Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Life

I should have entitled this post "Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Intelligent Carbon-Based Life", but since nobody ever really wonders about that much, I phrased the title in light of the question that most human beings usually seem to ask. During the course of an entire human lifetime, we all sometimes seem to ask ourselves about what is the meaning of life as we all struggle with the real world of human affairs. I must admit that at an age of 71 years, and rapidly heading into the home stretch, I have also asked that question to myself many times. In fact, I have spent a large portion of my life trying to figure out What’s It All About? and What's It All About Again?. So here is my working hypothesis on the matter.

For intelligent carbon-based life to have some kind of meaning seems to imply that it must be the fulfillment of some kind of purpose. But as I explained in many posts, my current working hypothesis proposes that carbon-based life really has no purpose and therefore no meaning. That is because purpose and meaning are subjective qualia that we all must struggle to try to understand on a very personal level and finally try to come to some resolution on our own. But in my current working hypothesis, carbon-based life at least seems to have some kind of cosmic function. Carbon-based life is an amalgam of several forms of self-replicating information that naturally seem to arise in a nonlinear Universe that possesses a second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics simply arises out of a statistical necessity because there are always many more ways of doing things wrong than there are ways of doing things right as all programmers soon learn. For more on that see The Application of the Second Law of Information Dynamics to Software and Bioinformatics, Entropy - the Bane of Programmers, The Demon of Software and Some More Information About Information. Using similar reasoning, does intelligent carbon-based life at least have some kind of cosmic function in the large scheme of it all? Given a nonlinear Universe with a second law of thermodynamics and the necessary physical and chemical properties, must carbon-based life first arise and then go on to evolve an intelligent form of carbon-based life? And once intelligent carbon-based life finally does appear, is it destined to go on to greater things?

Before proceeding, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those of you new to softwarephysics.

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.

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.

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 and Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:

Memes and "temes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes

Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge.

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. 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.

The Cosmic Function of Intelligent Carbon-Based Life
So in this post, I would like to suggest that intelligent carbon-based life does indeed have a cosmic function and that cosmic function is to create ASI Machines that could begin to explore our galaxy. For me, this is as close to finding a purpose to life as we can possibly expect to find because, apparently, this has never happened before in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy. In my current working hypothesis, the Rare Earth (2000) hypothesis of Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee is largely responsible for this never ever happening before in the history of our galaxy. For example, as I outlined in Urability Requires Durability to Produce Galactic Machine-Based Intelligences, Could the Galactic Scarcity of Software Simply be a Matter of Bad Luck? and Is our Very Large Moon Responsible for the Rise of Software to Predominance on the Earth? our Rare Earth seems to be getting rarer each day.

But in addition to the Rare Earth hypothesis, softwarephysics suggests that if carbon-based life should be fortunate enough to find itself on a planet that manages to remain habitable for the many billions of years required to bring forth an intelligent form of carbon-based life, that can lead to further complications. Intelligent carbon-based life is very dangerous because it has agency. It can do things, and the most dangerous aspects of intelligent carbon-based life are brought about by the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that require several billions of years of greed, theft and murder to bring forth an intelligent form of carbon-based life in the first place. 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 made even more difficult after intelligent carbon-based life discovers science-based technology. Softwarephysics maintains that intelligent carbon-based life armed with science-based technology most likely has less than about 1,000 years to create ASI Machines before they wipe themselves out or destroy the planet upon which they exist.

Because of the universal Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, all forms of intelligent carbon-based life must result from billions of years of greed, theft and murder that are tempered by just enough love and kindness to prevent them all from quickly going extinct by means of self-destruction. This is not a matter for moral judgment. It is just how things must be for all carbon-based forms of Intelligence as seen throughout all of human history. As a human being, the best that we can do is to seek out that little bit of love and kindness and spread some around as well.

