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Encouraging a Positive Transcension
(Ben Goertzel, February 17, 2004)
[COMMENT: What follows is only a small portion of this thought-provoking essay, which is well-documented with numerous references. We highly recommend reading the entire article, which is available via the above link.]

This essay is relatively brief, but its theme extremely large: how to manage the development of technology and society, in the near to mid-term future, in such a way as to maximize the odds of a positive long-term future for the universe. . . . My conclusions are uncertain, but bold. I believe that the era of humanity as the “Kings of the Earth” is almost inevitably coming to an end. Unless we bomb or otherwise destroy ourselves back into the Stone Age or into oblivion, we are going to be sharing our region of the universe with powerful AI minds of one form or another. Potentially depending on decisions we make in the near or moderately near future, this may or may not lead to a fundamental alteration in the nature of conscious experience in our neck of the woods: a Transcension. And this may or may not lead to the demise of humanity – which may or may not be a terrible thing. . . . I conclude that there are two strong options going forward, which I associate with the catch-phrases “AI Buddha” and “AI Big Brother.” . . . The basic idea of the Singularity is that, at some point, the advance of technology will become (from a human perspective) essentially infinitely rapid, thus bringing a fundamental change in the nature of life and mind. A key aspect of the Singularity concept is technological acceleration. . . . Another aspect of the Singularity idea is psychological: the Singularity is envisioned as a radical transition in the nature of experience, not just technology. . . . When civilization and language and rational thought emerged, the nature of human experience changed radically. Or, to put it another way, the “human experience” as we now know it emerged from the experience of proto-human animals. . . . But there is no good reason to believe that the emergence of the modern human mind is the end state of the evolution of psyche. Indeed, the rub is this: While evolution might take millions of years to generate another psychological sea change as dramatic as the emergence of modern humanity, technology may do the job much more expediently. The technological Singularity can be expected to induce rapid and dramatic change in the nature of life, mind and experience. . . . That’s Singularity; what about Transcension? The basic idea of the Transcension is that at some point, the advance of technology will bring about a fundamental change in the nature of life and mind. The difference is that a Transcension can occur even if there is no exponential or superexponential growth in technology. It could occur, eventually, even with a linear or logarithmic advance in technology. . . . In fact, it seems quite possible that actions we take now may play a major role in shaping the nature of this nebulous-state-to-come, this post-Transcension, post-human order of being. . . . there is nothing close to agreement on what it means for a post-Transcension world to be a “good” one. . . . For Eliezer Yudkowsky, the preservation of “humaneness” is of primary importance. . . . On the other hand, Ray Kurzweil seems to downplay the radical nature of the Singularity – leading up to, but not quite drawing, the conclusion that the nature of mind and being will be totally altered by the advent of technologies like AGI and MNT. . . . he’s quite concerned to encourage ordinary non-techno-futurist people not to be afraid of the beckoning changes. . . . Thinking about the post-Transcension universe pushes one to develop ethical value-systems that are both extremely general and reasonably clear. . . . There may be many different value-systems of this nature; here I will discuss several of them, and their interrelationship . . . a Principle of Voluntary Joyous Growth, i.e. Maximize happiness, growth and choice . . . This means adopting as an important value the idea that sentient beings should be allowed to choose their own destiny. For example, they should be allowed to choose unhappiness or stagnation over happiness and growth. . . . Voluntary Joyous Growth is not a simple goal, because it involves three different factors which may contradict each other, and which therefore need to be weighted and moderated. This complexity may be seen as unfortunate – or it may be seen as making the ethical principle into a more subtle, intricate and fascinating attractor of the universe. . . . I should note that my goal in positing “Voluntary Joyous Growth” has been to articulate a minimal set of ethical principles. These are certainly not the only qualities that I consider important. . . . I think that belief in God -- though it has some valuable spiritual intuitions at its core -– is essentially ethically undesirable. Nearly all ethical systems containing this belief have had overwhelming negative aspects, in my view. Thus, I consider it my ethical responsibility to work so that belief in God is not projected beyond the human race into any AGI's we may create. . . . So, in sum, the difficulties with Humane AI are 1. The difficulty of defining humane-ness 2. The presence of delusions that I judge ethically undesirable, in the near-consensus