Natural History: Some Even More Random Rambling

Sometimes you have a new thought, an idea, or eureka moment, but it’s not gutsy enough to expand into a reasonable length article or essay. So, here’s a potpourri of thoughts too good not to record, but with not enough meat available to flesh out. 

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* We’ve all read and heard about how we consume way more salt than is necessary and that too much salt can cause high blood pressure and heart attacks and associated nasty conditions. What is never mentioned in all these health warnings about salt is the feedback mechanism that restores the proper balance. It’s akin to how many bars will put out free salted peanuts or salted chips for the customers. It’s not out of the pure kindness of the bartender. If you take in a lot of salt you get, surprise, thirsty. And so the bar makes up for the ‘free’ peanuts and chips by selling more drinks to quench the thirst you build up by eating all that ‘free’ salty stuff. In other words, if you over indulge in the salt, you’ll drink more fluids because you get extra thirsty, and the additional liquids will, when filtered through the kidneys, take the unnecessary salt with it (salty urine) and the proper balance is restored. So, if we consume way more salt than is necessary, we probably drink way more fluids as well. 

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* I think most of us would agree that a reasonable definition of free will is the ability to voluntarily and consciously choose between two (or more) courses of action. You make a decision by your own free will that’s generated by your internal conscious self with no external influences, like someone, even Mother Nature, holding a gun to your head! However…

What if you view an optical illusion, an apparent reality of which there are numerous classic examples available? Initially you have two choices. You can convince yourself that what you are seeing is indeed reality (wrong choice) or you can convince yourself that what you’re seeing is not reality (right choice). But that’s mission impossible.

You know – you are consciously aware – that what you are looking at is an illusion and not reality. Can you now, of your own free will, take that course of action that will actually convince yourself that what you are looking at is an illusion and not reality? You know it’s an illusion, but can you convince yourself of that fact? Try as you might, no matter what, you will still see that apparent reality – the illusion – even though you know it’s just an illusion. Your brain is fooled and your mind can’t do a damn thing about it. Your free will cannot free yourself from seeing the illusion. You cannot negate that illusionary effect of your own free will even though you know it is not reality.

Now some optical illusions give you the apparent free will to view the illusion as this thing or that thing (like the classic two faces or one vase), but you can’t sustain that. You will shift perspective between the two illusionary options quite against what your own free will dictates. Further, you don’t have the free will third option of seeing neither of the two illusionary options.  

In a somewhat similar vein, watching one of the season three episodes of “Through the Wormhole”, part of that episode, exploring the subconscious, showed the experiment of a test subject who was fitted with a pair of camera-glasses that showed him an image of a test dummy dressed the same as the test subject. The test subject was fully aware of this. The test subject was then conditioned by being stroked with a rod while at the same time viewing the test dummy being stroked. Then, the test dummy was suddenly violently assaulted, and of course the test subject reacted as if he were being assaulted and not the dummy. Even when the test subject was told that the dummy was going to be assaulted, he was aware of this in his conscious mind, he still couldn’t help himself via his subconscious reacting as if he were being assaulted instead of the dummy. 

In short, your conscious mind cannot override or overturn your subconscious, free will be damned.

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* Despite the very popular but self-promotional conception, human beings are the least rational species on this planet. Any other animal that acts irrationally, say via a genetic defect or disease or the equivalent of dementia, is a dead animal. I have yet to witness any animal acting in any way, shape, manner or form that wasn’t rational for either its own survival or the survival of its genes, its community or its kind. I most certainly cannot say the same about the human species.

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* Here’s a wicked thought experiment. Create two clones of yourself. Raise them to maturity. Then, remove their brains and toss them away (this is just a thought experiment and so morals and ethics can be bypassed). Now have your brain removed (and toss your body away). Have one hemisphere transplanted into one clone; the other hemisphere transplanted into the second clone. While the two hemispheres of your brain have slightly different emphasis in terms of functionality, you can function as a reasonable whole with just one hemisphere. Now the question arises, will you be self-aware in two bodies at the exact same time? You could accomplish twice as much and be totally aware of the totality!

