Lonely Planets

by David Grinspoon

  with the right values and proper acknowledgment of the risks.

  Let’s accept for the sake of argument my paraphrasing of Bill Joy’s

  point: that soon any damn fool who was pissed off might be able to

  destroy the world. In a world where a couple of teenage video-game

  geeks decide to blow away their classmates, where people drop “smart

  bombs” on cities and crash planes into buildings, it’s impossible to

  believe that nobody would do it.*

  Do we have a plan for dealing with these huge new threats to our

  survival? Of course not. The human race has no plans. Individuals and

  nations do, but not proto-intelligent humanity. Our lack of collective

  *Say, could you pass the Xanax?

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  identity becomes more of a threat to our survival as certain kinds of

  technology become more advanced. No one would deny our cleverness,

  but can we find wisdom, and how long can we last with one and not

  the other?

  As I described in chapter 19, some people have argued that the “self-

  destruction hypothesis” is the solution to Fermi’s Paradox. Where are

  they? Simple: they’re all dead, having designed powerful technology

  without the wisdom to control it. Maybe it’s just natural selection on a

  cosmic scale. All those other living worlds out there that don’t produce

  idiots savants like us might end up surviving, thus ensuring that the

  self-destructive races are not the ones who inherit the galaxy.

  Perhaps our kind of proto-intelligence truly is an unstable develop-

  ment and does not usually survive. But, even if it happens rarely, I

  believe that sometimes proto-intelligence evolves into something else:

  true intelligence.

  T R U E I N T E L L I G E N C E

  When a reporter asked Gandhi what he thought of Western civilization,

  he replied, “I think it would be a wonderful idea.” I would say the

  same about human intelligence.

  If we are not intelligent, then what is? Here’s my crack at a definition:

  A truly intelligent species must have the ability to behave, collectively, in

  ways that ensure long-term survival. It must have learned to avoid self-

  destruction, anticipate and avoid natural disasters, intentionally and

  thoughtfully alter its environment and live sustainably within it.

  What we have seems pretty special, just as Earth once seemed cen-

  tral. But our consciousness may be just a faint spark, an inchoate stir-

  ring of what may someday, somewhere, lead to true intelligence. After

  all, why should this be the pinnacle? Given our complete inexperience

  on the cosmic stage, I would argue that what we have is most likely just

  some vague foreshadowing of what would be called true consciousness

  by the cosmiscenti. We are not the center of the universe, and our level

  of awareness is not the apotheosis of evolution.

  If you consider the continuum of increasing consciousness—say from

  a rock to a cabbage to a rabbit to an orangutan to you—why should we

  assume that it stops with us? Is it so hard to imagine that there are

  higher levels on this path and that, for all we know, on the whole spec-

  trum, we are more like cabbages than kings?

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  In chapters 5 through 9 I recounted the major turning points in

  Cosmic Evolution. Each new stage has involved changing the mecha-

  nisms by which matter has organized itself into ever more complex and

  stable gatherings: protons, atoms, and molecules. Then a molecular

  dance marathon in which the last ones left standing won the prize of

  survival. Then some learned how to copy themselves and the rest was

  heredity. We went cellular, became organisms, and the whole game

  since then has been getting together in new kinds of groups (cells,

  colonies, individuals, communities) and repeatedly fusing identity.

  At some time in the last million years, some of us cell throngs started

  to talk to one another and make big plans.

  We have no good reason to believe that this history of forming new

  groupings, each with unforeseen capabilities and a new sense of collec-

  tive self, has to stop with individual organisms. Is there a way to learn a

  group sense of identity strong enough to manifest collective intelli-

  gence, without becoming Nazis or Stalinists or the Borg? Can we main-

  tain the individual freedom that makes life worth living while gaining a

  new kind of freedom: the collective cognitive abilities that will allow us

  to survive?*

  At present there are some faint glimmerings of a collective, planetary

  consciousness growing on Earth. We see them in the bright side of the

  World Wide Web, in the growth of SETI@home, in some global non-

  governmental organizations, in the pulsing rhythms of world music

  that are collectively evolving into something new and wonderful as they

  echo around the planet, and in the global, transnational perspective

  brought back from space by astronauts and cosmonauts.

  Perhaps, like life, true intelligence will not be a trait of individ-

  ual organisms, but something new that will happen to a planet as a

  whole. Recall the noosphere of Tielhard de Chardin and Vladimir

  Vernadsky—the planetary development of a thinking realm, a zone of

  intellectual activity that arose out of the biosphere to become its organ

  of consciousness. The new-o-sphere. What might it become?

  Perhaps here it won’t become much of anything. Nietzsche said that

  *The current debate about globalization needs to be seen in the context of these questions.

