In 2014,
at a workshop on Brain-Computer Interface(BCI), a woman representing a major
part of DARPA said, in summary: “We are cyborgs. We are the borg. Resistance is
futile. You WILL be assimilated. You have no choice because the full weight and
power of the state and of the corporations behind the state will give you no
choice.” This is real. I checked it out – and there was no hyperbole at all
(except that this particular woman had not yet been fitted out with any of the
existing devices). Many of the billionnaires who imagine that they are funding
a movement to restore human freedom probably do not know what their money is
actually buying in reality, and where it is heading. But some of us have seen
the ground floor realities first hand.
The
very powerful borg movement is not made up of the stupidest people on earth.
(Earth being what it is, it certainly has stupider ones.) They argue that the
sensible way to avoid a struggle for survival between robots and humans is to
form a kind of marriage of the two, and turn ourselves into half-and-half. And
some folks dream of achieving immortality by downloading themselves into a
computer or a robot. (Those folks tend to be true believers in BCI, but not to
be aware of just how limited the technology is for benign purposes and just how
dangerous for others.) I have opposed the borg movement so hard at times that I
have made powerful enemies, probably why I was added later to the long list of
people purged from NSF by means I would have thought illegal and impossible in
a free country.
But this
morning... I realize... we should remember that the earth as a whole is ALREADY a kind of
cyborg, and it really is imperative that we think hard about how to adapt to
that reality. ALREADY information technology is at a level comparable to money,
DNA and spirit as a system which manages the specific information which
controls life on this planet. Short of trying to get to a new dark age (an
effort which itself would likely lead to war and annihilation, as more than
half the people of earth would have to die)... we are called to stretch our
minds ‘way beyond Washington, ‘way beyond this week’s hot topics in silicon
valley or even most universities... to try to figure out how to design a better,
more sustainable and more liberating interface between the IT part of earth and
the rest of it.
At
present, the issue is incredibly urgent. As the power of IT grows quickly, it
becomes ever more urgent that we get the kind of IT which does not suffocate us
into a path of decay which implodes – a kind of singularity.
But
please forgive if I take the time to explain just a little about what a
singularity is.
Most
people in futurism think a singularity is that Kurzweil stuff... the idea that
AI will cause progress and intelligence to grow more and more quickly,
downloading humans into the machines which joyously take over. He is referring
to the kind of singularity people learn about in courses in functions f(x). For
a function f(x)=1/(x-5), for example, the growth in the function as x rises
becomes faster and faster until x reaches 5, and the function goes to infinity.
Can humanity achieve transcendence and
go to infinity at a finite time form now like that? This idea reminds me a lot
of concepts of apotheosis which have been popular all across the earth here and
there for millennia.
But
more advanced courses talk about partial differential equations (PDE), which
address functions like f(x,y,z,t) (among others), to describe a real world
which not only changes with time (t) but has some variation or complexity over
three-dimensional space (x,y,z). In that world, the issue of singularities is a
very series business. For example, what should we think when the PDE which
describe the physics of the universe might just blow up under certain
conditions? Years ago, to help me understand that physics, I bought a little
book by Walter Strauss on Nonlinear Wave Equations... and the
issue of sudden breaks was really central to understanding that kind of system.
I would want to say more...
But I
will limit it to just one example. There are times when people actually WANT to
create a singularity. For example, in designing nuclear bombs, one wants to
create a compression wave to force the fuel into a smaller and smaller space –
like an implosion shrinking it to a point, to where nuclear ignition occurs and
an explosion goes off. Lawrence
Livermore Labs are working very hard now to design little pellets which they
can implode in that way, using lasers to initiate compression waves, so as to
create a great new source of energy and of space propulsion. But it is not
easy. Everyone knows about compression in general, but how to actually generate
that kind of implosion is tough.
Unfortunately,
that is exactly the kind of phenomenon I now see before my eyes in the
interactions of political, economic and technological forces (IT and energy
especially) in human society all over the earth.
Since
it involves the interaction of complex nonlinear phenomena, all I can
reasonably do in this kind of blog is point to a few strands of hope here and
there – and also think about what happens if it all hits the fan about the way
one might expect. (Last night’s speech from Trump continues the process of hope
dwindling more and more – as he sticks religiously to the idea that his fig
leaf of a conflicts law is enough to drain the swamp which is already eating
him alive, and to fantasies that it’s Hillary Clinton hiding there with huge
jaws beneath the surface... as if she could even swim!)
One of
the ... shock waves... involves IT technology, which I still discuss now and
then with industry people on some web conversations.