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* Humans and cycles go hand in glove. Though most are artificial constructions and therefore rather phoney, cycles are important to humans and human society. The Day-Night cycle is of the most prime importance, and it is a natural cycle. Humans put a lot of stock in the seven day week cycle, which is an artificial construct, and to a lesser extent the month (also a phoney cycle even if ever so loosely based on the lunar cycle). The year is a natural cycle (in terms of the seasons) and probably of greatest significance next to the day and week cycles. Decades and centuries rank fairly low in importance and are artificial constructs in any event. The millennia are only important when the calendar changes over from say 1999 to 2000 (though the new millennia actually began in 2001) and 1000 year cycles lie outside of the human lifespan in any event. And that should be pretty much it – except for some ancient societies who had cycles of apparent importance so long that predated the very existence of those societies (and concluded well after those societies went extinct), like the Mayan long count (recall that famous doomsday date of 21 December 2012). Other societies measure ongoing cycles of creation-destruction in such lengthy periods that they really have no imminent impact on the societies propagating them. When societies have cycles of significance that are of no immediate significance, then you have an anomaly and you have got to wonder where hence gave that particular cyclic concept.

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* Try as I might, I could never teach my cats the barest and most basic rudiments of algebra or even those boneheaded elementary mathematics of arithmetic that elementary schoolkids master. I could never get my cats to understand and appreciate the ancient Egyptian cat cults and goddesses. Even the concept of biological evolution – the how and why cats evolved into cats and the ancestry of my cats would be so much triple-Dutch to them. Their wetware, neurochemistry, etc. just isn’t up to this. Sunshine gives them warmth – that they understand but not how the sun shines.

Now, the upshot of that is, despite the human arrogance that our minds can comprehend everything part and parcel of life, the Universe and everything, perhaps we just can’t through absolutely no fault of our own. Maybe human brains, in the here and now, are not capable of figuring all things out, like the meaning of quantum physics, and the theory of everything (TOE) which is basically a theory of quantum gravity and coming to terms with what exactly is dark matter and dark energy and answering all those other questions that have gone without resolution for thousands of years.  

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* You probably think of yourself as one singular organism. The expression “me, myself and I” are all singular. Yet, you know perfectly well that you are really a colony of billions of organisms (cells) working in more often as not the case in total harmony. Yet, as things turn out, you play host to billions and billions more microbes. Nine out of ten of the microbes that make you up aren’t really a part of you at all, like say those bacteria that survive and thrive in your mouth. So, are you an organism, a colony of organisms or an environment for organisms? I’m quite astounded to learn that 90% of me isn’t me! So perhaps our real purpose in life is to serve as hosts for the greater multitudes. The needs of the many [microbes] outweigh the needs of the one [Human].

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* In the simulated universe scenario I (and many others) have suggested we exist inside a computer as a software program or subroutine within a larger software program. The un-stated assumption is that the Supreme Programmer was of flesh-and-blood (terrestrial or extraterrestrial). But why make that assumption? Why not suggest that the Supreme Programmer was/is an Artificial Intelligence in its own right just being creative. Silicon –and-steel (artificial) intelligence is a logical evolutionary successor to flesh-and-blood (natural) intelligence and is likely to not only evolve far more rapidly (Moore’s Law) than human evolution ever did but have an overall longevity vastly in extent of ours.



Human Reality Revisited: Part Two

In these life and times of your day-to-day activities, going about your business in this four dimensional space-time you find yourself stuck in, I doubt whether you question that what you experience is anything but the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. What you see is what you get, and what you get is really real reality, absolute nuts-and-bolts no question about it reality. If that’s what you think, think again.

