Genetic Downfall: A Science Fiction Story

When Marilyn and Brad Sawyer decided to have a child in the year 2037, they decided to take advantage of the new advances in genetic engineering. They shopped around for different companies that could genetically enhance a newly conceived child by using gene splicing. After seeing on their 3D television many commercials for a firm called Gene Pros, Inc., Marilyn and Brad decided to visit their offices.

"You two nice young people wanted to have a regular child,” said salesman Peter Bell, “but we can give you something so much more. We can give you a superchild. How would you like to have the smartest kid in your town? How would you like to have a kid who could be an Olympic athlete, or maybe a major league baseball star? Or how would you like to have a daughter so beautiful she could easily become a movie star? We can do these types of things by tweaking your child's genes.”

Marilyn and Brad smiled at each other. They were enticed by the sales pitch. But they immediately began fighting with each other over whether their soon-to-be-conceived child should be the next baseball star or the next female movie star. After a heated argument, they finally agreed to leave the gender of the child to chance. They agreed that if their child were male, they would pay for the child to have genetic enhancements that would make the child stronger and faster. If the child was a female, she would be given genetic enhancements that would make the child more beautiful.

“But what about the intelligence gene tweak?” asked Peter. “Don't you want to buy that, too?”

Marilyn and Brad looked at the price tag for the genetic enhancements they had already decided on, and then looked at the price tag for the intelligence enhancement. They winced, because they couldn't afford the intelligence enhancement.

“Don't worry about a thing,” said Peter. “You can charge it.” Marilyn and Brad agreed, charging the expensive genetic treatment on their credit card.

As soon as Marilyn found herself pregnant, she went to the clinic run by Gene Pros, Inc. They made the enhancements by doing genetic microsurgery performed by a robot.

Nine months later a healthy son named George was born to the couple. The baby progressed at an amazing rate. He could speak when he was only 6 months old. He could read by the time he was two years old. When George was three years old, his parents put him in a special school for other geniuses who had been blessed by genetic enhancement.

By the time George was six, he was reading Shakespeare and Tolstoy. By the time he was seven he could write computer programs and compose musical comedies. George was also faster and stronger than almost all of the boys of his age.

Everything went very well in Brad and Marilyn's family until one day shortly after George's thirteenth birthday. Brad and Marilyn arranged for Marilyn's mother to look after George, and the couple then headed for a romantic weekend, by flying in their copter-plane. The self-flying copter-plane had software that flew it automatically to its destination.

While flying toward their destination, Brad and Marilyn received a video phone call from George.

“Mom, Dad, I'm afraid I have some really bad news,” said George.

“Oh don't tell me, you broke another neighbor's window playing baseball, right?” said Brad. Being unusually strong, George had already broken several neighbor's windows with his sizzling line drives.

“No, it's something much worse,” said George calmly. “It's this: you're not going to reach your destination.”

“What are you talking about?” asked Marilyn.

“It's simple,” said George. “I've decided you're worth more to me dead than alive. I found out about that million dollar life insurance policy you have, the one that names me as a beneficiary if you both die. So I hacked into the software on your copter-plane, adding some special instructions that I programmed myself. Soon your copter-plane will begin plunging to the ground. No one will figure out I was involved.”

“George, this is a rotten idea of a joke!” said Brad.

“No joke, Dad,” said George. “Tough luck, guys. It's game over. Sorry about the bad break, but I have a long list of things I want to buy with that million dollars I'll get from the insurance company.”

The copter-plane began plunging to the ground. Brad tried to override the computer software, but with the copter-plane spinning wildly, it was no use.

The copter-plane hit the ground and exploded in a giant fireball.

They eventually found out that George had committed the crime. George wasn't aware that the government was recording all video phone calls. A suspicious insurance investigator asked the government to show him George's video phone calls, and found the incriminating conversation.

When the story of the crime became public, a news commentator made a sad but important observation: it is wrong to merely enhance a child's intelligence, speed, and strength, unless you also do something to enhance the child's morality.

Why a Zombie Apocalypse is a Real Possibility

It may sound like something from a second rate horror movie, but a zombie apocalypse is all too possible. But the zombies would be made of metal and plastic.

