Communicating with the universe

 
Over the next million years, a descendant of the Internet will maintain contact with inhabited planets throughout our galaxy and begin to spread out into the larger universe, linking up countless new or existing civilizations into the Universenet, a network of ultimate intelligence. (updated)

July 4, 2010 by Amara D. Angelica
Original link:  http://www.kurzweilai.net/communicating-with-the-universe
Originally published in Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge.

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The Earth has already input information to the Universenet. Whenever microwave towers or satellites send Internet traffic, some of the energy leaks off, transmitting data unintentionally into space. The first email messages transmitted via microwave towers in 1969 by the predecessor of the Internet, ARPANET, have (theoretically) traveled thirty-nine light-years so far, way past the nearest star system, Alpha Centauri, four light-years away. In practice, such feeble signals are probably buried in cosmic radio noise.

Now NASA plans to do it intentionally. The Interplanetary Internet (IPI) should allow NASA to link up the Internets of Earth, spacecraft, and eventually Moon, Mars, and beyond.[1] By the Year Million, billions of “smart dust” sensors will be connected to a distant descendant of the IPI, exchanging data in real time or via store-and-forward protocol or wireless mesh (a network that handles many-to-many connections and is capable of dynamically updating and optimizing these connections), on planets and in spacecraft.[2]

Meanwhile, one important near-future use will be for tracking asteroids, comets, and space junk, exchanging three-dimensional position location and time data (similar to GPS on Earth) via multiple hops between sensors. Once affordable personal space travel is available, the IPI could serve as the core of an interplanetary version of air traffic control. The IPI scheme could also become the standard communications protocol as we expand out beyond the solar system’s planets, and then beyond the stars and to other galaxies. We could start with possibly habitable planets beyond the solar system, such as Gliese 581d, the third planet of the red dwarf star Gliese 581 (about twenty light-years away from Earth), if we detect signs of intelligent life there.

But using radio waves or lasers to communicate with civilizations around other stars, let alone in other galaxies, requires huge amounts of energy. Exactly how much energy? That depends mainly on distance, frequency, directional efficiency of antennas, and assumed ability of the receiving civilization to detect signals amid the extreme electromagnetic noise of space. In 1974, the Arecibo telescope beamed a 210-byte radio message aimed at the globular star cluster M13, some twenty-five thousand light-years away. It was transmitted with a power of one megawatt-enough energy to power about one thousand homes, using a narrow beam to achieve an EIRP (effective isotropic radiated power) of 20 trillion watts. That made it the strongest human-made signal ever sent. (It has gone 0.14 percent of the way, so far.)

Arecibo uses a large dish. Another way to create a narrow beam of high-power microwave radio energy is to build a phased-array antenna with multiple dishes spread out over a large area. These could be located on the Moon or at a Lagrange point (one of the stable locations in the Earth-Moon-Sun axis). Or a high-powered laser could be used. How highly powered? Looking toward the Year Million, as we reach out to communication nodes orbiting more distant stars, or in other galaxies, we will need to use a lot of power-as much as the entire power of the Sun. A civilization able to do that kind of cosmic engineering is referred to as Kardashev Type II, or KT-II.

By modest contrast, our civilization used about fifteen terawatt-hours in 2004 (a terawatt-hour is one billion kilowatt-hours) of electrical power.[3] New York University Physics Professor Emeritus Martin Hoffert and other scientists calculate that if our power consumption grows by just two percent per year, then in just four hundred years we will need all the solar power received by the Earth (10¹⁶ watts = 10,000 terawatts). And in a thousand years, we’ll require all of the power of the Sun (4×10²⁶ watts).[4] Hoffert and other scientists propose space-based solar power as one major future solution. Solar flux is eight times higher in space than the surface average on cloudy Earth and available 24 hours a day, unlike solar energy panels on Earth. Power satellites located in geosynchronous orbit (like communication satellites) would use a bank of photovoltaic receptors to convert the Sun’s energy to radio waves. This energy would be beamed wirelessly down to a large “rectenna” or rectifying antenna where the incoming microwave energy is rectified (converted) for use in the electrical power grid on Earth, turning it to electricity for distribution. Alternatively, laser beams could replace radio-frequency signals.[5] Once the infrastructure is in place for economically launching space-based solar power satellites, the same types of microwave or laser systems could be aimed at the stars for communicating elsewhere.

Eventually, when we have become first a KT-I and then a KT-II civilization, we will reach even farther out to supergalaxies and even to clusters of supergalaxies, which could require a Type III civilization-one capable of controlling the power of an entire galaxy, some 10³⁶ watts. The communication latencies (transmission delays) for such a system would be millions or even hundred of millions of years. (Two-way latency is already a problem for astronauts in the solar system, increasing as we transmit information to places farther from the Earth, or wherever humans and posthumans end up, perhaps uploaded into a Matrioshka brain that will have replaced the existing solar system.) Even the nearest star, Alpha Centauri, could not reply to a message sooner than eight years after it was sent. Talk about bad netiquette.

Possibly the denizens of the Year Million will solve this time lag with extreme cosmic engineering feats such as wormholes, or even communication via parallel universes.[6] One intriguing possibility is the use of quantum entanglement-that is, allowing an entangled atom or photon to carry information across a distance, theoretically anywhere in the universe (once the initial photons have been received), or “spooky action-at-a-distance,” as Einstein called it.[7] An experiment testing the possibility of communication using this principle is in progress in the Laser Physics Facility at the University of Washington by professor John G. Cramer.[8] Cramer astonished physicists at a joint American Institute of Physics/American Association for the Advancement of Science conference in 2006 by presenting experimental evidence that the outcome of a laser experiment could be affected by a future measurement: a message was sent to a time fifty microseconds in the past.[9] This leads to an even more bizarre idea: retrocausal communication-the future affecting the past, as theoretical physicist Jack Sarfatti (the inspiration for Doc in the movie Back to the Future) has proposed.[10] So in principle, perhaps one could bypass the speed-of-light limitation and have messages show up in a distant galaxy long before they could have been received by radio or laser transmission, or even before they were sent!

Web to ET: Download This

Humans might not be the first technological species to explore the galaxy. Suppose alien probes await us in orbit or on the Moon (like the obelisk in Arthur C. Clarke’s “The Sentinel” and its movie version, 2001: A Space Odyssey) or at Lagrange points.[11] If so, we might only need to respond with the right signals to trigger a connection-similar to logging on to an FTP server with the right IP address, user name, and password. Such probes might even now be scattered around the solar system as smart dust particles that we haven’t yet analyzed. IBM has developed a prototype of a molecular switch that could replace current silicon-based chip technology with atom-based processors, making it theoretically possible to run a supercomputer on a chip the size of a speck of dust. IBM is also developing technology to store a bit on a single atom, portending hard drives that can pack up to a thousand times as much information on a hard disk as current technologies.[12]

Instead of transmitting via radio or laser, sending a physical data spore might be a simpler and more effective alternative. Rutgers University electrical engineer Christopher Rose has shown that for long messages conveyed across long distances (where transmitting a signal would be extremely expensive, have limited range, or be too hard to find), it is more effective to send physical messages than transmit them. That was one rationale for sending the greeting plaque on Pioneer 10 and 11 in 1972 and 1973, and a more complex inscribed disk on the Voyager probe in 1977. Rose thinks there could be such inscribed objects now orbiting planets in our solar system, or on asteroids.[13]

But transmitting information into space still fires up the imagination of several scientists. SETI senior astronomer Seth Shostak has proposed that rather than sending simple coded messages, why not just feed the Google servers into the transmitter and send the aliens the entire Web? It would take about half a year to transmit the Web in the microwave region at one megabyte a second; infrared lasers operating at a gigabyte per second would shorten the broadcast time to no more than two days.[14] Transmitting the Web into space could also serve as a backup for civilization. William E. Burrows has suggested creating a self-sufficient colony on the Moon where a “backup drive” could store the history and wisdom of civilization in case a calamity strikes Earth.[15] To achieve this, Burrows set up an organization, Alliance to Rescue Civilization (ARC), subsequently absorbed by the Lifeboat Foundation, which is developing solutions to prevent the extinction of mankind. Acquiring knowledge from ancient extraterrestrial civilizations could be critical to our long-term human survival, says Lifeboat Foundation president Eric Klien. “The Universenet could give us the final signals of a civilization right before it destroyed itself,” he wrote in a Skype message. “We could use this information to avoid our own destruction, perhaps the most important reason to continue the SETI project. If we learned that a civilization was destroyed by, say, nanoweapons, we could start creating defenses against this situation.”[16]

Such signals might not be obvious. For example, pulsars, discovered in 1967, are rotating neutron stars that emit electromagnetic waves. Their rapid rotation causes their radiation to become pulsed. Could this radiation be modulated deliberately to form a sort of cosmic transmitter? Astronomers at first thought the pulses meant they might be ET; so far, they haven’t found any evidence of an actual message. Or are there encoded messages too subtle to detect? And pulsars are far from the most powerful possible signal sources from space. Quasars can release the energy equal to hundreds of average galaxies combined, equivalent to one trillion suns. Could they be galactic Web sites run by Type III civilizations? (Unlikely, since most quasars are very far away, which means distant in time, and seem to have been formed not long after the emergence of the universe from the Big Bang.)

