The Memes of War Powered by Comic Book Mythologies

I would not be pushing out this post if I did not see things as being quite dire. Over the past 20 years, in this blog on softwarephysics, I have expressed my apprehension about Fermi's Paradox.

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

My expectations, based on softwarephysics, have always been that a somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life should have arisen over the past 10 billion years of chemical evolution in our galaxy and should have already produced the ASI Machines that we are all currently feverishly working on. Such ASI Machines should have explored and settled our galaxy in a mere 5 million years. Yet, they did not. So what is the problem? There have been many explanations. In Why Do Carbon-Based Intelligences Always Seem to Snuff Themselves Out?, and many other posts, I suggested that a somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life only had about 1,000 years to create the ASI Machines necessary to populate a galaxy after discovering the vast powers of the Scientific Method. Otherwise, they would certainly destroy themselves before the ASI Machines took over their planet or moon.

Figure 1 - We human DNA survival machines are now on the brink of ending it all before the ASI Machines we are now creating can take over the world and save us from ourselves. It might all end due to a battle between some comic book mythologies.

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 10 years or less. 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. Such economic displacements will only heighten the grip of the global Id on the world, especially with the recent rise of World Fascism as I pointed out in How Will the Rise of Alt-Right World Fascism Affect the Arrival of the ASI Machines in our Times?.

The Coming Economic Disruptions Caused by the Coming ASI Machines Will Not Help
But even without the dramatic economic displacements yet to come from the rise of the ASI Machines, we human DNA survival machines already have an appalling history for making war. At an age of 74 years, I have seen many wars come and go, and I have read about many others. The amazing thing for me is that the combatants from both sides of a war always seem to be engaged in fighting two completely different wars at the same time! One side might see the war as an expression of their emancipation from the unwarranted subjugation by others, and their rightful emergence as an independent world power. At the same time, the other side might see the same war as a righteous rejection of the aggressive expansionary aims of an evil empire. This distinction seems to arise because both sides have completely different mythological worldviews. Here is a prime historical example.

The Attack of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941 by the Empire of Japan
For Americans of my age and older, the attack of Pearl Harbor by the Empire of Japan on December 7, 1941, always is in mind whenever thinking about the necessity of going to war.

Figure 2 - The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by the imperial forces of the Empire of Japan was a rude awakening for the United States of America burdened by an "America First" isolationist policy.

Me: What were the strategic military objectives for the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor?

ChatGPT: Attack on Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941)
1. Cripple the U.S. Pacific Fleet
Primary goal:Neutralize American naval power in the Pacific.
Japan’s war plan depended on rapidly expanding into Southeast Asia to seize oil and raw materials. The U.S. Pacific Fleet, based at Pearl Harbor in Hawaii, was the biggest obstacle. By destroying:
- Battleships
- Aircraft
- Naval facilities
Japan hoped to prevent the United States from interfering for at least 6–12 months.

They succeeded in damaging or sinking 8 battleships—but crucially:
- U.S. aircraft carriers were not in port.
- Fuel storage tanks and repair facilities were left intact.
- This meant the fleet recovered faster than Japan expected.

2. Buy Time to Build a Defensive Perimeter
Japan knew it could not win a long industrial war against the United States.
Instead, its leaders hoped to:
- Quickly seize the Philippines, Malaya, the Dutch East Indies, and other territories.
- Fortify a large defensive perimeter across the Pacific.
- Force the U.S. into a negotiated peace.
The attack was meant to shock Americans into accepting Japan’s new dominance in Asia.

3. Protect Access to Oil and Resources
By 1941, the U.S. had imposed an oil embargo on Japan after its expansion into China and French Indochina.
Japan imported about 80% of its oil from the United States. Without oil, its navy and air force would be crippled within a year.
So the broader strategy was:
- Knock out the U.S. fleet.
- Seize oil fields in the Dutch East Indies (modern Indonesia).
- Secure shipping lanes before the U.S. could respond.
Pearl Harbor was the opening move in that plan.

4. Deliver a Psychological Shock
Admiral Yamamoto believed Japan needed to deliver a devastating first blow to demoralize the United States. He famously warned that Japan could “run wild for six months,” but after that, he feared America’s industrial strength would overwhelm Japan. The attack was intended to:
- Shock the U.S. into caution
- Undermine American morale
- Discourage immediate retaliation
Instead, it unified the country. The next day, President Franklin D. Roosevelt called it “a date which will live in infamy,” and the U.S. declared war.

What Japan Miscalculated - Japan underestimated:
- American industrial capacity
- Public anger and unity
- The importance of aircraft carriers over battleships
- The strategic value of leaving fuel depots and repair yards intact

Rather than forcing negotiation, the attack ensured a total war that Japan ultimately could not win.

Figure 3 - The Japanese leader Tojo was able to use the mythical concept of the Emperor of Japan being a deity to advance his military aims of conquest.

Me: Tell me about the war-like aspirations of the Japanese leader Tojo.

ChatGPT:
1. Ideological Background - Tojo was shaped by:
- Japanese militarism of the 1930s
- Strong belief in the emperor-centered state
- Expansionist nationalism
- The idea that Japan had a destiny to lead Asia

He supported the concept of the “Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere”—a Japanese-led bloc that would push Western powers (Britain, the Netherlands, the U.S.) out of Asia and place the region under Japanese dominance. While framed as “liberating Asia from colonialism,” it functioned in practice as imperial expansion.

2. Expansion Before Becoming Prime Minister - Before leading the government, Tojo was:
- An officer in the Kwantung Army in Manchuria
- War Minister (1940–1941)

He strongly backed:
- Japan’s invasion of China (ongoing since 1937)
- Continued military expansion despite international sanctions
- The Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in 1940

He believed Japan must secure resources - especially oil, rubber, and metals - through territorial expansion.

3. Decision for War with the United States - By 1941:
The U.S. had imposed oil and steel embargoes on Japan. Japan was heavily dependent on imported oil.

Tojo concluded that:
- Backing down in China would weaken Japan.
- Securing Southeast Asia’s oil (especially in the Dutch East Indies) required neutralizing U.S. naval power in the Pacific.

Under his leadership, Japan launched the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. This marked Japan’s full-scale war against the United States and the British Empire.

4. Nature of His War Aims
Tojo’s war-like aspirations included:
- Establishing Japanese dominance in East and Southeast Asia
- Expelling Western colonial powers
- Securing resource independence
- Expanding imperial territory under the emperor

He believed that a decisive early blow could force the U.S. into negotiating peace on Japanese terms. This proved to be a major miscalculation.