Continued from yesterday’s blog…

REALITY OUTSIDE OF THE STRIKE ZONE: THE NEBULOUS OTHER

What if someone or something else is pulling your chain? So far I’ve gone on the scenario that there’s a really real reality out there for you to experience and absorb. You are pulling your own chain; dancing to your own tune. Now what if some significant other is calling the shots?

You are a natural entity with wetware rooted in carbon chemistry

- A bit outside the scope of normality or what passes for normality, there are whole textbooks full of case studies of brains that haven’t been hardwired up quite correctly and so you’ve cases of people hearing colors or mistaking their wife for a hat or who have multiple personalities or seriously believe they are Alexander the Great, Jesus, or say President Kennedy.

- Although it doesn’t necessarily follow, there are those who believe that those who see ghosts or aliens or angels or the Loch Ness Monster are fantasy prone; just internally generated visions that’s all in the mind. Can shamans, mystics, gurus, and related really visit an otherworld of alternate realities, or are they too just fantasy prone, with perhaps some help from smoking the good stuff. Of course if they are experiencing such things, well that in turn might be evidence for alternative realities.

- And don’t we as adults construct an entire fantasy world for children – Santa Claus, the Tooth Fairy, the Easter Bunny, even the Bogyman who’ll, we say, do nasty things to naughty kids. Don’t children on their own construct fantasy worlds they live in along with invisible playmates? I wonder if there’s anything really different in principle between children believing in their invisible friends and adults putting their faith in invisible deities.  

- Adults too immerse themselves in fantasy worlds from putting on virtual reality helmets to boldly go (the 20^th Century version of the Star Trek holodeck), to actually dressing up in Star Trek or Star Wars outfits as various characters from those (and other) fictional worlds, to participating in all sorts of role-playing scenarios. Though one would hope that when doing dress-up for masquerade balls and attending fantasy conventions, the adults would be aware that they are doing make-believe. You’d hope that though some fans (fanatics?) can get really carried away to extremes, like naming their kids after their favorite fantasy character, collecting thousands of items of memorabilia, even say modeling and outfitting their home to resemble the interior sets of say the Starship Enterprise. It’s been done! Though I suspect this must be a modern phenomenon. I don’t recall ever hearing about people in the 17^th, 18^th or 19^th Centuries playing at King Arthur, holding mock battles and jousting contests, though maybe I’m wrong on that. It’s certainly common today for hundreds to play dress-up and reenact Civil War engagements, and there’s many a wannabe cowboy out there in suburbia. 

- Your natural brain-in-a-vat scenario might be where some ‘mad’ scientist has cultured some brain cells in a petri dish and eventually grown a full-sized brain-in-a-vat which is kept stimulated 24/7 with electrical impulses – your reality. Or, perhaps your body has aged and kicked-the-bucket but your brain – still alive and ‘kicking’ – has been removed and kept alive but in ‘storage’, but still requiring stimulation, pending a suitable transplant into another body whose brain has died.

- Your natural brain is being manipulated scenario. Say you’re a patient in a hospital in a coma, or undergoing a neurosurgical operation and your brain is being stimulated in an effort to determine what’s what. Perhaps that stimulation is what you take, while in your coma, or under-the-knife, to be your reality – but all you sense and remember is really being induced. There might even be a time dilation effect. Presumably you could electrically stimulate the brain such that the brain would experience or remember years worth of experiences but the applied stimulus is just taking a few minutes. 

- You’re dreaming. You are really a bug-eyed-monster from the planet Zork; or a pussy cat; or even a human; but you’re asleep and dreaming this alternative lifestyle which in this dream state you are interpreting as your actual reality. Until you wake up, your dream IS your reality.

- One or many? You could philosophically argue that the sum total of life, the universe and everything is illusionary and just the product of Your Mind. Life, the universe and everything (all else but your mind) is just Your Mind playing games, a created illusion or construction to keep Your Mind from being bored. Or, you see someone in the shops and you conclude that as you see them, they see you, and both of you have a perception that there’s a really real reality and both of you are a part of that. That’s the common sense worldview, but the universe doesn’t always play by common sense principles. Of course it’s possible that the both of you are all part of a larger mass hallucination; that you aren’t The Mind, but rather one of the creations of The Mind of someone else. 