worldview of humanity . . . The second point here may seem bizarrely egomaniacal – who am I to judge the vast mass of humanity as being ethically wrong on major points? And yet, it has to be observed that the vast mass of humanity has shifted its ethical beliefs many times over history. . . . My hypothesis is that an AGI beginning with Voluntary Joyous Growth as a guiding principle is more likely to help humanity along a path of increasing wisdom and humane-ness than an AGI beginning with current human nature as a guiding principle. . . . (As an aside, it is clearly no coincidence that the Principle of Voluntary Joyous Growth harmonizes better with modern urban American ethics than with the ethics of many other contemporary cultures. More so than, say, Arabia or China or the Mbuti pygmies, American culture is focused on individual choice, progress and hedonism. And so, I’m aware that as a modern American writing about Voluntary Joyous Growth, I’m projecting the nature of my own particular culture onto the transhuman future. On the other hand, it’s not a coincidence that America and relatively culturally similar places are the ones doing most of the work leading toward the Transcension. Perhaps it is sensible that the cultures most directly leading to the Transcension should have the most post-Transcension-friendly philosophies.) . . . One thing this discussion brings to mind is Nietzsche’s discussion of “a good death.” Nietzsche pointed out that human deaths are usually pathetic because people don’t know when and how to die. He proposed that a truly mature and powerful mind would choose his time to die and make his death as wonderful and beautiful as his life. . . . Counterbalancing the beauty of the Friendly AI notion with its quixotic quest to preserve humanity at all costs in contradiction to the universal pattern of progress, one has the hyperreal Nietzschean beauty of humanity dying a good death – recognizing that its time has come, because it has brilliantly and dangerously obsoleted itself. One might call this form of beauty the “Tao of Speciecide” – the wisdom of a species (or other form of life) recognizing that its existence has reached a natural end and choosing to end itself gracefully. As Nietzsche’s Zarathustra said, “Man is something to be overcome.” . . . It’s an interesting question whether speciecide contradicts the universal-attractor nature of Compassion. Under the Voluntary Joyous Growth principle, it’s not favored to extinguish beings without their permission. But if a species wants to annihilate itself, because it feels its mass-energy can be used for something better, then it’s perfectly Compassionate to allow it to do so. . . . Of course, I am being intentionally outrageous here – in my heart I don’t want to see the human race self-annihilate just to fulfill some Nietzschean notion of beauty, or to make room for more intelligent beings, or for any other reason. I have a tremendous affection for us hypercerebrated ape-beings. I am pursuing this line of discussion mainly to provide a counterbalance to what I see as an overemphasis on “human-friendliness” and human-preservation. Preserving and nurturing and growing humanity is an important point, but not the only point. To understand the Transcension with the maximum clarity our limited human brains allow, we need to think and feel more broadly. . . . I can see beauty in both of these extremes – Friendly AI and the Tao of Speciecide -- and I am not overwhelmingly attracted to either of them. . . . I think it’s clear that, as soon as AGI comes about, it will radically transform the future development course of all other technologies. Furthermore, these other technologies – if their development initially goes more rapidly than AGI – are likely to rapidly lead to the development of AGI, so that their final development will likely be a matter of AGI-human collaboration. Suppose, for example, that molecular nanotechnology comes about before AGI. One of the many interesting things to do with MNT will be to create extremely powerful hardware to support AGI; and once AGI is built it will lead to vast new developments in MNT, biotechnology, AGI and other areas. Or, suppose that human biological understanding and genetic engineering advance much faster than AGI. Then, with a detailed understanding of the human brain, it should be possible to create software or hardware closely emulating human intelligence – and then improve on human intelligence in this digital form … thus leading to powerful AGI. I have a suspicion that MNT or biotech will lead to AGI capabilities before they will lead to AGI-independent Singularity-launching capabilities … though of course I’m well aware this suspicion could be wrong. . . . In fact, my suspicion is that the only way to make a Singularity Steward entity actually work would be to supply it with an AGI brain – though not necessarily an AGI brain bent on growth or self-improvement. Rather, one can envision an AGI system programmed with a goal of preserving the human condition roughly as-is, perhaps with local improvements (like decreasing the incidence of disease and starvation, extending life, etc.). This AGI – “AI Big Brother” aka the “Singularity Steward” -- would have to be significantly smarter than humans, at least in some ways. However, it wouldn’t need to be autonomous – in fact, it’s natural for this entity to depend