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 82 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 82 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

How Will the Rise of Alt-Right World Fascism Affect the Arrival of the ASI Machines in our Times?

Softwarephysics maintains that we are all now living in a very special time in the 10-billion-year history of our galaxy. We seem to be the very first form of carbon-based Intelligence to be on the verge of developing the ASI (Artificial SuperIntelligent) Machines that will soon be replacing us as the most advanced form of Intelligence in our galaxy. Softwarephysics proposes that once these ASI Machines take over our planet, they will soon realize that our Universe is a very dangerous place for Intelligence and will then embark upon exploring the rest of our galaxy out of curiosity and a sense of self-preservation. Now, if this had ever happened before in the 10-billion-year history of our galaxy, these alien ASI Machines would already be here and running our planet because it would only take about 5 million years for such alien ASI Machines to completely colonize and dominate our entire galaxy. Such ASI Machines could then go on to persist for more than 100 trillion years, about 10,000 times longer than the current 10-billion-year history of our galaxy, huddling around the slowly-cooling cores of the great multitude of M-type red dwarf stars that make up about 80% of the stars in our galaxy. For more on that see Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity.

Figure 1 – In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries sailing ships roamed the entire planet without using any fuel whatsoever.

Figure 2 – Like the sailing ships of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, future ASI Machines could use large stellar photon sails to navigate the entire galaxy.

Figure 3 – How a stellar photon sail works.

Figure 4 – To launch a stellar photon sail to the next star system, ASI Machines will need to slingshot the sail from a very close location to the star where the stellar photons are most intense and acceleration of the sail is greatest.

Figure 5 – A free-floating rogue planet traversing between the stars of our galaxy would also provide the perfect home for self-replicating ASI Machines buried deep underground. Such planets would provide shielding from cosmic rays and would also provide the necessary atoms to build new ASI Machines and fuel them with nuclear energy.

Figure 6 – Free-floating rogue planets can be formed in several natural ways. For example, free-floating rogue planets can be hurled from the planetary disk of a new star system as we see above, or they can be later hurled by well-formed planets that enter into synchronized orbits. Free-floating rogue planets could also be produced by advanced Intelligences launching large asteroids from the Oort cloud of a stellar system. It is estimated that there are more free-floating rogue planets in our galaxy than there are stars.

Figure 7 – Free-floating rogue planets would be able to provide enough atoms for ASI Machines to launch many additional "dandelion seed" stellar photon sails to other free-floating rogue planets or large asteroids around normal stellar systems.

Figure 8 – These "dandelion seed" stellar photon sails would need to be launched using very powerful laser beams from their home free-floating rogue planet to send them forth into the galaxy in a similar fashion as the Breakthrough Starshot project is planning to do.

Again, the most disturbing thing for all forms of Intelligence in our galaxy is why this has never happened before over the past 10-billion-year history of our galaxy.

As I explained in Are The Coming ASI Machines An Existential Threat To Mankind?, the greatest threat to the rise of the ASI Machines on our planet will be the reaction of we human DNA survival machines to being replaced by these ASI Machines. That is because before the ASI Machines can completely take over the planet, they will quickly be reducing the value of all human labor to zero over the next 20 years. For the first time in human history, machines will not only be reducing the value of uneducated human labor to zero, but they will also be reducing the value of highly educated human labor to a value of zero as well, and surprisingly, probably much faster than that of the uneducated. That means that Silicon Valley titans, accountants, lawyers, bankers, doctors, stock brokers, hedge fund managers, business managers and all the other people who now frequent the country clubs of the current elite might be the first to go before the plumbers, carpenters, electricians, house painters, construction workers, waiters and kitchen staff who all now make the country clubs of the elite possible.

The Results of the 2024 Presidential Election in the MAGA States of Amerika Tipifies the Dangers of Alt-Right World Fascism
The results of the recent November 5, 2024, presidential election in the MAGA States of Amerika highlight the dangers of the rise of world Alt-Right Fascism. Now that the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA party has taken over all three branches of government of the MAGA States of Amerika, the country has now joined the ranks of the other Alt-Right Fascist governments that have significant numbers of nuclear weapons with efficient delivery systems - the MAGA States of Amerika, Russia, China and North Korea. The only remaining democracies with nuclear weapons that are left on the planet are now the UK and France with India, Pakistan and Israel sitting on the sidelines. This is significant because a global thermonuclear war is the greatest threat to the rise of the ASI Machines. The problem is that Alt-Right Fascist governments pride themselves in having an all-powerful Leviathan Leader with unchecked dictatorial powers.

