by Rucker, Rudy
Take a family photo-album; proves your from the past and has random little things they won’t know about.
You know that drawer you have where you keep little mementoes, games, toys, thingies? Empty it into a sack. It’s all priceless ephemera.
If you practice any art or craft, bring some samples of what you made.
What will sex be like in fifty years?
Fashion: X-shirts, which have blown-up photos of the wearer’s genitalia.
Sex in zero gravity very popular. Shuttle ships will take you up for an hour, just like now you can get a small plane to fly you over SF bay while ya DO it.
Scrotal pregnancies. Lots of men carrying babies in their scrota. Special little wheelbarrow that they use.
What will you find in the trash in thirty years?
Disposable facemasks, like to be tan or Black or whatever.
Fashion ears, they’re uncomfortable enough to throw away.
Misters—favorite drug intake is like asthma inhalers, five hits in a pulser.
Dermal patches for drug delivery.
Little bags of excrement—you can wear a pair of tubes that catch all your waste on the go so you don’t need to venture into public bathrooms. Dogs wear ‘em too.
Sacks of chewed food. You can get this thing like a condom that hooks onto your back teeth and goes down your esophagus and you eat a whole meal and it all goes into the big stomach rubber and then you pull it out. Colloquial: “I’m packing a lunch for the homeless.”
Talking cards that give directions to someplace; you throw it away when you get there.
* * *
Note on “Three Quick Answers”
Written 1995.
Unpublished.
I wrote this for a Wired 1995 feature to be guest-edited by Douglas Coupland. I think my material was unused.
Edge Questions
Everything is Alive
Answer to The Edge Annual Question, 2006: “What is Your Dangerous Idea?”
Panpsychism. Each object has a mind. Stars, hills, chairs, rocks, scraps of paper, flakes of skin, molecules—each of them possesses the same inner glow as a human, each of them has singular inner experiences and sensations.
I’m quite comfortable with the notion that everything is a computation. But what to do about my sense that there’s something numinous about my inner experience? Panpsychism represents a non-anthropocentric way out: mind is a universally distributed quality.
Yes, the workings of a human brain are a deterministic computation that could be emulated by any universal computer. And, yes, I sense more to my mental phenomena than the rule-bound exfoliation of reactions to inputs: this residue is the inner light, the raw sensation of existence. But, no, that inner glow is not the exclusive birthright of humans, nor is it solely limited to biological organisms.
Note that panpsychism needn’t say that universe is just one mind. We can also say that each object has an individual mind. One way to visualize the distinction between the many minds and the one mind is to think of the world as a stained glass window with light shining through each pane. The world’s physical structures break the undivided cosmic mind into a myriad of small minds, one in each object.
The minds of panpsychism can exist at various levels. As well as having its own individuality, a person’s mind would also be, for instance, a hive mind based upon the minds of the body’s cells and the minds of the body’s elementary particles.
Do the panpsychic minds have any physical correlates? On the one hand, it could be that the mind is some substance that accumulates near ordinary matter—dark matter or dark energy are good candidates. On the other hand, mind might simply be matter viewed in a special fashion: matter experienced from the inside. Let me mention three specific physical correlates that have been proposed for the mind.
Some have argued that the experience of mind results when a superposed quantum state collapses into a pure state. It’s an alluring metaphor, but as a universal automatist, I’m of the opinion that quantum mechanics is a stop-gap theory, destined to give way to a fully deterministic theory based upon some digital precursor of spacetime.
David Skrbina, author of the clear and comprehensive book Panpsychism in the West, suggests that we might think of a physical system as determining a moving point in a multi-dimensional phase space that has an axis for each of the system’s measurable properties. He feels this dynamic point represents the sense of unity characteristic of a mind.
As a variation on this theme, let me point out that, from the universal automatist standpoint, every physical system can be thought of as embodying a computation. And the majority of non-simple systems embody universal computations, capable of emulating any other system at all. It could be that having a mind is in some sense equivalent to being capable of universal computation.
A side-remark. Even such very simple systems as a single electron may in fact be capable of universal computation, if supplied with a steady stream of structured input. Think of an electron in an oscillating field; and by analogy think of a person listening to music or reading an essay.
Might panpsychism be a distinction without a difference? Suppose we identify the numinous mind with quantum collapse, with chaotic dynamics, or with universal computation. What is added by claiming that these aspects of reality are like minds?
I think empathy can supply an experiential confirmation of panpsychism’s reality. Just as I’m sure that I myself have a mind, I can come to believe the same of another human with whom I’m in contact—whether face to face or via their creative work. And with a bit of effort, I can identify with objects as well; I can see the objects in the room around me as glowing with inner light. This is a pleasant sensation; one feels less alone.
Could there ever be a critical experiment to test if panpsychism is really true? Suppose that telepathy were to become possible, perhaps by entangling a person’s mental states with another system’s states. And then suppose that instead of telepathically contacting another person, I were to contact a rock. At this point panpsychism would be proved.
