet over my head: the capacity of my muscles limits what I am capable of. It is recognized that things like addiction can impair or limit our ability to exercise our wills freely. We see some decisions as more difficult to make than others. And yet despite these limitations we believe that we have choices, options. We can choose to get up or to sleep in. We can choose one cereal box in the rather than another for our morning meal. If I ask you to choose a number between one and ten, chances are you believe without reservation that you have the full range of numbers available to you, and that the particular number you end up with is up to you.
This cannot be true within our current understanding of the scientific nature of the universe. Although many people don’t give it much consideration, the simple reality is that, to believe in free will, we must believe either that physical events as they occur in our minds and bodies are subject to different rules than chemical reactions in situations outside of them, or that all physical phenomena contain a component of free will that is not visibly exercised outside the context of living systems. Better Science will not make this problem go away: it requires a completely different science, a science that contains some type of force that can act on the ordinarily unwilled, scientifically destined physical universe as it exists within the confines of our flesh and cause a particular outcome - an outcome that is not preedetermined, that is in fact impossible to determine (if our belief in free will is correct). Hyperdimensional understanding will not change this situation, at least as it is envisioned in the Better Science context of the ATO. It is not a specific understanding or limitation but the very conceptual framework of science itself that contradicts the existence of free will.
As I say, I have yet to hear a reasonable materialist defense against this conumdrum. As far as my reason is able to determine, this existence of free will requires the existence of an agency that does not obey the principles of science. It requires the existence of something literally beyond the physical, and not just beyond the current, limited scientific understanding of it. It requires something that is able to transcend the physical. In a word, it requires the metaphysical.
As an aside, I’ll note that, as far as I see things, the problem of free will is one reason for keeping the understanding of quantum scale events that Heisenberg presented. If free will does in fact exist, the existence of undetermined physical events provides a phenomenological context where the metaphysical force of free will can theoretically act. I personally believe, and will continue to do so unless I am shown contrary evidence, that I carry out actions of free will be bringing some unknown force to bear on undetermined quantum events that exist within my body, events that go on to have effects on the atomic, then molecular, then cellular, then gross phsiological scale within my body.
A few more notes on the issue of free will, one of the two universally observable phenomena that science cannot, as I understand it, claim to be able to provide an explanation for, not simply because of its limitations but because of its fundamental nature.
The first regards this statement from the Story on the problem of free will. Yasha states:
“There had to be some other source of physical law that would authorise behaviour and events outside of determinism. The only piece to fit in that particular bit of the jigsaw was a god. Unfortunately, doing that made vast stretches of the rest of the jigsaw incomprehensible.”
I would argue that the first part of this statement is untrue. It is not necessary to conceive of any nocorporeal or supernatural being to explain free will, and in fact the concept of a god does not make free will itself any more comprehensible, although it does provide a potential context for the concept of ethics and morality within the framework of free will (these issues will get a fuller treatment in the second picnic). I also find the implication that the perception of free will is what leads to the concept of gods suspect. If there is evidence for this hypothesis, I have never been exposed to it. Finally, it is really not my intention to engage in apologetics or theodicy here, but I’ll note that the sentiment that a belief in God or gods inherently makes a scientific understanding of the physical universe incomprehensible is a debatable position that contains an implicit value judgement of a wide range of beliefs, including my own: the judgement that my beliefs are fundamentally an area where my ability to engage in critical inquiry somehow breaks down. In fact, beliefs of this sort have been and are held and rationally defended by a great number of highly rational individuals, and I include myself among them.
The exchange between Yasha and Pilgrim goes on: Pilgrim responds:
“That’s about it. We all drew some comfort from Heisenberg’s uncertainty Principle and the new theories of quantum mechanics, which seemed to allow for some undetermined events to take place.”
Yasha replies:
“A relief that was somewhat short lived. Showing that some subatomic events appeared to happen randomly didn’t in the end provide any satisfying basis for the glorification of free will. Random twitches of the brain instead of a steady flow of determined reason hardly seems a step in the right direction.”