There is no way you could distinguish any of the above realities from your perception of what’s really real.

WILD PITCH, ERROR ON THE THROW

You are an artificial entity

Needless to relate, there has been a massive amount of theoretical and practical research dedicated towards the goal of creating an artificial mind, a silicon chip mind or a mind made out of silicon chips, machine intelligence, otherwise more commonly known as artificial intelligence. The reasons are manifold, from just the academic pursuit of seeing if it can be done for the sake of seeing if it can be done, to practical applications like designing robots that can assist in making the lives of the handicapped or elderly or the lonely more bearable or beating the pants off of some egomaniac chess champion, to putting artificial intelligence to the same sorts of creative use that wetware intelligence is put to. Perhaps an artificial intelligence can put two and two together and come up with a Theory of Everything, the Holy Grail of physics. Artificial intelligence can also boldly go where wetware intelligence cannot since silicon chips are a bit more durable under extreme environmental conditions than flesh-and-blood.

Put another way, if Mother Nature can evolve flesh-and-blood intelligence, then that flesh-and-blood intelligence can create and evolve machine intelligence (and ultimately that machine intelligence can further evolve and advance the capabilities of machine intelligence). The basic reason is that there is no difference in principle between a squishy neural network, and a silicon chip network. It all operates on electrical connections, complex connects it is true, but just wiring. Now, the question arises, is your mind a squishy neural network or a silicon chip network? There’s also a third possibility. Your mind isn’t physical at all – squishy or silicon – but mathematical. Your mind is just computer code. 

- Your artificial ‘brain’-in-a-vat scenario might revolve around the idea that you, or rather your mind, is just a processing machine sitting on a bench top or on a shelf, maybe as a prototype, being fed data (that’s your reality) to see if your silicon chips are able to ‘think’ outside the box relative to your mind just being a sophisticated adding machine.

- Your artificial ‘brain’ is manipulated (programmed) scenario might be akin to you being a fully functional robotic android though programmed not to know in order to better integrate into the society that created you. If you cut yourself and bleed and feel pain, that’s just a programmed illusion. When you ‘die’ (your programmed use-by date) you’re recycled/reassembled – a form of reincarnation. Most of your memories are false ones programmed into you, so you believe you had a childhood for example.

- Finally, you are neither flesh-and-blood nor silicon chips. You’re just bits and bytes inside a computer. You’re a piece of software. You’re a simulated being just existing in virtual reality, created by others; manipulated by others without any awareness of this on your part.

Literally Love Your Mobile Phone?

Humans are a social animal, but the bond isn’t always human-human. Sometimes it is human-animal, sometimes it is quasi human-machine (a man and his car; a captain and their ship). Increasingly it is now a human-artificial intelligence (AI) or virtual reality (VR) bond. What do you love? Your mobile phone!

There is a hidden revolution going on within the more obvious revolution of the explosion of wireless technology. Once upon a time if you saw a person on the telephone you knew they were interacting with another person. The mobile cell-phone is nothing different in principal than the landline phone. Texting and email is just a modern fancier version of the telegraph system, which in turn was a more modern fancier version of smoke signals or flag semaphores. Today, it’s not unusual to see, in fact it’s probably now the norm, to see people everywhere holding a piece of wireless technology, usually a smart-phone. But when you observe the person interacting with that wireless device, can you still assume that they are interacting with another human being? You can’t anymore and that’s the hidden revolution. There’s so much virtual reality and artificial intelligence software out there in the ether that when you see someone on their mobile cell-phone, it is very possible the interaction is not with a human but a two-way interaction with computer software, software that mimics a human. Just like it is possible to become emotionally involved with another human, ditto one can become unnaturally attached and dependent on the human mimic. Perhaps even to the extent of wishing to marry that human mimic. We all love it when someone does something for us – well that someone could now just as easily be a something.

