The Search for Truth

Confusion arises from the internal conflict between what you perceive the world to present itself as and what you intuitively understand it to be. Initially the gap between what man understood the world to be and what it actually was was quite large, superstition reigned and people were largely confused as to the inner goings on of the entire process. Over time the process complexified, building upon previously attained knowledge as best as they collectively could and assembling it into a more complex structure which would provide greater benefit to larger numbers of people.

Yet the fundamental scism remains, and the more we know, the more we know we don’t know. Will we ever reach a break-even point in our knowledge, where we understand so much that we see an ultimate end to what we all unconsciousnessly and collectively been trying to attain, with only a dim or sometimes absent understanding of some overlying, ultimate goal?

As I stated in my previous post on what I would consider to be intuitive smooth exponential growth of progress as an epiphenomenon of the smoothly accelerating rate of change, reality has shown progress to follow a sawtooth pattern of periodic setbacks where despite accelerating change, overlying progress is disrupted by outside factors. Richard Dawkins described the “sawtooth” pattern of biological evolution in his book The Ancestor’s Tale, as evidence that the epiphenomenon of progress does not exhibit a smoothly exponential effect at all, but only emergent exponential pattern disrupted periodically by temporary setbacks. But over time more and more progressive enhancements are preserved, the result of which, in biological evolution, is mammals, who usurped the earth after the fall of the dinosaurs. Brains had inadvertently triumphed over brawn, as the maximize-energy-towards-growth pattern of the simply conceived, tiny baby dinosaur who would continue to grow for the rest of his life was replaced by the complexly conceived placental mammal, which fed off its mother like a paracite in order to develop progressively larger brains. Or at least, progressively larger brains were one branch of the evolutionary tree of placental mammals, and one which coincidentally lead to a solution of a much bigger problem biological evolution by natural selection had been coping with throughout its entirety, namely that it was a blind process with very primitive mechanisms for conveying and utilizing past discoveries. It inadvertently came up with a past discovery conveying and comprehending mechanism, human consciousness, which soon took over the duty that only genes and behavioral mimicry had held alone for billions of years, and directed it in a manner which put the previous process to shame.

I reject the conventional linear and teleological view of historical progress and instead advocate exponential and epiphenomnological view. I belive that one cannot consider the development of any particular piece of the modern world in isolation, but rather that the entire gestalt of the modern world is the result of a web of interconnected events, each one consisting of a person or group acting in rational self-interest with no concept of what the final, modern result would be or what their contemporaries’ actions lead to.

However, I believe the sawtooth pattern is converging. The haphazard zigzagging has been following a trend. Lots of blind stumbling in the dark, emerging from random walks across patterns of matter and energy have ultimately resulted in the society we know, love, and cherish today. The pattern continues to converge as the mechanisms of change lock themselves into an exponential upward ramping, and has started changing society in such a way that it is scarcely able to comprehend.

Slowly human knowledge, which was initially so far from the truth, in the 20/20 hindsight of modern, scientific understanding of the universe, is converging upon the truth. Ontology, the study of reality itself, and epistemology, the study of knowledge, have converged into a new type of ontology, the graph structure of information relationships which defines the Semantic Web. With the advent of Semantic MediaWiki, the semantic relationships which define the web of human knowledge will be continually revised by forces dedicated to the construction and preservation of a complete web of human knowledge. The amount of data mining that can be performed on this web, particularly by extremely intelligent data mining experts such as the ones who work at Google, is a virtually limitless resource which has only begun to be tapped.  The natural limit of the kinds of associations that can be made, based on the structure of the universe, is the truth.

Kurzweil is wrong

Kurzweil’s Law of Accelerating returns does not mean what Kurzweil argues it does. He demonstrates an exponential increase over time in the rate of telecommunication, which governs the rate of change, and a similar increase in computational power for a given unit of value, both of which to a certain extent govern the rate of human innovation, because computers can solve through stocastic or brute-force methods problems which are virtually random in terms of the time it takes for spontaneous human innovation, and communication helps the assemblage of disparate ideas into a singular whole.

However, spontaneous human innovation presents a completely unpredictable factor in futurism, and progress, as an epiphenomenon of change, is inherently unpredictable. Kurzweil’s Law does not represent an absolute metric of progress, only an absolute metric of the rate of change which only assists in the eventual convergence of progressive systems, but one which outside forces can throw askew at any time. Futurist predictions rely almost completely on predictions that after a certain amount of time innovation will inevitably emerge, but such an approach is a mistake, a logical fallacy which results from the static analysis of a highly dynamic system. There are so many random, unpredictable components to the system that it simply becomes impossible to give anything a specific deadline. The abstractions that humans build upon are going to become increasingly complex, and the ability to predict the timescales of completion of such tasks, particularly the abstraction of the entire system of the universe into a human-created universal-universe abstractor system, something known as Artifical General Intelligence (AGI), become that much more unpredictable.

