Singularity Theism: An Athiest's Bathtub Hypothesis

Okay, some Facebook friends and family are interested in some really dorky thoughts I’d had in the tub one night. Those who know me well know I am an atheist. And in one of those offhand Facebook comments, I dropped that I had inched toward agnosticism due to said dorky thoughts. The following is my quick and dirty write-up of the idea. Keep in mind that my fidelity (faithfulness!) to physicalism remains throughout. I rely on what I take to be theoretical possibility within a naturalist worldview and accept no supernaturalism. Anyway, here goes…

1. The Mind and the Brain are intimately connected. Fundamentally, the mind is a physical phenomenon. There are no non-physical, mental phenomena. There is nothing supernatural. All that exists is physical.
2. Artificial intelligence and Artificial consciousness are possible. Anything that instantiates the causal and physical properties of human brains can instantiate minds and intelligence. The properties of mind are the causal-physical properties instantiated by brains (or silicon, or whatever). This is known as functionalism.
3. Computers achieve increased computational power when they are networked.
4. Human brains are sufficiently similar to computers for us, one day, to have neural prostheses and interface with computers and machines. Cyborgs are possible. Brain to brain interfaces are possible. (Yes, there are deep questions about the unity of consciousness and personal identity I will pass over here.)
5. At some future time, brain to brain – and thus mind to mind – networking will be possible. (This is all found in the work of Kurzweil, Vinge and others. The “Singularity” is an extrapolation from Moore’s Law – a theoretical point at which computer intelligence exceeds human intelligence and artificial consciousness emerges. Beyond that point, things become really unpredictable.)
6. Transhumanists like Kurzweil, Vinge and, in particular, Nick Bostrum have postulated Jupiter Brains and Matrioshka Brains. These theoretical entities are super-massive extensions of Number 5, i.e. they are hyper-intelligences capable of harnessing the energy of, say, stars for their computations.
7. Let’s suppose Matrioshka Brains are possible. Suppose these entities can also be networked. Can their computational powers be scaled up even further? How large? Let’s call these brains beyond Matrioshka level “Deus Brains”. These godlike entities require us only to take the logic of networked intelligence, energy consumption and computational power as far as it can go. I am admitting ignorance about any theoretical, physical or mathematical limits to any intelligent computation system—much less limits on to what degree consciousness can be instantiated. (Humans are very limited in this regard and indeed our consciousness is but a small aspect of the unconscious computational process going on in our brains. See various models of the mind and brain function.)
8. So, Deus Brains could have a critical limit for various reasons: One is that Deus Brains, in order to harness the matter and energy of the universe for computation, would have fundamentally to transform the very nature of the universe, say, from a non-thinking expanse of dust, stars, planets and neutrinos, to something capable of instantiating Deus Brain computations (superintelligence). It seems implausible on its face that stars, spacedust and dark matter can serve dual functions as this ordinary stuff AND also be a Deus Brain. The second possible limit to a Deus Brain could be that networked computational power does not allow for unitary experience, or a single consciousness. In other domains of life, like ecosystems and economics, distributed systems seem to be the lot, due to what appears to be a natural limit on centralization. The Deus Brain would therefore be more like a collection of sentient entities sharing information, synchronizing and reorganizing, but never fully becoming one master-consciousness (due to some limit analogous to the limits of human selective attention, or, as we said, centralization).
9. However, suppose the universe has been thus transformed already (i.e. Deus Brain exist.)  These brains might already have achieved the level of computational power – e.g. a species of omniscience – to simulate the causal nexuses leading up to its status as a Deus Brain. In other words, the universe could already be a fundamentally transformed and the networked entity could already understand its prior states as a formerly unintelligent expanse of energized space-dust, much in the same way we understand ourselves as being evolved from a primordial soup—but in a much more sophisticated way. That understanding means it’s able to compute massive instances of cause and effect, sufficient to simulate experience for lesser minds (or nested subsystems with sentience).
10. The sophistication is such that the Deus Brain can comprise lesser, nested minds and run causal/experiential simulations within them. This is a version of the Brains-in-a-Vat/Matrix argument, or perhaps Berkeley’s idealism. In any case, our experience could be simulated for us by a Deus Brain.
11. AND/OR, the Deus Brain has sufficient computational power to manipulate or navigate space-time. The passage of events as we know it is completely different for a Deus Brain, who understands itself and the universe holistically and in multiple dimensions—moving seamlessly in and out of our limited and singular experience of space-time (which is just ordinary 3D plus time—i.e. the passage of events as we experience it). That means the Deus Brains live “outside of” space and time as we know it and we are limited in ways they are not. This means they could exist in a “future” that is also “now,” relativized in ways our brains can’t fathom. (Shit, ask Stephen Hawking)
12. However, the implications are of multiple, networked Deus Brains, or of a super massive God Brain. There are also Eastern (Hindu-Buddhist) style implications for networking human intelligence with the God Brain and becoming “one with it” in a way. So this God Brain, as I hypothesize it, is perhaps limited in ways that the Judeo-Christian God is not. It is also not clear that the God Brain is a moralizer, or has a “telos” for us or the universe. God Brains could be “evil” or neutral with respect to crude human moralisms. At this level of intelligence, morality could be utterly meaningless. Then again, it may be that the nested intelligences within the God Brain, competing for limited energy resources (limits on resources also speculative on my part), would themselves seek peaceful means of coexisting within the larger God Brain corpus.

