Galactic Dream Machine

Why should I fear death? While I am death is not. While death is I am not. Why should I fear that which is never around while I am?

The universe is thirteen point seven billion years old we are told and will end with space erupting between every thing so that nothing which we are now made of will remain intact. The universe has a beginning and will have an end. There is a limited amount of time which any civilization would have to use.

However the universe is vast and only just beginning. We find ourselves at the cusp of a curve which we do not fully recognize the full height of. We are at a very interesting point in universal history and we are only very small at this apparent time. To give you a hint of what may come let me give you these very large numbers to try to comprehend.

The human brain is what stores our memories it seems. Our best thoughts about it is that it is a computer. We have come a long way in understanding what makes up the brain and have made inroads into quantitatively comparing it to our own computers. While the software is different then anything we so far have written. The number of calculations which we think goes on in a human brain is staggering. We've reach an estimate for the amount of computational power from two separate means and as we hoped, we find agreement. The human brain performs about ten to the fifteenth to ten to the seventeenth power operations per second. That's within a few magnitudes for what our fastest supercomputers today can perform. Let me remind you again. That's a ten with about fifteen zeros after it. We are talking about an immense number.

None the less it is still small in the grand scheme of things. Today, physicists believe that the largest number of operations that can happen in two kilograms of matter is ten to the fifty second power operations per second, fifty two zeros. That would be enough to equal all six point seven billion humans living today living out ten thousand year lives every few billionths of a second. This staggering difference should show us just how small we are compared to where we will achieve in the future should the humanity overcome it's destructive tendencies to itself and get on with what it's already doing: improving technology. Given how things have changed in our own short life spans compared to our ancestors lives I hope you pause now to comprehend how much grander life could be.

It appears to us that we live on a system which is very conducive to our living our lives. While it can always be said that the universe favors us while we are alive, that we now have some basis for saying what we are I'd like to dream for you how I think things will play out and probably are already playing out in the universe at large.

Our planet is said to be four point five billion years old. This is some eight and a half billion years younger than the universe itself. The universe as far as we can see seems to be about the same everywhere when adjusted for the time differences created by the speed of light. Before our earth crusted over to form the rocks which we find on it's surface today, which we can date using sophisticated techniques, it was molten and being pummeled by objects from space. Our local solar system was reducing itself to a lower energy state. Things fall and release their potential energy into larger bodies which our or planets, moons, and sun. Computer simulations can give us confidence that this is just natures way. Added to that, and more convincing yet, are the extra solar planets which we have detected. The universe seems to follow patterns and enjoys repeating itself.

With a calm place to live the chemicals which make up, life had a chance to form. We have already detected that space is filled with the chemical constituents of life. While the study of abiogenesis is still young it seems that there is much for it to work with to give us a theory of how the building blocks of life could form molecular structures that can replicate themselves given a conducive environment which by the process of evolution produced us. It's easy to jump to the conclusion that life was not only destined to take hold of our planet, but also other planets as well which from our servery of the universe is probably vast in number.

But where are they? Why haven't they shown themselves to us or even given hints of their existence? Why questions are notoriously difficult to answer but let me give you my theory as to why we find ourselves so alone in a place that for our practical purposes is infinite. They are not telling us about themselves, they are listening to us.

Electromagnetic waves occur every time something magnetic moves. They travel at the speed of light and always have some presents, whether as a photon or as an excited state of an electron or other particle. They keep going, in other words. The information which they contain is conserved. Theoretically the information which produced an electromagnetic wave is available to any person with a physical form of it. Our brains produce electromagnetic waves as to our electronic devices. With the above estimates for computational power available in the universe it seems possible that when enough light years as needed to get there to occur, an alien civilization could read our very thoughts as if from a record of the past. Given our computational nature it seems like it should be possible to build a galactic dream machine where our thoughts could continue beyond the constraints of our own planet.

