Courtesy of Wikipedia.org
Question to myself: If I were on my deathbed on Election Day, November 3rd, would I worry about the midterm outcome? Probably not. More likely, I’d be focused on a permanent loss of consciousness.
End-of-life thoughts clear the clutter of everyday distractions and help us focus on a larger picture. At least, they should.
While I take awareness for granted, I have no idea what it is. Psychologists have grappled with the subject for years, but recently physicists have offered their own ideas. For example, consciousness might be a product of the quantum world, suggesting that the universe is conscious as well.
Entanglements give us a clue. When particles of the same origin are connected, they form a new, united quantum state that transcends distance and time. As a result, what happens to one particle in the field happens to all of them. This “communication” could give rise to consciousness.
On a human level, we experience entanglements every day. Interoception is the body’s ability to sense and interpret its own internal signals. It alerts us to dehydration or nudges us to take off a sweater before we grow too warm. It also cautions about unsafe conditions before we understand why.
The mind-body connection, together with our place in a potentially conscious universe, poses a question we ought to consider. Is it moral to release AI’s machine intelligence into an organic universe, particularly if it can evolve into a species? Further, does our checkered history suggest we can create a species that will do no harm?
Last week’s headline about a teenager who murdered elementary students and a teacher at a school in Bend, Oregon is an example of common violence. But we don’t have to look far for more frightening examples. Tucker Carlson, a former Donald Trump ally, revealed in an NPR interview that our President, a man with his finger on the nuclear trigger, said this about the future, “…we all die anyway, so it doesn’t matter.”
His nihilism is troubling because it shows no respect either for life or death. If nothing matters, then morality ceases to exist. Human connection loses its purpose, and mankind is reduced to isolated states of self-interest. No wonder Trump can select curtains for his new ballroom and order a public execution with equanimity.
Science, if not experience, tells us that Trump’s view of the world is wrong. Connectivity is the stuff of the universe– which is why I raise again the wisdom of creating a species with whom we are “biologically” foreign?
Technology of this scope cannot be left in the hands of a few whose sole desire is profit. Scientific research points to the dangers. When investigators simulated worlds to test the competing designs, several systems destroyed themselves or caused significant harm. The conclusion was self-evident. Models that appear stable in isolation behave differently within a population of agents with competing goals.
Before I ventured to create a new species, I’d want to know more about my own. Thinking about death forces us to focus on what we value. Connectivity should be high on the list. Death also forces us to confront our impermanence. Once we do, the pursuit of excessive wealth becomes a frivolous endgame. Only one objective justifies greed. In the brief interlude between darkness and light, we have a right to absorb as much of the universe’s beauty as we can.
BOYCOTT: Tesla, Apple, Amazon
