Or: Energy is a medium used by Biology in order to thwart Physics. Entropy is a medium used by Physics in order to thwart Biology.
(Here, I deliberately take an animistic stance, attributing human-like characteristics to inanimate patterns. I use notions based on action ontology in order to make my ideas easier to understand.) Biology has a general tendency to advance from simple to complex, whereas Physics have an opposite tendency, from complex to simple. In other words, biology is likely to increase potential energy, biological sophistication and redundancy (an Intentional Stance, see Dennett), whereas
Physical laws seek a state of lowest energy, minimal uncertainty and minimal entropy (the Intentional Stance with regards to Physics is the tendency towards minimum potential energy).
In this context, the term Physics refers to classical Physics (friction, gravity, tension etc.) and thermodynamics, rather than to all branches of Physics such as relativity or quantum theories. Of course, I acknowledge that Physical theories are merely descriptions of what we observe
empirically, and are not describing definitive reality.
Therefore, it can be said that Biology and Physics are entangled in an eternal confrontation, each leaning towards its own respective ‘aims’, but maintaining an overall balance, resulting in life with predefined limits, (i.e. a human lifespan of 80-120 years). In order to influence this balance (and increase our odds of living well beyond this limit) we need to reduce the impact of physical laws and/or strengthen our biological assets.
As it is hitherto impossible to change the laws of Physics*, one way to tip the balance in our favor is to enhance the laws of Biology.
* Nevertheless, the laws of Physics are not as immutable as we think, being just representations of our observations. Ultimate reality may be different from observed reality.
According to Eric Chaisson, the expansion of the universe (a process described by Physics), is responsible for the rise of complexity in biological and other systems. As the universe expands, it makes energy easily available for use by any system (including a biological and thus a human) in order to increase its complexity. Complexity declines with age and this is due to the
accumulation of damage that it is not repaired because of limited energy resources. Any process that increases available energy would be able to reverse this decline and so aging will slow down or virtually stop. Therefore, it appears that Physical laws if applied in a suitable manner may ultimately enhance Biology.
In Chaisson’s opinion, Darwinian evolution is only a small subset within a wider Cosmic
Evolutionary framework, and it could be possible that Darwinian evolution will be superseded by other, more effective forms of evolution.
Evolution by natural selection is the main obstacle to defeating aging and thus bars HBI (Human Biological Immortality), because it requires the survival of the germ-line and thus diverts
resources from somatic repair. If/when evolution by natural selection begins to weaken, the restriction of energy resources upon the soma will be eased, the soma will have improved resources for its repairs and thus it will live longer.
Based on the assumption that Biology tends to progress ‘from simple to complex’ it is reasonable
to suggest that, if there is a way that increases biological complexity or sophistication, then this would have an impact upon health/longevity (because it will enhance biological assets and allow biology to continue its tendency for increased complexity).
I believe that aging is due to loss of complexity of biological systems (increased entropy over time). In order to counteract this, we must input more energy into the system in the form of cognitive stimulation, i.e. informational energy, which activates many biological processes. This has been proven in many experiments.
During everyday life we are exposed to random unintentional challenges and stimulation
(cognitive challenges, novelty of the environment, new ideas and situations). This helps our brain function well. Against this, we lose energy (increasing entropy), which eventually causes death because the degree of information input tends to zero with time, whereas entropy tends to infinity.
I propose to introduce another variable, the sum of intentional cognitive stimulation (i.e.
intentional stimulation, special brain exercises, sense exercises, goal-oriented behavior, seeking novelty and excellence etc.) which adds robustness into the equation. If entropy increases with age (obeying physical laws), this will have no meaningful impact because we can increase the amount of intentional brain stimulation.
This model accommodates the concept of Free Energy Rate Density (FERD) roughly the degree of density of energy flowing through a unit space of a system. The higher the FERD, the higher the complexity and intelligence of a system. For example, the Sun has 4 ergs per second per cubic cm, whereas the human brain has 150,000 ergs per second per cubic cm. This means that the Sun, despite its enormous reserves of energy, is considerably dumber than a human brain.
This supports the view that energy must be maintained high in order to maintain intelligence (something biology does naturally for us), and when complexity declines due to physical constrains, we need to try and increase it by increasing FERD parameters.
Therefore, there is a need to reach an optimum between intentional increase of neuro-cognitive stimulation, against the increase of entropy, in order to achieve long life. The more we keep this system going, the longer the lifespan.