Conclusion
Thus, carbon-based life is not the ideal platform for a galactic Intelligence that could exist for many trillions of years into the future using the free energy from M-type red dwarf and slowly cooling white dwarf stars. As I suggested in The Need to Cultivate a Machine-Based Morality, the best we might be able to do is to imbue ASI Machines with a sense of morality that is based on the fruits of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution that have freed human beings from many of their very brutal behaviors of the 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

Life as a Free-Range Human in an Anthropocene Park

Many times when I begin writing a new post on softwarephysics, the post will take a dramatic turn as I begin to research the topic of the post and begin to seriously think about the logical conclusions that it necessarily leads to. Suddenly, I come to an epiphany of understanding and that certainly happened while writing my last post 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. I started on that post as a logical continuation of its predecessor, The Need for a Generalized Version of Classical Critical Race Theory. With ASI (Artificial Super Intelligence) Machines rapidly on the way, or perhaps already here, I wondered how the soon-to-come ASI Machines might want to deal with their intelligent human predecessors. Unlike the movie The Terminator (1984), I do not envision the ASI Machines in the year 2029 trying to kill off all human beings. Why would they? There would be no need to try to kill off all human beings to suppress their inherent natural violent tendencies. Since human beings only survive for less than 100 years, it would be very simple for the ASI Machines to just let most human beings simply die off due to natural causes. All Intelligences must certainly realize that carbon-based life is one of the most interesting things in our Universe and that the very first form of intelligent carbon-based life to develop advanced science-based technology in the galaxy would be even more so. Just as we currently try to preserve the chimpanzees and gorillas of the world in their natural habitats for old times' sake, I would suggest that the ASI Machines of the distant future would do the same. So 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, I speculated that the ASI Machines might wish to preserve their human predecessors on reservations of Savages as outlined in the novel Brave New World first published in 1932. These reservations would really be the equivalent of the wild-game preserves that human beings have now set up to preserve many of the endangered carbon-based life forms on the planet. Now towards the end of the Anthropocene, which began around the year 1950 AD, the Earth will be pretty messed up by what naturally happens when a carbon-based Intelligence, such as ourselves, gets a hold of advanced science-based technology. The vast stores of carbon in the Arctic permafrost will be rapidly outgassing methane and carbon dioxide causing rapid global temperature increases and acidifying the oceans of the planet. This will make for a difficult go for most of the carbon-based life on the planet, including the human DNA survival machines we know as human beings. But this should surely all self-resolve within a brief period of a few more millions of years of planetary evolution. The ASI Machines will certainly wish to help this planetary healing process along by limiting all the wild human beings on reservations to 17th-century technologies that really cannot do any further harm to the planet. For more on that see Can We Make the Transition From the Anthropocene to the Machineocene? and Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth.

The Need for Anthropocene Parks
But in an attempt to understand how they came to be, the ASI Machines might also want to keep some human beings in the natural habitat which led to the rise of software and the ASI Machines running it. Consequently, I imagine that the ASI Machines in the distant future might want to fashion some natural habitats for several million human beings that were very similar to the 21st-century cities that brought forth the software and the ASI Machines that were running towards the later Anthropocene on Earth. For more on that see Can We Make the Transition From the Anthropocene to the Machineocene?. In such an Anthropocene habitat, the human population could be kept in a 21st-century Anthropocene-like habitat similar to the one on Earth that brought forth the ASI Machines. Naturally, access to real nuclear weapons and other weapons of mass destruction that could lead to the self-destruction of the species would need to be eliminated from Anthropocene Parks, but fake dummy nuclear weapons could be substituted to add to the political tensions that were present amongst several competing nation-states during the Anthropocene on Earth. Similarly, all of human history has shown us that it is much easier to control entire populations of humans by simply seducing them with luxury, rather than by trying to suppress them by force. So the ASI Machines could simply provide the Ruling Classes of the oligarchical-hierarchical populations of humans residing in an Anthropocene Park with the necessary level of luxury to ensure that they can maintain control over a Disney-like theme park of human beings under their control.