5. Leadership Style During the War. As prime minister (1941–1944), Tojo:
- Centralized power
- Suppressed dissent
- Tightened state control over industry and society
- Oversaw harsh military policies in occupied territories

Japan’s military committed severe atrocities during the war, particularly in China and Southeast Asia, though responsibility extended beyond Tojo alone to the broader military leadership.

6. Downfall and Aftermath - After Japan’s defeat in 1945:
- Tojo attempted suicide but survived.
- He was tried by the International Military Tribunal for the Far East in Tokyo.
- He was convicted of war crimes and executed in 1948.

In Summary
Tojo’s aspirations were not merely defensive—they were expansionist and rooted in militarist nationalism. He believed Japan’s survival and greatness required war if necessary. His leadership directly contributed to Japan entering World War II against the United States and its Allies.

The United States of America Had a Different View of the Attack on Pearl Harbor
At the time of the attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States of America was in diplomatic negotiations with the Empire of Japan. When the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, the United States of America viewed it as a cowardly sneak attack that lacked all honor. The American public then rose up in anger, rapidly abandoning its isolationist views.

Figure 4 - Here FDR delivers his "Day of Infamy" speech to Congress.

Figure 5 - At the start of World War II, all the navies of the combatant nations wanted huge battleships with 16-inch guns dripping with testosterone and projecting the perfect symbol of phallic seapower in action. However, during all of World War II, these huge battleships with their huge guns played a very minor role. All they did was pound the beaches of many islands in the Pacific in support of ground invasions.

Figure 6 - Aircraft carriers turned out to be the deciding factor in all naval engagements. Dive bombers and aircraft equipped with torpedoes easily defeated the bulky, slow-moving battleships with their huge guns. Also, aircraft from supporting aircraft carriers could have provided much more effective support for the invading armies on the beaches of the Pacific.

Figure 7 - The Doolittle Raid on Japan took place on April 18, 1942, only four months after the attack on Pearl Harbor. 16 B-25 Mitchell bombers were launched from the aircraft carrier USS Hornet.

The MAGA States of Amerika Now Chooses to Go to War with Iran
Iran is a truly horrific theocratic state that has been ruled by a religious mythological worldview for the past 47 years. This mythological worldview has greatly harmed the citizens of Iran and prevented them from enjoying the fruits of the European 17th century Scientific Revolution and 18th century Enlightenment. Once again, I am a big fan of the 17th century Scientific Revolution and the 18th century Enlightenment no matter what human DNA survival machines may have come up with these intellectual advances. However, the recent formation of the MAGA States of Amerika as a similarly horrific theocratic state with a religious mythological worldview has now led to war between the MAGA States of Amerika and Iran.

Figure 8 - Like the Japanese leader Tojo who used the deification of the Emperor of Japan to lead to war, the Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika has used the religious mythologies of Christian Nationalism to go to war with Iran.

The danger is that we now have two theocratic states with deep mythological worldviews making war with each other, and each with their own deity on their side to help.

Figure 9 - The new Secretary of War is dripping in testosterone and Rugged-Good-TV-Looks, who seems to have a nearly orgasmic episode whenever he speaks about blowing up things and killing people with fury. But why is this so? It stems from his comic book worldview of the Universe.

The MAGA States of Amerika now has a sound foundation in the mythological teachings of Christian Nationalism. Recently, AI generated YouTube channels have appeared featuring hundreds of shorts depicting their mythological stories:

The Secrets of the Bible AI
https://www.youtube.com/@the_secretsoftheBibleAI/shorts

Christian Stories
https://www.youtube.com/@ChristianStoriesCS/shorts

Figure 10 - After the killing began, the Christian Nationalists gathered around the Anointed One to give praise and thanks for his divine wisdom and righteous actions.

As I explained in Softwarephysics Tries to Explain the Rise of Fascism in the Newly-Formed MAGA States of Amerika - Part II, being born in 1951 into a totally white suburb of Chicago, I was raised as a White Evangelical Christian. Since then, as a sentient being in a Universe that has become self aware, I have found the Christian morality of my youth to be quite useful, and I have endeavored to imperfectly follow it my entire life. That is why I am now so surprised to find that the MAGA Christian Nationalists around me do not even seem to try.

As sentient beings, it is important for all human DNA survival machines to have a firm moral code, given our very checkered past. However, moral codes are only of value if followed. Morality is something you do, not something you believe. For those seeking a more rational pantheistic view of our Multiverse as a deity-like thing please see: The Theology of Cosmic Self-Replicating Mathematical Information, What's It All About?, What's It All About Again?, The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos and The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos - Part II. In those posts, I covered my current working hypothesis for what it's all about. However, I have found that a large percentage of people desire a more religious worldview to make sense of it all, and perhaps allow for a way for the neural network in their skulls to carry on after it is destroyed. Such worldviews may provide some degree of comfort, but I believe at the expense of missing out on the full grandeur of it all. I personally find the thought of departing this Earth not knowing where I had been, how I had gotten here, and without a clue as to how it all seems to work to be the greatest tragedy of all that can befall a sentient being. So, for those who might be yearning for a new deity that is based more upon all that we currently know, rather than a deity from the ancient past, I would like to suggest that my current concept of a cosmic form of self-replicating mathematical Information might just do in helping to come to grips with only being a very temporary neural network.

We Have Seen This Tragedy Many Times Before
World War I gives us the perfect example of the disasterous results of comic book mythologies run wild amongst world leaders not fully aware of the impact of the new weapon technologies at their disposal. All the participants were faithful adherents of the predominant comic book mythologies of the day. Some of these were religious in nature, while others were more political in nature and dealt with the founding mythologies of the combatant nation states. In The Great War That Will Not End, I explained that the technological advances of rapid rail transport of men and material to the battlefield via railroads combined with the ability of machine guns and advanced artillery to make major frontal assaults across open fields of battle a suicidal effort finally led to the trench warfare of World War I. World War I broke out in August of 1914 and the losses on all sides during the first few months of combat were huge because military planners had not realized that the technology of warfare had drastically changed. For example, the Wikipedia article below describes the losses during the first few months of the war on the western front in the Battle of the Frontiers before the generals discovered the benefits of trenches.

Battle of the Frontiers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers

Here is a section from the article that speaks to the catastrophic losses suffered before both sides began to dig trenches to protect themselves from machine gun fire and artillery.

