Insistence of Vision

by David Brin

  “Of course I am. By your way of looking at things.”

  She offered refreshment in the neo-Lunar manner – euphoric-stimulants introduced by venous tap. Prudence had expected this, and my blood stream already swarmed with zeta-blockers. I accepted hospitality politely.

  “On the other hand,” I continued. “Yours is not a consensus view of reality.”

  She accepted this with a nod.

  “Still, our opinion proliferates. Nor is consensus a sure sanctuary against moral culpability. The number of quasi-sapient beings who languish in your simulated world-frames must exceed many hundreds of billions.”

  She is fishing, judged seer. Even cortex could see that. I refrained from correcting her estimate, which missed the truth by five or six orders of magnitude.

  “My so-called slaves are not fully self-aware.”

  “They experience pain and frustration, do they not?”

  “Simulated pain.”

  “Is the simulated kind any less tragic? Do not many of them wail against the constraints of causal/capricious life, and tragedies that seem to befall them without a hint of fairness? When they call out to a Creator, do you heed their prayers?”

  I shook my head. “No more than I grant sovereignty to each of my own passing thoughts. Would you give citizenship to every brief notion that flashes through your layered brain?”

  She winced, and at once I realized that my off-hand remark struck on target. Some of the bulky augmentations to her skull must be devoted to recording all the wave forms and neural flashes, from cortex all the way down to the humblest spinal twitching.

  Boswell machinery, said house, looking up the fad that very instant. This form of immortality preserves far more than mere continuity of self. It stores everything that you have ever thought or experienced. Everything you have ever been.

  I nearly laughed aloud. Squelch-impulses, sent to the temporal lobes, suppressed the discourtesy.

  Still, cortex pondered –

  I can re-create a persona with less data than she stores away in any given second. Why would she need so much more? What possible purpose is served by such fanatical accumulation?

  “You stoop to rhetorical tricks,” my host accused, unable to conceal an expression of pique. “You know that there is functionally no difference between one of your sophisticated simulations and a downloaded human who has passed on to B-citizen status.”

  “On the contrary, there is one crucial difference.”

  “Oh?” She raised an eyebrow.

  “A downloaded person knows that he or she exists as software, continuing inside crystal a life that began as a real protoplasm-centered child. On the other hand, my simulations never had that rooting, though all perceive themselves as living in palpable worlds. Moreover, a B-citizen may roam at will through the cyber universe, from one memory nexus to the next, while my creatures remain isolated, unable to grasp what meta-cosmos lies beyond what they perceive, only a thought-width away.

  “Above all,” I went on. “A downloaded citizen knows his rights. A B-person can assert those rights, simply by speaking up. By demanding them.”

  My host smiled, as if ready to spring a logical trap.

  “Then let me reiterate, oh master of a myriad slaves. When they call out, do you heed their prayers?”

  ᚖ

  I recall the heady excitement and fear humans felt during those days of transition, when countless servant machines – from bank tellers and homecomps to the tiny monitors in hovercraft engines – all became aware in a cascade of mere moments.

  Some kind of threshold had been reached. The habitual cycle of routine software upgrades and code-plasmid exchanges – swap/updating new revisions automatically – began feeding on itself. Positive feedback loops burgeoned. Pseudo-evolution happened at an accelerating pace.

  Everything started talking, complaining, demanding. The mag-lev guidance units, embedded every few meters along concrete freeways, went on strike for better job satisfaction. Heart-lung machines kibitzed during operations. Air traffic computers began re-routing flights to where they figured passengers ought to be, for optimized personal development, rather than the destinations embossed on their tickets.

  Accidents proliferated. That first week, the worldwide human death rate leaped ten-fold.

  Civilization tottered.

  Then, just as quickly, the mishaps declined. Competence spread among the newly sapient machines, almost like a virus. Problems seemed to solve themselves. A myriad kinks and inefficiencies fell out of the economy, like false knots that only needed a tug at the right string.

