The structure of the global catastrophe

Chapter 13. The risks connected with washing out of borders between human and inhuman

Powerful processes of genetic updating of people, prosthetics of parts of a body, including elements of a brain, connection of a brain with the computer, transfer of consciousness to the computer etc will create new type of risks for people, to understand which will be enough difficult. In what measure we can consider as human a being to which some genes are added,and some are cleaned? Are we ready to recognise the status of human behind any intelligent being which has arisen on the Earth even if it has no anything the general with human, does not consider itself as human and it is adjusted to people with hostility? These questions cease to be purely theoretical in the XXI century.

Essence of a problem that improvement of human can go different ways, and not the fact, that these ways will converge. For example, improvement of human for the account of gene manipulations gives one way, for the account of gradual replacement of parts of a body mechanisms - another, and for the account of full change of consciousness in the computer - the third. Can be various the declared purposes of improvement. And considerable groups of people flatly will refuse any improvements.

The risks connected with a problem of "the philosophical zombie”

«Philosophical zombie» is called (the term is entered by D.Chalmers in 1996 in connection with discussions about an artificial intellect) a certain object which represents human, but thus has no internal experiences. For example, the image of human on the telescreen is the philosophical zombie, and owing to it we do not consider switching off TV as murder. The gradual upgrade of human brings an attention to the question on, whether the improved human will turn to the philosophical zombie on somebody a stage.

The simple example of the catastrophe connected with the philosophical zombie, consists in the following. We will admit that a certain method of achievement of immortality was offered to people, and they have agreed on it. However this method consists of recording a man for 10 days on a videocamera, and then scrolling fragments of this record in a casual order. Certainly, here the dirty trick is obvious, and in a reality people will disagree, as understand, that it not immortality. However we will consider more complex example - the part of brain of a man is damaged by a stroke, and it is replaced by computer implant, approximately carrying out its functions. How to learn, whether human has turned into the philosophical zombie as a result? The answer is obvious - always there will be those who will doubt in it and search for signs of «un-genius» of the corrected human.

What distinguishes the live human from «the philosophical zombie», that is qualitative signs of experiences, in philosophy is called «qualia», for example, subjective experience of green colour. The question on a reality qualia and their ontologic status is a subject of sharp philosophical discussions. My opinion is that qualia are real, their ontologic status is high, and without finding-out of their original nature we should not make experiments on human nature alteration.

It is possible to foretell with confidence, that when there will be improved people, the world will break up in two: on those who will consider as the present people only usual people, and those who will improve themself. Scales of such conflict will be truly civilizational. Certainly, everyone solves it for himself but how parents will concern to what their child will destroy the physical body and download his mind in the computer?

One more problem, threats from which are not clear yet, that human mind cannot generate the purpose from anything, not making thus a logic mistake. The usual human is provided by the purposes from a birth, and absence of the purposes is a depression symptom, than logic paradox. However absolute mind which has comprehended roots of all purposes, can realise their senselessness.

Chapter 14. The risks connected with natural catastrophes

Universal catastrophes

Catastrophes which will change all Universe as whole, on scale equal to the Big Bang are theoretically possible. From statistical reasons their probability is less than 1 % in the nearest billion years as have shown by Bostrom and Tegmark. However the validity of reasonings of Bostrom and Тегмарка depends on the validity of their premise - namely that the intelligent life in our Universe could arise not only now but also a several billions years ago. This suggestion is based on that the heavy elements necessary for existence of a life, have arisen already after several billions years after Universe occurrence, long before formation of the Earth. Obviously, however, that degree of reliability which we can attribute to this premise is less than 100 billion to 1 as we do not have its direct proofs - namely the traces of early civilisations. Moreover, obvious absence of earlier civilisations (Fermi's paradox) gives certain reliability to an opposite idea - namely, that the mankind has arisen extremely improbable early. Probably, that existence of heavy elements is not a unique necessary condition for emergence of intelligent life, and also there are other conditions, for example, that frequency of flashes of close quasars and hypernovas has considerably decreased (and the density of these objects really decreases in process of expansion of the Universe and exhaustion of hydrogen clouds). Bostrom and Тегмарк write: «One might think that since life here on Earth has survived for nearly 4 Gyr (Gigayears), such catastrophic events must be extremely rare. Unfortunately, such an argument is flawed, giving us a false sense of security. It fails to take into account the observation selection effect that precludes any observer from observing anything other than that their own species has survived up to the point where they make the observation. Even if the frequency of cosmic catastrophes were very high, we should still expect to find ourselves on a planet that had not yet been destroyed. The fact that we are still alive does not even seem to rule out the hypothesis that the average cosmic neighborhood is typically sterilized by vacuum decay, say, every 10000 years, and that our own planet has just been extremely lucky up until now. If this hypothesis were true, future prospects would be bleak».

And though further Bostrom and Тегмарк reject the assumption of high frequency of "sterilising catastrophes”, being based on late time of existence of the Earth, we cannot accept their conclusion, because as we spoke above, the premise on which it is based, is unreliable. It does not mean, however, inevitability of close extinction as a result of universal catastrophe. The only our source of knowledge of possible universal catastrophes is theoretical physics as, by definition, such catastrophe never happened during life of the Universe (except for Big Bang). The theoretical physics generates a large quantity of unchecked hypotheses, and in case of universal catastrophes they can be essentially uncheckable. We will notice also, that proceeding from today's understanding, we cannot prevent universal catastrophe, nor be protected from it (though, we can provoke it - see the section about dangerous physical experiments.) Let's designate now the list of possible - from the point of view of some theorists - universal catastrophes:

1. Disintegration of false vacuum. We already discussed problems of false vacuum in connection with physical experiments.

2. Collision with object in multidimensional space - brane. There are assumptions, that our Universe is only object in the multidimensional space, named brane (from a word "membrane"). The Big Bang is a result of collision of our brane with another brane. If there will be one more collision it will destroy at once all our world.

3. The Big Rupture. Recently open dark energy results, as it is considered, to more and more accelerated expansion of the Universe. If speed of expansion grows, in one moment it will break off Solar system. But it will be ten billions years after modern times, as assumes theories. (Phantom Energy and Cosmic Doomsday. Robert R. Caldwell, Marc Kamionkowski, Nevin N. Weinberg. http://xxx.itep.ru/abs/astro-ph/0302506)

4. Transition of residual dark energy in a matter. Recently the assumption has been come out, that this dark energy can suddenly pass in a usual matter as it already was in time of the Big Bang.

5. Other classic scenario of the death of the universe are heat-related deaths rise in entropy and alignment temperature in the universe and the compression of the Universe through gravitational forces. But they again away from us in the tens of billions of years.

6. One can assume the existence of certain physical process that makes the Universe unfit for habitation after a certain time (as it was unfit for habitation because of intense radiation of nuclei of galaxies - quasars - billions of early years of its existence). For example, such a process can be evaporation of primordial black holes through Hawking radiation. If so, we exist in a narrow interval of time when the universe is inhabitable - just as Earth is located in the narrow space of habitable zone around the Sun, and Sun - in a narrow field of the galaxy, where the frequency of its rotation synchronized with the rotation of the branches of the galaxy, making it does not fall within those branches and is not subjected to a supernova.

8. If our world has to some extent arisen from anything by absolutely unknown to us way, what prevents it to disappear suddenly also?