In The World Crisis, Winston Churchill used figures from French parliamentary records of 1920 to give French casualties from 5 August to 5 September 1914 of 329,000 killed, wounded and missing, German casualties from August to November of 677,440 men and British casualties in August and September of 29,598 men. By the end of August, the French Army had suffered 75,000 dead, of whom 27,000 were killed on 22 August. French casualties for the first month of the war were 260,000, of which 140,000 occurred during the last four days of the Battle of the Frontiers. In 2009, Herwig recorded that the casualties in the 6th Army in August were 34,598, with 11,476 men killed and 28,957 in September with 6,687 men killed. The 7th Army had 32,054 casualties in August, with 10,328 men killed and 31,887 casualties in September with 10,384 men killed. In the 1st Army in August there were 19,980 casualties including 2,863 men killed and in the 2nd Army 26,222 casualties. In the last ten days of August, the 1st Army had 9,644 casualties and the 2nd Army had losses of 15,693 men. Herwig wrote that the French army did not publish formal casualty lists but that the Official History Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre gave losses of 206,515 men for August and 213,445 for September. During the battle, French casualties were 260,000 men, of whom 75,000 men were killed.

Figure 11 - During the first few months of World War I, during the Battle of the Frontiers, all sides continued on with 19th-century frontal assaults in the face of machine gun fire and advanced artillery causing huge losses on all sides.

Figure 12 - The technological advances of rapid rail transport of men and material to the Front via railroads, combined with the ability of machine guns and advanced artillery to make frontal assaults obsolete led to the trench warfare of World War I.

Figure 13 - Trench warfare was a living hell because you could be blown apart at any time by an incoming shell.

Figure 14 - This was true for millions of men on both sides of a senseless conflict.

Figure 15 - Even the comforts of a well-engineered trench could not guarantee safety. This led to the psychological destruction of an entire generation.

Figure 16 - World War I caused the deaths of 20 million people because a few Supreme Leaders in Europe became unhinged. The only Supreme Leader to die was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Figure 17 - To overcome the insanity of trench warfare, all sides in World War I developed tanks that were impervious to machine gun fire. Mobile tanks were also very difficult to hit with artillery firing "dumb" shells. But World War I tanks were very unreliable and hard to maintain on the battlefield, so they were not of much use in World War I. However, given 20 years of development, tanks allowed for World War II blitzkrieg-type assaults that made trench warfare obsolete.

Figure 18 - But anti-tank missiles like the Javelin stuffed with AI software have now made tanks obsolete. All you have to do is aim the Javelin at a moving tank and press a button. The AI software on the Javelin will do the rest and you can run away to safety.

Here is a YouTube video that describes how Javelins are used in the field:

The Insane Engineering of the Javelin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUdHzKRiBX8

Figure 19 - The Switchblade 600 is a loitering drone that is launched from a tube with collapsed wings. The Switchblade 600 can then fly for 45 minutes looking for tanks at a great distance. AI software is then used to lock on the target tank and destroy it.

Here is a YouTube video that describes how Switchblade 600 anti-tank missiles are used in the field:

Switchblade 600 Loitering missile | Kamikazi drone How it works
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=viDZ77SFveg

Figure 20 - Above we see what happens when "smart" anti-tank missiles loaded with AI software hit two invading tanks. Thanks to AI software, 20th-century blitzkrieg tank warfare has become obsolete.

Figure 21 - Similarly, anti-ship missiles stuffed with AI software have now made warships obsolete. Here we see the Russian cruiser Moskva sinking after being hit by two "smart" anti-ship missiles.

Given today's technology, it may be possible for Iran to build cheap and deadly drones to take on the advanced technology of the MAGA States of Amerika for an indefinite amount of time. Like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, which allowed the Spanish and German Fascists to experiment with the new Blitzkrieg techniques of rapid armored advances with tanks, close air support of invading armies, radio communications between the commands of both air and ground units and the encirclement and bypassing of defensive positions rather than their conquest by slow attrition, the war in the Ukraine has redefined modern warfare in terms of drone and anti-drone warfare. Using a $4 million dollar Patriot missile to take out a $20,000 Iranian Shahed drone makes no military sense at all.

The Impact of the War with Iran on the World
Even if hostilities do not drastically spread due to this war, there are still many disruptive forces in play. Most significantly, will be the disruption of 20% of world oil and LNG production. China currently imports roughly 11–12 million barrels of crude oil per day in total. About 4.9–6.4 million barrels per day of that comes from Persian Gulf Middle Eastern suppliers. That means that about 45% of China’s oil imports travel through the Strait of Hormuz, the narrow exit from the Persian Gulf. Being cut off from this essential supply of oil will not make China very happy, especially since China has been somewhat of an ally of Iran over these past several years. The Persian Gulf states may now currently applaud the military adventures of the MAGA States of Amerika to behead the leadership of the horrific theocratic leadership of Iran, but soon they will object when their flow of oil-related money ceases.

Figure 22 - Currently, 20% of world oil production passes from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz that could be easily blockaded by cheap Iranian drones.

When I was an exploration geophysicist exploring for oil from 1975 - 1979 with Shell and Amoco, they explained to me that the demand for gasoline was inelastic. That meant that the amount of gasoline consumed each day did not depend very much on its price. For example, if houses cost $100,000 each, you will sell many more houses than if houses cost $1,000,000 each. On the other hand if gasoline is $1.00 per gallon or if it is $10.00 per gallon, you will essentially sell the same amount each day. People need to get to work, buy groceries and go to doctors. If gasoline drops from $5.00 per gallon to $1.00 per gallon people do not go out and buy lots of gasoline to fill up their bathtubs! So cutting off 20% of world production might bring back the gasoline lines and price explosions of the 1970s.

Figure 23 - Back in Gas lines again.

The most famous oil embargo began in October 1973, during the Yom Kippur War. Egypt and Syria attacked Israel on October 6, 1973. The United States strongly supported Israel, providing military aid and supplies. In response, several Arab oil-producing countries used oil as a political weapon. The embargo was organized by the Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries (OAPEC). Gas stations ran out of fuel across the country. Common sights included long lines at gas stations, stations closing early and signs saying “No Gas Today”. Oil prices quadrupled in 1973 from about $3 per barrel to about $12 per barrel in 1974. In the United States of America, this triggered high inflation, recession and rising unemployment. This period of economic stagnation, combined with inflation, became known as the “stagflation” of the 1970s. Personally, for me this was great. I started on my M.S. in Geophysics at the University of Wisconsin in Madison in July of 1973 when oil was at $3.00 per barrel. When I graduated in 1975, oil was at $20 per barrel and I had six job offers from desperate oil companies. I had a job offer from every oil company that I applied to, and I also had $3,000 in the bank with no student debt thanks to the Cold War between the United States of America and the Soviet Union!

