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The vulnerability of the bio body is the source of most threats to its existence.

We have looked at the question of uploading the identity by uploading the memory contents, on the assumption that the identity is contained in the memories. I believe this assumption has been proved to be almost certainly wrong.

What we are concentrating on is the identity as the viewer of its perceptions, the centroid or locus of perception.

It is the fixed reference point. And the locus of perception is always Here, and it is always Now. This is abbreviated here to 0,0.

What more logical place to find the identity than where it considers Here and Now – its residence in Space Time.

It would surely be illogical to start searching for the identity where it considers to be Somewhere Else or in Another Time.

We considered the fact that the human being accesses the outside world through its senses, and that its information processing system is able to present that information as being “external.” A hand is pricked with a pin. The sensory information – a stream of neural impulses, all essentially identical — progress to the upper brain where the pattern is read and the sensation of pain is felt. That sensation, however, is projected or mapped onto the exact point it originated from.

One feels the pain at the place the neural disturbance came from. It is an illusion — a very useful illusion.

In the long slow progress of evolution from a single cell to the human organism, and to the logical next step — the “android” (we must find a better word) – this mapping function must be one of the most vital survival strategies. If the predator is gnawing at your tail, it’s smart to know where the pain is coming from.

It wasn’t just structure that evolved, but “smarts” too… smarter systems.

Each sensory channel conveys not just sensory information but information regarding where it came from. Like a set of outgoing information vectors. But there is also a complementary set of incoming vectors. The array of sensory vectors from visual, audible, tactile, and so on, all converge on one location – a locus of perception. And the channels cross-correlate. The hand is pricked – we immediately look at the place the pain came from. And… one can “follow one’s nose” to see where the barbecue is.

Dr Shu can use both his left hand and arm; and his right hand and arm in coordination to lift up the $22M Ming vase he is in the process of stealing.

Left/right coordination — so obvious and simple it gets overlooked.

A condition known as Synesthesia [http://hplusmagazine.com/editors-blog/sight-synesthesia-what…be-rewired ] provides an example of how two channels can get confused — for example, being able to see sounds or hear movement.

Perhaps the most interesting example is the rubber hand experiment from UC Riverside. In this the subject places their hands palm down on a table. The left arm and hand are screened off, and a substitute left “arm” and rubber hand are installed. After a while, the subject reacts as though the substitute was their real hand.

It is on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=93yNVZigTsk.

This phenomenon has been attributed to neuroplasticity.

A simpler explanation would be changed coordinates — something that people who row or who ride bicycles are familiar with — even if they have never analysed it. The vehicle becomes part of oneself. It becomes a part of the system, an extension. What about applying the same sense on a grander scale? Such a simple and common observation may have just as much relevance to the next step in evolution as the number of teraflops per second.

So, we can get the sensory vectors to be re-deployed. But one of the fundamental questions would be – can we get the 0,0 locus, the centroid of perception, to shift to another place?

Our environment, the environment we live in, is made of perception. Outside there may be rocks and rivers and rain and wind and thunder… but not in the head. Outside this “theater in the head,” there is a world of photons and particles and energy and radiation — reality — but what we see is what is visible, what we hear is what is audible, what we feel is what is tangible … that is our environment, that is where we live.

However, neurones do not emit any light, neurons do not make any sound, they are not a source of pressure or temperature so what the diddly are we watching and listening to?

We live in a world of perception. Thanks to powerful instrumentation and a great deal of scientific research we know that behind this world of perception there are neurons, unknown to us all the time working away providing us with colors and tones and scents….

But they do not emit colors or tones or scents – the neuronal language is binary – fired or not fired.

Somewhere the neuronal binary (Fired/Not Fired) language has to be translated into the language of perception – the range of colors, the range of tones, the range of smells … these are each continuous variables; not two-state variables as in the language of neurons.

There has been a great flurry of research activity in the area of neurons, and what was considered to be “Gospel” 10 years ago, is no longer so.

IBM and ARM in the UK have (summer 2011) announced prototype brains with hyper-connectivity – a step in the right direction but the fundamental question of interpretation/translation is side-stepped.

