REALITY v1.0

 

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********************** ADDICTION ********************** Most of us would think of any form of addiction in sharply negative terms. Yet certain forms of it may have evolved as a vital survival aid to the human species. How could such an absurd-sounding notion possibly be true? One of the most ancient areas of the brain in evolutionary terms, the limbic system, contains the well-known pleasure and pain centers. These centers enabled whichever primitive organisms that first acquired them to break out of the robot-like responses to stimuli and become able to learn new ones by trial and error. As I suggested in my book PereGaea, they enable the individuals of a species to learn via experience rather than the species as a whole having to learn via natural selection. As organisms evolved in that World, many of their submechanisms of brain and body multiplied within each individual, mutating slightly as they did so. This allowed various sensors to widen the range of stimuli they could respond to. The retina of the first eyes contained just a few `rods' able to respond only to the one wavelength of light, so that the organism perceived only the presence or absence of moving monochromatic shapes. But as retinas grew in size and rods grew in number to improve visual acuity, some of those rods mutated into cones to allow other wavelengths, or colors, to be perceived. In our own eyes three only slightly different such cones predominate, and are sensitive to red, green, and blue light. Even though these wavelengths are so close together on the electromagnetic spectrum, they are sufficient to allow our brains to interpret mixtures of them as that galaxy of colors with which we perceive our world. A similar copy-and-mutate process may have happened with the very first pleasure and pain centers to have evolved on our own world. These `emotion centers', as we'll call them, may then produce feelings we know as satisfaction, anxiety, frustration, disappointment, even subtle ones like peace, calm, harmony. But what exactly are these emotions, indeed what `are' pleasure and pain themselves? Ultimately we can't say anymore than we can say what `red' is (we can't describe that in terms of wavelength since that is what our eyes detect, not what our brains perceive). All we can say is that they are, like the emotion centers that produce them, slightly different from each other because they need to respond to different perceived `sets of events'. It is almost as if the limbic system contains an internal `tongue' which enables us to taste the experience of life, perhaps here too as sweet, bitter, sour and saline, or as some mixture of these. But what are these `sets of events', and how are they perceived? What happens when the emotion centers register them? The emotion centers must do something more than merely `register' them, otherwise there would be no point in their existence. They would simply never have evolved. The limbic system has a close relationship with the brain's cortex, the third and outermost layer of the brain (the first and oldest layer is the brainstem, this is concerned mostly with an organism's internal `housekeeping' functions, breathing, bloodflow, etc, though these can be modified in specific ways by messages from the limbic system, eg: the famous `fight or flight' response). The cortex, more specifically its frontal area, allow more complex organisms to plot, plan, decide, scheme, and ultimately organize behavior-plans to attain long-term objectives that will in turn bring pleasure and minimize pain in the future (I suggested a theory about how a `cortex' might do this in my book PereGaea). It is in effect the cortex which gives us our sense of time, for it allows us to see what might happen when certain amounts of it has passed (might the sense of `mightness' have its own limbic emotion center?) When the cortex signals the limbic system that a plan has reached its conclusion, the appropriate emotion center, perhaps the one for `satisfaction', can then signal the brainstem to prepare the body for the ingestion of richer foods, a sexual encounter, or some other form of survival-enhancing excitements. Other organisms will perceive these changes as a `mood-change' - which may cause their cortexes to alter their plans so that similarly `successful' outcomes might eventually be arrived at. This adds another useful function to the limbic emotion centers, they enable certain kinds of social interaction to occur, which may enhance the collective survival of the species. And that in turn promotes the evolution of yet more emotions and their corresponding centers, along with an even bigger cortex able to handle more complex social situations. This may well be why humans are as different from chimpanzees as those are from monkeys (see SPIRITUALITY). We can now come back to the question of `benevolent' addictions which our pleasure-seeking emotions at least ultimately are. When a cortex plan is successful, the emotion center it stimulates in turn sends it a signal which causes it to retain that plan longer than it otherwise would. This also causes the cortex to formulate `subplans' which will cause the organism to place itself in a position where it may be able to follow the original plan again. That plan in effect lengthens. As the organism acquires more experience, its cortex may develop several alternative subplans that lead into that one key emotional gratificational plan. Conversely, the organism may develop plans and subplans that lead it away from painful situations. If it is a social animal and the pain has arisen from some form of dispute, emotion centers may have evolved that allow it to express what we interpret as anger, appeasement, even `reasonability'. Again I have described in more detail how all this might work in my book PereGaea. Artificial narcotics such as heroin or cocaine can stimulate the emotion centers directly. This means that they in effect short-circuit the cortical connections that allow the organism to plan long-term survival strategies. In our world heroin seems to stimulate virtually all our pleasurable emotions at once. The vital link between mind and emotion, upon which our humanity ultimately rests, is then broken. The individual may achieve his nirvana, but he is likely to starve or, at the very least, lose the ability to earn the money to feed his addiction, even by dishonest means. Do all these notions of `organisms', `limbic systems', `pleasure and pain centers' and `cortical plotting' mean we are really nothing more than machines? Eating and reproducing machines that operate most efficiently by stimulating each other in certain ways? In short, yes. Why? The long answer to that question is implicit in the following essays       ********************* ALIENS *********************     Much has been spoken about the possibility of contact with extraterrestrials, whether there even are any, whether we have or will meet them here on Earth, on their own worlds, or on `neutral territory' in Space (see COLONIZATION). Much of it may seem fanciful. But with something alien, provided such notions don't contravene our laws of physics - or not too many anyway - fancifulness is culturally relative. In other words, can we really deride notions which, to most `educated' people, seem silly? Like little green men in flying saucers who have never known warfare and who, out of the goodness of their hearts, come to Earth to Solve All Our Problems? And that's the trouble. Since we have absolutely no experience in this area, we can say absolutely nothing. For instance, the `common-sense' view is that, since any aliens must survive as we do in an environment which doesn't care whether any being survives or not, they will, through parallel evolution, develop much the same social structures as we have. They may as a part of that even acquire similar emotions to ours (see ADDICTION), although they will almost certainly display them differently from the way we do. Yet there is no evidence to support these suppositions, since there is no evidence to support any supposition. We might look back on our own history and at the often negative results of what happens when one human culture comes into contact with another. But can that really tell us anything about what might happen when human meets non-human? While we have to try to keep an open mind here, assumptions of some sort are nevertheless unavoidable in any situation otherwise we would not be able to survive at all (see BELIEFS). In other words, if Contact is made, we are going to have to make decisions, and these can only be based on `intelligent guesses', or rather, on what seem like them at the time. To my mind, if we have to choose one assumption to `keep in the back of our minds' in the event of Contact, then I have to say the `common sense' one I've just described seems more likely to improve our chances of surviving the encounter than any of the `little green angel' ones. At least it is based on some experience, not on what that experience itself has so often shown us to be wishful thinking. It is for these reasons that I don't think we ought to attempt to make Contact ourselves by beaming radio messages through radio telescopes at promising looking stars, as I believe has in fact been done on at least one occasion. Not until we can at least travel between the stars ourselves, as well as possess correspondingly advanced defensive firepower. Otherwise any aliens we meet could insist we subscribe to their belief systems. Like so many of our own people, they too may believe in little green beings in flying saucers. Or even in fairies.       ********************* ART *********************     I really don't know how one becomes an artist. There are so many random events that can start a person off on that path (see RESPONSIBILITY). But to my mind you only really start when, after what may be many years of learning the basic craft without which no art is possible, somehow, suddenly, you feel you are on the verge of discovering some whole new continent. Now, if only you can get there and explore... It is at that instant that you `cross the line' and becomes an artist. And if you realize what is happening, you feel immensely lucky, probably far more so than you probably would if you had won a million dollars in a lottery. You now feel you have something you feel is worth doing with your life. And even if, a lifetime later, you feel you have failed, you still feel grateful you at least had the chance. There are so many hazards to overcome though that you may well find yourself in that situation. Just crossing to that continent is hard, for it can take much trial and error to turn that still hazy, nebulous idea into a firm notion of just how you are going to bring it to fruition. If it is a book or a movie, just how are you going to flesh out its theme with location, characters, situation? If it is a series of visual designs or a piece of music, how can you ensure that these will induce the same perceptions in your audience as they do in you? Just what words, sounds and images will you need to squeeze into your opus to produce that total effect you are after? If you manage to reach that shore, exploration begins in earnest. You will traverse the mountains of ideas and inspiration, the valleys of uncertainty, the rivers of diversions, the forests of fashion, trends, and other people's well-meant notions. Some of those landscapes may be beautiful and exciting when passed through in the heat of discovery, others will seem even more sterile and bare than the ones of he shores you left behind, and will be very slow and tedious going indeed. And during all that exploration, you might sink at any time without trace into a swamp of all-consuming despair, get lost in a jungle of insanity, or a lake of too many responsibilities, of simple survival in the `real' world for yourself and those who may have become attached to you. Like any explorer, you have to live to tell the tale, but if you do, you cannot help but tell it well. You may find however, like other explorers, that life after life is even harder than anything that has gone before. Other explorers will begin to move into `your' continent, and many will find many fascinating things that you could not help but have missed because that continent was so huge. But eventually it will