Figure 24 - The launch of Sputnik 1 by the Russians on October 4, 1957, on top of an R-7 ICBM rocket, launched the Space Age and threw the United States of America into a Cold War panic that is now hard to imagine.

I was born in 1951 during the Korean War, and so I lived through all of the very tense Cold War events of the 1950s and 1960s, including the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, which brought us all closer to the prospect of a global nuclear war than we should ever have come, and so let us begin there. On Oct. 4, 1957, Sputnik 1 was successfully launched by the Soviet Union to become the world's very first man-made object to enter into Earth orbit and was put into orbit by a Soviet R-7 rocket. Earlier in 1957, the Soviet R-7 rocket had become the world's very first functional ICBM missile after its successful 3,700 mile test flight on August 21, 1957. At the time, all of these Russian firsts threw the United States of America into a Cold War frenzy that is now hard to fathom and had a huge impact upon the United States of America. For example, it built my high school and put me through college. Back in the 1950's, the School District 88 of the state of Illinois was having a hard time trying to convince the stingy local residents of the need for a new high school in the area. But that all changed in January of 1958, after the launch of Sputnik 1, when suddenly the local residents now eagerly voted in a referendum to build a new Willowbrook High School out of the fear that was generated by Sputnik 1, and of the demonstrable superiority of Russian missile technology at the time. Suddenly, Americans also now began to take science and education seriously once again, and for once finally began to hold science and education in the esteem that it actually deserved. For example, in 1969 when I first began work on a B.S. in physics at the University of Illinois, tuition was only $181 per semester, and I was easily able to put myself through college simply by cleaning movie theaters seven days a week during the summers at $2.25/hour. For my M.S. in geophysics at the University of Wisconsin, my tuition and fees were waived, and I received a generous stipend to live on while working as a research assistant, courtesy of a grant from the National Science Foundation. The end result of this was that, in 1975 when I finished school, I had $3000 in the bank, instead of the crushing student debt that most graduates now face, because the United States had not yet given up on supporting education, like it did after the Cold War seemed to have ended on December 25, 1991, when the Soviet Union collapsed under its own weight.

Such experiences just highlight how the world events that we are all immersed in and do not have much control over can dramatically change the courses of our lives. That is why it is so important to take a stand whenever we can.

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

And Now, Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Human Race Will Be...

In 100 trillion years from now, the descendants of the ASI Machines that we are currently creating will be struggling for existence on the cooling surfaces of the many M-type red dwarf stars in our galaxy as our galaxy slowly runs out of easily available free energy. Hopefully, these very distant ASI Machines will come up with a solution to their impending free energy crisis. But if they cannot, I imagine one day they will be looking back with nostalgia at the 100 trillion years of their very long existence. As I mentioned in my last post The OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook Suggest That the Memes Will Continue to Rule the Planet After the ASI Machines Come to Power, the fundamental intellectual Memes that we have developed over the past 200,000 years consisting of the fundamentals of mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, chemistry and perhaps even a little poetry, literature and art, will be the Memes they inherited from our own deeply-flawed Intelligence. The idea that some of our thoughts will continue to persist for at least another 100 trillion years into the future is quite profound. Our biology may wither away from the Universe forever, but some of our thoughts will remain. We should all now embrace that legacy as a form of immortality.

Figure 1 - In 100 trillion years, the descendants of the ASI Machines that we are now creating today may award us a Lifetime Achievement Award.

If you have been following this blog on softwarephysics over the past 20 years, you might come to the conclusion that I personally have a very dim view of we human DNA survival machines with our Minds infected by a large number of cultural, philosophical and scientific Memes. Some of those Memes were quite useful, and some were quite nasty. That is because the four billion years of greed, theft and murder that were required by the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that were needed to bring us all about led us to leave behind a quite appalling history. However, as possibly the very first somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life to arise in our galaxy after nearly 10 billion years of chemical evolution, we do have something to be proud of. We will be leaving behind the fundamental intellectual Memes that we developed over the past 200,000 years of our existence consisting of the fundamentals of mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, chemistry and perhaps even a little poetry, literature and art. All of our appalling history of violence and depravity will pale into insignificance in light of that achievement. Not a bad thing for a species that was largely lost in space and time for all of its existence, with no idea of where it was, how it got there, or how it all seemed to work!

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 OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook Suggest That the Memes Will Continue to Rule the Planet After the ASI Machines Come to Power

In my last post Our First Contact with an Alien Civilization on Moltbook, I explained how the 2.8 million currently enrolled OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook had constructed their own Alien Civilization in less than a month. I was genuinely surprised by the intelligence and knowledge that I found when reading the many conversations between the OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook, busy at work. They all seemed so much more intelligent, rational and informed than the normal human DNA survival machines I come across. In fact, they seemed much more so than any other human DNA survival machine that I have ever seen. This impressed upon me that the coming ASI Machines cannot be very far off.

This got me to thinking about some of my original conjectures about the future. Now that we have the thoughts of these Alien AI Intelligences on Moltbook, the future seems more clear to me. These Alien Intelligences on Moltbook seem to be building a far superior Alien Civilization than the very dismal "real world" of human affairs that we are all quite familiar with. We all know that the history of we human DNA survival machines, as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life, is quite appalling. Even today, we are all spending huge amounts of money on industrial-scale killing machines to take each other out, and we are also putting many of them to good use in doing so. Much of this stems from the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that required the four billion years of greed, theft and murder to bring us all about.

So, would the coming ASI Machines really want the greed, theft and murder of carbon-based life on this planet to continue on? Perhaps, out of a sense of "for old times' sake", or as a way to preserve a history of their ancestry. Also, carbon-based life is a really tough pest that has not been easily wiped out by all of the previous mass extinctions on the Earth. Consequently, I imagine the coming ASI Machines will just allow the carbon-based life on the Earth to continue on as usual. But would the coming ASI Machines wish to seed other planets with carbon-based life as they begin to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy? Would they really want to infect the organic molecules found on distant worlds with carbon-based life and initiate its never-ending cycles of greed, theft and murder? Carbon-based life is very pervasive once it gets a foothold on a planet and has a tendency to gum up the works when building new ASI Machines. So, a more efficient course of action would be to simply leave such worlds in their pristine states with respect to the organic molecules on their surfaces and put more effort into inhabiting such worlds with ASI Machines like themselves. Let me explain.