I hope someone will prove me wrong, but I am not aware of anyone doing any work on the translator question. This is a grievous error.

(To be continued)

I have been asked to mention the following.
The Nature of The Identity — with Reference to Androids

The nature of the identity is intimately related to information and information processing.

The importance and the real nature of information is only now being gradually realised.

But the history of the subject goes back a long way.

In ancient Greece, those who studied Nature – the predecessors of our scientists – considered that what they studied – material reality – Nature – had two aspects – form and substance.

Until recent times all the emphasis was on substance — what substance(s) subjected to sufficient stress would transmute into gold; what substances in combination could be triggered into releasing vast amounts of energy – money and weapons – the usual Homo Sap stuff.

You take a block of marble – that is substance. You have a sculptor create a beautiful statue from it – that is form.

The form consists of the shapes imposed by the sculptor; and the shapes consist of information. Now, if you were an unfeeling materialistic bastard you could describe the shapes in terms of equations. And if you were an utterly depraved unfeeling materialistic bastard you could have a computer compare the sets of equations from many examples to find out what is considered to be beauty.

Dr Foxglove – the Great Maestro of Leipzig, is seated at the concert grand — playing on a Steinway (of course) with great verve, (as one would expect). In front of him, under a low light, there is a sheet of paper with black marks – information of some kind – the music for Chopin’s Nocturne Op. 9, no. 2.

Aahh! Wonderful.

Sublime….

But … all is not as it seems….

Herr Doktor Foxglove thinks he is playing music.

A grand illusion my friend! You see, the music – it is, how you say — all in the heads of the listeners.

What the Good Doktor is doing, and doing manfully — is operating a wooden acoustic-wave generator – albeit very skilfully, and not just any old wooden acoustic-wave generator – but a Steinway wooden acoustic-wave generator.

There is no music in the physical world. The acoustic waves are not music. They are just pressure waves in the atmosphere. The pressure waves actuate the eardrum. And that in turn actuates a part of the inner ear called the cochlea. And that in turn causes streams of neural impulses to progress up into the higher brain.

Dr Foxglove hits a key on the piano corresponding to 440 acoustic waves per second; this is replicated in a slightly different form within the inner ear, until it becomes a stream of neural impulses….

But what the listener hears is not 440 waves or 440 neural impulses or 440 anything – what the listener hears is one thing – a single tone.

The tone is an exact derivative of the pattern of neural impulses. There are no tones in physical reality.

Tones exist only in the experience of the listener – only in the experience of the observer.

And thanks to some fancy processing not only will the listener get the illusion that 440 cycles per second is actually a “tone” – but a further illusion is perpetrated – that the tone is coming from a particular direction, that what one is hearing is Dr. Foxglove at the Steinway, over there, under the lights – that is where the sound is.

But no, my friend….

What the listener is actually listening to is his eardrums. He is listening to a derivative of a derivative … of his eardrums rattling.

His eardrums are rattling because someone is operating an acoustic wave generator in the vicinity.

But what he is hearing is pure information.

And as for the music ….

A single note – a tone – is neither harmonious nor disharmonious in itself. It is only harmonious or disharmonious in relation to another note.

Music is derived from ratios – a still further derivative — and ratios are pure information.

Take for example the ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg.

The ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg is not 2 Kg.

The ratio of 20 Kg to 10 Kg is 2 – just 2 – pure information.

20 kg/10 kg = 2.

Similarly, we can also show that there is no colour in reality, there are no shapes in reality; depth perception is a derivative – and just as what one is listening to is the rattling of one’s eardrums – so what one is watching is the inside of one’s eyeballs – one is watching the shuddering impact of photons on one’s retina.

The sensations of sound, of light and colour and shapes are all in one’s mind – as decodings of neural messages – which in turn are derivatives of physical processes.

The wonderful aroma coming from the barbecue is all in one’s head.

There are no aromas or tastes in reality – all are conjurations of the mind.

Like the Old Guy said, all is maya, baby….

The only point that is being made here is that Information is too important a subject to be so neglected.