A lot
of the present IT developments... remind me of the Three Body sci fi trilogy by
Cixin Liu, where he talks about forces trying to flatten the universe actively,
from ten dimensions to four to three to two... a process accelerated by folks
who use flattening as a weapon. That’s not a bad metaphor for the way in which
badly used IT, IT used as “artificial stupidity” (AS), can be flattening to
human existence,
destructive
to body body and soul. Since I know these types of IT extremely well, it is so
tempting to go into very specific detail... but let me just be brief as I was
on the webcast the other day.
One
major problem is that folks developing IT systems are often guided by a
powerful tacit assumption that an IT system must be a kind of top down control
system, or at least a system which gets its
primary
values from a top down, single source. I am guilty of fostering that kind of
thinking myself to some degree (see that Handbook of RLAP by Lewis and Liu, the
best book on the most advanced designs
of this family). But in fact, there are folks devoutly
dedicated to the caste system (literally!) and to fixed point control (actually
aiming at shrinking life to a point, really) who have had far more devastating
impacts on these directions.
But
what is a constructive way out, on an earth where IT WILL be in charge more and
more? Above all, where is a serious alternative general design paradigm,
without which implosion will continue regardless of what other crises we learn
to deal with?
At www.werbos.com/Mind.htm, I give a
link to a talk I gave in plain English to leaders in the RLADP area, all about
the incredibly huge risks and opportunities coming up quickly (as in
singularity) in the world of real intelligent systems. (Not just the dreams
from afar like Kurzweil’s.) An obvious question: where is there a
mathematically solid and well-defined alternative to that kind of top-down
control.
An
obvious response (from one of two “hopeful examples” I talked about): can we
not ground the new IT system which will run the world (inevitably!) on
MULTIPLAYER optimization theory or games
rather
than single player optimization?
Is
there any way to make that real?
We can
learn a whole lot of lessons from the electric power system, if we dig enough
deeply into how it really works and not fall into the trap of believing the
gross untruths which the local money folks tell to people like Trump or like
the leaders of IBM research. Again, it is hard for me to resist saying more
about very important details (but many are covered in various parts of www.werbos.com already). The key point is that
an IT system can be designed to be more like an intelligent market, getting its
values from the humans... There are many, many limits to such systems, and many
lessons about what needs IMPROVEMENT in the electric power system, from
security to balance to fairness... but even more important are the lessons
about a better way to organize other IT systems, all the way to things at the
governance level.
But
this week it hits me: all these traditional market-based IT systems (much
fairer than the corrupt nonsense we see in DC) are still INCREMENTAL in nature.
They remind me of my very first task in my first tenured job, at DOE, when I managed
a grant to Oak Ridge to do a deep mathematical study of the DOE long-range
energy forecasting model. That model was grounded very firmly in market
equilibrium economics, and had been adapted from the best model of Shell Oil,
which was helping DOE out from its beginning. The Oak Ridge folks discovered...
multiple solutions. Even traditional market economics is ambiguous! It suffers
from what mathematicians call a nonconvexity problem.
Market
economics still allows different paths into the future. In neural networks....
everyone knows that this is the “local optimum” problem, and serious
mathematicians know that ALL nonlinear systems we design have that problem to some
degree as an inevitable issue. (I have written satirical blogs before analyzing
the glossy eyed salesmen who try to convince people they have a universal
solution to the problem, a perfect and infallible silver bullet. More dreams of
apotheosis?)
In
RLADP, we do have ways to REDUCE the nonconvexity problem ... by a whole
level... by
NONINCREMENTAL
systems... systems adapted by incremental means to achieve nonincremental
goals. How to say it in words? I published a design called GDHP... too complex
for the simpler problems we solved before with simpler neural networks (like
accurate missile interception, per work of Balakrishnan with DHP and then his
simplified DHP)... so is that we would need to get out of the implosion now
underway, if we had a more intelligent market-style IT top level? (The secure
lower level is also important to IT of course, but I have already written about
that essential design component here; see “cyberblitzkrieg.”)
I don’t
know.
It
reminds me of when Guido DeBoeck, who set up the trading room for the World
Bank, wrote an important seminal book, Trading on the Edge, and asked me for a
foreword (as I was known as the source of the algorithms which worked best). I
agreed, and wrote a four page foreword – two pages extolling what I did forty
years ago and how to use it to make money in trading (as requested), and two
pages discussing how we could have financial crisis if everyone kept moving
that way (a kind of minimplosion, which did happen of course in 2008) and how
to use automated DHP to get better valuations and a better trading system to
avoid that. Since he, like Trump, wanted good news, he just used the first two
pages... so do we need to get back to the hard work? Do we need an automated
GDHP kind of system, to make up for the failure of individual humans to see the
big picture or create organizations with enough honesty and intelligence and
sanity to meet the minimal requirements for staying alive? I wonder. But if the
humans keep acting nuts enough, we won’t even have the minimal EMP or cyberblitzkrieg
defenses which even a dumb organism should be able to appreciate, even though
the IT aspects and device technology are all worked out already!!