We already know people, especially young people, who are obsessed with social contacts (at a distance) via email and Twitter and Facebook and who desire lots of ‘likes’ – what better way to avoid any sort of rejection and ‘dislikes’ than to embrace a virtual (software) friend and companion who’s programmed not to ever reject you.

Marriage or a relationship is traditionally between a man and a woman (or many women and one man, sometimes many men and one woman).

There are other sorts of relationships. The life-size inflatable ‘sex’ dolls for one, which is only a slightly more advanced version from that proposed in the very popular song sung by the Mills Brothers in 1943 titled “Paper Doll” (written by Johnny S. Black in 1915).

Then of course there are those same-sex relationships, the one drawback being problems in biological reproduction, but if you don’t want children, or are happy to adopt, that’s no big deal.

Many people already prefer relationships with pets (companion animals) over people*. Some people have literally ‘married’ their pets.

Some people advertise for a human-human relationship, but if you’re happy with a close encounter of the non-sexual artificial or virtual kind, instead of putting out a classified ad for a perfect human mate, select an off-the-shelf virtual reality (VR) or artificial intelligence (AI) program, or program your own VR or AI to meet your specific or exacting intellectual and emotional needs. Apparently the era of the computer mouse is doomed to extinction and sooner rather than later. Instead of letting your fingers do the walking (or clicking), it’s your mouth that will do the talking. That Star Trek scenario of talking to your computer is nearly to hand. Further, based on past behaviour, your computer software will start to tell you what you want to know before you ask – that’s actually very human like behaviour. To repeat what I said above, we all love it when someone does something for us – well that someone could now just as easily be a something.

Relations between humans and VR or AI have been a sci-fi staple for decades, often akin to human-robotic/android relationships which could do things for you (or to you) that today’s cell-phone VR or AI can’t (yet) do. But the cell-phone of today ultimately will morph into the robot/android of tomorrow. Human-robotic relationships can mirror all the forms of a human-human relationship, except ultimately a robot/android can’t get pregnant or get you pregnant. So you’re still going to need human-human sex. Thus, there will always be a need for a human-human relationship, even if it ends up being sperm meets egg in a test-tube.

What of the far future? Might it ever come to pass that human-VR or AI might pass for the standard scenario or normal undertaking in relationships? Wouldn’t it be great not having dealings with an unpredictable human mood-swinging great unwashed partner, just a ‘someone’ who is 100% respectful and helpful and kind and considerate 100% of the time, and if you really need it, has an off-switch!

If the religious right are frothing at the mouth over intimate same-sex human-human relationships and same-sex marriages, they will probably have a total seizure over a love affair between a human and VR, AI and associated robotic/android pairings.

*We all know the old well known joke – wife to husband (or vice versa), “Either the dog goes or I go” – reply: “So long, it’s been good to know you, but the dog stays”. Then there is that step to a happy marriage: divorce the husband and marry the cat!

Our Post Biological Evolution

A well worn staple of science fiction is travel to the stars – ‘boldly going’ to borrow the tag phrase from one well known science fiction staple, “Star Trek”. Unfortunately, what’s easy to do in the pages of sci-fi literature, or show on the small or big screen isn’t anywhere as simple in reality. But, just because something isn’t simple doesn’t mean it isn’t possible. Most solutions focus on new cheaper, better, faster rocket propulsion technology. I got a better idea!

A well known SETI (Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence) scientist recently made the following statement.

“The real question to me isn’t why ET isn’t everywhere, but why ET’s machines aren’t everywhere.”*

The standard thinking, that basic point being made is that it’s dangerous and costly to boldly go anywhere out there in person relative to staying at home. But sending out unmanned probes instead, probes which might be sophisticated enough to not only explore but reproduce themselves using resources discovered while exploring would like a cancer spread out more and more until they have covered every cubic mile of space. Maybe there’s just one ET; zillions of ET’s machines.