Many horror movie fans (and many video game fan) are familiar with the zombies depicted in movies like Night of the Living Dead: soulless, silent beings of decaying flesh who stalk around, scaring the daylights out of people. But philosophers speak of another type of zombie: what they call a philosophical zombie. The term philosophical zombie is used to mean a being who resembles a human but who does not really experience pain or pleasure, and does not have any real consciousness or inner self or true emotions. A philosophical zombie may appear to feel pain or pleasure (but does not really do so), and may appear to feel joy or sadness, but really feels nothing. Philosophers use this concept in various thought experiments designed to throw light on metaphysical issues. 

As far as we know, there has never been a real philosophical zombie. But later in the century there may be many of them. The philosophical zombies that may come into existence are android robots. Within fifty years or so we will probably see robots that resemble human beings. Such robots may well seem to have some of the same emotions that we have, and some people will think that they will feel pleasure and pain as we do. But it would seem that such robots will not really have any real inner life or any real self. They will merely be simulations of beings who feel pleasure and pain, rather than beings that really do. An advanced android robot may say, “I feel happy when I see that,” but it won't really feel any happiness or pleasure at all, because it won't really have any inner self. In short, advanced android robots will be a technological implementation of the concept of a philosophical zombie. 

Robots are philosophical zombies

Given these philosophical zombies of metal and plastic, there is then a possibility of what we might call a zombie apocalypse. We can define a zombie apocalypse in this context as the replacement of all human life (beings who actually have an inner self, and who really feel pleasure and pain) with soulless, insentient beings (robots) who don't actually feel any pleasure and pain. This would be a type of apocalypse because it would wipe out the main thing of value on the planet – the existence of beings with an inner self who are enjoying themselves and feeling real emotions such as love and joy.

To help clarify why such an event might be a kind of apocalypse, let us imagine an alien planet that undergoes a strange evolution. It starts out with a protoplasmic race of intelligent, sentient, feeling beings who live lives filled with real pleasure. But then for some reason these intelligent beings become obsessed with building model train sets everywhere around the planet. They finally fill the whole planet with an insanely intricate system of billions of model trains that can run independently (using solar power) on a vast system of little train tracks arranged all over the planet. The entire race of protoplasmic beings then kills itself for some reason. What is left is the system of model trains, which keeps running on and on for many centuries.

Clearly if this happened on such a planet it would be a kind of apocalypse. There would still be endless amounts of purposeful activity on the planet, as the model trains continued to run on their little tracks, going along their little routes. But such activity would not have any real value. The main thing of value on the planet (the pleasure in the lives of the protoplasmic beings, and the consciousness and feelings of such beings) would have been lost, and replaced by a mere mechanical, insentient swarm of activity. It would make relatively little difference if such a planet were to be wiped out by an asteroid collision, because nothing like a human life would be lost. 

Having imagined this strange planet, let us compare it to a planet on which humans have entirely been replaced by robots (something that could happen not too many centuries after the first really impressive model of android robot was introduced). It would seem that such a planet is really not much different from the “toy train” planet just imagined. If all humans had been replaced by robots, the robots might scurry around the planet doing all kinds of elaborate things. But it would seem that they would not have any real inner selves, that they would not really feel any pleasure or pain, and would not have any real emotions. Consequently, such a horde of robots existing without humans would apparently not have any more real value than the horde of toy trains whizzing around on the previously imagined planet filled with toy trains. So if humans were to be entirely replaced by robotic beings who were philosophical zombies (incapable of any real pleasure, feelings, or inner self), then it would seem to be an apocalypse essentially as bad as the apocalypse previously imagined on the toy train planet.

This, then, is the “zombie apocalypse” that might really happen one day. As the metal and plastic “philosophical zombies” took over, Planet Earth might change from a planet with billions of man-years of pleasure experienced every year to an all-robot planet with zero man-years of pleasure experienced every year. From the philosophical standpoint of hedonism (which regards human pleasure as the main value), such a result would be something apocalyptic, a disaster about the same as if an asteroid were to hit and kill all human beings.

A person might argue that one day we will be able to prove that there could never be such a “zombie apocalypse,” by one day proving that advanced robots really are sentient and really can feel pleasure and have inner selves. But it would seem that such a thing can never be proven. Consider the question: how is it that you really know that the people you see around you are beings with real pleasures and real inner thoughts and real inner selves, rather than just images in your mind? You basically reason that such people look like you, and apparently originated in the same way you did; and since you know that you have inner thoughts and feelings, and that you really experience pleasure, you infer that the people you perceive also have inner thoughts and feelings and experience real pleasures and pains (even though you cannot directly experience such things by “living in their shoes” and being them). Such reasoning is respectable when applied to humans, but it would be wrong to apply any such reasoning to robots. We are not anything like robots, did not originate in the same way, are not made of the same materials, and we can never live “in the shoes” of a robot, experiencing things as they do. So we will never have any adequate warrant for concluding that a robot really feels pleasure or feels emotion in the same way we do.

