Phillip Adams again, recently.
August 23, 2008
Then Man made God
Imagine, for a moment, humanity's 6,000,000,000 brains becoming one collective consciousness.
Imagine that googol (please look up the original meaning of that marvellous word, misspelt by the internet company) of intelligence applying itself to a simultaneous consideration of the universe we occupy. Imagine, on the one hand, this magisterial consciousness contemplating the infinite regressions to the very small and, on the other, the infinite successions to the very large, from the sub-atomic galaxies within a speck of dust to the atom-like circling of the suns and planets. Imagine our melded mega-brain embracing the totality – from the counter-intuitive paradoxes of quantum mechanics to the monstrous immensity of space.
Even then the universe would be beyond our shared comprehension. Our mega-brain, our hyper-awareness, would still fall short of understanding. True, we’re a lot closer to comprehension than we were when the great religious texts were written in the Middle Eastern deserts in past millennia. Now we know that there are more stars out there than grains of sand in the Sahara. And our collective consciousness would reject the notion of shrugging off the awesome mystery and calling it God. That’s always been the easy way out – the answer that’s no answer but just another question.
The 6,000,000,000 brains-in-one-brain might defiantly insist that TOE, that comical acronym for the grand unifying Theory of Everything, is within humanity’s grasp – that at any moment someone will write a new formula on a blackboard at Princeton or Cambridge that will be as simple and even more profound than e=mc². At that moment TOE will banish and vanish GOD. He, She or It would become surplus to requirements.
I think, however, we’ll be stubbing our TOE on the mighty mysteries for a few more millennia. Yes, God will continue to recede as knowledge advances, becoming an ever smaller and more beleaguered notion. Yet human hubris, for all our chutzpah, may never quite get there. Perhaps the best thing about our universe (or universes, if there are, in fact, an infinite variety of them as some attest) is that it will remain tantalisingly beyond our comprehension. Even if our comprehension were aided, abetted and accelerated by the cognitive powers of our computers – the Artificial Intelligence we’re trying to invent.
(Consider for one of those computer nanoseconds the great risks of the AI race. When combined with robotics, we’ll have created a monster worthy of multifarious Frankensteins – a master race that might feel compelled to thank us with genocide. Perhaps keeping a few of us as pets, or in a zoo.)
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the catch-22 of the cosmos. It means that at some point in the future, after eons of pondering the mystery of it all, the mystery will cease. In total darkness, stillness and universal death. From the tiniest to the mightiest, everything will have run down, cooled down, dimmed down … the End.
Optimists, particularly to be found among the theologians of AI, propose that the spread of intelligence throughout the cosmos may triumph over the Second Law – that our collective wisdom, multiplied by our technologies, will stop the Law’s merciless clock and rewind it. Their argument goes like this: that while God didn’t exist and doesn’t exist, we’re bringing him into existence. They predict a vast effulgence of thought spreading from our planet throughout the galaxies, the ultimate techno-fix. While Douglas Adams laughed about things like this, I’ve encountered many who take it (and themselves) very seriously.
Let there be light! Verily the geeks say unto us – the light of our intellects will flood the darkness of space! The suns and planets and galaxies, and anyone or anything that dwells therein, will be part of it. A collective consciousness far larger than the one proposed in my first paragraph is being formed. It is being googled into existence.
We have, of course, been inventing gods for thousands of years. We needed them to solve the puzzle, to soothe the fears. Tribespeople moulded their gods from mud, carved them from wood or painted them in caves. Soon civilisation would cast them in bronze or make them glow with gold. The museums are full of them – the gods that died. Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Norse, all long past their use-by dates and toppled from their pedestals. Found in dunes and jungles, retrieved from tombs or hauled encrusted with shellfish from the Mediterranean. Once worshipped by vast populations, they are now reduced to tourist attractions. Dim memories in marble.
This new-model god is just the latest.
Genesis has God making Adam from the dust. In truth, it was the other way round. Early man made God from the mud. In his own likeness. While the material of choice is now silicon, the vanity remains the same.