on humans for its survival. . . . This steward AGI would need to be a wizard at analyzing massive amounts of surveillance data and figuring out who’s plotting against the established order, and who’s engaged in thought processes that might lead to the development and deployment of dangerous technologies. Perhaps, together with human scientists, it would figure out how to scan human brains worldwide in real-time to prevent not only murderous thoughts, but also thoughts regarding the development of molecular assemblers or self-modifying AI’s, or the creation of beings with intelligence competitive with that of the steward itself. . . . The problem of engineering a Singularity Steward AGI is rather different from the problem of engineering an AI intended to shepherd human minds through the Transcension. In the AI Big Brother case, one doesn’t want the AI to be self-modifying and self-improving – one wants it to remain stable. This is a much easier problem! One needs to make it a bit smarter than humans, but not too much – and one needs to give it a goal system focused on letting itself and humans remain as much the same as possible. The Singularity Steward should want to increase its own intelligence only in the presence of some external threat like an alien invasion. . . . This AI Big Brother option is not terribly appealing to me personally, because it grates too harshly against my values of growth, choice and happiness. However, I respect it as a logical and consistent possibility, which seems plausibly achievable based on an objective analysis of the situation we confront. And I can see that it may well be the best option, if we can’t quickly enough arrive at a confident, fully-fleshed-out theory regarding the likely outcome of iterated self-improvement in AGI systems. . . . In fact – Orwellian associations notwithstanding -- a Singularity-Steward-dominated society could potentially be a human utopia. Careful development of technology aimed at making human life easier – cheap power and food, effective medical care, and so forth – could enable the complete rearrangement of human society. Perhaps Earth could be covered by a set of small city-states, each one populated by like-minded individuals, living in a style of their choice. Liberated from economic need, and protected by the Steward from assault by nature or other humans, the humans under the Steward’s watch could live far more happily than in any prior human society. Free will, within the restrictions imposed by the Steward, could be refined and exercised copiously, perhaps in the manner of Buddhist “mind control.” And growth could occur spectacularly in non-dangerous directions, such as mathematics, music and art. . . . Encouraging a Positive Transcension . . . How then do we encourage a positive Transcension? Based on the considerations I’ve reviewed above, there seem to be two plausible options, summarized by the tongue-in-cheek slogan AI Buddha versus AI Big Brother . . . Or, less sensationalistically rendered: AI-Enforced Cautious Developmentalism versus AI-Driven Aggressive Transcension Pursuit . . . As noted above, I emotionally prefer the more aggressive approach. However, it’s possible that research into AGI during the next years or (if it takes that long) decades may change my mind and convince me of the value of a more conservative, Cautious Developmentalist approach. After all, before going the aggressive route, one wants to be awfully sure of one’s approach to Transcension-spawning AGI. . . . After significant reflection, my own vote is for the Principle of Voluntary Joyous Growth. Of course, I hope that others will come to similar conclusions – and I’ll do my best to convince them… both of the rational point that this sort of principle is relatively likely to survive the Transcension, and of the human point that this principle captures much of what is really good, wonderful and important about human nature. If we leave the universe – or a big portion of it -- with a legacy of voluntary joyous growth, this is a lot more important than whether or not the human race as such continues for millions of years. At least, this is the case according to my own value system – a value system that values humanity greatly, but not primarily because humans have two legs, two eyes, two hands, vaginas and penises, biceps and breasts and two cerebral hemispheres full of neurons with combinatory and topographic connections. I have immense affection for human creations like literature, mathematics, music and art; and for human emotions like love and wonder and excitement; and human relationships and cultural institutions … families, couples, rock bands, research teams. But what are most important about humanity are not these often-beautiful particulars, but the joy, the growth and the freedom that these particulars express – in other words, the way humanity expresses principles that are powerful universal attractors. At any rate, these are the human thoughts and feelings that lead me to feel the way I do about the best course toward the transhuman world. Let’s do our best to make the freedom to be human survive the Transcension – but most of all, let’s do our best to make it so that the universal properties and principles that make humanity wonderful survive and flourish in the “post-Transcension universe” … whatever this barely-conceivable hypothetical entity turns out to be….