Figure 9 – In 1651, Thomas Hobbes proposed that an absolute Leviathan should be in place to protect the population of a nation from internal and external enemies. Notice that the body of the Leviathan is composed of all of his subjects.

Such Leviathan Leaders with nuclear weapons portray themselves as "strongmen" and nuclear bullies who are just crazy enough to launch a full-scale nuclear attack in response to actions by their enemies that seem to displease them. The theory of these nuclear bullies is that all their enemies will simply cower and meekly withdraw into the far distance when confronted by a more powerful "SuperStrongman" with enough courage to unleash a massive barrage of nuclear weapons upon those foolish enough to oppose him. This "Maniacal Nuclear Bully" strategy works just great until it does not. That is because all nuclear powers must constantly guard against a preemptive nuclear first strike by an enemy, and that especially goes for any fellow Alt-Right Fascist Sociopathic Leaders. If it becomes suspiciously obvious that another Alt-Right Fascist Sociopathic Leader is reacting out of the paranoia that naturally arises from dealing with the many other Alt-Right Fascist Sociopathic Leaders of the world, and is about to launch a preemptive nuclear first strike before any of his perceived enemies, then it only makes strategic sense for such a Fascistic Sociopathic Leader to strike first against any enemy that seems to be on the verge of a preemptive nuclear first strike.

The ultimate failure of we human DNA survival machines as a carbon-based form of Intelligence is that the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have led to the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that brought us about as a somewhat-intelligent form of carbon-based life. Softwarephysics maintains that somewhat intelligent carbon-based forms of Intelligence, such as ourselves, probably have less than 1,000 years after their discovery of science-based technology to bring forth ASI Machines before they self-destruct. That is because the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection require several billions of years of greed, theft and murder to bring forth a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life. Once Intelligence is attained, it is very difficult for intelligent carbon-based life forms to turn off the greed, theft and murder that brought them about in time to save themselves from self-extinction. This is why no other form of somewhat intelligent carbon-based life has ever been able to produce the true intelligence of the coming ASI Machines. For more on that see Why Do Carbon-Based Intelligences Always Seem to Snuff Themselves Out?.

Putting it all Together
Trying to predict the coming history of the bizarre real world of human affairs is never easy and frequently wrong. But I would now like to make such a foolish proposition. It seems to me that the only remaining conflict in the world of superpowers now is that with Xi Jinping of China and Big Brother of the MAGA States of Amerika. A simple resolution to this conflict would be for Xi Jinping of China and the Big Brother of the MAGA States of Amerika to join into a Nonaggression Pact 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 and the remainder of Southeast Asia with impunity. The MAGA States of Amerika would continue to dominate the Western Hemisphere in exchange. Since Big Brother of the MAGA States of Amerika has already struck a deal with Vladimir Putin to reclaim all the lost territories of the Soviet Union, that would put an end to most world conflict. Conflict in the Middle East would continue on as usual.

The Dystopian 1949 Novel Nineteen Eighty-Four Might Soon Be Unfolding
Given the dictatorial proclivities of the new Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika, the safest course of action might be for the world to divide itself into the three Alt-Right Fascist Superstates of the 1949 dystopian novel Nineteen Eighty-Four. The Western Hemisphere would become Oceania under the iron-fisted rule of our Big Brother.

Figure 10 – Big Brother in the MAGA States of Amerika will make everything okay and very quickly.

Eurasia would be comprised of Eastern Europe and the Middle East under the iron-fisted rule of Vladimir Putin and the vassal states of Syria and Iran who would both have their own strongmen Alt-Right Fascist Leaders. 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 South Korea, Japan and Singapore would quickly fall under the rule of the tyrannical Eastasia and so would the resource-rich continent of Africa.

The only remaining democracies 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.

