Brand's Blog

Sue's Brain

Sue walked into the kitchen, looking for something. She turned, looked at me, smiled, then walked out, still looking.

I love Sue. What does that mean?  What does it mean to love someone?  This is not exactly an original question. It is a question that countless people have asked, over countless eons.

But when I ask the question, I am asking the question as a more fundamental level. At a level not of personalities and emotion, but at the level of biochemistry, physics, fields.

So what does it mean to say I love Sue?

If she looked different, would I still love her?  Certainly.

If she moved differently, would I still love her? Of course.

If she spoke differently, would I still love her?  Definitely.

So what is it about her that I love?  Well, her personality. What most people say is the core of who we are.

So I love Sue's personality.  What is that personality?  That personality is defined by how her brain works. It is defined by the configuration of the neurons in her brain. In particular, its is defined by the action potentials in the synapses between those neurons.

If we could reproduce those action potentials in an electronic device, would that be Sue?  Would I love the machine? Would the machine think it was Sue?  Would it be conscious, self aware?

The only reasonable answers to those questions is yes. Of course, we are hundreds if not thousands of years away from actually doing something like that. But it is possible, in principle.

Now that brain configuration can be represented by numbers. Alot of numbers, but still, just numbers. Numbers that define the connections between neurons and synapses in Sue's brain, numbers that define the action potentials, numbers that define how those items interact and evolve over time, based on internal and external stimuli.

So Sue is nothing but numbers. Numbers that define the configuration of Sue's brain. Numbers that define her personality. Numbers that ARE Sue.

So I don't love 'Sue', I love the numbers that represent Sue's personality.

But clearly, when Sue walked into the kitchen, she wasn't using her full brain, she wasn't using ALL of those numbers. Would say only a subset of her brain, of her numbers, be enough to illicit that feeling of love? How sophisticated would a simulation of Sue need to be to be lovable?  Could someone create a Sue simulation in a mechanical Sue that was not self-aware, that was designed solely to illicit love?  Probably.

And her numbers, if I changed those numbers, would she still be Sue?  We all agree that someone who has plastic surgery done on their body is still the same person. But what happens when we can make changes to the personality?  At what point does Sue stop being Sue, and start being a different person? Would I love a 95% Sue? How about a 65% Sue?  Or is there a core of Sue that every Sue-copy would need to have to be considered 'Sue-like'?  Would these Sue-like copies think that they were Sue?

There is so much that is a mystery. I know intellectually that Sue is nothing but numbers, nothing but information. But emotionally, spiritually, I think of Sue as more than just a computer program. I think of her as a soul, with self awareness, with internal thoughts that I cannot access, but that exist for her and her soul. I think that if I modified her brain, her computer program if you will, She would still be Sue. She may behave differently, but she would still be Sue.

But thats not logical. I love a collection of numbers. Her 'thought', her self awareness, is nothing but those numbers changing. Thats all, no more, no less. Not only that, but if those numbers were very different, the personality they represent would no longer be Sue. They would be someone, something else.  I wouldnt love them.

Sue walked back into the kitchen. She, stopped, looked at me quizzically.

"You have a weird expression on your face. What on earth are you thinking?"

Mary's Theology

Mary’s daughter Janice walked in the door. Strutted.

“Mom, I don’t see that I have time to pick up carrots and bread for you, you know how stressed I am, I have to finish that essay, and study for that test tomorrow, and, well, work on that project, sorry.”

She was gone.  Mary looked at the space that her daughter used to be. It was just air. Was it a vacuum? Perhaps the air had a memory of her daughter being there? Could she construct the shape of her daughter from the memory of the air in the room?  Was she ever in the room, or was she a figment of Mary’s mind?

Mary’s other daughter, Amy, was in the next room, just visible, looking at a picture book, making interested and interesting noises, outlining the images of the book with a crayon.  What did Amy think about Amy?  Did Amy think how unfair life was, that her sister had it all, and Amy struggled? Or was Amy happy to be Amy?

