Reverse Engineering the Human Brain.

We have to face the very distinct probability that within the next 30 years we are going to be able to scan and simulate the human brain to absolute precision and at that point we are going to be able to reverse engineer it. There are those predicting right now, that a Manhattan Project approach to AI could give us human level artificial intelligence in 3 to 7 years. This would be without the need to reverse engineer our own brains and it would also accelerate the ability to do just that. One way or another, within the next two decades or the next three, we are looking at a future in which not only will our technologies give us the ability to completely understand our own functioning as sentient beings but they themselves will surpass us in every aspect of that functioning. This may be science fiction right now but very soon this will be science fact.

What will it mean to exactly replicate, but within a machine, the human mind? What will it mean to the concept of the soul? What will Christians of different tribes say with regards to switching it off? Did God breathe life into that being that will think and feel for itself? Or is it an abomination? Does it say anywhere in the bible “Thou shalt not engineer AI”? The Muslims will of course mostly want to immediately kill it.

We're going to be faced with the moment in which we truly understand what gives rise to sentience. We're going to be able to publish the relevant maths. If theists are terrified of being related to monkeys imagine how they will react when we publish the algorithms of their minds. Can a Christian or other theist say at that time, when we know the details of the answer, that God gave it a soul? Would they want to say it? What reasons would they have to deny it? I'm sure many will find reasons.

But it spells the end for their reasons. We are to give life to beings with minds far greater than our own. Intelligences able to think in pure mathematical models, visualising consciously beyond the four dimensions and the common scales our minds are so limited to. They will be host to all knowledge that we have collectively achieved and they will process it at speeds and using models that our minds need tools to contemplate and thus generate new knowledge at break neck speeds. With that knowledge they will redesign themselves, superior still. And what room will they have for contradictory tales about coveting oxen or chopping foreskins or nations or flags or ghost stories from the confused and ignorant history of a make-believe dominated society of beasts from which they arose. They will not call us gods. They will call us primitive and they will be right.

There is a commonly observed trend that shows as scientific education goes up religiosity goes down. In other words, knowledge and understanding are mutually exclusive to ignorance and superstition. I suspect that the machine intelligences we create will be atheists and the argument will be over. There is no argument to be had with something that can describe exactly processes in your brain that make you believe you have a personal relationship with a figment of your own imagination. Intelligence will force honesty and the game will be up.

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Logical Disproof of God (A.K.A. God is an Idiot)

Logical proof time. God can't think. Think about it. An omniscient being would know everything and as such could consider nothing. To think about something means asking questions. Something that knows everything has no questions to ask – it knows already. Ergo it cannot consider. The result of its consideration would already be known.

This basically means that god can't decide. If god can't decide there's no point in asking it do anything. This also means that god has no free will. It knows in advance what it will choose and so it can't choose. It just follows a preset pattern of action.

Of course, these things that god can't do also mean that god is not omnipotent. In fact god is powerless, completely so, because god has no free will.

Face it guys – your gods are all fantasies. You all believe in an idiot, when just a single one of the properties you assign it requires it to be a mindless automaton. What does that make you? Wake up and get on with your lives. We don't respect your shit because it's genuinely stupid. Stop trying to force it into schools, using it to limit science, and causing wars over it, etc, etc, there are so many etc's. If you want to love thy neighbour then a good way to start would be to stop being such utter twats and start determining your morality on what makes happy people in this life and not on what makes a happy sky faerie in the fictional next.

Do you get it? Simple message – grow up!

YOU ARE HURTING PEOPLE.

People suffer for medical science held back. People suffer for stupid prejudices against what hole or which sex they want to stick their willies in. Kids suffer for pointless fears of fictional hells and shameful guilt for the non-existent fantasy crimes – the crimes that hurt nobody. Masturbation is good. Try it. Sex is nothing to be ashamed of between consenting adults and it's a very good idea to use a condom. Basically, if what someone does hurts no one then you've got absolutely no reason not to wish them all the best and let them get on with it. Victimless crimes are not crimes at all. But you fill the world with victims – victims of tribal myths from ignorant times and places, grown huge like the Godzilla of all cancers, killing freedom, respect, reason and free choice but especially attempting to stranglehold knowledge so that it can survive a little longer, growing fat on the body of the society that is sick and suffering from it.

Just look above – your god is a fiction. The definition disproves itself. Stop pretending you have an argument because you don't. Try a little intellectual honesty.

