Recap: Where we came from and Where We’re Going
Just as a fanatic accepts his beliefs as fact, most of us have accepted the mechanistic metaphor as if it were objective reality. All people see the world through their beliefs, yet we notice them less than the windshield on our cars. Chapter 19 was about becoming aware of the mechanistic metaphor. Chapter 20 goes on to discuss its negative impact on your life.
I wish I could explain the mechanistic metaphor in a single sentence. In a brief description you would be able to see that society has it, you have it, and it is wrong. Then you could choose to drop it in an instant; without stress or thought. Unfortunately, detaching yourself from a cultural belief that is so deeply entrenched requires time and contemplation. It is the psychic equivalent of untangling a ball of yarn. I do hope that you are well on the path of evaluating this belief and deciding if it is working for you or against you.
This following chapter gives you more ammunition for breaking up the mechanistic metaphor. Please understand that the age of science has produced many wonderful things, all of which are through understanding the mechanistic nature of the universe. Don’t jump to the assumption that this is the whole story. As a human being, with a mind, body and soul you are part of a much larger reality to which the mechanistic universe is but one component.
The Three Great Problems with the Mechanistic Metaphor
Problem #1: You Are Not a Tool
A metaphor is a filter that we see reality through; it is not factual reality. A metaphor is to reality as a picture of a bird is the bird itself. A picture is a two dimensional representation of a moment in a bird’s life. It doesn’t include the vast complexity nor dynamics involved in a real bird’s existence. But a picture does simplify things and makes it easier to convey the idea “bird.” In the same way a metaphor is a tool of our mind to represent reality in a way which we find most useful to us.
Metaphors carry a host of associated suppositions. If “A” is true, then you must also believe in “B” and “C” because A requires B & C before it can happen. You must also believe in D, E and F because they are logical consequences of A. It doesn’t matter if you are consciously aware of B to F or not. Your unconscious mind will make subtle adjustments to alter the interpretation of conflicting information, just as a river shifts stones that block its passage.
Machines don’t have free will. If you believe that you are a biological machine, then it follows that you don’t have freewill. And if you accept that you don’t have freewill then you are at the mercy of your environment to be assign purpose.
The reality of what you are is far deeper, complex and miraculous. In a material sense you are rarer and more valuable than your body’s weight in diamond. For every ounce of life in this universe there are hundreds of trillions of tons of inanimate matter. Being alive makes you part of an exclusive club.
And of the very small amount of matter which gets to be alive, most of it has evolved very specialized strategies to operate inside very specific environments. Of all creatures, you have developed an enormous capacity to think, reason, and change. You have the rare ability to choose your own purpose and redefine yourself. No machine, no inanimate matter, and very few animals, have such an amazing ability.
Problem #2: Reality of Intangibles
Perception and beliefs feedback on each other. We base our beliefs on what we observe. As we accept those beliefs to be the truth, we start to see the world in a way that is consistent with those beliefs. A metaphor can be thought of as a mental shortcut for a collection of many related beliefs. When a metaphor is accepted, then all supporting beliefs and beliefs that extend from it are accepted, often without conscious review.
The mechanistic metaphor encourages a hard science approach to the world. Lay people believe that in adopting a scientific-like manner they seem more intelligent and fall into alignment with our technological based culture. If you can see it, touch it, physically interact with it, then you can quantify it. This is what we mean by “real.” Things like music, harmony, love, dreams, thoughts and spiritual connection are not quantifiable, therefore not “real.” The unspoken logical extension is that if something is not “real,” then it is not “valuable.”
All these non-physical things are real. They are part of our lives and often they are more valuable to us than material things. Music provides great comfort and joy. Love has inspired the greatest monuments, statues, and the great works. Dreams provide direction for our future as strongly as our experiences give us wisdom. Fear is an insubstantial thing which has destroyed relationships, spiralled whole economic systems into a recession and lead to more wars than any physical cause. Politics, laws, economics, mathematics and theoretical sciences are based on intangible notions. All of which are very real to us.
And the most inconsistent one of all… money. The concept of ‘Money’ started because it was more convenient to carry gold ingots (as a universal representation of wealth) rather than dragging around all the items you could barter with (such as live chickens and pigs). Over the last few generations, money transformed from the physical metals to paper notes. These documents (aka paper money) are like stocks which represent a quantity of gold held in a safe location, also known as the gold standard.
As technology moves on, money progressively became even less tangible. With online credit, Internet banking, and rapid wire transfers, your wealth is represented by a few lines of code and a numerical sequence in a financial institution. A well placed fridge magnet could wipe out your entire fortune. Yet people work their entire lives to make these numbers a little higher and become stressed to the point of depression when these numbers dip too low. Money is only the idea of “value,” yet it has become unquestionably valuable by everyone in our culture. There isn’t much difference between a bit of cotton paper and a bank note, but there is a great difference in the meaning we attach to it. Burn some paper and no one cares, set a $100 bank note on fire and watch people freak out.
All laws, permits, licences, fines, court rulings, titles, deeds of ownership, insurance, stocks and bonds are intangible ideas only made real by official documentation. These documents are physical representations of abstract ideas. People have fought and died for “freedom.” Refugees leave their homeland not because of lack in resources (real physical things), but because of a dangerous political climate. Politics is a philosophy of how the government works, it is also an idea. War often happen over religious differences. Every single great creation started as an idea before it arrived in the physical world. Thoughts are very real things and are very important even if they are too elusive to hold.