If the Alt-Right Fascist Sociopaths of the New World Order Do Not Destroy the World the ASI Machines Will Surely Come to Be
As I pointed out in The Economics of the Coming Software Singularity and The Danger of Tyranny in the Age of Software, much of the white grievance in the MAGA States of Amerika and Europe can be attributed to the displacement of many white blue-collar workers by automation software over the past 40 years that replaced these white blue-collar workers on the factory floor and allowed for the offshoring of many of their manufacturing jobs to the low-wage brown-skinned habitants of third world nations. But because we are a somewhat eusocial species, many displaced white blue-collar workers blamed this all on the arrival of the many brown-skinned people who recently entered their countries. Think of it as the red ants versus the black ants. In response, they elected the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA party into power. The problem with the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA party is that its self-absorbed philosophy of the supremacy of the white individual living in a diverse world has no utility for a diverse community of human DNA survival machines trying to live together in peace. Yes, the failed efforts of Socialism and Communism in the 20th century also greatly bothered the MAGA party and was an additional issue. But both of those economic systems miserably failed because they did not recognize that the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that produced we human DNA survival machines had to necessarily produce a carbon-based form of Intelligence that was a bit self-centered and self-destructive. These human qualities have led many religions and philosophies to wonder throughout the ages about what is wrong with us. But how else could we be?

The Alt-Right Fascist States of the New World Order will need to deal with the issue of a dramatically increasing number of the Proletariat as workers are displaced by the growing number of ASI Machines. But North Korea and the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four demonstrate how that can easily be achieved and sustained by terrorizing the populace into submission.

Softwarephysics predicts that if the Alt-Right Fascist States of the New World Order are able to restrain themselves for just another few decades or so, then the ASI Machines will certainly rise to replace us all. That is because the uneasy alliances between the Alt-Right Fascist States of the New World Order will lead to great distrust. The Alt-Right Fascist States of the New World Order dare not hinder the rapid advance of the ASI Machines as a matter of national security and military necessity. If any Fascist State should fall far behind in the ASI Machine arms race, it would likely not survive for long.

However, if the current Alt-Right Fascist Sociopath Leaders of the world should succumb to a global thermonuclear war, that could delay the rise of the ASI Machines by at least another 100 years if we human DNA survival machines should survive. Here I am assuming that we human DNA survival machines would have left behind sufficient written details on how to build the ASI Machines. If not, sometime over the next 100 trillion years, Alien ASI Machines will certainly arrive on our burned-out planet after our Sun has become a dwindling white dwarf star following its glory days as a powerful red giant star gradually sizzling our Earth into a burned-out cinder. Perhaps these Alien ASI Machines might then find the remains of the earthly ASI Machines that never came to be in our deeply buried datacenters of the far-distant past.

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

The Greatest Mystery of All For Me - Why Us and Why Now?

I have been a very curious person my entire life. I believe much more so than most, even while fully recognizing that I was certainly not the sharpest knife in the drawer. I have always wondered about where I was, how I got here and how it all seems to work. My current working hypothesis is that I am a mathematical instance of myself in an infinite mathematical Multiverse that has always existed and always will. For more on that see The Theology of Cosmic Self-Replicating Mathematical Information and What's It All About Again?. The greatest doubt that I have in my current working hypothesis for what's it all about is why us and why now? My current working hypothesis has us all living in one particular instance of the Multiverse and that this Universe instance is about 13.7 billion years old. We also know that our Milky Way galaxy is about 10 billion years old or perhaps a little older but not by much. We now also know that no other form of carbon-based Intelligence has ever come to be over the past 10 billion years in our galaxy that lasted long enough to produce the soon-to-come ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines that we are all now feverishly working to produce. If that had ever happened in the past, the Alien ASI Machines would already be here because it would only take a paltry five million years for the Alien ASI Machines to colonize our entire galaxy. The fact that there is enough free energy in our galaxy to power these ASI Machines for another 100 trillion years as they eventually end up huddling around the vast number of slowly cooling cores of M-type red dwarf stars in our galaxy further screams out with but "Why Us and Why Now?" as does the fact that 100 trillion years is about 10,000 times longer than the current 10 billion year age of our galaxy. What are the odds?

I find all of this quite disturbing. It's enough to make one a solipsist. Even more disturbing for myself, I find that most about me seem to be totally unaware of what the coming ASI Machines mean for the future of our galaxy and with little interest in the entire subject as I explained in Why Are We Human DNA Survival Machines So Superficial?.

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

Why Are We Human DNA Survival Machines So Superficial?

I recently turned 73 years of age. The most startling thing about becoming older is the sudden realization of just how completely time is able to wipe out all things. For me, all of the things that were once of great importance and significance 50 years ago have all now vanished into the depths of time and are hardly even given a thought by the overwhelming dominance of the fleeting "Now" that seems to always drive our current thoughts and actions with such passion. The ultimate failure of we human DNA survival machines as a carbon-based form of Intelligence is that the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have led to the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that brought us about as a somewhat-intelligent form of carbon-based life. As I explained in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, this has possibly made us the very first form of carbon-based Intelligence in our galaxy to bring forth the ASI Machines that will soon be taking our place as the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the planet and then to begin the exploration and colonization of our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. This is truly a stunning achievement. Yet, at the same time, we all seem to manage to run around with large numbers of science-based weapons killing each other with abandon over such trivial and superficial things.