Remember that intelligence is ultimately the ability to make consistently correct selections from available choices. This means that one has to be in a position that contains (is forced to contain) challenges that need resolving, and choices that need to be made. Routine, monotony and regularity do not account for increased need to select, whereas variability, irregularity and uncertainty maximize our need to select (and thus increase intelligence) and thus increase informational energy.
The assumption is that there is an upwards ‘endeavor’ aiming to increase complexity, sophistication and intelligence, with the highest step being that of pure global intelligence (spirit).
METAPHYSICAL CONTEXTS
In metaphysical terms, “spirit” has acquired a number of meanings. One of these is:
1.An incorporeal but ubiquitous, non-quantifiable substance or energy present individually in all living things. Unlike the concept of souls (often regarded as eternal and sometimes believed to pre-exist the body) a spirit develops and grows as an integral aspect of a living.
I am suggesting that it is possible to work towards this stage by intentionally increasing external inputs, and by optimizing and enhancing the usage of internal cognitive signals.
This touches on the religious, i.e. the search for higher, pure metaphysical states, via meditation and religious rituals/practices. It also touches on the philosophical, with the search for
excellence. Both the religious search for spiritual purity and the philosophical search for
excellence are merely disciplined and intentional enhancements of external cognitive information and maximal use of internal cognitive powers (meditation, mental discipline).
In the biological realm, this translates to a search for higher intelligence (here intelligence is defined as an ability to repeatedly make appropriate selections from a list of available options).
For this there is a need to optimize the use of information by the brain, i.e. to make informational inputs use metabolic energy optimally.
It is necessary to work stepwise: first increase external cognitive inputs, then use these in an optimal way to work towards achieving more abstract stages such as excellence and awe (Kazantzakis calls this ‘Holy Terror’, the highest point of human mind can achieve).
WHAT CONSTITUTES A GOOD STIMULATION OR CHALLENGE?
A Positive Challenge is a condition that requires action (see F. Heylighen) because it represents an opportunity to be exploited. These can be planned/anticipated or unexpected/unintended. My advice is to follow a program of planned positive challenges. This is essentially a problem that needs resolving, and the brain is forced to make a decision one way or the other. It is forced to SELECT the best option among a number of others. A suitable/appropriate selection itself creates information (Shannon’s reduction of uncertainty). Meaningful Information (knowledge, experience, wisdom, excellence), via expressive activation of appropriate brain mechanisms
(sensory to cortex and other areas) activates (increases the energy available to, or the potential energy of) biological patterns and agents that then improve repair and maintenance, thus non- aging.
In this respect, challenge (accumulation of useful information) can prevent regress, i.e. reduce the rate of entropy increase. According to Shannon, entropy increase is associated with loss of information, so more information equals a reduced rate of loss of thermodynamic energy.
Increased entropy destroys organization.
However not all information is useful, and not a lot of information is beneficial, so it is necessary to filter it in order to avoid information overload. Suitable information is necessary in order to improve problem solving (by our biological processes). This will be achieved if the biological process can make the appropriate selection when confronted with a challenge. The increased power of selection means that the best choices will be chosen for the ultimate benefit of the organism.
The information must be analyzed and judged by an active process, and not just accumulated in a disorganized manner.
It has been shown in some experiments that information can be transformed into energy (Experimental demonstration of information-to-energy conversion and validation of the
generalized jarzynski equality. A Toyabe et al. Nature Physics vol. 6 p988-992, 2010). Also, the informational transfer process is associated with decrease entropy (Coherent informational energy and entropy. A. Avramescu J Documentation 1993 36(4)293).
The benefits of challenge are derived not only from external information but also from internally created abstract thoughts, meditation, awe etc. Intentional cognitive enhancement should be distinguished from a mere passive cognitive stimulation.
The generation of entropy over an average lifespan (around 80 years) was found to be in the region of 11,404kJ/K (Degrees kelvin) (Silva AC, Annamala K. Entropy Generation and Human Aging: Lifespan Entropy and Effect of Physical Activity Levels. Entropy 2008, 10; 100-123). No entropy generation equals death.
Any reduction in the entropy production would therefore result/be associated with an increased lifespan (longer dt). Also, any increase of meaningful energy into the system would have the same result.
