The Singularity Is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology (71 page)

I do believe that we humans will come to accept that nonbiological entities are conscious, because ultimately the nonbiological entities will have all the subtle cues that humans currently possess and that we associate with emotional and other subjective experiences. Still, while we will be able to verify the subtle cues, we will have no direct access to the implied consciousness.

I will acknowledge that many of you do seem conscious to me, but I should not be too quick to accept this impression. Perhaps I am really living in a simulation, and you are all part of it.

Or, perhaps it’s only my memories of you that exist, and these actual experiences never took place.

Or maybe I am only now experiencing the sensation of recalling apparent memories, but neither the experience nor the memories really exist. Well, you see the problem.

Despite these dilemmas my personal philosophy remains based on patternism—I am principally a pattern that persists in time. I am an evolving pattern, and I can influence the course of the evolution of my pattern. Knowledge is a pattern, as distinguished from mere information, and losing knowledge is a profound loss. Thus, losing a person is the ultimate loss.

M
OLLY
2004:
As far as I’m concerned, who I am is pretty straightforward—it’s basically this brain and body, which at least this month is in pretty good shape, thank you
.

R
AY
:
Are you including the food in your digestive tract, in its various stages of decomposition along the way?

M
OLLY
2004:
Okay, you can exclude that. Some of it will become me, but it hasn’t been enrolled yet in the “part of Molly” club
.

R
AY
:
Well, 90 percent of the cells in your body don’t have your DNA
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Is that so? Just whose DNA is it, then?

R
AY
:
Biological humans have about ten trillion cells with their own DNA, but there are about one hundred trillion microorganisms in the digestive tract, basically bacteria
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Doesn’t sound very appealing. Are they entirely necessary?

R
AY
:
They’re actually part of the society of cells that makes Molly alive and thriving. You couldn’t survive without healthy gut bacteria. Assuming your intestinal flora are in good balance, they’re necessary for your well-being
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Okay, but I wouldn’t count them as me. There are lots of things that my well-being depends on. Like my house and my car, but I still don’t count them as part of me
.

R
AY
:
Very well, it’s reasonable to leave out the entire contents of the GI tract, bacteria and all. That’s actually how the body sees it. Even though it’s physically inside the body, the body considers the tract to be external and carefully screens what it absorbs into the bloodstream
.

M
OLLY
2004:
As I think more about who I am, I kind of like Jaron Lanier’s “circle of empathy.”

R
AY
:
Tell me more
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Basically, the circle of reality that I consider to be “me” is not clearcut. It’s not simply my body. I have limited identification with, say, my toes and, after our last discussion, even less with the contents of my large intestine
.

R
AY
:
That’s reasonable, and even with regard to our brains we are aware of only a tiny portion of what goes on in there
.

M
OLLY
2004:
It’s true that there are parts of my brain that seem to be somebody else, or at least somewhere else. Often, thoughts and dreams that intrude on
my awareness seem to have come from some foreign place. They’re obviously coming from my brain, but it doesn’t seem that way
.

R
AY
:
Conversely, loved ones who are physically separate may be so close as to seem to be part of ourselves
.

M
OLLY
2004:
The boundary of myself is seeming less and less clear
.

R
AY
:
Well, just wait until we’re predominantly nonbiological. Then we’ll be able to merge our thoughts and thinking at will, so finding boundaries will be even more difficult
.

M
OLLY
2004:
That actually sounds kind of appealing. You know, some Buddhist philosophies emphasize the extent to which there is inherently no boundary at all between us
.

R
AY
:
Sounds like they’re talking about the Singularity
.

The Singularity as Transcendence

Modernity sees humanity as having ascended from what is inferior to it—life begins in slime and ends in intelligence—whereas traditional cultures see it as descended from its superiors. As the anthropologist Marshall Sahlins puts the matter: “We are the only people who assume that we have ascended from apes. Everybody else takes it for granted that they are descended from gods.”

                   —H
USTON
S
MITH
¹⁶

Some philosophers hold that philosophy is what you do to a problem until it’s clear enough to solve it by doing science. Others hold that if a philosophical problem succumbs to empirical methods, that shows it wasn’t really philosophical to begin with.

                   —J
ERRY
A. F
ODOR
¹⁷

The Singularity denotes an event that will take place in the material world, the inevitable next step in the evolutionary process that started with biological evolution and has extended through human-directed technological evolution. However, it is precisely in the world of matter and energy that we encounter transcendence, a principal connotation of what people refer to as spirituality. Let’s consider the nature of spirituality in the physical world.

Where shall I start? How about with water? It’s simple enough, but consider the diverse and beautiful ways it manifests itself: the endlessly varying patterns as it cascades past rocks in a stream, then surges chaotically down a waterfall (all viewable from my office window, incidentally); the billowing patterns of
clouds in the sky; the arrangement of snow on a mountain; the satisfying design of a single snowflake. Or consider Einstein’s description of the entangled order and disorder in a glass of water (that is, his thesis on Brownian motion).