  There is no sense in being “antiglobalization.” Globalization must happen if we are to survive long term with high technology. The question is how we do it and what values dominate. Will globalization simply empower massive corporations to control Earth’s resources in a short-term orgy of profit, the future be damned? Or will humanistic and multigenerational values prevail?

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  the human race was an intermediate step between ape and superman.

  It’s interesting to think of Homo “sapiens” as the missing link between

  apes and truly intelligent creatures, between clever animals and wise

  beings.

  How long could such a species survive? How long have you got? I

  believe that a civilization that achieves true intelligence can survive for

  the rest of time. As Shklovskii said at Byurakan in 1964, “There is,

  however, a possibility that some civilizations, having reached a highly

  advanced level, will find themselves past the inevitable crises and inter-

  nal contradictions which plague the younger civilizations. The evolu-

  tionary timescale of these quiescent civilizations may be considerably

  larger, approaching the cosmogonic scale.”*

  “Approaching the cosmogonic scale” means approaching the age of

  the universe. For the purposes of the present discussion, true intelli-

  gence has, by definition, achieved effective immortality.

  Humanity’s semismart transition state cannot last. This fragile,

  proto-intelligent phase may be one that most species don’t make it

  through. An immature noosphere like ours could be a risk that a bio-


  sphere must endure, hoping to come out newly empowered. It’s a high-

  stakes gamble. Either we get snuffed rather quickly, or we emerge

  immortal. A great valley of stability is out there, but the journey is

  fraught with dangers, and we don’t have a map.

  In this view we are near either the beginning or the end of the human

  adventure. I believe that if we survive a tight bottleneck we have

  now entered, we will emerge as one of the immortals. I don’t know if

  this bottleneck lasts a half century or a millennium, but either way it

  is a trivial interval compared to life’s long history. Certainly in a few

  thousand years—a “blink and you missed it” moment in Cosmic

  Evolution—we will be through it one way or another.

  It seems almost inevitable that other sentient beings will have in com-

  mon with us this “race between education and catastrophe.”† Will

  some learn to use technology in a way that ensures survival rather than

  destruction? That will determine whether the universe is lively or

  lonely. If even a small fraction choose life, then life will still dominate.

  This is a good reason to have some hope for the universe (if not for us).

  *This was three decades before he dismissed the early rosy views that he once held, along with his coauthor Sagan and most of the SETI community, as “adolescent optimism.”

  †Quoting H. G. Wells.

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  We don’t know the odds, but this is the game we’re in. The problem

  of survival is not fundamentally technological. It is spiritual and moral.

  It is evolutionary. Technical solutions may provide temporary Band-

  Aids, but they do not save us from our nature. If we want to be one of

  the survivors, we must create a global society where curiosity is tightly

  bonded to compassion, and where (this is hardest to picture) not a lot

  of people want to do violence to others. You’re probably not going to

  like this next thought, but one solution would be to just surrender to

  the machines.

  W E L C O M E T O T H E M A C H I N E

  Arthur C. Clarke once speculated that “all really high intelligences will

  be machines. Unless they’re beyond the machine. But biological intelli-

  gence is a lower form of intelligence, almost inevitably. We’re in an

  early stage in the evolution of intelligence, but a late stage in the evolu-

  tion of life. Real intelligence won’t be living.”

  Many futurologists have predicted that we will evolve into machine-

  human hybrids with our consciousness intact or even enhanced. Some

  feel that this transition might come within the next century. Variations

  on this theme range from Bill Joy–type doomsday scenarios to utopian

  visions of “uploading” our memories and thoughts into an immortal,

  pain-free machine state and building for ourselves any bodies we

  choose. The biological stage may be a mere precursor to what technol-

  ogist Ray Kurzweil calls “the age of spiritual machines.”

  In many ways, we already are human-machine hybrids. I sit thwack-

  ing away at my computer all day, my thought processes, memories, and

  communications increasingly dependent on it. While I work, I am often

  connected to several different computers in different cities. Eventually, I

  leave work and head home (don’t worry, there are computers there,

  too). As I turn into my driveway, I’m simultaneously cranking the steer-

  ing wheel, stepping on the brake, hanging up the phone, tuning the

  stereo, and pushing the garage door opener. Every evening I do all this

  as effortlessly as Homer at the beginning of each episode of The

  Simpsons. We’ve constructed an elaborate high-tech matrix within

  which we are merely the organic, semi-intelligent component. Already,

  machines are us, and we are them. Goo goo ga joob.