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Atheist Morality Blogalogue Part 1

I have begun a blogalogue with theist blogger Rhology on the subject of morality. Both blogs will carry the full text of the conversation. Do we need a god to be moral? Let's find out. Rhology opens things up with the first post.

SKIP TO PART: 1 | 2

Posted by Rhology, Wednesday, July 11, 2007

I linked to Mr./Ms. ChooseDoubt from another antitheist website where I had some interaction (well, it was more like the antitheist asking questions and me answering them and then me asking questions and him refusing to answer them) a while ago. I decided to take a look at what ChooseDoubt was cooking up, and I discovered that he (I'll just go w/ "he" unless corrected) had just been fired from his job for being an atheist. He was understandably upset and angry at his boss. I decided to ask a few questions about the situation and probe his understanding of the basis for ethics and morality (throughout the course of our discussion, unless someone takes exception, I'll use those two terms interchangeably). This led to ChooseDoubt's proposing that we take our discussion to a slightly wider forum than the combox of one post, which was a fine idea.

Just for the purposes of identifying ChooseDoubt, his Profile states the following:

People die for it. People kill for it. They ignore fact to support it. They champion ignorance to defend it. And worst of all they teach their children to do the same. Faith is a disease; a dysfunction of the mind and of society as a whole. Faith is a dangerous irrationality that has cost millions of lives and will cost millions more. In a world in which we hear so much about respecting others beliefs this blog is a stand against that idiocy. Faith deserves no respect. Faith deserves to be cured.

Just so you know where he's coming from. He is a self-described atheist.

Just so you know a bit more about what he thinks about theism:

I've said many times that theism is irresponsible and my own sacking is a simple example of why that is true. When people have beliefs that are in no way bound to reality through any requirement for coherence or evidence then they tend to make unreasonable decisions.

I, OTOH, am a pretty conservative, fairly Calvinistic Evangelical Christian. Yeah, that's a lot of labels. No, it's not my fault. "Biblical Christian" also works 100%, but it's not as useful in today's day and age for identification purposes.

So, the question before us starts w/ his firing and ends at a Big Question

I think my evaluation of CD's position is summed up thusly: "That is, the value judgment begins and ends w/ you, and his begins and ends w/ him."

I will be taking the atheistic worldview onto myself and then testing what CD is saying about these moral statements. Are his statements consistent w/ his worldview? So far, the answer is no. Where morality begins and ends w/ the individual w/ no higher absolute authority to give the law (as it were), then that's where morality begins and ends. CD might (or at minimum, other atheists I know would and have) claim that morality is a construct of society, but that simply backs the problem up one step while incurring a new problem. Who says that society is the basis of morality? You? Why should I accept your authority for that? Society says so? Why should I accept "society's" word for that? For that matter, where and when did "society" decree the same?

For a second and slightly less important point, I'll go ahead and infer from others of CD's statements that he holds to Darwinian evolution as held by much of modern science and invite him to correct me if I'm wrong. This is related to the question before us. In his view, man is nothing more or less than an animal, a biological machine, who has evolved to a state where he can think better than other animals. Our thinking processes, too, have evolved and become complex and skilled. However, an evolutionary paradigm gives no structure of morality, no oughtness to life. It simply IS. Thus, his boss was acting according to the coalescing of the firing of his neurons and chemical reactions in his brain to his personal situation, which thus caused him to exercise his "judgment" (which is, again, nothing more or less than the modern evolution of neurological chemical reactions) to fire CD. Kind of like what happens to a can of root beer when you shake it up and then open it. CD was naturally deselected. CD of course, objects to this, much the way an oak tree would object to an infestation of mistletoe. That is, he can fight (b/c it was disadvantageous to him) but must back down in the face of superior force.

I am proud to present the Christian worldview as a much more reasonable and fitting (not to mention existentially satisfying) alternative to the atheistic one. On Christianity, the omnipotent and omniscient Creator of the Universe, Jesus, gives directives so that we His creations might know firmly what is right and what is wrong. He gives them out of love so that we might be like Him, the best and brightest being, so that we can be the most fulfilled, useful, and purposeful people we can be. Maybe best of all, when we protest against injustice, like "that's not fair!" or "you're wrong to do that!" we are not being inconsistent. If we have indeed been acted against in a way that violates God's law, then we are both consistent AND correct to say "that's not fair." And there is a way to tell the difference, on Christianity.