I still haven’t said anything about why panpsychism is a dangerous idea. Panpsychism, like other forms of higher consciousness, is dangerous to business as usual. If my old car has the same kind of mind as a new one, I’m less impelled to help the economy by buying a new vehicle. If the rocks and plants on my property have minds, I feel more respect for them in their natural state. If I feel myself among friends in the universe, I’m less likely to overwork myself to earn more cash. If my body will have a mind even after I’m dead, then death matters less to me, and it’s harder for the government to cow me into submission.
Can Robots See God?
Answer to The Edge Annual Question, 2007: “What have you changed your mind about, and why?”
Studying mathematical logic in the 1970s I believed it was possible to put together a convincing argument that no computer program can fully emulate a human mind. Although nobody had quite gotten the argument right, I hoped to straighten it out.
My belief in this will-o-the-wisp was motivated by a gut feeling that people have numinous inner qualities that will not be found in machines. For one thing, our self-awareness lets us reflect on ourselves and get into endless mental regresses: “I know that I know that I know…” For another, we have moments of mystical illumination when we seem to be in contact, if not with God, then with some higher cosmic mind. I felt that surely no machine could be self-aware or experience the divine light.
At that point, I’d never actually touched a computer—they were still inaccessible, stygian tools of the establishment. Three decades rolled by, and I’d morphed into a Silicon Valley computer scientist, in constant contact with nimble chips. Setting aside my old prejudices, I changed my mind—and came to believe that we can in fact create human-like computer programs.
Although writing out such a program is in some sense beyond the abilities of any one person, we can set up simulated worlds in which such computer programs evo
lve. I feel confident that some relatively simple set-up will, in time, produce a human-like program capable of emulating all known intelligent human behaviors: writing books, painting pictures, designing machines, creating scientific theories, discussing philosophy, and even falling in love. More than that, we will be able to generate an unlimited number of such programs, each with its own particular style and personality.
What of the old-style attacks from the quarters of mathematical logic? Roughly speaking, these arguments always hinged upon a spurious belief that we can somehow discern between, on the one hand, human-like systems which are fully reliable and, on the other hand, human-like systems fated to begin spouting gibberish. But the correct deduction from mathematical logic is that there is absolutely no way to separate the sheep from the goats. Note that this is already our situation vis-a-vis real humans: you have no way to tell if and when a friend or a loved one will forever stop making sense.
With the rise of new practical strategies for creating human-like programs and the collapse of the old a priori logical arguments against this endeavor, I have to reconsider my former reasons for believing humans to be different from machines. Might robots become self-aware? And—not to put too fine a point on it—might they see God? I believe both answers are yes.
Consciousness probably isn’t that big a deal. A simple pair of facing mirrors exhibit a kind of endlessly regressing self-awareness, and this type of pattern can readily be turned into computer code.
And what about basking in the divine light? Certainly if we take a reductionistic view that mystical illumination is just a bath of intoxicating brain chemicals, then there seems to be no reason that machines couldn’t occasionally be nudged into exceptional states as well. But I prefer to suppose that mystical experiences involve an objective union with a higher level of mind, possibly mediated by offbeat physics such as quantum entanglement, dark matter, or higher dimensions.
Might a robot enjoy these true mystical experiences? Based on my studies of the essential complexity of simple systems, I feel that any physical object at all must be equally capable of enlightenment. As the Zen apothegm has it, “The universal rain moistens all creatures.”
So, yes, I now think that robots can see God.
Search and Emergence
Answer to The Edge Annual Question, 2010: “How is the Internet changing the way you think?”
Twenty or thirty years ago, people dreamed of a global mind that knew everything and could answer any question. In those early times, we imagined that we’d need a huge breakthrough in artificial intelligence to make the global mind work—we thought of it as resembling an extremely smart person. The conventional Hollywood image for the global mind’s interface was a talking head on a wall-sized screen.
And now, in 2010, we have the global mind. Search-engines, user-curated encyclopedias, images of everything under the sun, clever apps to carry out simple computations—it’s all happening. But old-school artificial intelligence is barely involved at all.
As it happens, data, and not algorithms, is where it’s at. Put enough information into the planetary information cloud, crank up a search engine, and you’ve got an all-knowing global mind. The answers emerge.
Initially people resisted understanding this simple fact. Perhaps this was because the task of posting a planet’s worth of data seemed so intractable. There were hopes that some magically simple AI program might be able to extrapolate a full set of information from a few well-chosen basic facts—just a person can figure out another person on the basis of a brief conversation.
At this point, it looks like there aren’t going to be any incredibly concise aha-type AI programs for emulating how we think. The good news is that this doesn’t matter. Given enough data, a computer network can fake intelligence. And—radical notion—maybe that’s what our wetware brains are doing, too. Faking it with search and emergence. Searching a huge data base for patterns.
