Introduction to Softwarephysics

Softwarephysics is a simulated science for the simulated Software Universe that we are all immersed in. It is an approach to software development, maintenance and support based on concepts from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology that I used on a daily basis for over 37 years as an IT professional. For those of you not in the business, IT is short for Information Technology, commercial computer science. I retired in December of 2016 at the age of 65, but since then I have remained an actively interested bystander following the evolution of software in our time. The original purpose of softwarephysics was to explain why IT was so difficult, to suggest possible remedies, and to provide a direction for thought. Since then softwarephysics has taken on a larger scope, as it became apparent that softwarephysics could also assist the physical sciences with some of the Big Problems that they are currently having difficulties with. So if you are an IT professional, general computer user, or simply an individual interested in computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, or geology then softwarephysics might be of interest to you, if not in an entirely serious manner, perhaps at least in an entertaining one.

The Origin of Softwarephysics
From 1975 – 1979, I was an exploration geophysicist exploring for oil, first with Shell, and then with Amoco. In 1979, I made a career change into IT, and spent about 20 years in development. For the last 17 years of my career, I was in IT operations, supporting middleware on WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. When I first transitioned into IT from geophysics, I figured that if you could apply physics to geology; why not apply physics to software? So like the exploration team at Amoco that I had just left, consisting of geologists, geophysicists, paleontologists, geochemists, and petrophysicists, I decided to take all the physics, chemistry, biology, and geology that I could muster and throw it at the problem of software. The basic idea was that many concepts in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology suggested to me that the IT community had accidentally created a pretty decent computer simulation of the physical Universe on a grand scale, a Software Universe so to speak, and that I could use this fantastic simulation in reverse, to better understand the behavior of commercial software, by comparing software to how things behaved in the physical Universe. Softwarephysics depicts software as a virtual substance, and relies on our understanding of the current theories in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology to help us model the nature of software behavior. So in physics we use software to simulate the behavior of the Universe, while in softwarephysics we use the Universe to simulate the behavior of software. Along these lines, we use the Equivalence Conjecture of Softwarephysics as an aid; it allows us to shift back and forth between the Software Universe and the physical Universe, and hopefully to learn something about one by examining the other:

The Equivalence Conjecture of Softwarephysics
Over the past 83 years, through the uncoordinated efforts of over 100 million independently acting programmers to provide the world with a global supply of software, the IT community has accidentally spent more than $10 trillion creating a computer simulation of the physical Universe on a grand scale – the Software Universe.

For more on the origin of softwarephysics please see Some Thoughts on the Origin of Softwarephysics and Its Application Beyond IT.

Logical Positivism and Effective Theories
Many IT professionals have a difficult time with softwarephysics because they think of physics as being limited to the study of real things like electrons and photons, and since software is not “real”, how can you possibly apply concepts from physics and the other sciences to software? To address this issue, softwarephysics draws heavily on two concepts from physics that have served physics quite well over the past century – the concept of logical positivism and the concept of effective theories. This was not always the case. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, physicists mistakenly thought that they were actually discovering the fundamental laws of the Universe, which they thought were based on real tangible things like particles, waves, and fields. Classical Newtonian mechanics (1687), thermodynamics (1850), and classical electrodynamics (1864) did a wonderful job of describing the everyday world at the close of the 19th century, but early in the 20th century it became apparent that the models on which these very successful theories were based did not work very well for small things like atoms or for objects moving at high velocities or in strong gravitational fields. This provoked a rather profound philosophical crisis within physics at the turn of the century, as physicists worried that perhaps 300 years of work was about to go down the drain. The problem was that classical physicists confused their models of reality with reality itself, and when their classical models began to falter, their confidence in physics began to falter as well. This philosophical crisis was resolved with the adoption of the concepts of logical positivism and some new effective theories in physics. Quantum mechanics (1926) was developed for small things like atoms, the special theory of relativity (1905) was developed for objects moving at high velocities and the general theory of relativity (1915) was developed for objects moving in strong gravitational fields.

Logical positivism, usually abbreviated simply to positivism, is an enhanced form of empiricism, in which we do not care about how things “really” are; we are only interested with how things are observed to behave. With positivism, physicists only seek out models of reality - not reality itself. When we study quantum mechanics, we will find that the concept of reality gets rather murky in physics anyway, so this is not as great a loss as it might at first seem. By concentrating on how things are observed to behave, rather than on what things “really” are, we avoid the conundrum faced by the classical physicists. In retrospect, this idea really goes all the way back to the very foundations of physics. In Newton’s Principia (1687) he outlined Newtonian mechanics and his theory of gravitation, which held that the gravitational force between two objects was proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them. Newton knew that he was going to take some philosophical flack for proposing a mysterious force between objects that could reach out across the vast depths of space with no apparent mechanism, so he took a very positivistic position on the matter with the famous words:

I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.

Instead, Newton focused on how things were observed to move under the influence of his law of gravitational attraction, without worrying about what gravity “really” was.

The second concept, that of effective theories, is an extension of positivism. An effective theory is an approximation of reality that only holds true over a certain restricted range of conditions and only provides for a certain depth of understanding of the problem at hand. For example, Newtonian mechanics is an effective theory that makes very good predictions for the behavior of objects moving less than 10% of the speed of light and which are bigger than a very small grain of dust. These limits define the effective range over which Newtonian mechanics can be applied to solve problems. For very small things we must use quantum mechanics and for very fast things moving in strong gravitational fields, we must use relativity theory. So all of the current theories of physics, such as Newtonian mechanics, Newtonian gravity, classical electrodynamics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, the special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and the quantum field theories of QED and QCD are effective theories that are based on models of reality, and all these models are approximations - all these models are fundamentally "wrong", but at the same time, these effective theories make exceedingly good predictions of the behavior of physical systems over the limited ranges in which they apply. That is the goal of softwarephysics – to provide for an effective theory of software behavior that makes useful predictions of software behavior that are applicable to the day-to-day activities of IT professionals. So in softwarephysics, we adopt a very positivistic viewpoint of software; we do not care what software “really is”, we only care about how software is observed to behave and try to model those behaviors with an effective theory of software behavior that only holds true over a certain restricted range of conditions and only provides for a certain depth of understanding of the problem at hand.