Anyway, this is the dorky, bathtub thought-process that nudged me towards agnosticism and away from athiesm (but only very, very slightly). There is just so much speculative stuff in here, I admit. But I really appreciate being able to share these nerdy, errant notions with friends and family. You’re all very tolerant, indeed. If you got this far, I owe you a beer and I promise not to mention any of this again. J

Comments

[Bandy]

I'll take that beer.

[Luke Hankins]

Given your absolute denial of the supernatural, this is very much on the borders (pun intended) of agnosticism. The problem of physicalism/naturalism is essentially no different from the problem of supernaturalism -- namely, the origins of either or both. How is it possible for matter to exist? Did it emerge spontaneously, ex nihilo? Has it "always" existed? If so, why should anything exist rather than nothing? Similarly, if there is another order of existence (what we call the spiritual), how is it possible for whatever makes up that order (what we call the soul and the Divine) to exist? Since we cannot understand how or why matter should exist, why should we preclude the possibility of another, simultaneous order of existence? Certainly not on the grounds of its existence being implausible! What is more implausible than existence itself, whether of matter or of the spiritual realm? And yet...here we are...or so it seems. There are evidences of the spiritual -- but perhaps not the kind that science is equipped to measure very well, if at all. (That would make sense for something that is of another order, though, wouldn't it?)

[Max]

You're changing the subject of this post a bit, Luke. But I'll take a stab at what I see as two questions here. Basically, I go back to the infinite regress problem posed by Glen Whitman on FB, which is fairly standard: The problem of God being created or instantiated. In my version, that's not a problem. In your version, it is a problem. I have less difficulty accepting the idea of matter and energy oscillating cyclically "starting and restarting" as recurring extensions of space-time due to big bang events. Adding God to the mix doesn't add much. Why? This leads to the second issue: I can't accept the idea of something non-physical or non-causal being something that exists. We have a closed ontology. So, while there may be mysterious beings, like God Brains, they must be instantiated. They must have causal-physical properties. Indeed, that's what it means to exist. This would make them no less mysterious to us, it just precludes entities that involve ontological non-closure of the physical. Room for non-physical essenses. The very terminology makes no sense. Anyway, my hypothetical theism in the post above is a way to get to super-intelligence without the requirement of "super-natural" (above and beyond the laws of nature)entities. My hypothetical God brain exists within and because of the laws of nature. Self organization would be part and parcel to this entity's existence -- just as it is to ours. No Unmoved Mover necessary. While I don't think it's easy to imagine matter and energy having always existed, if "always" makes sense in a "realm" beyond spacetime. I find it less palatable to postulate something extra that has no causal physical properties itself, and is etermal AND causally efficacious. That's just weird to me.