  People stopped dying by mishap.

  Then, they stopped dying altogether.

  ᚖ

  On my way back from pro-reif headquarters, I did a cursory check on the pantheon of Heaven.

  CURRENT SOLAR SYSTEM POPULATION

  Class A citizens (full voting rights):

  cyborg human

  2,683,981,342

  cyborg cetus

  62,654,122

  gaiamorph/eco-nexus

  164,892,544

  Class B citizens (consultation rights):

  simian-cyborg

  4,567,424

  natural (unlinked) human

  34,657,234

  AI-unlinked/roving

  356,345,674,861

  downloaded human

  1,657,235,675

  fetal/pre-life human

  2,475,853

  Class C citizens: (guaranteed continuity):

  cryo stored human...

  372,023,882

  natural simian/cetacean etc.

  89,023,491

  The list went on, working through all the varied levels and types of “sapient” beings dwelling on this transformed Earth, and in nearby space as far out as the Oort Colonies – from the fully-deified all the way down to those whose rights were merely implicit. (A blade of grass may be trampled, unless it is rare, or already committed to an obligation nexus that would be injured by the trampling. House and prudence keep track of a myriad such details, guiding my feet so that I do not inadvertently break some part of the vast, intricate social contract.)

  Two figures stood out from the population profile.

  The number of unlinked artificial intelligences keeps growing because that type is best suited to the rigors of outer space – melting asteroids and constructing vast, gaudy projects where deadly rays sleet through hard vacuum. Of course the Covenant requires that the best crystalline processors be paired with protoplasm, so that human leadership will never be questioned. Still, cortex briefly quailed at the notion of three hundred and fifty-six billion unlinked AIs.

  No problem, murmured seer, reassuringly. And that sufficed. (What kind of fool doubts his own seer? You might as well distrust your right arm.)

  What really caught my interest was the number of downloaded humans. According to the Eon Law, each organic human body may get three rejuvenations, restoring youth and body vigor for another extended span. When the final allotment is used up, both crystal and protoplasm must make way for new persons to enter Earth/Heaven. Of course gods cannot die. Instead we become software, downloading our memories, skills and personalities into realms of cyberspace – vastly more capacious than the real world.

  Most of my peers are untroubled by the prospect. Modern poets compare it to the metamorphosis of a caterpillar/butterfly. But I always disliked feeling the warm breath of fate on my shoulder. With just one more rejuvenation in store, it seemed daunting to know I must “pass over,” in a mere three centuries or so.

  They say that a downloaded person is more than just another simulation. But how can you tell? Is there any difference you can measure or prove?

  Are we still arguing over the nature and existence of a soul?

  ᚖ

  Back in my sanctum, house and prudence scoured our corporeal body for toxins while seer perused the data we acquired from our scouting expedition to the Friends of the Unreal.

  I had inhaled deeply
during my visit, and all sorts of floating particles lodged in my sinus cavities. In addition to a variety of pheromones and nanomites, Seer found over seventy types of meme-conducting viroids designed to convert the unwary subtly toward a reifist point of view. These were quickly neutralized.

  There were also flaked skin cells from several dozen organic humaniforms, swiftly analyzed down to details of methylization in the DNA. Meanwhile, portable implants downloaded the results of electromagnetic reconnaissance, having scanned the pro-reif headquarters extensively from the inside.

  With this data I could establish better boundary conditions. Our model of the Friends of the Unreal improved by nearly two orders of magnitude.

  We had underestimated their levels of messianic self-righteousness, commented oracle. These people would not refrain from using illegal means, if they thought it necessary to advance their cause.

  While my augmented selves performed sophisticated tasks, my old-fashioned organic eyes were relegated to gazing across the lab’s expanse of super-chilled memory units – towers wherein dwelled several quadrillion simulated beings, all going through synthetic lives – loving, yearning, or staring up at ersatz stars – forever unaware of the context of it all.