Amy and Janice. Janice and Amy. Only two years apart, but separated by so much more than years. How could a mother not compare and contrast?  Janice, so smart, everything was so easy for her, school, soccer, friends, theatre, and now boyfriends. Well boyfriend.  What does her future hold? What will Janice contribute?  How does one measure human worth? By what they contribute, by what they do, by what they think, by who they help? Or by how they live?

And then Amy. Amy had downs syndrome. Everything was hard for Amy. Would Amy ever have a boyfriend? What would Amy contribute?  How would one measure Amy’s worth?

Mary thought a lot about this. How does one judge a life?  Mary had her children very late in life, and she was very, very conscious that there were fewer years ahead than there were behind.  She wanted to know how her life would be judged.  Since she had fallen away from heer church years ago, this was not an easy question.

Mary thought that perhaps lives would be, should be judged by how much they contributed to humanity, by how much of a difference to the human struggle they made. So the person that invented the transistor, he would be judged very highly, in Mary’s theology. How about the Pope?  Hard to say. How about Mother Theresa?  She thought that Mother Theresa improved the human condition, so she would be judged highly.

How about the person, like Mary, who lived a normal life, raised children, and then died?How would she be judged? What did she contribute?  Mary thought that perhaps she raised children who could contribute, so perhaps she would wind up on the positive side of the ledger.

But now her thoughts returned to Amy. Amy would never contribute. In Mary’s theology, this meant that Amy would not be judged highly. So did that mean that Janice, the perfect daughter, was ‘worth’ more than Amy?  What kind of theology had Mary constructed?

But perhaps, that’s the way it was. In Mary’s mind, what mattered was not individuals but all of humanity. Mary thought that people who helped humanity should be valued highly, and people who didn’t, shouldn’t. So rightfully, Janice should be judged more highly.

Just then, Amy looked up, and walked over to Mary, and hugged her, hard.

“I love you mommy”.

Mary cried.  So much for her theology.

Endurance

“Hey there, how you doing? Mary’s birthday went really well, lots of guests, she loved the chocolate cake, gosh, time flies, she is 7 years old now, isn’t that amazing? I just cannot tell you how busy I am, how crazy life is now. How are things there?”

I read the email from my sister twice. I guess there is really no way for her to comprehend my situation emotionally. Intellectually, she knows that I am five billion miles away, in a space ship headed for certain, well I guess nothing is certain, except that this spaceship is never returning to Earth. Or Mars, where my ex-wife is….

Im was not alone on this spaceship, named somewhat ironically the ‘Endurance’, after the famous Earnest Shackleton expedition. I have several mice, an entire room full of plants and microbes, and two rats to keep me company.

But no humans. Just me.   This was not the way it was supposed to be. The Endurance was supposed to be a long term science expedition to the Saturn system, with a crew of 8. That was the plan. Plans change..

Right now I can look out the window, and not see Saturn. Its not visibile from this angle anyway, but if it was it would be pretty small. Its getting smaller every day. Pretty soon it will just look like another star, nothing special. So much for Saturn.

I feel some sense of ownership of the Endurance, it is mine now. I own every wall, every bolt, every dial, every window. I like touching things like the desk, my desk, and think about how it feels, hard, cool, a little rough. These small things give me pleasure, they distract me from the large things.I really like the sounds of the mechanisms, and I love finding problems, and solving them.

Oh, hey, another email. this time in voice.  Given the distance, talking normally is impossible, so everything was emails, voicemails, and occasionally, when ground control wanted to give me a special treat, videomail.