The mechanistic metaphor says that the universe is only about the physical nature of reality, yet the reality that we live in is far larger than just the physical.
Problem #3: A Legal Conundrum
In a mechanistic view of the universe, all actions have explainable, logical, physical causes. Your behaviours are determined by your thoughts. Those thoughts are consequences of complex electro-chemical reactions inside your brain. As you are a puppet on the strings of your neurology, free will becomes nothing more than a trick of the mind. This is the deterministic perspective in a nutshell.
If we accept the deterministic point of view, then we would have to accept that all criminal behaviour is the result of aberrant chemical reactions. In essence, any crime is the product of brain damage and the criminal is as much a victim of his own neurology as the actual victim of the crime. How can a society, in good conscious, punish anyone for having a mental condition? If free will doesn’t exist, no one is at fault for any of their actions.
Every now and then, a lawyer will try to use determinism as a defence. The try to blame the criminal act on bad neural activity, poor genes or bad upbringing, usually when the physical case against their client is insurmountable. This is a dodge to shift blame away from their client and rarely works.
Unfortunately for determinists (and criminals) “free will” is an accepted truth of being human and is a fundamental fact of every legal system in the world. Even in cases of drinking and driving, where neurology is clearly compromised, people are still held accountable for their actions. There was a choice to drink, then another choice to use a car; thus they are held accountable for any damage caused.
All legal systems uphold rules set down by their society. When a citizen violates a rule, they are punished. This practice directly educates the offender who is less likely to break the rule again, but also teaches everyone else through example. Laws are only needed because we are creatures with free will. Laws attempt to impose a standard of how we are supposed to interact with each other. Ants are born with instinctual knowledge of how to function in their colony and how to relate to each other. Ants don’t need a legal system, but they also don’t have free will.
Just because we can’t prove “free will” with physical evidence doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. For example, you know you dream; you can’t prove it, but you know it’s true. We hear about the dreams of others and accept the idea they dream because it is a common experience. There is no “physical evidence” to support the existence of dreams, yet it is still part of our reality. There is no microscope powerful enough to show you a “free will” molecule, but we all accept the idea that we are responsible for our actions.
As a society we do not believe fate forces you to behave in a particular way. Despite the prevalence of the mechanistic metaphor, no one believes all their choices have been preordained, nor that our neurology is forcing us to behave in a particular way. We know people think, we know people dream, and we know deep down that everyone has free will to do as they choose.
And if you accept that you do have free will, then how can you see yourself as a mechanism? No mechanical construct (including our most advanced super computers) has free will. Only the robots in sci-fi fantasy have free will; alongside dragons and unicorns.
Drawing Lines between Humans and Machine
Most of us believe in the mechanistic metaphor because we see it as a useful way to understand the physical universe. The scientific method has allowed for rapid advancement in applied technologies (from computers to medical) and will continue to do so for some time to come. There are advantages to looking at the world in a mechanistic way. We are far from done with this model as there is still much about our physical world we don’t know.
It is important to understand that no human being can see absolute truth. All of our worldly senses need to be interpreted by the mind to be understood. The act of interpretation filters and distorts reality based on our beliefs. The mechanistic metaphor provides a useful frame to interact with the physical world, but it is not an absolute truth.
Great music isn’t just a bunch of notes randomly strung together. There is care, thought, intelligence, purpose, and love behind each note. There is harmony, melody and rhythm. Whatever a human being is, it is far more complex, and far more interesting, than the physical plumbing which keeps you alive. We are rhythm, we are melody, we are the feeling of a divine artist. We are passion.
You have a flexible, powerful mind which can see the world through many frames. If you choose, you can see yourself as a biological machine, but in doing so you ignore the larger dynamics of your life. And there is the great flaw of the mechanistic metaphor; in analysis of the microscopic we have forgotten to see the larger picture.
Viewing ourselves with the same mechanistic frame has a profound negative impact on our psychological health, brings about a lack of motivation, lack of purpose and a depressed state.
With compassion, I would suggest that you are not a biological machine at all. In the next section we will draw some very solid lines showing how human beings and machines are completely different.
If you were to look at a snapshot of a mountain and a large ocean swell, you may superficially think they are the same sort of thing. This is an oversimplification which ignores the dynamic properties over time. Something that would be clearly obvious when watching a movie of a mountain and a movie of an ocean swell.
In English we tend to see matter as nouns and dynamics as verbs. So we say, “That is a car” or “He is John.” The implication behind a noun is one of permanence. If it is a car, it was a car and it will always be a car, and the same is true when we look at John. Perhaps even more so, for we like people to have a stable, reliable (predictable) personalities.
When we say John is running, “running” is a verb. It is the dynamic that John is in at the moment. We understand that John won’t always be running forever, he may be in a different state in the next 10 minutes. So it is natural for us to associate permanent traits with identity and not dynamics which change more frequently.
Except we are not permanent. We are looking at ourselves as if we were a picture and not as the dynamic system which we actually are. In reality, we are composed of atoms swirling about in a dynamic system. One dynamic system is in the state of being a “Car” another is in the state of being “John.” Eventually, the car will be scrapped for parts, and eventually John will die. It would be more accurate to think of both John and the car as a dynamic system (a verb, or state of being) rather than as a noun.