Computer scientist Stephen Wolfram believes current methods used in SETI are inefficient and unlikely to produce reliable results because our detection methods seek to detect only regular patterns. A more efficient method would use sophisticated, noise-immune coding, producing something similar to spread spectrum signals. To SETI’s present system of analysis this kind of signal sounds and looks like random noise, and would be overlooked and discarded.[17] Wolfram suggests we need more sophisticated software-based signal processing. Maybe we need someone like Hedy Lamarr, the brilliant actress who famously said, “Any girl can be glamorous; all she has to do is stand still and look stupid,” and then went on to invent spread spectrum technology. Could ET be using it? There’s no way to know with the current SETI technology. Complex artifacts made by an advanced civilization could look very much like natural objects, Wolfram argues. Could the stars themselves be extraterrestrial artifacts? “They could have been built for a purpose,” says Wolfram. “It’s extremely difficult to rule it out.”[18]

Is Alien Intelligence Hidden in Junk DNA?

Cardiff University astronomer and mathematics professor Chandra Wickramasinghe, a long-time collaborator with the late cosmologist Sir Fred Hoyle, has suggested that life on this planet began on comets, since their combination of clay and water is an ideal breeding ground for life. He believes that explanation to be a quadrillion times more likely than Earth’s having spawned life.[19] If that’s the case, then comets and asteroids could be carrying physical messages, a sort of “sneakernet”-physical file sharing in the interests of added security-for the Universenet.

Astrobiologist Paul Davies, now at Arizona State University, suggests that ET could embed messages in highly conserved sections of viral DNA-most likely in its so-called “junk” sections-and send them out as hitchhikers on asteroids or comets. (Genomics researchers at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory in California, who compared human and mouse DNA, have reported millions of base pairs of highly conserved sequences of junk DNA, meaning they have a survival value).[20] These messages could even have been incorporated into terrestrial life, Davies thinks, and lurk in our DNA, awaiting interpretation. (There could be an interesting d-mail-DNA-mail-waiting to be discovered as we search through the decoded genome.) Rather than beaming information randomly in the hope that somewhere, someday, an intelligent species will decode them, this method would use a pre-existing “legion of small, cheap, self-repairing and self-replicating machines that can keep editing and copying information and perpetuate themselves over immense durations in the face of unforeseen environmental hazards. Fortunately, such machines already exist. They are called living cells.”[21]

Transmitting People to the Stars

Futurist/inventor Ray Kurzweil has suggested that once the intelligent life on a planet invents machine computation, it is only a matter of a few centuries before its intelligence saturates the matter and energy in its vicinity. At that point, he suggests, nanobots will be dispersed like the spores of plants. This colonization will eventually expand outward, approaching the speed of light (as discussed in Robin Hanson’s Chapter 9).[22] In Fred Hoyle and John Elliot’s 1962 novel A For Andromeda, a radio signal from the direction of the galaxy M31 in Andromeda gives scientists a computer program for the creation of a living organism, adapting borrowed human DNA. They name this young cloned woman Andromeda, and through her agency the computer tries to take over the world.[23] Author James Gardner has seriously suggested a version of such “interstellar cloning”: an advanced civilization could transmit a software program to us with instructions on replicating its own inhabitants-even an entire civilization.[24]

Dr. Martine Rothblatt, who founded Sirius Satellite and other satellite companies, has suggested a related method for connecting with Universenet: sending bemes or units of being-highly individual elements of personality, mannerisms, feelings, recollections, beliefs, values, and attitudes. Bemes are fundamental, transmittable, mutable units of being-ness in the spirit of memes (Richard Dawkins’s term for the replicators of cultural information that a mind transmits, verbally or by demonstration, to another mind). The main difference is that memes are culturally transmittable elements that have common meanings, whereas bemes reflect individual characteristics.

Rothblatt suggests that a new Beme Neural Architecture (BNA) will outcompete DNA in populating the universe. “At any moment, and certainly at some moment, a giant star in our general stellar neighborhood will blow up and thereby fry everything in its vicinity,” she points out. Some of these explosions, known as gamma-ray bursts, are so violent that they damage everything within hundreds of light-years. Yet there are two or three gamma-ray bursts somewhere in the observable universe every day and about one thousand less-explosive but still life-ending supernovae every day throughout the galaxies (that we can observe). One explanation for the Fermi Paradox-why is there no evidence of ET, although the galaxy seems capable of so many extraterrestrial civilizations-is that sooner or later a supernova nabs everyone’s life zone. “Perhaps the only way we can survive the risk of astrobiological or mega-volcanic catastrophe is to spread ourselves out among the stars,” Rothblatt suggests. And as self-replicating code, bemes are much more quickly assembled, replicated, and transported than genes strung along chromosomes and transmitted by sex. Computer technology is vastly more efficient than wet biology in copying information. Expressed in digital bits rather than in nucleotide base pairs, information can be transported farther (beyond Earth to evade killer asteroid impacts) and faster (at the speed of light).

DNA is not well suited for space travel. It can replicate effectively only within bodies. Humans require vast quantities of life-preserving supplies and besides, at the moment, we don’t live long enough to make the journey to other stars (a factor, as Pamela Sargent notes in the previous chapter, that is subject to change). On the other hand, by replicating our minds into BNA and storing them in a computer substrate, we can travel far longer and far faster, since we would be traveling with minimal mass in seeds or spores. Arriving at a promising planet, our BNA can be loaded into nanotech-built machine bodies to prepare a new home. Once that home flourishes, human (and other) DNA can be reconstructed from either stored samples or digital codes and basic chemicals, which can be nurtured into mature bodies free to develop their own minds or to receive a transfer of a BNA mind.

Alternatively, Rothblatt suggests that just by spacecasting your bemes, you can already achieve a level of immortality, and so can all of humanity. In March 2007, Rothblatt’s CyBeRev Project began experimentally spacecasting bemes in the form of digitized video, audio, text, personality tests, and other recordings, of attributes of a person’s being, such as memories, mannerisms, personality, feelings, recollections, beliefs, attitudes, and values.[25] These bemes are transmitted out into the universe via a microwave dish normally used to communicate with satellites. Any spacecast signal, she speculates, has a chance of being decoded from the background cosmic noise in the same way a cellphone’s CDMA (spread spectrum) encoded signal is decoded out of random electromagnetic noise. Your bemes could then be interpreted, and yourself recreated from the transmission. This requires interception by an advanced, intelligent civilization that would receive and decode the signals, then instantiate the bemes as either a regenerated traditional cellular or a bionanotechnological, body. (If this happened, we might find by the Year Million that the galaxy is swarming with other humans downloaded by far-flung extraterrestrials or their machines.)

Each spacecast of an individual’s bemes is accompanied by an informed-consent form authorizing that individual’s re-instantiation from the transmitted bemes. The CyBeRev project is based on the hypothesis that advanced intelligence will respect sentient autonomy and be capable of filling in the blanks of a person’s consciousness via interpolation of the spacecast bemes, using background cultural information transmitted from Earth. The project’s backers do not believe extraterrestrials will unethically revive persons such as television personalities whose images, behavior, and personal information have been telecast, but who have not authorized their re-instantiation. Still, such cultural transmissions will be useful in the aggregate, providing revived spacecasters with a familiar environment. “Given the vast amount of television and Internet information streaming into space, the revivers of our spacecasters will have abundant contextual information with which to work,” concluded Rothblatt.[26]

Programming the Universe

By converting matter into what some futurists call computronium (hypothetical material designed to be an optimized computational substrate), Year Million scientists could create the beginnings of an ultimately powerful computer.[27] Taking it to the extreme, MIT scientist Seth Lloyd has calculated that a computer made up of all the energy in the entire known universe (that is, within the visible “horizon” of forty-two billion light-years) can store about 10⁹²105 computations/second.[28] The universe itself is a quantum computer, he says, and it has made a mind-boggling 10¹²² computations since the Big Bang (for that part of the universe within the “horizon”).[29] Compare that to about 2×10²⁸ operations performed over the entire history of computation on Earth (“because of Moore’s law, half of this computation has taken place in the last year and a half,” he wrote in 2006). What’s more, the observable horizon of the universe, space itself, is expanding at three times the speed of light (in three dimensions), so the amount of computation performable within the horizon increases over time.