  If we receive an interstellar message we may never know if it was sent

  by machines or biological organisms. Perhaps it will come from sen-

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  tient organisms who have evolved radio dishes for sensory and commu-

  nicative organs and computers for memories and minds, as we our-

  selves may now be doing. Even if we meet the aliens in person, will we

  be able to tell if they are machine or organism? Will we be able to dif-

  ferentiate “individuals” from tightly knit, machine-enabled communi-

  ties? These puzzles give us reason to question our cozy categories.

  Notice that when I’ve written about “the immortals,” I haven’t said

  whether I think it is civilizations, species, machines, or individuals who

  will evolve to live forever. I’ve intentionally blurred these lines because I

  think that for the immortals such distinctions may have become mean-

  ingless.

  According to one theory, a kind of mineral life may have existed on

  Earth before carbon-based life. Now, carbon has so remade our world

  that if this former life ever existed, all vestiges of it have long since been

  erased. Will our silicon machines one day erase all vestiges of carbon

  life from their world?* Our carbon-based egos recoil in horror at the

  thought, but from the point of view of the machines, this may only be

  the beginning of something magnificent that we can scarcely envision.

  Rejecting the value and sanctity of machine sentience may someday be

  regarded as just another form of ignorance, racism, or bigotry. The new

  machine-human hybrids may keep us on for a time as useful organs in

  their silicon structures. Then, someday, they may leave our fragile,

  ephemeral bodies behind altogether and take to the stars. Five billion

  years hence, as Earth is roasted dry by our bloated, red, dying star, our

  descendants may briefly pause to remember us as they ride off out of

  the sunset, seeking other green worlds or the company of like-minded

  spiritual machines.

  I M M O R T A L F O R A W H I L E

  The idea of immortality, I’ve noticed, is troubling. People are quick to

  reject the notion. A group of academics at a “philosophy of astrobiol-

  ogy” discussion group at the University of Colorado once gave me a

  hard time about this. The topic was SETI. When I argued that we should

  consider a definition of intelligence qualitatively different from our

  own—one that might indeed be immortal—they practically shouted me

  *This could be the ultimate Microsoft marketing strategy!

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  down. They only wanted to discuss intelligence as a variation on what

  we have on Earth. What good is it to talk of hypotheticals?*

  To me, it seems inevitable that in our vast universe at least a tiny

  fraction of species will escape self-destruction, attain great understand-

  ing of nature, and learn how to avoid natural disasters. The combina-

  tion will make them immortal.

  A common response is to point out that no species has ever attained

  this. Yet, the same could have been said to a cell contemplating animal-

  hood a scant billion years ago. It had never been done.

  When we reflexively dismiss immortality as a pipe dream, we are

  being unduly influenced by our limited experience, and the narrow

&
nbsp; species-level picture of evolution we were taught in high school. It’s

  true that species come and go. But, forget about species. On the molec-

  ular level, the immortality of Earth’s DNA is a fact of our existence.

  And what about the life of Gaia? Earth’s biosphere may well last for-

  ever, or at least as long as the Sun keeps nuking along, and maybe

  longer if we play our cards right. Indeed we, the noosphere, might be

  the biosphere’s ticket out of here, its vehicle for extending its lifetime

  beyond that of the Sun. If we think of ourselves as just another species, our odds don’t seem great. But if we are the noosphere, why shouldn’t

  we become immortal, like the biosphere that birthed us? And even if we

  blow it, wouldn’t you think that some biosphere somewhere has pro-

  duced an immortal noosphere?

  If some fraction of sentient species might achieve immortality, then

  that changes everything. True intelligence is not an easy gang to join,

  but once you’re in, you’re in for life—the life of the universe. They’re

  not going anywhere, so immortal species would just accumulate as the

  universe cooks along.

  Why discuss a hypothetical like the immortals? Because their exis-

  tence is a reasonable supposition when we drop the pretense that we

  are the supreme beings. And because if they do exist, it leads to a differ-

  ent picture of our universe and the cosmic role of conscious awareness.

  Frank Drake has said that it is the immortals whom we are most

  likely to hear from with SETI. As fantastic as this sounds, the more you

  think about the timescales of Cosmic Evolution and the inconceivable

  *One professional philosopher there told me I was using the wrong definition of definition. Whatever.

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  power of technology in the service of a spiritually advanced society, the

  idea of the immortals starts to make more sense.

  However rare it may be, the birth of an immortal is, by definition, a

  one-way, irreversible transition. If immortality can be achieved, then

  the immortals must exist in ever-increasing numbers. I do not know

  what the average distance is between civilizations. No one here does.

  But I believe that it is decreasing.

  The universe is progressing in a direction toward greater intelligence,

  conscious awareness, and self-understanding. The dark universe