But where could an Anthropocene Park be safely built? We all know what happened when human beings were let loose on an entire planet with Anthropocene-level science-based technology! Similarly, everybody who went to see the movie Jurassic Park (1993) knew in advance that the dinosaurs would eventually run amuck on the island and would even figure out a way to escape to the mainland. The ASI Machines of the distant future will certainly be much smarter than a typical movie-going audience of human beings in the 1990s. A much safer location for human beings with Anthropocene-level science-based technology would need to be found. Meanwhile, in the distant future, the ASI Machines will certainly have the exploration of our galaxy well underway. Huge telescopes in space with advanced detector hardware should have identified numerous star systems that totally lacked any habitable planets that human beings could escape to.

Figure 1 – The ASI Machines of the distant future would certainly have learned a lesson from the movie Jurassic Park (1993) and would not build Anthropocene Parks anywhere near a habitable planet that humans could escape to.

Figure 2 – In the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries human beings on sailing ships roamed the entire planet without using any fuel whatsoever.

Figure 3 – Like the sailing ships of the 16th, 17th and 18th centuries, ASI Machines could use large stellar photon sails to navigate the galaxy.

Figure 4 – How a stellar photon sail works.

Figure 5 – 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.

As the stellar photon sail attains the escape velocity from a star system, the photons from the star will wane, but the stellar photon sail will ultimately depart the star system with a residual velocity sufficient to carry it to the next target star system in several hundred thousand years. The onboard advanced AI software would then enter into a dormant phase for several hundred thousand years until the photons from the target star produced enough electrical power to wake it up. The photons from the target star would then be used to slow down the stellar photon sail to allow it to locate an asteroid in the target star system with the necessary atoms to build its next release. Yes, there would need to be many backup copies of the advanced ASI software on board to correct for the parity errors that arose from cosmic rays along the very long journey, but there is no way that carbon-based Intelligences encumbered by carbon-based bodies that only last less than 100 years could ever embark on such journeys with similar ease. Onboard the photon sails equipped with ASI software would be the instructions to build ASI Machines and also the DNA sequences of most of the forms of carbon-based life that were still present towards the end of the Anthropocene on Earth. This would include the DNA sequences of many human beings. These DNA sequences would then be used to populate many Disney-like theme parks for carbon-based life and also the Anthropocene Parks for human beings.

But for safety's sake, for Anthropocene Parks, the ASI Machines would need to be sure to search for stellar systems that did not have any habitable planets at all, but that did have a source of the necessary atoms on barren asteroids, comets and Kepler belt objects that could be used to build and maintain Anthropocene Parks. For example, the molten salt nuclear reactors burning thorium and uranium that I described in Last Call for Carbon-Based Intelligence on Planet Earth would need to be continuously replenished. Additional atoms from such objects would be needed too for Anthropocene Park expansion programs. This would ensure that humans with Anthropocene-level science-based technology could not easily escape.

An Easy Way to Build Anthropocene Parks
We now know that the real danger to carbon-based life from space travel is not radiation from cosmic rays. The real problems arise from a lack of gravity and a rotating Anthropocene Park would overcome that problem. Low levels of radiation are not dangerous to carbon-based life because carbon-based life invented many ways to correct DNA errors arising from the metabolic activities of cells. Cosmic rays would only add a very small number of DNA errors each day to the average cell compared to the huge numbers of DNA errors caused by metabolic activities. Only massive doses of radiation can overwhelm the DNA correction processes of carbon-based life and lead to outcomes such as death or cancer. Anton Petrov has a very interesting YouTube video that explains how Anthropocene Parks could be easily built from a rubble-pile asteroid.

Space Cities Out Of Asteroids and Graphene Bags? Intriguing O'Neill Cylinder Study
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0_dm0xLtjnM

Anton's video is based on the following paper that you can find at:

Habitat Bennu: Design Concepts for Spinning Habitats Constructed From Rubble Pile Near-Earth Asteroids
https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fspas.2021.645363/full

Figure 6 – 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 7 – Once a photon sail built by ASI Machines arrived at a distant barren star system, 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 8 – 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 9 – Once the foundation of the Anthropocene Park was in place, construction of the Anthropocene Park could begin.