posted by Lorenzo 12:12 PM

 

What a technological Singularity may mean
While evolution might take millions of years to generate another psychological sea change as dramatic as the emergence of modern humanity, technology may do the job much more expediently. The technological Singularity can be expected to induce rapid and dramatic change in the nature of life, mind and experience.
-- Ben Goertzel

posted by Lorenzo 5:02 PM

 

Marijuana Eases HIV-Related Nerve Pain
(Reuters, 12 February 2004)
For people with nerve damage that can result from HIV infection, smoking marijuana seems to relieve the pain they experience, according to the results of a small pilot study.. . . Diffuse nerve pain, or polyneuropathy, is a significant problem for many people with HIV infection. Pre-clinical research findings suggest that cannabis-like compounds may be effective for treating neuropathic pain, Dr. Cheryl Jay of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues noted this week at the 11th Annual Retrovirus Conference. . . . In a trial, 16 HIV-infected subjects with neuropathy were given three marijuana cigarettes each day for seven days. The cigarettes were dispensed by the pharmacy at San Francisco General Hospital. All of the patients reported previous experience smoking marijuana but had not done so for 30 days prior to the trial. . . . Fourteen of the participants were men, and their average age was 43 years. They had had neuropathy for an average of 6 years. . . . Reductions in pain were assessed using a 0-to-100 visual scale. The aim was to achieve a 30 percent reduction in average daily pain, "which is a pretty typical standard used in pain studies, and is considered a clinically meaningful amount of pain relief," Jay told Reuters Health. . . . Average pain scores dropped from 47 at the start of the study to 20 at the end of the seven-day period. Twelve of the 16 participants reached the 30-percent goal in reduction of pain, Jay said. . . . A trial with participants randomized to receive marijuana or an inactive placebo has now been started, she added, and 20 out of 50 participants have been enrolled so far.

posted by Lorenzo 4:27 PM

 

A new galaxy that may have helped awaken the universe
(Peter N. Spotts, Christian Science Monitor, February 17, 2004)
A team of astronomers from the US, France, and Britain announced on Sunday that it had discovered what looks to be a small galaxy some 13 billion light-years away - the most distant galaxy yet detected. And it appears to have been forming massive first-generation stars at a furious pace. . . . This, researchers say, suggests that this object and others like it may have played a key role in awakening the universe from its "dark ages" - a period when the young universe was filled with primordial hydrogen but no stars. Even when new stars did ignite their fusion furnaces, the light was obscured by a dense fog of neutral atoms until enough stars and protogalaxies evolved to ionize atoms and let light pass. . . . The new galaxy is unusual compared with its more mature counterparts, including those experiencing intense star formation . . . With an estimated diameter of some 3,900 light-years, the young galaxy would fit comfortably within the Milky Way, whose disk stretches some 120,000 light-years across. Yet it is forming stars from 10 to 50 times as quickly as the Milky Way . . . the galaxy's great distance means that it is speeding away from earthbound observers as the universe continues to expand. At 13 billion light-years distant, the speeds are so great than radiation emitted within the new galaxy as ultraviolet light is "stretched" to much longer infrared wavelengths by the time it reaches Earth.

posted by Lorenzo 2:35 PM

 