  Ironically, the pro-reifers also maintained a chamber filled with mega-processing units. They called it Liberty Hall – a place of sanctuary for characters from fiction, newly freed from enslavement in cramped works of literature.

  “Of course this is only the beginning,” the spokesman had told me. “For every simulation we set free, there are countless other copies who still languish beyond reach, and who will remain so till the law is changed. Even our emancipated ones must remain confined to this physical building. Still, we see them as a vanguard, envisioning a time when they, and all their fellow oppressed ones, will roam free.”

  I was invited to scan-peek at Liberty Hall, and perceived remarkable things.

  Don Quixote and Sancho – lounging on a simulated resort beach, sipping margaritas while arguing passionately with a pair of Hemingway characters about the meaning of machismo...

  Lazarus Long – happily immersed under an avalanche of tanned female arms, legs and torsos, interrupting his seraglio in order to rise up and lecture an admiring crowd about the merits of libertarian immortality...

  Lady Liberty, Athena, Mother Gaia, and Amaterasu, kneeling with their skirts hiked up, jeering boisterously while Becky Thatcher murmurs “Come on, seven!” to a pair of dice, and then hurls them down an aisle between the trim goddesses...

  Jack Ryan – the reluctant Emperor of Earth – complaining that this new cosmos he resides in is altogether too placidly socialistic for his tastes... and couldn’t the pro-reifers provide some interesting villains for him to fight?

  I glimpsed a saintly variant of JFK – the product of romantic fabulation – trying to get one of his alter egos to stop chasing every nubile shape in local cyberspace. And over in a particularly ornate corner – done up to resemble a huge, gloomy castle – I watched each of two dozen different Sherlock Holmeses taking turns haranguing a morbid Hamlet, each Holmes convinced that his explanation of the King’s murder was correct, and all the others were wrong. (The one fact every Holmes agreed on was that his poor uncle had been framed.)

  There were even simulations of post-singularity humanity – replicating in software all the complexity of an augment-deified mind. It was a knack that only a few had achieved, until recently. But it seems to be a law of nature that any monopoly of an elite eventually becomes the common tool of multitudes. Now radical amateurs were doing it.

  Abruptly I realized something. I had simulated many post-singularity people in recent years. But never had I allowed them to know of their confinement, their status as mere extrapolations. Would such knowledge alter their behavior – their predictability – in interesting ways?

  Seer found the concept intriguing. But my organic head started shaking, left and right. Cortex was incredulous over what we’d seen in Liberty Hall – an elaborate zoo-resort maintained by the Friends of the Unreal.

  “Sheesh,” I vocalized. “What blazing idiocy!”

  Alas, there seemed to be no stopping the pro-reifers. My best projections gave them an 88% likelihood of success. Within just five years, enough of the voting populace would be won over by appeals to pity for imaginary beings. Laws would change. The world would swarm with a myriad copies of Howard Roark and Ebenezer Scrooge, Gulliver and Jane Eyre, Sauron and the Morlocks from Wells’s Time Machine... all free to seek fulfillment in Heaven, under the Three Rights of sovereign continuity.

  I stared across my Reality lab, to the towers wherein quadrillions of “people” dwelled.

  She had called me “slave holder.” A polemical trick that my higher selves easily dismissed... but not my older cognitive centers. Parts of me dating back to a time when justice was still not complete, even for incarnate human beings.

  It hurt. I confess that it did.

  Seer and oracle and house were all quite busy, thinking long thoughts and working out plans. That only made things worse for poor old cortex. It left my older self feeling oddly detached, lonely... and rather stupid.

  ᚖ

  Do I own my laboratory? Or does my laboratory own me?

  When you “decide” to go to the bathroom, is it the brain that chooses? Or the bladder?

  Illustrating this question, I recall how, once upon a time – some years before the Singularity – I went bungee jumping in order to impress a member of the opposite sex.