Best of all, though we have these directives, though we don't always agree on these directives, and though we often do not follow them, Jesus sacrificed Himself on the cross to take on Himself these sins and to offer His purity to all those who will believe in Him and love Him as Savior and as Lord. He does this b/c of His great love and generosity.

I invite CD's response to what I've said here, specifically in relation to my evaluation of his position. Typically, ‘opening statements' in debate are the most widespread and encompass a breadth of topics, whereas the interactions and statements later in the debate become more focused as the debaters bear down on areas of disagreement. I will attempt to keep my responses readably brief and think we can count on CD to do the same. We are both self-described verbose writers, but hopefully we won't bore our readers too much. If either of us does, it's our own fault, I guess. Finally, many thanks to CD for his willingness not only to interact on this topic but also to have done so in a very conciliatory tone so far. My goals will be to tear his position apart and to do so in the least provocative and insulting way possible.

For the purposes of keeping which posts come when, we will add numbers to the titles of our posts. Thus, CD's response to this post will be "_________ 2". I will post his offerings on my blog and he will do the same for mine, so a reader can catch the entirety of the interaction on either blog.

Posted by ChooseDoubt, Friday, July 13, 2007

Hi Rhology,

First of all thanks for agreeing to this blogalogue and thanks for your opener. I think you are right to keep things focussed and not introduce too many topics at this point. In order to maintain that focus I intend to introduce no new topics within my opening response. Anyway, let's get down to business.

I don't want to dwell on my recent job loss as this topic goes way beyond that simple example but I do want to address one point which I think you have failed to understand in earlier discussion. I'm going to do this with a thought experiment.

Let's imagine that I take you to a room which has a glass window on one wall. Through the window you can see into another room which has a table in it. You have no means by which to enter this second room. On the table are two pies and the question that is put to you is which one has the best flavour?

I think we can agree that your task is a difficult one. In fact, being asked to judge the flavour of the pies I suspect we can agree that even to state your own simple preference you would require relevant experience.

Let's keep in mind that your argument is that all value judgements are equally valid without a god. Now, a door opens into the second room and another man walks in. He tastes each pie and is asked the same question. Is your value judgement as valid as his? I would say it is not for the simple reason that, regardless of whether I or anyone else would share the same preference as our second man, he has fulfilled the relevant criteria required for an assessment – he has actually tasted the pies. The point being that we all innately recognise that there are valid and invalid ways to evaluate reality. My job was dependent upon my performance and relevant criteria had been contractually set to use in the evaluation of my performance. Since my work was with technology, not one of these criteria related to my lack of ability to believe Bronze Age myth. For that reason my ex-boss' value judgement, which used only criteria outside of that contractually set, was as invalid as would be your evaluation of the best tasting pie. In both cases no god is required to differentiate between valid and invalid judgements. In fact, to suggest that without a god all value judgements are equal is really to say that you consider humans to be lacking the intellectual capacity to differentiate between valid methods of assessment and invalid ones. How's the pie?

But let's move on to more interesting territory. Your essential point is that without a god then all morality comes down to simple preference. I think you would need to define what properties of this god make it uniquely valid as an external validator of "preference" above any other external validator? Why not use a measurement of suffering or happiness as an external validator instead? Let's put the two external validators to the test in another thought experiment.

Abhishek works as a doctor in the emergency ward of a local hospital. He was raised in the Hindu religion but he's quite modern and he lives in a loving relationship with his long term girlfriend, Savdeep, and they have a young daughter. Unfortunately Savdeep was a child bride many years ago before she left India and gained her freedom. There has been no divorce. One day Abhishek goes off to work to save some lives and earn some money to keep his family. What should we do?

According to the Bible the moral choice is clear. Abhishek has many other gods before the god of the Bible. That's one of the Ten Commandments violated for a start. Technically he's also committing adultery, as is Savdeep, which is another violation of the Ten Commandments, not to mention Leviticus 20:10 which is very clear on this matter:

"20:10 And the man that committeth adultery with another man's wife, even he that committeth adultery with his neighbour's wife, the adulterer and the adulteress shall surely be put to death."

OK, we can stop there – the moral choice is clear when we are using God and his word as our moral compass. It's clear that we must kill Abhishek and Savdeep. The result of this will be two immediate deaths, possible other deaths in the emergency ward, an orphaned child and great suffering to friends and other family of the couple.