become known, and explorers will be replaced by surveyors, those who will produce good and interesting work, but which can now be no more than craft rather than art, of landscapes rather than horizons, of people rather than of peoples. Then the land speculators and real estate agents will move in, along with all the other frontier townsfolk. Livings can now be made, contracts signed, reputations built. Finally the cities arrive and, along with the highways and the freeways that connect them, the land becomes devoured and sometimes debauched, with the `hot new genre' little more than a veneer for that same tired old tales we've seen again and again, along with the tawdry and pornographic. Your `magic' continent is now no more than an extension of the old continent you thought you left behind. If you are still young enough to up stakes and move on to find yet another whole new continent to explore, you are even luckier than you were the first time, since few artists find more than one continent in their brief lives. It is far more likely that some bright, new, young person will have the good fortune to leave his home on that `new' continent you discovered and discover a whole new one of his own. If you are not too old, you will share his delight, and perhaps even try and explore a few of its undiscovered mysteries yourself. And we will, I hope, never run out of artistic continents to discover and discover and discover. Nor the energy to explore them, nor the tolerance for those who must. And that tolerance is just as limited as it ever was, because it is now added to by hordes of old inhabitants of continents long subsumed, of poetry, oil painters, `creativists', and, perhaps most conservative of all, rock musicians. The pressures to conform are perhaps now most severe amongst these `non-conformists'. So how then would we recognize our new explorers? As always we can't. Because most quickly learn to keep themselves well hidden until they have their tale to tell, when they can then be seen to have told it well.       ********************* BEAUTY *********************     It's always puzzled me why peacocks have such enormous, exquisitely beautiful tails. The conventional answer has been that this is because it is a superstimulus, bigger brighter tails act as stronger sexual attractants to the female of the species. So long as they don't impede the male bird's survival too much, they may become even more spectacular. Yet this seems to me to be only one half of the equation. As the male bird's tail evolves its particular form, so surely must the female's instinctive preference for it, otherwise those males would be no better at finding mates than their duller brethren and their tails would eventually be lost to the species. Similarly, it's not impossible for peahens to eventually evolve who respond more vigorously to smaller, less brightly colored displays. Indeed something like this may have happened with other species. When we look at birds with less elaborate tails such as bower or lyre birds, we cannot know whether they once had tails even more outrageous than the peacock's instead of the lesser ones they have now. What about the human instinct for personal attractiveness? Maybe we too have evolved similar such responses which, since they don't have any effect on our survival, can evolve relatively randomly. A purely chance male preference for hairlessness in females (and vice versa) may have caused us to lose our hairy coats. Other such sexual preferences may have even have caused the total displacement of all other humanoid species by homo sapiens sapiens. And what are sexual stimuli based on but combinations of the even more primitive perception of line, form, texture and color via our limbic subcenters? (See ADDICTION.) We also appear to have evolved an appreciation for straight lines, regular geometric shapes, and `orderly arrangements', even though it is very hard to define just what these `really' are. More than a few people have tried to find out (amongst other things) by stimulated these centers artificially using various narcotics such as LSD and mescaline. We also have a preference for more subtle `aesthetics' such as simplicity and elegance (see SCIENCE). From where could these limbic affinities have sprung, since it is hard to see how they could have aided our survival in the earlier days of our evolution? They must, like all our proclivities, have evolved solely via chance. But since they did no harm, they were under no evolutionary pressure to recede (except again by chance). In the event they have remained with us long enough to became useful with the very first beginnings of science and technology, where order is of the very essence. Indeed they may have been responsible for their first beginnings. Occam's Razor is all about ultimate simplicity, and as such is the foundation of all science, since we have found that the simplest explanations of observable phenomena are usually the most correct, provided they are also complete. Even if we don't quite know why... (See GOD.) So we appear to have two major sets of aesthetics, those that aid our organic survival directly such as sex and humor (just as vital in complex social structures), and those that do so indirectly, such as those for simplicity and order. They can be inimical but certainly need not be, indeed virtually all our cultures are exquisite blends of the two (could `exquisiteness' be yet another emotion center?). We can see this most vividly in our computer-graphic representations of such things as equations, chaos, fractals, Mandelbrot Sets, and even some simple mathematical equations. Ultimately all our cultures appear to rest on basically the same feedback loop of peacock tailfeathers and peahen preference for them. As artists explore new aesthetic forms, so the appreciations of their various audiences change and evolve, and apparently by chance in spite of what critics would have us believe (see ART). But now, for the first time in all our collective histories, a new `meta-culture' has entered all our cultures to link them together, that of science (see SCIENCE). It need not, as so many proclaim, subsume them all so that the whole of Earth becomes a monoculture (as if our whole world will be taken over by `the BLOB' as portrayed in many movie remakes). Even if it did, how long would it last? What wholly new aesthetic might we eventually come to see from an extraterrestrial culture, if we can perceive it as such at all? (See ALIENS.) Theirs will almost certainly have derived from a quite different source, especially if their brains have no equivalent to our limbic system because they evolved to cope with a very different environment. Or to put it another way, if we could cross peacock with bower bird, what tail preferences would the progeny inherit? How would females of both species respond sexually to those progeny? How would those progeny respond to each other?       ********************* BELIEFS *********************     How do we really know the Earth isn't flat? The suggestion has been made that the Earth's surface could `really' be like one of those old computer games in which objects, ships or satellites, that sail off one edge reappear intact from the opposite edge, moving at the same speed and direction as before. Similar arguments have been advanced suggesting that the Earth - or even the entire Universe itself - is `really' some other particular shape, a disk or multipoint star for instance, or a sphere, torus, pyramid or dodecahedron. Similar sorts of things can be done with that old wive's tale that the `moon is made of green cheese'. Although men have landed on it, an advocate of the notion would simply point out that `men have only landed on its surface. How do we know it isn't really 100% green cheese underneath?' Then, should it finally be proved once and for all that it is made of green cheese, that advocate could simply transfer his belief to any or all the planets of our solar system and claim that these are made of green cheese. Should that subsequently be disproved, he will simply move his claim out further, perhaps into neighboring star systems and beyond to the point where it may actually become impossible to prove that some object unreachable billions of lightyears away isn't made of green cheese (now how could we ever hope to prove that a black hole isn't made of green cheese?). You can in fact go as far as you like with these sophistic sorts of arguments. And if you find it annoying that you can't quite shoot them down, then I know how you feel. I felt that way too until I discovered Karl Popper's notion of unprovability. To use my own slightly modified definition, `if a proposition or an assertion can be neither proven nor unproven, then it can have no validity' (There are a few problems with this though, I'll come back to these shortly). Most people however simply make an appeal to `commonsense' when confronted with some unprovable notion they don't care for. The best commonsense definition of commonsense I've encountered to date is `what you pick up when you chuck all that philosophical rubbish out of your head and go out and learn about life'. But for some of us the fundamental questions still niggle at us in the backs of our minds. And commonsense can let you down badly. As a physicist might say, `it's nearly useless when you try to understand what makes reality really tick'. Science itself provides some of the answer to the uncertainties here (see SCIENCE). In short, all science's theories, laws, models of reality are provisional, that is, treated as if they were `true' until they can be displaced by new ones. That whole process rests on observation, and the checking of those observations by impartial observers. Perhaps we could attach `confidence percentages' to theories that reflect the extent to which they appear to represent reality. For example, superstring theory might be assigned a confidence rating of 10%, whereas established theories like evolution and quantum chromodynamics might have confidence ratings of 90%. Nothing would ever have a rating of 100%, not in science, anyway. And this is the problem with unprovability - it means no proposition can really be completely proven or unproven. Even in mathematics, where 2 + 2 = 4 appears absolute and real, Kurt Godel's incompleteness theorem states that `no logical statement can ever be completely proven from within the framework of the logic containing it'. Perhaps this is because mathematics - and logic - are only highly symbolized shorthand forms of the spoken languages we use to try and describe reality to each other. They are not a part of that reality itself, even though they may seem so. Now, what kind of confidence ratings would one attach to the claims made by any of Earth's great religions? Or old favorites like astrology, numerology, and tarot card readings? That can rather depend on the people one has been in contact with. The number of people who would rate one or more of these as being 100% probably even now somewhat outweighs that number who would put it at less than 10%. Many of those people would make claims like `they represent higher truths which you, in your blindness, cannot see'. And that, ultimately is the heart of the problem. What then `is' knowledge? Or in the language even commonsense occasionally permits: `How do you know for sure? You might be being conned by somebody.' Yet we simply cannot go though our lives continually questioning people, or our beliefs, or even the simple day-to-day variants of these we call `assumptions', otherwise we would simply become too neurotic to survive. If we look at a house and only see one wall, we don't assume that it has only the one wall like a house front on a movie lot. We assume it is complete. Similarly with all the other objects in our existence, cars, cats, computers. This is the basis, and value, of commonsense. The benefits usually far outweigh the penalties, though it comes at the price of sometimes leading us badly astray (see TRUST). I too am obliged to make certain assumptions, that is, have beliefs, even though I try to keep them as few as possible. I believe for instance that writing these essays may do more good for people than harm, else I could not write them. Unfortunately, one major component of why we believe this rather than that may be because at some time in the past we were approached by somebody