Yasha’s statement of the conclusions of quantum mechanics is not accurate. Heisenberg demonstrated that some subatomic events can and do exist in an undetermined state. Furthermore, quantum mechanics does not demonstrate that any subatomic events occur randomly but that some subatomic events can be described withprobabalistic equations. These are two entirely different things. And while the situations Heisenberg described cannot explain free will, they can, as I argued before, provide a scientifically observable context in which free will could act. And while this is just my own little speculative jaunt, I would also argue that the apparently probabalistic nature of quantum events could provide a context where we could begin to understand the limitations of free will. If our free wills stand in opposition to the deterministic nature of the universe, and if they are mediated through quantum scale events, then the fact that some conclusions of these quantum scale events have a higher probability then others, and others are not possible within quantum theory, could explain why free will has both relative and absolute limitations. But again, some other agency that can act on these events is still required for free will to exist.
The astute may note I posited two universally observable phenomena that science cannot explain. I save the for last because it seems to me related to but distinct from free will, and because it is not really addressed in the Story. This second quality, which we all seem to posess, is self-awareness. And indeed, self-awareness seems a necessary precursor to the existence of free will. How can we have a choice without being aware of ourselves as beings within a situation of multiple options? Although Pilgrim frets some about whether he is “real,” this is never really an issue in the Story, and for a simple reason: the Story is told from Pilgrim’s point of view. His self-awareness is assumed and demonstrated from the beginning. The issue of whether Pilgrim, as a unique entity equivalent to his pre-mortem life, really exists within the BC would be quite a different one if we were allowed to observe his existence only from the outside. After all, in that case the “Pilgrim event” could be argued to simply be a profoundly complicated simulation with neither self-awareness nor free will. Recall that earlier I mentioned that I would set aside any objections to the reality of individual existence as a construct on the Big Computer except one. This is the crux of the unanswered question that I was foreshadowing. Can self-awareness and free will exist within an artificially constructed computer? The Story contains the assumption that it can. Many people hypothesisze that when a certain level of complexity or processing power or informational content exists in a system, these qualities will naturally appear. But at the moment there is really no evidence for this assumption. It can be argued that the observation of living systems gives evidence that these conditions are necessary for free will, but there is no reason to believe that they are sufficient.
2nd Picnic: This Is My AllTime, Given for the Remission of Sins
In his second picnic, Pilgrim is introduced to two new aspects of his situation in the AllTime computer. The first is a process he must undergo in order to be integrated as a fully participating part of the AllTime organism. After this he is given a taste of the nature of this fully integrated existence.
Yasha explains to Pilgrim that in his current state of existence, his being contains two varieties of “energy,” one type positive and consistent with the goals of the AllTime organism, the other negative, which must be absolutely excluded from integrating with the AllTime. Pilgrim is cautioned that while it is easy to correlate these “energies” to his concepts of good and evil, these correlations are not accurate, but that he is not yet equipped to comprehend the distinction. The negative “energy” is also correlated to the brutal aspects of the evolution of life on earth - the tendency of evolution to favor struggle, competition, selfishness, and tribalism. These tendencies are also presented as an explanation for suffering and “evil” in the world.
Pilgrim is then introduced to the process of expiation he must undergo to purge negative “energy” from his existence. The process consists of his being exposed to an intense scrutiny of the consequences of a negative action he was responsible for, a moment of aggressive driving that resulted in an accident. He experiences the consequences of this action through the viewpoints of all those who were affected by it, and also experiences the scrutiny of his own reactions and feelings about the incident by people who were close to him in his previous, earthly existence. The experience is painful and extremely difficult, and leaves Pilgrim sure that he could not possibly stand to undergo the experience over every negative action or thought his experience contains.
Pilgrim is then allowed a brief moment of experiencing the AllTime existence: he immerses himself into a pool, and in a brief moment experiences a taste of the full existence of the AllTime - complete and simultaneous access to his personal experience, the indescribable breadth and completeness of knowledge the AllTime computer posesses about the phenomenological universe. In the light of this experience Pilgrim realizes that he will choose to undergo the full and painful process of expiation, because the state it allows is so desirable.
So, the second picnic is really about morality and ethics, as well as a consideration of the potential glory that a fully ethical being (that is, in the language of the Story, one purged of all negative “energy”), could experience in the context of the overwhelming knowledge contained in an entity like the AllTime computer. It is a presentation that raises fascinating questions about the subject of ethics and morality, which will be the focus of my analysis. But I’ll begin with another story of my own.
A Materialist Explanation of Ethics.