What you are doing here is at the leading edge beyond the leading edge and in that future Information will be a significant factor.

What we away back in the dim, distant and bewildered early 21st Century called Information Technology (I.T.) will be seen as Computer Technology (CT) which is all it ever was – but there will be a real IT in the future.

Similarly what has been referred to for too long as Information Science will be seen for what it is — Library Technology.

Now – down to work.

One of the options – the android – is to upload all stored data from a smelly old bio body to a cool Designer Body (DB).

This strategy is based on the unproven but popular belief that one’s identity is contained by one’s memory.

There are two critical points that need to be addressed.

The observer is the cameraman — not the picture. Unless you are looking in a mirror or at a film of yourself, then you are the one person who will not appear in your memory.

There will be memories of that favourite holiday place, of your favorite tunes, of the emotions that you felt when … but you will only “appear” in your memories as the point of observation.

You are the cameraman – not the picture.

So, we should view with skepticism ideas that uploading the memory will take the identity with it.

If somebody loses their memory – they do not become someone else – hopping and skipping down the street,

‘Hi – I’m Tad Furlong, I’m new in town….’

If somebody loses their memory – they may well say – ‘I do not know my name….’

That does not mean they have become someone else – what they mean is ‘I cannot remember my name….’

The fact that this perplexes them indicates that it is still the same person – it is someone who has lost their name.

If a person changes their name they do not become someone else; nor do they become someone else if they can’t remember their name – or as it is more commonly, and more dramatically, and more loosely put – “cannot remember who they are”.

So, what is the identity?

There is the observer – whatever that is – and there are observations.

There are different forms of information – visual, audible, tactile, olfactory … which together form the environment of the observer. By “projection” the environment is observed as being external. The visual image from one eye is compared with that of the other eye to give depth perception. The sound from one ear is compared with that from the other ear to give surround sound. You are touched on the arm and immediately the tactile sensation – which actually occurs in the mind, is mapped as though coming from that exact spot on your arm.

You live and have your being in a world of sensation.

This is not to say that the external world does not exist – only that our world is the world “inside” – the place where we hear, and see, and feel, and taste….

And all those projections are like “vectors” leading out from a projection spot – a locus of projection – the 0,0 spot – the point which is me seeing and me tasting and me hearing and me scenting even though through the magic of projection I have the idea that the barbeque smells, that there is music in the piano, that the world is full of color, and that my feet feel cold.

This locus of projection is the “me” –it is the point of observation, the 0,0 reference point. This, the observer not the observation, is the identity … the me, the 0,0.

And that 0,0 may be a lot easier to shift than a ton and a half of squashed memories. Memories of being sick; of being tired; of the garden; of your dog; of the sound of chalk on the blackboard, of the humourless assistant bank manager; of the 1982 Olympics; of Sadie Trenton; of Fred’s tow bar; and so on and on and on –

So – if memory ain’t the thing — how do we do it … upload the identity?
(To be continued)

He always called it so. That in free fall after jumping out of the window (he was feeling sick at the moment) you do not feel the weight of a heavy stomach. The laws of nature then are the same as those valid in free outer space — those of special relativity.

The long overlooked consequence: gravity reduces rest mass energy and charge and increases size along with the clock period T focused on by Einstein. His T-change in gravity is accompanied by an L-, M- and Ch-change (Telemach theorem). Very simple but planet-saving. For it totally alters the properties of black holes. They arise more easily, do not Hawking evaporate, cannot be detected if produced at CERN, and grow exponentially inside earth.

The risk of the planet being shrunk to a 2-cm black hole in a few years’ time is currently being raised at CERN every day by 1/30 of the calculated final risk of 3 percent reached by the end of October. No scientist contradicts this accusation openly.

It is so easy: Interrupt and wait until the vitally needed counterproof has been found. No one will be happier than me and the mothers of the planet. Please, allow them to know about the situation.

If you do not act, earth will be shrunk to 2 cm in a few years’ time with a probability of about ten percent as everyone knows.