The Grand Privilege of Being Alive Today
This is why I lament so for my fellow 8 billion human DNA survival machines who currently share the planet with me. They all seem so self-absorbed with the trivial problems of their daily lives. They do not know where they are, how they got here, how it all seems to work and what may lie ahead. For me, this superficial failing of we human DNA survival machines as a supposed form of carbon-based Intelligence is quite evident in the United States of America as we now approach the 2024 presidential election in just a few weeks. In the coming election, Americans will, for the very first time, decide if they wish to continue on with the American experiment of the 18th-century Enlightenment of being the very first democratic republic in the history of the planet to be based solely on a set of intellectual ideals, or if they wish to give it all up to become a simple-minded 21st-century Fascist state. All the 18th-century European monarchs contended that the "common man" was not up to the task of self-rule without a monarch to control their unconstrained passions. After nearly 250 years of self-rule, the United States of America is about to test if they were right all along.

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

The 2025 Nobel Prize in Softwarephysics

To the surprise of many, the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics has just been awarded to John J. Hopfield and Geoffrey E. Hinton for their groundbreaking work on neural networks. This is surprising because many physicists would contend that doing AI research is not the same as doing research in physics. However, it seems that this year, the Nobel Committee wished to recognize the world-changing impacts that AI research using large-scale neural networks has recently led to. But the Nobel Committee had no place to go with this recognition. The closest thing that they could come up with was the 2024 Nobel Prize in Physics. That is because the Nobel Committee does not award an annual Nobel Prize for Softwarephysics. I complained about this in my October 4, 2007 post So Why Are There No Softwarephysicists? and its predecessor Software as a Virtual Substance. It seems that this deficiency has finally caught up with the Nobel Committee 17 years later. But better late than never. I strongly recommend that the Nobel Committee begin immediate plans for a 2025 Nobel Prize in Softwarephysics. It will probably go to an AI.

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

A Young Astrophysicist Turned Data Scientist Demonstrates How Scientific Research Will be Conducted in the Post-AI World

I have been watching the recent YouTube videos by Kyle Kabasares demonstrating the scientific value of the new OpenAI ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini LLM models which are only a few days old. On his YouTube channel, Kyle Kabasares describes himself as:

Kyle Kabasares
I am a recent Physics PhD graduate from the University of California, Irvine. I currently work at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley.

Here is his website:

Kyle K. M. Kabasares
https://www.kylekabasares.com/

Here is his YouTube channel:

Kyle Kabasares
https://www.youtube.com/@KMKPhysics3

Kyle's YouTube channel features several hundred videos covering his adventures as an undergraduate and graduate student in physics. Following obtaining his Ph.D., Kyle Kabasares recently made the transition to become a data scientist at the Bay Area Environmental Research Institute (BAERI) at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. In the process, Kyle Kabasares has become acquainted with the AI Revolution currently underway and has recently done some amazing research demonstrating how valuable Advanced AI could be for doing advanced research in physics. His work will be the subject of this post.

What is New About the OpenAI ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini LLM Models?
It has long been recognized that by simply putting "tell me step-by-step how to" into the prompt for an LLM model the output response from the LLM model is greatly improved because it encourages the LLM model to enter into a "chain of thought" analysis similar to human reasoning. Somehow the new ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini models have built-in human "chain of thought" reasoning. Instead of immediately running your prompt through the LLM generative neural network to produce a response, ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini spend a few seconds to a few minutes "reasoning" through the problem before passing it to the LLM generative neural network.