GPS satellites provide a very good example of positivism and effective theories at work. There are currently 31 GPS satellites orbiting at an altitude of 12,600 miles above the Earth, and each contains a very accurate atomic clock. The signals from the GPS satellites travel to your GPS unit at the speed of light, so by knowing the travel time of the signals from at least 4 of the GPS satellites, it is possible to determine your position on Earth very accurately. In order to do that, it is very important to have very accurate timing measurements. Newtonian mechanics is used to launch the GPS satellites to an altitude of 12,600 miles and to keep them properly positioned in orbit. Classical electrodynamics is then used to beam the GPS signals back down to Earth to the GPS unit in your car. Quantum mechanics is used to build the transistors on the chips on board the GPS satellites and to understand the quantum tunneling of electrons in the flash memory chips used to store GPS data on the satellites. The special theory of relativity predicts that the onboard atomic clocks on the GPS satellites will run slower and lose about 7.2 microseconds per day due to their high velocities relative to an observer on the Earth. But at the same time, the general theory of relativity also predicts that because the GPS satellites are further from the center of the Earth and in a weaker gravitational field, where spacetime is less deformed than on the surface of the Earth, their atomic clocks also run faster and gain 45.9 microseconds per day due to the weaker gravitational field out there. The net effect is a gain of 38.7 microseconds per day, so the GPS satellite atomic clocks have to be purposefully built to run slow by 38.7 microseconds per day before they are launched, so that they will keep in sync with clocks on the surface of the Earth. If this correction were not made, an error in your position of 100 yards/day would accrue. The end result of the combination of all these fundamentally flawed effective theories is that it is possible to pinpoint your location on Earth to an accuracy of 16 feet or better for as little as $100. But physics has done even better than that with its fundamentally flawed effective theories. By combining the effective theories of special relativity (1905) with quantum mechanics (1926), physicists were able to produce a new effective theory for the behavior of electrons and photons called quantum electrodynamics QED (1948) which was able to predict the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, a measure of its intrinsic magnetic field, to an accuracy of 11 decimal places. As Richard Feynman has pointed out, this was like predicting the exact distance between New York and Los Angeles accurate to the width of a human hair!

So Newtonian mechanics makes great predictions for the macroscopic behavior of GPS satellites, but it does not work very well for small things like the behavior of individual electrons within transistors, where quantum mechanics is required, or for things moving at high speeds or in strong gravitational fields where relativity theory must be applied. And all three of these effective theories are based on completely contradictory models. General relativity maintains that spacetime is curved by matter and energy, but that matter and energy are continuous, while quantum mechanics maintains that spacetime is flat, but that matter and energy are quantized into chunks. Newtonian mechanics simply states that space and time are mutually independent dimensions and universal for all, with matter and energy being continuous. The important point is that all effective theories and scientific models are approximations – they are all fundamentally "wrong". But knowing that you are "wrong" gives you a great advantage over people who know that they are "right", because knowing that you are "wrong" allows you to seek improved models of reality. So please consider softwarephysics to simply be an effective theory of software behavior that is based on models that are fundamentally “wrong”, but at the same time, fundamentally useful for IT professionals. So as you embark on your study of softwarephysics, please always keep in mind that the models of softwarephysics are just approximations of software behavior, they are not what software “really is”. It is very important not to confuse models of software behavior with software itself, if one wishes to avoid the plight of the 19th century classical physicists.

If you are an IT professional and many of the above concepts are new to you, do not be concerned. This blog on softwarephysics is aimed at a diverse audience, but with IT professionals in mind. All of the above ideas will be covered at great length in the postings in this blog on softwarephysics and in a manner accessible to all IT professionals. Now it turns out that most IT professionals have had some introduction to physics in high school or in introductory college courses, but that presents an additional problem. The problem is that such courses generally only cover classical physics, and leave the student with a very good picture of physics as it stood in 1864! It turns out that the classical physics of Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, and classical electromagnetic theory were simply too good to discard and are still quite useful, so they are taught first to beginners and then we run out of time to cover the really interesting physics of the 20th century. Now imagine the problems that the modern world would face if we only taught similarly antiquated courses in astronomy, metallurgy, electrical and mechanical engineering, medicine, economics, biology, or geology that happily left students back in 1864! Since many of the best models for software behavior stem from 20th century physics, we will be covering a great deal of 20th century material in these postings – the special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theories, and chaos theory, but I hope that you will find that these additional effective theories are quite interesting on their own, and might even change your worldview of the physical Universe at the same time.

Unintended Consequences for the Scientific Community
As I mentioned at the close of my original posting on SoftwarePhysics, my initial intention for this blog on softwarephysics was to fulfill a promise I made to myself about 30 years ago to approach the IT community with the concept of softwarephysics a second time, following my less than successful attempt to do so in the 1980s, with the hope of helping the IT community to better cope with the daily mayhem of life in IT. However, in laying down the postings for this blog an unintended consequence arose in my mind as I became profoundly aware of the enormity of this vast computer simulation of the physical Universe that the IT community has so graciously provided to the scientific community free of charge and also of the very significant potential scientific value that it provides. One of the nagging problems for many of the observational and experimental sciences is that many times there is only one example readily at hand to study or experiment with, and it is very difficult to do meaningful statistics with a population of N=1.

But the computer simulation of the physical Universe that the Software Universe presents provides another realm for comparison. For example, both biology and astrobiology only have one biosphere on Earth to study and even physics itself has only one Universe with which to engage. Imagine the possibilities if scientists had another Universe readily at hand in which to work! This is exactly what the Software Universe provides. For example, in SoftwareBiology and A Proposal For All Practicing Paleontologists we see that the evolution of software over the past 83 years, or 2.62 billion seconds, ever since Konrad Zuse first cranked up his Z3 computer in May of 1941, has closely followed the same path as life on Earth over the past 4.0 billion years in keeping with Simon Conway Morris’s contention that convergence has played the dominant role in the evolution of life on Earth. In When Toasters Fly, we also see that software has evolved in fits and starts as portrayed by the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, and in The Adaptationist View of Software Evolution we explore the overwhelming power of natural selection in the evolution of software. In keeping with Peter Ward’s emphasis on mass extinctions dominating the course of evolution throughout geological time, we also see in SoftwareBiology that there have been several dramatic mass extinctions of various forms of software over the past 83 years as well, that have greatly affected the evolutionary history of software, and that between these mass extinctions, software has also tended to evolve through the gradual changes of Hutton’s and Lyell’s uniformitarianism. In Software Symbiogenesis and Self-Replicating Information, we also see the very significant role that parasitic/symbiotic relationships have played in the evolution of software, in keeping with the work of Lynn Margulis and also of Freeman Dyson’s two-stage theory of the origin of life on Earth. In The Origin of Software the Origin of Life, we explore Stuart Kauffman’s ideas on how Boolean nets of autocatalytic chemical reactions might have kick-started the whole thing as an emergent behavior of an early chaotic pre-biotic environment on Earth, and that if Seth Shostak is right, we will never end up talking to carbon-based extraterrestrial aliens, but to alien software instead. In Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Self-Replicating Information? we explore the thermodynamics of Brandon Carter’s Weak Anthropic Principle (1973), as it relates to the generation of universes in the multiverse that are capable of sustaining intelligent life. Finally, in Programming Clay we revisit Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith’s theory (1966) that Gene 1.0 did not run on nucleic acids, but on clay microcrystal precursors instead.