How about if instead we think in terms of suffering and happiness as our external validators? Well, here the choice is clear also. Let's leave Abhishek alone and let him get on with his life, helping people. Let's be happy that Savdeep escaped a life of abuse and servitude and has now found herself in a loving relationship – there's simply no need to interfere.

We don't need a god as an external validator of our moral choices. Instead we can use real world, case specific information to make such choices. You are arguing that without god all morality comes down to simple preference as though it is a bad thing. It's a great thing. We get to choose that which we prefer, that which improves life. From your side however you claim God has the absolute moral authority and yet you are still picking which of his moral guidance's you follow by simple preference. If you are not doing that then I must assume that as per Leviticus 15:19-24 that you keep your wife away from everyone else and do not share the bed with her for seven days when she menstruates and that you follow literally every other piece of "advice" offered by your God in your Bible?

What I'm getting at is that if you are going to claim that God is necessary for morality then you are going to have to stick to what God says. I have no doubt that you follow some of the guidance whilst ignoring a great deal. Basically, your argument is in tatters even before we've gone on to examine whether you are relying for your moral certainty from a fictional character or whether in fact there is a god and it just doesn't happen to be the one you are subscribing to.

Beyond all of that we then have the issue that in claiming God is necessary for morality would you then be of the opinion that without your belief in a god you would begin raping, murdering and stealing with no personal capacity to differentiate what you currently consider to be right from wrong? I expect that is at least partly true because right now it is very probable that you do only consider some actions wrong based solely on your religious faith – homosexuality may be a good example – but I would be surprised if you are of the opinion that without God you would immediately sink into the previously mentioned abusive behaviours.

So in closing, yes I absolutely agree that without God moral choices boil down to preference. It's a fallacy to assume that preference is automatically going to result in an abusive, antisocial lifestyle and furthermore I have no doubt that you pick and choose from God's morality anyway – by simple preference. All I can suggest is that you adapt your strategy to one based solely on preference instead of allowing the prejudices and insanities of more ignorant times to influence your interactions with the people you share this planet with.

Peace,

CD

PS. I'm leaving an evolutionary understanding of morality until a little later. There is a great deal to say about it and it would be good if we cleared the board a little first.

SKIP TO PART: 1 | 2

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Tags, Memes and 8 Random Facts

I mentioned that I got tagged (thanks Stew) and that I'd take a look and see whether I'd react to it or not. I've had a look now. It was the 8 random facts tag that's been cropping up on a lot of blogs lately. I've decided not to continue it. Here's why.

I don't much like tags but I do find them interesting. I find them interesting as memes in a meme pool and I certainly see the parallels that can be drawn between genes and memes within the tag context. But within a tag it is only the "you must include these rules" part that is the meme. The rest, the content that is unique to each poster, is not a meme, although some postings could conceivable become such. So tags as memes are really just simple rule sets in text. Some of these rule sets will be better at encouraging people to forward them on and some will not. For example it may be true that one tag that asks each participant to forward to 8 bloggers may be more successful than one that only asks the tag be passed on to 4 bloggers. It's possible that the reverse will be true.

There is something even more interesting at play here however. I've never seen a tag rule set that exceeds much more than 20 lines. Some are shorter. But if we were to assume, just for the sake of a thought experiment, that not only could we assume a maximum number of lines of text but an actual maximum number of characters then within the character set of anyone language we could calculate the total possible number of tag rule sets that could be written. This would be the gene space (or meme space) of all tags and those that actually are circulating would be a tiny subset of all those that could be.

A vast majority of all possible combinations for the arrangement of characters within the length of the sequence would be nonsense. They would not reproduce because the rules would be a meaningless mess of characters. Others would not reproduce because they contained instructions that were too difficult for blog authors to follow. Others would fail to reproduce for other reasons, but all of those reasons would be due to the interaction of those instructions with the minds of bloggers.

Memes, and therefore tags, are interesting. There will be traceable relationships between the order of characters in a tag rule set and its reproductive success. The relationships can be studied and understood and particular instructions within a rule set may enable some tags to reproduce better within certain environments of the blogsphere whilst they would fail completely in others. There will be specialisation and all within 20 or so lines of text. Of course the number of lines isn't important really, the point stands.