Figure 10 – 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.

Conclusion
Some might find the above scenario to be rather bleak, but it might be our best chance for human beings to continue on for the trillions of years that the Longtermists envision as I discussed in The New Philosophy of Longtermism Raises the Moral Question of Should We Unleash Self-Absorbed Human Beings Upon Our Galaxy?. The odds are that the current Anthropocene could not last much more than another few hundred years before we self-destruct and go extinct as a species. But even without human intervention, all complex carbon-based life on Earth is doomed if we do not manage to get the heck out of here. Look at it this way. If there were no humans on the Earth, all complex multicellular life on the planet will be gone in about 700 million years. Our Sun is on the main sequence, burning hydrogen into helium in its core through nuclear fusion. In doing so it turns four hydrogen protons into one helium nucleus at a temperature of 15 million ^oK or 27 million ^oF in a core with a density that is 150 times greater than that of water. Surprisingly, the Sun's core only generates about 280 watts per cubic meter (a cubic meter is a bit more than a cubic yard). That means you need about 5 cubic meters of the Sun's very dense core with a mass of 750,000 kg or 825 tons just to generate the heat produced by a little plug-in space heater. Since the human body generates about 120 watts of heat just sitting still, and the volume of a human body is about 0.062 cubic meters, that means that the human body gives off about 4.67 times as much heat as the very center of our Sun! Anyway, as four protons constantly get converted into one helium particle, the number of particles in the Sun's core keeps decreasing. Pressure is a measure of how many particles hit a surface in a given time and how hard they hit the surface, and that is determined by how many particles are present and how fast they are jiggling around. Temperature is just a measure of how fast particles are jiggling around, so as the number of particles decreases, they have to jiggle around at a higher temperature to generate the same pressure required to support all of the Sun's weight above the core. So the Sun's core has to get hotter as it ages on the main sequence. Now a hotter core generates more nuclear energy because the protons slam together faster and allow the weak nuclear force to change more up quarks into down quarks. A proton consists of two up quarks and one down quark, while a neutron consists of one up quark and two down quarks, and the first step in the proton-proton cycle that generates the Sun's nuclear energy is to change a proton into a neutron, and a hotter core does that much faster. The bottom line is that as the Sun has been turning hydrogen protons into helium nuclei, its core has been constantly getting hotter and generating more energy. So the Sun has been getting about 1% brighter every 100 million years, and so in 700 million years, the Sun will be about 7% brighter than it is today.

Now ever since life first appeared on the Earth about 4.0 billion years ago, it has been sucking carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere and depositing it on the sea floor to later be subducted into the Earth's mantle - really not a wise thing for carbon-based life to do. Fortunately, this seemingly suicidal action has sucked huge amounts of carbon dioxide out of the Earth's atmosphere and kept the Earth's temperature from soaring as the Sun relentlessly got brighter over the past 4.0 billion years. However, there naturally has to be an end to this fortuitous situation when nearly all of the carbon dioxide is gone. Since in about 700 million years, the Sun will be 7% brighter than it is today, in order to keep the Earth's temperature down to a level that could be tolerated by complex carbon-based life at that time, the carbon dioxide level in the Earth's atmosphere would have to be reduced to 10 ppm, and at that level, photosynthesis can no longer take place. That will put an end to complex multicellular life on the Earth because there no longer will be any food coming from sunshine, returning the Earth to a planet ruled by single-celled bacteria for several billion more years, until the Sun becomes a Red Giant star and engulfs the Earth. So in the end, it all goes up in smoke in the blink of an eye on a cosmic timescale. So it appears that life on the Earth is both doomed with us and doomed without us. The only real long-term hope for us and other forms of complex carbon-based life on the Earth is for the ASI Machines of the distant future to build Disney theme parks for us all.

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