We can avoid this type of “zombie apocalypse” by remembering that robots are just tools to help humans, rather than things to be valued like a human life. Even though robots might think faster, process facts faster, run faster, and work more efficiently at many tasks than human beings, from a value standpoint they must be considered mere philosophical zombies. Better to lose an entire alien planet consisting of nothing but robots that have no pleasures, emotions, or inner selves, than to lose a single bus load of humans that have pleasures, emotions, and inner selves.

We'll Need Virtual Reality for Robots

Within several decades we presumably will have robots capable of walking around among us, acting as helpers. One important issue is how the robots will be trained. Let us consider the case of a robotic policeman, rather like the hero of the movie Robocop, but entirely electronic (rather than the man/machine blending depicted in that movie). How could such a robotic policeman be trained?

One approach would simply be: introduce the robot into a working situation, note any shortcomings, and correct as necessary. But this would be extremely dangerous. Let's imagine an example of how things could go very wrong. A robot policeman encounters a group of young boys playfully punching at each other, without actually trying to hurt each other. This is something that young boys often do. But the robot policeman interprets the arm-swinging activity as one person assaulting another. The robot policeman then tells the boys to freeze. One boy takes out a black colored cell-phone, but the robot misidentifies the object as a gun. Thinking it is in danger, the robot then pulls his gun and shoots the young boy.

Or let's imagine a family that buys a household helper robot. The father arrives at home in his car with a big heavy box containing a new television. He summons the robot, and asks him to carry the big heavy box from the car, and put it in the living room. The robot picks up the box, and takes it into the living room, depositing it on the living room floor. Unfortunately, just before he places it down on the floor, a two-year old toddler crawls below the spot the robot selected to place the big heavy box. The young child is tragically crushed by the huge heavy box.

Clearly it won't be good to allow these types of tragic incidents to occur. What will we need is some kind of way to train android robots before they are let loose in the real world. How could such training occur?

One possibility is to create a huge “sandbox” training center that would mimic conditions in the real world. The training center would be populated by two types of android robots: the robots that were meant to be introduced into the human community, and other robots intended only for the training center, robots designed to simulate human beings. Software engineers use the term “sandbox” to mean an environment in which a software application can be tested, without causing harm in the real world. A training center designed to simulate a real-world environment would be kind of a giant “sandbox” for robots to be tested in. If a robot made a mistake, he might damage or destroy one of the training robots designed to simulate humans. But no real human would be hurt.

Such a sandbox training center would probably be a good idea, but it would be very expensive to create such centers. It would be particularly expensive to create training robots designed to simulate human beings.

Is there some less expensive way that robots could be trained? There is: virtual reality. It seems that virtual reality training might be a vital component of the training of advanced robots.

 A robot using virtual reality for training

Here is how it might work. A virtual environment could be created to train robots, an environment similar to the virtual worlds created for video games. A robot could then be allowed to train in such an environment. Instead of interpreting visual data from the real world, the robot would interpret visual data supplied by the virtual reality system. If the robot made a mistake, it would never cause real-world death or destruction, but merely death or destruction in the virtual world.

We can imagine, therefore, a sequence that could be used to train new android robots:

1. First, a new model of android robot would spend extensive time training in a computer generated virtual reality environment. As it was training, any problems in the robot's responses would be noted, and corresponding corrections would be made in the robot's software.
2. If it passed these tests, the new model of android robot would spend time in a physical “sandbox” environment consisting only of itself and other robots designed to simulate humans. As it was training, any problems in the robot's responses would be noted, and corresponding corrections would be made in the robot's software.
3. Finally, if it succeeded well enough in the physical “sandbox” environment, the new model of robot would be sent out into the real world to interact with actual humans.

The same approach may become an option in the future for training human beings for certain types of jobs that must be performed properly, or else people will die. For example, imagine someone training to be a doctor.