This earth arose from the condensation of a cosmic event. Once a mass of superenergetic vapor, the earth cooled and condensed and became a cohesive unit, and over time life arose on it. Maybe life evolved from processes intrinsic to the earth, maybe it was seeded from outside the solar system, nobody knows for sure. In any event, particular types of molecular constructs occurred - constructs that tended to replicate themselves. Over unimaginably long geological stretches of time, these constructs - living organisms - evolved. The process of evolution was guided by selection - organisms that survived the most effectively managed to replicate themselves the most. Organisms changed - mutations in their replicating machinery resulted in progeny which were different from their parents. Some of the changes allowed these organisms to survive more effectively, and so were preserved and multiplied. Others made the organisms less able to survive, and so were wiped out by their failure to survive.
One of the adaptations that allowed organisms to survive more effectively was the evolution of increasingly complex systems that allowed observation and reaction to their environment. Sense organs and nervous systems allowed organisms to adapt to their immediate environment, to evolve patterns of reaction that favored survival, and so these adaptations were preserved and multiplied.
Sexual reproduction evolved, allowing the pace of evolution to increase by recombining the genetic material of disparate individual organisms, freeing the pace of evolution from merely internal mutations, and as nervous systems evolved, allowing organisms to store memories of effective survival behaviors and to develop communication behaviors that allowed them to pass these behaviors on to their offspring. In this context organisms evolved social behaviors. Living in herds, hunting in packs, social structures involving reproductive hierarchies evolved. In all cases the process of selection continued: some behaviors promoted survival, others mediated against it. The predisposition towards some behaviors was preserved in the genome, other behavioral tendencies were eliminated.
Evolution favored the devlopment of increasingly sophisticated nervous systems, which led in time to the existence of human beings. Social behaviors in these creatures reached new levels of complexity, variation, and historical scope in a single species. The level of cognitive abstraction allowed by the huge neural equipment of humans led to the ability to communicate through highly symbolic systems, and allowed humans to start creating sophisticated abstract systems for understanding the world they lived in. The combination of social and intellectual evolution allowed the human genome to be an exceptionally sucessful one, as they were able to modify and adapt to their environments to an unprecedented degree. At the same time, while behavioral and intellectual developments were driven on the ultimate level by selection, the abstract conceptual systems humans created allowed them to invent many different rationales for their behavior. Humans survived more easily in groups than alone, so behaviors that favored social stability (obedience to the dictates of leadership, decision by concensus, sexual mores, practices promoting collective empathy like rituals and storytelling, work ethics and practices) were favored, but the practitioners of these practices interpreted their behavior with theories as far flung as the dictates of imaginary transcendent beings and as mundane and unexamined as I am of this People and this is how we’ve Always Done Things. There was plenty of conflict between personal drives of reproduction, dominance, and sustenance and social drives of the survival of the species, and concepts like good and evil were created and invoked toattack some behaviors and ideas and defend others. But in fact, everything everyone did was a combination of basic animal genetics, with its usual relationship, sometimes a conflicted one, between individual and species survival, interacting with the complex but still selection-originated and driven social and intellectual structures and the immediate environment. And calling any particular behavior good or evil made about as much sense, from the viewpoint of actual, objective fact, as calling the moon or wind good or evil. The end.
Besides the fact that it assumes the common but nonetheless profound conceit that I could personally somehow stand outside of all the social and intellectual conventions I talk about so blithely, I’ll also note that theoretical pondering of this sort is not particularly scientific. Which is not to say it is not sensible or at least partially correct. But it is not properly science, at least by my definition. It is speculation which nods vaguely towards scientific theories like evolution and in so doing claims, debatably, kinship and identity with true scientific discipline.
But to me this is the least of my problems with this kind of materialistic explanation for the existence of concepts like morality. My primary objection is that I find it completely unsatisfying to my sense of moral truth (which I have no reason to regard as intrinsically less reliable than my perception of any other kind of truth) and completely useless in attempting to dictate any kind of standard for personal or social behavior. I find these objections vastly outweigh the value of the fact that I can more or less defend this analysis within science as I understand it and without recourse to any metaphysical concepts.