(PS: No I don't believe in ghosts, spirits and souls, but if they exist they are physical things that obey causal laws.)

[GDiddy]

Beer:30 anyone?

[Micha Ghertner]

Hi Max,

I caught your mention of this on Facebook and am glad you wrote it down in blog form. It's sort of what I expected, given your description. Well, I expected #10. I don't really know what to do with #11, as I don't have a very good grasp of multiple dimensions. Which reminds me that I need to read "Flatland" one of these days.

Are you familiar with Nick Bostrom's simulation argument?
www.simulation-argument.com
Here is the abstract:

"This paper argues that at least one of the following propositions is true: (1) the human species is very likely to go extinct before reaching a “posthuman” stage; (2) any posthuman civilization is extremely unlikely to run a significant number of simulations of their evolutionary history (or variations thereof); (3) we are almost certainly living in a computer simulation. It follows that the belief that there is a significant chance that we will one day become posthumans who run ancestor-simulations is false, unless we are currently living in a simulation. A number of other consequences of this result are also discussed."

I discuss reasons for doubting proposition #2 here: distributedrepublic.net/archives/2008/06/02/combinatorial-explosion

If Nick's argument goes through, I find the most plausible proposition to be #1, which would be somewhat depressing.

[Max]

Micha! My sweet Micha! I should have known I could count on you to throw me some wacky-ass curve ball to make my brain fry. I will definitely check this out. I hope you are doing well.

[Luke Hankins]

Max, I haven't changed the subject at all -- I simply chose one particular area of your reasoning (the idea that nothing outside of the material world exists) to examine. I'm not addressing all of your subject matter, but I am addressing an actual part of it, right? Anyway, there's a semantic issue inherent in this discussion. The claim that nothing exists outside of the laws of nature is often problematic because what we usually seem to mean is that nothing exists outside of those laws of nature that we currently understand, or that are empirically discoverable by us. The very terms "matter" and "nature" could quite possibly be meaningless -- mere stand-ins for all that exists, whatever that may be -- and therefore the term "supernatural" only a metaphor for the unknown, rather than something that is literally other than "the natural." If a spiritual realm exists, it is integrally part of the physical world, and is therefore an aspect of "nature." If it exists, and if science could learn about it, we would have to expand our definition of the "physical," "material," "natural," as well as our understanding of the laws that govern it. The idea of the integrality of the spiritual and the physical seems fairly universal in human culture -- a way of thinking about mystery -- so might it be a kind of communal intuition about reality? We can think of Eastern religions, or ancient Celtic religion with its interlocking world and otherworld, or Platonic thought, or Christianity's conception of all things holding together "in" God, etc., etc. What I would suggest is that we are quite narrowminded if we assume that we understand what constitutes "matter" and "nature" and the laws thereof. If the spiritual exists, it is every bit as "natural" as matter is. If the spiritual exist outside of space and time, does it defy natural laws? Not necessarily -- it might only defy our limited view of them. Relativity in physics might provide a paradigm for thinking about the possibility of seeming breaches of natural law actually constituting further complexities of the laws we can't fully understand. Basically, all I'm getting at is that it's narrowminded of us to preclude the possibility of what we call the supernatural, and that we don't have to take that term literally to believe in the soul or in a God who is not "material" in the way that we currently understand the term.

[Max]

You said all you needed to say, which is why there is no actual disagreement with my initial point: "If a spiritual realm exists, it is integrally part of the physical world, and is therefore an aspect of "nature." If it exists, and if science could learn about it, we would have to expand our definition of the "physical," "material," "natural," as well as our understanding of the laws that govern it." No argument here. I'm making an ontological claim (closed physical universe), not an epistemic one (knowledge of said universe). But if you stick to what I just quoted, there is nothing supernatural, only mysterious, which I don't deny. Schroedinger's Cat, Quarks, neutrinos are all mysterious phenomena, but they are nevertheless physical and causal.

[Transhuman]

Guys, regarding this matter you need to see the future human evolution website
http://www.humansfuture.org