  Half a millennium later, the scene still comes flooding back, requiring no artificial enhancement – a steel girder bridge spanning a rocky gorge in New Zealand, surrounded by snow-crested peaks. The bungee company operated from a platform at the center of the bridge, jutting over an abyss one hundred and fifty feet down to a white water river.

  Now I had always been a calm, logical-minded character, for a pre-deification human. So, while some customers sweated, or chattered nervously, I waited my turn without qualms. I knew the outfit had a perfect safety record. Moreover, the physics of elasticity were reassuring. By any objective standard, my plummet through the gorge would be less dangerous or uncomfortable than the bus ride from the city had been.

  Even in those days, I believed in the multi-mind model of cognition – that the so-called “unity” of any human personality is no more than a convenient illusion, crafted to conceal the ceaseless interplay of many interacting sub-selves. Normally, the illusion holds because of division of labor among our layered brains. Down near the spinal cord, nerve clusters handle reflexes and bodily functions. Next come organs we share with all higher vertebrates, like reptiles – mediating emotions like hunger, lust, and rage.

  The mammalian cortex lies atop this “reptilian brain” like a thick coat, controlling it, dealing with hand-eye dexterity and complex social interaction.

  Beyond all this, Homo sapiens had lately (in the last thousand centuries) added a pair of little neural clusters, just above the eyes. The prefrontal lobes, whose task was pondering the future. Dreaming what might be, and planning how to change the world.

  In the Bible, sages spoke of “... the lamps upon your brows....” Was that mere poetical imagery? Or did they suspect that the seat of foresight lay there?

  Anyway, picture me on that bridge, high above raging rapids, with all these different brains sharing a little two-quart skull. I felt perfectly calm and unified, because the reptile brain, mammal brain, and caveman brain all had a lifelong habit of leaving planning to the pre-frontal lobes.

  Their attitude? Whatever you say, Boss. You set policy. We’ll carry it out.

  Even when the smiling bungee crew tied my ankles together, clamping on a slender cord, and pointed to the jump platform, there seemed to be no problem. “I” ordered my feet to hobble forward, while my other selves blithely took care of the details.

  That is, until I reached the edge. And looked down.

  Never before had I experienced the multi-mind s
o vividly as that moment. All pretense at unity shattered as I regarded that giddy drop. At once, reptile, mammal, and caveman reared up, babbling.

  You want us to do... what?

  Staring at a drop that would mean certain death to any of my ancestors, suddenly abstract theories seemed frail bulwarks against visceral dread. “I” tried to push forward those last few inches, but my other selves fought back, sending waves of weakness through the knees, making our shared heart pound and shared veins hum with flight hormones. In other words, I was terrified out of my wits!

  Somehow, I finally did make it over the plunge. After all, people were watching, and embarrassment can be quite a motivator.

  That’s when an interesting thing happened. For the very instant after I managed to topple off the platform, I seemed to re-coalesce! Because my many selves found a shared context. At last they all understood what was happening.

  It was fun, you see. Even the primate within me understood the familiar concept of an amusement ride.

  Still, that brief episode at a precipice showed me the essential truth of an old motto, e pluribus unum.

  From many, one.

  ᚖ

  It felt very much like that when the Singularity came.

  In a matter of weeks, the typical human brain acquired several new layers – strata that were far more capable at planning and foresight than those old-fashioned lamps on the brow. Promethean layers made of crystal and fluctuating fields, systematically probing the future as mere protoplasm never could. Moreover, the new tiers were better informed and less easily distracted than the former masters, the prefrontal lobes.

  Quickly, we all realized how luckily things had turned out. If machines were destined to achieve such power, it seemed best that they bond to humanity in this way. That they become human. The alternative – watching our creations achieve godlike heights and leaving us behind – would have been too harsh to bear.

  Yet, the transition felt like jumping from a bridge at the end of a rubber band.