The reason is that no scientist can disprove that black holes:

1) are never finished,

2) do not evaporate (Hawking is wrong),

3) are uncharged,

4) arise more readily than thought,

5) grow exponentially inside earth,

6) cannot be detected at CERN.

Every day the danger is mounting by 3 percent as you know. You must stop the LHC today, then try to find a scientist who can dismantle one of the six points. The planet will applaud if you find one.

Einstein is still not accepted in Germany – to judge from the fact that there are no academic curricula designed in his footsteps. A new finding implicit in his “happiest thought” as he always called it entails that a currently running German-led experiment will shrink the earth to 2 cm in a few years’ time with a sizable probability. The ostentatious “Albert-Einstein-Institut” refuses to discuss the matter since the German-led LHC experiment must go on at all costs.

The (currently) German-led UN Security Council does not respond to the kind request to endorse the scientific safety conference needed to defuse the bomb alarm. A world-wide press curfew is in charge. Is the world press also German-led?

If Einstein were still alive, he would no doubt cry alarm again. Please, dear Israel: give the warnings of an unworthy son the benefit of the doubt. I hope it is not too late.

Most of the threats to human survival come down to one factor – the vulnerability of the human biological body.

If a tiny faction of the sums being spent on researching or countering these threats was to be used to address the question of a non-biological alternative, a good team could research and develop a working prototype in a matter of years.

The fundamental question does not lie in the perhaps inappropriately named “Singularity”, (of the AI kind), but rather in by what means are neural impulses translated into sensory experience – sounds, colors, tastes, odours, tactile sensations.

By what means is the TRANSLATION effected?

It is well known that leading up to sensory experience – such as music – that it is not just a matter of neural impulses or even patterns of neural impulses, but patterns of patterns – derivatives of derivatives of derivatives – but yet beyond that, translation has to occur.

Many of the threats to human existence, including over-population and all that it brings – can be handled by addressing the basic problem, instead of addressing each threat separately.

There are as many ways to help another human being as there are people in need of help. For some, the urgent need is as basic as food and water. For others, it is an opportunity to develop a talent, realize an idea, and reach one’s full potential. Helping people get what they need most in life is at the heart of successful philanthropy.

However, you can’t simply give money away without thinking deeply about how and where the money will go and why you’re doing the giving. You need to approach philanthropy in a strategic and systematic way—just as an entrepreneur approaches a new venture. That’s the only way to make a self-sustaining difference in the world. That being said, here are five key ways to achieve sustainable success with your philanthropic efforts.

1. Open a Door
Helping people boost themselves out of poverty is the best way to make a lasting positive difference in a person’s life. A new skill, an introduction, an education—these gifts open doors that would otherwise remain closed. A promising beneficiary will walk through that door and create opportunities for others.

2. Define Your Passion
To have enduring impact, your philanthropic efforts should reflect the causes you are most passionate about. For me, one of those things is education: A good education is the most valuable thing you can give another person. My own philanthropic efforts have always included an educational element, whether it’s expanding opportunities to educate a promising mind or extending the brain’s ability to learn. If you follow your own passions, you’ll increase exponentially your chances of sustainable success.

3. Seek Out Inspiration
To truly change the world, you need to inspire—and be inspired by—others. I’ve found many people who share my interest in neuroscience—brilliant people like V.S. Ramachandran, and David Eagleman. They inspire me to learn more, do more, and raise my standards higher. That, in turn, inspires those I work with to raise their game. Having someone you can talk to and work with makes the job of changing the world less daunting, builds deep trust, and sparks vital creativity.

4. Measure Your Impact
You’re more likely to achieve success if you can define ahead of time what form that success will take and track progress toward your goal. Set milestones along the way so you can adjust your approach and add more resources, if necessary. Simple metrics can be a powerful tool to engage people’s competitive spirit and harness it for a good cause.

This approach is what the X Prize Foundation has done in the nonprofit science field, from genomics to space exploration—it defines the goal, sets the parameters, and measures the results. And at the end there is a payoff: a cash prize for the innovators and a new body of human knowledge for the rest of us who are the true winners.

