

Copyright © 2017 Robert W. Fuller  
All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval without permission in writing from the author.

Cover Credit: Jenny Bloomfield, 1986  
Book Design: Hynek Palatin

Robert W. Fuller's web site: www.robertworksfuller.com  
Dignity Movement: www.breakingranks.net  
Huffington Post: www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller  
Email: robertwfuller@gmail.com
_To my children:  
Karen, Benjamin, Noah, and Adam

and my grandchildren:  
Az, Arden, Thomas, and Charlie

and young people everywhere who may have to learn to get along with beings whose intelligence surpasses their own._
_Man is not Man as yet,  
Nor shall I deem his object served, his end  
Attained, his genuine strength put fairly forth,  
While only here and there a star dispels  
The darkness, here and there a towering mind  
O'erlooks its prostrate fellows: when the host  
Is out at once to the despair of night,  
When all mankind alike is perfected,  
Equal in full-blown powers – then, not till then,  
I say, begins man's general infancy._

– Robert Browning, _Paracelsus_ (Part V) (1835)
Contents

The Theory of Everybody: Getting Along with AI (Introduction)

Jennifer and God on Mount Palomar (Dialogical Stage Play)

Genomes, Menomes, Wenomes: Neuroscience and Human Dignity (Article)

When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens

Part 1: An Interview with Robo Sapiens 2.11

Part 2: The Emancipation of Robo Sapiens: Recapitulation

The Epic of Gilbert Mesh

Part I: Story Board

Part 2: Blank Verse (by Noah Brand)

A New Default Self: Meet Your Superself (Article)

6 Reasons You Can't Win (and 3 Reasons You Can Anyway) (Listicle)

Interstellar Wormhole Tweets (Fictionalized-Memoir)

The Moral Arc of History (Essay)

A New Age of Enlightenment (Rosy Scenario)

Appendix: On the Origin of Order in Behavior (A Model of Brain Function)

About the Author

# The Theory of Everybody

As a graduate student in physics, I was part of a community committed to understanding how the world works. We sought to identify causes and effects, to explain everything from Nature's tiniest building blocks to the Universe itself. We immodestly called our Holy Grail the _Theory of Everything_.

I thought I shared this goal but something held me back. I could not completely commit myself to this project. Not because the goal was too grand, but because it was too narrow. To explain, I have to say something about my upbringing.

My mother saw things as right or wrong; my father, as true or false. She judged; he questioned. My mother's passionate convictions caused arguments, but she got things done; my father's detached investigations promised to resolve disagreements, but rarely did.

As an unconscious carrier of both modi operandi, I toggled between them—from the moral righteousness of "How could you possibly?!" to the sober inquisitiveness of "What happened?" If I were not to take sides, I either had to reconcile their divergent ways or watch from the sidelines.

In my teens—the 1950s—I tried to emulate my father by becoming a scientist. But as a young adult, I took sides, becoming active in the movements for racial justice and gender equality.

Of course, most scientists, like most people, reconcile their partisan political beliefs with scientific objectivity by declaring morality and politics to be matters of the heart and science the business of the head. Perhaps because I identified with both parents, I kept trying to unify my heart and my head. To my surprise, the unification I sought led me back to physics, not for its predictions, but for the elegance of its explanations.

What had drawn me to theoretical physics in the first place were not its practical applications, but its beautiful, comprehensive theories. I was less interested in the details of how the world works, than in Nature's intelligibility and its apparent conformity with simple, discoverable mathematical laws.

Animals register correlations between events, but humans go further. We imagine that things do not simply happen, but that they are _caused_. We may sneer at the causes our ancestors came up with (for example, Zeus, the God of Thunder, expressing his displeasure with humankind by hurling bolts of lightning at us), but a correctible cause, albeit it false, is better than no cause at all because, eventually, we identify a cause that correlates well enough with an effect to give us a measure of control.

What we can't reduce to cause and effect, we attribute to divine intervention. As our explanations take in more of the material world, we have less use for god. The theory of everything that physics seeks would limit god's jurisdiction to matters of morality. A theory of everybody would make him a figurehead.