Tinges of Revelation begin to peak their head out. Much like the rapture, no one will know the hour of AGI’s birth. The rate of change, accelerated by the increasing speed of the telecommunications network which drives the motivating factors for change at an ever-increasing pace, means that as time goes by the rate at which the invention of AGI could transform society only quickens. Its creation represents a trigger for sweeping change whose potential grows more profound with each passing day. The cause of this trigger remains spontaneous human innovation, but there are certain precursors we can look for which give definite assurances that AGI is near.

The first would be a revolution in neurophysiology, specifically the creation of a comprehensive and falsifiable model of the operation of the human brain. To my knowledge there is but one individual working towards this goal, Jeff Hawkins, creator of the Palm Pilot, who has since founded the Redwood Neuroscience Institute with the goal of developing a comprehensive theory of the operating of the brain, and the company Numenta who seeks to implement in software his memory-prediction framework, a conceptual model of what many see as the three most important centers of the brain surrounding consciousness: the neocortex which represents the perceiver process, the thalamus which represents conscious state perceived by the neocortex, continuously altered by feedback loops between the two of them, and the hippocampus, the brain’s archivist which saves the state of these feedback loops to permanent memory. Hawkins hypothesizes that these three parts of the brain comprise the fundamental structures which represent consciousness in his book On Intelligence, which lays out the memory-prediction framework his company is attempting to develop. This potential path is also governed by the results of the Blue Brain Project, presently using the world’s most powerful supercomputer architecture to simulate the behavior of the fundamental unity of the rodent neocortex. The results of that study will give dramatic insights to those working on a comprehensive, scientific theory of the brain’s operation, including Jeff Hawkins. It’s potential that with enough empirical scientific research into and modeling of the functional operation of the human brain, the closer we will come to having the knowledge to implement artificial general intelligence.

The second path involves increasing our intelligence of cellular and molecular biology to the point that we are able to create a computer simulation of the human developmental process from fertilized egg to human baby. In such a simulation the only limitations on the types of data we can collect are the error from imprecision of the model, the timesteps that the simulation is run over, and the storage limitations for the types of data that can be collected. The first point will likely not matter for any virtual baby which we can carry to term through a cellular model: due to the complex intracacies of the human developmental process, any simulation error apt to have an effect after the end of the virtual gestation period will likely have a negligable effect on the subsequent baby, otherwise the developmental process will fail and a human baby will never be constructed in simulation. Given the massive amounts of data that would be available from such a simulation, it’s likely the precise structure of human consciousness could be derived from the data using only analysis of the resulting simulation data. Thus the other harbinger of AGI you need to be on the look out for are computer models of multicellular organisms, which will eventually give way to full scale simulations of human beings. This potential path is governed by the results of the Blue Gene Project, presently using the world’s most powerful supercomputer to simulate the inner workings of the most complex and confounding aspect of intracellular behavior: protein folding. We are coming to understand it only through an atom-by-atom simulation of forces, particularly Gibbs Free Energy, which beomes one of the dominating factors in the folding pathways and kinetics of proteins.

While I said before that human innovation is completely unpredictable, I believe all other paths to AGI will ultimately lead to failure. While I admit that there is the potential that someone taking an unscientific, completely conceptual approach to understanding the mind may leap frog everyone else by spontaneously coming up with the “right answer”, I believe the two horsemen of the technological infocalypse to bet on are a comprehensive theory of the brain and biomodeling. I also believe these two fields represent the two most beneficial scientific studies mankind can undertake, because I believe the fruits of their labor will eventually lead to AGI more than any other type of research.

I’m sad to say that I do not believe that the MIT AI lab, the Singularity Institute, or any other group advocating direct research into AGI at the present time, or even advocating a non-biological approach towards successive steps towards AGI, will accomplish anything before the biological movement does, because while the former movement relies on the completely sporadic and unpredictable process of human innovation, the latter makes continous progress through scientific research into the problem. While the former will eventually usurp the results of the latter to create AGI, until that time comes we are floundering. There is much more we need to understand about nature before AGI becomes a possibility, and when the prerequisite natural knowlege is in place, we will make the leap to a post-AGI, post-Singularity society where were are no longer, in any way, bound by the limitations of nature, but are free to puruse our own ends in an environment free from natural consequences, a heavenly world solely of mind. However, unlike the pictured posthumous utopia of the dominant religions, this utopia would go to the survivors: those who could preserve their patterns long enough that they could forever save them from the continous onslaught of natural forces which tended towards entropy and thus the destruction of highly complex patterns, preferring diffuse apatternistic formations which tend toward equilibrium.