Lloyd has also proposed that a black hole could serve as a quantum computer and data storage bank. In black holes, he says, Hawking radiation, which escapes the black hole, unintentionally carries information about material inside the black hole. This is because the matter falling into the black hole becomes entangled with the radiation leaving its vicinity, and this radiation captures information on nearly all the matter that falls into the black hole. “We might be able to figure out a way to essentially program the black hole by putting in the right collection of matter,” he suggests.[30]

There is a supermassive black hole in the center of our galaxy, perhaps the remnant of an ancient quasar. Will this become the mainframe and central file sharing system for galaxy hackers of the Year Million? What’s more, a swarm of ten thousand or more smaller black holes may be orbiting it.[31] Might they be able to act as distributed computing nodes and a storage network? Toward the Year Million, an archival network between stars and between galaxies could develop an Encyclopedia Universica, storing critical information about the universe at multiple redundant locations in those and many other black holes.

Clash of the Titans

Far beyond the Year Million, our galaxy faces a crisis. The supermassive black holes in our galaxy and the Andromeda galaxy are headed for a cosmic collision in two billion years. Will they have incompatible operating systems-a sort of Mac-versus-PC confrontation? (Of course, they might just pass by each other-or be steered past by hyperintelligent operators.)

In The Intelligent Universe, James Gardner adapted a bold notion originally proposed by cosmologist Lee Smolin. For Smolin, Darwinian principles constrain the nature of any universe such that new baby universes produced via black holes will resemble their parent cosmos, and will be surprisingly life-friendly as well. Gardner extends this idea into a fundamentally radical (but falsifiable) hypothesis called the Selfish Biocosm-the cosmological equivalent of Richard Dawkins’s selfish gene. The idea is that eventually intelligent life must acquire the capacity to shape the entire cosmos. In addition, the universe has a Smolin-style “utility function”: propagation of baby universes exhibiting the same life-friendly physical qualities as their parent-universe, including a system of physical laws and constants that enables life and intelligence to emerge and eventually repeat the cycle.

Under this scenario, the mission of sufficiently evolved intelligent life in the universe is to serve as a cosmic reproductive organ-the equivalent of DNA in living creatures-spawning an endless succession of life-friendly offspring that are themselves endowed with the same reproductive capacities as their predecessors. (Rothblatt’s BNA might well be the fundamental mechanism for this evolutionary process-veteran physicist John Wheeler’s legendary IT from BIT, things arising from information rather than the other way round).

Gardner believes that we’ve already received a message from ET: the laws and constants of our universe, including the inexplicable cosmological constant which at this time is accelerating cosmic expansion. His hypothesis makes sense of the observation that the constants seem rigged in favor of the emergence of life. For example, they are improbably hospitable to carbon-based intelligent life-an unlikely and as-yet unexplained anthropic oddity that some scientists have identified as the deepest mystery in all of science. As Gardner claims:

We are likely not alone in the universe, but are probably part of a vast-yet undiscovered-transterrestrial community of lives and intelligences spread across billions of galaxies and countless parsecs. . . . We share a possible common fate with that hypothesized community: to help shape the future of the universe and transform it from a collection of lifeless atoms into a vast, transcendent mind.

In the Year Million, such a cosmic community will be linked up by the Universenet.

Notes

[1] In the late 1990s, Dr. Vint Cerf, who co-designed the Internet’s TCP/IP protocol, designed the Interplanetary Internet (IPN, http://www.ipnsig.org) to link up the Earth with other planets and spaceships in transit over millions of miles. Cerf’s clever scheme solved a big problem. With interplanetary communication delays-the average two-way latency (delay time) between Earth and Mars, 228 million km apart, is 25 minutes 21 seconds-the Internet TCP/IP protocol we use today would simply time out. Who has half an hour to wait for a carriage return? So Cerf and his team came up with a store-and-forward architecture-a sort of relay race. Transmit messages to an Earth-orbiting satellite, let’s say, and store them there until the next local pass of the Moon, which then transmits them to Mars.
[2] Tomas Krag and Sebastian Büettrich, “Wireless Mesh Networking,” O’Reilly Network, Jan. 22, 2004: http://www.oreillynet.com/pub/a/wireless/2004/01/22/wirelessmesh.html
[3] Energy Information Administration , U.S. Department of Energy: http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/electricityconsumption.html. The world electrical power generation is increasing by 2.4 percent per year (see http://www.eia.doe.gov/oiaf/ieo/electricity.html) and is expected to grow to thirty terawatt-hours in the year 2030.
[4] Martin I. Hoffert, et al, “Advanced Technology Paths to Global Climate Stability: Energy for a Greenhouse Planet,” Science, Vol. 298 (2002): 981-987. As Dougal Dixon notes in Chapter 2, we are running out of oil, and what is worse, many countries, especially China, are burning huge amounts of coal, increasingly polluting the atmosphere with toxins and carbon dioxide and accelerating global warming. It can only get worse: 850 new coal-fired power plants are to be built by 2012 by the United States, China, and India. Terrestrial solar installations, biofuel, wind power, and geothermal power will help, but they all have limitations (ground-based solar panels don’t work at night, for example) and, says Hoffert, can’t economically provide the amount of power needed, especially in Africa and Asia.
[5] Martin Hoffert, “Energy from Space,” Marshall Institute, Aug. 7, 2007, http://www.marshall.org/article.php?id=550
[6] John G. Cramer, “Wormholes and Time Machines,” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, June 1989, communication access via parallel universes, or retrocausal and faster-than-light (FTL) signaling John G. Cramer, “EPR Communication: Signals from the Future?,” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2006, http://www.analogsf.com/0612/altview.shtml; Max Tegmark, “Parallel Universes,” Scientific American, May 2003.
[7] Seth Lloyd, Programming The Universe (New York: Knopf, 2006): 165.
[8] John G. Cramer, “An Experimental Test of Signaling using Quantum Nonlocality,” http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/NLS/NL_signal.htm.
[9] John G. Cramer, “Reverse Causation and the Transactional Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics, in Frontiers of Time: Retrocausation-Experiment and Theory,” in AIP Conference Proceedings, Vol. 263, ed. Daniel P. Sheehan (Melville, NY: AIP, 2006): 20-26; John G. Cramer, “Reverse Causation-EPR Communication: Signals from the Future?,” Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 2006, http://www.analogsf.com/0612/altview.shtml; B. Dopfer, PhD Thesis, University of Innsbruck (1998); A. Zeilinger, Rev. Mod. Physics, 71, S288-S297 (1999).
[10] Jack Sarfatti, Super Cosmos (Author House, 2006): 20.
[11] Robert A. Freitas Jr. and Francisco Valdes, “The search for extraterrestrial artifacts (SETA),” Acta Astronautica, Vol. 12 (1985): 1027-1034.
[12] Peter Liljeroth, Jascha Repp, and Gerhard Meyer, “Current-Induced Hydrogen Tautomerization and Conductance Switching of Naphthalocyanine Molecules,” Science, Vol. 317. no. 5842, pp. 1203 – 1206, http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/317/5842/1203
[13] Christopher Rose and Gregory Wright, “Inscribed Matter as an Energy Efficient Means of Communication with an Extraterrestrial Civilization,” Nature, Vol. 431, September 2004. http://www.winlab.rutgers.edu/~crose/papers/nature.pdf
[14] Seth Shostak, “What Do You Say to an Extraterrestrial?” SETI Institute News, December 2, 2004, http://www.seti.org/news/features/what-do-you-say-to-et.php
[15] William E. Burrows, The Survival Imperative: Using Space to Protect Earth (New York: Forge, 2006).
[16] Personal communication, September 3, 2007.
[17] Stephen Wolfram, A New Kind of Science (Wolfram Media, 2002): 1188, http://www.wolframscience.com/nksonline/page-1188b-text
[18] Marcus Chown, “Looking for Alien Intelligence in the Computational Universe,” New Scientist, November 26, 2005, http://www.newscientist.com/channel/fundamentals/mg18825271.600
[19] Hazel Muir, “Did Life Begin on Comets?” NewScientist.com news service, http://space.newscientist.com/channel/astronomy/astrobiology/dn12506, August 17, 2007.
[20] Mark Peplow, “ET Write Home,” Nature News, http://www.nature.com/news/2004/040830/full/040830-4.html, September 1, 2004.
[21] Paul Davies, “Do We Have to Spell It Out?” New Scientist, August 7, 2004, http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg18324595.300.
[22] Ray Kurzweil, The Singularity Is Near (Viking 2005).
[23] Fred Hoyle and John Elliot, A For Andromeda (Harper & Row, 1962), adapted from the 1961 BBC TV serial, now lost: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0054511/
[24] James Gardner, The Intelligent Universe (New Page Books, 2007).
[25] In Chapter 7 of this book, Wil McCarthy estimates that people could store most of their memories in about two terabytes, which could be transmitted via satellite in just a few hours.[26] CyBeRev, Terasem Movement, Inc., http://www.cyberev.org
[27] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computronium
[28] Seth Lloyd, Programming The Universe (New York: Knopf, 2006): 165.
[29] Based on the Margolis-Levitin theorem: take the amount of energy within the horizon (10⁷¹ joules), multiply by 4, and divide by Planck’s constant. What has the universe computed? Itself. Seth Lloyd, Programming The Universe (New York: Knopf, 2006): 165-167.
[30] Maggie McKee, “Black Holes: The Ultimate Quantum Computers?” NewScientist.com news service, March 13, 2006, http://space.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8836&feedId=online-news_rss20%3E
[31] “Chandra Finds Evidence for Swarm of Black Holes Near the Galactic Center,” January 12, 2005, http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2005/01/050111114024.htm
* http://www.amazon.com/Year-Million-Science-Edge-Knowledge/dp/1934633054/