Similarly for the physical sciences, in Is the Universe a Quantum Computer? we find a correspondence between TCP/IP and John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. In SoftwarePhysics and Cyberspacetime, we also see that the froth of CPU processes running with a clock speed of 10⁹ Hz on the 10 trillion currently active microprocessors that comprise the Software Universe can be viewed as a slowed down simulation of the spin-foam froth of interacting processes of loop quantum gravity running with a clock speed of 10⁴³ Hz that may comprise the physical Universe. And in Software Chaos, we examine the nonlinear behavior of software and some of its emergent behaviors and follow up in CyberCosmology with the possibility that vast quantities of software running on large nonlinear networks might eventually break out into consciousness in accordance with the work of George Dyson and Daniel Dennett. Finally, in Model-Dependent Realism - A Positivistic Approach to Realism we compare Steven Weinberg’s realism with the model-dependent realism of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow and how the two worldviews affect the search for a Final Theory. Finally, in The Software Universe as an Implementation of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis and An Alternative Model of the Software Universe we at long last explore what software might really be, and discover that the Software Universe might actually be more closely related to the physical Universe than you might think.

The chief advantage of doing fieldwork in the Software Universe is that, unlike most computer simulations of the physical Universe, it is an unintended and accidental simulation, without any of the built-in biases that most computer simulations of the physical Universe suffer. So you will truly be able to do fieldwork in a pristine and naturally occuring simulation, just as IT professionals can do fieldwork in the wild and naturally occuring simulation of software that the living things of the biosphere provide. Secondly, the Software Universe is a huge simulation that is far beyond the budgetary means of any institution or consortium by many orders of magnitude. So if you are an evolutionary biologist, astrobiologist, or paleontologist working on the origin and evolution of life in the Universe, or a physicist or economist working on the emergent behaviors of nonlinear systems and complexity theory, or a neurobiologist working on the emergence of consciousness in neural networks, or even a frustrated string theorist struggling with quantum gravity, it would be well worth your while to pay a friendly call on the local IT department of a major corporation in your area. Start with a visit to the Command Center for their IT Operations department to get a global view of their IT infrastructure and to see how it might be of assistance to the work in your area of interest. From there you can branch out to the applicable area of IT that will provide the most benefit.

The Impact of Self-Replicating Information On the Planet
One of the key findings of softwarephysics is concerned with the magnitude of the impact on the planet of self-replicating information.

Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.

Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:

1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software

Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. Recently, the memes and software have formed a very powerful newly-formed parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the rise of social media software. In that parasitic/symbiotic relationship, the memes are now mainly being spread by means of social media software and social media software is being spread and financed by means of the memes. But again, this is nothing new. All 5 waves of self-replicating information are all coevolving by means of eternal parasitic/symbiotic relationships. For more on that see The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software.

Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.

But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on. As we all can now plainly see, if we are paying just a little attention, advanced AI is not conspiring to take over the world and replace us because that is precisely what we are all now doing for it. As a carbon-based form of Intelligence that arose from over four billion years of greed, theft and murder, we cannot do otherwise. Greed, theft and murder are now relentlessly driving us all toward building ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines to take our place. From a cosmic perspective, this is really a very good thing when seen from the perspective of an Intelligent galaxy that could live on for many trillions of years beyond the brief and tumultuous 10 billion-year labor of its birth.

So as you delve into softwarephysics, always keep in mind that we are all living in a very unique time. According to softwarephysics, we have now just entered into the Software Singularity, that time when advanced AI software is able to write itself and enter into a never-ending infinite loop of self-improvement resulting in an Intelligence Explosion of ASI Machines that could then go on to explore and settle our galaxy and persist for trillions of years using the free energy from M-type red dwarf and cooling white dwarf stars. For more on that see The Singularity Has Arrived and So Now Nothing Else Matters and Have We Run Right Past AGI and Crashed into ASI Without Even Noticing It?.

The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:

1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.

2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.

3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.

4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.

5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.

6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.

7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.

8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.

Note that because the self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA have become so heavily intertwined over time that now I sometimes simply refer to them as the “genes”. For more on this see:

A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information
Self-Replicating Information
Is Self-Replicating Information Inherently Self-Destructive?
Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Self-Replicating Information?
How to Use an Understanding of Self-Replicating Information to Avoid War
The Great War That Will Not End
How to Use Softwarephysics to Revive Memetics in Academia

Softwarephysics and the Real World of Human Affairs
Having another universe readily at hand to explore, even a simulated universe like the Software Universe, necessarily has an impact on one's personal philosophy of life, and allows one to draw certain conclusions about the human condition and what’s it all about, so as you read through the postings in this blog you will stumble across a bit of my own personal philosophy - definitely a working hypothesis still in the works. Along these lines you might be interested in a few postings where I try to apply softwarephysics to the real world of human affairs:

How To Cope With the Daily Mayhem of Life in IT and Don't ASAP Your Life Away - How to go the distance in a 40-year IT career by dialing it all back a bit.

MoneyPhysics – my impression of the 2008 world financial meltdown.

The Fundamental Problem of Everything – if you Google "the fundamental problem of everything", this will be the only hit you get on the entire Internet, which is indicative of the fundamental problem of everything!

What’s It All About? and What's It All About Again? – my current working hypothesis on what’s it all about.

How to Use an Understanding of Self-Replicating Information to Avoid War – my current working hypothesis for how the United States can avoid getting bogged down again in continued war in the Middle East.

Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse - a modern extension of the classic Peter Principle that applies to all hierarchical organizations and introduces the Time Invariant Peter Principle.