Exact progress towards comprehensive models of either the human brain or low-level human biology is difficult to determine. Save for Jeff Hawkins, there are no notable people working toward the former goal, and none that I have ever heard of working toward the latter. Until humanity gets its priorities straight, realizes that AGI, or rather, “Friendly AI” is a moral imperative, and chooses the best route for pursuing this goal, it will remain elusive. The more humanity becomes focused towards achieving AGI as a goal, and focuses on realistic prerequisites, the sooner AGI will happen.

I very much wish that humanity would focus its efforts on the creation of either a comprehensive theory of the human brain, or perfecting cellular biomodeling to the point that complex multicellular entites could be simulated. These two pursuits will, more than any other, bring us closer to Singularity. As to which one will win out in the end I am uncertain. At this time BlueGene is beating BlueBrain in terms of total computational power, and that is all I can say. The exact prerequisite structure for either task to fall into place as AGI is unknown and immense, so at this point, I think it’s really either discipline’s game.

May the best discipline win. I just hope the public will eventually realize the need to support you both.

The Singularity could occur within 5 years. It could occur within 50 years. Who’s to say? The sheer number of assumptions which are required to predict a timeframe are incomprehensibly immense, at least for any human. My ultimate point is that the Singularity isn’t anything to plan your life around: it will happen when it happens, and no sooner, or not at all, and we will all die. Enjoy yourselves for now, and know that the status quo, or thereabouts, is going to stick around, getting a little better all the time, until the final trigger is pulled and AGI is created. And while I may see that event happen with a head full of wetware, smirking at these remarks, until the prerequisite triggers are in place, to the general public all of you Singularitarians and transhumanists all sound like jackasses for talking about the transhuman age where we will live on as immortal transhuman entities. You can’t predict the trigger, I can’t predict the trigger, and until that happens your fantasies are merely science fiction. The birth of Friendly AGI will truly represent a day when the universe changes.

Progress as a universal epiphenomenon – Part 3: The Universe Itself

Okay, so, I know what you’re wondering: sure, progress in evolution and human society is great, but how the hell does that make progress a universal epiphenomenon.

Well, sadly, I don’t have a good answer for you. It’s just a conjecture. And about all I can respond with is highly theoretical stuff which will likely be proven wrong in the future. Or maybe it’s right, who knows? But to me: it fits the pattern, and that’s what I consider important.

Okay, so, let me introduce you to Dr. Lee Smolin:

Yes, there he is, chilling in his chair at Harvard.

Okay, so who the hell is he?

Well, you may or may not have heard of string theory. Lee Smolin has been working on a different theory called Loop Quantum Gravity. He just put out a book called “The Trouble With Physics” where he argues that physics has entered something of a post-modern age where the limits of experimental verifiability have been exceeded. Initially Smolin worked under the assumption that string theory and loop quantum gravity were both approximations of some underlying theory, but lately he has changed his mind and this book is the result.

For those of you who aren’t aware, scientists still don’t know how gravity works, at least in the world of the very small where the rules of quantum mechanics apply, the realm of the Planck scale. Einstein came up with a description of how it works on large systems, which says that gravity is essentially a warping of spacetime itself. But for now, scientists have been unable to find a way to work Einstein’s theory of relativity into the small scales where the laws of quantum mechanics operate. So while Einstein’s theory explains how gravity works, it doesn’t come close to explaining what gravity actually is. Only a theory of quantum gravitation can do that, and for now, we don’t have one. String theory is one explanation. Loop Quantum Gravity is another.

What does Loop Quantum Gravity say about gravity? (Certainly something, it’s in the title after all!) Well, one important aspect leads to one of Smolin’s hypotheses. At a certain critical density, say, that achieved at the center of a black hole, gravity becomes repulsive. When this happens, what you get is a new universe… spacetime crunches down to an infinitessimally small point, then the repulsive force of gravity causes this infinitesimally small super-dense bit of spacetime to explode, the result of which is a new universe with a slightly altered set of physics from the original. It’s a big bang, but one powered by the repulsive power of gravity, a “quantum bounce.”

This leads to an idea Smolin calls fecund universes. Rather than the universe being a once off sort of thing, universes themselves have been evolving over time. A black hole forms in a parent universe, and a fecund universe with slightly different physics is the result, and in turn, black holes form in this fecund universe, leading to another generation of fecund universes. What naturally follows is that the universes with the most descendants are the ones who have rules that are most conducive to forming black holes. Does this sound kind of like what happens in biology with natural selection: a naturally-originating consequence of a set of events results in progressive evolution, in this case, towards better black hole formation?