Or elsewhere in the biological world, consider the intricate dance of spirals of DNA during mitosis. How about the loveliness of a tree as it bends in the wind and its leaves churn in a tangled dance? Or the bustling world we see in a microscope? There’s transcendence everywhere.

A comment on the word “transcendence” is in order here. “To transcend” means “to go beyond,” but this need not compel us to adopt an ornate dualist view that regards transcendent levels of reality (such as the spiritual level) to be not of this world. We can “go beyond” the “ordinary” powers of the material world through the power of patterns. Although I have been called a materialist, I regard myself as a “patternist.” It’s through the emergent powers of the pattern that we transcend. Since the material stuff of which we are made turns over quickly, it is the transcendent power of our patterns that persists.

The power of patterns to endure goes beyond explicitly self-replicating systems, such as organisms and self-replicating technology. It is the persistence and power of patterns that support life and intelligence. The pattern is far more important than the material stuff that constitutes it.

Random strokes on a canvas are just paint. But when arranged in just the right way, they transcend the material stuff and become art. Random notes are just sounds. Sequenced in an “inspired” way, we have music. A pile of components is just an inventory. Ordered in an innovative manner, and perhaps with the addition of some software (another pattern), we have the “magic” (transcendence) of technology.

Although some regard what is referred to as “spiritual” as the true meaning of transcendence, transcendence refers to all levels of reality: the creations of the natural world, including ourselves, as well as our own creations in the form of art, culture, technology, and emotional and spiritual expression. Evolution concerns patterns, and it is specifically the depth and order of patterns that grow in an evolutionary process. As a consummation of the evolution in our midst, the Singularity will deepen all of these manifestations of transcendence.

Another connotation of the word “spiritual” is “containing spirit,” which is to say being conscious. Consciousness—the seat of “personalness”—is regarded as what is real in many philosophical and religious traditions. A common Buddhist ontology considers subjective—conscious—experience as the ultimate reality, rather than physical or objective phenomena, which are considered
maya
(illusion).

The arguments I make in this book with regard to consciousness are for the purpose of illustrating this vexing and paradoxical (and, therefore, profound) nature of consciousness: how one set of assumptions (that is, that a copy of my mind file either shares or does not share my consciousness) leads ultimately to an opposite view, and vice versa.

We do assume that humans are conscious, at least when they appear to be. At the other end of the spectrum we assume that simple machines are not. In the cosmological sense the contemporary universe acts more like a simple machine than a conscious being. But as we discussed in the previous chapter, the matter and energy in our vicinity will become infused with the intelligence, knowledge, creativity, beauty, and emotional intelligence (the ability to love, for example) of our human-machine civilization. Our civilization will then expand outward, turning all the dumb matter and energy we encounter into sublimely intelligent—transcendent—matter and energy. So in a sense, we can say that the Singularity will ultimately infuse the universe with spirit.

Evolution moves toward greater complexity, greater elegance, greater knowledge, greater intelligence, greater beauty, greater creativity, and greater levels of subtle attributes such as love. In every monotheistic tradition God is likewise described as all of these qualities, only without any limitation: infinite knowledge, infinite intelligence, infinite beauty, infinite creativity, infinite love, and so on. Of course, even the accelerating growth of evolution never achieves an infinite level, but as it explodes exponentially it certainly moves rapidly in that direction. So evolution moves inexorably toward this conception of God, although never quite reaching this ideal. We can regard, therefore, the freeing of our thinking from the severe limitations of its biological form to be an essentially spiritual undertaking.

M
OLLY
2004:
So, do you believe in God?

R
AY
:
Well, it’s a three-letter word—and a powerful meme
.

M
OLLY
2004:
I realize the word and the idea exist. But does it refer to anything that you believe in?

R
AY
:
People mean lots of things by it
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Do you believe in those things?

R
AY
:
It’s not possible to believe all these things: God is an all-powerful conscious person looking over us, making deals, and getting angry quite a bit. Or He—It—is a pervasive life force underlying all beauty and creativity. Or God created everything and then stepped back
. . . .

M
OLLY
2004:
I understand, but do you believe in any of them?

R
AY
:
I believe that the universe exists
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Now wait a minute, that’s not a belief, that’s a scientific fact
.

R
AY
:
Actually, I don’t know for sure that anything exists other than my own thoughts
.

M
OLLY
2004:
Okay, I understand that this is the philosophy chapter, but you can read scientific papers—thousands of them—that corroborate the existence of stars and galaxies. So, all those galaxies—we call that the universe
.

R
AY
:
Yes, I’ve heard of that, and I do recall reading some of these papers, but I don’t know that those papers really exist, or that the things they refer to really exist, other than in my thoughts
.

M
OLLY
2004:
So you don’t acknowledge the existence of the universe?

R
AY
:
No, I just said that I do believe that it exists, but I’m pointing out that it’s a belief. That’s my personal leap of faith
.