Emortalism 102
Meaning, Context, Identity, Sex and Other Curiosities.
After wading through endless philosophical waffle about what ‘meaning’ means, and finding mostly the usual circular definitions and the equally ubiquitous panoply of jargon (a.k.a. ‘yuk-speak’), I finally, some ten years ago, came to terms with the word; maybe not in a philosophical sense but on a personal level. As a result and to introduce the subject, let me start off this article by taking a swing at another bit of immortalist hype: we can, in principle, and in due course in practice as well, ‘download’ whatever constitutes our ‘mind’ into another computational medium but the human brain.
It’s crap. It won’t happen. It can’t happen: not even in principle. Even the functionalist persuasion of cognitive philosophers wouldn’t really believe it, if only they thought about what they’re saying for more than a nanosecond. The same, by the way, goes for the cryonics crowd. The notion of ‘restarting’ a brain or ‘mind’ after freezing is fantasy. You might be able to ‘restart’ a frozen nematode or even a frog (I forgot the species), but, let’s face it, you have no way to figure out if, insofar as a worm or a frog can be said to have a ‘mind’, resumption of biological functioning and/or cognitive operations (defecate, hump or get humped, identify food and catch, etc) is actually any indication at all of continuity of whatever may have been or now constitutes the creature’s ‘identity’.
Why is ‘mind downloading’ nonsense?
First of all, let’s be clear about the basic assumptions underlying this truly idiotic notion. (Sorry, but ‘idiotic’ is the minimal attribute I can think of. Nothing else even comes close.)
1) A ‘mind’ and its current ‘state’ can be sufficiently and essentially ‘completely’ described by a set of physical state descriptors.
2) The complete set of descriptors can, even in principle, be stored in any appropriate computational medium, even if that medium is not a human brain.
3) The complete set of descriptors can, even in principle, be transferred into any computational medium that is functionally equivalent to the human brain and ‘run’ in that medium without loss of whatever qualifies as the ‘identity’ of the mind thus ‘transferred’.
The three items are listed in order of logical dependence; meaning that if 1 isn’t true then 2 & 3 of the others cannot be true, and if 2 is not then 3 can’t.
Let’s look at 1 and start with what we think of a ‘mind’. Here’s another killer , of course, because nobody knows; or, to be more precise, everybody thinks they kind-of know—sort of, maybe, possibly…
In lieu of such knowledge, which nobody has, it’s much easier to define what ‘mind’ is, which is, of course, exactly what the computer-phile transhumanists do. They define the mind—and anything associated with it, like ‘identity’, ‘consciousness’ and so on—as the current functional state of the human brain. If this were so, then, in principle it could be ‘described’ by reference to the complete physical state-parameters of the brain, right?
No. Not even then.
[Sidebar: (skip over this until later, if you want to follow the original train of thought!)
I’ll leave out what you might call the ‘technical’ issues involved in transcribing into any computational medium the preposterously complex state spaces mapped out not only by the neural network in our heads, but also by the additional state-spaces—of unknown dimensionality, and we don’t even begin to have a notion of their complexity!—mapped out by the biochemical and electrical environment in our heads. These technical issues alone are so huge as to be, for all practical purposes and a very long time to come, insurmountable. Add to that another factor, namely that the functionality of the human mind is also determined by the precise mechanics of the system within which it operates, this is the brain and the body.
“Ah,” say the transhumanists, “but you forget that we are trying to overcome those limitations. We want to be faster, more efficient, less error-prone and so on.”
Why thank you for mentioning it, because you help me to make my point—which is that indeed such a transplanted mind will definitely not be human, but a mere parody. A faster, more efficient, etc parody, but still a parody. The question then is: ‘If whatever constitutes your ‘self’ were transferred into such an environment and the moment it was switched on, would ‘you’ still be ‘you’ or just the parody?’
End of Sidebar.]