Now if we look at the dynamics of life forms and machines, we see they are quite different. The molecules that compose a machine remain the same from the point of its construction to its destruction. One could say that machines are more absolute in their atomic composition. All life forms are cyclical in their atomic composition; being alive involves constant swapping out old molecules for new ones.
This may be hard to believe at first, but you are 2 years old… literally 2 years old. 70% of your physical weight is water which is constantly flooding into and out of your system. All the water in your body today wasn’t there 3 weeks ago. Your blood has a life span of about 30 days and is continually being replaced by the marrow of your bones.
You think you keep your bones for life? Nope. At this moment, little workers called osteoblasts are patrolling your skeleton and replacing old bone cells with new ones. It is one of our slowest biological processes, and it takes about 2 years to cycle out all your calcium and hard minerals for new ones.
Think your brain is permanent? Nope. Your brain cells are also taking on new material and excreting waste products, swapping old molecules with new ones. No matter what you believe your chronological age to be, every single atom in your body today wasn’t there 2 years ago (your skeleton is 2 years old and the rest of you is around 3 weeks old).
Another fun fact: 53% of you isn’t even you. In terms of genetic material, only 47% of your body weight is made up of cells that share a common DNA, given to you by your parents. The rest of you is an amazing, ecosystem of microscopic creatures that “colonized” you after your inception. This is nothing to worry about as life seems to favour a cooperative approach. Most of these little guys work in symbiosis to help you live more easily. For example, the gut microbiota are a collection of symbionts which aid with your digestion.
This could lead to a very different way of understanding disease. Pathogens are around us all the time, therefor we shouldn’t worry about people sneezing on us as much as we should worry about maintaining a vibrant immune system. AIDS doesn’t kill directly, it compromises the immune system. Without an immune system everything else which is naturally in the environment all the time wipes you out. It also explains why students get so sick around exam times. With the stress they put themselves under (through procrastination) they undermine their own immune system becoming vulnerable to natural pathogens which are always present in the environment.
Explaining Old Age
Very few people can grasp the concept they are actually 2 years old. “Yeah, that’s nice… but I’m really 84. My bones feel old, and I’m worn out.” This is the mechanistic metaphor talking. As our senior citizens believe themselves to be worn out like an obsolete machine ready for the trash bin, and because they hold the mechanistic metaphor in their mind they unconsciously direct their bodies follow suit. They amplify aches and pains of old age as proof that their bodies are “wearing out.” We do get old, we feel the effects of age, but our bodies do not “wear out.”
Humans, and all other biological life forms, are near perfect and could recycle and regenerate themselves forever. Except we have a built in life span by design. At the end of our DNA we have a telomere wick, each time our DNA replicates it gets shorter. It is an elegant timing mechanism which tells our bodies what sort of proteins we need to produce and when. There is a time for being a child, a time for being a youth, a time for being an adult and a time for being a senior. The telomere wick tells our DNA what sort of proteins and hormones should be produced at each stage. This can have dramatic effects on our behaviour (such as being more inclined to fall in love as a young adult) and it causes us to die at a certain point.
Degeneration, in a machine, would be considered a design flaw. Planned obsolescence is an evil trick of manufacturers, as it forces you to go and by the same product repeatedly. Yet every time you buy a new machine, you get a better version which includes all the latest innovations and technological improvements over previous models. Evolution has figured this trick out too.
Our renewing biological systems could live forever. While immortality may sound like a dream for some (as it is in alignment with our instinctual need for survival), it would be tragic for our species as a whole. Imagine immortal parents, immortal great grandparents, and immortal great great great great great (keep going) grandparents and everyone in between. All those previous immortal generations would be using limited environmental resources and taking up limited space. Soon there would be no resources for the youngest (and most improved) generation. The older generations would crowd out the young making it impossible for them to survive. Worse still predators and parasites have more opportunity to lock on to that species, making survival even harder. Death is not nice to contemplate, but it is how nature clears the playing field making way for improved models. This is why we have expiration dates built into our DNA.
Age as an Idea
Clip from WebMD.com “Myths about Exercise and Older Adults”:
“There’s a powerful myth that getting older means getting decrepit,” says Dutta. “It’s not true. Some people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s are out there running marathons and becoming body-builders.” A lot of the symptoms we associate with old age — such as weakness and loss of balance — are symptoms of inactivity, not age, says Alicia I. Arbaje, MD, MPH, assistant professor of Geriatrics and Gerontology at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore. Exercise improves more than your physical health. It can also boost memory and help prevent dementia. And it can help you maintain your independence and your way of life. If you stay strong and agile as you age, you’ll be more able to keep doing the things you enjoy and less likely to need help.
On May 23, 2013, Yuichiro Miura of Japan reached the summit of Mount Everest becoming the oldest person ever to make the climb. Interestingly enough, he made the climb five years earlier at the youthful age of 75. With his second attempt (at age 80), he managed to do the climb in 7 fewer days than his first. I’m certain Mr. Miura’s family and friends tried to convince him he was too old to make the climb. I am certain he walked past them on his way to the mountain.
On Entropy
It is an absolute fact that no matter how well a machine is built, it will break down sooner or later. The best day for a machine is the day it was produced. However, entropy is always acting against it causing wear and tear. Humans (and all life forms) are not subject to entropy as long as we are alive. Your physical health and mental wellbeing are functions of your self-image (beliefs about self), your attitude, and your habitual lifestyle (eating and exercise). Entropy, which is why machines wear out doesn’t have any impact on you as your atomic structure is always being swapped out.