HOW TO CHOOSE AN IDEAL DEGREE OF CHALLENGE
Here, consider Csikszentmihalyi’s concept of ‘flow’. Essentially, the concept describes how a challenge that matches one’s skills and abilities causes well-being. If the challenge is over one’s ability then it causes anxiety. If it is below, it causes boredom (see equation above where the values of Ai are above or below k). This is similar to Blascovich’s ideas of ‘challenge versus threat’. A challenge is a situation that matches your resources to deal with it. A threat is when your resources are below what is necessary to deal with it (causing anxiety). So, if a mental challenge causes excessive stress or anxiety, is unlikely to be beneficial in aging. If it is of such a low intensity that causes boredom, then it will not be beneficial either.
It has been suggested that the frequency, duration, type and level of the challenge has a power law distribution (see Le Corre), meaning that low intensity and frequent challenges must be occasionally enriched with infrequent high intensity ones.
According to Le Corre: “The variation between a low and a high level challenge is likely to mobilize biological resources and activate defense mechanisms that can ultimately increase biological redundancy and improved damage repair rates. This implies that there must be a continuous variation of challenging stimuli, without ever reaching a stage of exhaustion” (in this case, mental exhaustion).”
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In what is perhaps the most absurd attack on transhumanism to date, Mike Adams of
NaturalNews.com equates this broad philosophy and movement with “the entire idea that you can ‘upload your mind to a computer’” and further posits that the only kind of possible mind uploading is the destructive kind, where the original, biological organism ceases to exist. Adams goes so far as calling transhumanism a “death cult much like the infamous Heaven’s Gate cult led by Marshal Applewhite.”
I will not devote this essay to refuting any of Adams’s arguments against destructive mind uploading, because no serious transhumanist thinker of whom I am aware endorses the kind of procedure Adams uses as a straw man. For anyone who wishes to continue existing as an
individual, uploading the contents of the mind to a computer and then killing the body is perhaps the most bizarrely counterproductive possible activity, short of old-fashioned suicide. Instead, Adams’s article – all the misrepresentations aside – offers the opportunity to make important distinctions of value to transhumanists.
First, having a positive view of mind uploading is neither necessary nor sufficient for being a transhumanist. Mind uploading has been posited as one of several routes toward indefinite human life extension. Other routes include the periodic repair of the existing biological organism (as outlined in Aubrey de Grey’s SENS project or as entailed in the concept of nanomedicine) and the augmentation of the biological organism with non-biological components (Ray Kurzweil’s actual view, as opposed to the absurd positions Adams attributes to him).
Transhumanism, as a philosophy and a movement, embraces the lifting of the present limitations upon the human condition – limitations that arise out of the failures of human biology and unaltered physical nature. Max More, in “Transhumanism: Towards a Futurist Philosophy”, writes that “Transhumanism differs from humanism in recognizing and anticipating the radical alterations in the nature and possibilities of our lives resulting from various sciences and technologies such as neuroscience and neuropharmacology, life extension, nanotechnology, artificial ultraintelligence, and space habitation, combined with a rational philosophy and value system.” That Adams would take this immensity of interrelated concepts, techniques, and
aspirations and equate it to destructive mind uploading is, plainly put, mind-boggling. There is ample room in transhumanism for a variety of approaches toward lifting the limitations of the human condition. Some of these approaches will be more successful than others, and no one approach is obligatory for those wishing to consider themselves transhumanists.
Moreover, Adams greatly misconstrues the positions of those transhumanists who do support mind uploading. For most such transhumanists, a digital existence is not seen as superior to their current biological existences, but as rather a necessary recourse if or when it becomes impossible to continue maintaining a biological existence. Dmitry Itskov’s 2045 Initiative is perhaps the most prominent example of the pursuit of mind uploading today. The aim of the initiative is to achieve cybernetic immortality in a stepwise fashion, through the creation of a sequence of avatars that gives the biological human an increasing amount of control over non-biological components. Avatar B, planned for circa 2020-2025, would involve a human brain controlling an artificial body. If successful, this avatar would prolong the existence of the biological brain when other components of the biological body have become too irreversibly damaged to support it.
Avatar C, planned for circa 2030-2035, would involve the transfer of a human mind from a biological to a cybernetic brain, after the biological brain is no longer able to support life processes. There is no destruction intended in the 2045 Avatar Project Milestones, only
preservation of some manner of intelligent functioning of a person whom the status quo would instead relegate to becoming food for worms. The choice between decomposition and any kind of avatar is a no-brainer (well, a brainer actually, for those who choose the latter).