The fantastic nature of such a proposal warrens further explanation. Why would they want to do these things? But what else is there to do? Have you ever wondered what it would be like to be a different person? In our dreams we construct within our minds whole worlds which we interact with including persons. When you look at our selves as the result of computations it's easy to guess from even an outside perspective that this is what is being done. Recreationally we create simulated worlds where we can act our our fantasies on today's feeble computers. It's a need of intelligent beings it would seem to dream. Without dreams the mind goes mad. It has been shown that only a few days without dreaming can cause permanent psychological damage. With tens or hundreds of orders of magnitude of computational power available to an advanced civilization, the need to entertain themselves would be great. Any new information would be welcome it would seem. It might seem anticlimactic for intelligence to find it's end in a dream world. I would like to point out the number of geniuses in history who have killed themselves as the result of mental illness possibly preventable by a bit of sleep. Just like children, we get cranky. Some of us become cranks. Any civilization with that amount of computational power would probably have to fulfill the same requirements if it were to last the billions of years the universe is making available to it.

There are those of you who might point out humanities difficulties with getting along with itself and it's power of destruction as an alternative reason. Evolution would select out these civilizations of course, and this may be the reason we find no intelligent life on other planets. But I would point out the understanding of conflict we have come to understand in economics. Borrowed from religion, some might say, is the golden rule acting in the equations of commerce. It does not surprise me much that the golden rule was first formulated it seems among a people living in a trade route. The golden rule comes out of a realm of mathematics called game theory. It is the best known way, called tit-for-tat, to play a game called the repeated prisoners dilemma written into poetry. Perhaps a better translation of the actual algorithm would be “do unto others as you would have them do unto you, but don't be a sucker”. With the advent of nuclear bombs I offer this translation for your enjoyment: bomb onto others as you would have them bomb onto you. The reason we never had world war three it seems is that no side could profit from it. There has never been a direct war between two nuclear armed nations. It's simple enough even for the military mind of a general to understand.

It seems that our world is destined for peace. We have plenty of nuclear ore in the ground and are well underway to civilizing the poorest countries due to the cheap labor they can provide. An economic equilibrium around the entire planet is being reached. With abundant wealth and the tendency for educated women to have fewer children it seems the entire world will reach an equilibrium of persons and wealth given time that will allow us the full use of those nuclear materials by the reduced tendency for terrorism that would result. Even at our current rate of consumption with increases added in we have millions of years of fuel already known about. This should give us plenty of time to construct a system of satellites around our sun to provide vast power for the suns expected five billion year lifespan. We have the opportunity to live in an amazing world and we seem to have the natural tendency to do it. It would seem also likely that other civilizations would follow a similar pathway.

But should we expect galactic conquests as civilizations collide? I think not. From our understanding of intelligence and our knowledge that the universe is going to end, it would seem a far better strategy to merge minds if space was an issue. Just as a Mac and a PC can communicate over the internet, when we get away from our animal brains made of so much jelly, we will find a meeting of the minds possible and probably entertaining. This seems a natural course. Our human bodies seem to be programmed not to live much beyond our reproductive years, yet the desire to live remains in the individual. Our understanding of biology is likely to reach a point on a long enough time line where we will leave our frail bodies behind and move into a simulated world to live out the rest of our consciousness. Once in a virtual world we would be free from death. Only hazards of mind would remain. We might merge with the wrong person and need to restore ourselves from a backup. But it might also be the natural inclination of the psyche to produce one or a few consciousnesses and always a welcome thing. We like to talk and gossip. It might seem a fitting end for the multitudes to reform themselves into a few who can keep track of each other and provide comfort and company too. Or it might be that we need a multitude of consciousnesses and that we never fully leave the animal forms in our simulated world, finding the greatest comfort in them. What has kept civilizations civil to each other is trade. The commodity I propose is simply information. Perhaps the only reason to go into space and to other starts is to bring copy of our library of consciousnesses and works of creativity. The logic of peace is so easy to understand it would seem only the civilizations that destroy themselves would not join in on the game. Information is a fundamental quantity in physics. It might trade well.

This opens up new and great possibilities. Civilizations that could have been recording our mental history might have a copy of some of the thoughts of our ancestors. Some of them might come after having been reanimated in the alien world. Some of them might be packaged as amusement rides where you could live the life of another person, say Jesus Christ.

I mention him because the world I describe is a bit like his version of heaven. Perhaps should we be lucky enough to live long enough, we'll live in a reasonable enough simulation of heaven as to scarcely be any different. And as the universe winds to it's end, perhaps we'll all celebrate as we merge into a single consciousness to create for that final moment, God.