© 2008 Amara D. Angelica

Protectionism

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Political poster from the Liberal Party clearly displaying the differences between an economy based on Free Trade and Protectionism. The Free Trade shop is full to the brim of customers due to its low prices whilst the shop based upon Protectionism has suffered from high prices and a lack of customers.

Protectionism is the economic policy of restricting imports from other countries through methods such as tariffs on imported goods, import quotas, and a variety of other government regulations. Proponents claim that protectionist policies shield the producers, businesses, and workers of the import-competing sector in the country from foreign competitors. However, they also reduce trade and adversely affect consumers in general (by raising the cost of imported goods), and harm the producers and workers in export sectors, both in the country implementing protectionist policies, and in the countries protected against.

There is a consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare,^[1][2][3][4] while free trade, deregulation, and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.^{[2][5][6][7][8][9]} In fact protectionism has been implicated by some scholars as the cause of some economic crises, in particular the Great Depression.^[10] However, trade liberalization can sometimes result in large and unequally distributed losses and gains, and can, in the short run, cause significant economic dislocation of workers in import-competing sectors.^[11]

Protectionist policies

Logo of Belgium's National League for the Franc's Defense, 1924

A variety of policies have been used to achieve protectionist goals. These include:

• Protection of technologies, patents, technical and scientific knowledge ^[12][13][14]
• Prevent foreign investors from taking control of domestic firms^[15][16]
• Tariffs: Typically, tariffs (or taxes) are imposed on imported goods. Tariff rates usually vary according to the type of goods imported. Import tariffs will increase the cost to importers, and increase the price of imported goods in the local markets, thus lowering the quantity of goods imported, to favour local producers. Tariffs may also be imposed on exports, and in an economy with floating exchange rates, export tariffs have similar effects as import tariffs. However, since export tariffs are often perceived as "hurting" local industries, while import tariffs are perceived as "helping" local industries, export tariffs are seldom implemented.
• Import quotas: To reduce the quantity and therefore increase the market price of imported goods. The economic effects of an import quota is similar to that of a tariff, except that the tax revenue gain from a tariff will instead be distributed to those who receive import licenses. Economists often suggest that import licenses be auctioned to the highest bidder, or that import quotas be replaced by an equivalent tariff.
• Administrative barriers: Countries are sometimes accused of using their various administrative rules (e.g. regarding food safety, environmental standards, electrical safety, etc.) as a way to introduce barriers to imports.
• Anti-dumping legislation: "Dumping" is the practice of firms selling to export markets at lower prices than are charged in domestic markets. Supporters of anti-dumping laws argue that they prevent import of cheaper foreign goods that would cause local firms to close down. However, in practice, anti-dumping laws are usually used to impose trade tariffs on foreign exporters.
• Direct subsidies: Government subsidies (in the form of lump-sum payments or cheap loans) are sometimes given to local firms that cannot compete well against imports. These subsidies are purported to "protect" local jobs, and to help local firms adjust to the world markets.
• Export subsidies: Export subsidies are often used by governments to increase exports. Export subsidies have the opposite effect of export tariffs because exporters get payment, which is a percentage or proportion of the value of exported. Export subsidies increase the amount of trade, and in a country with floating exchange rates, have effects similar to import subsidies.
• Exchange rate control: A government may intervene in the foreign exchange market to lower the value of its currency by selling its currency in the foreign exchange market. Doing so will raise the cost of imports and lower the cost of exports, leading to an improvement in its trade balance. However, such a policy is only effective in the short run, as it will lead to higher inflation in the country in the long run, which will in turn raise the real cost of exports, and reduce the relative price of imports.
• International patent systems: There is an argument for viewing national patent systems as a cloak for protectionist trade policies at a national level. Two strands of this argument exist: one when patents held by one country form part of a system of exploitable relative advantage in trade negotiations against another, and a second where adhering to a worldwide system of patents confers "good citizenship" status despite 'de facto protectionism'. Peter Drahos explains that "States realized that patent systems could be used to cloak protectionist strategies. There were also reputational advantages for states to be seen to be sticking to intellectual property systems. One could attend the various revisions of the Paris and Berne conventions, participate in the cosmopolitan moral dialogue about the need to protect the fruits of authorial labor and inventive genius...knowing all the while that one's domestic intellectual property system was a handy protectionist weapon."^[17]
• Political campaigns advocating domestic consumption (e.g. the "Buy American" campaign in the United States, which could be seen as an extra-legal promotion of protectionism.)
• Preferential governmental spending, such as the Buy American Act, federal legislation which called upon the United States government to prefer US-made products in its purchases.

In the modern trade arena many other initiatives besides tariffs have been called protectionist. For example, some commentators, such as Jagdish Bhagwati, see developed countries efforts in imposing their own labor or environmental standards as protectionism. Also, the imposition of restrictive certification procedures on imports are seen in this light.

Further, others point out that free trade agreements often have protectionist provisions such as intellectual property, copyright, and patent restrictions that benefit large corporations. These provisions restrict trade in music, movies, pharmaceuticals, software, and other manufactured items to high cost producers with quotas from low cost producers set to zero.^[18]

History

Tariff Rates in Japan (1870–1960)

 

Tariff Rates in Spain and Italy (1860–1910)

 

Historically, protectionism was associated with economic theories such as mercantilism (which focused on achieving positive trade balance and accumulating gold), and import substitution.

In the 18th century, Adam Smith famously warned against the "interested sophistry" of industry, seeking to gain advantage at the cost of the consumers.^[19] Friedrich List saw Adam Smith's views on free trade as disingenuous, believing that Smith advocated for freer trade so that British industry could lock out underdeveloped foreign competition.^[20]

Some have argued that no major country has ever successfully industrialized without some form of economic protection.^[21][22] Economic historian Paul Bairoch wrote that "historically, free trade is the exception and protectionism the rule".^[23]

According to economic historians Douglas Irwin and Kevin O'Rourke, "shocks that emanate from brief financial crises tend to be transitory and have little long-run effect on trade policy, whereas those that play out over longer periods (early 1890s, early 1930s) may give rise to protectionism that is difficult to reverse. Regional wars also produce transitory shocks that have little impact on long-run trade policy, while global wars give rise to extensive government trade restrictions that can be difficult to reverse."^[24]

One paper notes that sudden shifts in comparative advantage for specific countries have led said countries to become protectionist: "The shift in comparative advantage associated with the opening up of New World frontiers, and the subsequent “grain invasion” of Europe, led to higher agricultural tariffs from the late 1870s onwards, which as we have seen reversed the move toward freer trade that had characterized mid-nineteenth-century Europe. In the decades after World War II, Japan’s rapid rise led to trade friction with other countries. Japan’s recovery was accompanied by a sharp increase in its exports of certain product categories: cotton textiles in the 1950s, steel in the 1960s, automobiles in the 1970s, and electronics in the 1980s. In each case, the rapid expansion in Japan’s exports created difficulties for its trading partners and the use of protectionism as a shock absorber."^[24]

According to some political theorists, protectionism is advocated mainly by parties that hold far-left or left-wing economic positions, while economically right-wing political parties generally support free trade.