who made us feel uncertain about our belief in something, then they used the force of argument and personality to persuade us that theirs was `in fact' the correct belief. And that of course is the oldest trick in the book, especially for salespeople, whether of hair restorer or of religious salvation. Yet there is a positive aspect of persuasion. We have in most parts of the Western World at least hard-won democratic systems resting on a foundation of educated and literate populations. None of that could have happened without persuasion, without people coming to believe in something as if it were - or could become - absolute fact. Much the same applies in the messy real world of science, a new claim can be tested by other scientists, but they must often first be persuaded that checking the claim is worth the time and effort involved. And as for the rest of us, our livelihoods, to say nothing of our necessary feelings of well-being and confidence, so often depend on making the best decision we can, and committing ourselves to the outcome for better or for worse, whether we are getting married or choosing a career. Deciding to subscribe to a belief system which claims to offer guidance in such essential matters does not then seem so risky a step, especially if one has made one or two choices with unfortunate outcomes. And there's the paradox. On one hand you have the absolute, rigid belief systems standing above the ocean of uncertainty like rocks, trying to persuade you that they are completely immovable, eternal. On the other you have the more relativistic structure of science, floating on that ocean like a raft, continually being added to by its hopeful inhabitants using materials that can never be permanent, for they must come from that ocean itself. But rocks can be worn down to nothing over time, rafts can break up if there are too many flaws in their construction. To my mind the best resolution to this paradox is this: believe and assume the minimum of what you need to to get through life, as I say I try to take this approach myself. But for all else, take a lesson from science and keep all other beliefs provisional, perhaps even attaching rough confidence ratings to them. If you can find the right balance between belief and skepticism, you will have the advantages of both commonsense and open mindedness. But of course don't believe me. You'll need to figure it all out for yourself.       ****************************** COLONIZATION ******************************     Some of the best `hard' science fiction I have read, i.e, that with a solid scientific core, is set on Earthlike worlds that have been colonized by humans. The colonies may be recent or ancient, and may co-exist with indigenous fauna (or flora) that is intelligent or otherwise. Only a few of these works however were centered around the question of whether we should ever colonize any such world at all. Most asked whether or not we should leave them to their indigenous lifeforms to evolve in their own way so that they might acquire the ability to leave their world at some time in the future. What in any case would be the point in expanding our already needlessly large numbers elsewhere? What would we achieve? It may seem too soon to think about this, but in the nature of scientific discovery we may finally acquire the ability to navigate through space sooner than we imagine, indeed I hope we do (see EXPLORATION). We only have to look back at our own history to see what might happen again, when Caucasian white man expanded out of Europe (and before that, out of Africa according to current theory) into regions of the world where some, namely the many conquered indigenous peoples, believe he had no right to invade. But did that invasion happen entirely through ignorance and insensitivity? Of course not. It happened for all sorts of reasons. To gain resources and to fulfil Imperialist ambitions, certainly, but also to bring the gift of Salvation and Civilization to those who would clearly Benefit from it (as it was all believed then). Another largely forgotten but very important reason was simply to grab territory before someone else did, usually a foreign power whose interests were, or might be some day, contrary to ones own. In other words, if an indigenous people weren't invaded by one such power, they would have been by some other sooner or later. That power might have been kinder or less kind, who can say? All we know is that virtually no corner of the world remained uninvaded. The current ethic now, when we do actually come into contact with some undiscovered culture, is to observe it as remotely as possible in order to prevent physical or cultural adulteration. Imagine though that we had somehow applied such a policy right from the very beginning of our history, when we first became able to move across vast distances in a systematic way. There would be no Europe, India, Asia, North or South America, no Australasia or South Pacific, though there may have been an Antarctica. Hard for us to imagine, isn't it? Especially since so much of our technology comes from America, one of those colonized countries, and Japan, in which this aspect of Western Culture has taken such firm root. All these regions would still be virgin territories, with all their original floral and faunal species intact. Perhaps all the world outside Africa (from where I am assuming man did originate) would have been some sort of giant World Heritage Park, visited by a select few with the appropriate scientific or financial credentials. That's if we had developed Science or even Finance at all. So would `No Contact' be a policy we could realistically maintain when we finally come to explore the Universe? Or would the temptation to grab a beautiful world off somebody else be just too much? Even if we could resist that, might we still have to grab that and any other territory we could to prevent others grabbing it first? Colonization - and rapid population growth - may then become essential (or at least seem essential) to preserve our species. History would once more repeat as we explore new worlds, go where no world... We would perhaps do well to reflect on the fact that none of this has so far happened to us, our World has not as yet been occupied (so far as we know) by a extraterrestrial power. How would we feel about becoming an `indigenous people'? Would we resist, as many of our own indigenes do? How would we feel if our occupiers had to defend themselves against their extraterrestrial enemies, and expected us to help them? Like other indigenes before us, we would soon begin fighting amongst ourselves, trying to decide just what we should do. In this light, the ability to become space-going now seems urgent. If we can get into Space before that happens, much will then depend on what we find out there. There may be no space-going species that we can find for hundreds of lightyears. On the other hand, Space may be teeming with all sorts of such lifeforms - and political situations of unimaginable kinds (see ALIENS). What we find would obviously influence our policy on how we approached new worlds. Lets begin first with the `empty space' scenario, then imagine we encountered three new worlds in succession: the first world has a high but not space-capable technology perhaps equivalent to our own today, the second world has little technology, perhaps equivalent to our Stone Age, and the third has no intelligent species that we can find at all. Contact with the first world might benefit both our species in ways that offset the inevitable harm, that is something that will need to be continually reassessed by both sides. With lower technology worlds, we might observe its inhabitants remotely so as to avoid cultural contamination. `Empty' worlds we might as well have, though we could treat them as `Extraterrestrial Parks' so that people can go explore them (see EXPLORATION). Again the idea of turning such a world into a copy of Earth with its teeming millions seems utterly pointless. Just a few `maintenance' colonies would be sufficient to keep our species alive if Earth was invaded. In a crowded Space however, we might have to do things very differently. We would have to form alliances with any potentially friendly species, advanced or not, to improve the chances of survival of both. If we don't, the opposition will. Empty worlds we have to take and use for resources as quickly as we can, there may be no time to try to preserve the scenery. It would be a shame, but so would be the death of our species. Wouldn't it? And if all that sounds like the history of ordinary old Human Life on Earth, then I suspect that the laws of politics are as likely to be as Universal as those of physics. Perhaps the hardest thing to consider in these scenarios is what we might be like by the time our technology gets us to the stars. Will the first of us to arrive there come from a democracy that will decide through a process of consensus how to respond to the kinds of situation I've just described? Or will our species be represented by some authoritarian political system who may make decisions which the rest of us may have to live with for the rest of the life of our species, however long that may be? Or the life of whatever species we might invade?       ************************** CRIMINALITY **************************     For the last fifty years or so the civilized world has thought it uncivilized to execute its criminals. Many arguments were advanced for this. For instance, capital punishment did not deter criminal activity, it actually increased it, even in the dark days when even relatively minor crimes could earn hanging or deportation. Capital punishment was as much an act of violence as the crime that resulted in it. Innocent people could all too easily be executed. And if there was any chance that a criminal could be rehabilitated, that chance should be taken, however slim. But have the ideals these views reflected brought us the more humane society we had hoped for? Or have they too become just another set of entrenched catechisms, like the `flog 'em and hang 'em' ones it replaced? If neither of these has worked, then what will? Obviously we can either execute, or not execute. The last fifty years have brought much else with them besides the enormously heightened crime rate, including narcotics which on their own must generate more crime than virtually all other factors put together. Attitudes to sex have almost completely reversed, which means supplies of this particular narcotic (see SEX) can suddenly be cut, with all the violent responses that can bring. Then there is the growth of what can only be described as the criminal culture with its own unwritten rules of conduct and even manners of speech. And, worst of all, is the overall diminution of the morale of the public this extra crime has brought us, which puts further pressure on those at the bottom of the heap to become criminals themselves. While the average person may only have a low probability of becoming the victim of a crime, that is only an average. If your economic status is low and you live in the poorer areas of your community, your chances increase significantly. Being burgled and bashed several times a year are hardly uncommon. So what can we do if we cannot return to the past nor continue with the present? We can go in a quite different direction. Virtually all executions in the past were for a person's first major crime, usually murder with violence. That should neither continue nor return, a person should serve the same jail sentence as he does now. Rehabilitation is then still possible, as well as a chance to prove innocence. If that person is found after his release to be guilty of a second such serious offense however, then on the balance of probabilities it is most unlikely he is being falsely accused a second time. He should then, I believe, be executed for that crime. We do not however need to return to hanging or any other such brutally retributive method of capital punishment. Nor do we need to allow executions to become circuses, as used to be the case in Europe, and still is in some parts of the U.S. Modern technology allows executions to be carried out painlessly, compassionately, even pleasantly (see THANATOLOGY). Civil Libertarians might object to this, along with the notion of the `balance of probabilities'. Unfortunately however the