The
universe is billions of years old, and there has been at least a
billion years for intelligent life to arise on other planets. But if
there are extraterrestrials vastly more advanced than us, what form
would they take? Some scientists say they probably look like some
protoplasmic life form totally different from ours. But other scientists think
that advanced extraterrestrial civilizations have probably advanced
“beyond the flesh.” The idea is that the extraterrestrials have
evolved into robots. Some scientists have said that if an
extraterrestrial spaceship lands on our planet, we should not expect
some weird biological form to emerge from the spaceship. We should
instead expect to meet nothing but robots coming out to greet us.
Such
an idea is advanced in a recent essay by Susan Schneider, who
says this:
The
transition from biological to synthetic intelligence may be a general
pattern, instantiated over and over, throughout the cosmos. The
universe’s greatest intelligences may be postbiological, having
grown out of civilizations that were once biological. (This is a view
I share with Paul Davies, Steven Dick, Martin Rees, and Seth Shostak,
among others.)
But
while it may seem like a reasonable extrapolation of Darwinian ideas,
the idea of a biological race of beings evolving into robots has
great difficulties. The main difficulty is that we have no evidence
that any type of robot or computer can actually possess the slightest
bit of consciousness, understanding, insight or comprehension.
Computers are good at information processing, but that's not the same
as real understanding. A computer may be able to instantly answer the
question,”On what day was the fattest American president born?”
But the computer has no actual understanding of what it is to be fat,
what it is to be born, what it is to be an American, or what it is to be
an American president.
And
contrary to those who say, “Computers will start understanding
once they get better or faster,” there is every reason to doubt
that this will happen. Consider a large modern computer consisting of
many chips and many bits of software called subroutines. It is hard
to imagine any type of situation like this happening: the machine
will have no understanding of anything while it has less than a million
chips and a billion subroutines, but once you get to a million and
one chips or a billion and one subroutines, then suddenly it will be
able to understand for the first time.
Contrary
to what you may have heard, we have no understanding of how the
comprehension of a mind could arise from nerve cells. Some people
reason that even though we don't understand this, we can assume that
consciousness and understanding will occur in computer units that
might be made so that they are rather similar to nerve cells. This
assumption seems no more valid than this reasoning: “Since we know
that cracks will occur in a block of ice when we strike it with a
hammer, we can assume that cracks will occur in a pond of water when
we strike it with a hammer.”
Part
of the problem is that we are not actually sure that consciousness
does arise purely from the brain itself. It is all too possible that
our consciousness involves something much more than the brain –
perhaps something like a soul, or some mysterious cosmic
infrastructure that enables consciousness. As discussed here, there are reasons for thinking that our
bodies or brains are more of a receptacle or a receiver for
consciousness rather than the sole generator of it. Considering that
we cannot account for how our brains could possibly be storing and
retrieving so quickly memories that are decades old (as discussed
here and here), it seems all too reasonable to doubt that the
brain is the sole generator of our consciousness.
Given
all these factors, there seems to be little plausibility in the idea
of an extraterrestrial civilization making a transition from a
biological state to a robotic state. Biological organisms with
consciousness would never want to transition into a robotic state
that did not have consciousness (that would be like suicide for
them). And if computers and robots never gained consciousness, we
would never see the “robots wipe out their creators and take over
the planet” type of scenario. A set of robots would never be
programmed to wipe out their creators. If they lacked the
consciousness necessary for independent initiative and independent
ideas, they would not independently come up with the idea of doing
such a thing.
In
Schneider's essay advancing the “super-advanced extraterrestrials
will be robots” idea, she seems to get all mixed up about
consciousness, intelligence, and understanding, advancing the very
wrong idea that you can have superintelligence without consciousness.
She states the following:
Further,
it may be more efficient for a self-improving superintelligence to
eliminate consciousness. ... A superintelligence would possess
expert-level knowledge in every domain, with rapid-fire computations
ranging over vast databases that could include the entire Internet
and ultimately encompass an entire galaxy. What would be novel to it?