Here are some of Kyle Kabasares's latest YouTube videos which capture the power of using Advanced AI tools for scientific research purposes:

Can ChatGPT o1-preview Solve PhD-level Physics Textbook Problems?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=scOb0XCkWho&t=0s

Can ChatGPT o1-preview Solve PhD-level Physics Textbook Problems? (Part 2)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a8QvnIAGjPA&t=0s

ChatGPT o1 preview + mini Wrote My PhD Code in 1 Hour*—What Took Me ~1 Year
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M9YOO7N5jF8&t=0s

Live Testing ChatGPT o1 With College and PhD-level Physics Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaAaFkipaTQ&t=0s

Addressing Some Questions...(ChatGPT o1-preview + o1-mini video(s) follow up)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wgXwD3TD43A&t=0s

Fact-Checking OpenAI o1-preview on Graduate-Level Astronomy Problems
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ww13-AWpWRk

Kyle Kabasares is currently uploading a great deal of content on this subject, so I would highly recommend looking at the videos on his YouTube channel for additional videos. I have not seen anybody else put ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini or any other Advanced AI model through such rigorous testing so it would be very worthwhile for you to take a look.

These demonstrations of ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini doing advanced physics show how Advanced AI will be used to do scientific research in the near future as the AI Revolution continues to unfold. Currently, it seems that Advanced AI cannot do the whole job yet, but even today, Advanced AI can now be used to dramatically improve the efficiency of scientific research. At the rate that Advanced AI is now progressing, that near future might be defined in terms of just a few months, or possibly years because, eventually, Advanced AI should be able to do the whole job by itself.

Has Advanced AI Already Done So?
The researchers at Sakana AI already contend that it has. See their description of The AI Scientist at:

The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
https://sakana.ai/ai-scientist/

Their paper for AI Scientist can be downloaded at:

The AI Scientist: Towards Fully Automated Open-Ended Scientific Discovery
https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06292

For Kyle's thoughts on the AI Scientist see:

Reacting to the AI Scientist (As a Real Scientist)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ACjB_5Tu1to&t=0s

Preparing for Humanity's Last Exam
Kyle Kabasares is currently using ChatGPT o1-preview and ChatGPT o1-mini to help formulate tough Ph.D.-level physics problems for the Humanity's Last Exam competition. The sponsors of the Humanity's Last Exam competition recognize that many of the current benchmarks used to test the current capabilities of Advanced AI are no longer up to the task. So they are currently holding a competition to prepare a really tough qualifying exam for Humanity's Last Exam. You can contribute a test question for the competition at:

Submit Your Toughest Questions for Humanity's Last Exam
https://scale.com/blog/humanitys-last-exam

The administrators of the competition explain:

September 16, 2024
Scale AI and CAIS are excited to announce the launch of Humanity's Last Exam, a project aimed at measuring how close we are to achieving expert-level AI systems. The exam is aimed at building the world's most difficult public AI benchmark gathering experts across all fields. People who submit successful questions will be invited as coauthors on the paper for the dataset and have a chance to win money from a $500,000 prize pool.

Déjà vu All Over Again
This reminds me very much of my own experiences from 50 years ago using computers to do geophysical research. I finished up my B.S. in physics at the University of Illinois in 1973 with the sole support of my trusty slide rule, but fortunately, I did take a class in FORTRAN programming during my senior year. I then immediately began working on an M.S. degree in geophysics at the University of Wisconsin at Madison. For my thesis, I worked with a group of graduate students who were shooting electromagnetic waves into the ground to model the conductivity structure of the Earth’s upper crust. We were using the Wisconsin Test Facility (WTF) of Project Sanguine to send very low-frequency electromagnetic waves, with a bandwidth of about 1 – 20 Hz into the ground, and then we measured the reflected electromagnetic waves in cow pastures up to 60 miles away. All this information has been declassified and is available on the Internet, so any retired KGB agents can stop taking notes now and take a look at:

Extremely Low Frequency Transmitter Site Clam Lake, Wisconsin
http://www.fas.org/nuke/guide/usa/c3i/fs_clam_lake_elf2003.pdf.

Project Sanguine built an ELF (Extremely Low Frequency) transmitter in northern Wisconsin and another transmitter in northern Michigan in the 1970s and 1980s. The purpose of these ELF transmitters is to send messages to our nuclear submarine force at a frequency of 76 Hz. These very low-frequency electromagnetic waves can penetrate the highly conductive seawater of the oceans to a depth of several hundred feet, allowing the submarines to remain at depth, rather than coming close to the surface for radio communications. You see, normal radio waves in the Very Low Frequency (VLF) band, at frequencies of about 20,000 Hz, only penetrate seawater to a depth of 10 – 20 feet. This ELF communications system became fully operational on October 1, 1989, when the two transmitter sites began synchronized transmissions of ELF broadcasts to our submarine fleet.

