Issue link: https://cp.revolio.com/i/393
30 #1 Fall 2008 and 19th centuries, and it didn't work very well. In the case of the AI-rapture folks, I suspect there's a big dose of Christian mil- lennialism (of the sort that struck around 990–1010 A.D., and again in the past de- cade) that, because they're predisposed to a less superstitious, more technophillic world-view, they displace onto a quasisci- entific rationale. Mind uploading would be a fine thing, but I'm not convinced what you'd get at the end of it would be even remotely human. (Me, I'd rather deal with the defects of the meat machine by fixing them -- I'd be very happy with cures for senescence, cardiovas- cular disease, cancer, and the other nasty failure modes to which we are prone, with limb regeneration and tissue engineering and unlimited life prolongation.) But then, I'm growing old and cynical. Back in the eighties I wanted to be the first guy on my block to get a direct-interface jack in his skull. ese days, I'd rather have a firewall. H+: You said "I'd be very happy with cures for senescence, cardiovascular dis- ease, cancer, and the other nasty failure modes to which we are prone, with limb regeneration, and tissue engineering and unlimited life prolongation." It seems to me that this still puts you in the Trans- humanist camp. Would you agree? CS: To the extent that I don't believe the human condition is immutable and constant then yes, I'm a Transhumanist. If the human condition was immutable, we'd still be living in caves. (And I have a very dim view of those ideologies and religions that insist that we shouldn't seek to im- prove our lot.) H+: Earlier on, you referred to the Matrioshka brain. Can you say a bit more about that and why you find it an appeal- ing or, perhaps, realistic concept? CS: As I said, the credit for the concept belongs to Robert Bradbury, who refined it further from discussions by Eliezer Yud- kowsky and others in the mid-nineties, in turn based on speculation by Freeman Dy- son going back as far as the 1960s. Dyson first opened the can of worms by suggesting that we could make better use of the matter of the solar system by structuring it as free-flying solar collec- tors and habitats in variously inclined but non-intersecting orbits, which would trap the entire solar radiation output and give us access to mind-numbingly vast amounts of energy and inhabitable space. e extropians took the idea one step further, with the idea of computronium — the densest conceivable form of mat- ter structured to maximize computation. What amount of thinking can you get done by building a Dyson sphere, optimized to support computation rather than biological life? Bradbury suggested building multiple concentric spheres of free-flying compute nodes, each shell feeding off the waste heat of the next layer in. Some estimates of the computing power of such a Matrioshka Brain (named after the nested Russian dolls) suggest that it would be roughly as far beyond us -- the entire human species -- as we are beyond a single nematode worm. If the idea of procedural artificial in- telligence holds water, it's possible that a Matrioshka Brain (or something like it) is going to turn out to be the end state of any tool-using civilization: after all, the bulk of the mass of which our planet is composed is of no use to us whatsoever (other than insofar as it makes a dent in spacetime for us to stick to), never mind the rest of the solar system... H+: Moving on, your latest novel, Halting State is all about different levels of reality. LARPs and Second Life, of- fice politics, the "mammalian overlay" of sexual seduction, financial instruments: they're all artificial realities, one layer on top of each other, and all interacting. It's sort of like what we used to think of as a spiritual realm, but it's right here run- ning on TCP/IP. It used to be only sha- mans and schizophrenics who had these sorts of visions, but now, if you're wearing the special specs, we all get to share this world that's haunted by imaginary beings. I think of Arthur C. Clarke's notion that a sufficiently advanced technology is in- distinguishable from magic. Do you think the areas and powers that we're opening up will change us? CS: What makes you think it's about us? We're human 1.0. We're not going there. Or we may go down that road, but the things that arrive at the other end won't be us. (ey might remember having start- ed out as us, but I'm not betting on it.) H+: ere's a nasty little idea bur- ied in Halting State, I think. Like: if you think things are bad when people get their ideas about reality from TV, wait until our imaginations are completely colonized, surveilled and programmed. Our hero bleakly opines, that this is the reason for the Fermi Paradox. ere are no signs of alien life because you get so far and then vanish up your own artificial reality. Have I got that right? And is that a prediction? CS: I try not to make predictions -- but I see that one as a distinct possibility (and indeed, as yet another solution to the Fermi Paradox). Back in the eighties I wanted to be the first guy on my block to get a direct-interface jack in his skull. These days, I'd rather have a firewall. " G r e a t b o o k ! " - D C