===========
And
that all naturally has gotten me to maintain discussions about what people call
afterlife.
I have
often written about the beautiful and lucid concept of “alchemical marriage,”
which I interpret as an effective Pareto optimal partnership and integration of
body and “soul.” (I put “soul” in quotes only because so many people have so
many weird specific theories about what that life form is. Some people speak
from experience, while others are motivated by greed and desire for power or
desire for fixed-point control to make all people shut up who would dare to
speak from experience. Like those “scientists” who try to suppress data and
prevent experiments lest they contradict their beloved theories.)
But as
we get older, the question arises: what happens when the soul part of us
becomes a widow?
Well,
we’re not the same person after that, and we should not kid ourselves about it.
But it is also a well-established cycle of life, which should not drive us to
irrationality either. It is part of nature, and nature is who we are.
From
the viewpoint of the soul, I have at times compared the body/brain to a car or
to a collection of files.
For
example... vain people pay too much attention to their bodies, in a silly way,
which Quakers rightly do not encourage; it is a classic case of misplaced
myopic priorities. But classic Hindu ascetics would totally ignore or even beat
up the body. That is like unto the person who doesn’t even do basic maintenance
for his/her car, in hopes of spending less time on it. In reality, if you
choose to have a car (another issue which varies), you end up wasting less time
and energy and money if you do reasonable preventive maintenance. Same with the
body. So I am no athlete, but I work to get a certain level of physical
exercise (at maximum value and minimum cost) and learn other ways to be efficient
about a reasonable level of preventive maintenance – and not putting effort
into advanced anti-aging technologies which it would hurt humanity to possess
at this level of its development.
Re
files: I remember when my father had to give up his company president office in
downtown Philadelphia, and thus most of his file cabinets. “Those are my
brains!” he exclaimed one day. “Without them, I feel I am only half as
intelligent as I was.” Anyone who doubts their brain is so important should try
harder to experience what it is like wandering around just as soul for a little
while, and really test themselves in that state... as Gurdieff once would
discuss, when he was relaxed enough to trust people. (When people voted for Trump and Bannon, I
think they were hoping for someone more like Gurdjieff, who used weird talk
just to wake people up... but Trump now seems to be headed for deeper sleep
lately, even rolling around less and less in bed.)
“The
obvious response,” I mentioned to some friends the other day, “Is to put any
really important data onto ‘hard disk,’ onto the soul. If you don’t, you may
lose it.”
“Ah,”
said Marie... “But if your soul is developed enough, it gets access to all the
information in the cosmos, so nothing is really lost.” As in “who needs your
files, when you have achieved access to the internet?”
That
was a bit of a tricky zinger. It reminds me of the older question: “If all the
information is there in cosmic consciousness, who needs this school of a planet
anyway?”
Part of
the answer is that people tend to exaggerate. When they see something bigger
than they are, they tend to assume it is infinitely big. All-wise omniscient
parents, for example. Not EVERYTHING
is
there on the internet, and it is even possible for mere humans to upgrade what
is available and known on the internet. That’s part of the answer.
Another
part... reminds me of my old ... sort of collaborator... Karl Pribram, a name
you can find on the web, well worth looking up. In his world... many people
distinguished between PROCEDURAL memory and EPISODIC memory. That’s a bit
oversimplified... but it’s good enough for here and now. The key point is that
the memories and learning which you build up in your soul in a lifetime on
earth are not ONLY episodic data, like bland recording of external data, but
also ... things like skills or habits or attitudes... active kinds of memory
which steer what you do, and “who you are.” For example, having physical access
to the internet (like cosmic consciousness) is not important by itself, if you
don’t learn the ACTIVE SKILL of how to use it. (For example, with cosmic
consciousness, learning to pose questions, wait, engage dialogue, bear with
certain flows... ). All of that determines what your afterlife is actually like
or whether you end up so useless that you join the majority in .. well,
it’s
like the Book of Esdras. Saint Paul made it clear that those who overflow with
faith but no spirit or charisma... well, maybe it’s kinder to compare them to
camels with no hope of making it through the eye of a needle. We have ever so
many camels like that on earth.. and that is another part of why implosion
seems likely.
I
should perhaps have continued the joke from last time: “Of course, we do not
know how soon evacuation will be necessary, because of course people have free
will and because we juggle multiple paths also. Our duty is to help as best we
can, and to fulfill due diligence, and certainly clean up when it is time to
remove the mess.”
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