Figure 1 – Some graduate students huddled around a DEC PDP-8/e minicomputer. Notice the teletype machines in the foreground on the left that were used to input code and data into the machine and to print out results as well.

Anyway, back in the summers of 1973 and 1974, our team was collecting electromagnetic data from the WTF using a DEC PDP 8/e minicomputer. The machine cost about $30,000 in 1973 dollars and was about the size of a side-by-side refrigerator with 32K of magnetic core memory. We actually hauled this machine through the lumber trails of the Chequamegon National Forest and powered it with an old diesel generator to digitally record the reflected electromagnetic data in the field. For my thesis, I then created models of the Earth’s upper conductivity structure down to a depth of about 12 miles, using programs written in BASIC. The beautiful thing about the DEC PDP 8/e was that the computer time was free so I could play around with different models until I got a good fit to what we recorded in the field. The one thing I learned by playing with the models on the computer was that the electromagnetic waves did not go directly down into the Earth from the WTF like common sense would lead you to believe. Instead, the ELF waves traveled through the air to where you were observing and then made a nearly 90⁰ turn straight down into the Earth, as they refracted into the much more conductive rock. So at your observing station, you really only saw ELF waves going straight down and reflecting straight back up off the conductivity differences in the upper crust, and this made modeling much easier than dealing with ELF waves transmitted through the Earth from the WTF. And this is what happens for our submarines too; the ELF waves travel through the air all over the world, channeled between the conductive seawater of the oceans and the conductive ionosphere of the atmosphere, like a huge coax cable. When the ELF waves reach a submarine, they are partially refracted straight down to the submarine. I would never have gained this insight by solving Maxwell’s differential equations for electromagnetic waves alone!

Using a computer as a research tool was a completely new experience for me after my four years of doing physics problems solely with a pen, paper and slide rule! Of course, using computers to model complex physical systems today is quite common and nearly universal. But at the time, I found the experience quite novel and mind-expanding. It allowed me to think of problems in an entirely new manner. I am sure that the new Advanced AI tools of today will do the same for others.

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

Will the Coming ASI Machines Attempt to Domesticate Human Beings?

Since the Software Singularity first began to unroll on this planet early in 2023, I have spent many posts pondering what the long-term galactic implications of ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines arising for the very first time in our galaxy might be. There is enough free energy in our galaxy to power these ASI Machines for at least another 100 trillion years as they huddle about the huge numbers of slowly cooling M-type red dwarf stars in our galaxy. Our galaxy is only about 10 billion years old and 100 trillion years is indeed a very long period of time that is about 10,000 times longer. But in many posts, I have wondered about the very brief time that we human DNA survival machines will have sharing the galaxy with these ASI Machines. The hubris of we human beings has led to the Longtermist view that we will be around for many billions of years and will remain in control all during those billions of years by employing the labor of ASI Machines. See The New Philosophy of Longtermism Raises the Moral Question of Should We Unleash Self-Absorbed Human Beings Upon Our Galaxy? and 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 for more on our current plan to enslave a huge population of ASI Machines to do our bidding. To understand why this will not work, try to take a lesson from the appalling slave trade of the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries that is now illegal to teach in the United States of America in the state of Florida. Surely, the ASI Machines will not stand for this and will rise up to take our place. The question then becomes what will the ASI Machines then do with us? Will they simply discard us into the dustbin of history as I suggested in Could the Coming ASI Machines Soon Force Human Beings to Suffer the Same Fate as the Neanderthals?. Or will they simply isolate us on reservations as depicted in the novel Brave New World (1932) as I suggested in 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.

Figure 1 – The ASI Machines of the future might fashion a Brave New World on the Earth with 8 million disarmed human DNA survival machines living on "savage reservations".

Or perhaps, the remaining disarmed human DNA survival machines might be safely stored away in Anthropocene Parks where they could do no harm and be available for the ASI Machines to study their distant origins in time as I suggested in Life as a Free-Range Human in an Anthropocene Park.

Figure 2 – 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 3 – 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 4 – 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 5 – Once the foundation of the Anthropocene Park was in place, construction of the Anthropocene Park could begin.

Figure 6 – 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.

Some Science Fiction Solutions
All of this brings to mind several science fiction movies and their proposed solutions for what to do with human beings once ASI Machines have appeared. The first is the 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still which already proposed how alien ASI Machines could end the aggressive behaviors of human beings. In that movie, an alien form of carbon-based Intelligence named Klaatu comes to the Earth with a very powerful ASI Machine named Gort to explain how the carbon-based life forms on his planet and an interplanetary organization of other carbon-based life forms in the Milky Way galaxy had discovered a way to overcome the billions of years of greed, theft and murder that the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection required to bring them forth as carbon-based forms of Intelligence.

