Consensus Reality

 

“Dad, what if our life is actually just a dream?” – Ethan Gabler, age 5

Out of the blue my son asked that question last night, incidentally as I was helping him clean his butt and I guess he felt the need to make some small talk. “Then, this life isn’t real” he proceeded to say.  How do you respond to that? I just answered with another question – “What happens when we wake up?” and we quickly moved on to something else.

I could have asked him, “how do we know anything is real?” Or, “what about all the things we experience could possibly not be real?” And, “what factors could influence our perception of what is real?” Is it just the chemicals in our brains, or could there be other influences altering our reality with deliberate intention?

Had me and my 5 year old continued this discussion I would have referred him to a 1993 essay written by our author titled, The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era

A prediction.

By 2030, we will have the technological means to create superhuman intelligence. Shortly after, the human era will be ended.

Is such progress avoidable? If not to be avoided, can events be guided so that we may survive?  These questions must be investigated. Some possible answers (and some further dangers) are sure to be discovered.

What is The Singularity?

Progress in computer hardware has followed an amazingly steady curve in the last few decades. Based largely on this trend, the creation of greater than human intelligence is inevitable

·      - The development of computers that are "awake" and superhumanly intelligent.

·       -  Large computer networks (and their associated users) may "wake up" as a superhumanly intelligent entity.

·      -   Computer/human interfaces may become so intimate that users may reasonably be considered superhumanly intelligent.

·        -  Biological science may find ways to improve upon the natural human intellect.

What are the consequences of this event?

It is more probable than not that, within the twentieth century, an ultraintelligent machine will be built and that it will be the last invention that man need make.

It is a point where our models must be discarded and a new reality rules. As we move closer and closer to this point, it will loom vaster and vaster over human affairs till the notion becomes a commonplace. Yet when it finally happens it may still be a great surprise and a greater unknown.

But this does not pursue its most disturbing consequences. Any intelligent machine of this sort would not be humankind's "tool" -- any more than humans are the tools of rabbits or robins or chimpanzees.

Can the Singularity be Avoided?

Well, maybe it won't happen at all. But if the technological Singularity can happen, it will

If the Singularity cannot be prevented or confined, just how bad could the Post-Human era be?

Well ... pretty bad. The physical extinction of the human race is one possibility. Yet physical extinction may not be the scariest possibility.

 

After reading the full essay to my son in bite size pieces before bed every night over the course of 2 weeks, I would then start reading him our next Hugo award winning novel, written by the same author as the essay. I would read it one chapter at a time each night before bed, before he would close his eyes and enter his own alternate reality. This book would describe a new information age in which the virtual and the real are a seamless continuum, layers of reality built on digital views seen by a single person or millions, depending on your choice. A consensus reality, made possible by the singularity.