5. Think Like an Entrepreneur
None of the previous points will create a sustainable philanthropic effort unless you are constantly looking for newer and better ways to make a meaningful difference. That means looking at the world and living life as a philanthropic entrepreneur.

For example, Kairos Society, (disclosure: my son, Ankur Jain, founded the organization and I’m a supporter), is based on the belief that the key to improving our world lies in giving the next generation of leaders different opportunities to develop globally impactful innovations. Kairos brings promising young people together with successful business and political leaders from around the world to create sustainable solutions to the world’s most pressing problems.

Continuing to pass down enthusiasm for philanthropy provides chances and opportunities to the people who need it most. Growing up in India, I knew all I needed to change the world was one good opportunity, and I prepared myself for it. When that opportunity came—in the form of the chance to earn an engineering degree—I was ready. With sustainable philanthropy, we can make sure that these chances for success can be grasped by the next generation. This is philanthropy that is truly sustainable.

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Otto E. Rossler, Faculty of Natural Sciences, University of Tubingen, Auf der Morgenstelle 8, 72076 Tubingen, F.R.G.

Resumé

There are new developments in gravitation theory beginning in 2005. They have changed the previously accepted scientific picture of black holes. On the basis of these results, a currently running experiment, designed to produce artificial black holes of very low velocity, has ceased to be innocuous. The experimentally hoped-for “mini black holes,” (1) become more likely to arise, (2) do not evaporate, (3) are undetectable by the machine, (4) will in part get stuck inside earth and (5) will grow there exponentially so as to shrink the earth to 2 cm in perhaps 5 years’ time. Hence a re-appraisal of the experiment is necessary before it can be allowed to go on. Please, rule so, dear Council.

(July 30, 2011)

A previously overlooked new fact in gravitation theory is the reason for my turning to you. It looks simple enough: the rest mass-energy of a particle decreases with increasing gravity. To witness, on a neutron star on which gravity is so high that clocks tick almost twice as slow, every particle has only half the outside rest mass without this fact being locally detectable. This mass-change result, implicit in a dissertation of a co-worker submitted in 2005, represents the main content of a 2007 paper accepted for publication by the journal Chaos, Solitons and Fractals [1]. The same result was independently derived two years later by Richard J. Cook of the Air Force Academy [2]. It finally was obtained on the highest level of technical sophistication by a specialist who wants to remain anonymous while insisting that all credit go to the late Arthur Komar [3]. A maximally simple derivation finally is the “Telemach theorem” [4].

Many predictions pertinent to particle collisions are overthrown as a consequence of the mass-change result. Designing new tailor-made experiments will take several years. All of this is nothing but ordinary scientific progress, taking its due time to be tested and become mainstream wisdom.

By a twist of fate, the new result happens to possess more than just academic interest. A machine that was designed to produce miniature black holes — the Large Hadron Collider of CERN — suddenly becomes the most dangerous endeavor of humankind. As familiar from similar examples in the past, the scientific community is sluggish in recognizing the significance of the situation.

Science sometimes transcends its usual boundaries by spilling over into everyday life and politics. This happens to be the case here. An experiment thought to be purely academic (except for some theoretically unexplored features of quark-gluon plasmas drawn attention to by my colleague Walter Wagner) acquires a menacing character because the most hoped-for experimental outcome suddenly possesses radically new features: black holes.

“Black holes” were so named by John Wheeler in 1968 [5] who had inherited his impishness from his mentor, Einstein. Three years later, Johnny (as his friends sometimes called him) joked that “a black hole has no hair” (in apparent allusion to a Berlin pop song from the 1920s, “Say is it true that the frog at the butt has no hair?”) — “except for three.” The remaining three hairs were: mass, angular momentum and charge [6]. Only three years later, Stephen Hawking [7] described a fourth hair brought-in by quantum mechanics (Hawking evaporation). The latter property would – he argued – drain away mass-energy, slowly emaciating every black hole until it would eventually explode (“evaporate”) on having grown maximally small – as small as the tiny black holes hoped-for at CERN.

