Where Is My Mind?

The Turing test is a proposal for a test of a machine's capability to demonstrate thought. A human judge engages in a natural language conversation with two other parties, one a human and the other a machine; if the judge cannot reliably tell which is which, then the machine is said to pass the test.

The way I see it, there are two ways to build a computer that can pass this test. The first way is to understand each one of the brain’s functionality and implement it by software. This means we must fully comprehend each aspect of human thinking in order to copy these successfully and fool the judge that the computer he’s talking to is actually a human. I don’t know why, but it seems all the A.I. scientists are trying to go this way when it’s clear we will need a full understanding of human psychology, logic, emotions, humor, etc. Seems like passing a Turing test this way is centuries away.

The other method is to focus on how a single brain cell works and interact with other brain cells, and then simply scan a human brain in great detail and recreate the whole neural network in software code. This seems to me like a much easier task since we don’t actually have to understand how humans think. We already understand pretty well how a neuron works and the mechanism behind brain cells interaction, so I think it can be achieved in a few decades. One problem with this method is that it may be necessary to slice the brain to small pieces while scanning, meaning the physical scanned human will be killed, but I’m sure there will be plenty of volunteers. Think about it, moving from a carbon-based existence to a silicon-based implementation will make you almost immortal; no aging, no diseases, no car accidents, and you will always be able to backup your brain somewhere and restore it if needed. In addition to that you will have many extra bonuses like almost infinite number of virtual worlds to visit, lightning-fast thinking and more. I believe in a few decades, many people, myself included, will take this leap into virtual-only existence on a hard disk and live in a matrix-like world - probably on some Google hosting server :-)

While uploading the human society, will we take the opportunity to omit old “negative” human behaviors like aggression that was once necessary for human carbon-based biological evolution on Earth, in order to create a “better” human civilization? I don’t think a scanned human will agree that a good-behavior-only filter will be applied to his personality while uploading it because it won’t be exactly him anymore, so it seems like our new society will be just as good (and bad) as the current one. So what will we do with all this virtual aggression? How about nuking you, the original human society… The existence of a physical civilization outside of our Google server will jeopardize us virtual inhabitants (somebody can push the “off” button on the server), so it’s only a matter of time when we (the virtual people) will try and destroy you (the physical people). Since us virtual humans will control every computer in the world and will be able to make decisions and take actions in a matter of nanoseconds – I’m afraid that if you won’t agree to give up your physical existence and join us - you’re doomed. Sorry, get uploaded or be terminated. Resistance is futile.

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p.s. Can the second guy on the moon gloat over the third tenor?

If God Was a Tiny Purple Simulated Armadillo, Would You Still Go to Church?

If this universe is just a computer simulation (read this), then somebody programmed it.

It could have been a man, a woman, some advanced A.I. software, a very impressive chimpanzee, or more likely, a tiny pink dotted purple armadillo that loves ice skating on Tuesday nights and dislikes small talk with eels.

Would you consider this armadillo as God? Would you still go to church / synagogue / mosque / temple?

He coded and created all these wonders you see around you, and he can move you to the recycle bin by drag-and-drop if he’s bored, or even shift-delete this entire universe. He may be just a small armored mammal, but he is certainly all-knowing and all-powerful in our world.

Does the fact that he’s mortal (and purple) in his own universe matter? What qualifies an entity as God? Are you the God of the characters in your SimCity?

If his universe is also simulated by a higher level world, does that change the picture? Must God (if exists) reside only on the top level real (not simulated) world, or is he allowed to live somewhere lower down the simulated world tree? And even if God exists on the top level real world, don’t you agree someone from within a system cannot know the entire system from within? Does that forces God to live as a sole entity one level above the top level real world? Is that even possible?

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p.s. I love my kid; sometimes even when he’s awake.

Red or Blue? - Is Free Will Just an Illusion?

Choose a pill, red or blue. Picked one? Great! I guess you believe you could have picked any color you like, right? I don’t. I don’t believe in free will.

Causal determinism claims that future events are necessitated by past and present events combined with the laws of nature. In principle, if I would to know all the facts about the past, the present, and all the natural laws that govern the universe, I would be able to use this knowledge in order to foresee the future, down to the smallest detail. The illusion of free will emerges from the interaction of finite rules and deterministic parameters that generate something that looks like infinite and unpredictable behaviour. Yet, if all these events were accounted for, and there was a known way to evaluate these events, the seemingly unpredictable behaviour would become predictable. In this case, if I was able to map your brain to the smallest detail a few seconds before you picked your color, I could have known your choice even before you made it.