In the United States

Tariff Rates (France, UK, US)

 

Average Tariff Rates in US (1821–2016)

 

US Trade Balance (1895–2015)

According to economic historian Douglas Irwin, a common myth about US trade policy is that low tariffs harmed American manufacturers in the early 19th century and then that high tariffs made the United States into a great industrial power in the late 19th century.^[30] A review by the Economist of Irwin's 2017 book Clashing over Commerce: A History of US Trade Policy notes:^[30]

Political dynamics would lead people to see a link between tariffs and the economic cycle that was not there. A boom would generate enough revenue for tariffs to fall, and when the bust came pressure would build to raise them again. By the time that happened, the economy would be recovering, giving the impression that tariff cuts caused the crash and the reverse generated the recovery. 'Mr Irwin' also attempts to debunk the idea that protectionism made America a great industrial power, a notion believed by some to offer lessons for developing countries today. As its share of global manufacturing powered from 23% in 1870 to 36% in 1913, the admittedly high tariffs of the time came with a cost, estimated at around 0.5% of GDP in the mid-1870s. In some industries, they might have sped up development by a few years. But American growth during its protectionist period was more to do with its abundant resources and openness to people and ideas.

According to Paul Bairoch, the United States was "the mother country and bastion of modern protectionism" since the end of the 18th century and until the post-World War II period.^[31]

The Bush administration implemented tariffs on Chinese steel in 2002; according to a 2005 review of existing research on the tariff, all studies found that the tariffs caused more harm than gains to the US economy and employment.^[32] The Obama administration implemented tariffs on Chinese tires between 2009 and 2012 as an anti-dumping measure; a 2016 study found that these tariffs had no impact on employment and wages in the US tire industry.^[33]

In 2018, Cecilia Malmstrom considered that the US is playing a “dangerous game” seeing Trump's decision both as “pure protectionist” and “illegal”.^[34]

In Europe

Europe became increasingly protectionist during the eighteenth century.^[35] Economic historians Findlay and O'Rourke write that "the immediate aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars, European trade policies were almost universally protectionist," with the exceptions being smaller countries such as the Netherlands and Denmark.^[35]

Europe increasingly liberalized its trade during the 19th century.^[36] Countries such as Britain, the Netherlands, Denmark, Portugal and Switzerland, and arguably Sweden and Belgium, had fully moved towards free trade prior to 1860.^[36] Economic historians see the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 as the decisive shift toward free trade in Britain.^[36][37] A 1990 study by the Harvard economic historian Jeffrey Williamsson showed that the Corn Laws (which imposed restrictions and tariffs on imported grain) substantially increased the cost of living for unskilled and skilled British workers, and hampered the British manufacturing sector by reducing the disposable incomes that British workers could have spent on manufactured goods.^[38] The shift towards liberalization in Britain occurred in part due to "the influence of economists like David Ricardo", but also due to "the growing power of urban interests".^[36]

Findlay and O'Rourke characterize the 1860 Cobden Chevalier treaty between France and the United Kingdom as "a decisive shift toward European free trade."^[36] This treaty was followed by numerous free trade agreements: "France and Belgium signed a treaty in 1861; a Franco-Prussian treaty was signed in 1862; Italy entered the “network of Cobden-Chevalier treaties” in 1863 (Bairoch 1989, 40); Switzerland in 1864; Sweden, Norway, Spain, the Netherlands, and the Hanseatic towns in 1865; and Austria in 1866. By 1877, less than two decades after the Cobden Chevalier treaty and three decades after British Repeal, Germany “had virtually become a free trade country” (Bairoch, 41). Average duties on manufactured products had declined to 9–12% on the Continent, a far cry from the 50% British tariffs, and numerous prohibitions elsewhere, of the immediate post-Waterloo era (Bairoch, table 3, p. 6, and table 5, p. 42)."^[36]

Some European powers did not liberalize during the 19th century, such as the Russian Empire and Austro-Hungarian Empire which remained highly protectionist. The Ottoman Empire also became increasingly protectionist.^[39] In the Ottoman Empire's case, however, it previously had liberal free trade policies during the 18th to early 19th centuries, which British prime minister Benjamin Disraeli cited as "an instance of the injury done by unrestrained competition" in the 1846 Corn Laws debate, arguing that it destroyed what had been "some of the finest manufactures of the world" in 1812.^[40]

The countries of Western Europe began to steadily liberalize their economies after World War II and the protectionism of the interwar period.^[35]

In Canada

Since 1971 Canada has protected producers of eggs, milk, cheese, chickens, and turkeys with a system of supply management. Though prices for these foods in Canada exceed global prices, the farmers and processors have had the security of a stable market to finance their operations. Doubts about the safety of bovine growth hormone, sometimes used to boost dairy production, led to hearings before the Senate of Canada, resulting in a ban in Canada. Thus supply management of milk products is consumer protection of Canadians.^[41]

In Quebec, the Federation of Quebec Maple Syrup Producers manages the supply of maple syrup.

In Latin America

According to one assessment, tariffs were "far higher" in Latin America than the rest of the world in the century prior to the Great Depression.^[42][43]

Impact

There is a broad consensus among economists that protectionism has a negative effect on economic growth and economic welfare, while free trade and the reduction of trade barriers has a positive effect on economic growth.

Protectionism is frequently criticized by economists as harming the people it is meant to help. Mainstream economists instead support free trade.^[19][46] The principle of comparative advantage shows that the gains from free trade outweigh any losses as free trade creates more jobs than it destroys because it allows countries to specialize in the production of goods and services in which they have a comparative advantage.^[47] Protectionism results in deadweight loss; this loss to overall welfare gives no-one any benefit, unlike in a free market, where there is no such total loss. According to economist Stephen P. Magee, the benefits of free trade outweigh the losses by as much as 100 to 1.

Living standards

A 2016 study found that "that trade typically favors the poor", as they spend a greater share of their earnings on goods, and as free trade reduces the costs of goods.^[49] Other research found that China's entry to the WTO benefitted US consumers, as the price of Chinese goods were substantially reduced.^[50] Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argues that while globalization and free trade does contribute to social problems, "a serious retreat into protectionism would hurt the many groups that benefit from trade and would result in the same kind of social conflicts that globalization itself generates. We have to recognize that erecting trade barriers will help in only a limited set of circumstances and that trade policies will rarely be the best response to the problems [of globalization]".^[51]

Growth

According to economic historians Findlay and O'Rourke, there is a consensus in the economics literature that protectionist policies in the interwar period "hurt the world economy overall, although there is a debate about whether the effect was large or small."^[35]

Economic historian Paul Bairoch argued that economic protection was positively correlated with economic and industrial growth during the 19th century. For example, GNP growth during Europe's "liberal period" in the middle of the century (where tariffs were at their lowest), averaged 1.7% per year, while industrial growth averaged 1.8% per year. However, during the protectionist era of the 1870s and 1890s, GNP growth averaged 2.6% per year, while industrial output grew at 3.8% per year, roughly twice as fast as it had during the liberal era of low tariffs and free trade.^[52] One study found that tariffs imposed on manufactured goods increase economic growth in developing countries, and this growth impact remains even after the tariffs are repealed.^[53]

According to Dartmouth economist Douglas Irwin, "that there is a correlation between high tariffs and growth in the late nineteenth century cannot be denied. But correlation is not causation... there is no reason for necessarily thinking that import protection was a good policy just because the economic outcome was good: the outcome could have been driven by factors completely unrelated to the tariff, or perhaps could have been even better in the absence of protection."^[54] Irwin furthermore writes that "few observers have argued outright that the high tariffs caused such growth."^[54]

According to Oxford economic historian Kevin O'Rourke, "It seems clear that protection was important for the growth of US manufacturing in the first half of the 19th century; but this does not necessarily imply that the tariff was beneficial for GDP growth. Protectionists have often pointed to German and American industrialization during this period as evidence in favour of their position, but economic growth is influenced by many factors other than trade policy, and it is important to control for these when assessing the links between tariffs and growth."^[55]

A prominent 1999 study by Jeffrey A. Frankel and David H. Romer found, contrary to free trade skeptics' claims, while controlling for relevant factors, that trade does indeed have a positive impact on growth and incomes.^[56]

Developing world

There is broad consensus among economists that free trade helps workers in developing countries, even though they are not subject to the stringent health and labour standards of developed countries. This is because "the growth of manufacturing—and of the myriad other jobs that the new export sector creates—has a ripple effect throughout the economy" that creates competition among producers, lifting wages and living conditions.^[57] The Nobel laureates, Milton Friedman and Paul Krugman, have argued for free trade as a model for economic development.^[5] Alan Greenspan, former chair of the American Federal Reserve, has criticized protectionist proposals as leading "to an atrophy of our competitive ability. ... If the protectionist route is followed, newer, more efficient industries will have less scope to expand, and overall output and economic welfare will suffer."^[58]

Protectionists postulate that new industries may require protection from entrenched foreign competition in order to develop. This was Alexander Hamilton's argument in his "Report on Manufactures",^{[citation needed]} and the primary reason why George Washington signed the Tariff Act of 1789.^{[citation needed]} Mainstream economists do concede that tariffs can in the short-term help domestic industries to develop, but are contingent on the short-term nature of the protective tariffs and the ability of the government to pick the winners.^[59][60] The problems are that protective tariffs will not be reduced after the infant industry reaches a foothold, and that governments will not pick industries that are likely to succeed.^[60] Economists have identified a number of cases across different countries and industries where attempts to shelter infant industries failed.