“Hey Lar, we think we have something worked out.  It’s a bit crazy, but hey, these are the same folks who saved Apollo 13. Well, the grandchildren of those guys. Anyway, the main concept is a gravitational swing by asteroid HR23-1005, which, well, it nudges you to within calling distance of Neptune, which gives you another slingshot, and then back to the inner solar system. It’s a longshot, but as you know, with almost no thrusters, there isn’t much to work with. I feel pretty good about this option, and we looked at your consumables, we think it will work. Take a look at the attached file, let us know what you think. Im sure you know, you have a bunch of folks working hard on this..”

It had been a month since the accident. I don’t think about it.  Every second of that ‘day’ is seared permanently in my brain, every image, every sound, but its in a part of my brain that is currently offlimits to me. Make that permanently. I stopped answering questions about the accident from anybody. What they gonna do, fire me?

I said the Endurance is all mine. Most of it that is. I don’t own the airlock, that has seven bodies in it. My friends. Well,four of them. Anyway, the airlock, that isn’t part of the ship. Its something else, not mine. Why did God choose me to be outside, in my spacesuit, when the microasteroid punched a hole in the ship?

Some ‘days’ I didn’t bother getting dressed. At first I was afraid the neighbors might see in the windows. It took a while for me to really accept emotionally that the nearest neighbor was about 3 billion years away. Oh ya, I also found and cut out all those video cameras that ground control had. I don’t like them spying on me. So what if they think I may go crazy? Maybe I will, or not.

It is funny, sending and receiving emails like I was still in my apartment in Houston. From my sister, from my kids, from my ex-wife, who is nicer now than she ever was when we were married. Im not sure how he felt about that.

I have several romantic email buddies with women on Earth and Mars and the Moon, which is a bit confusing, since the chances of meeting any of them in person is somewhat remote. I think of inmates serving life sentences in jail corresponding with female penpals, and figure that this was something similar. There is something exciting and comforting about total inaccessibility, I suppose.

I think a lot about religion these days, I guess that isn’t a huge surprise. I didn’t think I believed in God, but I do now. Well, not a God in a chair with a big book, but the God of the universe, the God that gives the universe, and all of us, purpose and meaning.

What is my purpose? I had thought that my purpose was to explore the universe in general, and Saturn in particular. We were going to spend a couple years there, exploring, landing on Saturn’s moons, studying the rings, having a regular scientific planetary lovefest. It was such an exciting thought, Humankind reaching, well not the stars, but the outer reaches of the solar system, showing that it was truly ours for the taking.

Something as small as a pencil eraser put an end to that. A microasteroid, the wrong place at the wrong time, killed everyone but me, punched a hole in the fuel tank, left me an orphan, just me and the crippled ship, with no way to  stop at Saturn anymore. So the Endurance swung by Saturn and headed out for deep space.

Back to my purpose/ So what is my purpose now? What is God’s plan? Every day, every night, well there isn’t day or night, but as often as I can, I pray to God. I don’t believe in God, but I pray, I pray to find out what his plan is for the universe, and for ME.  God never answers.  I hope he doesn’t mind that I don’t believe in him. Or her.

I think a lot about death these days. I am fully appreciating the fact that all of us must die. I guess I had not accepted that before. What matters is not that we die, or how, but what matters is how we live on beyond our death. Does our life make a difference to the universe?  Are future generations of humans enriched by our existence?  If one can choose, should one take a short meaningful life, or a long, meaningless life?

I had never thought of these questions before. Always, too busy, too busy. Well, right now, I have nothing but time. Time to think, time to plan for the fture, and all that entails.

An interesting thought occurred to me just now. Voyager 1, launched, geesh, almost hundred years ago, it is sailing out to the stars now, it’s the farthest away thing that humankind has ever sent out to space.   It has a picture of a man and a woman one it, so in the far, far future, alien intelligences can either look us up, or, perhaps, remember us as a species that was.  That picture of man and woman has to stand in for all of human culture and society.

Well, right now, I am the farthest living person ever in human history. No human has ever been 4 billion miles away. If I don’t do anything, I too will be heading to the stars. I may reach one in a few hundred thousand years.  Who knows, maybe Ill lap Voyager 1! That would be neat!