1. First, the student could spend extensive time using virtual reality training programs, interacting with computer-generated patients with computer-generated symptoms.
2. Then, the student could spend time in a physical “sandbox” environment containing only robots who simulated sick human beings. We can imagine robots deliberately manufactured with fake cancers and fake bone fractures, which would make great tools for training surgeons.
3. Finally the student could be let loose to begin treating actual human beings.

The Planet Thieves: A Science Fiction Story

It all started on November 7, 2013, when scientists announced the discovery of a very strange asteroid that was spouting six tails of gas and dust. Scientists had never seen anything like it before, and they thought it was just some weird freak of the solar system. The object was found in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

But in the weeks and months ahead, more and more asteroids in the asteroid belt started to show the same strange tails of gas. Scientists detected that the asteroids were moving towards Mars. The asteroids all crashed into Mars with tremendous force. The combined force of this onslaught was so great that the orbit of Mars was changed. Mars began to move closer to the sun.

The President of the United States met with his advisers at the White House to discuss the situation.

“Who caused all these asteroids to hit Mars?” asked the President. 

“We're not 100% sure,” said Ken Hamilton, the White House chief science adviser. “It is just barely possible that it was due to chance, although that would require a one in a billion coincidence for so many asteroids to have hit in such a small time.”

“But what about the jets of gas detected from the asteroids?” asked General Todd Brin. “Those kinds of jets are what we would expect if someone had attached rockets to the asteroids, to deliberately change their path. I think extraterrestrials must have caused these asteroid collisions.”

“But if it is aliens who moved Mars, why would they have done it?” asked the President. “Could it be that they are trying to attack us, by causing Mars to crash into our planet?”

“No, that wouldn't make sense,” said Hamilton. “If they knew how to move around asteroids, they could just cause one or two big asteroids to hit our planet. That would be a much easier way to wipe us out.”

The world watched with fascination as Mars started to move closer to the sun. Then another astonishing thing happened. Many new comets started to appear in the inner part of the solar system. Then the comets crashed into Mars. The icy bodies of the comets brought lots of additional water to the surface of Mars.

The President met again with his advisers at the White House.

“First a whole bunch of asteroids hitting Mars, then a whole bunch of comets,” said the President. “Does anyone now doubt that this is being deliberately caused by someone?” No one answered yes.

“As they say in the movies, it looks like we have company,” said Ken Hamilton. “It must be extraterrestrials lurking somewhere around the solar system. They probably have some spacecraft in both the asteroid belt, and also the Oort Cloud, the huge comet cloud that surrounds the solar system.”

“What are they trying to do with Mars?” asked the President.

“The fact that they're causing lots of comets to hit Mars may suggest that they are trying to make the planet habitable,” said Hamilton. “If you take a planet like Mars, move it closer to the sun, and give it a lot more water, as the comet collisions are doing, then before long long you may have something where people can live.”

“Perhaps this is being done for our benefit,” suggested the President optimistically. “They may be creating a kind of second home for mankind, which we can go to in case we mess things up too badly on our planet.”

After being hit by all the asteroids and comets, Mars moved closer and closer toward the sun. Mars came closer toward Earth, and many were terrified that it might collide with Earth. But then Mars finally entered a stable orbit only a million miles from Earth. Mars could now be seen very clearly in the sky. It now became very complicated to compute the tides at beaches, because there were now lunar tides and also tides caused by Mars. 

The President of the United States met again with his advisers at the White House.

“They've parked Mars very close to us,” said the President happily. “It's like a gift from the gods. Let's begin a colonization program. It will be a breeze now that Mars is so much closer.”

Many space enthusiasts signed up to be the part of the first wave of Mars colonizers. But then the world got a sudden shock.

Unidentified spaceships appeared in the skies of Earth, above the world's major capitals. The spaceships wrote a huge message in the sky, in giant glowing red letters. The message said:

SEND NO SPACESHIPS TO MARS. IT BELONGS TO US NOW.

The disappointed faces at the White House were glum.

“So I guess they moved Mars closer to Earth, and hit it with all those water-bearing comets, so that they could have a nice warm, wet planet to colonize all by themselves,” said Ken Hamilton.

“We wanted Mars, but they've taken it,” said the President. “Lousy damn planet thieves!”

This story is fiction, but the event described at the story's beginning is a real event that happened a few days ago. Is the strange new asteroid a sign of alien visitors?