The problems with defining what ‘mind’ (‘self’, ‘consciousness’, ‘identity’) actually ‘is’ is that it is not just probably but certainly incomplete, possibly fatally so. I don’t think that even transhumanists believe for a moment that what they propose is true. For any transhumanist who thinks different, let me propose the following thought experiment:
Suppose (as is in principle possible, though the technology will have to wait a bit) that you were selected as a subject for ‘quantum teleportation’. That’s the closest thing you’ll come to a Star Trek ‘transporter’ device.
The thing will work like this:
You’ll be subjected to a ‘scan’ that completely gathers all information about the state of your physical body: every atom, to within the limits of uncertainty principle, will be recorded and the information about its states stored somewhere. Then this information will be transmitted to somewhere else using some nifty technology, where a ‘reconstruction device’ will take that information and reconstruct a complete likeness of you.
Assume the device has been tested on other humans. Assume you’ve spoken to such ‘transported’ humans, and found that they appear, indeed to be the ones that went into the ‘transmitter’.
It’s your turn now.
The catch? Well, in order not to overpopulate the Earth and to avoid administrative problems and all that, the person that goes in to the ‘transmitter’ has to be annihilated. In fact that’s what’s done: before they start scanning, just so you hold still and all that, they anaesthetize you, so your reproduced self comes out anaesthetized as well, and that makes everything nice and symmetrical. Your body on the transmitting table, now surplus, will be consigned to a recycling bin, where they mash it up and re-use the materials for reconstituting someone else who is sent the other way. Gotta get the raw materials from somewhere, right?
So hands up who would go into that transmitter and allow himself to be ‘put under’! Any ‘transhumanists’ who don’t should probably declare themselves as cured of transhuman predilections as of this moment. I mean, if you can’t even be happy with having your body copied to the last decimal place, then how could you ever suggest that a measly subset of it, the ‘mind’, which you obviously consider simple enough to claim that you have even the remotest understanding of it, could be transferred into a computer.
Who had their hands up?
I thought so…
Next question: apart from just not wanting to be shown up as having taken a really stupid position with regards to their understanding of their humanity or what they want from it…who of you actually means it?
Even if someone could make a perfect copy of you, would that copy be really you?
That’s the question we’re asking here, and I suppose the more simple-minded would nod eagerly (though I’d still like to see them vote with their feet and go into that transmitter chamber!), because, after all, a perfect copy of a program is still the same program, right?
Right.
So what are we forgetting?
Two things: ‘continuity’ and ‘context’.
‘Continuity’ means temporal-spatial ‘uninterruptedness’. It means that though, if you, say, took snapshots of a person one year apart, it would be true that they are indeed physically and mentally very different from the person they were before, the fact is that from one instant to another and from one spatial location to another the changes in them are essentially incremental, in such a way that a perceptual notion of ‘continuity’ is preserved. This may not be true, of course, if, say, we were anaesthetized—and indeed there’s nothing in the world that could prove to us that the person waking us is really still really the same person that went under the anesthetic; which is probably the reason why most people feel basically uncomfortable about being ‘put under’. It could even be argued that it happens in sleep all the time, so what’s the problem? Should you stop sleeping?
But the fact is that all the available evidence points to continuity of existence throughout sleep, continuity of mental processes (just not necessarily ‘conscious’) and of the body. A sleeping person, though they may not consciously know it, still feel the world around them through their sensory apparatus, and I suspect that, though only subconsciously, they are aware of their continued existence—which is why nobody seems to be unduly disturbed by going to sleep. The same may apply to periods of unconsciousness caused by other agencies: trauma, anesthesia, temporary cessation of cardiac function, etc.
This however does not apply to the ‘transfer’ of minds, or even ‘transporter- like devices. There is a true discontinuity of existence here, and this is equivalent to death, at least in my book—and, I suspect, secretly in the ‘books’ of most wannabe transhumanists, too.
Then there is that vexed issue of ‘context’, which is related to ‘continuity’ in some respects, though its significance is much vaster.
Think of ‘context’ as the ‘environment of existence’ of whatever it is you’re talking about. In the human case that’s first of all the brain/body complex—and not just the perceived body but the actual constraints imposed on the mind by being associated intimately with a body!—and then what you might call ‘the world’ around us. Contrary to popular and a lot of addle-minded academic thinking the mind–body–external-world context is not something that can be separated. The mental is supervenient on the physical and vice versa, and there is actually no definite barrier between mind and body and world.