What would require slow, deliberative focus? Wouldn’t it have
mastered everything already? Like an experienced driver on a familiar
road, it could rely on nonconscious processing. The simple
consideration of efficiency suggests, depressingly, that the most
intelligent systems will not be conscious. On cosmological scales,
consciousness may be a blip, a momentary flowering of experience
before the universe reverts to mindlessness.
This
thinking involves a great confusion. While people sometimes use the
word “intelligent” to describe a computer that performs well,
such a use is rather metaphorical. A computer has no real
intelligence in the sense of understanding or comprehension. When we
talk about intelligence, comprehension, consciousness, and
understanding, we are largely talking about the same things. So the
unconscious “superintelligence” imagined by Schneider would not
actually be an intelligence at all. It would be a lot of information
processing incapable of actually understanding anything. Actual
understanding is something that can only occur in a conscious entity.
If Schneider is advancing the idea that you don't need consciousness
to be superintelligent, I think that's all wrong, and does nothing to
substantiate the idea that an extraterrestrial civilization might
evolve to become robotic.
But
if we are thinking about far-out ideas about how extraterrestrials
might evolve, there's another idea that might be worth considering:
the idea that extraterrestrials might have evolved to be beings of
pure energy or pure spirit. This would be the ultimate way of
achieving immortality. If you are an extraterrestrial with a robot
body, you will still have to worry about your electronic or metal
parts wearing out one day. But if you are an extraterrestrial that is
pure energy or pure spirit, you will have no such worries.
In
his novel 2001: A Space Odyssey, Arthur C. Clarke imagined a
race of extraterrestrials that first were biological, and then
evolved to become robots. But then this race of extraterrestrials
eventually evolved into pure energy beings that were “beyond the
reaches of time.”
We
actually have some evidence from psychic phenomena (such as
near-death experiences) suggesting that consciousness can exist
outside of the brain. As is very well-documented in the recent book The Self Does Not Die, quite a few people undergoing near-death
experiences report floating above their bodies, and observing their
bodies, often while medical personnel were attempting cardiac
resuscitation. Such evidence may suggest that the idea of a pure
energy consciousness or pure spirit consciousness may be quite
viable.
When
people think about consciousness separating from the body, they
typically imagine progression to some afterlife realm. But what if
some race of super-advanced extraterrestrials was able to achieve
such separations through some technological means? They might stay
around their planet, and live as a race of pure energy beings or pure spirit
beings.
We see no sign of any physical tinkering by extraterrestrials in the galaxy. The most promising possible case was the case of Tabby's Star, but a recent analysis suggests that strange star has a natural explanation. Perhaps this lack of galactic reorganization is a sign that super-advanced extraterrestrials are beings of pure energy or pure spirit. Such entities might have little need to create structures for themselves.
We see no sign of any physical tinkering by extraterrestrials in the galaxy. The most promising possible case was the case of Tabby's Star, but a recent analysis suggests that strange star has a natural explanation. Perhaps this lack of galactic reorganization is a sign that super-advanced extraterrestrials are beings of pure energy or pure spirit. Such entities might have little need to create structures for themselves.
Extraterrestrials
of pure energy or pure spirit might be able to temporarily inhabit
different biological bodies or robotic bodies, in a kind of
“possession.” Think of the advantages of that. On any day you
could try being a male, a female, a flying animal, an underwater
creature, a flying car, or a speeding spaceship. When you were bored
with that, you could just go back to being an unattached pure energy
being.
I
may note that the idea that super-advanced extraterrestrials will be
robots would seem to imply that there would be extraterrestrial
robots all over the galaxy. But we see no signs of such robots in our
galaxy. When UFO “close encounters of the third kinds” occur,
witnesses virtually never report seeing robots. We do, however, see
mysterious energies in our skies, and mysterious orbs that show up in
photos. Could such things be signs of pure-energy extraterrestrials
touring around our planet?
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