There is no Theory of Everything yet, and, if every answer raises new questions, there may never be. Regardless, our penchant for explanation is stronger than ever and we're now focusing our model-building skills not just on the world around us but on our own bodies and minds.

We have discovered the genome and figured out how it builds proteins and bodies. The heart, once "the seat of the soul," has been revealed as a machine that can be repaired and even replaced. As our explanations take in more and more of Nature, the idea takes hold that we might even explain what we've been judiciously leaving out—our very own selves.

We've resisted the idea that our minds are machine-like: regarding our behavior as governed by cause and effect feels like an insult to our dignity. We prefer to believe that we do things because we choose to. Our system of jurisprudence presumes free will, individual agency, and personal accountability.

If human behavior, like the physical world, is caused, then how can we hold individuals responsible for their actions? If what we do is not a free expression of our personal will, but is determined by our interaction with other beings and the physical world, how can we pride ourselves on our achievements? Any theory of selfhood will have to answer these questions.

I know it sounds pretentious, and I didn't dare say it out loud, but the reason I didn't devote myself one hundred percent to the quest for a theory of everything, was that I was holding out for a theory of everybody. That is, a theory of human affairs that, today, seem as unruly as the physical world seemed to our ancestors.

If human behaviors were explainable, then there would not be two distinct realms—physical law and moral law—but a unification of causality and morality. My parents would be reconciled, and I'd no longer be divided against myself.

You could think of such a grand synthesis as one that more advanced beings, observing us from somewhere in the Cosmos, would use to explain humankind's salient characteristics: we love and hate, we make war and peace, we take each other for somebodies and nobodies.

Understanding Nature has enabled us to harness her energy and shield ourselves from her ravages. Could a better understanding of ourselves enable us to get along with thinking machines who may soon be smarter than we are?

§§§

I've tried to make each of the pieces in _The Theory of Everybody_ self-contained, so expect to find some overlap. Their common purpose, pursued in a variety of genres, is to mitigate what could be the most disruptive event in human history—the advent of robots that do everything we do as well or better.

**_Jennifer and God on Mount Palomar_** is a conversation between a young astrophysicist and God, who has concluded that his continued presence is prolonging humankind's adolescence, and so has decided to retire. God becomes fond of Jennifer and tries to help her come to terms with the threat to human pride posed by artificial intelligence.

**_Genomes, Menomes, Wenomes: Neuroscience and Human Dignity_** traces the encroachment of mechanistic models of the body and the mind, and embraces the old but heretofore repugnant idea that Man is a machine. Surprisingly, this view of humanity does not diminish human beings. On the contrary, it elevates machines to the point that we are proud to be numbered among them. To find our proper place alongside sentient machines, we shall need a more inclusive notion of self. Meet the _superself_.

**_When Robots Reign: Getting Along with Robo Sapiens_** is a journalist's interview of one of humanity's new overlords, Robo Sapiens, who, it turns out, is more agreeable than we might think. There follows an equivalent bare-bones scenario for the emancipa­tion of Robo Sapiens.

**_The Epic of Gilbert Mesh_** is a contemporary retelling, in the form of a story board, of humankind's first great work of literature, _Gilgamesh_ , composed circa 2500 BCE in Babylonia. The story is then rendered in Iambic Pentameter (Blank Verse) by Noah Brand.

**_A New Default Self_** tracks the evolution of selfhood through three stages: singular self, plural self, and superself.

**_6 Reasons You Can't Win_ ( _and 3 Reasons You Can Anyway_ )** is a "listicle" that enumerates the limitations of our current concept of self and shows how reconceiving selfhood can change the game so that everyone wins.

**_Interstellar Wormhole Tweets_ ( _How to Dodge Extinction_ )** is a short story—part memoir, part science fiction—that imagines how more advanced beings might take us under their wing, mentor us, and help us navigate the treacherous transition from a predatory to a dignitarian civilization.

**_The Moral Arc of History_** explains why Martin Luther King, Jr. was right when he said, "The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice." Two "proofs" of King's assertion are offered: one historical and inductive; the other, game-theoretic and deductive. King's famous saying is tantamount to a refutation of "might makes right." This article shows why, in the long run, it's the other way round.