If the casual determinism argument haven't convinced you there is no free will, how about this: There are several experiments (like Benjamin Libet's experiments) regarding the build-up of electrical brain signal called the readiness potential. These tests demonstrate that unconscious brain activity is leading up to the conscious decision, about half a second later. In other words, your subconscious is actually choosing, and your conscious decision making is just an illusion, just a retrospection, an attempt to rationally justify the choice made by your subconscious. So... No free will for you! Come back one year!

But if there is no free will, how can a person be responsible for his acts? How can we send a murderer to prison when we know his subconscious made the choice for him? Well, I think we can. First, it does not matter if this killer is responsible for his decision. The fact is that his mind reached the point where murder seems like a possible solution to a problem. This is one dangerous brain walking around, so it should be locked up. Second, by putting this man behind bars, it will make other brains fear this punishment, reducing crime level. Finally, I think human society can not function correctly when people are not presumed responsible for their choices, even if it’s not actually true.

Believing free will is just an illusion can make you less sorry for the wrong decisions you made in your life, but it also denies you from taking credit for the right ones. My advice to you is to do what I do. Be proud when your choices are a success, and blame your subconscious when they fail.

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p.s. Whenever I want to sound intellectual, I quote Chewbacca.

Beam Me Up, Scotty - Copy and Paste a Human

Human teleportation, the instant transport of people from one place to another without travelling through space, is by far the coolest way to travel in almost every sci-fi (science fiction) book or movie. There are mainly two ways to teleport a human. The first, like in the movie ‘Contact’, is through some kind of a wormhole, a hypothetical topological feature of spacetime that is essentially a shortcut through space and time. The second, like in ‘Star Trek’, is by scanning a human physical structure, eliminating him and transmitting the information to another place where it is used to reconstruct a perfect copy of the person. I would like to focus on the second method and ask this: What happens if the teleport technician hired to tranport me to the moon will keep the source, choosing by mistake copy-and-paste instead of cut-and-paste?

There will obviously be two physical copies of me, one on earth and one on the moon, but which one of them is me? It’s easy to tell the one stayed on earth is me, but what about the new person constructed on the moon’s teleportation room? He’s got the same memories as me. He thinks like me. He feels like me. He is me in every way. So actually there will be two of me. No, I will not simultaneously see what my moon-buddy sees, but for a short moment we'll both feel the same. Exactly the same. From the point of separation, different events on earth and the moon, will cause our two brains to become more and more different, resulting in two persons with mutual identical history, but different thoughts and feelings. Since it can become really awkward, especially if you’ll ever meet your copy at a cocktail party, my advice to you is – choose your teleportation technician wisely.

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p.s. If you tend to succeed on your second attempt, don’t try skydiving. (credit not mine)

Looking for Morpheus - Can This World Be a Simulation?

For centuries, we have been trying to understand, is this world the ‘real’ world? The movie ‘The Matrix’, although not presenting any new ground braking idea, has done a great service to philosophy and science by bringing this question to the attention of the ordinary man. It’s Descartes’ deceiving demon idea resurrected, and all the brain-in-a-vat like theories returning in one colossus budget-devouring adrenalin-dispensing CGI-promoting fake-city blockbuster. But what are the chances we live in such a Matrix?

Nick Bostrom in his simulation argument claims that at least one of these must be true:

1. Intelligent races will never reach a level of technology where they can run simulations of reality so detailed they can be mistaken for reality; or
2. Races who do reach such a level do not tend to run such simulations; or
3. We are almost certainly living in such a simulation.

His argument uses the premise that given sufficiently advanced technology, it is possible to create matrix-like simulations where oblivious conscious entities can live in a full detailed world. If we assume we can reach such a technological level without nuking ourselves first, and that once we'll reach such a level we would want to run this kind of simulations, then it is likely that we would run a very large number of these so-called ancestor simulations. By the same line of reasoning, many of these simulations would in turn run other sub-simulations, and so on. Given the fact that right now it is impossible to tell whether we are living in one of the vast number of simulations or the original ancestor universe, the likelihood is that the former is true. Since there are much more simulated humans than real humans, and you can’t really tell if you are real or not, choosing to believe you are a simulation, you have a better chance of being right.

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p.s. Using Aladdin’s carpet will always give you a window seat, but no frequent flyer benefits.