Wednesday, December 5, 2007

Is Suicide the logical end to Intelligent Evolution?

Source:
http://www.exitmundi.nl/exitmundi.htm

Now here’s something different: what if we all killed ourselves in the end? We agree: after all we’ve been through, it would be a ridiculous way to go. But suicide could also be the inevitable, perfectly logical outcome of evolution...

Mass suicide. Oh, come on! What on Earth would we do that for?

Well: because somewhere in the distant future, we would reach the conclusion that it’s the best thing to do. The only thing that makes sense. We would decide to kill ourselves – and do it. We wouldn’t even leave a suicide note. After all, who will be there to read it?

Of course, it won’t happen tomorrow. First, a lot of dramatic changes will take place. Right now, we’re not too keen on dying. In fact, we hate it!

Luckily, that will change over time. Slowly, we will defy death. We will beat disease after disease, and live longer and longer. We will fool the Grim Reaper with anti-ageing chemicals and fantastic, new cures.

And in the end, we will beat Mr. Death. We will need technology to do it. In the long run, we will replace our entire bodies by technology. Already, we replace our teeth and the occasional limb that has gone missing with artificial stuff. In the near future, science expects to invent replacements for our organs. A little later, and we will be able to replace our brain by computer technology. Really! Already, some futures researchers expect that by the year 2050, we will be able to upload our mind into a computer! We will become machines – and be immortal.

Trust us: it’s gonna be fun. When our minds have become pieces of software, we will be able to copy ourselves! We will be able to upload ourselves into… well, whatever we like. We will go out in space, in the shape of a conscious space ship. Or in the form of a purple cloud of thinking smoke particles. No, seriously! Respected scientists like Freeman Dyson and Carl Sagan already wrote about it in the 1970s.

And we will interact with each other, big time. With our biological bodies gone, we will no longer need MSN, Hyves or Myspace to get in touch with each other. Rather, our minds will start to… well, blend, actually. We will become one consciousness. Some researchers have dubbed this The Singularity, as we detail elsewhere on this site.

Ok, that sounds very vague – but hey, it’s no reason to kill ourselves! Well: there is this one crucial detail. Once we’re immortal, we’ll be booooooored!

To us simple, mortal humans this may be a bit hard to grasp. But once we’ve reached Perfection and Singularity and Oneness and all that blah blah, we will have no goal in life. Yes, we will go out and discover the Universe. But after a while, we will have seen it all. With our mortal bodies gone, we will have all the time of the Universe. We will know every corner of the Universe and say: so what?

So there you have it. You’ve become a God-like purple space cloud, but only to find that it is soooooo depressing.

And in fact, it’s even worse than that. Once we will become machines, our processing speed will increase hugely. Simply put, we will think bloody fast. Within a split second, we will realise that our existence, literally, has become useless. A split second later, we will realise it’s best if we didn’t exist.

To a Purple God Cloud it will be as logical as getting off a train that has reached its final destination. And the final destination is what we will have reached: the endpoint of evolution.

Even harder to comprehend, the God Cloud won’t have any special feelings about it. When we think of suicide, we immediately think of terrible things like high buildings, speeding trains and shotguns. But to a Purple Cloud, it’s a different matter. Conscious clouds don’t feel pain have no reason to feel fear, least of all of death.

If you’re immortal, dying might seem like a fun thing to do. Just like to us it is a challenge not to die.

So, there we go. After a long period of contemplation – say, a whole millisecond – we will realise we have become useless. Right there on the spot, we will kill ourselves.

And hey, you’re doing it again! You picture a weeping purple cloud throwing itself in front of a speeding train. But it won’t be like that. Rather, we will terminate ourselves in a way yet beyond our imagination. We will step out of the Universe, fold ourselves up, switch ourselves off – something like that. In a split second after we’ve reached immortality and Oneness and all that, we will be gone. Click. Exit.

So – is that it? Is suicide the only inevitable outcome of evolution? Well, actually: there is another way out. But it is so strange and so disturbing, that it will blow your mind. Therefore we really urge you: if you’re mentally unstable or have a psychiatric history, please don’t read any further. It’s at your own risk.

For what else is there to do if you’re a Super Human that is Super Bored? What do you do when you’re bored? Indeed: you distract yourself. You play a video game, or watch TV.

Exactly this is what a superhuman intelligence may do. But of course, it will do so in a superhuman way: it will create a new Universe, break down its intelligence, and seed it with the spores of its Presence. Basically, such a ‘game’ will be a Universe that is destined to bring forth life and intelligence.

But wait a minute… Isn’t that exactly the kind of Universe we’re living in?

As we outline elsewhere on this site, it is. Scientists have noticed for long that our Universe has unmistakable clues that it is artificial. Everything around us, everything you do or see or feel or experience, may be fake! We may be part of a kind of Sims Game, an illusion, set up by some kind of Superhuman intelligence long before the Universe began…

Well, at least it would be a weird choice if we reach Superhumanity again. We’ll ask ourselves: “Ok, what’s it gonna be? Another game of Universe? Or should we go to bed now and kill ourselves?”

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