I very much dislike expressions such as “You are as old as you feel” or “You are as young as you believe.” People often dismiss them as optimistic, mindless drivel which sound nice, but have no scientific value. Atomically speaking, you are a dynamic, recycling, regenerating body is only 2 years old. At any age you can be stronger tomorrow than you were today. Mortality is part of our genetic design, but never underestimate the large influence the mind plays in directing health of the body to match its self-image.
2. The Nature of Intelligence
I grew up in a generation that saw the birth of the Internet. AI (or Artificial Intelligence) is a staple in science fiction and shows up as major or minor plot elements in countless stories over the last 50 years. A familiar idea (one we have been exposed to many times) is easy for our minds to process. If something is easy to process, we are more likely to interpret it as “truth.” Because of the repeated exposure of AI, most people in our culture believe that it is practically around the corner and should be available for purchase any day now.
As a writer I have done much research, contemplation, and writing on AI. I have attended many seminars, listened and talked with business owners working in the field of AI research. I learned that our current micro circuit technology is approaching a physical restriction because of the size of photons. As a work around, computer scientists are exploring the avenues of networked hyper-computers, quantum computers and neuromorphic chips. I mention this because the next statement may sound shocking and opposes popular opinion.
Machines will not possess true intelligence, and they never will.
Teleological Systems
A mouse trap is a basic mechanical device designed to kill rodents. It operates on a simple “If then” program; if the plate holding the bait wiggles enough, then it trips the spring, and the trap goes off. A thermostat is a slightly more complex mechanism having 2 if-then commands. If the temperature rises above a predetermined amount, then it trips a switch to activate the air conditioner. If the temperature drops below another predetermined amount, it activates the heater. We could anthropomorphize these devices; saying that the mouse trap “wants” to catch a mouse, or that the thermostat is trying to stay within a temperature range, but neither mechanism has motivation or intelligence behind its actions. The mouse trap is a mechanical event which releases the potential energy of a bound spring when the trigger is pulled. The thermostat is two trip switches which react to environmental conditions. If you reversed the wires to activate the heater when it is hot, and the cooler when it is cold, it would be just as “happy” to execute those orders, except that would make the occupants of the house uncomfortable all the time, which is counterproductive to the intention of its creator.
Appreciation of Intelligence
All life forms are teleological, meaning they set goals and they respond to changes in the environment. When an organism responds in a way that is adaptive, we say it is intelligent. As a species we like to appreciate good ideas and clever ways of going. We can also create a machine as a teleological system, responding to changes in the environment with a specific end goal in mind (like the thermostat). We can also say it is a “very smart” machine. But who is the compliment directed at? Is “smart” directed to the machine or to its designer?
How strange it would be for someone to show appreciation for a painting by walking up to it and exclaiming, “My, you are so beautiful!” Appreciation of a painting goes to the intelligence behind the creation of the painting, in this case the artist. Mouse traps and thermostats are smart inventions, but the compliment isn’t applied to the device but to whoever designed them.
Illusion of Intelligence
Modern computers are far more sophisticated than mouse traps or thermostats. Programs may consist of hundreds of thousands of “if/then” statements which allow for far more complex interactions with the environment and user. We have developed chess programs which can rival grand masters. In modern first-person shooter games, software developers program the mobs (monsters) to respond and adapt to the player’s typical tactics, increasing the challenge of the game. This also forces the player to change it up and try new tactics and keeps game play interesting and novel. The gaming industry refers to this adaptive quality as the ‘AI’ though it is a bit of a misnomer. In a virtual world, all actions a player can do are known (use a weapon, throw a grenade, W-A-S-D movement, run, duck, and some interact button) so the gaming developer can spend a few months to figure out all possible moves and the AI can be programmed with hundreds or even thousands of “if then” statements to account for all possible tactical options available in the simulation.
The programmed characters can seem very intelligent from the player’s perspective. But this is all smoke and mirrors; it is an illusion that complexity gives. Modern computers are no more, nor less intelligent than a mouse trap.
However, we can say our ability to program computers has long since passed a point where the Turing Test can be used as a measure of intelligence. In the 1940s (when Alan Turing designed the test) they had no conception how complex computer programs could become. So testing the responses of a machine against a human judge seemed like a good idea.
The Puppet Master
Modern computers are so well programmed, we are often fooled to believing that the machine is intelligent, because we see it take intelligent actions. In a way there is an intelligence at work, but we make a mistake in attribution. We focus so much on the machine, we forget there was a team of programmers who designed it. A chess master has never lost a game because a computer was “smarter.” They lost because the software design team spent years programming in all possible gambits and patterns to look for. This allows the machine to make choices several hundreds of moves ahead of the player. From the time you move your first pawn, the machine knows how many more moves it will need to win. When the player does something unexpected it calculates out a new path. A chess program is no more intelligent than a mouse trap, though it is a little more complex.
Can they design a computer which is “smarter” than a human player? Sure, in the context of game design you can easily create a game which is unwinnable. However, this is not the result of a better intelligence, but inferior game design.
The purpose of a video game is to entertain human players. If a game is too hard, then it will frustrate players and people won’t want to play it, which results in bad reviews and fewer sales. On the other hand, if the game is too easy, it becomes boring fast which also results in bad reviews and few sales.