balance of probabilities is ultimately all we have in any judicial system in spite of any claims to the contrary. If we attempt to eliminate any risk of an innocent person being executed as we are doing now, then many, many more innocent people will continue to die at the hands of criminals. In other words, the painless, pleasant death of a probable criminal by the state seems eminently preferable to the death of a probably innocent person by gun, knife, or baseball bat. Why should an execution be painless or pleasant? Ultimately we can't answer the question of why some people commit crimes (or do anything for that matter, see RESPONSIBILITY). Plenty of criminals come from good middle class backgrounds, they just enjoy committing the crime `for the fun of it'. Others are people desperately struggling to support their children and who succumb to temptation. There are endless motivations and causes. For this reason an execution must be an act of compassion, even though the original crime almost certainly was not. Unfortunately however this could mean that some deranged souls will actually commit two serious crimes in order to be executed, that is, commit suicide. This could explain why hanging was an insufficient deterrent; many crimes are committed by people who feel they have nothing left to lose, including their lives. This has often been the case with crimes of passion. Therefore if a person is found guilty for a second major offense, then he should still serve the mandatory jail sentence for that as before. This sentence will then end in his compassionate execution. This will at least preserve the deterrence value we have now. Other social policy changes may also be of help here (see EUTHANASIA). Executions of this kind should not however be restricted to the most serious crimes. Prisons are full of people with literally hundreds of less serious crimes to their names, such things as common assault, burglary, causing injury through dangerous driving, destruction of property, arson. These crimes may not end lives, but they can certainly spoil them, even ruin them. I feel that a point system could be instituted so that each crime, and each degree of seriousness of that crime, has a certain number of `crime points' associated with it, on a scale of 0 - 100 for instance. The arson of a single dwelling with no loss of life might bring perhaps 20 such Points, the setting of a forest or bush fire that destroys a whole neighborhood would on the other hand `earn' 40 points. If serious crimes are also brought into this system instead of the simpler one I have just described, murder would bring a minimum of 50 Points, with particularly vicious ones up to 70. Treason, since it could involve the death of millions, 90. When a person collects 100 Points by whatever means, that person would be executed after completing his final jail sentence. The execution would need be carried out at some randomly determined time to avoid the media carnival that usually attends such events. A problem may arise with people who have committed sufficient crimes to `earn' them over fifty Points. They may feel inclined to `get it over with' and commit a random murder or some other crime with a high number of Points. Just one more long jail sentence may not be enough to deter them, especially if they have become institutionalized. For this reason it may be vital that, as a person accumulates Points, he correspondingly loses more and more of his civil rights. At, say, forty points, random phone tapping becomes allowed, and above fifty, random searching of premises with no search warrant being required. Above sixty, constant automatic monitoring, perhaps with the assistance of a radio collar or implant. Up till now people with long criminal records have become folk heroes within the wider criminal community, but such monitoring would make such criminals too risky for other criminals to have around - unless they are of the same `standing'. All this may still appear to be answering inhumanity with inhumanity, or violence with violence. But humanity is not absolute, it is what we collectively say it is. If a person acts towards another in a way that his or her victim perceives as `inhumane', then that person is voluntarily setting aside their own humanity, we are not doing it to them. Such people in effect become the most highly intelligent animals on Earth, and should be managed as such. Again Civil libertarians will no doubt object to this, they would claim that it would quickly lead to the creation of a police state. One can sympathize with this view, but unfortunately we are not too far from having a criminal state, like that which preceded Hitler's Germany, or the extremely horrible Argentinian Junta of the 1970's. Civil Liberties have to be balanced by Civic Responsibilities, a cause which has become somewhat unfashionable to champion with the same vigor. To offset some of the more draconian aspects of the Crime Point system and encourage rehabilitation however, convicted criminals could lose up to ten points off their tally per year if they can demonstrate that they have made appropriate changes to their ways of life and the company they keep. But they would have to demonstrate this, otherwise the system would fail to catch those who perform crimes only occasionally. Since motivation behind a crime can be established in court with a reasonable degree of success, that could also help determine the number of Points to be assigned a person for his crime. Character references and suchlike would count for just as much here as they have done in the past. Some classes of crime would nevertheless need to be exempt from any form of remission; it would clearly be in an embezzler's best interest to behave himself for some years to better position himself for his next crime, if such was his intent. Similarly we cannot be sure child molesters will not offend again ten, twenty years after their initial recorded crime, they may not be sure themselves. Child molestation unfortunately does have a high rate of recidivism. This Crime Point system would allow us to achieve a number of objectives. Firstly it would allow jail populations to shrink to more manageable levels, which would then give rehabilitation, still a major ambition of most judicial systems, a better chance to work. Second, it would help to contain and possibly reduce the influence of the morale-sapping criminal subcultures, this may also reduce the load on the judiciary. Third, it would reduce the risks of handing down a criminal inclination from parent to child, whether genetic or experiential. And fourth, it gives us a better chance to tackle the drug problem, which is not only spreading, but is now clearly responsible for much of the AIDS epidemic in the Western World at least. Some people will inevitably claim that these ideas are just another form of neobarbarism. But who is being barbaric here? Innocent people are not only being killed horribly, but being turned into drug addicts, and what is that but a form of living death? Some people, especially many elderly, cannot bring themselves to return to their burgled homes. Of if they can or must, they may find themselves unable to touch any property that may be left. Their lives are thereby seriously disrupted with much pain and suffering. Similarly with embezzlement, this can involve much greater sums than bankrobberies. But unlike bankrobberies, the sums of money lost belong to just a few individuals, with little chance of recovery. And these people often turn out to have lost their life savings, earned through decades of work at jobs they may not have particularly enjoyed. What about children? What should be the minimum age to which this Crime Point system applies? Even children as young as eight can be quite vicious and knowledgeable criminals, as anybody residing in a slum housing estate will attest. This would really need to be assessed from case to case; applying some arbitrary fixed age like `thirteen' isn't going to help determined young thugs or their potential victims. What are the chances of such a Crime Point system being adopted by a society? Somewhat slender, since current penal thinking is so deeply entrenched worldwide. Also, resistance from the criminal culture would be considerable, indeed any politician seriously proposing it may fear for his life (like a police state, a criminal state would be no greater friend of free speech and the democratic process). Perhaps the most we could expect would be a botch (as has happened with the abortion laws of some countries) which would result in an even bigger disaster than we have now. Even a complete implementation would be subject to the `law of unforseeable side-effects', in other words problems may arise that cause it to come into doubt, and the will to fix it may not be there (see SOLUTIONS). For these reasons I would say that most of today's criminals will live out their natural lives in complete safety, from the state at least. Indeed, some of the cleverer ones have already formed states of their own big enough to challenge those we know today. With the increasingly automated military hardware becoming available to anyone who can afford it, they won't need big armies to completely overpower those they choose too. This could spoil an otherwise interesting future (see FUTURE).       ************************* DECADENCE *************************     Using the word `decadence' in the same sentence as `society' has now become so unfashionable as to appear all but obscene. But then that's not so hard to understand. There are still many advocates of hard-line Puritanical values who promote such an association with extreme vigor, even glee. Yet there are some situations in which the association does retain, I feel, some currency. Imagine a society which has suddenly found itself to be in some peril, perhaps through some economic problem like a sharply reduced ability to borrow more funds because of an already huge debt burden. The government calls upon the citizens to moderate their wage demands or accept reduced social welfare benefits. This government is however nearing the end of its term in office and is facing elections. The opposition party, seeking re-election, is not only proposing an alternative course of action which plays down the threat, they also claim the government is exaggerating it in order to scare the populace into returning them to office. The opposition then proposes to lift wages and benefits `in order to inject more money into the economy' and to borrow even more funds from overseas even at the higher rates. "We can then employ people in public works not only to improve the infrastructure, but to ensure that economic demand is maintained as fully as possible". The party proposing the least painful, not the most effective course of action will probably, in many of today's societies at least, be the one elected. That, to my mind, defines decadence in relation to a society. It may be that such societies contain too many people who have themselves become unable to take the hard, effective decisions rather than the easy, initially painless one in their personal lives. Or of not wanting to know about `economic rubbish' like debt burdens and internal deficits. Social Welfare systems struggle to cope with the grateful unemployed along with the genuinely so, for they have little choice (see UNEMPLOYMENT). The `exaggerated' threat then becomes all too real, the debt that is increased to solve it is simply increased further when the people's `spending power' is dissipated in imported luxuries rather than in supporting the home market. And what's the cure? There is probably none but hard experience, both collectively and individually. Hard experience though can unfortunately do permanent damage, even cause death. People and their societies can be warned by outsiders, but such warnings are usually ignored because they can no longer tell the difference between warnings that should be heeded and those that should not. It's unfortunate, but that appears to be real life. Also, it has to be said, there are some people who will say the kind of things I have just said in order to frighten others into conforming to what becomes a totalitarian regime. This too, believe it or not, is a product of a decadent society, for such a society will have lost its judgment, its `common sense'. And that is in fact nothing more than effective advice passed on from parent to child, either directly or through the education system, the knowledge of when hard decisions are necessary and what they should consist of. Once that is lost... But once the hard work is done, there is always still room for fun, in fact that is when it becomes fun. For lives can only be happy when people know that the rent has been paid, the debts have been managed, the income is being fairly earned, and the children and their grandparents are being looked after.       ************************** DEPRESSION **************************     The old cliché that being born is like being dealt a hand of cards is, like many clichés, still no less true for that. And if you should come to feel at some later stage in your life that you've been dealt a poor hand, you do at least have the opportunity (unless that poor hand includes genuine liabilities like belligerent stupidity) to turn that hand into a good hand, even a winning hand, through intelligent gameplay. For example, minor psychiatric illnesses are relatively common throughout the developed world at least, especially depression (could one say such people have been dealt hands with no royalty cards?). Many such people may be unable to hold a job and therefore are obliged to live on some form of Social Welfare. If you are in this situation, the fact that you have too much time on your hands can be turned into an advantage few other people have except for the very wealthy. You now have the time to pursue any goals you may have, at least those that do not require too much money. The best way to proceed initially at least is to acquire an education for yourself. You don't have to go to a college or a university, you may not have the entrance qualifications anyway let alone the temperament. But you can read introductory books, even children's books, on a vast range of subjects. My own very lucky pick was the Time-Life series on Science, which covered everything from mathematics to ecology; I read and enjoyed them all. Time-Life also published similar series on other topics such as History and Geography. Along the way you will come across other books on these topics, and of course magazines, good magazines. Amongst these I found `New Scientist' every week from Britain, and `Scientific American' from the U.S. every month. These list or review other fascinating books in a multitude of fields in depth. Even more important (for me anyway), they taught me much about the way of thinking behind science, and allowed me to improve my own (I hope). Self-delusion, of which I had been more than capable, began to become repugnant. I learned more about depression itself from these sources, and how one of its worst characteristics is that it feeds on itself. People tend to stay away from depressed people, which makes the victim feel even more depressed. Like alcoholism, ultimately you have to break the cycle yourself, and it's much easier to do when you know how that cycle applies to you. And probably the only hope you have of finding your way out of your depression is to find something to work at, then work hard at it. If this means avoiding people, then avoid people. Part of the reason for your depression may well be that you have no talent for getting along with people, earning their respect and friendship. Not everyone has such a talent, just as some people simply cannot learn how to drive a car, no matter how many lessons they have. Since the ability to get along with people is so vital (you can be utterly talentless and still have a full and happy life), even if you do find your work, you may then find some difficulty getting the products of your labors accepted. But that is a risk you have to be prepared to take. By that stage though you may have become so involved in the work itself this may not matter very much. You just want to get on with it. I did not really begin to find my own direction until the early 1980's, when computers finally became accessible to all. I began on that long endless road of learning about them as soon as I could afford to buy a kitset, which were quite common in those early days. Like many others who had gone before, I got that feeling that I could really use these things for something, if only I could figure out what. I also knew that while I enjoyed reading about science, I realized that I could never be a scientist, even if I had the temperament to accept the training. I had in fact attempted it in my youth, but had not measured up. I also knew I had no inclination to become an amateur. Very few worthwhile discoveries are made by amateurs, and most of those only in astronomy, where observers might spend years looking for new comets or asteroids and other such things. To add one more piece to the jigsaw puzzle of this rebuilding of my life, I had also had a lifelong interest in Science Fiction. With my strengthening interest in science itself however, I soon dropped the fantasy categories and concentrated on the `hard' Science Fiction written around scientific themes. It naturally occurred to me that I could try to write such fiction myself, I had always had an interest in writing in general, but I knew that my solitary way of life - through my depression - had prevented me from acquiring the experience of life to anything the depth I knew was necessary. I also did not have an eye for settings such as landscapes, house interiors, modes of dress, speech characteristics, and all those other things like plot, characterization, and dramatic conflict that novelists must pay careful attention to. I enjoyed these things when done by other people (and done well) but, as with science, I felt absolutely no inclination to attempt them myself. One more piece of the puzzle therefore needed to fall into place before I was able to begin what I was already beginning to feel would be my life's work. But I had no idea of what that piece might be. One of the reasons why I had left my science studies at the University was that I had been seduced by Art, mostly painting, and mostly the Impressionists. What lonely oversensitive young man doesn't feel an affinity for Vincent Van Gogh? That however isolated me from my contemporaries, for during those time the Beatles, Hippies, Rock and things like that held the consciousness of the young. As I grew older I had to admit myself that not only was that art I had treasured a long-gone world, but that Art itself was now without value, that its `achievements' could now draw only momentary notice (or notoriety) rather than contribute anything of real depth to Life. The only `art' that mattered now was science and its byproduct, technology. And that feeling caused me to become even more isolated from my contemporaries, for most had actually become anti-science and worse, drifted off into spurious religions, mysticism and magic, the very things science was supposed to have freed Us from the shackles of. Eventually however, the germ of an idea was sown. I had inevitably come across the writings of philosophers, or rather abstracts from these, and it seemed to me that much of these were written in pre-scientific times. Modern philosophers of science were of course interesting, but it seemed to me there was a gap here. Nobody appeared to be trying to build a model of Reality - which to my mind defines philosophy - using science as a springboard from which to do so. Contemporary philosophy was, so far as I could see, usually abstruse and inaccessible, with little apparent relationship to reality. In a word, empty. The scientific field that looked most interesting to me in this context was artificial intelligence. I couldn't unfortunately understand everything being done in the field, but it seemed to me almost from the start that it was really two different things. One half, that what I now think of as being artificial intelligence, had to do with the automation of things that are a part of the world we have created, from chess-playing programs to expert systems that do things like diagnose illnesses from a carefully recorded set of symptoms. The other half, artificial consciousness as I saw it, had to do with machines that had to cope with real-world conditions, like the first obstacle-navigating and maze-negotiating mechanical `turtles'. I found myself to be more interested in this artificial consciousness, but only in its potential, not in what was actually being done. This looked crude to say the least, though I realized that most of this was caused by limited battery storage and the poor power-to-weight ratio of electric motors. In short, I was more interested in thinking about it rather than doing it, developing ideas that might be of interest to others with the relevant hardware and software knowledge. Sure, I knew that ideas can only be validated by experiment and new ones developed from these, but I had to take that chance and present what I had as a mix of speculation and science fiction. Hence PereGaea was born, and I was reborn with it. It had taken me thirty years to get there from somewhat uncertain beginnings. And I have to say that most of the people who knew me through that time took me for a crank (and who is to say that I wasn't one, and am still one today?). But that is the risk you take when you have to find the long way round. At least though I have done something with my life, which like those of so many other depressed people, might otherwise have been uselessly wasted. There are some problems I have not yet overcome however. Now that PereGaea is complete, the depressions return and I find it hard not to resort to the alcohol which I have never quite succeeded in giving up. It is a relief to have PereGaea finally published on paper rather than on disk in disk libraries, though I don't know why since digital publication on the Internet is now so clearly more appropriate for anything of a speculative nature. Maybe I can think of something else to do. Perhaps I could learn the relevant technologies and build some of those machines I described myself. I have to say though that Fiore de Concini in Brazil is already doing a far better job of this than I ever could. We shall see.       ********************** ELEMENTS **********************     Near the end of my book Nummus, the predecessor of PereGaea, I described the `Parsi' as having developed the idea that there were four fundamental elements behind their reality and their existence: causality, probability, relativity and cybernetics. These then reduced further into two even more fundamental elements, the `serial' and `parallel' ways information can move within an `eventuum', the digital medium of which their Space and Time was constructed (in contrast to our notion of a `continuum'). This ultimately made it impossible for them to distinguish between an actual `reality' and the simulation of one inside their `comparator' (their equivalent of a neural net, though it operated in a very different way). This to my mind could also be the case in our own reality. One of the purposes of this book therefore is to act as an `extension' to PereGaea, to show how the notions and concepts it contains could apply to our world as we collectively experience it. For those people who have not read Nummus (Now long gone; I also have to admit it was not easy to read anyway), let me explain briefly just what the initial four elements were about.   