The seemingly insurmountable task of digitizing the world has been accomplished by ordinary people. This results from the happy miracle that the internet is that it’s unmoderated and cheap to use. Practically anyone can post information onto the web, whether as comments, photos, or full-blown web pages. We’re like worker ants in a global colony, dragging little chunks of data this way and that. We do it for free; it’s something we like to do.
Note that the internet wouldn’t work as a global mind if it were a completely flat and undistinguished sea of data. We need a way to locate the regions that are most desirable in terms of accuracy and elegance. An early, now-discarded, notion was that we would need some kind of information czar or committee to rank the data. But, here again, the anthill does the work for free.
By now it seems obvious that the only feasible way to rank the internet’s offerings is to track the online behaviors of individual users. By now it’s hard to remember how radical and rickety such a dependence upon emergence used to seem. No control! What a crazy idea. But it works. No centralized system could ever keep pace.
An even more surprising success is found in user-curated encyclopedias. When I first heard of this notion, I was sure it wouldn’t work. I assumed that trolls and zealots would infect all the posts. But the internet has a more powerful protection system than I’d realized. Individual users are the primary defenders.
We might compare the internet to a biological system in which new antibodies emerge to combat new pathogens. Malware is forever changing, but our defenses are forever evolving as well.
I am a novelist, and the task of creating a coherent and fresh novel always seems in some sense impossible. What I’ve learned over the course of my career is that I need to trust in emergence—also known as the muse. I assemble a notes document filled with speculations, overheard conversations, story ideas, and flashy phrases. Day after day, I comb through my material, integrating it into my mental net, forging links and ranks. And, fairly reliably, the scenes and chapters of my novel emerge. It’s how my creative process works.
In our highest mental tasks, any dream of an orderly process is a will-o’-the wisp. And there’s no need to feel remorseful about this. Search and emergence are good enough for the global mind—and they’re good enough for us.
The World is Unpredictable
Answer to the he Edge Annual Question , 2011: “What scientific concept would improve everybody’s cognitive toolkit?”
The media cast about for the proximate causes of life’s windfalls and disasters. The public demands blocks against the bad and pipelines to the good. Legislators propose new regulations, fruitlessly dousing last year’s fires, forever betting on yesterday’s winning horses.
A little-known truth: Every aspect of the world is fundamentally unpredictable. Computer scientists have long since proved this.
How so? To predict an event is to know a shortcut for foreseeing the outcome in advance. A simple counting argument shows there aren’t enough shortcuts to go around. Therefore most processes aren’t predictable. A deeper argument plays on the fact that, if you could predict your actions, you could deliberately violate your predictions—which means the predictions were wrong after all.
We often suppose that unpredictability is caused by random inputs from higher spirits or from low-down quantum foam. But chaos theory and computer science tell us that non-random systems produce surprises on their own. The unexpected tornado, the cartoon safe that lands on Uncle George, the winning pull on a slot machine—odd things pop out of any rich computation. The world can simultaneously be deterministic, chaotic, and unpredictable.
In the physical world, the only way to learn tomorrow’s weather in detail is to wait twenty-four hours and see—even if nothing is random at all. The universe is computing tomorrow’s weather as rapidly and as efficiently as possible—any smaller model is inaccurate, and the smallest error is amplified into large effects.
At a personal level, even if the world is as deterministic as a computer program, you still can’t predict what you’re going to
do. This is because your prediction method would involve a mental simulation of you that produces its results slower than you. You can’t think faster than you think. You can’t stand on your own shoulders.
It’s a waste to chase the pipedream of a magical tiny theory that allows us to make quick and detailed calculations about the future. We can’t predict and we can’t control. To accept this can be a source of liberation and inner peace. We’re part of the unfolding world, surfing reality’s waves.
Inverse Power Laws
Answer to The Edge Question 2012: What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?
I’m intrigued by the empirical fact that most aspects of our world and our society are distributed according to so-called inverse power laws. That is, many distribution curves take on the form of a curve that swoops down from a central peak to have a long tail that asymptotically hugs the horizontal axis.
Inverse power laws are elegantly simple, deeply mysterious, but more galling than beautiful. Inverse power laws are self-organizing and self-maintaining. For reasons that aren’t entirely understood they emerge spontaneously in a wide range of parallel computations, both social and natural.
One of the first social scientists to notice an inverse power law was George Kingsley Zipf, who formulated an observation now known as Zipf’s Law. This is the statistical fact that, in most documents, the frequency with which a given word is used is roughly proportional to the reciprocal of the word’s popularity rank. Thus the second most popular word is used half as much as the most popular word, the tenth most popular word is used a tenth as much as the most popular word, and so on.
In society, similar kinds of inverse power laws govern society’s rewards. Speaking as an author, I’ve noticed, for instance, that the hundredth most popular author sells a hundred-fold fewer books than the author at the top. If the top writer sells a million copies, someone like me might sell ten thousand.