The goal of a game design, is to create an exciting and enjoyable user experience which supersedes attempting to make something that will out think players every time. So it is no wonder that most games are tailored to the expectations of their players over realism. Protagonist can be shot, stabbed, kicked, almost drown, fall off high buildings, stand on airplanes in flight, and ignore things like “pain” or “laws of physics.”
Mobs or sprites (computer players) are only as intelligent and adaptive as the software team intended them to be. They will never grow, adapt, nor change their behaviour beyond the context of the game they are in. They may appear to have will and motivation, but those too are illusions of complexity and very clever design of software teams and psychologists. Even the most complex machines have no more will to act or motivation than a mouse trap or thermostat.
3. Passive and Active Quality
Let’s ignore any pending limitations microprocessor technology. Let’s forget about freewill and put aside the vast expanse of things we don’t know about mind/brain operation.
There is a far greater problem with the creation of AI that goes beyond technical limitation of the size of photons, beyond what we still don’t know about our own brain and even beyond the lack of free will of inanimate objects. The greatest problem with AI is in the human motive to create it.
In chapter 19, premise #1, we talked about how humans are natural tool users and that we value our tools based on their usefulness. We are obsessed with computers because they are the most useful and versatile tools yet produced. Over the past 30 years this passion for micro-technology has seen an exponential advancement and many see AI as an inevitable result.
Yet no one has mentioned how a sentient device would be more useful than a non-sentient device. Imagine having a car that tries to persuade you to vacation in Detroit because it heard about a new road and it wants a better driving experience. Say your toaster gets bored with toast and refuses to make it for breakfast. How would you handle a disagreement between your blender and vacuum over ideal voltage requirements? What would you do if your power tools form a union because they feel your shop is too disorganized? How popular would a military drone be if it has moral objections with carrying out its orders?
These scenarios may seem ridiculous. Why would we craft tools which act like little humans; we already have children and pets for that. Why indeed? True Intelligence grants an inanimate object the ability to determine its own directives, make its own decisions and choose its own path. Intelligence implies freewill. It may be novel, it may be interesting, it may be something to show off to your friends.
So how useful would a machine be if it had freewill? The short answer is: It wouldn’t. The simple brain that coordinates the efforts of an insect are light years more sophisticated than our most advanced super computers. An insect has its own agenda and thus isn’t terribly useful to us.
Human intelligence evolved because it proved useful for our survival. It allowed us to branch into many environments and adopt many lifestyles; from farming to fishing to being nomadic hunters. Intelligence is a wonderful thing, but it is also dangerous; far more dangerous than any other thing in our sphere of influence. When homo-sapiens first appeared we shared the planet with other hominids. There are no other hominids today because our ancestors considered them competition. With superior intelligence they exterminated all of them.
Let’s suppose that we were successful in the creation of a true AI. Let’s say it could upgraded its own design and soon surpass human intelligence. Why wouldn’t it follow in our footsteps and replace us as the dominant life form? There is historical precedence, so why should we think AI would be any different?
These ideas are nothing new. At some level we know that creation of a true AI runs counter to our survival. But what if…
Some people worry a super computer will spontaneously become self-aware, decide that it needs to murder all humans, hoodwink its R&D team, access the Internet, figuring out how to bypass nuclear launch codes and develop some telekinetic power to override the physical fail safes. Fun in fiction… not going to happen.
Randomly throwing rocks at each other will not spontaneously create a brain. Our intelligence took billions of years to evolve. Besides, if a computer started doing something weird, as in something the software team didn’t want it to do, it would be called a glitch. That section of code would be rewritten. I know that isn’t as exciting, it doesn’t make for a good story, but it is more probable. I don’t worry about an AI apocalypse; we lack the ability to create a true sentient being, and what’s more important, we aren’t trying to.
The Direction of Technology
True, self-aware, self-motivated AI is not likely to happen in our future. On the other hand, all of our technology is about solving problems and making life easier. You can count on this trend to continue. At one point we flint stone knives were the rage; everyone had one, and it was an essential tool for a wide variety of tasks. Today, people can’t seem to live longer than 10 minutes without checking their smart phone. It borders on being a modern obsession. We can assume that smart devices will continue to get smarter, easier to use, and more useful. But does that mean the ultimate form of smart technology will be true intelligence? Probably not; the ultimate form of smart technology may resemble the droids of the original Star Wars movies (episodes 4, 5, & 6).
In most science fiction, AI is presented as a human intelligence packaged in a mechanical brain. However the droids of Star Wars were non-sentient, self-mobile tools which could be controlled via simple voice commands. Their cybernetic brain was flexible enough to follow the intention behind human directives even with very little programming. Essentially this was a more sophisticated version of “Hey Siri.” or “Hey Google.”
Fiction, unlike reality, requires believability. Star Wars is set in a galaxy spanning civilization that endured for thousands of years. Droids (aka highly refined smart technology) were believable in context and we bought into that story. Star Wars not only became an epic box office success, but also an influential metaphor of how we would interact with technology in the future.
One of the more interesting things about Star Wars is the huge gap between the original production (1977) and the final movie (2019), as they reflect a change in the way we see technology. Stories reflect the social views and values of the time they were written. In the late 70s and early 80s, computers were novel flexible tools, exclusive to nerds, geeks and techies. They were only starting to be seen in private sector as accounting tools. The droids of the original Star Wars were depicted as very advanced “novel flexible tools.” These droids had human-like intelligence, but no ability to motivate themselves. There were repeated references to “Droids don’t think” or “If droids could think they’d take over the galaxy” or “There are no bad droids, only bad masters.” Droids of the original movies were non-sentient self-mobile tools.