[Sidebar: If you don’t believe me, try to find the barrier, the dividing line between your ‘inside’ and what’s ‘outside’. You think maybe the senses are? Fine, then tell me where, say in the visual system, in the path from external world to your ‘inner’, cognitive universe is the barrier? At the lens? The retina? The optic nerve? Visual cortex? Where? Or, show me one single thought of yours that is not referenced or linked in some way to some aspect of your body-sense or symbols or representations that relate to external-world percepts! Meditators often claim they do, of course, but some probing usually reveals their folly.]
The point is that Mind is defined by its context. Change the context and you change the mind. The individual human mind is defined to a great degree by the structure of the brain, which in turn maps huge areas onto what you might call a ‘body image’ and the mind exists within —‘is’?—that context, distributed all over the system. Take away the context and you may still have something qualifying as a ‘mind’ and maybe even a fairly extensive set of ‘memories’, but it’s definitely not ‘human’ anymore. Nor is it contiguous to or continuous with the mind which it purports to ‘be’. Therefore it’s not the ‘same’ mind, and if someone performs the transfer of his human mind into that other context and then kills himself, he is indeed dead. What remains is a caricature; possibly ‘enhanced’, but who cares?
Is even a perfect copy the same as the original? Go figure. I don’t think so, for the reasons briefly touched upon above.
And so we come back to ‘meaning’.
Thought I’d lost the plot there? I haven’t. It all started with ‘meaning’—and now we’ve finally come back to it. Because, when all is said and done and all the philosophical waffle has been dealt with, this is what we end up with:
‘Meaning’ is ‘context’. It’s just a word we pin onto our perception of what we experience when we become, probably subliminally, aware of our ‘setting’. ‘Meaning’ increases with the strength and number of the links, ties, bonds, connections with and to everything else. Meaning is at its lowest when we are isolated, and it is at its highest when we are completely ‘involved’ in (meaning ‘connected to’, ‘tied to’) something (another person, religion, any cause), and the more involved we are the ‘deeper’ and more intense the experience of ‘meaning’. Like everything else, there is, however an optimal balance. The much-vaunted ‘middle way’ if you will. Too much or too little meaning and we become moderately to severely dysfunctional in either direction. Just the right amount and we function optimally.
The best ‘dose’ of meaning will vary from person to person. However, except in very unusual circumstances and with very unusual people, there is an ‘optimal dose’—with some latitude for deviation, of course.
What’s it all ‘mean’—for emortalists especially?
It implies that we have to learn to find our optimal level of ‘meaningfulness’, that what is suitable for a mortal of the currently-standard life-spans will have to be completely re-evaluated. Because, as I’ve said before, it’s quite possible for your average mortalist to spend a whole life in the kind of imbalanced existence that many are prone to: selfish, narrow-minded, religiously bigoted, couch-potatoed, game-playing, opportunist—or totally devoted to others or a ‘life for God’ or something along those lines, with nary a thought for ‘self’ (except that I suspect a lot of God-devotees think a lot about ‘self’ indeed…). The ones all bunched up, afraid of connecting to the larger context; the others all connected up everywhere, too afraid to connect with themselves.
The mind/body can bear these excesses for a time: maybe for long enough to see a person through their three-score-and-ten years—but for an emortal the situation is different. Any imbalance will ultimately either tip into the opposite or ultimately become fatal. I confidently predict an epidemic of suicides maybe a century or so after emortalist treatment first becomes available. The emortals who remain will be those who have found their right level, their middle-path, their balance between selfishness and involvement in the ‘bigger picture’.
And now to sex. (This is what you all have been waiting for, yes?)
W.B.Yeats wrote: "There are really only two subjects worthy of serious consideration: Sex and Death."
Behind this flippant remark hides a profound truth: that among the contextual elements that define us as human beings two stand out: our sexuality and our mortality, though possibly in reverse order.