If this sort of cosmological evolution really exists, are we just the lucky by-products of it, or do we have some larger role to fulfill in the universe? Even if they were to accept Smolin’s hypothesis, existentialists and post-modernists will certainly say the former: we have no purpose, there is no universal progress metric, and we’re just the accidental offspring of a set of universes which has become progressively more adept at the art of making black holes.

I believe we’re something more, and I believe the two progress metrics I previously defined are resultant from the emergent process of the progressive evolution of physical law itself. This evokes what’s known as the weak anthropic principle, namely that the reason our universe and the physical law by which it operates seems so conducive to life is that there have been countless universes in the past that weren’t. We happened to luck out, and had our universe not been conducive to life, we wouldn’t have been here to care.

If a progressive pattern exists, just where is it taking us? Well, right now futurists forsee an event which they have labeled The Singularity occuring sometime in the next few decades. After The Singularity, humans will have produced technologies that outperform humans themselves in all aspects. After this happens, humans will be obsolete and the human age will have ended.

“The progressive development of man is vitally dependent on invention. It is the most important product of his creative brain. Its ultimate purpose is the complete mastery of mind over the material world, the harnessing of the forces of nature to human needs.”

– Nikola Tesla

Progress as a universal epiphenomenon – Part 1: Human Society

Wow, what a lofty title, eh? Well, that’s where it stands in my mind: progress naturally emerges from all sorts of systems in the universe.

But first, here’s a question that needs to be answered: What is progress? Well, that’s easy: progress indicates any kind of change which isn’t aimless fluxuation but instead directed in some manner.

That’s quite the all-encompassing definition. For example, our universe’s entropy is progressively increasing. While that fits the above definition, it’s not the sort of progress I’m interested in.

In this and the next few posts I’ll expore the systems I consider to be progressive by my own personal standards: human society, evolutionary biology, and physical law itself.

Progress in Human Society

We are naturally goal-oriented, however we also formulate our own goals. Humanity only becomes progressive when we agree on goals and combine our collective effort towards accomplishing them. For most of human history, those goals primarily concerned keeping established society running and improving it whenever possible. Following the advent of word we became archivists of past knowledge, the scope of which began progressing dramatically. Societies rose and fell, the Roman Empire collapsed and Europe was plunged into the Dark Ages, but it bounced back after an infusion of Greek and Roman knowledge kicked off the Renaissance.

The major turning point occured following the development of science, at which point humans became remarkably adept at describing reality in a way which is demonstratably true. At this point humans began progressing immensely: science was an incredible benefit to societies who understood it, and knowledge of physical law let us build technology to harness its power. Science and technology have been ramping up at an accelerating pace. We live in a time where computers are designed and constructed with the aid of computers. Consumerism fuels the push to produce better and better technology in all forms.

The rate of change in human society has been increasing with time. This is because one of the many factors that the rate of change depends on is the rate of communication. Initially communication between groups of geographically disparate people was nonexistent or slow. Many times the communications channels have almost completely collapsed, such as in the afforementioned example of the Dark Ages. However, the last century has seen massive progression in the rate of communication, first with the telegraph, then the telephone, then radio. Now communication is increasingly digitized, and thus the overwhelmingly dominant factor in the rate of change becomes the speed of the underlying communications infrastructure. Like all other aspects of computing, communications speeds have been increasing exponentially. Broadband proliferation in first world countries has been staggering, and broadband providers continue to ramp up the speed as they improve their own infrastructures. Backbone links between the various systems which comprise the Internet grow increasingly vast, and more and more electronic communications systems are moving to the standardized Internet Protocol architecture.

It’s been a little more than a decade since the Internet exploded into mainstream popularity, and in that short time it’s managed to tentacle its way into all aspects of our life. The rate of change in society is increasing exponentially just as the speed of the Internet increases exponentially. Computer power is increasing exponentially as the cost of computing power decreases exponentially. The result is a more-power-for-less-money explosion which we’re in the beginnings of. Computers are also increasing the rate of change as they take on a more and more prominent role in society. They organize us, make decisions for us, and manage the explosion of available information they are helping to generate.

Human societies are unquestionably the most progressive system presently known. While nuclear weapons brought on the post-modern era and made us painfully aware of our progressively increasing destructive power, and instilled the fear that we may unleash such power on ourselves, the traditional intuitive concept of progress was questioned. The modernistic view was essentially quashed by the post-modernist movements, and technology became a Faustian bargain. Would we pay for the luxury of a technologically-enhanced life with our own lives? Nevertheless, this perpetually dangling Sword of Damocles and the post-modernist attitude it brings have not detered progress. We’ve remained modernists, even if many of us no longer feel that way.