By 2010 to 2015, computers have been a house hold appliances for a generation and portable technology became a cultural fetish. People treat their computers and phones like pets, sometimes giving them names. Again this is reflected in how droids are treated in Star Wars. Episode 7 to 9 (and the star wars stories) droids are seem as fully sentient characters. R2D2 was allowed to pine for Luke and go into a comma (in the original version they would have just fixed the problem by wiping its memory and put it back in service). Ray treats BB8 like a regular person, valuing its motives to go where it wants to and to make its own choices (in the 1980s R2 and C3PO were purchased as farm equipment). Lando Calrissian has a romantic relationship with L3-37, who also desires “freedom” for her enslaved droid people. In the 80s, Lando looked at a demolished C3PO and asked if something was wrong. The concern wasn’t for C3PO, but in that someone may have vandalized the property of his guests. The original Star Wars showed droids as possessions, not people.
Give me “AI” but hold the “I”
When people talk about AI, they don’t want a machine to possess true intelligence. They certainly don’t want a thing which is more intelligent than they are (Theme of West World). They want mechanical servants without the ethical problems of enslaving a sentient being. Minions which can follow commands, anticipate the needs of their owners, and make life easier by doing the tasks you don’t want to do.
Fortunately for us, smart devices aren’t intelligent. Building smarter devices doesn’t require a full understanding of how the brain works, no epistemological problems with freewill, nor ethical problems with slavery of a sentient being. A mouse trap is never going to attack you unless you put your foot in it. Even then, it is only following its designed program; and there is no malice upon its part to do you harm. It is just reacting in the way it was designed. A modern computer can be programmed with hundreds of thousands of “if then” statements and react in a way that could fool a person into believing it is alive. Future smart devices may have millions or billions of “if then” statements, created over several generations of technical design teams building and improving on previous platforms.
Moving from portable technology to self-mobile technology isn’t a big leap. What would you rather have? Stuff you have to carry around or stuff that carries itself? “Convenience” is a trend you can believe in. I believe smart device technology will continue to get smarter, and will evolve into robot servants. They may even create robots with simulated attitude and personality, but these are reflections of the creator and not a true personality which grows and changes over time.
No, a Tamagotchi doesn’t have a real personality, it has a personality that is selected from a list of predetermined options based on user inputs. We have become so good at simulation and illusion that we have forgotten that simulated intelligence is not the same as real intelligence. We are still stuck on Turing’s test.
Machines intelligence is forever rooted to the way it was designed. It is fixed like a mountain. Human intelligence is forever changing, adapting like the great mountainous swells on the ocean. The snapshot between machine intelligence and human intelligence may at some future point may look the same. No matter how advanced machines become, they will always be more similar to a mousetrap than a human.
Passive vs Active
Machines cannot repair themselves, they can’t set their own goals, and they have no motivation beyond what they were specifically designed to do. Machines can only evolve if there is an intelligent creator updating them and creating better versions. Machines are passive entities, intelligent life forms are active. An essential part of intelligence is the “will” to act. One could say that the “will to act” is one of the most essential qualities of life.
The sophistication of biological mechanisms involved in getting a yellow jack wasp to fly are more complex than anything we have devised in our modern drones. However, due to the wasp being alive and having its own true intelligence, it is not useful nor valuable to us. It is a pest and most people who encounter a yellow jacket nest would want to exterminate them. Yellow jacks don’t give a rat’s ass what humans think; they evolve, they grow, they reproduce themselves to their own directives as they have done for millions upon millions of years.
AI will never spontaneously create itself because machines are not alive. Machines are the artifacts of humans. A singularity event (a random technical boo-boo which leads to the birth of AI) is pure fantasy. It is no more likely to occur than a wasp nest growing itself without wasps.
It is Impossible to Delete Beliefs
Humans are not computers and we cannot delete thoughts or old beliefs. Tell yourself not to think of a pink elephant. Try it now… try very hard not to think of a pink elephant… and notice how hard it is not to think of a pink elephant. Before this passage you weren’t thinking of any pink elephants, but now, as hard as you try not to; you can’t help but think of a whole herd of elephants.
This is a very simple mental trick which demonstrates how human attention works. To understand the meaning of a negative (not) statement, part of your mind has to visualize an elephant, then think of the colour pink, then come up with an alternative thought which doesn’t match the target picture in your mind… Ooops… but the request of “not thinking of a pink elephant” requires you to think of it to know what you shouldn’t be thinking of. OK, seriously, you can stop thinking of pink elephants now. No more pink elephants.
Your unconscious mind consists of a wide array of cognitive systems which operate outside of your conscious attention. Your conscious mind is like the CEO of a large corporation, most of the daily operations go on outside of his attention, however he can give orders when necessary. Orders are transmitted via images, sounds or feelings because we are familiar with those.
It is also why negatively phrased affirmations are so counterproductive. We have millions of people who think they can overcome a bad habit by willpower… they continually tell themselves “I will not smoke another cigarette… I will not smoke another cigarette….” And as they think about not smoking, they are crowding their mind with images of smoking and how good it would be to have a nicotine fix. Avoiding relapse becomes almost impossible. Some of them manage to tough it out and power through, but the vast majority of people fail simply because they don’t understand this simple aspect of how their brain / mind works.