Economists such as Paul Krugman have speculated that those who support protectionism ostensibly to further the interests of workers in least developed countries are in fact being disingenuous, seeking only to protect jobs in developed countries.^[66] Additionally, workers in the least developed countries only accept jobs if they are the best on offer, as all mutually consensual exchanges must be of benefit to both sides, or else they wouldn't be entered into freely. That they accept low-paying jobs from companies in developed countries shows that their other employment prospects are worse. A letter reprinted in the May 2010 edition of Econ Journal Watch identifies a similar sentiment against protectionism from 16 British economists at the beginning of the 20th century.^[67]

Conflict

Protectionism has also been accused of being one of the major causes of war. Proponents of this theory point to the constant warfare in the 17th and 18th centuries among European countries whose governments were predominantly mercantilist and protectionist, the American Revolution, which came about ostensibly due to British tariffs and taxes, as well as the protective policies preceding both World War I and World War II. According to a slogan of Frédéric Bastiat (1801–1850), "When goods cannot cross borders, armies will."^[68]

Current world trends

Protectionist measures taken since 2008 according to Global Trade Alert.^[69]

Since the end of World War II, it has been the stated policy of most First World countries to eliminate protectionism through free trade policies enforced by international treaties and organizations such as the World Trade Organization^[70] Certain policies of First World governments have been criticized as protectionist, however, such as the Common Agricultural Policy^[71] in the European Union, longstanding agricultural subsidies and proposed "Buy American" provisions^[72] in economic recovery packages in the United States.

Heads of the G20 meeting in London on 2 April 2009 pledged "We will not repeat the historic mistakes of protectionism of previous eras". Adherence to this pledge is monitored by the Global Trade Alert,^[73] providing up-to-date information and informed commentary to help ensure that the G20 pledge is met by maintaining confidence in the world trading system, detering beggar-thy-neighbor acts, and preserving the contribution that exports could play in the future recovery of the world economy.

Although they were reiterating what they had already committed to, last November in Washington, 17 of these 20 countries were reported by the World Bank as having imposed trade restrictive measures since then. In its report, the World Bank says most of the world's major economies are resorting to protectionist measures as the global economic slowdown begins to bite. Economists who have examined the impact of new trade-restrictive measures using detailed bilaterally monthly trade statistics estimated that new measures taken through late 2009 were distorting global merchandise trade by 0.25% to 0.5% (about $50 billion a year).^[74]

Since then, however, President Donald Trump announced in January 2017 the U.S. was abandoning the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) deal, saying, “We’re going to stop the ridiculous trade deals that have taken everybody out of our country and taken companies out of our country, and it’s going to be reversed.”

On genes, memes, bemes, and conscious things

July 4, 2010 by Martine Rothblatt
Original link:  http://www.kurzweilai.net/on-genes-memes-bemes-and-conscious-things
This article was adapted from a lecture given by Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D., at the (HETHR), Human Enhancement Technologies and Human Rights Conference hosted on May 26-28, 2006, at Stanford University in California. It is reprinted with permission from The Journal of Personal Cyberconsciousness, Volume 1, Issue 4, 2006.
 
As human memory, personality, values, and other attributes are increasingly being captured in cybernetic form, they are becoming virtual entities of their own. These “bemes” — units of beingness — are analogous to memes (culturally transmissible ideas) and genes, but go far beyond them. Common sets of bemes will lead to a new “Beme Neural Architecture” (BNA), analogous to DNA. But while DNA expresses matter in a limited way, substrate-independent BNA expresses mind, and can replicate with a speed and flexibility far beyond DNA, extend our consciousness, and survive beyond our fragile DNA.

---

Humanity is rapidly extracting the essences of people into cybernetic form. These essences will soon demand a life of their own, which may ultimately occur through natural selection. The cybernetic essences that demand the most time and attention will thrive and proliferate. If we say no to cybernetic life, we may face a kind of class war. If we say yes, we face the challenge of redefining life, consciousnesss, and civilization.

As I address these issues, I will introduce a new word, bemes. I will address how many bemes there are, where they are, and how they can become a way to create and extend consciousness. How do we value bemes? What are their rights? Can bemes parent? Why should we focus on creating bemes? Ultimately, I believe that bemes will give us joy and increase our chances of survival.

Bemes are fundamental, transmissible, mutate-able units of beingness very much in the spirit of memes[1]. The difference is that memes are culturally transmissible elements that have common cultural meanings whereas bemes are highly individual elements of personality, mannerisms, feelings, recollections, beliefs, values, and attitudes.

Martine Rothblatt’s explanation of Bemes versus Memes. (Image: Martine Rothblatt)

Over time, people will start to realize that the beme is mightier than the gene. We humans are much more accurately described by our intellectual uniqueness than by our genetic codes. Cyronics is itself based on beme revival as opposed to gene revival. Ultimately, common sets of bemes will be the base for a new species definition. Today, we define our species based on genetics or DNA. Because we can reproduce by commingling genes: We are moving towards reproducing by the commingling of our bemes and this will give rise to a new species, which I would like to call Persona Creatus.

Examples of bemes are smiles, elements of one’s paranoia, a memory of a first bike ride, and a love for lasagna. There are millions of bemes just like we have billions of base pairs.[2] People are already beginning to make efforts at beme recording. One of the best known is Gordon Bell’s My Life Bits project.[3] It is interesting that it does not take a huge amount of data to accumulate a vast amount of bemes. At the speed at which Bell is beme-ifying his life, data is accumulating at one gigabyte a month. At this rate, it would take 83 years to hit a mere terabyte. Others are using Bell’s Sense Cam, which everyone reports is very enjoyable.[4] People seem to enjoy reproducing themselves through their bemes.

The result of beme recording is what I would like to call Beme Neural Architecture, or BNA. How do BNA and DNA differ?

Genes spell out matter, what we would ordinarily call phenotype, via a four-molecule code. Bemes spell out mind, what I might call a noonotype and do that through a two-bit on/off sequence of code.

Bemes are organized into Beme Neural Architecture, or BNA. BNA beings include some animals and computers, whereas DNA beings include all animals, but no computers.

Where might this take us? Instead of looking at genes as the metaphor for the origin of the species, with bemes we are looking at the destiny of the species. The reasons why the beme is mighter than the gene is that our uniqueness is far greater when expressed through BNA than in DNA; our thoughts differ to a much greater extent than our brains do; bemes allow substrate independence; and ultimately, it is much more true to say that mind is deeper than matter than to say that blood is thicker than water, which is actually not true at all in the metaphorical sense (ask your spouse or best friend).

What is a BNA being? A BNA being is called a beman or a transbeman. These entitities have human thought patterns and meet the biological definition of life directly or via electronics. It is quite easy to show that cybernetic beings meet the biological definition of life. Even though we do not think of things that are not wet as being biological, functionally, they can be.

Why this particular word, beman? There is nothing magical about it, but it does evoke the fact that what is really cool and interesting about life is to be, being-ness. It brings together the elements of being-ness (be-) and humanity (-man). Examples of bemans might be Homo sapiens, the computer Mike from Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Robin Williams in the film, Millennium Man, A.I., and primates.



The point of this new semantics is to shift our thinking in the direction of looking at DNA as an archaic, irrelevant body-ist approach, whereas BNA addresses our preciousness, personality, mind, and thoughts. Beman and transbeman are terms of inclusiveness that make it easier for us to avoid class wars and to include cybernetic consciousness in our same community, whereas human is more of a label of division like Caucasian or female.

How many bemes are there? I don’t know but it is a great research project. The Human Genome Project was great, how about a Human Benome Project?

There is a lot of interesting research that can be done on the new beme-based species, Persona Creatus, from the standpoint of physical and cultural anthropology. Yet in essence, substrate is to bemes as race is to genes. Race is irrelevant to genes and substrate is irrelevant to bemes.

Why not use other words like transhumans? Ray Kurzweil has made the observation that we are not called transmonkeys, so as we begin to abstract ourselves into cybernetic form, why would be call ourselves transhumans?



