Digital cloning - mortality awareness, artificial intelligence and the end of the world?

This remarkable human being:

has warned us that artificial intelligence (computer power equal to the human brain) could threaten the survival of homo sapiens. He's a smart bloke and we'd do well to listen and think, though another prof calmed us a bit by saying that it's a 100+ years threat, not an "AI and Ebola too, which to tackle first?" sort of threat.

One aspect of AI which I find immediately worrying is the idea of a computer cloned with a digital facsimile of a person. I think it's worrying not because Apple might include it in their next upgrade, but because of what it tells us about mortality unawareness.

So I'm someone who has lost a partner in mid-life. I set up a digital clone of my beloved. This clone talks to me as he did, answers questions, chats, the whole bit. Maybe the imagery of him is avatar-like, or better.

So instead of mourning my beloved, I spend a lot of my time with "him." Instead of grieving for him, enduring pain, moving onwards, I stick in a digital version of the past. Not, note, my memories, but an updateable mock-up of him. If I meet someone else, after a decent time interval (I'll check with the kids - they'll tell me) what do I do? Ask my cloned beloved if that's OK? Compare digital nonperson with  actual bloke I've met?

YUCK! 

I'm avoiding the pain as well as the joy of being human. I'm pretending death doesn't exist. Don't tell me death and life are the same thing, and we need death to be alive. I'll stay enmeshed with my dead person, who can now talk to me, offer comfort, be soothing and.....

What a horrible temptation for a grief-stricken person.

 But my dead dear one belongs here:

and in my heart. Not here:

AAAARGH!

(Or is it just me?)

Dealing with the Fear of Death part 1

 I was asked recently why I started "doing" mindfulness. I answered by relating it to my work as a funeral celebrant. I've said often enough here and hereabouts that it is not depressing work, but it's Big Stuff. You find yourself staring at a lot of coffins in the course of a year.

I needed something to help me deal with what this magnificent poem by Thomas Hardy says, so painfully and so clearly:

               During Wind and Rain

They sing their dearest songs—

       He, she, all of them—yea,

       Treble and tenor and bass,

            And one to play;

      With the candles mooning each face. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

How the sick leaves reel down in throngs!

       They clear the creeping moss—

       Elders and juniors—aye,

       Making the pathways neat

            And the garden gay;

       And they build a shady seat. . . .

            Ah, no; the years, the years,

See, the white storm-birds wing across.

       They are blithely breakfasting all—

       Men and maidens—yea,

       Under the summer tree,

            With a glimpse of the bay,

       While pet fowl come to the knee. . . .

            Ah, no; the years O!

And the rotten rose is ript from the wall.

       They change to a high new house,

       He, she, all of them—aye,

       Clocks and carpets and chairs

          On the lawn all day,

       And brightest things that are theirs. . . .

          Ah, no; the years, the years

Down their carved names the rain-drop ploughs.

Well, 'nuff said. I don't think we help ourselves by pretending that the fact of death, of human mortality, isn't a pretty definitive smack in the gob. 

But n.b. mindfulness isn't an avoidance strategy. Trying to avoid our awareness of mortality, which it seems to me our culture does a lot of, gives death enormous power over us. It makes the way we live deathly, morbid, in many ways that need, individually and collectively, to be dealt with.

Let's leave aside, for the moment, questions such as is it fear of death or of dying that troubles us; does it make any difference if you believe in an afterlife; is stoicism the best answer, etc etc. Let's just consider if mindfulness is a way of living with the fact that life ends, so that we are not obsessed by it, depressed by it or dominated by it.

Easy, I humbly or arrogantly submit. Yes, it does, in many interesting and diverse ways, too many, you'll be pleased to hear, to address in one post. 

So here's one way I've found that mindful meditation helps: if you spend part of your day living as far as possible in the present moment, you are not anticipating, planning, dreading, worrying. And when you have to return, after your meditation (or quiet time, or whatever you want to call it), you may find that you retain more calm and more acceptance as you go about your daily life. Your calm will be disrupted, of course. But you know (sweet secret!) that you can go back to that place whenever you choose. It's a place where death has less of a hold on you. It's the timeless present.

"Quick, now, here, now, always....."

Meditating monkeys, internal thoughts, consciousness and fearing death.

Above gem of a pic from a fascinating BBC website story about research involving brain-scanning monkeys.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/wondermonkey/2011/06/do-monkeys-wonder-1.shtml

Seems to me that a fuller understanding of human consciousness is helpful in getting us to look more four-square at our own mortality. So enough already with the obvious jokes such as "Never mind brass monkeys mate, I can't even find it now." These, the most northerly human-related primates, are Japanese macaques. They go for a cold meditate when it's very hot, and they look for hot springs when it's cold. They wash their food in sea-water which cleans it and may even make it taste better.

But, wonderful though these kinship points are, something else and possibly quite profound has emerged. Researchers have found, via electronic brain scanning (calm down, it's harmless and it doesn't hurt), that these chaps have what the neuroscientists call a "default mode" of brain activity. Wow.

This default mode is the bit we slide into when we're thinking about ourselves and our state of mind or bodily well-being. It is our conscious awareness of self. For example, when we're sometimes just letting our thoughts drift along thus: "I must get a new tyre, maybe I'll go to the place where there's that tasty mechanic, who looks like the bloke who..anyway, that I'll do tomorrow, ouch that ankle is still playing up, bugger it's raining and the washing's out..." etc. (The Munday mind is a murky place at best, you've gathered by now.) Or looking back with happiness or regret, or foward planning.

The other bit, when we're focusing on hurrying to get the washing in, concentrating on not dropping too many pegs, even counting them, not drifting off into daydreams about tight jeans, not noticing that the ankle hurts, not verbalising or imageing apart from the task in hand - that's the focused bit, and it shows up as a different area of activity in the brain. Our self-awareness is, as I understand and feel it, at a low state of arousal when we are lost in a task. We talk of "losing ourselves." Recently bereaved people often like to keep busy, because it dulls for a while their painful self-awareness.

You'd expect these smart monkeys to be good in that focused area, as they hunt for their sushi and wash it in seawater. But "deafault mode?" Wow again. The scientists are wondering if monkeys can wonder too, maybe look back, maybe contemplate alternative future actions not just immediate reflexes, etcetcetcetc.

Let's not be sentimental. They can't talk (i.e. their sound communications are not a fully-featured symbolic system) - no, lady, your little bow-wow can't talk to you, however sweetly he responds. But he may be more self-aware than we'd realised. The macaques may behave in a distinctly ungentlepersonly fashion sometimes. But then so do we.

Human consciousness, awareness of self, is the bit that says to us "you're going to die one day," so we have to live with the dread of death before it arrives, and somehow come to terms with it. Sometimes it makes us behave better towards each other - in the words of the nearly immortal Randy Newman, "no more arse-grabbing, back-stabbing" or it's pitchforks and trombones, not harps and angels, for you - sometimes it drives us a bit crazy - see "Staring at the Sun" by Irvin Yalom, no apologies for another plug.

And these macaques? Wish I knew. Because if consciousness is a continuum, if it has evolved gradually through a progressively complex area of organisms and to some degree is spread around the natural world more than we thought, then (and I'm not sure why) I feel comforted. Not because any other creature might have to face some awareness of its future demise, but because - just because.

Our consciousness moves through the world, the world moves through our consciousness. We make our world out of our thoughts and senses, the world makes us think and feel like we do. And we are not entirely alone in this. It's all one. Tat tvam asi. What's to fear?

My brain hurts. I may run off to an ashram.

No monkeys were hurt in the making of this blogpost.