Then they berate themselves with nasty internal self-talk for “being a failure” or “not having enough will power” or whatever. This is to punish themselves, so they will do a better job next time. As they beat themselves up, they are commanding their unconscious systems for more failure in future attempts. This is simply a misunderstanding of how the mind operates. We do not have the power to delete thoughts, beliefs, or habits, however we can overwrite them. You cannot “not think of a pink elephant” but you can “think of a purple monkey.”
Can’t Delete it… So Replace it
Trashing the mechanistic metaphor isn’t enough to create lasting change. Doubt in a belief system is an important step; it is like providing some slack on a tight rope to untie a knot, but it is only a temporary measure. If you don’t spend a little time replacing a bad habit (or a bad habitual way of thinking) with a new one, it will reassert itself.
So what do you replace it with? The best option is to create your own metaphor for what you believe the human condition to be like. How you see humanity determines how you interact with people and how you see yourself, and forms a large part of your identity.
The following are different metaphors for viewing the human condition. Their purpose is to give you the idea of what alternative perspectives look like so you can create your own. A self-determined metaphor is always more powerful than copying something you read in a book because you are personalizing it to your way of thinking about the world. The truth is that we already do this, we just aren’t aware of the process. At the end of this section you will be taking conscious control of your metaphors and consciously designing the way you want to see the world.
Metaphor #1: Life is Like an Ecosystem
This metaphor is my personal view, and it follows from our previous discussion. I understand that a machine is a static, unchanging, inanimate thing. Being alive means you’re dynamic, you are always in a state of change. Atoms are coming into you, little symbionts take up residence, others leave, and you have a marvellous immune system which does a smack down on invaders which are not playing nice. Your mental landscape is equally complex and beautiful, exchanging and swapping ideas; cultivating beliefs and growing skills. In my mind, you are an ecosystem.
What are the assumptions that go with the ecosystem metaphor? Thinking of yourself as a dynamic ecosystem?
It becomes far easier to accept the literal truth that you’re only 2 years old; atoms are being exchanged for new ones. Your health is not just “your health” but the health of trillions of little creatures which depend on you to make healthy decisions. Whatever causes you pain is only a tiny part of your being. The majority of what makes you “you” is outside your attention because it is operating in perfect harmony. Pain is only an alert system to tell you something is wrong, but it makes up very little of what you are about. No matter how messed up you think you are, 99.999% of what makes you “you” is in a state of harmony.
If you suffer from chronic pain, it becomes a central point of your life, and it becomes the reason that your entire life is shit. It doesn’t have to be. You are an ecosystem with many parts. Focus on an area of your being which is happy. Allow that state of peace and relaxation to become your centre point. Notice how as you focus on those harmonious areas they allow you to pull your mind away from the pain, easing and relaxing those hurt areas.
Peace is your natural state and by focusing on it, you make that the dominate focus of your reality. You can see start to see your pain as a warning system and ask it what it needs to be happy again. It will flash images to you (may be pills, may be seeing a doctor, may be a particular type of food, or not doing a stressful activity). Don’t argue with your pain! Help it to come back to its natural state of peace.
When you say “I’m out of energy” you will realize that it’s the mechanistic metaphor talking again. You know, that as a dynamic ecosystem, you may exercise very hard today. And yes, you will feel tired, but tomorrow your system will adapt and you will have even more energy the next day.
When you say, “I suck at this”, you are right… you do. But nothing about an ecosystem is absolute. Keep on trying and tomorrow you will suck a bit less. If you persist you will even become passable, competent, good, expert and a master. Every day you get a bit better as your neural network in your brain grows new axons and dendrites to make better connections.
Side Tip: when learning new skills, eat fish at least once per week. The omega acids in fish provides your neurons with the building blocks they need to build better, faster connections.
When you say “I feel alone” you notice that you aren’t. As an eco-system you are a swarm of trillions of little beings. Your brain is the great coordination system for all these micro-organisms and guides them through the macro-world by the choices you make. They depend on you just as much as you depend on them. Maybe you won’t eat fast foods; supply them with fresh fruits and vegetables. Give your ecosystem quality foods and good exercise and notice how much better you feel about yourself.
It is your mechanic’s responsibility to fix your car (a machine), but as an ecosystem, you are responsible for your health. Doctors and psychiatrists become your advisers, but they cannot take responsibility for you. Even a surgeon cannot heal you, they can set your bones and clean wounds to create a condition where you can heal yourself. You understand that you are the dynamic ecosystem which does the healing and your state of mind has a great impact on how long you stay in the hospital.
Metaphor #2: Life is a Song
Most astronomers believe the beginning of our universe resulted from a cosmic event called the “big bang.” The term (or metaphor) of “big bang” is a misleading one; suggesting the universe is the after effect of a massive explosion.
It is more accurate to say that the big bang started 13.82 billion years ago, however it never stopped. Explosions, as we understand them, lose energy over time and are destructive. Evidence suggests that the universe (space and time) are expanding faster today than they were at the beginning. Also this “explosion” is a creative process; things are coming together and moving from a state of simplicity to a state of complexity; the exact opposite of an explosion. Yet we still call it the “big bang” and a traditional, though inaccurate, way of thinking persists.
The universe is like a great symphony which started at the point of the big bang and has continued to play in all variations and permeations throughout the universe. This may be less poetic and more actual than you think. Physicists have discovered that atoms, molecules and even planets vibrate. These vibrations seem fundamental to determining chemical and physical properties (especially when it comes to magnetism). The whole universe sings with these strange resonance patterns. All variations of life, all art, all culture, all things which we value and things which we don’t are part of this celestial song.