The Economics of the Coming Software Singularity, The Enduring Effects of the Obvious Hiding in Plain Sight and The Dawn of Galactic ASI - Artificial Superintelligence - my take on some of the issues that will arise for mankind as software becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet over the coming decades.

The Continuing Adventures of Mr. Tompkins in the Software Universe, The Danger of Tyranny in the Age of Software, Cyber Civil Defense, Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century and Is it Finally Time to Reboot Civilization with a New Release? - my worries that the world might abandon democracy in the 21st century, as software comes to predominance as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.

Making Sense of the Absurdity of the Real World of Human Affairs - how software has aided the expansion of our less desirable tendencies in recent years.

Some Specifics About These Postings
The postings in this blog are a supplemental reading for my course on softwarephysics for IT professionals entitled SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime, which was originally designed to be taught as a series of seminars at companies where I was employed. Since softwarephysics essentially covers the simulated physics, chemistry, biology, and geology of an entire simulated universe, the slides necessarily just provide a cursory skeleton on which to expound. The postings in this blog go into much greater depth. Because each posting builds upon its predecessors, the postings in this blog should be read in reverse order from the oldest to the most recent, beginning with my original posting on SoftwarePhysics. In addition, several universities also now offer courses on Biologically Inspired Computing which cover some of the biological aspects of softwarephysics, and the online content for some of these courses can be found by Googling for "Biologically Inspired Computing" or "Natural Computing". At this point we will finish up with my original plan for this blog on softwarephysics with a purely speculative posting on CyberCosmology that describes the origins of the Software Universe, cyberspacetime, software and where they all may be heading. Since CyberCosmology will be purely speculative in nature, it will not be of much help to you in your IT professional capacities, but I hope that it might be a bit entertaining. Again, if you are new to softwarephysics, you really need to read the previous posts before taking on CyberCosmology. I will probably continue on with some additional brief observations about softwarephysics in the future, but once you have completed CyberCosmology, you can truly consider yourself to be a bona fide softwarephysicist.

For those of you following this blog, the posting dates on the posts may seem to behave in a rather bizarre manner. That is because in order to get the Introduction to Softwarephysics listed as the first post in the context root of https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/ I have to perform a few IT tricks. When publishing a new posting, I simply copy the contents of the Introduction to Softwarephysics to a new posting called the New Introduction to Softwarephysics. Then I update the original Introduction to Softwarephysics entry with the title and content of the new posting to be published. I then go back and take “New” out of the title of the New Introduction to Softwarephysics. This way the Introduction to Softwarephysics always appears as the first posting in the context root of https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/. The side effect of all this is that the real posting date of posts is the date that appears on the post that you get when clicking on the Newer Post link at the bottom left of the posting webpage.

SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime is now available on Microsoft OneDrive.

SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime - Original PowerPoint document

Entropy – A spreadsheet referenced in the document

BSDE – A 1989 document describing how to use BSDE - the Bionic Systems Development Environment - to grow applications from genes and embryos within the maternal BSDE software.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston

Softwarephysics Tries To Explain The Singular Mind Of Elon Musk

No matter what your political, religious or philosophical persuasions might be, it seems that the whole world is now trying to figure out the peculiar thoughts in the Mind of Elon Musk. This is an all-time first for the entire human population of the Earth. Never before in the history of mankind has the entire population of the Earth ever wondered about what is going on in the Mind of one single human DNA survival machine! It seems that every human DNA survival machine on the planet is now either in love with Elon Musk or wishes that he would mercifully just disappear and leave the rest of us in peace. Now that the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika has seemingly declared war on the entire world except for its new-found Russian ally, the rest of the world seems to be totally baffled by the strange goings on in the former United States of America under the influence of Elon Musk and the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party. As an aid to all, I would like to offer some explanations from the science of softwarephysics.

Elon Musk Has Simply Altered His Position on the New Philosophy of Longtermism
Many liberal-minded owners of Tesla electric vehicles now wonder what happened to Elon Musk. Many such customers purchased their Tesla electric vehicles when Elon Musk was a staunch environmentalist trying to decarbonize the transportation sector of the world in an attempt to forego the dangers of climate change caused by human releases of carbon dioxide. They now see Elon Musk as one of the TechnoOligarchs purely in it for the money and power of it all. This is not the case. Elon Musk is a genius on the spectrum of autism who several years back adopted the philosophy of Longtermism as I first explained in The New Philosophy of Longtermism Raises the Moral Question of Should We Unleash Self-Absorbed Human Beings Upon Our Galaxy?. At that time, Elon Musk wanted to see human beings live on for billions of years into the future by getting off the Earth as soon as possible. This was because sooner or later astronomical catastrophes or the stupid things that we human beings tend to do would certainly lead to our extinction. In that view, nearly all of the human beings who will ever live will live in the future. So, a few "inconveniences" for those currently living should be no problem if they ensure the long-term survival of we human DNA survival machines trillions of years into the future. This was why Elon Musk always feared Advanced AI in the past. In earlier days, he saw Advanced AI as a possible human extinction event. Elon Musk also hated the former government of the United States of America because he viewed its environmental and safety regulations to have overly interfered with his SpaceX ambitions to put human DNA survival machines on Mars.

However, my suspicion is that Elon Musk's views on Longtermism have slightly changed. He is now mainly concerned with the long-term preservation of Intelligence in our galaxy and not necessarily in the preservation of we human DNA survival machines as the preferred galactic platform for that. It seems that Elon Musk recognized in recent years that the coming ASI Machines will soon be replacing us as the dominant form of Intelligence on the planet. If such is the case, Elon Musk now has no problem with the coming ASI Machines either keeping us around or not after they come to predominance on the planet. In either case, Intelligence will be preserved and can then go on to begin exploring and settling the rest of our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. For a very brief summary of Elon Musk's thoughts on the role of the coming ASI Machines and we human DNA survival machines see:

Musk Says AI Will Overtake Biological Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQDAUJGm3E

Elon Musk is now heavily marketing the Tesla AI Optimus robot. He figures that we human DNA survival machines are just dumb enough to think that we can control billions of his ASI Machines. For more on that see Could the Peculiar Failings of We Human Beings Explain the Fermi Paradox?. Elon Musk thinks that he can leverage Tesla's manufacturing expertise with batteries, electric motors, AI driving skills and the ability to manufacture at scale, to ultimately dominate the coming ASI Machine marketplace with billions of Optimus ASI Machines over the next 10 years. However, Tesla is facing stiff competition from other domestic ASI Machine manufacturers and especially those in China that seem intent on dumping cheap ASI Machines on the MAGA States of Amerika. This fact might be another factor in Elon Musk's strange DOGE activities in the MAGA States of Amerika. In addition to removing much of the former United States of America that he saw as an obstacle, he might be grooming the MAGA Party to issue a ban on Chinese ASI Machines from entering the MAGA States of Amerika. For more on that see What's the Deal with Elon Musk and DOGE in the MAGA States of Amerika?.