And now I’ll put that aside for a moment and talk a little bit about terms. It will be noticed that I carefully put “energy” in quotation marks whenever I discussed the word in the context of how it is invoked in the Story’s discussion of morality. I have two reasons for this. The first, and perhaps more justifiable, is to acknowledge the fact that the negative or positive “energy” accumulated through certain behaviors that the Story describes bares little if any relationship to energy as a scientific concept, which allows for a limited range of very precise if abstract definitions. My second motivation contains more than a modicum of rhetorical deviousness: my intention is to attack the way the Story (by my interpretation) is using the term energy.
There is a certain amount of discussion of the fact that Pilgrim is operating on interpretations of the ideas of “good” and “bad” or (I prefer) “evil,” and that these interpretations are relatable to the more accurate (in the context of the Story) concepts of negative and positive “energy,” (look, I’m still at it) but are ultimately incorrect. The Story doesn’t really go into what is wrong with Pilgrim’s old-time religion notions of good and evil, but in context I will take a stab at it and say that the basic problem is that these concepts appeal to the metaphysical - some type of dictated (as by a mystical being) or self-existant principle of how thinking, self-aware beings with free will should act.
The story also doesn’t have much to say about what the actual difference is between Pilgrim’s primitive notions of moral law and the BC’s sophisticated understanding of the “scientific“ dynamics of positive and negative “energy.” The stated reason for this is by now a familiar one: Pilgrim’s crummy little mind cannot, as things stand, comprehend the difference. It is only comprehensible within the Better Science of the BC, and as such cannot be fully grasped by the human mind.
I’ll give my opinion free reign for a moment, though, and suggest another explanation of the fundamental difference between these two presentations of morality (I say opinion because the explanation of this difference is notable in the story primarily through its absence): the Story’s explanation invokes the term “energy” and energy sounds scientific. The distinction is purely rhetorical. By any scientific understanding we currently have of the way our bodies, brains, minds, and societies function, as thermodynamic events in a largely lifeless universe, the concept of morality is purely metaphysical. In fact the concept of what is moral exists by virtue of the fact that it is assumed to transcend the merely physical in our understanding of the motivations of behavior. If a person is hungry they will eat if they can; this is genetically driven survival behavior and requires no moral judgement. But if a grown man steals bread from a child in order to eat, this would be considered by most to be immoral. Avoiding the destructive energy of fire is a simple survival tactic that can be seen in even very simple organisms, yet if someone braves a burning building to save another’s life she is thought to be courageous, a moral judgement.
And here we’re getting to my fundamental thesis as to my reservations about the ideas presented in the ATO. The human intellect has created, for as long as we have records and certainly much longer than that, explanations of the meaning underlying our existences. These explanations encompass the phenomena of the physical universe, from its uncertain origins to its presumed eventual demise and everything in between, the origins of our conciousnesses and will, and the basis of our behavior. Science and abstract reasoning have corrected many aspects of our understanding of the former and made it far more sophisticated, but it has barely scratched the surface of these latter issues. The origin of consciousness, the nature of free will, and the basis of morality are concepts that we can address only from the context of the metaphysical. This begs the question, will it always be so? This is a fascinating question, and I value the fact that the Story exhibits the chutzpa to take it on - because it represents a break in our various understandings of how things work and why things are that is more often than not ignored as faithfully by the most dogmatic True Believers of whatever as it is by the strictes materialist scientists, and just about everyone in between. As to my opinions, vague and dim as they may be, as to what science may eventually have to say about my self-aware, willful, morally driven existance, I’ll ponder in my analysis of the final picnic. But I will say again, that inasmuch as the Story exposes these ideas and through the theory of the ATO offers many novel thoughts on what it all might mean, it is a genuinely worthwhile thing.
Be this as it may, I must return to my central contention: that if we are to reject the existence of things that can only be described as metaphysical, then we cannot address the issues of consciousness, free will, or morality. We have no basis for these ideas in a purely physical, causal understanding of reality. Biology, physics, chemistry and evolution tell us something about ourselves, that we are composed of energetic interactions of particles, and gives us some understanding how seemingly lifeless, will-less, amoral and unconscious compositions of energetic particles might develop into the beings we are. But it tells us almost nothing about how and why it is that the beings we are do in fact exhibit consciousness, free will and moral awareness. My materialstic explanation of morality, unscientific though it may be, appeals not at all to metaphysical concepts - and it is completely useless and unsatisfying. It is tempting to get rid of the metaphysical because it seems to eliminate a broad area of ideas that we seem terminally unable to agree upon, and in the name of which we commit, with depressing regularity, quite horrific acts against one another.