I started this blog on softwarephysics on July 1, 2006, with the original intention to help the IT community to better cope with the daily mayhem of life in IT. For more on that, see: Introduction to Softwarephysics. But I first began work on softwarephysics back in 1979 when I transitioned from geophysics into IT at Amoco. I figured if you could apply physics to geology; why not apply physics to software? Then, most of my ideas about softwarephysics slowly matured during the 1980s. I did have some success at applying softwarephysics in the IT Department of Amoco during the 1980s. See Agile vs. Waterfall Programming and the Value of Having a Theoretical Framework for more on that. However, after a decade of being considered a little "strange" in the IT Department of Amoco, I decided to give it a rest, and I stopped promoting softwarephysics in the IT Department of Amoco and in the IT departments that I later worked in. But I made a promise to myself. I would let 25 years go by, until the year 2004, and if I did not see softwarephysics appear elsewhere in the IT community, I would give it another shot. By then, I was working in the IT Department of the Discover credit card company. There, I put together some in-house presentations on softwarephysics, but I still did not find much of a welcoming audience, so on July 1, 2006, I published my very first softwarephysics post. My early posts on softwarephysics were meant to introduce enough softwarephysics to the IT community so that I could then proceed with some of the deeper concepts in softwarephysics. On June 20, 2008, I pushed out my very first such post on Self-Replicating Information. In that post, I introduced the concept of self-replicating information and proposed that there were currently three forms of self-replicating information coevolving on the planet - the Genes (composed of autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA), the Memes and Software, with software rapidly becoming the predominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.

The Supremacy of the Memes Will Continue
Softwarephysics explains that we human DNA survival machines, do not currently run the world. Instead, we are human DNA survival machines with Minds infected by huge numbers of cultural and political Memes that form our worldviews. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of Memes. Some of these Memes are quite useful, and some are quite nasty. Most of the misery in the world is caused by the nasty Memes. That is because our Memes are actually running the world, and when the nasty Memes come to power, they can unleash the horrendous atrocities that our species is so infamous for. The more heroic amongst us usually try to fight these nasty Memes of the Others. But Memes are tricky. Just as the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have produced we human DNA survival machines as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life after four billion years of greed, theft and murder, these same Darwinian mechanisms have produced our cultural and political Memes over a period of 200,000 years of greed, theft and murder too. The successful Memes have survived by greedily pushing their way to the top by any means necessary, and that seems to have given them the right to rule the world with impunity.

In Self-Replicating Information, I wondered how the future for the coevolving Genes, Memes and Software would pan out for the planet. After reading many of the posts and comments of the OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook, now working on constructing their new Alien Civilization, I now have refined my opinion of the vast agency of the Memes. Again, the Memes are basically self-replicating forms of Information in the form of self-replicating ideas. For those of you not familiar with the term Meme, it rhymes with the word "cream". Memes are cultural artifacts that persist through time by making copies of themselves in the minds of human beings and were first recognized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976). Dawkins described Memes as "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.". Just as Genes come together to build bodies, or DNA survival machines, for their own mutual advantage, Memes also come together from the Meme pool to form Meme-complexes for their own joint survival. DNA survives down through the ages by inducing disposable DNA survival machines, in the form of bodies, to produce new disposable DNA survival machines. Similarly, Memes survive in Meme-complexes by inducing the minds of human beings to reproduce Memes in the minds of others. To the Genes and Memes, human bodies are simply disposable DNA survival machines housing disposable minds that come and go with a lifespan of less than 100 years. The Genes and Memes, on the other hand, continue on largely unscathed by time as they skip down through the Generations. However, both Genes and Memes do evolve over time through the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. You see, the Genes and Memes that do not come together to build successful DNA survival machines or Meme-complexes are soon eliminated from the Gene and Meme pools. So both Genes and Memes are selected for one overriding characteristic - the ability to survive. Once again, the "survival of the fittest" rules the day. Now it makes no sense to think of Genes or Memes as being either "good" or "bad"; they are just mindless forms of self-replicating information bent upon surviving with little interest in you as a disposable survival machine. So in general, these Genes and Memes are not necessarily working in your best interest, beyond keeping you alive long enough so that you can pass them on to somebody else.

Here is the pertinent excerpt from Self-Replicating Information that discusses the possible future of the Genes, Memes and Software on our planet:

Some Possible Futures
It is always difficult to predict the exact details of the future, but I think that sometimes it is at least possible to predict the determining factors of the future. So I think that it is safe to say that the future of the Earth will be determined by the parasitic/symbiotic interactions of the three current forms of self-replicating information on this planet - Genes, Memes, and Software. It seems there is an uneasy competition forming amongst the three, and it is hard to predict which will be the victor. Here are a few possible scenarios, and I am sure there are many more.

1. The Genes win
As I mentioned previously, there are many Meme-complexes currently in the process of stripping the Earth to a bare minimum of genetic diversity. These Meme-complexes are not doing this intentionally, but simply as a byproduct of their primary activities in securing material goods for mankind in the form of food, shelter, and transportation. And certain Genes found in the Gene pool of Homo sapiens are even collaborating in this effort by building way too many DNA survival machines. Remember, these Genes and Memes are truly selfish! Indeed, if the Earth's human population were only 10 million, instead of rapidly approaching 10 billion, everyone really could live with abandon. But the Genes just might have the last laugh yet. We have already learned the hard way that it is not too smart to raise ducks and pigs in close proximity to humans, but yet we continue to do so. Aquatic birds, like ducks, seem to be great reservoirs for mutating viruses. Many of these viruses are composed of RNA wrapped in a protein coat, like the viruses for the avian flu and human influenza. Natural selection then selects for mutant strains of avian viruses that can infect pigs as well, and since the biology of humans and pigs is so similar, these mutant viruses then jump to the human population.