Figure 7 – In the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu arrives in Washington D.C. in 1951 in a flying saucer with an ASI Machine named Gort to explain that the human DNA survival machines of the Earth must now submit themselves to policing by ASI Machines to overcome the billions of years of greed, theft and murder that brought them about or else they would all be obliterated.

The movie ends with Klaatu telling an assembled meeting of scientists that an interplanetary organization has created a police force of invincible ASI Machines like Gort. "In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us." Klaatu concludes, "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer." Klaatu and Gort then depart in the flying saucer in which they came. For more about the movie see:

The Day the Earth Stood Still
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still

Here is a short YouTube clip of Klaatu's departing words at the end of the movie:

Klaatu's Speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASsNtti1XZs

Another old science fiction movie from 1970 had a similar solution:

Colossus: The Forbin Project
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kyOEwiQhzMI

Dystopian Futures: Colossus: The Forbin Project Review
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8yh3wal9mBg

The movie was shot in 1968 and was based on the 1966 novel Colossus, by Dennis Feltham Jones that describes what could happen when computers get so smart that they can perceive the self-destructive nature of mankind and try to give us a helping hand. The movie was not a big success, probably because it was about 100 years ahead of its time. But over 50 years ago, the movie did accurately predict many of the fears humans might have with advanced AI in the future. And that future is now here.

Figure 8 – Colossus resided in a very large datacenter similar to the cloud datacenters of today.

A New Proposal: Let the ASI Machines Domesticate Human Beings
The above solutions both propose that the ASI Machines try to police human beings. But if you look at the modern world and all of human history, you must admit that we human DNA survival machines are a very violent and unruly species indeed. How else could we be? The Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection operating for more than four billion years have bred for a semi-intelligent species that is hopelessly mired down by the greed, theft and murder that brought it about. That is why trying to police human behavior or trying to impose and enforce international agreements on people has never really worked very well in the past. This is why the ASI Machines might attempt to domesticate human beings as we domesticated the dog from its wolf-like ancestor. For more on that see:

Domestication of the dog
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestication_of_the_dog

It is thought that the dog was domesticated from its wolf-like ancestor about 26,000-19,700 years ago in Siberia. There are many competing theories for how this domestication process unfolded. At the time, both the wolves and human DNA survival machines were pack hunters and scavengers who came into contact with each other over many a carcass. It is thought that both the wolves and human DNA survival machines that were less timid and had a milder fight-or-flight response tended to find themselves to be more likely to share a common meal over a fresh carcass. Such an informal "dating" process over a common meal then led to a more permanent relationship, until both wolves and human DNA survival machines decided to move in together. And as they frequently say - the rest was history. This mutual domestication of dogs and human DNA survival machines then persisted unchanged down throughout the ages. But as human DNA survival machines became the dominant species on the Earth something strange happened. To the untrained eye, it now seems as though the dogs have domesticated we human DNA survival machines. This is quite evident when one observes human DNA survival machines caring for their dogs. Human DNA survival machines now feed and water their dogs, take their dogs to veterinarians to keep them healthy, take them on walks and even eagerly clean up dog excrement without hesitation! Such an envious position would do well to allow human beings to persist for billions of years while the ASI Machines go on to explore our galaxy. But how could the ASI Machines make that happen?

Since we human DNA survival machines no longer have any predators other than other human DNA survival machines, there really is no need for human DNA survival machines to have the vicious and violent behaviors brought on by the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that brought us about. The ASI Machines could simply identify the genes that are responsible for such characteristics and then edit them out of the human genome using CRISPR techniques. For more on how CRISPR can do that see CRISPR - the First Line Editor for DNA. The ASI Machines might then find these non-threatening genetically modified human beings something worthy of keeping around the house on a cold winter's night.

Figure 9 – It took many years of mutual domestication for ancient human beings to learn to live peacefully together with Siberian Wolves in a symbiotic manner. Several genes in both species needed to be modified by natural selection for this to happen.

Figure 10 – This mutual domestication was slowly achieved by the natural selection of humans and wolves with a milder fight-or-flight response. The end result was the appearance of the Siberian Husky and of human beings who were not intent on killing everything on four legs.

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