Why should we care about bemes? The reason is to create and extend consciousness. Copying and extending one’s bemes would create the self element and mind file for extending one’s unique consciousness. It would be a necessary but sufficient way to replicate one’s consciousness. We would also need mindware that does not yet exist. People who work on avatars and other autonomous agents are rapidly putting together the mindware that could wrap around our bemes and enable us to have a cybernetic consciousness.

The father of conscious bemans is Alan Turing, who gave us a test that says that if something seems real, then it is good enough to be real. Copies of conscious things are conscious if they seem to be conscious. Because consciousness is almost synonymous with subjectivity, none of us really know in the absolute sense if any of us are conscious, because we live our daily life based on what seems to be real or conscious. Therefore, if a computer seemed to be conscious, then it would work for all of us.

Another way of looking at consciousness is to compare it to pornography. Back in the 1960s, there was a major debate over what was obscene or not. Magazines such as Screw were all the rage and cities like Kansas City were trying to put their publishers in jail.[5] The issue went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court and they finally asked the basic question, “What is obscene?” Justice Potter Stewart came to the conclusion that you cannot define it, but you know it when you see it.

Consciousness is the same type of entity. We can end up with a useless philosophical discussion about what is or is not conscious. Yet we all know it when we see it. That was Turing’s insight.

We also need to be aware that different kinds of consciousness exist. Too often, we fall into the error of thinking that consciousness is an either/or state. We can look at consciousness as being on a continuum of hard core consciousness to soft core consciousness.

When will be be able to beme ourselves up into transbeman states? Right now, mind files exist in a virtual reality on the Internet. People are creating more of themselves in websites such as secondlife.com.[7] Richard Morgan has laid out a number of scenarios for ex vivo consciousness.[8] We cannot predict an exact date, but remember that only sixty years ago, Vannevar Bush predicted a memory extender machine that is available today in desktop, PDA, and ipod versions.[9]

A bemex hypothesis to complement the memex hypothesis – a bemex is a device in which an individual stores enough of their bemes and which is equipped with mindware so that it may function as our alter ego. It is an analog of one’s consciousness that can be replicated with speed and flexibility paralleling Vannevar Bush’s definition of a memex. Kurzweil predicts the arrival of this bemex capability for the year 2030. We are certainly within the horizon of this and we should be debating the related ethical issues.

How do we value cyberconscious lives? There is a cartoon that shows a widow who gets a letter from her husband who died in Iraq and receives a few thousand dollars. Someone else took a drug and had a heart attack and got two million dollars. The point is that if we cannot even figure out how to equally value human lives, it will be even more tricky to figure out how we value beman lives. Certainly, there will be many who claim that beman lives have no value at all, that they are mere constructs like cartoons.

Let’s start considering the potential transhuman enhancements of beme uploading because that will allow us to begin to feel the value of beming ourselves. Beming will allow real death to become rare because as bodies die out, bemes will be transporting ex vivo and can either live in virtuality, in a nanobiotech body, or in a cellular regenerated body.

Older knowledge will become a commodity as everyone collects themselves in beme form. There will be a collective consciousness that emerges in which older knowledge will be readily available to everyone. We should value beme lives highly because people will pay almost anything to escape death. People also will pay dearly for knowledge.

In order to value bemes highly, we must come up with a third way to define birth and death. Today we define death based on brain death, but this definition is only thirty years old. Back in the 1960s, we defined death based on heart death. The next transition will be to the information theory definition of death, which holds that an entity is alive as long as its bemes remain in organized form. If we can accomplish this through the legal and political community, then we will pave the way for valuing beman life highly.

Another enhancement aspect to beming is that it allows us to transcend substrate entirely. Beming will end up enhancing humans into bemans and transhumans into transbemans. Yet substrate is very important to people. It is part of the body politic. Revolutionizing this and going to a situation of substrate independence is equivalent to going to a colonial master of government independence and demolishing the state as you demolish the body. That is a tall order, but it has been accomplished before, although never completey.

The flip side of transbeman rights is transbeman obligations. Bemans will be able to comply with obligations just as well as humans do.



Humans control the entire world and decide what goes on. Humans essentially have a monopoly on rights. In order for nonhuman bemans to gain access to this privileged space, first they will have to evidence consciousness and then persuade other members of the club (the human club) that they have in fact evidenced consciousness. If they succeed in this, then they will be admitted to the club, where they must prove that they can comply with the club’s rules, which are basic human ethics. For example, they must not steal or kill. Will they be good bemans like good humans? If the answer is yes, then it is fully possible that bemans can acquire full human rights. If the answer is no, then bemans will end up with the protections of a unique life form or the rights of a baby, lunatic or felon.

How can nonhuman bemans actually persuade humans that they are members of the club? The answer lies in following Turing’s creed. Bemans must first pass as humans if they want access to full human space, which is where all the power is. Another strategy is to make having rights in the human’s interest. Bemans could start a political campaign. “Keep grandma alive!” “Two bodies are better than one!” These political campaigns could be a way to persuade Americans to grant bemans life.

Finally, bemans will have to take away humans’ fears. No matter how much bemans succeed in making humans salivate for longer life and multiple bodies, there will be the fear mongers who think that bemans will abolish their state and their world. The legal community will need to come up with a concept of one mind, one vote instead of one man, one vote. They will need to develop a strict liability cyber law, whereby legal responsibility can be traced back to someone who already has human rights. They will also need to devise cyberparental licensing so that bemans can produce their own children. Bemans will then need to have responsibility for the children so they do not end up producing junk children.

Who will hold these beman rights? The answer is either bio-birth people who transition to cyberconsiocussness or to cyber birth people who transition to personhood.

Are you transbeman? Some fifteen or twenty years ago, FM 2030 wrote the book “Are you Transhuman?”[10] Today we are ready to move past this and ask, “Are you trasnbeman?” Can you relate to the other members of the club and comply with the obligations of consciousness and the laws of society?

Ultimately, the transbemanist message will be much more attuned to existing society than the transhumanist message. The transhumanist message sets up a class war between us and them and gives rise to an idea about those who are enhanced and those who are left behind. The transbemanist message, or B+ for short, is more of a collective type of message, one of inclusiveness, including both humans, bemans and transbemans in a redefined species. Transhumanists (H+) are focused on eugenics, whereas transbemanists are focused on euthenics, which is changing the environment (in this case, going to a cybernetic environment, thus allowing everyone to achieve a level of equivalent empowerment and joyful life). Transhumanist is a strongly secular approach, which leaves an impression in mainstream society that God is bad and will be left behind. Transbemanism is also secular, but has more of an approach that God is something we can build through our collective consciousness.

Ultimately H+ and B+ are two points on a continuum. One is focusing on technological evolution, the other on sociological evolution.



When we abstract ourselves into cybernetic form, that form, too, will want to replicate. Ultimately, we are all playing out according to the master laws of natural selection. There is nothing to fear about cybernetic beings replicating themselves in ever greater numbers. In fact, it is the only way we can achieve survival in a dangerous universe. As long as we have responsibility for our cybernetic offspring, the right to family should be made available to all bemans. Transbemans can be fruitful at the speed of light, so we can rapidly colonize the cosmos and achieve some level of independence from all the harms that can be afflicted upon the earth.

There are simple principles of cyberliability law that can enable reproducing. One example is if a transbeman cannot be civilly punished, then it cannot meet the obligations of a person, and so cannot have the rights of one.

The psychology of transbemans is important to keep in mind. Maslow[11] stated that our adulthood should not be only a renunciation of our childhood, but also an inclusion of its good values and a building upon those. Transbemans and transhumans have nothing to be embarrassed about their human background. Instead, they should take their human background with them into the future at the speed of light as cyberconscious beings. Transbemanism is a Maslowian approach to human enhancement.

Why should we make the leap into transbemanism? This raises the debate between red dolphins and green chimps. Red dolphins are those who believe that history, data, and empirical evidence shows that technology has caused more pain than pleasure. The H-bomb is the usual example given of this. Because of this, technology is more likely to cause existential events, so they conclude that we should limit technology. Green chimps say that the data shows just the opposite, that technology has reduced pain caused by nature. The emblematic example is the eradication of small pox which regularly wiped out millions of humans. Green chimps believe that because technology has reduced harm, it is logical to assume that it is more likely to prevent rather than cause existential events, so we therefore should maximize technology.

This is an irresolvable debate. Empirical data cannot prove or disprove either side. Red dolphins say, “Stop. Our ancestors wisely gave up land technology and returned to the sea. Humans and technology have done us wrong. The evidence of this is how we swim in ever diminishing numbers in the sea.” The green chimps say, “Put the pedal to the medal. Look at what our thumbs have enabled. We are on the cusp of having human rights. As there is an invisible hand in the market that somehow resolves all issues, there is an invisible leg of technology that allows us to maximize goods and reduce harms.”