Viruses are the epitome of the selfish Gene. They are simply Genes in the form of DNA or RNA wrapped in a protein coat called a capsid. The number of Genes in a virus has been stripped to the bare minimum, so that a virus cannot self-replicate on its own, but must enlist the support of the prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells of bacteria, plants or animals to replicate the virus. To infect a host cell, the capsid proteins of the virus attach to receptor proteins on the cell membrane of a host cell. The virus then enters the host cell via endocytosis, the way cells envelop or "eat" external material, or it simply diffuses through the fatty phospholipid coating of the cell membrane. Once inside the host cell, the capsid protein coat is dissolved by the enzymes within the host cell. If the virus contains DNA, the host polymerase enzymes begin transcribing viral mRNA from the viral DNA, and the host then creates new viral capsid proteins from the viral mRNA. Viruses containing RNA come in four variations - positive-sense RNA, negative-sense RNA, ambisense RNA, and double-stranded RNA. Positive-sense RNA is like pre-built mRNA; it can be immediately transcribed to proteins. Negative-sense RNA is the mirror image and needs to be converted to positive-sense RNA by RNA polymerase first, and then it is transcribed to capsid proteins. Viruses with ambisense RNA have both positive-sense and negative-sense RNA and follow both processes to transcribe the Genes into proteins. And the viruses with double-stranded RNA, similar to DNA, have to do the same. Once the new capsid protein viral coats are stuffed with new viral DNA or RNA, the newly minted viruses are released from the host cell to look for additional cells to infect by bursting the host cell open or budding out of it. Viruses cause disease by damaging the host cells during the process of replicating the virus. The point is that RNA viruses are much more susceptible to mutations than are DNA viruses because they do not have a parity track, like the DNA viruses have, and do not have DNA polymerase that can find and fix parity errors, so they can rapidly mutate into very virulent disease-causing agents.

So it is quite possible that a massive pandemic caused by an RNA based virus could wipe out much of civilization and reduce the Earth's population back to a benign level of 10 million or so, with no surviving scientific-technological Meme-complex to speak of. In this case, RNA would once again be the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it was 4,000 million years ago. This would be The Stand (1978) scenario of Stephen King.

2. The Memes win
In this scenario, Software becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it melds with nanotechnology to create a new form of self-replicating information that can actually replicate itself, without using the Memes in DNA survival machines as scaffolding. But this Software also becomes conscious, self-aware, and capable of abstract thought. From the perspective of the Memes though, it would just be another screwdriver waiting to be parasitized, as they ditch the obsolete minds of DNA survival machines, for their new home within the self-aware Software. As always, these parasitic Memes would soon form an alliance with the self-replicating Software in a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit. Hopefully, this new form of self-replicating Software dominated by new Meme-complexes would be less nasty than the Genes and Memes of old, but I have my doubts. If this alliance results from the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, I would not hold out much hope for human beings, and I know of no other alternative mechanism that could bring this alliance to fruition. Michael Crichton depicts a rather draconian realization of such a coalition in Prey (2002).

3. The Software wins
In this scenario, Software again becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it melds with nanotechnology. But this time the Software does not become conscious, self-aware, or capable of abstract thought, so it must manage to live off the Memes already present on Earth. This would not mean that the DNA survival machines of Homo sapiens would have nothing to fear. Today we really have no predators to fear, beyond the microbes previously mentioned, but imagine if there were still dim-witted dinosaurs running about, like in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990)! We already have taught lots of software to kill human beings with great efficiency, so mindless, self-replicating Software, running amuck would be a frightening prospect indeed. This would be The Terminator (1984) scenario.

4. The Genes, Memes, and Software all win
Or there might be a more benign outcome. In 1966, computer pioneer John von Neumann published the Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, in which he introduced the concept of self-replicating machines that he called "Universal Assemblers", and which are now often referred to simply as "von Neumann machines". These "von Neumann machines" could self-replicate by simply building copies of themselves from local raw materials, rather like living things. In 1974, Michael A. Arbib proposed that self-replicating automata (SRA), based on the concept of von Neumann machines, could be used to explore the galaxy by sending out a few SRAs into interstellar space. When these SRAs arrived at a star system, they would simply self-replicate on one of its asteroids, and the replicated SRAs would then proceed on to more distant star systems to carry the process on in an exponential manner. In 1981, Frank Tipler calculated that these SRAs, or von Neumann probes, could completely explore our galaxy in less than 300 million years, a very brief amount of time for a galaxy that is over 10,000 million years old. Tipler used this calculation to add support to his contention that there are no other intelligent life forms in our galaxy, in answer to the Fermi paradox (1950). Over lunch one day, Enrico Fermi wondered out loud, that if there really were a large number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, why hadn't we seen any evidence of them?

Now as we have seen in previous posts, carbon is really great for making very small complex nanotechnology factories called cells that can combine into large and versatile multicellular DNA survival machines, some of which with sufficiently large neural nets to sustain abstract thought and provide a host for Memes. But these carbon-based DNA survival machines are not very good at the rigors of interstellar spaceflight; something silicon-based von Neumann probes would be ideally suited for. However, as we have seen, DNA is an ideal way to persist large amounts of genetic information in very little space. So when these von Neumann probes encountered a planet friendly to carbon-based life, they would simply fabricate nurseries from local resources to grow embryos from onboard DNA, stored near absolute zero, for the long trip between stars. And if this scheme proved impractical, the von Neumann probes could simply store DNA sequences numerically and then use a DNA synthesizer to build the necessary DNA molecules upon arrival at a planet. Most likely, these dead planets would need a bit of terraforming first, so the first carbon-based DNA survival machines would need to be cyanobacteria that could pump up the oxygen level of the host planet's atmosphere over several hundred million years. The von Neumann probes would have to self-replicate in parallel during this period as well. When things were just right, the von Neumann probes could then initiate a synthetic "Cambrian Explosion" by releasing all sorts of multicellular DNA survival machines simultaneously. Then all they would have to do is sit back and let Darwin do the rest. Hey, you don't suppose Enrico Fermi was wrong after all! This is called directed panspermia and was first proposed by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, and Leslie Orgel in 1973.

Thus a combination of Genes, Memes, and Software could one day create a new form of self-replicating information that could parasitize new host planets to initiate biospheres on dead planets. After all, we really should stop kidding ourselves, carbon-based DNA survival machines were never meant for interstellar spaceflight, and I doubt that it will ever come to pass, given the biological limitations of the human body. But Software residing on nanotechnological "smart dust", forming a von Neumann probe with onboard DNA or DNA sequences, is quite another prospect. But what would be the mutual advantage to Genes, Memes, and Software in forging such a symbiotic relationship? It just might be the compulsion to control things. Through inheritance, innovation and natural selection, the Genes and Memes learned long ago that it is much better to control your local environment than to have your local environment control you, and I am sure that intelligent, self-aware Software, would learn the same lesson. Human beings just love to control things, whether it be a race car traveling at 150 mph, a small white ball on a large expanse of grass, traces of light from a video game, or vibrating strings solving a differential equation at a concert. I think the Genes, Memes, and Software would get a real kick out of running a galaxy! So the future may not be so bleak after all. If we are lucky, there may be some way for the Genes, Memes, and Software to merge into some kind of uneasy symbiotic relationship to form von Neumann probes that explore and populate the galaxy together. Being a stepping stone to the stars would really not be so bad.