Perhaps ET and ET’s machines are one and the same. Even if there is but one ET race or civilization, there could be an abundance of ET’s machines (that’s standard thinking noted above), but all containing not just ET but lots of ET (that’s not standard thinking). Translated, if you want to ‘boldly go’ (i.e. interstellar travel), it may make more sense to be an actual part of the spaceship instead of just being a passenger. Better rocket propulsion might prove to be fairly irrelevant.

Premise: Exploring is in our very makeup. Humans do not want surrogates to do their exploring for them. It may be necessary, but it’s never enough. A photograph of Paris isn’t good enough – I want to see the Eiffel Tower for myself.

While a robotic probe discovered the location and wreck of the RMS Titanic, humans had to go to the time and trouble and cost to see and explore the shipwreck in person.

We don’t send an unmanned robotic rover to climb Mount Everest; we do it ourselves, even though it’s a very dangerous activity to life and limb.

I’m sure the scientists who guide the unmanned rovers on Mars are happy little campers; they would be even happier if they were on Mars in person.

Sending Pioneer 10 & 11; Voyager 1 & 2 out into interstellar space is all fine, well and good but wouldn’t you want to travel to, say the star Tau Ceti, in person? An unmanned probe (a descendent of Pioneer or Voyager) exploring Tau Ceti and sending you back data doesn’t generate quite the same thrill as being there up close and personal.

However, it’s difficult to get you to Tau Ceti. Your life span isn’t long enough to last the trip at projected interstellar velocities achievable in the foreseeable future, and in any event, you’d need massive life support infrastructure which adds lots of additional mass requiring lots of extra energy and thus cost to your journey. All up, too much mass, too much energy, and too much cost.

But, what part of you really needs to get to Tau Ceti? Does your big toe need to go? Does your liver need to get up close and personal with Tau Ceti? No. The only part of you that really needs to encounter Tau Ceti is your ‘inner you’, your mind, not the physical body part of you apart from that which houses the mind – your brain thingy. Alas, even your mind, your wetware, is part of your physical body (your brain) and it won’t last the distance from Earth to Tau Ceti.

Now let’s pause to consider the following interlude. Somewhere around the time of humanity’s transition from a hunter-gather lifestyle to a life of domestic settlement and leisure, even if not always domestic bliss, there was a remarkable but hardly remarked upon revolution. There was a slow but sure transition from Darwinian natural selection and evolution to artificial selection and evolution.

So how does artificial selection come into play? What useful role is it? Well, we now augment enough of our natural abilities with some sort of non-biological technology to allow us ultimately to produce offspring that otherwise would not have been produced. Reproduction is ultimately the name of the game; no reproduction, no selection, no evolution, natural or otherwise.

That transition to a post biological humanity probably all started when the first human used a long stick as a prop; as a cane to help him support himself and walk easier, instead of lying helplessly on the ground as prey for a saber-tooth cat! That stick could further serve as a prosthetic and be used to fend off the cat or hit it and drive it away. We are now in control, or at least better control over our fate. Clearly, like the stick-cane, we’ll continue to use artificial means – technology – to better our existence and defy the odds Mother Nature throws our way.  That path has already been well and truly started down. Since the stick-cane we’ve added eyeglasses and hearing aids and dentures and artificial joints and drugs** to help us with our sex lives and to breed and we’re talking about using nanotechnology nanobots to circulate through our blood stream seeking out nasty cancer cells from the inside and destroy them while unclogging our arteries, plus various prosthetics that increase our strength, etc.

There are in addition to non-biological technology those other sorts of means to achieve artificial selection, as in genetic engineering techniques for improving the human lot, like DNA splicing and manipulating the structure of our genes, etc., but I want to stick with biological plus non-biological integrations (bioengineering), like human-computer interfaces often used to immerse yourself in virtual reality simulations or games. 

We’ve come a long way in applying artificial selection technologies since those hunter-gather days. Now where does it all end? And how might artificial (as in technology) selection help us, and by analogy ET, boldly go?