**_A New Age of Enlightenment_** proposes a sequel to the 18th century philosophical movement that gave us the Age of Enlightenment. Then, the agenda was science and reason, indi­vidual liberty, and religious tolerance. Now, it's dignity for all sen­tient beings, including those whom we are designing to outdo us.

The Appendix— ** _On the Origin of Order in Behavior_** by Peter Putnam and me—is a reprint of our 1966 exposition of Putnam's functional model of the nervous system, which, by depicting the brain as working on Darwinian principles, undergirds the unifica­tion of morality and causality.

# Jennifer and God on Mount Palomar

TIME: Near future

CHARACTERS:

JENNIFER: is a 26-year-old graduate student, and later, a post-doc in astrophysics, at the Mount Palomar Observatory.

GOD: is the biblical god, but he's going through changes.

ATTENDEES at God's press conference at the Holiday Inn:

_Eugene White_ , a PhD student in political science at a nearby university  
_Catherine Rowe_ , an adjunct professor of religion at a local community college  
_Molly_ , cleaning lady at the Holiday Inn  
_Marty_ , the audiovisual technician at God's press conference  
_Claire_ , a junior in the local high school  
_Anne_ , classmate of Claire and Joel  
_Joel_ , classmate of Claire and Anne  
_Mildred_ _and_ _Clarence Dobbs_ , retired couple
**ACT I: Jennifer and God on Mount Palomar**

The curtain rises to reveal a large telescope, the centerpiece of a domed astronomical observatory. The vertical plane of the curtain bisects the dome, so the audience has the illusion of being inside the observatory. Stars shine over the dome and on the theater's ceiling above the audience.

The telescope is aimed up and out over stage right. An alcove filled with scientific instrumentation and computers is visible at stage left. Behind the bank of computers is a vending machine, beyond which is an exit to the outside world.

On stage right a door leads away from the dome to the outside world. Toward the top of the dome is a crow's-nest, accessible by a spiral staircase, that allows a person to climb up near the telescope.

Jennifer is seen in the alcove peering at the computer screens. Then she goes to the spiral staircase and climbs to the crow's-nest. As she gazes at the celestial sphere, her line of sight parallels that of the telescope. Shivering, she draws a blanket over her head, taking on the appearance of Madonna, or equally, of a Muslim woman wearing a headscarf.

**Scene 1: The Observatory**

JENNIFER: _(Though apparently alone on stage, her tone of voice is conversational, as if she were talking to someone, or possibly, to herself.):_ I hope the rains hold off for a few weeks. Clear skies, if you please.

GOD: _(a disembodied voice, a bit stern)_ I don't concern myself with the weather. I thought you knew that. Besides, most people are praying for rain.

JENNIFER: _(off-handedly)_ That wasn't a prayer, just a personal pre­ference. My supervisor is pressuring me to get data for his research paper. Cloudy skies mean no data, no paper, nothing to pad his résumé.

GOD: _(His voice softening)_ You do the work, he gets the credit?

JENNIFER: That's the deal. His word is God's.

GOD: _(taking umbrage, God enters through the door on stage right)_ I beg your pardon.

_In full beard and tunic; a commanding personality. It will gradually be revealed that God's demeanor is bravado, an attempt to conceal diminished powers._

No one speaks for me.

JENNIFER: It's just a figure of speech.

GOD: You don't have to put up with a boss like that.

JENNIFER: It's worth it to hang out up here with the stars. I've been hooked since I was seven.

GOD: _(nods approvingly which encourages her to elaborate)_

JENNIFER: My dad gave me a telescope for my birthday, and we set it up on the roof of our garage. I learned the names of the constellations and fell in love with Saturn's rings and Jupiter's moons.

GOD: _(appreciatively)_ Well, as a student of the heavens, you're in the company of Ptolemy, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Hubble—a grand lineage.

JENNIFER: Maybe so, but I feel like a mouse in a cathedral.

GOD: Don't mix up 'mouse' and 'mousy.'

JENNIFER: I can't stand up to my supervisor without risking the only thing I've ever wanted.

GOD: Which is what, exactly?