Is Itskov’s path toward immortality the best one? I personally prefer SENS, combined with nanomedicine and piecewise artificial augmentations of the sort that are already beginning to occur (witness the amazing bebionic3 prosthetic hand). Itskov’s approach appears to assume that the technology for transferring the human mind to an entirely non-biological body will become available sooner than the technology for incrementally maintaining and fortifying the biological body to enable its indefinite continuation. My estimation is the reverse. Before scientists will be able to reverse-engineer not just the outward functions of a human brain but also its immensely complex and intricate internal structure, we will have within our grasp the ability to conquer an ever greater number of perils that befall the biological body and to repair the body using both biological and non-biological components.
The biggest hurdle for mind uploading to overcome is one that does not arise with the approach of maintaining the existing body and incrementally replacing defective components. This hurdle is the preservation of the individual’s unique and irreplaceable vantage point upon the world – his or her direct sense of being that person and no other. I term this direct vantage point an individual’s “I-ness”. Franco Cortese, in his immensely rigorous and detailed conceptual writings on the subject, calls it “subjective-continuity” and devotes his attention to techniques that could achieve gradual replacement of biological neurons with artificial neurons in such a
way that there is never a temporal or operational disconnect between the biological mind and its later cybernetic instantiation. Could the project of mind uploading pursue directions that would achieve the preservation of the “I-ness” of the biological person? I think this may be possible, but only if the resulting cybernetic mind is structurally analogous to the biological mind and, furthermore, maintains the temporal continuity of processes exhibited by an analog system, as opposed to a digital system’s discrete “on-off” states and the inability to perform multiple exactly simultaneous operations. Furthermore, only by developing the gradual-replacement approaches explored by Cortese could this prospect of continuing the same subjective experience (as opposed to simply creating a copy of the individual) be realized. But Adams, in his screed against mind uploading, seems to ignore all of these distinctions and explorations. Indeed, he appears to be oblivious of the fact that, yes, transhumanists have thought quite a bit about the philosophical questions involved in mind uploading. He seems to think that in mind uploading, you simply “copy the brain and paste it somewhere else” and hope that “somehow magically that other thing becomes ‘you.’” Again, no serious proponent of mind uploading – and, more
generally, no serious thinker who has considered the subject – would hold this misconception.
Adams is wrong on a still further level, though. Not only is he wrong to equate transhumanism with mind uploading; not only is he wrong to declare all mind uploading to be destructive – he is also wrong to condemn the type of procedure that would simply make a non-destructive copy of an individual. This type of “backup” creation has indeed been advocated by transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil. While a pure copy of one’s mind or its contents would not transfer one’s “I-ness” to a digital substrate and would not enable one to continue experiencing existence after a fatal illness or accident, it could definitely help an individual regain his memories in the event of brain damage or amnesia. Furthermore, if the biological individual were to irreversibly perish, such a copy would at least preserve vital information about the biological individual for the benefit of others. Furthermore, it could enable the biological individual’s influence upon the world to be more powerfully actualized by a copy that considers itself to have the biological individual’s memories, background, knowledge, and personality. If we had with us today copies of the minds of Archimedes, Benjamin Franklin, and Nikola Tesla, we would certainly all benefit greatly from continued outpourings of technological and philosophical innovation. The original geniuses would not know or care about this, since they would still be dead, but we, in our interactions with minds very much like theirs, would be immensely better off than we are with only their writings and past inventions at our disposal.
Adams is wrong on a still further level, though. Not only is he wrong to equate transhumanism with mind uploading; not only is he wrong to declare all mind uploading to be destructive – he is also wrong to condemn the type of procedure that would simply make a non-destructive copy of an individual. This type of “backup” creation has indeed been advocated by transhumanists such as Ray Kurzweil. While a pure copy of one’s mind or its contents would not transfer one’s “I-ness” to a digital substrate and would not enable one to continue experiencing existence after a fatal illness or accident, it could definitely help an individual regain his memories in the event of brain damage or amnesia. Furthermore, if the biological individual were to irreversibly perish, such a copy would at least preserve vital information about the biological individual for the benefit of others. Furthermore, it could enable the biological individual’s influence upon the world to be more powerfully actualized by a copy that considers itself to have the biological individual’s memories, background, knowledge, and personality. If we had with us today copies of the minds of Archimedes, Benjamin Franklin, and Nikola Tesla, we would certainly all benefit greatly from continued outpourings of technological and philosophical innovation. The original geniuses would not know or care about this, since they would still be dead, but we, in our interactions with minds very much like theirs, would be immensely better off than we are with only their writings and past inventions at our disposal.