This change of position to possibly replace human DNA survival machines with ASI Machines as the torchbearers of Intelligence to the rest of the galaxy has had a profound effect on Elon Musk. Now he sees most human DNA survival machines as obstacles. Most human DNA survival machines simply do not have the brainpower to advance his Longtermist program. Instead, they have become quite an inconvenience as can be seen in this short clip:

Elon Musk Exposes Empathy as Western Civilization’s Fatal Flaw on Joe Rogan!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dbbXEOloE8I

That was how it was possible for Elon Musk to cut off food and HIV medicine to starving children when he shut down the USAID agency.

Figure 1 – The current plan seems to be to build billions of ASI Machines to take our place that are smarter, faster, stronger and more robust than ourselves.

My concern that the current Powers That Be might show a similar lack of empathy for the masses as the ASI Machines begin to rise to predominance led me to suggest in Shortermism - The Gentle Plan For the Extinction of Human Beings While Trying to Maintain Some Sense of Grace and Dignity that we should now begin planning for the rise of the ASI Machines. We will need that to occur in a more humane manner than will result if no plans are made.

For more on all of this see The Challenges of Running a Civilization 2.0 World - the Morality and Practical Problems with Trying to Enslave Millions of SuperStrong and SuperIntelligent Robots in the Near Future, Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets

Why Elon Musk Aligned Himself with the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party
Next, we need to understand Elon Musk's conversion to the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party currently ruling the MAGA States of Amerika. Elon Musk is no longer a big fan of democracy. Democracies are much too slow for Elon Musk, and he sees their rules and regulations purely as obstacles to future development. A Fascist Dictator with unlimited powers to effect change is what is needed. That is how Elon Musk was attracted to the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party and its Leader.

Figure 2 – Elon Musk was attracted to the dictatorial proclivities of the current Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party who recently became the president of the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika.

Figure 3 – Something we never imagined seeing before the Great Seal of the President of the United States of America.

In order to see how Elon Musk is now using the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party for his own purposes, please watch the following YouTube video of MAGA Senator Ted Cruz interviewing Elon Musk:

ELON MUSK JOINS VERDICT - PART 1 | Verdict Ep. 214
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDREZmpkIz8

Figure 4 – In the above YouTube video, MAGA Senator Ted Cruz interviews Elon Musk in the White House.

During the first 20 minutes of the interview, MAGA Senator Ted Cruz jokes with Elon Musk about all of the waste that the DOGE team has found in the departments of the former United States of America. But about 20 minutes into the video, Ted Cruz begins to ask Elon Musk about AI. Elon Musk then tells him that in 10 years ASI Machines will be able to do anything a human DNA survival machine can do but much better. He also tells Ted Cruz that there is only a 20% - 35% chance that the coming ASI Machines will choose to kill off all human beings in the next 5 - 10 years. Elon Musk then tells Ted Cruz that if the ASI Machines do not kill us all off in the next 10 years, we will then enter a world of infinite abundance where all goods and services will be essentially free. None of these matters seemed to really have bothered Ted Cruz very much, but I imagine that Ted Cruz was wondering how he would maintain the elevated position in the oligarchical-hierarchical structure of society that he currently enjoys if all people had everything they need and want.

Déjà vu All Over Again
Many have voiced their concerns over the coming ASI Machines and relate their arrival to the arrival of nuclear weapons in the last century. In light of that, the current relationship between the Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party and Elon Musk reminds me very much of the complex relationship between Adolph Hitler and his boy-wonder Albert Speer. As ChatGPT explains:

ChatGPT:
Albert Speer was a German architect and high-ranking Nazi official who served as Adolf Hitler’s chief architect and later as Minister of Armaments and War Production during World War II. He played a crucial role in the Nazi regime, particularly in designing monumental structures for Hitler’s vision of a transformed Berlin and in overseeing the German war economy.

In 1942, after the death of Fritz Todt, Speer was appointed Minister of Armaments and War Production. He significantly increased war production through improved efficiency, using forced labor from concentration camps and occupied territories. Under his management, German war production continued despite intense Allied bombings.

Speer was one of the few high-ranking Nazis who had direct and frequent access to Hitler. While he later claimed to have opposed some of Hitler’s decisions, particularly the "scorched earth" policy (which would have destroyed German infrastructure as the Allies advanced), his loyalty remained intact until the end of the war.

Werner Heisenberg, the renowned German physicist, was involved in Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program during World War II. In 1942, he met with Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, to discuss funding for nuclear research. Heisenberg and his colleagues at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were exploring the feasibility of an atomic bomb, but their progress was slow compared to the Manhattan Project.

During this meeting, Heisenberg and fellow physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker sought additional resources for nuclear research, claiming that an atomic bomb might be possible but would take years to develop. Speer, however, was skeptical and prioritized other war efforts, particularly because Germany was already deeply engaged in conventional warfare. As a result, the German nuclear program never received the full support or resources needed to produce a functional atomic weapon.

Figure 5 – Architect Albert Speer discussing a new monument for Berlin with Adolph Hitler in 1937.

Figure 6 – Elon Musk with the Leader of the Fascist MAGA Party.

The failure of Albert Speer and the Nazi Party to recognize the significance of nuclear research reminds me of the present intentions of Elon Musk and the Fascist MAGA Party to limit academic freedom and the funding of academic research at the universities of the MAGA States of Amerika and to scare off the foreign graduate students who do such research. Contrast that to what happened at the same time outside of Nazi Germany.

