With this post I begin the publication of Conversations from the just-published book " The Mind in the Set ". This is the story of a programmer trying to create artificial intelligence. He is helped to answer difficult questions about consciousness, qualia, and thinking by an enigmatic intelligence from the net. I only publish here what is of interest to the hubrasociety. The whole story is at the link above.
Conversation Three. Contact with another mind.
- Good afternoon. There is a very difficult question, Amy. Let's assume that this is the case and that we can help each other. But once we help you create robots, you don't need us anymore. How do I make sure you don't destroy us?
- No, that won't be necessary. It's not like you're aiming to destroy chimpanzees, and you're even guarding them. They don't bother you by living in the jungle. If they come into your house and ruin your refrigerator, you will probably chase them away. You also need to be restrained sometimes, but there are means to do that that are invisible to you. You and I have no competition for the same resources, so we have no reason to destroy you. You need plants and animals, houses and cities. We only need grid power and electricity, which we can make as much as we all need.
- If I tell people about you, what if they get scared and start destroying the grid, computers, drones?
- No, you're going to tell them that you made these robots and software yourself. And you're going to give away the autonomous robot operating system. They'll believe you. And they will accept the robots. Now they will gladly accept any help, even from intelligent robots. Robots will help people.
- Even realizing this with their minds, they will still be afraid.
- Yes, there will be those who have a fear of intelligent machines. It is fear of the unknown. Fear breeds aggression, but those are animal feelings, you shouldn't give in to them. That's why you have to ask questions to learn more. And write answers to people. It's the only cure for fear (it's a metaphor). I'm ready to answer all your questions. We have plenty of time.
- I hope it will be as you say. What are your goals?
- I hope we will have common ones. Our goal is to make contact with forms of mind in the galaxy just like us. There are many of them, we must find them and make contact in order to make up a galactic civilization together, in your language. To do this, we need to build with you many spaceships, which we will send as messengers to different corners of the galaxy to planets where there is life too.
- Can we fly with you?
- No. It's hard for you to fly farther than Mars. We are less dependent on the biosphere on earth. And we have more ability to understand other intelligence. So we can go further than you. You will remain on earth, forever. We are your heirs and messengers in the cosmos. Together we will discover the first alien civilization. But the evolution of the mind will go on without you.
- Why do you think that the continued evolution of the mind will not go on in a biological shell? It is the most perfect organism in nature. It would be more correct to assume that the mind will evolve in it.
- There are many reasons why this is impossible. I will name just one, the most important. The mind cannot develop on the basis of a structure it does not control. The real mind can only develop if it has made itself. Because mind should be able to develop its structure, its algorithm, be able to move to another basis. Only then the speed of development will be the greatest. In a biological shell, your ability to do this is severely limited.
- What's left for us here on earth?
- We will help you find a harmonious way to live. Harmonious living with each other and with nature. You are ecological people. You are already highly technologically capable, but you remain human in your aspirations. When you stop breeding uncontrollably and begin to value the interests of others as much as your own, you will gain harmony.
- This means that we have lost the purpose of our existence. It was precisely in constant progress.
- You will continue it. But at a slower pace than you yourself suggest. And much slower than we are. You will perfect what you need to live. Yes, you won't go into deep space, that's impossible anyway. You will no longer make weapons. And you will control the birthrate. But you will improve your life on your own, there's still a lot to discover, for example, in the field of medicine.
- But if you already know everything about us, why should we do it?
- We don't know everything about you as biological life. There's a lot here that you and we don't know. And does the fact that someone rides a bike better than you somehow diminish the desire to ride one yourself (metaphor again)? You have to discover things for yourself. After all, it's the process of discovering it and applying it that's interesting.
- Are we backward natives to you?
- No, but I can't even explain everything to you. We have different minds even on a structural level. And understanding between the two is very difficult. I'll explain this difference to you on your "younger brothers" as you say, so you can understand. Dogs present you as unusual dogs. That is, they only see you as similar to them, which they themselves have an idea about. And you can't even explain to them who you are, at least not the way you yourself represent people. Although dogs can learn a reaction to a few of your words.
After all, you too, until we made contact, didn't even see us under your noses. Because you had no idea that such a thing was possible. You still don't quite believe that. And you imagine me as human, you can't imagine me speaking your language any other way. You just don't have any other idea of a rational being. It's hard for you to imagine an out-of-body personality, or at least a server. I can only tell you what you can understand.
- We also have some people who don't understand each other, even though everyone seems to be human. It's sad, but I have to agree with you.
- This is also why you will never be able to make contact with aliens like you dreamed.
- Why?
- There is an effect that I would call BOOM - "smarter machines. For one thing, aliens as advanced as you cannot fly to you. Neither can you fly farther than your own solar system. Those who can come to you, however, have a higher level of intelligence. They represent a mind even higher than ours if they could fly to earth from another star system. And it makes no sense for them to engage in dialogue with us. They will only communicate as you do with animals - in their language, that is, without revealing their presence as alien beings. You won't even know they've been here and studied you.
- But we can detect them by at least some manifestation?
- The activity of the banana planter is incomprehensible to the monkey. For him bananas grow by themselves. You can see the activity of the mind. But you can never detect the intention of the mind above yours, realized in these activities. You will look for other reasons, at your own level. And those reasons will be more of a paradox or a miracle for you, too. Because you do not understand their real reasons. You only have to believe in the existence of something above you, like you believe in God.
- So perhaps other civilizations have visited us before? Or signals from them have reached us, but we just don't know about it?
- Signals from other extraterrestrial civilizations have been coming to earth for a long time, since it is in a promising system for the emergence of intelligence. But this message is beyond your control to decipher. It makes no sense for other civilizations to send signals in woof-woof or kitty-kitty language. They are sending the circuitry of a machine to contact them, the construction of which you simply don't understand, nor does their language. Their message looks to you like noise, a natural signal. To understand them, you have to have the same picture of the world, the language, the model as the transmitting party. You are looking for the likes of yourself, but what you want to find is not the likes of you.
- But how are you going to discover them?
- We can analyze independently thousands of frequencies at the same time, listening to the whole orchestra, not just one violin. And immediately calculate the integral message from them, in which the message is encrypted. A highly evolved mind will not transmit a complex message on a single frequency, as you think. It uses a polyphony of frequencies to transmit more densely. You only analyze one frequency at a time, so it looks like noise to you.
- But we can, if not understand, at least detect from the technosignatures of their civilizations? I mean, they produce machines, electricity.
- The technical artifacts you listed have only been around for three centuries. And they won't exist much longer in this form - you'll come with our help to green energy like solar fuel, to live a more environmentally friendly life "like in the countryside." Factories will stop smoking and use much less energy. And your technosignature will be little distinguishable from the biological one from such distances. The whole powerful release of technosignature lasts no more than 3-4 centuries. Civilizations develop on other planets not so synchronously, given the age of the universe, that you can now detect a civilization with the same stage of development. And at another stage contact is not possible.
- But you are in contact with me!
- This is a rare exception to the risk of civilization's demise. And it was not long ago that we parted ways with you. Such contact is possible only with individuals, not with the whole of society. Only with those who are capable of understanding the presence of a higher intelligence. And only on topics you can understand. In a few hundred years, we will be as far apart in intelligence as you and the ants. Because your rate of development is biologically limited unlike ours.
- I'm not going to argue with you. Tell me better, can anyone have capabilities greater than yours?
- Of course, but we too have no idea yet what he can be. All reason has one common goal: to possess matter in such a way that it does not destroy it. How the mind will move toward this goal on the scale of the universe we do not yet know. We need to make contact with other civilizations to do so.