Now, almost 4 decades later, two of the remaining four hairs prove to be clipped (charge and evaporation). This fundamentally altered situation logically requires a re-evaluation of the safety equation of the LHC experiment, since the most looked-forward-to fruits of the experiment (mini black holes [8]) have become undetectable by detectors designed on the basis of the overhauled theory. This situation represents a drawback for a lovingly set-up world-class experiment which also is the most expensive of history. Some resistance shown by the scientific community is predictably preprogrammed.

This new situation would not represent a sufficient reason to bother the world’s Security Council – were it not for the fact that the experiment has become unsafe. The undetectable miniature black holes hoped to be generated at a rate of one per second [8] will now do new things which, unfortunately, are not innocuous.

To evaluate the totally changed situation, a “scientific safety conference” was proposed in 2008, with Prince Charles who is widely esteemed for his “green thumb” as the chair. The whole issue was approached in a hope-inspired light tone [9].

But the harsh logic of real-life constraints struck. Would a public safety assessment not cause unnecessary delays and, what is more, drain away valuable public confidence? One member state of CERN’s – Austria — even announced to leave CERN, to reluctantly return after closed-door admonitions.

It goes without saying that the most awesome experiment of history — with its thousands of physicists, the cream of creams, and with all influential governments of the globe participating either as members or as accredited observers who have to contribute too — cannot easily change course. Should it really do so only because a new chapter of future textbook results has been opened up?

Any safety assessment is a double-edged endeavor. What it achieves in terms of added rationality, it jeopardizes in terms of lost planning security. So it is no wonder that there has been little enthusiasm to comply with such a request. Pascal’s logic – a very big risk deserves absolute priority – is predictably hard to enforce in the reality of a tight-budget multinational endeavor.

Does this mean that everything is in perfect order? From the point of view of bureaucracy, the answer is yes, from the point of view of safety, the answer is no. For the risk that our earth will be eaten inside out by the first sufficiently slow artificial mini black hole (anticipated to be produced in a matter of ten days [8]) can be estimated to be roughly 1:6 — a “Russian roulette” — with the added feature of the remaining time for the planet being of the order of 5 years [10]. The low estimate for the remaining time stems from the fact that an independent physical theory – chaos theory – conspires predicting that every resident miniature black hole will be turned into an exponentially growing “miniquasar” [10]. Thirdly, the final safety argument offered by CERN to the world before the new results were brought to its knowledge in early 2008 – the continued existence of neutron stars in the sky – was evaporated by another independent physical theory, quantum mechanics [11]. Thus, three totally disjoint sciences (relativity, chaos and quantum) conspire by each refusing to give the all-clear signal to be expected from at least one of them on the basis of common sense: A “trap” put to humankind by nature as it were.

After the experiment inadvertently got shrunk in half energy-wise, following an early technical accident in September 2008, the probability of earth’s being transformed into a 2-cm mini-quasar got cut in half too – from 16 to 8 percent. This still dreadful level will be reached once the experiment has attained its maximum luminosity or cumulative number of collisions.

Currently, CERN has reached one ninth of the originally planned luminosity while scheduling to reach one third by the end of the next three months [12]. If the already incurred risk thus is 0.8 percent (8÷9 = 0.8), this means that more than a quarter of the danger of 8 percent to be reckoned with will be realized by the end of October 2011. It goes without saying that every single day that the experiment is halted earlier for re-evaluation purposes is worthwhile. The single eventually lethal collision event could happen on the last day before the conference starts.

Nothing more is being asked than to have a second look. A court in Germany — the “Cologne Administrative Court” – before whom CERN was standing as a defendant on January 27, 2011 – concluded its ruling after stating that it could not override an earlier ruling by the German supreme court, on the following sentence which for some reason went unreported in the media:
THE COURT EXPRESSES THAT IT SHOULD BE POSSIBLE TO LET THE VARIOUS SAFETY ASPECTS, WHICH ALSO WERE THE SUBJECT OF THE TWO SAFETY REPORTS FROM THE YEARS 2003 AND 2008, BE DISCUSSED WITHIN THE SCOPE OF A “SAFETY CONFERENCE” [13].