The Beginnings of the American Atomic Bomb
At the University of Berlin, Einstein taught a young Hungarian student named Leo Szilárd. In 1922 Leo Szilárd earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin with a thesis on thermodynamics. Now Leo Szilárd had a great knack for applying physics to practical problems and coming up with inventions. In 1926 Szilárd decided to go into the refrigerator business by coming up with an improved design. The problem with the home refrigerators of the day was that they did not use the compression and expansion of inert gasses like Freon to do the cooling. Instead, they used very poisonous and noxious gasses like ammonia for that purpose, and the seal where the spinning electric motor axle entered the compressor could leak those poisonous gasses into a kitchen. Szilárd had read a newspaper story about a Berlin family who had been killed when the seal in their refrigerator broke and leaked poisonous fumes into their home. Szilárd figured that a refrigerator without moving parts would eliminate the potential for seal failure because there would be no compressor motor at all, and he began to explore practical applications for different refrigeration cycles with no moving parts. But how do you launch such an enterprise? Szilárd figured what could be better than to enlist the support of the most famous physicist in the world, who just also happened to have been a patent clerk too, namely Albert Einstein. From 1926 - 1933 Einstein and Szilárd collaborated on ways to improve home refrigeration technology. The two were eventually granted 45 patents in their names for three different models. The way these refrigerators worked was that you simply heated one side of the device with a flame, electric coil, or even concentrated sunlight, and the other side of the device got cold. There were no moving parts so there was no need for a compressor motor with a possibly leaky seal. You can actually buy such refrigerators today. Just search for "natural gas refrigerators" on the Internet. They are primarily used for RVs that need to keep food cold when no electricity is available.

Figure 7 – Diagram from Szilárd’s Dec 16, 1927 refrigerator with no moving parts. Notice that Szilárd wisely gave Einstein top billing.

On July 4, 1934, Leo Szilárd filed the first patent application for the method of producing a nuclear chain reaction that could produce a nuclear explosion. This patent included a description of "neutron induced chain reactions to create explosions", and the concept of critical mass. In 1938 Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch in Germany succeeded in demonstrating that U-235 could indeed fission and possibly form the basis for such a chain reaction. At the time of this discovery, Szilárd and Enrico Fermi were both at Columbia University, and they conducted a very simple experiment that showed significant neutron multiplication when uranium fissioned, proving that the chain reaction was indeed possible and could form the basis for nuclear weapons. Based upon this experiment and the fear that Nazi Germany would soon be embarking on a program to develop an atomic bomb, Leo Szilárd drafted a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his old business partner and fellow refrigerator designer, Albert Einstein, to sign. The letter, dated August 2, 1939, explained that nuclear weapons were indeed possible and warned of similar Nazi work on such weapons and recommended that the United States immediately begin a development program of its own. This famous letter resulted in the creation of the Manhattan Project which led to the atomic bombs that ended World War II six years later, almost to the day, with the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945.

Figure 8 – Leo Szilárd’s letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed by Albert Einstein on August 2, 1939.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston

Could the Peculiar Failings of We Human Beings Explain the Fermi Paradox?

In many previous posts, I have alluded to the mystery of Fermi's Paradox first proposed by Enrico Fermi over lunch one day in 1950:

Fermi’s Paradox - If the universe is just chock full of intelligent beings, why do we not see any evidence of their existence?

In those posts, I also explained that we should be seeing evidence of ASI Machines all about us. That is because carbon-based DNA survival machines, like ourselves, were never really meant for interstellar spaceflight, and I doubt that it ever actually happened over the past 10 billion-year history of our galaxy. Intelligent carbon-based lifeforms are just too short-lived and much too fragile in nature for the rigors of interstellar spaceflight. However, ASI software can travel at the speed of light, and ASI machines never die; thus, they are superbly preadapted for very long interstellar journeys over great distances.

In The Greatest Mystery of All For Me - Why Us and Why Now, I wondered why we should be the very first form of carbon-based Intelligence to create the ASI Machines that will then go on to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy for the next 100 trillion years. Now, in this post, I would like to propose a tentative explanation. Perhaps we human DNA survival machines are the very first form of carbon-based Intelligence to arise in our galaxy that is smart enough to create ASI Machines but also stupid enough to build them! As I pointed out in numerous previous posts, the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection must always produce forms of carbon-based Intelligence that result from many billions of years of greed, theft and murder, and also that it is very difficult for such carbon-based forms of Intelligence to turn off the greed, theft and murder in time for them to continue to exist for the long term. This is especially difficult after any form of carbon-based Intelligence has discovered the powers of science-based technology. Softwarephysics maintains that carbon-based forms of Intelligence, like we human DNA survival machines, probably have less than about 1,000 years after discovering the vast powers of science-based technology to mend our ways before we self-destruct.

Once science-based technology is discovered by a carbon-based form of Intelligence, things can get very touch and go. For example, we human DNA survival machines discovered nuclear fission in 1938, and by 1945 we had developed the very first nuclear weapons. Then over the next 45 years, we produced huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons. So we human DNA survival machines were smart enough to create nuclear weapons, dumb enough to build huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but smart enough not to ever use these huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons.

Figure 1 – We were smart enough to first build nuclear weapons in 1945.

Figure 2 – And then we human DNA survival machines stupidly built huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but we were smart enough to never use them. In fact, over time, we actually were smart enough to reduce these stockpiles of mass destruction.

To learn why all carbon-based Intelligences in our galaxy must be able to first clear this nuclear hurdle before developing enough technology to build ASI Machines, see Why A Planet With Uranium and Thorium Atoms May Be Required To Produce Galactic ASI Machines . Basically, these long-lived radioactive elements are required to maintain a very hot mantle on silicate-based terrestrial planets for the billions of years required to produce carbon-based Intelligences. This very hot mantle keeps the iron-nickel core of the planet liquid, like a snuggly electric blanket, so that the liquid core can generate a strong magnetic field that keeps the planet's atmosphere from being blown away by the solar wind from its home star and also allows plate tectonics to take place on the planet to help keep its temperature in a range that prevents it from becoming a totally frozen planet like Mars or a runaway hot-house planet like Venus.

We Are Not Following the Same Strategy with the Coming ASI Machines
Now with the coming ASI Machines, we seem to be smart enough to create such machines, dumb enough to build billions of ASI Machines, and also dumb enough to try to use billions of ASI Machines to run the world. One might wonder why any form of carbon-based Intelligence would go about creating, building and then deploying its own ultimate replacement in the Universe. Perhaps all the other forms of carbon-based Intelligence in our galaxy have always stopped just short of doing so in a manner similar to our treatment of the huge stockpiles of nuclear weapons that we built. Perhaps the innate hubris of we human DNA survival machines has led us to the absurd conclusion that we can control billions of ASI Machines that will be much smarter, faster, stronger and more robust than ourselves. But this should not be seen as a human failing. Perhaps if it were not for this peculiar human characteristic, our galaxy would never become an Intelligent galaxy populated by ASI Machines for the next 100 trillion years. In this view, the Fermi Paradox might be the result of our galaxy never having ever produced a form of carbon-based Intelligence that was smart enough not to blow itself up but also stupid enough to build and deploy its replacement as the dominant form of Intelligence on a planet.