Causality, perhaps the one we are most familiar with in our day-to-day lives, simply has to do with the way one event appears to be caused by another, and which may in turn lead to a third, or an entire cascade of events. Machines of course ultimately rely on causality to operate, in fact it is physically impossible for a machine not to operate provided it has been maintained according to the instructions of its designer and is operated accordingly. When the machine is operated outside of these limits however, or has begun to show considerable wear, its operation may then become more in accordance with the second of the Nummic elements: probability. Here the machine may run erratically, sometimes it runs, sometimes it doesn't. To a naive operator this may seem to be a matter of chance. Notice that word `naive'; to a knowledgeable operator its faultiness may not appear to be a matter of chance at all, but have a perfectly mechanistic cause which can be set right. The difference between chance and causality may be one of perception than of actuality, though paradoxically we have mechanistic methods of determining which is which, though none can be perfectly guaranteed. Machines can also break down in ways which, to naive operators, appear to be their own doing. Some minor mechanical malfunction may for instance cause a machine to vibrate; a car engine with faulty mountings for instance. This vibration in turn increases the stress on a particular component, moving it out of adjustment so that the vibration gets worse. If this component controls the engine's revolutions per minute (rpm), and its rpm increases, the vibration will then increase further. The engine may eventually even self-destruct. Such a vicious circle is the basic concept behind cybernetics. `Virtuous circles' can also arise, if that control component responds to vibration by reducing the engine's rpm, the problem is at least self-correcting (though still undesirable, the engine may occasionally need to be operated at high rpm). This brings us to the last of my four elements: `relativity'. One most often thinks of Einstein's relativity here, but this is just one sense of the word, there are many others. For instance, to return to my `engine' metaphor, there may be many better engines available, that is, ones that perform their intended function more efficiently and at less cost. Or worse ones, these may produce less power yet use more fuel. There is also the possibility that the same function may be performed without the need for an engine at all, i.e. by some other means, or that it may not even need to be performed at all. It all depends on how that function is perceived to fit relative to other functions, perhaps in some long-term plan. And that `plan' may not be perceived at all by those people designated by others to carry it out. And so on to a possible galaxy of viewers, all with their viewpoints that may or may not be connected, or only partially so... It is extremely unlikely however that any of these four elements which I suspect underlie all the phenomena of our world will ever be found in isolation. In other words, all phenomena will contain all four in one proportion or another. Even a brand new engine may fail to perform (even with today's high manufacturing quality) because of some chance assembly error either of the whole thing or one of its components. Chance itself may not always be complete, the dice that may not be perfectly balanced, a random number generator for a Lotto draw may have a tiny bias in its design - no matter how vanishingly slight, even those systems designed to be `perfectly' random may at some later time may be shown to contain just a modicum of order. Similarly with cybernetic and relativistic elements, cybernetic systems must have a mechanistic system at their base to allow the feedback loops to operate, and no device of any kind can be seen in isolation from all other devices, whether or not they are of the same kind. These four elements percolate through far more than these simple examples however, as I hope you will see as you read these essays. I do not label each of the topics each essay covers however according to whether they are primarily causal, probabilistic, cybernetic and relativistic, this will always be implicit. Otherwise the book would for you be unreadable, and for me unwritable. The same applies to those two even more fundamental elements, Serial and Parallel. All computers are made up of components that pass the data they process to each other either via serial lines or parallel buses. If our reality really `is' a simulation inside a computer, it is here that they acquire their fundamentality, for the way the connections between and within the circuit elements are made and the software that initiates and controls the data flows then determine the nature of that reality (see GOD, MYSTICISM).       ********************* EUGENICS *********************     As with Euthanasia, one of Adolf Hitler's greatest undocumented crimes is that he made such a botch of eugenics as to make even the hint of it all but unthinkable in today's civilized societies. And considering his version of it, that is perhaps just as well. The notion of Eugenics based on one person's aesthetic sense about what other people `should' look like no more enhances the survival of a culture than the preference of one sex's survival over another, as some cultures attempt even today. There are forms of eugenics however which seem not only compassionate and humane, but are already carried out even in the most ethically cautious of our societies. For instance, if a woman (and her partner) discover through fetal examination that her child is deformed or defective in some way, she is able to abort that child, even though it may be some time after the generally favored time of three months. Most non-religious people find this perfectly acceptable. Whether they would feel that we can go further than this is moot, but I would hope that this is not beyond all consideration. In essence, I would like to see the right to choose for the abortion of all fetuses with a specified list of conditions, not just at any time before the birth, but for some months after the birth, since some serious conditions are not revealed by fetal examination. Some are created by the birth process itself, others by accident after the child takes up residence within the home of its parents. If we don't allow such a decision to be made when it can be made with the minimum of suffering, the child itself may be confronted with several much harder decisions when it reaches the age at which it is able to make them for itself. That's if it can make any sort of decision by that time. A few such children do succeed in living full and rich lives, we see them in the media thanking their parents for their chance at life. But for each one of these individuals, there may almost certainly be dozens who wish the choice had been made for them before they became fully conscious, since they certainly have none now. I also feel that eugenics of this kind ought not always be a matter of parental choice. If a child is born or becomes mentally or physically incapacitated, it should be euthanased unless its parents have the means and the ability to care for it throughout its life. No society should have to subsidize religious or ideological convictions in ways that will eventually cost it dearly. That money and those resources should be committed to the welfare of those people fully able to make decisions for themselves and act on them (see RESPONSIBILITY). If some people feel that distinguishing between the rich and the poor in this way is socially unfair, then it would be wiser to make this form of compassionate eugenics compulsory for all rather than just the indigent. What should happen in cases where fetuses or children develop conditions which are merely likely to become disabling, that is, have perhaps a 50% chance of doing so? Huntingdon's Chorea, or Cystic Fibrosis, for instance? Some parents already chose to remain childless in these circumstances, others try to believe, rationally or not, that some future scientific advance (and there have been one or two) will cure the condition or minimize its effects. I think the latter parents are literally gambling with their child's welfare in a way that is quite inhumane. Once again that child may be placed in a position of suffering a crippling disease with no say in the decision which resulted in that. `Where there's life there's hope' is a notion you should feel free to apply to yourself, not impose on a child whom you are supposed to love and care for. Exposing anybody to even a 10% chance of being disabled is as criminal as driving while drunk and exposing other road users to similar odds. To many people, such views as these would seem `negative' or even `anti-life'. To my mind however such folk stand to condemn far too many people to lives of needless and prolonged misery in the name of that `Life'. Who is being inhumane here? I would urge such people to examine their consciences in the light of what could become considerate and compassionate practice rather than that of their customary cruel `kindness' in such matters.       ************************** EUTHANASIA **************************     Is death really such a terrible thing? A violent death certainly is, or any form of death, including that of a loved one, that is imposed against one's will (however, see CRIMINALITY). It is all but unthinkable if one is fit, active, and in love with somebody, or just in love with life itself. And in earlier decades and centuries when disease or war could take so many lives in so many horrible ways, death was not only highly visible, but reduced the chances of survival of entire populations. Whole societies could - and sometimes did - disappear. Is our reality so different in the current era where death is less likely to be violent, at least in most of the developed World? To my mind our lives have become sufficiently different that we ought revise our attitudes towards death, both as individuals and as societies. Since technology can now make death painless, even pleasant, I feel we can now come to see it as a solution to certain of the intractable problems of our existence which are unlikely to go away or, if they do, are usually only replaced by others. Those who suffer from AIDS should be able to elect it since that is an appallingly miserable way to die, and a cure may not arrive soon. Mental illness is, if anything, worse than AIDS. Even relatively mild ones like some forms of schizophrenia are just as miserable for their victims, only they don't die so soon, they can live as long as anybody else. Nobody should have to live like that for more than a year or two, when the chance of a cure becomes too slim. Some conditions, like painful terminal cancers, might continue to be treated with painkillers if the patient wishes, but he or she should at least be offered the choice of a more pleasant death. Extreme old age can also become a major burden, for the sufferer, the family both emotionally and financially, and the whole of society and the state that acts in its name. To revisit an ancient argument, if such an act of compassion be allowed for animals, why not for those people who wish it? Should pilots be deprived of parachutes to make them fly their planes better, as was believed during World War One? But then euthanasia itself is a very ancient idea. I won't therefore go over old ground here, but will instead look at what I believe are new reasons to allow its practise. What is the difference between a fool, a loony, and a criminal? This too is a very ancient question that has its roots in the even older one of `do we have free will?' (see RESPONSIBILITY). The fact that the different words exist suggests that we consider there are some. However, the activities of all three kinds of people have the same end result, they do harm to themselves or to others. A fool may do harm through what what we perceive to be ignorance or stupidity, a criminal through what we see as bloodymindedness. We place the loony in a no man's land of not being responsible for his actions, but of having committed them nevertheless. Cures for these conditions have come and gone, they have worked for a few, the rest have carried on in their helpless way. In my view the option of euthanasia should be available to these people just as for any normal person whose life has become intolerable. It should however be imposed on those adjudged to be criminals along the lines I have suggested in CRIMINALITY, and those assessed as being criminally insane. There is no possible kindness in keeping criminally insane people alive beyond the absolute minimum, they should certainly not have to be incarcerated in secure institutions for decades as they usually are now. Some people feel euthanasia should be called what it `really is', killing people. The introduction of that notion can stop pro-euthanasia arguments in their tracks. But again, if there was thought to be no difference between the words killing and euthanasia, or murder, assassination, and self-defense for that matter, those words would not have been invented. The word killing could be used in their place but this would then devalue its role in describing violent killings that will always be unacceptable in any society. It would also invite a desensitization to it, a brutalization that