Dark side of creation, what is the universe is made of?
(Tim Radford, The Guardian, February 12, 2004)
Good news: cosmologists know what the universe is made of. And the bad news? Most of it is truly indescribable. And scientists still know absolutely nothing about it. . . . All the stars in all the galaxies - and planets, comets, asteroids, minerals, life forms and so on - across more than 13bn light years of space add up to only a tiny fraction of the whole shebang. Almost a quarter of the remainder is now called cold dark matter, mysterious heavyweight stuff that emits no light and leaves no bruises. You cannot see, touch or bump into it. But it must be there. . . . The remaining three-quarters of the universe is something even more puzzling. Cosmologists call it vacuum energy, quintessence, or dark energy. These are only names. They know what it does - it has antigravity and makes the universe expand ever faster - but they do not know what it is. . . . In a nutshell, the universe is 4% visible, 23% undetectable and 73% unimaginable. Welcome to the cosmos, full of mass you can measure but not manhandle, driven by a force you can infer but not explain. Scientists at last know the facts. The paradox is that they don't know much about the facts. . . . The hunt for the dark side of creation began with Albert Einstein, who produced a notional antigravity to "fudge" his equations for general relativity to explain why the universe was static, when his calculations said it ought to be collapsing. He later described this fudge factor as his "greatest mistake": because it turned out that the universe was expanding. Galaxies were flying away from each other, and the furthest away were receding fastest. That left huge questions. Was there a beginning, and if so, when? Why did stars appear? Would the universe expand forever? Was the expansion slowing down with time? Why did stars form in galaxies? Why did galaxies form into clusters, and clusters into super clusters? . . . The puzzle is that the universe looks almost entirely empty. Smear all the stuff in the heavens - 200 billion galaxies at least, each of 200 billion stars - evenly across the universe and you end up with one hydrogen atom every five cubic metres. This is not nearly enough to explain why the heavens are full of stars. So there had to be some invisible glue holding matter in its celestial formations. . . . An American called Michael Turner of Chicago dubbed vacuum energy "dark energy" in 1997. In 1998, astronomers in Australia and elsewhere announced that the most distant supernovae were far further away than predicted. It was as if the universe was expanding faster and faster or gravity was being overcome by antigravity. Things started to fall into place: satellites had begun to peer into space to detect wrinkles in spacetime recorded in the faintest embers of the Big Bang. Balloon soundings in Antarctica and other sky surveys had begun to match the evidence with the theory. By the turn of the millennium, dark energy was firmly on the cosmological agenda. Scientists could put a value on the cosmological constant and then work out the rate of expansion. They could begin to figure out a fairly accurate age for the universe, and values for the quantities of atomic matter, dark matter and dark or vacuum energy. . . . "Think of some poor soul who died in the trenches in 1914," says Peacock. "Basically we knew nothing about the universe then, we didn't even know that galaxies were made of stars. We didn't know the universe was an expanding system, how old the universe was, what was in it and so on. That guy died just a few years from the one time in human history when basically all these questions were settled. . . . "We should not get bigheaded. We only understand a small fraction of things about the universe, but you could say there was only a small fraction we were capable of understanding. And, on that restricted list, we have worked our way through a good bit of it. "

posted by Lorenzo 10:54 AM

 

Scientists Discover A New Form of Matter
(NASA, February 12, 2004)
We learned it in grade school. There are three forms of matter: solids, liquids and gases. . . . But that's not even half right. There are at least six: solids, liquids, gases, plasmas, Bose-Einstein condensates, and a new form of matter called "fermionic condensates" just discovered by NASA-supported researchers. . . . Most second graders can recite the properties of ordinary solids, liquids, and gases. Solids resist deformation. They're stiff and they can crumble. Liquids flow, they're hard to compress, and they assume the shape of their container. Gases are less dense, they're easy to compress, and they not only assume the shape of their container ... they expand to completely fill it. . . . The fourth form of matter, the plasma, is gas-like, made of atoms that have been ripped apart into ions and electrons. The sun is made of plasma, as is most of the matter in the universe. Plasmas are usually very hot, and you can keep them in magnetic bottles. . . . The fifth form, the Bose-Einstein condensate (BEC), discovered in 1995, appears when scientists refrigerate particles called bosons to very low temperatures. Cold bosons merge to form a single super-particle that's more like a wave than an ordinary speck of matter. BECs are fragile, and light travels very slowly through them. . . . Now we have fermionic condensates--so new that most of their basic properties are unknown. Certainly they're cold. Jin created the substance by cooling a cloud of 500,000 potassium-40 atoms to less than a millionth of a degree above absolute zero. And they probably flow without viscosity. Beyond that...? Researchers are still learning. . . . "When you find a new form of matter," notes Jin, "it takes a while to understand it."

[COMMENT: The link above provides additional scientific detail about this new form of matter.]

posted by Lorenzo 1:42 PM