So instead of a picture of a man and a woman to represent all human society, I can be the living and breathing representative of humankind.  Well, not living and breathing exactly, since I wll be nonliving in a few years, but certainly a well preserved corpse is more interesting thatn a picture.

My email pings again, this one is marked URGENT,.

I open it, its ground control again. They said I need to make a course adjustment in just a few minutes! Its critical that I do it now, or I will sail out of the solar system forever,

Interesting thought. If I go along with ground control, I will bounce like a billiard ball in the solar system for at least a decade, and perhaps, someday, they can figure out a way to pluck me off of my injured ship.

If I do nothing, I become an emissary of the entire human race to the stars. Its possible that my corpse may be the only thing of humanity that survives for millions, for billions of years. , while our sun goes nova, or the Earth explodes, or who knows what other catastrophe befells Earth?  All the universe will know of humanity will be me.

What a decision.

I hit the REPLY button to the urgent email.  I write my response. I don’t expect them to understand, given that nobody has ever been in my position before.I decide to do nothing, and become one with the stars.

The Eundurance will be my home, my final home, my resting place. And my chariot. Soon, relatively speaking, I will leave the solar system, I will join interstellar space. I hope that my spaeship will last that long, I hope I will last that long.

My email buddy on the Moon writes me all the time about how wonderful it will be when we finally meet. Well, we are never meeting, not on this plane of existence. I wonder if there are other planes of existence?

I pull out some fabric, and juryrig a needle and thread. I start making a tie from the fabric. I want to look nice for eternity.

A Rough Night

Sam woke up in his hotel room. Was he in Des Moines? Chicago?  London?  Who knew? His head was killing him. His hotel room could be on Mars for all he knew.

What happened last night?  He barely remembered.  Ah yes. A drunken conversation about a fantasy of his. A fantasy of owning a time machine, and bringing back someone from the past, and showing them the present.

He wanted to bring back leonardo da vinci, show him an airplane, a parachute, modern medicine. Imagine how surpised and gratified he would be.

Now imagine bringing back an ancient roman. Would he comprehend the modern world?  What would he think of fighter jets?  What would he think about modern society?

And then imagine bringing back someone from ancient egypt. That was when the arguments at the bar started.  Mary thought that that egyptian would be so overwhelmed that he or she would not be able to process what they were seeing. it would be literally inconceivable. That the world would be so alien that they would just be uncommunicative.

Sam didnt think so, but many people thought Mary had a point. Imagine bringing back say Peter from the bible, bring him to a modern fundamentalist church, what would he say?  Would his brain explode from overload?

So the fantasy had to be modified. When we bring back these people, we introduce them to the modern world gradually.  A little bit at a time.  Small changes.  Let them notice them one at a time, so they gradually become adjusted.

Sam fell out of bed. Funny. He didnt hurt when he hit the floor. His hand felt funny. Light.   He opened the curtains. Dark. Pitch black. Nothing. No street signs. no stars, no lights of any kind. That didnt make any sense.   What did the clock say?  The clock made no sense. Lines and circles. It must be broken.

Sam sat down. Tried to. Was he still drunk?  He missed the bed, slid off. He couldnt figure out up or down anymore. Sam crawled towards the front door of the hotel room,  Locked. A panic rose in him. What was going on?    He was on the floor, so he looked under the crack at the bottom of the door.

What he saw thru the crack, made no sense to him. It was, he could make no sense of the colors or shapes. It was literally inconceivable. At least by Sam, at least then.  Sam's head started spinning. He blacked out.

Kgobk-34 yelled loudly.  "Dorevkoo34!  You idiot! You forgot about the crack in the door!  The subject is overloading!!"

Kgobk-34, Dorevkoo34, two 'graduate students', in a 'universe' studying a primitive 'subject', had made a mistake. They would be graded harshly....