But I think that if we do try to eliminate the metaphysical we impoverish the potential for our discourse and self-exploration to a degree that is unnacceptable, particularly when there is ample evidence that we are perfectly capable of being vile to one another without the crutch of religious, mystical or metaphysical beliefs to justify our actions. There is a G. K. Chesterton quote that I think is more relevant in these times than ever:
“We are convinced that theories do not matter... Never has there been so little discussion about the nature of men as now, when, for the first time, anyone can discuss it... Good taste, the last and vilest of human superstitions, has succeeded in silencing us where all the rest have failed. Sixty years ago it was bad taste to be an avowed atheist... now it is equally bad taste to be an avowed Christian. But there are some people nevertheless - and I am one of them - who think that the most important thing about man is still his view of the universe... We think the question is not whether the theory of the cosmos affects matters, but whether, in the long run, anything else affects them.”
I do not think that the fundamental spirit of the ATO is in conflict with these sentiments: quite the opposite, in fact. But I think that it is better to call a spade a spade. It is better to accept that the questions of the origin and nature of the conscious mind, the conflict and potential of a free will (whatever its limitations) in an apparently materialistic and deterministic universe, and the moral basis for the way we choose to live our lives are questions that we cannot appeal to science or logic alone to answer, that require the use of inward vision, of our (I believe) universal ability to perceive things that are metaphysical in nature, and indeed what I can only call faith, if we are to make any progress in understanding ourselves and one another.
That sermon being done, there are a few novel aspects of the morality and process of expiation in the Story that are deserving of comment, more in the realm of observation than of critique.
One thing that fascinates me is that ultimately the morality that is presented in the Story is of a rather broader scope than is generally encountered. For one thing, it is applied to all levels of life - “the spider will make amends to the fly,” asserts Yasha - at least it will if it wants to participate in the AllTime. It raises interesting questions about the basis of morality, in that I tend to hold the spider blameless for the flies it eats because it doesn’t seem to have much choice in the arrangement - as an aside I would question the statement by Yasha that “intentionality would not be a factor among plant life...” If there is any scale of will and intention in living things then I would think that plants would have their modicum, however small. Another example of this breadth of scope is that fantasies and thoughts are held to have a real moral weight, though perhaps generally less than that of what we actively commit. Of course this is not without basis in more conventional moralities, in fact the story makes a reference to Christ’s contention that to think “impure thoughts” about another is to commit “moral adultery” (I’ll indulge myself in a pedantic Christian aside and note that while this idea is sometimes invoked as a sort of goad to “supermorality” and an indictment of impure thoughts, that in its context in the Gospel the point Jesus is making is meant to indict the legalistic morality and self-proclaimed moral superiority of some of his opponents). But the majority of people, myself included, would be rather uncomfortable with the idea of having to face up to all the moral implications of the contents of our thoughts, a fact recognized in the Story in Pilgrim’s vehement objections to the concept.
Another notable thing is that the process of expiation is painful and unpleasant. Rather a purgatorial experience, one might say. I couldn’t help but wonder, why couldn’t the BC painlessly, invisibly realign the “energies” of Pilgrim’s mind as it corrected the bodily “sickness” that his physical self-perception entered the AllTime existence with? Since it is all just speculation and theory, why not make it easier? Not that I have any objection to the idea. But it is interesting to note that even when we have purged morality of the concepts of good and evil and rejected the crude punishment and revenge ethic of a certain variety of hellfire and brimstone theology, there is still this sense that overcoming and rejecting the negative in ourselves must by nature require suffering.
And since suffering certainly seems to be an unavoidable aspect of existence, it is comforting to think that perhaps, at least on some levels and in some circumstances, it is good for something. But the questions of “purpose and ultimate destiny” belong to the third picnic, which is our next destination.
3rd Picnic: For Now We See As Through a Glass, Darkly...
1. Does the ATO provide a scenario that is consistent with our current scientific understanding?
2. Does the ATO eliminate the necessity for metaphysical considerations in the consideration of meaning?
3. Does the ATO live up to its claim to provide meaning without faith?
4. Is the BCH genuinely a necessary component of the fundamental eschatology presented by the ATO?
There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle.
The other is as though everything is a miracle.
-Albert Einstein
this is what is up with this.
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