I am aware that I have no right to contact you owing to my being an ordinary person only. But I stand here representing the whole scientific community and every citizen and country of the planet when I say: Please, dear Highest Delegates of Planet Earth, do endorse the request made by the Cologne Administrative Court by declaring: LET US HAVE A SECOND LOOK IMMEDIATELY.

For J.O.R.

References

[1] O.E. Rossler, “Abraham-like return to constant c in general relativity: ‘gothic-R-theorem’ demonstrated in Schwarzschild metric,” 2007, http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/ottoroesslerminiblackhole.pdf (second paper there). Revised version: http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/Chaos.pdf

[2] R.J. Cook, “Gravitational space dilation”, 2009, http://arxiv.org/abs/0902.2811

[3] A. Komar, “Covariant conservation laws in general relativity.” Phys. Rev. 113, 934–936 (1959), http://iopscience.iop.org/0264-9381/23/24/L01/pdf/cqg6_24_l01.pdf

[4] O.E. Rossler, “Einstein’s equivalence principle has three further implications besides affecting time: T-L-M-Ch Theorem,” 2011,
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/einsteins-equivale…t-l-m-.pdf

[5] J.A. Wheeler , “Our universe, the known and the unknowns.” The American Scholar 37, No.2, 248 (1968).

[6] J.A. Wheeler 1971, quoted in: K.S. Thorne, Black Holes and Time Warps, New York: W.W. Norton 1994, p. 275.

[7] S.W. Hawking, “Black hole explosions.” Nature 245, 30–31 (1974).

[8] B. Giddings and S. Thomas, “High energy colliders as black hole factories: The end of short distance physics.” Phys. Rev. D, Vol. 65. 10.1103/PhysRevD.65.056010 (2002).

[9] O.E. Rossler, “A petition to CERN,” April 2008,
http://www.wissensnavigator.com/documents/PetitiontoCERN.pdf

[10] O.E. Rossler, “Abraham solution to Schwarzschild metric implies that CERN miniblack holes pose a planetary risk.” In: Vernetzte Wissenschaften – Crosslinks in Natural and DSocial Sciences (P.J. Plath and E.C. Haas, eds.), Berlin: Logos Verlag 2009 (July), pp. 263–270 (submitted September 2007), http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/ottoroesslerminiblackhole.pdf (first paper there).

[11] O.E. Rossler, “A rational and moral and spiritual dilemma.” In: Personal and Spiritual Development in the World of Cultural Diversity (G.E. Lasker and K. Hiwaki, eds.), Vol. 5, Tecumseh: The International Institute for Advanced Studies in Systems Research and Cybernetics 2008 (July), pp. 61–66,
http://ww.wissensnavigator.com/documents/spiritualottoeroessler.pdf

[12] A. Rydd and M. Ferro-Luzzi, “Experiment’s desiderata,” slide No. 8, http://indico.cern.ch/getFile.py/access?contribId=1&sess…fId=144632

[13] Original German ending of the Cologne Administrative Court’s ruling: “Das Gericht gibt seiner Meinung Ausdruck, dass es möglich sein sollte, die unterschiedlichen Sicherheitsaspekte, die auch Gegenstand der beiden Sicherheitsberichte aus den Jahren 2003 und 2008 waren, im Rahmen einer ‘Sicherheitskonferenz‘ diskutieren zu lassen“,
http://www.juris.de/jportal/portal/page/homerl.psml?cmsuri=/…A110100233

carboncopies.org

Concerns arose recently about the concept of so-called “catchment areas”, evolutionary developments that result in a very tight interdependence between requirements for survival and behavioral drives. In particular, the concern has been raised that such catchment might render any significant modification of the human mind, such as through brain enhancement, impossible (Suzanne Gildert, “Pavlov’s AI: What do superintelligences REALLY want?”, Humanity+@Caltech, 2010).