Ultimately, this is a debate between long run and short run perspectives. Because the cosmos is definitely deadly, red dolphin rules must mean death for all sentient species on the planet in the end. The earth is not going to last forever. Historically, almost all species are wiped out every hundred million years or so. Green chimps rules may let us survive with nanotechnology. Technology only may be deadly. Thus red dolphin rules mean we only definitely survive for a while, but green chimp rules mean that we might die sooner. It all depends on whether you are willing to take a risk for the long term even though there might be a risk of harm in the short term.

There is a compromise approach. If you blend red and green, the result is brown. There is a brown turtle hybrid approach, which is to move forward with technology, but do so in a way that gets a collective buy-in of society in a consensual fashion. In this way, we will be able to realize the transbeman vision with a maximum of good for everyone and a minimum risk of harm.

Footnotes

1. Memes – The term “meme” (IPA: [meem], not “mem”), coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins, refers to a replicator of cultural information that one mind transmits (verbally or by demonstration) to another mind. Dawkins said, Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Other examples include deities, concepts, ideas, theories, opinions, beliefs, practices, habits, dances and moods which propagate within a culture. A meme propagates itself as a unit of cultural evolution analogous in many ways to the gene (the unit of genetic information). Often memes propagate as more-or-less integrated cooperative sets or groups, referred to as memeplexes or meme-complexes. The theory has proved itself to be a successful meme, achieving penetration into popular culture rare for a scientific theory. Wikipedia.com
2. Base pair – n. The pair of nitrogenous bases that connects the complementary strands of DNA or of double-stranded RNA and consists of a purine linked by hydrogen bonds to a pyrimidine: adenine-thymine and guanine-cytosine in DNA, and adenine-uracil and guanine-cytosine in RNA. Stedman’s. Medical dic•tion•ar•y, second edition. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2004: 88
3. Gordon Bell’s My Life Bits Project – Gordon Bell has captured a lifetime’s worth of articles, books, cards, CDs, letters, memos, papers, photos, pictures, presentations, home movies, videotaped lectures, and voice recordings and stored them digitally. He is now paperless, and is beginning to capture phone calls, IM transcripts, television, and radio.
4. SenseCam – is a badge-sized wearable camera that captures up to 2000 VGA images per day into 128Mbyte FLASH memory. In addition, sensor data such as movement, light level and temperature is recorded every second. This is similar to an aircraft Black Box accident recorder but miniaturized for the human body. It could help with memory recall, e.g. where did I leave my spectacles or keys? who did I meet last week? by doing a rewind of the days events. If a person has an accident, the events and images leading up to this will be recorded, and these could be useful to medical staff. It could also be used for automatic diary generation. Microsoft.com
5. Screw magazine is a New York-based pornographic tabloid newspaper published by Al Goldstein from 1968 to 2004. Now Screw is published by DJK Productions and edited by Kenny Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_magazine
6. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91 (1945). FindLaw.com
7. SecondLife – An online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy. http://secondlife.com/
8. Richard Morgan (b. 1965) is a British science fiction author who wrote, Altered Carbon, a science fiction novel set some five hundred years in the future in a universe in which the “United Nations Protectorate” oversees a number of planets settled by human beings, it features protagonist Takeshi Kovacs (the final “cs” is pronounced “ch”). Kovacs is a former United Nations Envoy and a native of Harlan’s World (settled by the Japanese yakuza with Eastern European labor). Wikipedia.com
9. Dr. Vannevar Bush’s visionary 1945 Atlantic Monthly article entitled, “As We May Think” which proposed a memory extender machine to organize the public record. The Atlantic Montly.com
10. FM-2030 – a name adopted by the transhumanist philosopher and futurist Fereydun M. Esfandiary (October 15, 1930–July 8, 2000), who professed “a deep nostalgia for the future.” He wrote one of the seminal works in the transhumanist canon, Are You a Transhuman? He also wrote a number of works of fiction under his original name F.M. Esfandiary. On July 8, 2000, FM-2030 died from pancreatic cancer and is believed to be in cryonic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona.
11. Abraham Maslow (1908-1970) attempted to synthesize a large body of research related to human motivation. Prior to Maslow, researchers focused separately on such factors as biology, achievement, or power to explain what energizes, directs, and sustains human behavior. Maslow posited a hierarchy of human needs based on two groupings: deficiency needs and growth needs. Within the deficiency needs, each lower need must be met before moving to the next higher level. Once each of these needs has been satisfied, if at some future time a deficiency is detected, the individual will act to remove the deficiency. Valdosta State University

Freedom of choice

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Freedom of choice describes an individual's opportunity and autonomy to perform an action selected from at least two available options, unconstrained by external parties.

In law

In the abortion debate, for example, the term "freedom of choice" may be used in defense of the position that a woman has a right to determine whether she will proceed with or terminate a pregnancy.^[3][4][5] Similarly, other topics such as euthanasia,^[6] contraception^[7] and same-sex marriage^[8] are sometimes discussed in terms of an individual right of "freedom of choice." Some social issues, for example the New York "Soda Ban" have been both defended^[9] and opposed^[10] with reference to "freedom of choice."

In economics

The freedom to choose which brand and flavor of soda to buy is related to market competition.

In microeconomics, freedom of choice is the freedom of economic agents to allocate their resources as they see fit, among the options (such as goods, services, or assets) that are available to them.^[11][12] It includes the freedom to engage in employment available to them.^[13]

Ratner et al., in 2008, cited the literature on libertarian paternalism which states that consumers do not always act in their own best interests. They attribute this phenomenon to factors such as emotion, cognitive limitations and biases, and incomplete information which they state may be remedied by various proposed interventions. They discuss providing consumers with information and decision tools, organizing and restricting their market options, and tapping emotions and managing expectations. Each of these, they state, could improve consumers' ability to choose.^[14]

However, economic freedom to choose ultimately depends upon market competition, since buyers' available options are usually the result of various factors controlled by sellers, such as overall quality of a product or a service and advertisement. In the event that a monopoly exists, the consumer no longer has the freedom to choose to buy from a different producer. As Friedrich Hayek pointed out:

Our freedom of choice in a competitive society rests on the fact that, if one person refuses to satisfy our wishes, we can turn to another. But if we face a monopolist we are at his absolute mercy.

— Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom – "Can planning free us from care?"^[15]

As shown in the above quote, libertarian thinkers are often strong advocates for increasing freedom of choice. One example of this is Milton Friedman's Free to Choose book and TV series.

There is no consensus as to whether an increase in economic freedom of choice leads to an increase in happiness. In one study, the Heritage Foundation's 2011 Index of Economic Freedom report showed a strong correlation between its Index of Economic Freedom and happiness in a country.^[16]

Measuring freedom of choice

The axiomatic-deductive approach has been used to address the issue of measuring the amount of freedom of choice (FoC) an individual enjoys.^[17] In a 1990 paper,^[18][19] Prasanta K. Pattanaik and Yongsheng Xu presented three conditions that a measurement of FoC should satisfy:

1. Indifference between no-choice situations. Having only one option amounts to the same FoC, no matter what the option is.
2. Strict monotonicity. Having two distinct options x and y amounts to more FoC than having only the option x.
3. Independence. If a situation A has more FoC than B, by adding a new option x to both (not contained in A or B), A will still have more FoC than B.

They proved that the cardinality is the only measurement that satisfies these axioms, what they observed to be counter-intuitive and suggestive that one or more axioms should be reformulated. They illustrated this with the example of the option set "to travel by train" or "to travel by car", that should yield more FoC than the option set "to travel by red car" or "to travel by blue car". Some suggestions have been made to solve this problem, by reformulating the axioms, usually including concepts of preferences,^[20][21][22] or rejecting the third axiom.^[23]

Relationship with happiness

A 2006 study by Simona Botti and Ann L. McGill showed that, when subjects were presented with differentiated options and had the freedom to choose between them, their choice enhanced their satisfaction with positive and dissatisfaction with negative outcomes, relative to nonchoosers.^[24]
A 2010 study by Hazel Rose Markus and Barry Schwartz compiled a list of experiments about freedom of choice and argued that "too much choice can produce a paralyzing uncertainty, depression, and selfishness".^[25] Schwartz argues that people frequently experience regret due to opportunity costs for not making an optimal decision and that, in some scenarios, people's overall satisfaction are sometimes higher when a difficult decision is made by another person rather than by themselves, even when the other person's choice is worse. Schwarts had written a book and given speeches criticizing the excess of options in modern society, though acknowledging that "some choice is better than none".