I think we all understand the ‘mortality’ aspect, but maybe immortalists are apt to forget what it implies: that if we cease to be mortal we will cease to be human.
Hold it! What I did not say was: ‘If we become emortal we cease to be human.’
We’re talking about two different things here. There is a difference between ‘being immortal’ and ‘having to get old and die on schedule’ (that’s being ‘emortal’). I think everybody reading this is aware of it, so I won’t dwell on the issue.
The ‘emortal’ partially sidesteps the issue of losing a part of her humanity by remaining ‘mortal’ in the sense that death may still strike and that indeed, one can never be sure whether there really will be a tomorrow—though one can be reasonably certain that, if one doesn’t want to get old and die, one is under no pressure to do so. In another context this kind of longevity was called ‘relative immortality’ (‘relative Unsterblichkeit’).
Is there value in retaining at least a part of this aspect of our ‘humanity’? It’s a matter of choice. I think it is, but I appreciate that others don’t. I guess I’m not by inclination ‘transhuman’. I like the limitations of my current humanity, because, apart from my mortality, I’m actually happy being what I am. This appears to be in contrast to a lot of wannabe immortals, who are obviously thoroughly dissatisfied with their humanity (and their current lives for that matter.
We may aspire to the same kinds of goals, but apart from that, end even with respect to what we actually want, we’re complete strangers. I realize that, even if I live to be 1,000, it will be in a body that can be destroyed—and I with it. I like that idea. It keeps me grounded. It keeps me focused. It keeps me human. Emortal-human maybe, but human nonetheless. It also keeps me in empathy with other humans, which to me, at least, matters.
Sex: the other ‘basic parameter’ of the human equation. Sex like humans do it (bizarre as some practices may be), not like a computer may simulate it. Not even the ‘enhanced’ version. Sex that occasionally doesn’t come off quite as good as other times, with ups and downs and real highs and lows, too.
But, of course, even sex isn’t going to be the same anymore, is it? It’s linked inextricably to pair-bonding, which, to most people on Earth, cutting across all cultures to varying degrees, means bonding-for-life. Which currently means, say, 75 years max, if you live long enough.
[Sidebar: I know that this isn’t really happening any more. Let’s face it, the divorce rate in most Western countries is 50% or so, and in the Muslim realm we have the bizarre situation where men, many of which regard women as pleasure-generating and child bearing objects anyway, can ‘divorce’ their spouses at a moment’s notice and without much ado and no recourse by the woman. Still, in the ‘Western’ world at least the romantic, and religious, ideal is marriage for the rest of your ‘natural’ life.]
Problem is, what happens when you live to 750? You may be able to endure your spouse for a few decades and, after all, you also may hold to him or her because of the kids and you’re-both-getting-older-and-who-else-would-want-you, and other motives decidedly unromantic. A ‘bearable’ spouse for a few decades may become insufferable for longer—probably will more often than not. Besides, evolution hasn’t equipped us for ‘love’ beyond a limited amount of time. Statistics show that, now that religious shackles are weaking, we’re not talking about decades any more either. A few years at best.
It doesn’t take a futurologist to see where this is going with emortalism coming along. A major wrenching of our sexual ethics is unavoidable—and the only writer I know who has tackled this repeatedly and with determination is Robert Heinlein. Every other writer of ‘the future’ I know of or have read, has carefully skirted the subject or made it into a minor issue among others.
It isn’t. It’s important. Our definition of ‘human-ness’ will stand and fall largely on how we deal with this change in the sexual parameters of the human equation. And it’s not some woolly far-out thing like minds-in-computers, but it’s actually here. We just don’t know it yet—but every human being alive now and in a ‘long-term relationship’ with another, and old enough to make it through the mortality-barrier, will have to face this. They may not be thinking about it now, but it’s coming: like it or not. So, you budding emortals, look at your significant others and think of what it means for your relationship that either or both of you may live to be 1,000…
[Sidebar:
It goes without saying that those who have no relationship of any significance with another human being seemingly don’t have to worry about this kind of thing. This appears to suggest that maybe emortals are better off without profound involvements of this kind. It might be easier to treat relationships like the computer-games they play, or whatever amuses them.