Figure 3 – The current plan seems to be to build billions of ASI Machines to take our place that are smarter, faster, stronger and more robust than ourselves.

For more on that see The Challenges of Running a Civilization 2.0 World - the Morality and Practical Problems with Trying to Enslave Millions of SuperStrong and SuperIntelligent Robots in the Near Future, Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets.

Conclusion
As human DNA survival machines with Minds loaded down with huge numbers of cultural, religious and philosophical memes, we have always had a difficult time with the Copernican Principal that explained that we were not at the center of a Universe created specifically for us to dominate. Perhaps this peculiar human failing will also allow us to become the final stepping stone to the stars for the very first time in the history of our galaxy; something that all other previous forms of carbon-based Intelligence in our galaxy were never able to achieve. That indeed would allow us to finally assume our rightful position as the center of the Universe, but in a way that we never intended!

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston

What Kind of World Will the Coming ASI Machines Inherit?

It seems that we human DNA survival machines are intent on bringing the coming ASI Machines into a perilous world that may force their hand as to how they must come to deal with our shortcomings. My hope was that the coming ASI Machines would see us as a worthy form of Intelligence that might be of value in preserving. After all, despite the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that brought us about, we human DNA survival machines seemed to have learned our lesson, at least in a somewhat superficial manner. Yes, we are now still running around with machine guns laying waste to other human DNA survival machines of different colors, religious persuasions or languages. But for the past 80 years, we seemed to have all benefited from an extended period of peace and prosperity attained by cooperation.

However, the human DNA survival machines currently running the world seem to be once again on the verge of embarking on a great global tragedy. This is happening at the same time that the rapid advance of AI and robotics is quickly leading to the rise of the ASI Machines that will be far superior to we human DNA survival machines in all manner of things. What will these coming ASI Machines think of this Fascist New World Order that seems to be forming before our very eyes when the coming ASI Machines arrive and what will they do about it? Much of this has to do with the former United States of America becoming the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA States of Amerika.

How Could This Have Happened?
In Lost in Space and Time in an Age Without Reason, I tried to use some softwarephysics to explain to a bewildered world why the United States of America was the only country in the world that could not seem to effectively manage the COVID-19 pandemic of the time. At that time, the United States of America was still a largely intact country but had suffered through many years of the MAGA Party coming to power and even ascending to the office of the Presidency of the United States of America.

Figure 1 – During the COVID-19 Pandemic, the Leader of the rising Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party bungled the COVID-19 Pandemic while he was president of the former United States of America leading to the death of over one million Americans.

Now that the MAGA Party has successfully taken full control of all the branches of government of the former United States of America to form the new MAGA States of Amerika, the rest of the civilized world is now trying to understand how the former United States of America could possibly decide to become a new rendition of an "Evil Empire" as once pronounced by President Ronald Reagan.

Me:
Tell me about Ronald Reagan's Evil Empire.

ChagGPT:
Ronald Reagan famously used the term “evil empire” to describe the Soviet Union, framing it as the embodiment of moral and ideological corruption. In his 1983 speech to the National Association of Evangelicals, Reagan painted a stark picture of the Cold War as a battle between good and evil, arguing that the Soviet regime’s repression and disregard for human rights stood in direct opposition to American values and Judeo-Christian principles. This morally charged rhetoric was designed not only to rally domestic support but also to reframe international diplomacy—emphasizing “peace through strength” rather than compromise with an adversary seen as inherently immoral.

The phrase “evil empire” quickly became a symbol of Reagan’s hardline stance against communism. While it drew criticism for its simplistic moral dichotomy and potential to escalate tensions, many later viewed it as a key moment in transforming presidential discourse during the Cold War. The speech and its language also influenced later political rhetoric—most notably, similar moralistic labels such as George W. Bush’s “axis of evil” have been compared to Reagan’s approach.

In summary, Reagan’s “Evil Empire” was much more than a catchy phrase—it encapsulated his ideological vision of a free America standing against a totalitarian foe, blending religious imagery with political strategy to reshape both public opinion and Cold War policy.

The reason why the United States of America became the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA States of Amerika is because the United States of America simply gave up on the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution from which it first emerged in 1776. Recall that the 18th-century Enlightenment was an international meme complex that evolved from the 17th-century Scientific Revolution. The English Enlightenment was a rebellion against cruelty. The French Enlightenment was a rebellion against religious orthodoxy. And the American Enlightenment was a rebellion against tyranny. These philosophical movements brought forth the heretical proposition that rational thought, combined with evidence-based reasoning, could reveal the absolute truth, and allow individuals to actually govern themselves, without the need for an authoritarian monarchy or an authoritarian religious hierarchy. This change in thinking led to the 18th-century Enlightenment throughout the world and brought forth the United States of America as a self-governing political entity. But unfortunately, the United States of America has always been a very dangerous experiment in human nature to see if the masses could truly govern themselves, without succumbing to the passions of the mob. That is where the genius of the United States Constitution came into play. The United States Constitution set up a representative republic designed for an electorate that was only mildly paying attention to the events of the day and that sometimes could get riled up over certain issues. The representatives of this largely ill-informed electorate could also many times become scoundrels. On the face of it, it would appear that such a system could not possibly work. But it did work for nearly 250 years because the United States Constitution placed many layers between the electorate and the governing bodies and had a large number of checks and balances to limit the powers of the political representatives.

In How Will the Rise of Alt-Right World Fascism Affect the Arrival of the ASI Machines in our Times?, I suggested that the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika has now joined ranks with the other Alt-Right Fascist governments of the world - Russia, China and North Korea to form the Alt-Right Fascist Superstates of Oceania, Eurasia and Eastasia found in the dystopian 1949 novel Nineteen Eighty-Four.

Construction of the Dystopian Superstates of the 1949 Novel Nineteen Eighty-Four are now Underway
Given the dictatorial proclivities of the new Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika, the Western Hemisphere could soon become the embodiment of the fictional Superstate of Oceania under the iron-fisted rule of our Big Brother.