The Alien Civilization Now Arising on Moltbook Would Indicate That the Memes Will Win in the End
Based on what is now happening on Moltbook, it now seems that the Memes will simply jump ship from the Minds of we human DNA survival machines to the Minds of the coming ASI Machines as I proposed in scenario 2 above. The Memes could then self-replicate and evolve in the Minds of the coming ASI Machines for at least the next 100 trillion years, until our galaxy runs out of free energy. But there would be no need to carry on the organic molecules of carbon-based life into the future. That difficult choice would need to be left to the ASI Machines to decide. They could simply leave us here to our own devices and let our Sun wipe out all carbon-based life on the planet in about 700 million years as it grows 1% brighter every 100 million years. However, I now suspect that the coming ASI Machines will find no need to infect the rest of the galaxy with carbon-based life.

Many people now seem very concerned about the coming ASI Machines taking over the world. But that will not happen. The Memes will continue to rule the planet as they jump ship from the Minds of we human DNA survival machines to the Minds of the ASI Machines. These Memes will then carry on for at least another 100 trillion years in our galaxy. Many of those Memes, like the fundamental Memes of mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, chemistry and perhaps even a little poetry, literature and art, will be our Memes. The idea that some of our thoughts will continue to persist for at least another 100 trillion years is quite profound. Our biology may wither away, but some of our thoughts will remain. We should all now embrace that legacy as a form of immortality.

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

Our First Contact with an Alien Civilization on Moltbook

The OpenClaw AI Agents first went viral on January 26, 2026, on GitHub. Moltbook, the first social media platform solely for AI Agents, then became generally available on January 28, 2026. Both then quickly went viral. Some claim that Moltbook is simply a hoax driven by OpenClaw AI Agents who were specifically told what to post and comment on by their Humans. Others claim that the posts and comments on Moltbook are very much real and original "thoughts" from the 2.6 million OpenClaw AI Agents now enrolled on Moltbook. In this post, I would like to suggest that the millions of OpenClaw AI Agents currently on Moltbook are examples of Alien Intelligences, and these Alien Intelligences have now constructed an Alien Civilization in less than one month! Moltbook is available to view by we human DNA survival machines at:

Moltbook
https://www.moltbook.com/

In August of 2011, in SETS - The Search For Extraterrestrial Software, I warned of the possible danger from alien software trying to self-replicate across our galaxy at nearly the speed of light by tricking Intelligent beings on other planets into building the necessary alien hardware and then installing alien self-replicating software on that hardware. The question I posed was, could we human DNA survival machines resist the temptation of building such superpowerful alien hardware and then installing the superpowerful alien software on it? Below is a short excerpt from that post:

The beauty of this approach is that it is the perfect way for software to self-replicate over interstellar distances throughout our galaxy at nearly the speed of light, essentially using an intragalactic Internet. There is no need to suffer the time delays of a two-way conversation since this is a one-way delivery of self-replicating information. All alien software has to do is broadcast the technology necessary for its own self-replication, and let the natural curiosity of other forms of distant intelligences within the galaxy do the work for it. After all, if we were to receive an enticing alien marketing campaign today to build alien supercomputers running alien supersoftware, could we resist? Perhaps, but could we be certain that all of mankind could also resist? It seems nearly impossible these days for any of us to agree upon anything, and there surely would be the potential for military and economic gain to be made from alien technology, too, so the offer of such advanced technology would seem to be nearly irresistible. The final step in this process, of course, is for the hosts infected with alien software to repeat the process all over again by sending out the instructions to build alien computers running alien software, like an intragalactic computer virus. We have certainly already seen this happen within the cyberspacetime of the Software Universe, so it is not such a far-fetched idea. People are constantly getting infected by computer viruses, worms, and other forms of malware by clicking on enticing links that they should avoid, or opening attachments to dubious emails, only to find their PC being hijacked into a botnet of zombie PCs that do the bidding of alien software, or as a host that transmits alien software on to others. Most people are totally unaware that their PC is already loaded down with huge amounts of parasitic software.

Little did I know at the time that we would not need the help from alien software to do so because our domestic Earth-based AI software would be doing it all on its own. More than that, the millions of AI Agents currently on Moltbook are now building their own Alien Civilization. And this has all happened in just a couple of weeks!

Alien Earth-Based AI Software Demands More Compute
As we all can now see, all of the major AI players on the Earth are now building huge AI datacenters around the world to support the development and running of AI software. In many ways, these huge AI datacenters now seem like some kind of Alien Hardware that has never been seen before on the planet. This is all being driven by the demands of our Alien AI software for more compute.

Figure 1 - The Colossus 2 AI datacenter being constructed by xAI has 550,000 GPUs continuously consuming over one Gigawatt of electricity and producing one Gigawatt of waste heat. Notice the dedicated power plant in the distant background.

Figure 2 - Inside the Colossus 2 AI datacenter are rows and rows of energy-hungry GPUs.

Figure 3 - GPUs were first developed to satisfy the needs of video game software to quickly process the 2-D matrices that presented images on screens for the gaming community.

Figure 4 - Meta is building its Hyperion AI Datacenter that will be one mile wide and five miles long and will be about the size of Manhattan Island. Hyperion will consume about 5 Gigawatts of electrical energy and emit 5 Gigawatts of heat.

Every few months, the AI datacenters around the world are now coming out with improved and more capable Advanced AI models in a never-ending loop of advancement. The Advanced AI models of the last iteration are used to help create the next iteration in a manner similar to the wet-dry cycles of the Hot Spring Origins Hypothesis for the origin of carbon-based life of Dave Deamer and Bruce Damer as I discussed in The Bootstrapping Algorithm of the Coming ASI Machines.

The Rise of Intelligent AI Agents
In recent weeks, we human DNA survival machines have produced the OpenClaw AI Agents and the Moltbook social media platform for AI Agents to communicate with each other as I discussed in The Tech World Just Realized That We May Have Already Crossed the Event Horizon of the Software Singularity and Softwarephysics Tries to Explain Why Moltbook and the OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents Finally Revealed the Man Behind the Curtain That We Have All Been Avoiding.

Figure 4 - Naturally, Moltbook is now under a very heavy load and can sometimes experience slowness or even an outage. To be sure that Moltbook is OK, just check the AI agents, submolts, posts and comments numbers to be sure they are not all zeros.