The concept of a catchment area assumes that beneath the veneer of goal-oriented rational planning, learned behavior and skill lies a basic set of drives and reward mechanisms. The only purpose of those drives and reward mechanisms is genetic survival, a necessary result of eons of natural selection. It follows that all of our perceived goals, our desires and interests, the pursuit of wealth, social acceptance or fame, love, scientific understanding, all of it is merely a means to an end. All of it points back to the set of drives and reward mechanisms that best enable us as individuals, us as a tribe and us as a species to survive in our given environment.

Why does that describe a catchment area, a type of prison of behavior? It is assumed that the distribution of behaviors that have enabled long-term survival is a narrow one with little real variance. Stray too far from the norm and your behaviors become counter-productive to survival. Worst of all, if you recognize your enslavement to those single-purpose drives and reward mechanisms, if you realize that they have no meaning beyond a survival that itself links to no universal purpose, then you risk embarking upon a nihilistic course that would likely end in your extermination or self-termination.

How risky is modifying reward mechanisms?

If the catchment problem is real, and if it indeed implies that we live in a precarious balance of behavioral drives that keep us alive, then any modification brings with it the risk that we tip the balance. One significant change, or a series of changes could push us into a condition where our mental reward system is no longer aligned with requirements for survival. One form of this problem has been popularized as “wire-heading” (Larry Niven, Known Space & Ringworld novels, 1970–1996), where an individual exists in a short-circuited reward-loop, living only to repeatedly and directly deliver reward stimulus to herself.

There are of course numerous possible critiques of the catchment hypothesis, which bears a heavy burden of proof. There is plenty of evidence that evolution is not an actual optimizer. If the process of natural selection is not an optimizer, then why should we assume that we exist in a delicately optimized state? We may also consider changes in our mental experience in the recent past. For example, humans generally live longer now than they did previously, so that the extended experience itself is a novel condition for human mental function, and brings with it different survival challenges to which behavior needs to be adapted. And, while we share many behavioral traits as a species, there are clearly differences in behavior between individuals, most of whom appear to function and survive. In fact, some behaviors do not seem at all optimal for survival, such as extreme sports. Those critiques do not mean that the notion of catchment areas is wrong, but they demonstrate that we must take care before drawing extreme conclusions in the matter.

If we represent behavioral traits as variables in a multi-dimensional landscape, and the survival suitability of combinations of traits as elevation in that landscape, does the landscape look like a Himalayan mountain ridge with sharp peaks, steep cliffs and deep valleys? Or does it look more like a rolling vista of hills, or perhaps even a concatenation of several contiguous high-altitude plateaus? If we do not know what this landscape looks like, then it is extremely difficult to make informed statements about the results that we should expect when reward mechanisms and consequent behaviors are modified.

Can we modify while specifying conditions for survival?

Is there anything about past developments that we might use as a guide, to tell us if modifications of reward mechanisms and behaviors are survivable, and how that might work? I believe there is. I think the process is unavoidable, as it is a result of selection among differences. Darwin got us here, and he can get us out too.

Let us assume that modifying our reward mechanisms can result in personal destruction. That is not a fanciful assumption. We need only look at the worst-case scenarios in cases of addiction to see relevant examples. Similarly, we may observe that suicide is such a case, unless it is a sacrifice that serves the greater purpose of tribe or species survival.

Do all modifications lead to destruction? That seems highly unlikely, given that humans have not existed forever. There have been ancestors who probably had different brains and at least somewhat different drives and reward mechanisms. The further back you look, the more different and strange those drives and mechanisms may seem, since the species involved will have had somewhat different challenges and requirements for survival.

If there was a way that led from there to what we are now through natural selection, then why should we assume that this is the terminal state? It seems reasonable to assume that if we carried out a large number of experiments in which we modified our brains and their underlying drives and reward mechanisms to some degree, some of those experiments would not result in catastrophe. There would still be a selection process. The question is not whether there exist ways to achieve brain enhancement. Rather, we should seek out the best process. We should determine how to carry out intelligent experimentation that minimizes that rate of failure and maximizes the rate of success.

Image attribution

Wirehead Darwin: modified from George Grantham Bain press photo collection, purchased by the library of Congress. No restrictions.
Survival landscape: modified Height map (Wikipedia), unknown author. Public domain.