Anybody coming to that conclusion and taking it seriously, in my eyes at least, qualifies as a ‘loser’, and I make no apologies for it. I don’t doubt though that there will be aplenty of them. Those who follow through with this approach will, I predict, be among the major wave of emortal suicides sometime during the 22nd century.]
Conclusion:
About me:
I hate this. I really do. And I, for one, actually mean it. I’d like people to listen to what I say, not spend too much time looking at who I am. That’s one reason why I like writing fiction—telling stories, that is: because people listen to the story, rather than wondering what the storyteller’s love-life is like. That’s why I write scripts and direct movies, but don’t act in them.
However, with all the issues I’ve so-far heaped on readers of these articles, they might start to wonder why I want to be emortal at all. Don’t I make it sound like it was more of a bother than a boon?
By no means.
It all started when I was, I suppose, about six years old. It can’t have been much before that because children usually can’t remember much further back. But it was on the threshold of me becoming a thinking human being.
I had what amounts to a revelation: a sudden rush of comprehension—triggered by I know not what—of what it actually meant that I would have to die one day; to cease to exist; to be extinguished; to lose that precious existence I felt I had (and still do).
My parents didn’t help. They probably didn’t even understand what was happening. Not that I think they could have helped.
This insight into the finality of personal extinction has remained with me since then. In the end, in 1974 I came across Alan Harringtons The Immortalist, and it was like ‘of course!’ I’d known it all the time. How could I not. It was so obvious, so utterly obvious…
But it didn’t stop there. I’m not a hermit and I had and still have a ‘life’. I’m not a lunatic either. Having discovered what I wanted, I thought about what I could do about it, and decided to veer away from Astrophysics, into biophysics and medical computing and related things. I also always wanted to be a writer, so that was another angle. I would tell people about why it made sense to want to live forever.
It wasn’t easy, and indeed it didn’t work out that way. I roamed across a wide philosophical and occasionally religious landscape, decided pretty much on what was what and what was bullshit (it’s not that difficult, actually), and kept my eye on scientific developments. Meanwhile I married and had a family. My daughters are now grown up. They’ve lived all their lives with a father who made no bones about wanting to live forever. We don’t talk about it much: they know it’s a dicey and socially not quite acceptable subject, and besides, what’s the point of talking to people who don’t want to listen. “Trying to save someone from their own stupidity is like trying to teach a pig how to dance: it wastes your time, and annoys the pig,” wrote RAH and I concur wholeheartedly.
My motives for wanting to stay alive have expanded as I gained a sense of perspective with the passing years. The fundamental impetus has not changed: I still know the terror of what it means to understand ‘personal extinction’; still, in the dark hours of the occasional night feel it touch me again.
But now there’s much more. I want to see my children live, and their children, and I want the whole damn human race to live, and I’d like to be there to help it make it through whatever comes. That starts with making sure that we maintain and improve our level of ‘civilization’, don’t screw up our spaceship, and don’t allow barbarians who live in the middle-ages to destroy centuries of progress. It extends to the need to get the human race—or at least a significant part of it—off the planet, because, sooner or later, there will be something that’ll wipe out everything we’ve done. A comet, an asteroid, the sun, an alien species, whatever. We need to anticipate this and take our eggs out of a single basket.
I think the introduction of emortality and the accompanying future-consciousness will be the most hopeful thing that’s ever happened to the species: as we stop thinking two days ahead, and instead think ‘centuries’, and as we stop thinking ‘me’ or ‘my tribe’ and have the time to think of ‘my species’, ‘my people’, ‘my kind’, ‘my hope’.
Extending the threads and bonds of ‘meaning’; balancing our personal and the larger context. And the ‘larger context’ is everybody else on the planet. I don’t know what I can do about it or what I can contribute. But I’d like to be around and lend a hand and something will come up. It always does.
But one thing’s for sure: it’s got to be about more than me.
In the next and probably last article: Scenarios.