When I see the smile on my 2-year-old daughter’s face as she shows me a new flower, it isn’t hard to see her as a cheerful little song. After that it becomes easy to see all people as a melody that the universe is playing, elegant and sophisticated.
In this metaphor, life becomes one of connection. Your life is connected to all things in a divine song that started 13.82 billion years ago. You are no more or less important than anyone else, for they are also part of that song. Your song resonates with all the deeds you do to or for others. Life has rhythm and cadence. You have volume, drama, emotion, feeling, mood, and all those other qualities which make music interesting. Or are you a funeral dirge of depression? Perhaps you may wish to change the way you play your song.
Metaphor #3: Life is a Story
Shakespeare once said “All life is a stage and we are but the players.” Another way to look at life is as if it were a story and you are the hero. Logically, your life has a beginning, a middle and a conclusion. It has challenges, wins and losses. Your friends and family make up the supporting cast and they enter and exit your stage as your story intersects theirs.
So… what kind of story are you living? Are you mostly a drama, a comedy, a tragedy, a romance, or a horror story? Is your story going the way you want or is it a boring production with an empty theater? If you were the playwright (and you are) how would you change your story to make it more interesting?
This metaphor allows you to believe you are at the mercy of a divine creature writing your story (fate) or you can believe that you are the star and the playwright. This latter believe gives yourself the power to change your story anyway you want.
I remember a fellow who carried it to a logical extreme, believing himself to be the absolute centre point of his reality. Other people were “guests” in his reality. Arrogant? Extremely. But he was teaching confidence by owning your own reality and grounding yourself in it.
Seeing our self as if we were a story is not hard for human beings. For most of our existence, we lived in tribes gathered about campfires and we exchanged stories. In modern society fiction makes up half of all content in all library and over 95% of what we see in mass media.
Perhaps our love of stories stems from escapism. We see our own story as boring and we want to engage our mind in the adventure of another. By thinking of our life as a story, we direct our attention to writing the story we most would desire to live. Seeing it this way we start to live the kind of story we would be proud to share with others.
Negative Metaphors
Few are aware that at some point they chose a metaphor to make sense of their lives. Even when the metaphor lies outside of conscious awareness it still exerts a powerful influence. These next two metaphors show some common ways people interpret life and logical consequences. Neither #4 nor #5 are recommended as both carry more negative consequences than positive.
Metaphor #4: Life is a Game
You win some and lose some, there are always rules. Games are fun and so is life. Chance and risk make life interesting. It is even more fun when you include others in your game. Life is all about how you play the game. But hey, you gotta play if you wanna win. Give the dice a toss and see what happens.
This metaphor is popular with ambitious people, however it also implies a competitive world view rather than a cooperative one. People who adopt this metaphor see life in zero-sum with limited resources. If I win then someone else loses. If someone else wins there isn’t enough for me. This sort of metaphor makes abundance much harder to achieve.
Metaphor #5: Life is a Big Party
Life has many highs and lows, and lots of wild times in between. People who see life as a “big party” think of themselves as happy and carefree.
Some consequences are over indulgence and immediate self-gratification. Everything is about having fun in the present and little thought is given to future or past. Relationships only matter if they are fun now, and if they don’t work or if events go bad then there is always another party next week, and new relationships to form.
The majority seek pleasure and avoid pain. Seeing life as a party means you just react to events as they come. A carefree existence is one that has little need to plan for the future. Without such planning many don’t develop skills, nor work on projects which create lasting improvements in their lives.
Also “Life is a Party” can quickly turn into “Life was a Party.” People find the routines of adult life boring and have nostalgic fantasies of their youth. They often speak of their high school years as being the best of their lives. Often they try to recapture their youth vicariously, through the lives of their children. “Life is a Party” may work well for teenage life, but keeping the metaphor into adult life leaves one empty; paving the way to midlife crisis, affairs, and divorce.
Life is like…
Metaphor #4 and #5 are examples of what happens when you don’t think through the consequences. I know many people who would say “Life is a game” or “Life is a Party” because they act in accordance with that metaphor; though they may have adopted the life style without giving it any conscious thought.
Very few things are more empowering than taking conscious control over your life metaphor. It allows you to review what you believe and ponder the ramifications of holding that belief. On the next page is a little work sheet to help you organizing your thoughts on creating a new metaphor for life.
Life is like
____________________________________
Support:
Why do I believe it? List a few experiences to provide yourself with evidence that your point of view is correct.
1) _________________________________
2) _________________________________
3) _________________________________
4) _________________________________
5) _________________________________
6) _________________________________
7) _________________________________
Implications:
Consider your life metaphor against the following questions.
1) What does this metaphor say about me? What kind of person am I?
2) How does holding this metaphor affect the way my personal development? Who am I becoming? Do I want to become that sort of person?
3) How does it affect the way I relate to others around me? How does it influence my family? How does it determine who I choose as friends?
4) What does it say about my goals?
5) What does this say about my choice of profession?
6) Does living with this metaphor make my life progressively better or progressively worse? Note: nothing in life is static.
7) Are there other ways to see the world which are equally valid? If “YES,” try running through the supporting experiences and implication questions. Try a new metaphor on for size and see how it feels. If “NO,” ask yourself if can even consider the possibility others may have different ways of seeing the world.