Fast forward say 500 years. Might it not be possible to transfer the ‘inner you’ contained in your wetware, the brain thingy of yours, and transfer it into software and hardware made of more durable non-organic stuff like silicon and steel? If so, you’re now onboard, but as part of the electronics, the computer, that’s onboard. You and the ship have merged.

Of course your wetware, once downloaded or transferred into a software package, could be transferred again and again into many different computers, sort of like an endless  ‘copy and paste’ operation, each copy of you on a ship headed to some other interstellar destinations. In fact, everyone could explore anywhere and everywhere they wanted. If a lot of ‘people’ (could we still call ourselves ‘people’?) wanted to go to Tau Ceti, that’s as easy as if just one wanted to go since presumably there’s room on the ship for many ‘brains in the electronic vat’. Maybe everyone is headed everywhere. Eventually everyone experiences everything, but not quite at the same time of course.

I mean You #1 goes to Tau Ceti, while You #2 heads off to say the star Sirius. However, You #1 and You #2 don’t share your separate experiences even if you both communicate them to each other. Each is a surrogate to the other. But of course You #1 could go to Tau Ceti and then go on to Sirius; You #2 goes to Sirius and then on to Tau Ceti. Both ‘copy and paste clones’ get both experiences.

Regardless of those variations on the theme, your lifespan has increased by orders of magnitude. There’s little if any real ‘life’ support needed. There might even be a ‘sleep’ switch to turn you off while the light years slowly tick by. [That alone, by the way, takes care of the ‘they (aliens) can’t get to here from there’ argument, often used as a debating point against the UFO extraterrestrial hypothesis.] And, when you reach Tau Ceti, there will be mechanical devices, rovers or robots on board you can download into and thus explore the Tau Ceti environment – in person!

Post-biological development or bioengineering is our ticket to the stars, even if the big toe has to stay at home! So, I wouldn’t be surprised if each and every one of ET’s machines didn’t actually contain ET or ET’s entire population for that matter!

Of course some real extraterrestrials might not have to resort to the ‘brain in the electronic vat’ to get from there to here, but it’s one way of doing it.

And as to why we don’t see ET or at least ET’s machines, since they (the machines) are supposed to be everywhere, well perhaps our scientist hasn’t heard of UFOs, or perhaps taken the time to study the subject. If s/he did, well perhaps s/he wouldn’t have raised the issue in the first place since ‘everywhere’ obviously includes here.

There is some interest in the morals or ethics of wetware to software transfer and cloning of that resultant software. From an ethical or moral point of view, the ‘inner you’ transfer from wetware to software would probably happen just prior to your natural death. The body would be buried or cremated in the normal way. Or, you might sign a consent form authorizing the transfer at any time after you reach the legal age. The body would still be treated as if it had died since it obviously must do so if there’s no longer any wetware running it. Oh, since this is a copy-and-paste arrangement, there could be one copy of the ‘inner you’ as software; two copies of you; 20 copies of you; 200 copies, etc. Think of a video game with a character in the game. Now recall that there are thousands of copies of the game in existence, therefore thousands of copies or clones of the character - Same distinction.

Each version of the ‘inner you’ would probably regard itself as the real ‘me’ but it makes no sense to distinguish between them as an outsider. Each version wouldn’t really care about the other versions. Even though you no longer have a flesh-and-blood body, your consciousness will be where it always has been – part and parcel of your wetware. Only now it’s cloned and exists as software not wetware – one copy per how many copies of the software you now are part and parcel of. But from the point of cloning onwards, those clones of your consciousness diverge depending on the various career paths taken by the various software versions of you.

*Impey, Chris (Editor); Talking About Life: Conversations on Astrobiology; Cambridge University Press, Cambridge; 2010; page 325.

**In fact all your pharmaceutical drugs and over-the-counter medicines are technological fixes designed to help you beat the odds.