August 23, 2008
Then Man made God
Imagine, for a moment, humanity's 6,000,000,000 brains becoming one collective consciousness.
Imagine that googol (please look up the original meaning of that marvellous word, misspelt by the internet company) of intelligence applying itself to a simultaneous consideration of the universe we occupy. Imagine, on the one hand, this magisterial consciousness contemplating the infinite regressions to the very small and, on the other, the infinite successions to the very large, from the sub-atomic galaxies within a speck of dust to the atom-like circling of the suns and planets. Imagine our melded mega-brain embracing the totality – from the counter-intuitive paradoxes of quantum mechanics to the monstrous immensity of space.
Even then the universe would be beyond our shared comprehension. Our mega-brain, our hyper-awareness, would still fall short of understanding. True, we’re a lot closer to comprehension than we were when the great religious texts were written in the Middle Eastern deserts in past millennia. Now we know that there are more stars out there than grains of sand in the Sahara. And our collective consciousness would reject the notion of shrugging off the awesome mystery and calling it God. That’s always been the easy way out – the answer that’s no answer but just another question.
The 6,000,000,000 brains-in-one-brain might defiantly insist that TOE, that comical acronym for the grand unifying Theory of Everything, is within humanity’s grasp – that at any moment someone will write a new formula on a blackboard at Princeton or Cambridge that will be as simple and even more profound than e=mc². At that moment TOE will banish and vanish GOD. He, She or It would become surplus to requirements.
I think, however, we’ll be stubbing our TOE on the mighty mysteries for a few more millennia. Yes, God will continue to recede as knowledge advances, becoming an ever smaller and more beleaguered notion. Yet human hubris, for all our chutzpah, may never quite get there. Perhaps the best thing about our universe (or universes, if there are, in fact, an infinite variety of them as some attest) is that it will remain tantalisingly beyond our comprehension. Even if our comprehension were aided, abetted and accelerated by the cognitive powers of our computers – the Artificial Intelligence we’re trying to invent.
(Consider for one of those computer nanoseconds the great risks of the AI race. When combined with robotics, we’ll have created a monster worthy of multifarious Frankensteins – a master race that might feel compelled to thank us with genocide. Perhaps keeping a few of us as pets, or in a zoo.)
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is the catch-22 of the cosmos. It means that at some point in the future, after eons of pondering the mystery of it all, the mystery will cease. In total darkness, stillness and universal death. From the tiniest to the mightiest, everything will have run down, cooled down, dimmed down … the End.
Optimists, particularly to be found among the theologians of AI, propose that the spread of intelligence throughout the cosmos may triumph over the Second Law – that our collective wisdom, multiplied by our technologies, will stop the Law’s merciless clock and rewind it. Their argument goes like this: that while God didn’t exist and doesn’t exist, we’re bringing him into existence. They predict a vast effulgence of thought spreading from our planet throughout the galaxies, the ultimate techno-fix. While Douglas Adams laughed about things like this, I’ve encountered many who take it (and themselves) very seriously.
Let there be light! Verily the geeks say unto us – the light of our intellects will flood the darkness of space! The suns and planets and galaxies, and anyone or anything that dwells therein, will be part of it. A collective consciousness far larger than the one proposed in my first paragraph is being formed. It is being googled into existence.
We have, of course, been inventing gods for thousands of years. We needed them to solve the puzzle, to soothe the fears. Tribespeople moulded their gods from mud, carved them from wood or painted them in caves. Soon civilisation would cast them in bronze or make them glow with gold. The museums are full of them – the gods that died. Egyptian, Assyrian, Roman, Greek, Aztec, Mayan, Norse, all long past their use-by dates and toppled from their pedestals. Found in dunes and jungles, retrieved from tombs or hauled encrusted with shellfish from the Mediterranean. Once worshipped by vast populations, they are now reduced to tourist attractions. Dim memories in marble.
This new-model god is just the latest.
Genesis has God making Adam from the dust. In truth, it was the other way round. Early man made God from the mud. In his own likeness. While the material of choice is now silicon, the vanity remains the same.