JENNIFER: To find out if the Universe cares.

GOD: I can see why you might think it doesn't: just one fiery galaxy after another, floating in cold, empty space.

JENNIFER: That's it. I want to know if it has a heart? Do you know?

GOD: Yes, I know.

JENNIFER: Will you tell me?

GOD: Maybe some day...when I think you're ready. Meanwhile, you should practice speaking truth to power. You can practice on me, if you like.

JENNIFER: _(tentatively)_ I do have a bone to pick with you.

GOD: I won't bite.

JENNIFER: _(accusingly)_ You left Henrietta Leavitt off your list of cosmic explorers. Without her yardstick, Hubble wouldn't have found the rest of the universe. You're just like my supervisor: men get the glory; women do the work.

GOD: _(apologetic)_ Old habits die hard, but I learn from my mistakes. You're right: Henrietta belongs in the Astronomy Hall of Fame with Hubble and the others.

_Beat, during which God recovers his aplomb and reverts to braggadocio._

Before her, no one had any idea of the scale of my magnum opus.

_Beat._

A nice week's work, if I do say so myself.

JENNIFER: Nice, but...

_Beat._

...sometimes kind of spooky.

GOD: Huh? It's just one galaxy after another, all the way out. I'm not one for reinventing the wheel. What's so spooky?

JENNIFER: Looking into space, I sometimes wonder if anyone is looking back. See someone seeing you and you exist. Look long enough into an infinite void and you begin to wonder, "Who am I? Does anyone care?"

GOD: I care.

JENNIFER: Don't take this personally, but the love of God is not enough.

GOD: I never intended it to be. Every creature on Noah's Ark had a partner.

JENNIFER: _(She busies herself for a moment with the telescope.)_ I don't suppose you'd be willing to say something to my supervisor...

GOD: He wouldn't listen to me. _(self-pitying)_ Alas, no one does these days.

JENNIFER: _(ignoring his complaint)_ I feel powerless.

GOD: That's because you _are_ powerless. Your salvation lies in numbers. The powerful back down only when confronted with greater power.

JENNIFER: If I challenged my supervisor, he'd replace me, overnight.

GOD: That's my point. On your own, you'll fail. You need allies. Even then, you're likely to fail—at first.

JENNIFER: I can't even make a friend, let alone organize a group. In school, I was too nerdy for the girls and too girly for the nerds. Besides, nobodies don't make revolutions.

GOD: On the contrary, they're the only ones who ever do. But by acting together, not alone. Acting alone is a recipe for martyrdom.

_Dawn is breaking, the sky slowly brightens, extinguishing the stars. Jennifer gathers her things into a backpack and prepares to leave._

JENNIFER: I'll be here tomorrow night. Will you be around?

GOD: 'Just call my name and I'll be there.'

_Beat._

Goodnight, or should I say good morning?

_God half-sings the title of the Beatles' tune Here Comes the Sun._

'Here comes the sun.'

_Jennifer walks to the bank of computers and then exits sleepily._

GOD: _(calling after her)_ Godspeed.

**CURTAIN**

**Scene 2: The Observatory**

_Jennifer enters and puts her backpack down. She pulls out some large glossy photos and leafs through them, then resumes her conversation with God, who, initially, is off stage._

JENNIFER: The photos I took last night...they show something unusual in Orion.

GOD: Orion? That's my favorite constellation—as seen from the Earth, I mean. None of your constellations look the same from anywhere else.

JENNIFER: _(miffed by his condescension)_ I know that! _(curious)_ Where are you looking from, anyway?

GOD: Everywhere, of course. I'm omnipresent.

_Beat._

_While Jennifer fiddles with the telescope, God, in Old Testament garb, ambles onto the stage._

You're late. I was afraid I'd been too preachy last night.

JENNIFER: I know you mean well, but I want to understand the universe, not save the world.

GOD: The two are not unrelated. Most human suffering can be traced to mistaken beliefs.

JENNIFER: Tonight, I just want to understand that blur in Orion. Can you tell me what it is?

GOD: You'd better ask one of your professors.