may render too many people uncaring of whether death is inflicted or natural, violent or serene. Some people feel that euthanasia is little more than a form of `post-natal' abortion. I would actually have to agree with that, but then to my mind that is not an argument against it at all (see EUGENICS) Many people would ask: what about the relatives of the newly-departed? Their parents, or their children? No man is an island that can be simply removed without altering the landscape he is a part of. The loss of a person suffering or likely to suffer may be severe and long lasting, certainly, but relatives will endure just as much suffering while that person is still alive. Also, many other people may come to suffer through his continued existence, especially if he becomes drunk, drives a vehicle and smashes into another containing an innocent family. And the question of whether the client was a fool, loony, or criminal will not make any difference to that final result. Though counseling for disturbed people ought to be available as it is now, allowing a person to end his own suffering should always remain that person's choice. Others may then be less likely to suffer as well. Would not euthanasia though bring problems of its own? It has to be said that some of the arguments against it are perfectly reasonable. For instance, it is not unknown for an elderly person's relatives to harass that person to death in order to inherit his estate. Also, there is considerable risk of any newly-introduced euthanasia legislation being botched in an attempt to accommodate religious extremists in the way abortion laws have been in some countries. What kind of laws might some of the less ethically careful countries institute, perhaps as a means of reducing population numbers to match their shrinking resources? What might happen if a key person in a society, a company president or a scientist for instance, chooses to die, taking some vital knowledge with him? In my view we cannot know how serious these problems might be until some countries at least actually try the form of euthanasia I have outlined here, using `sunset' clauses that allow automatic review after a `reasonable' period of time has elapsed, perhaps five years. Then we will be in a better position to assess what will by then be fact rather than speculation. It can't be that much worse, with the crime, horror and bloodshed of our present world. One other problem remains: the instinct we all have to live, no matter what, and to try and ensure that those whom we love do the same. It's a fundamental instinct that has been essential to our survival over evolutionary time, just as it has been for our predecessors on this world. But in order to build our societies we have had to learn how to repress many of our instincts or redirect them into more constructive channels. The instinct to explore has given us science and logic, without which any control of instinct would be impossible. The instinct to care has brought us all our judicial and welfare systems, hopelessly overloaded they may be. The instinct to live at all costs can now too surely be rechannelled so as to foster life, not bury it under its own errors and failures.       ***************************** EXPLORATION *****************************     Although science and technology has allowed us to spread out all over the world, in a sense it has also taken the world away from us, for there is no region of it left for us to explore. Certainly, one might say there are infinite worlds to explore given to us through science and technology itself. But these are the provinces of those who have considerable training, the rest of us can only explore them second-hand (though this can still be very interesting, see DEPRESSION, also ART). Exploration appears to be a major part of the human spirit, we must feel able to escape our bounds and see what is beyond them. Just now though we cannot even leave the Earth except in very expensive rocket-powered dugout canoes. These can only be launched with very few people aboard and only very occasionally, and can only undertake very short voyages which hug the orbital shorelines of our planet. What we need is some means of moving some object through space which does not involve the ejection of high-speed reaction mass through its rear. Ion propulsion engines overcome one limitation of these systems, that is, large quantities of reaction mass do not need to be carried aboard the vehicle. But as yet these provide a somewhat feeble propulsive force, certainly much less than what would be needed to even lift a people-containing vehicle off the surface of the Earth. In any case, reaction mass propulsion of any kind is hardly enough to get us to the stars, where we really need to be able to go to have any chance of encountering other species and doing any real exploration. Indeed it is hard to see how reaction mass systems can be much use to us even in our own solar system. Travel times would still be months or years, meaning greater risk of damage during transit, and huge amounts of life support needing to be carried. Quite often in our technological history the seeds of the next major technological leap are actually sown decades before. Sometimes this is in an earlier technology that was abandoned because it appeared to be a dead-end, or the technological infrastructure of the day was insufficient to allow further development. The transistor is perhaps the best-known example of both. If the old germanium-crystal `cats-whisker' rectifier used in radio reception in the early part of this century had been researched further, then the thermionic valve might have become an incidental curiosity and the whole of our technological history - or history, period - changed. Could something like this be the case with space propulsion? Is there some device or principle that we already know, but don't know that we know? Because no one has thought of using it - whatever it might be - in this connection? To my mind it would be well worth our while committing billions of dollars in finding a way of reaching the stars. Before we become so overburdened with our own problems that we lose the exterior perspective needed to help overcome them. Because of the urge most of us have to explore, even if it has to be, initially at least, by proxy. And along with conventional avenues of research we could try some unconventional ones. For instance, perhaps we could set up a worldwide competition with a major prize to the first person or group to build a workable non-reaction mass spacecraft. Although we might then have a million cranks all struggling to build spaceships in their back yards, statistically one of those cranks is more likely to succeed than any of the others. Then we may all benefit as we at last take our chance to explore the stars. On the other hand we might not (see ALIENS). But that is the risk all explorers take, isn't it?       ********************* FUTURE *********************     Clairvoyance is an illusion created by statistics: if you take a thousand predictions made by a thousand seers, one of those seers will come to be seen as far more prescient than the others. Scientifically, we cannot predict the future at all except in terms of possibilities and probabilities, no certainties or nevers, even for limited systems that behave `purely mechanistically' (see ELEMENTS). But the exercise is not entirely useless, indeed looking at what could happen is a vital survival aid since we can then try to prevent it if it is likely to mean harm, or foster it if otherwise. We may also try to predict a range of alternative possible futures that may come about if certain key events occur or fail to, perhaps once again assigning loose probabilities to their relative likelyhood. But `loose' will always be the best we can do, since the actual course of events will of course be unpredictable and may produce a surprise that was not, or could not, have been foreseen. When I look into the future then, it is with these cautions in mind. I can only describe what I see as the most likely ultimate future of us all in the most general possible terms. What I see happening is this: we will eventually replace ourselves, voluntarily I hope, with conscious machines able to travel in space, indeed live in it, with none of the deadly encumbrances and limitations of our present organic form. In other words, no food, shelter, sex and so on, just exploration (see EXPLORATION, INCENTIVES). I should say though that when I use the word `machines' I don't mean it in today's somewhat limited sense, but in tomorrow's in which a machine might look like one, but will have the same awareness of self and of other conscious entities, similar or different, as we do. Because these machines will almost certainly possess considerably greater sensory and effective capabilities than our own however, their consciousness may be correspondingly far broader and deeper than ours with our immutable brains and bodies. Those future machines may go even beyond this and cast off their physical `shells', but there is no way I, with my own limitations, can ultimately consider whether this is even possible (see PereGaea). How do we arrive at this nirvana, if nirvana it be? I think it may actually be inescapable if we continue developing our scientific and technological culture at the current pace, and that it could happen sometime in the next hundred years or two. Even if we should turn round and forsake our new planetwide culture and go back to the Stone Age (as I suspect many people believe we should), eventually a scientific rebellion and renaissance will once again take place and we will be on the road again to that glittering future. Even if the delay is a thousand years, that is barely an instant in the evolutionary scale of time. Should we attempt to resist? Such a reality may, both for the machines and possibly for ourselves, turn out to be an improvement on what we have now. Whether these new representatives of Earth will however replace us humans or coexist with us is not, unfortunately, possible to foresee. If the latter, then our future may be like inhabiting a sociological game park, that is, we continue to live as we always have, but do not attempt to escape our new boundaries. Could the ideas in these essays, along with some of the solutions I have suggested to our human problems, be seen to hasten the transition than hinder it? That is not my purpose. I too can ultimately only look at this here-and-now we live in and hope that I can help turn it into a better future one. We each must, after all, try to do that, otherwise some other kind of future may be imposed on us that we do not want (see BELIEFS, PARADOX, SOLUTIONS).       ********************* GOD *********************     It's actually possible now to create an Earth-like planet in seven days - indeed seven hours. And it doesn't take a God. All it takes is a decent computer and a program to match. The results won't be all that convincing, it is after all only a simulation, but one gets the odd feeling that it won't be all that long before we can create the real thing in a comparable time. And that, believe it or not, may be wholly within a computer. As I described in my book PereGaea, the whole of our Universe may already be a simulation inside somebody's computer (or the comparator my book described. See also ELEMENTS). And that somebody might himself (or itself) be a simulation in some other system Elsewhere. Ultimately we can't answer such questions as Who or Where since one of the current definitions of a Universe is `something its inhabitants can't perceive or escape to the outside of'. However, if we are inside some such simulation, it may be possible for us to discover the program under which it runs, and make alterations to it to suit ourselves. This might then allow us to create whole new worlds, amongst countless other things (see MYSTICISM). Of course there is no way of knowing if there is really such a program, let alone if we can alter it. What it does mean is that all the claims made in the Bible are entirely possible, they could have happened just as it and all the literature it is ultimately founded on described. God could be very real, along with Jesus Christ and the Devil. However, as a corollary to that, so could all the claims made by all the other religions ever invented on this planet (and for that matter, possible beyond, see ALIENS). One might then suppose either that all religions are equally invalid since they all conflict, or that they are equally valid in that they are simply different interpretations of the same idea, that we were all created by Something. Unfortunately there's only one thing we can say with any certainty here at all, and that's that we know nothing. We may think we can be guided by feelings, faith, and revelation on these things, but they are all products of whatever culture we belong to, our particular society, friends, etc. It is also unfortunate in the extreme that inducing such feelings is a prime tool of confidence tricksters and others who, perhaps even more dangerously, believe in their Message with a literally life-consuming ferocity (see RESPONSIBILITY, SPIRITUALITY, BELIEFS). Just imagine if we could somehow prove God's existence. Then there could be no free will since we would feel compelled to do what we believe we are told by Him, or His `representatives' on Earth, real or false, to be His Will. Since he is believed to have specifically stated that we have Free Will and that our behavior is our choice, he must therefore have made it impossible for us to prove his existence. There are other reasons to suspect such a `proof' is unlikely. If a scientist or philosopher did develop a proof that no other person on Earth could find fault with, (as some believe once happened with the Ontological Proof of God), how long would that state of affairs last? Would it be a week before somebody did find an error? A month? Even if it many years were to pass, could we ever be sure that it wouldn't ever happen? In any case, would a God whose existence could be proved be much of a God? Once we learned anything absolute and definite about Him, wouldn't that not only limit the possibilities as to what he could be, but in turn put constraints on the nature of reality? Wouldn't we then come to feel we were living in a somehow limited Universe created by a God who was less than the perfection that the Western concept of God at least implies? To my mind therefore the only approach we can take to the Existence of God is one of neither belief or disbelief. This is not agnosticism, it is essentially similar to the attitude we might take towards anything for which there is no evidence for or against, extraterrestrial visitations for example (see ALIENS). Some people might find such a notion to be completely intolerable, especially those who feel `a great void' in their lives and feel that their existence is little more like `going through the motions'. They need a Purpose, both for themselves and for the whole of Existence. `Surely we don't just live and die like flowers?' some of them might ask. The notion of `purpose' is solely a human concept, one that ultimately derives from our cortical propensity to plan, plot or scheme. Finding purposes to put objects to - and sometimes other people - in order to aid our survival is a key part of that. After one million years, it becomes hard for us not to see things in terms of Purpose, including ourselves and our lives. However, since we cannot know whether or not God exists let alone whether he has a Purpose for us, we cannot apply the concept to our existence in this way. We may have a purpose for flowers, but we can no more determine if we ourselves have a Purpose than flowers can. We are only able, so far as we know, to live and die as they do. Since most religions of course claim otherwise, they draw large numbers of people into them as a result. However, subscribing to any such religion or some other belief system (see BELIEFS, INSPIRATION, TRUST) is unlikely to be more than a temporary palliative for the `purpose anxiety' any thoughtful person may suffer from. He or she is eventually likely to discover that they have joined a sort of club where God stands in for Santa Claus, always granting or with-holding requests made through prayer `according to His higher wisdom'. A Santa Claus who guides people through life like a father, punishing those who `stray' with disease, grief, loss of love. The rest of us prefer to accept such mishaps as a part of life and deal with them using our intelligence rather than faith. Whether God exists or not, I can't imagine He sees himself as a sort of narcotic. How then to fill that void? Some of these religious clubs have in fact stumbled on what I feel is a better answer, and one which is well accommodated within most of the codes of morality we have invented. Here I am thinking of such organizations as the Salvation Army, World Vision, Red Cross. All these societies exist to serve their fellow man, whether they are Believers or not. There are of course many other non-religious organizations with similar aims, but the people in them all have one belief in common: helping out one's fellow Orphans of Reality is the only way of filling a void (see WELFARE). There are many other things we can do to help us find our way (see ART, DEPRESSION, SCIENCE). So even if we cannot say whether God exists or not, we can at least bring our ideal of him to life in this real, everyday world we live in. That is not just the next best thing, to my mind it is the best thing. We are then more likely to determine what is needed and find ways of providing it rather than deluding ourselves with spiritual narcotics.       *********************** HAPPINESS ***********************     The ultimate end of conscious life is Happiness. But there are two kinds of this, short term and long term, and the activities involved in the pursuit of one may conflict with those of the other. Traps are based on this conflict, where a brief surge of happiness induced into a victim may blind it to a severe cost, perhaps even its life. This conflict is the entire thing behind the evolution of intelligence, our individual ability to plan, plot, scheme for `future security', another term we like to use for happiness tomorrow. The cortical structures of our brain then expanded further to allow us to develop our basic social structures which, with the evolution of language, lead to our attempts to improve our happiness through cooperating our plans, schemes etc. Hence our rules, written and unwritten, embodied in our economic, political, ethical, and various belief systems. Yet one wonders if people are on the whole any happier overall than they were a hundred years ago, a thousand years ago, a million years ago? Certainly medical science for instance has spared us much death and disease, but brought fierce drug addictions, overpopulation, and prolongation of life beyond the livable. Revolutionary new political systems like communism promised to prevent the very few from owning the very many, but all it did was change the system of ownership. Even the simple machines we use to improve our lives can also become guns, tanks and bombs. Is there any point therefore to progress? Should we stay as we are, revert to previous modes of life? Or just lie back and let progress take us where it will? (See FUTURE) I suspect we have no control over that, such a decision will forever lie beyond us. There have been, are, and always will be a few people who want to change things for what they believe to be the betterment of their fellow man, or solely for the benefit of themselves. Most of us are somewhere in between, lying somewhere along that Gaussian Curve connecting Happiness Now with Happiness Future, helping ourselves while we help others. In essence we constantly struggle to find the balance between Moral Capitalism, where the many come to be owned by the few, and Moral Communism, where the few are always subject to the collective needs of the many. Some societies find different balances from others just as individuals do, but relatively few of either appear to be completely happy overall. It seems unlikely a lasting solution can be found since inevitably some well-intentioned acts will always prove to have disastrous consequences, while a few mean and selfish ones will result in unintended good. Like all balancing acts, this one has to be carefully maintained else all is lost. It also requires a society to maintain the free and easy movement of all the social mechanisms that enable it to do that.         ********************* INCENTIVE *********************     Imagine if you can that we finally become capable of building an android that is powered indefinitely by nuclear energy, is hardened against the elements so that it needs no shelter, can repair itself by fashioning what it needs directly from raw materials, and doesn't need to replace itself since its self-repair ability makes it everlasting. It would in effect be completely immune to those incentives which allegedly control us, like food, shelter, sex, fame, power, money, fun, and meaning. Most of these goals have shaped the evolution of our consciousness from pre-human times and brought us everything we have in our various cultures. What incentive then would the android have to survive? Could it even be conscious in any sense we could understand, or even at all? Here we have to consider the difference between consciousness and intelligence. Intelligence has to do with how we do things, finding ways of reaching objectives that are reliable, yet consume the least time and resources. Consciousness has to do with why we do those things, set our various goals and objectives. The consciousness of a dog will differ from that of a dolphin because they live in such different environments and have so few goals in common. Their intelligence however may be quite comparable, though as yet that can only be a matter of opinion. In order to make an android conscious in any way we can understand therefore, would we have to `hobble' it so that it must, for example, periodically `feed' off an external electricity supply? Build an entire society of androids that provide specialized maintenance and support services for each other to gain that electricity and anything else they may require? Even include a form of `sex' so that the brains of any new androids are prestocked with a random combination of the learned experiences of two other androids? (how would they select themselves?) At that point one might ask: what would be the point of building such a `society'? It would be interesting, certainly, we could learn a lot about ourselves. We could even turn them into slaves (if necessity is the mother of invention, laziness is the de facto father). Is consciousness totally about incentives? Does our own derive solely from our Limbic Emotion Centers? (See ADDICTION) Perhaps an everlasting android could be built with a wholly different set of incentives. Its artificial `emotion centers' could cause its consciousness to resemble that of a professional person in that it would care for others before itself (it would not need to care so much for its own welfare), explore whole new areas of the universe like, well, an old-time explorer (it would not need an atmosphere or gravity to function, though it would need an interstellar drive, see EXPLORATION), and investigate new areas of what up till now have been human knowledge like a scientist (imagine a symbiosis between a Computer and a Neural Net (or Comparator, see PereGaea)). Although these incentives are for us culturally learned ones that ultimately derive from our limbic emotions, there seems no reason why they can't form the basis for a wholly new consciousness. One that is not just a replica of our own, but better. It may even have more of a soul than a mind. There may be an interesting corollary to this. Now that us humans (at least in the advanced regions of the world) are finding our own basic Incentives easier to satisfy (food, shelter, and sex at least), we may find ourselves in the same position as the incentiveless android. If an incentive is continually satisfied, it is all but not there. Could our own consciousness actually diminish accordingly? Maybe we have the chance to remould it along the lines of the new `social' androids (see ART, DEPRESSION, WELFARE). Could such androids incidentally have been constructed by intelligent beings billions of years ago? Might they now even be controlling the universe in some way, perhaps even rewriting the laws of physics to suit themselves? Maybe they even invented us (see GOD). There is simply no way we can answer such questions as yet and perhaps, because of our comparatively limited