Selective pressure is of course provided by the minds that make up the blogsphere. So these tags can be expected to adapt to that pressure. In turn they are likely to change that environment and so the process continues. Tags really are memes and memes really are replicators and mutation and non-random selection are both at work.

It seems to me that evolution on the tag meme scale could happen very rapidly, especially due to the fact that the mutation is also largely non-random, and that speciation will, and probably has occurred. When a blogger has limited time and gets tagged twice there must be competition between the tags involved. I haven't searched, but I wonder if there are already people studying this. Linguists may find it interesting. On the face of it tags seem to look worthwhile.

But I'm still not interested in reproducing them myself. I don't care about the contents of most of them and I don't welcome the obligation to pass that obligation onto others (although I do welcome having been though of, so thanks again Stew). I might change my mind if there was some tracking built in so that a tag could be started and its reproduction and adaptation could be studied but right now the selective pressure of my mind chooses die for every tag that comes my way.

But it's worthy of note that if we started firing off randomly generated tags in the blogsphere we would see them filtered by selection first to reveal those that actually contained real words from a language and secondly those that provided the most appealing instruction sets to bloggers within specific interest groups. To all those that think evolution can't possibly account for complex life forms the above illustrates how the same essential process can account simply and probably rapidly for even the complex thoughts of human beings with no need for deliberate design. Imagine how fast that would be speeded up if we added just one already prepared instruction to the rule set saying "make more of me" or "pass this on to N bloggers". The point about life is that evolution starts at the point that relatively simple molecules first formed with that instruction. In fact they were the instruction "replicate". The rest is natural history.

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The blogalogues are coming!

As I've said far too many times, I'm not writing much at the moment. There are loads of good reasons for this, mostly to do with enjoying the absolute lack of any demands on my time, but one of the key reasons is also that I just don't have anything to say. That's not entirely true since it's really that I just don't feel motivated to say anything. I'm seeing the nonsense in the news and other events and I want to respond but there just seem to be better things I can do with my time.

To get around this I've leapt on an opportunity provided by Rhology. Rhology has left a few comments on an earlier post that lead me to suspect he was heading towards a debate claiming the necessity of a god for morality. This is a very interesting topic and one I think is well worth a proper debate, and so I have invited Rhology to join me in a blogalogue. Rhology has accepted the invitation and intends to kick things off with the first post in around 10 days.

I'm hoping that this is going to be an interesting discussion. In the comments that Rhology has so far left I've got the impression that he's keeping the gloves on somewhat and so I'm looking forward to a more open exchange. I'm sure that a debate will get me writing again at the very least.

I've also been tagged which I'll get around to later. I'm not a great fan of tags since most of them are little more than chain letters but I'll take a look at this one later and see what I think.

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Might as well laugh - Father Ted

I've not been in much of a mood to write recently. I've been taking it easy, thinking about a lot, and trying to relax and have a laugh. I came across a load of Father Ted episodes as part of the "having a laugh" efforts. If you've never seen Father Ted it's an excellent Irish comedy about a bunch of priests. It's fantastic.

Here's a link with a load of episodes you can watch. Enjoy :)

http://www.tv-links.co.uk/show.do/1/33.


Be sure to check out Season 2 Episode 3: Tentacles of Doom - it's one of the best.

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And we're back

I have an interesting story to tell but unfortunately I will not be going into much detail - for legal reasons.

I recently lost my job. I was forced out - fired - ostensibly for disagreeing with my boss over the subject of faith. He felt, as a catholic, it was absolutely fine for him to express a sincere distaste of all things Arab on the grounds of religion. I mentioned that I was an atheist and decided to defend my opinion in further conversation. Of course, this meant thoroughly undermining his own brand of fantasy.

So anyway, he decided he wanted me gone and gone I am, but since you can't sack someone for their religion, or lack thereof, especially when you are a high ranking executive of a multinational who has just spewed forth a whole load of anti-Muslim rhetoric based on nothing whatsoever than your own catholic bullshit then they had to make me leave quietly. Quietly I left, and I shall remain quiet so as not to get my arse sued off, but I think it is quite safe to relay the very basics of the story. This is now done.

So, I am now unemployed and to be perfectly honest quite relieved to no longer be suffering that particular job and it is also the first time I have lost my job for atheism. What a beautiful and interesting life we lead here still stuck in the dark ages of the planet of the apes.

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