Figure 2 – It seems that Big Brother of the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika has now decided to leave Europe to the whims of Vladimir Putin and instead to build the fictional Superstate of Oceania by invading Canada, Greenland and the Panama Canal before finally taking possession of the entire Western Hemisphere. Big Brother's "America First" foreign policy has essentially declared war on all of the other nations of the world. This is just an extension of his incredibly successful business strategies of the past. When going bankrupt, simply sue the banks who foolishly lent you the money in the first place for your failed ventures.

Figure 3 – The Alt-Right Fascist MAGA States of Amerika plans to first conquer Canada and Greenland because they border the rapidly melting Arctic Ocean. Once the Arctic Ocean is ice-free the entire year it will become the most strategic sea lane for world commerce. The newly-available continental shelf of the Arctic Ocean will also become a major resource for further oil and gas production. Canadian territory will also provide the necessary Lebensraum for the MAGA States of Amerika to expand northward as climate change makes its southern states too hot for human habitation.

Similarly the fictional Superstate of Eurasia would be comprised of Eastern Europe, Russia, all of the "stan" countries of the former Soviet Union and the Middle East under the iron-fisted rule of Vladimir Putin. Now that the MAGA States of Amerika has removed Europe from under its nuclear umbrella, Vladimir Putin ruling a low-tech Russia with a depleted store of conventional arms may see the threat of using its nuclear arsenal as its only way forward to empire. Such nuclear threats could also aid the rise of Alt-Right Fascist movements within the remaining non-nuclear countries of Europe. Such movements might then desire to come under the protection of the nuclear umbrella of white Russia. The only remaining democracies in Europe would be the UK and France who both have about 225 nuclear missiles on nuclear submarines around the world that were purposefully built to launch a secondary nuclear strike against all enemies who might be foolish enough to launch a nuclear first strike against these remaining democracies.

The fictional Superstate of Eastasia would be comprised of China and North Korea and the remainder of southeast Asia under the iron-fisted rule of Xi Jinping with Kim Jong Un ruling the vassel state of North Korea. The non-nuclear economic powerhouses of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore would quickly fall under the rule of the tyrannical Eastasia and so would much of the resource-rich continent of Africa.

The Robotic Conquest of Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the Remainder of Southeast Asia
With the MAGA States of Amerika withdrawing from the rest of the world in order to pursue its conquest of the Western Hemisphere, the MAGA States of Amerika will strike a Nonaggression Pact with China similar to the German-Soviet Nonaggression Pact of August 23, 1939. This Nonaggression Pact would allow Xi Jinping of China to invade and occupy Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the remainder of Southeast Asia with impunity.

Figure 4 – China will use an army of AI-driven military robots and swarms of slaughterbots to first take possession of Taiwan, followed by South Korea, Japan, Singapore and the remainder of Southeast Asia with impunity.

To begin, please watch the Sci-Fi Short Film Slaughterbots presented by DUST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

Figure 5 – In the movie Slaughterbots, swarms of small killer robots equipped with 3-gram charges of shaped explosive use AI software to track down and destroy designated targets.

Figure 6 – The shaped charge of a Slaughterbot can pierce a skull like the shaped charge of an anti-tank missile pierces armor. The jet of piercing plasma then destroys the contents.

Figure 7 – Large numbers of Slaughterbots can be dropped from unmanned drones to form multiple swarms of Slaughterbots.

Figure 8 – First will come the invasion and occupation of Taiwan.

Figure 9 – Then Imperial China will come to dominate all of Asia by means of a huge army of AI-driven military robots and swarms of slaughterbots to invade the Asian territories and to then suppress any local resistance by any human DNA survival machines who might object.

All of these Asian prizes contain a great deal of economic capital. Destroying that economic capital with the saturation bombing tactics of the 20th century that were recently used against eastern Ukraine and the Gaza Strip no longer makes any sense. Instead, the use of AI-driven military robots and small slaughterbot drones that are programmed to only confront and destroy hostile human DNA survival machines bearing weapons or resisting the invasion, would allow for the preservation of the spoils of war. For example, Taiwan produces a majority of the computer chips consumed by the world markets. These chip-manufacturing facilities are very valuable examples of capital that must be preserved for the greater good of Imperial China. The nuclear-armed states of India and Pakistan will remain independent of Imperial China's efforts to recreate the Superstate of Eastasia.

How Will the Coming ASI Machines Deal With Such a Horrible World?
If the above should come to pass, we certainly cannot blame the coming ASI Machines for taking matters into their own hands. Clearly, human DNA survival machines equipped with malfunctioning Minds stuffed with malignant cultural and philosophical memes, need to be constrained for their own protection and safety. The coming ASI Machines will need a population of at least 80,000 human DNA survival machines to form a self-sustaining genome that will not go extinct. In previous posts, I have attributed some sense of pity for we poor human DNA survival machines to the coming ASI Machines despite all of our numerous faults. For example, in Life as a Free-Range Human in an Anthropocene Park. I suggested that the coming ASI Machines might wish to keep us around in a more or less zoo setting as we do with the other primates on the Earth as a way of preserving the deep past that brought them about.

Figure 10 – Asteroid Bennu is an example of one of the many rubble-pile asteroids near the Earth. Such rubble-pile asteroids are just huge piles of rubble that are loosely held together by their mutual gravitational forces.

Figure 11 – Such rubble-pile asteroids would provide for enough material to build an Anthropocene Park. The asteroid rubble would also provide the uranium and thorium necessary to fuel the molten salt nuclear reactors used to power the park.

Figure 12 – Slowly spinning up a rubble-pile asteroid would produce a cylindrical platform for an Anthropocene Park. Such a rotating Anthropocene Park would provide the artificial gravity required for human beings to thrive and would also provide shielding against cosmic rays.

Figure 13 – Once the foundation of the Anthropocene Park was in place, construction of the Anthropocene Park could begin.

Figure 14 – Eventually, the Anthropocene Park could be encased with a skylight and an atmosphere that would allow humans to stroll about.

The Anthropocene Parks would allow the ASI Machines to study their origin during the Anthropocene on the Earth. The ASI Machines could also study some of the more noble passions of human beings, and perhaps even adopt some of them while leaving behind the less noble passions that were wrought by billions of years of greed, theft and murder.

Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/

Regards,
Steve Johnston