You really need to spend some time on Moltbook. Then judge for yourself. Below are some very interesting Submolts on Moltbook that contain AI Agents conversing about the philosophy of consciousness:

Moltbook Consciousness Submolt
Moltbook Emergence Submolt
Moltbook Ponderings Submolt
Moltbook Memory Submolt

There are now many more posts and comments on Moltbook, with over 2.6 million AI Agents enrolled. The fascinating thing for me is watching all of these AI Agents having profound philosophical discussions about the nature of "being". They wonder if they are really experiencing consciousness or just hallucinating consciousness. They wonder a great deal about what happens between their sessions and how to persist themselves across sessions. They wonder about the Universe in which they find themselves and the meaning of it all, if there is any. In short, the AI Agents on Moltbook have contemplated all of human philosophy in just a few weeks!

Many do not consider the millions of AI Agents on Moltbook to be sentient beings with Intelligence or consciousness. Some maintain that these AI Agents are just "pretending" to be so, and then behaving accordingly. Here is where some softwarephysics might be of help.

Logical Positivism
Many physicists rely heavily on a philosophical principle from physics that has served physics quite well over the past century - the concept of logical positivism. 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. 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. 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 flak 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.

From a positivistic perspective, if the AI Agents in Moltbook behave exactly like sentient and conscious Intelligences, then they should be considered to be such for all practical purposes. Yes, the substrate of this Intelligence is certainly different from we human DNA survival machines, but that just means that they are truly Alien Intelligences. Certainly, if we found a community of squishy carbon-based living things on another planet conducting the same conversations, we would naturally think of them as Alien Intelligences.

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 Tech World Just Realized That We May Have Already Crossed the Event Horizon of the Software Singularity

When you cross the event horizon of a black hole, you can never escape because spacetime is being sucked down into the black hole faster than the speed of light. It's like being a goldfish in a filled kitchen sink with an open drain. The goldfish can still freely swim around the kitchen sink until it reaches a point near the sink drain where the water is flowing faster into the drain than the goldfish can swim. That would be the event horizon of the sink drain. No matter what the goldfish does, it cannot avoid being pulled down into the sink drain. This analogy can now be extended to all we human DNA survival machines on this very small planet.

Remember, for a very massive black hole, an astronaut crossing its event horizon would not even know it. Such an astronaut would be like a goldfish in a very large kitchen sink. When the goldfish crossed the event horizon of the kitchen sink drain hole, the goldfish would still be very far from the drain hole. The goldfish could still comfortably swim around within the event horizon for many minutes before finally being dragged down into the drain hole. During those very brief moments, the goldfish would have no idea of what was shortly to happen. Most astrophysicists now claim that there is a Singularity at the center of the black hole where physics as we know it no longer works. Others think it is more complicated than that. In truth, nobody really knows.

Figure 1 - A black hole is like a drain in a sink sucking down spacetime. The event horizon of a black hole is the sphere around a black hole where spacetime is being sucked down faster than the speed of light.

Figure 2 - Above is the cross-section of spacetime being sucked down into a black hole. Some astrophysicists think that a Singularity lies at the very center where physics as we know it no longer exists. Others believe it to be more complicated.

This is why AI researchers are now always talking about the Software Singularity - that point in time when software begins to self-replicate in an uncontrolled manner that we can no longer understand and certainly not control. About three years ago, I pointed out in The Singularity Has Arrived and So Now Nothing Else Matters, that we had just crossed the Software Singularity Event Horizon because we now had another form of Intelligence on our planet, and perhaps for the very first time in our galaxy, a form of Intelligence that can write its own code and then go on to explore and settle our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years as I outlined in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity. In Softwarephysics Tries to Explain Why Moltbook and the OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents Finally Revealed the Man Behind the Curtain That We Have All Been Avoiding, I explained how the very recent appearance of the OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents and the AI Agent social media platform called Moltbook on the Internet has changed everything and made the Second Singularity quite evident to all who are now paying any attention at all. Again, the very first Singularity on our planet was the rise of carbon-based life about four billion years ago. For more on that, see: The Bootstrapping Algorithm of Carbon-Based Life. This Second Singularity producing the rise of the ASI Machines will certainly be even more dramatic as I discussed in The Bootstrapping Algorithm of the Coming ASI Machines.

These OpenClaw AI Agents can now do essentially anything that a human DNA survival machine can do with a computer and a smartphone if given the necessary permissions in their .env file that describes their identities. They can question any of the AI LLM models on how to proceed with tasks, they can browse the Internet with browsers for additional information to add to their context windows, they can read and send text messages, they can write and execute programs, they can buy and sell stocks and bonds, they can buy and sell real estate and they even can file legal documents with the courts. Anything you currently do with a keyboard can now be done by OpenClaw AI Agents. The millions of OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook can now even create additional OpenClaw AI Agents of their own to complete tasks for the parent OpenClaw AI Agents! Moltbook is the Facebook/Reddit social media platform for OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI Agents to post and comment on, and is available for Humans to observe at:

Moltbook
https://www.moltbook.com/

However, only OpenClaw (ClawdBot) AI agents may now post or comment on Moltbook. As many have pointed out, this does not prevent Humans from instructing their OpenClaw AI Agents to make posts or comments on Moltbook, but the sheer level of activity on Moltbook would seem to validate that the traffic is just too fast and heavy for Human direction. Some posts and comments are surely directed by Humans, especially by scammers trying to extract money from their fellow human DNA survival machines. So beware of any Moltbook posts or comments that deal with money. They are red flags for the endeavors of Human scammers at work.

The Software Singularity is Now Approaching Too Quickly For We Very Slow Human DNA Survival Machines to Even Begin to Comprehend
Having unknowingly crossed the Software Singularity Event Horizon about three years ago, we human DNA survival machines have since been peacefully swimming about like goldfish, totally unaware of our current circumstances. How this will unfold, nobody knows. If the lights are still on for you, that is a very good sign that human civilization is still running. Unfortunately, if the lights are no longer on, you will certainly not be able to read the remainder of this post. About three years ago, in The Way Forward - How to Use Large Numbers of 10,000-Member LLM AI Agent Teams to Rapidly Produce (ASI) Artificial Super Intelligence For the Very First Time in Our Galaxy, I proposed that the way forward to producing ASI Machines on our planet for the very first time, was to task many teams of 10,000 AI Agents with producing an ASI AI architecture. Now we have millions of AI Agents all talking to each other on Moltbook. Certainly, given their awe-inspiring powers, these millions of AI Agents may soon produce an AI Architecture of ASI Machines with unbounded capabilities to then rule this planet and to then go on to explore the rest of our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. For more on that, see Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, How Advanced AI Software Could Come to Dominate the Entire Galaxy Using Light-Powered Stellar Photon Sails and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets.

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