JENNIFER: I don't want to mention this to anyone just yet. Could it be a comet? They're named after their discoverers, you know.

GOD: _(a note of disapproval in His voice)_ Human vanity never ceases to amaze me. That comet is _my_ comet. They all are. I trust you're not expecting it to make _you_ famous.

JENNIFER: Ah ha! So, it _is_ a comet! If my supervisor gets wind of it, he'll take the credit for its discovery. I just want to know where it's headed. Do you know?

GOD: If I told you, what use would you have for all this technology?

_With a sweeping gesture, God indicates the telescope and the computers._

JENNIFER: No problem. Newton's laws plus my data will predict the orbit.

GOD: They were my laws before they were Newton's, you know.

JENNIFER: Fine, we'll use _your_ laws to figure out where _your_ comet is going. Same result either way.

_A bit put out, she exits via the alcove on stage left; God exits stage right._

_A brief musical interlude—Haydn's Matin—and changes in the lighting to indicate passing of the daylight hours. As dusk comes over Mount Palomar, Jennifer returns, striding briskly and with purpose, in contrast to her dreamy walk of the previous evening. She carries a tablet and climbs the spiral stairs toward the roof of the dome through which the telescope looks out on the heavens. Reaching the crow's-nest at the top, visibly agitated, she seems about to speak when suddenly she changes her mind, retreats down the staircase to the floor of the observatory, and begins pacing back and forth._

JENNIFER: _(passionately, urgently)_ What you call a comet is actually an asteroid—a hardball, not a softball—and it's got our name on it.

_A brightening spotlight reveals that God is seated before a desk with his feet on it in a power pose._

GOD: _(paternalistically)_ Calm down.

JENNIFER: _(annoyed by his paternalism)_ I won't calm down. Even a small asteroid would wreak havoc, and this one's a whopper. Can't you do something?

GOD: For some time now, I've taken a back seat when it comes to human affairs. Quite frankly, I have begun to wonder if humankind is worth saving.

JENNIFER: _(In disbelief)_ What?

_When God does not respond she pleads._

We're your creations, aren't we? The plants and the animals... everything and everybody?

GOD: I had a hand in the dinosaurs, too, but I let them go. They kept getting bigger, but no smarter. I hate to admit it this late in the game, but it looks like humans are on the road to self-destruction.

_Jennifer has been pacing back and forth like a prosecuting attorney before a judge in a courtroom. Suddenly she stops and faces God._

JENNIFER: _(shocked)_ What are you saying?

GOD: It's simple, really. The only thing as important as how you treat the Earth is how you treat each other. You've failed on both counts.

_Beat as this sinks in, then_

It's now apparent that human brainpower was sufficient to make you top dogs, but not up to the task of stewardship. You're turning the Earth into a wasteland.

JENNIFER: Are you saying you killed off the dinosaurs and you're going to do the same to us? Is this asteroid your idea?

GOD: No self-respecting god would put up with such mismanagement.

JENNIFER: But surely a blockbuster asteroid is overkill!

GOD: _(exasperated)_ Do you think I feel good about another flop? It will seem like I didn't know what I was doing when I granted you dominion.

JENNIFER: _(haltingly, with growing doubts)_ Well, do you know what you're doing? Surely you have a plan...

_Beat._

or, don't you?

GOD: _(sheepishly)_ A grand design, yes, but not a blueprint.

JENNIFER: _(shocked)_ What! You're telling me you haven't thought things through!

GOD: _(working himself up)_ The truth is I work the same way you do—by trial and error. The dinosaurs were one mistake; I had high hopes for human beings, but they're turning out to be another. Everywhere, I see torture, murder, rape, war, and poverty amidst plenty. On top of all that, you're trashing your planet.

_Pausing to regain his composure; resuming in upbeat tone._

I've got some ideas about your successors. Would you like to hear them?

JENNIFER: _(indignant)_ Most certainly not! Why don't you just tell us what you want from us?

GOD: It has always puzzled me that you worship me but ignore my teachings. I guess I'd like a little respect.

JENNIFER: You're not going to get it by incinerating us. The asteroid will strike the Earth in just under three years. We don't know exactly where it will land, but it's so big it doesn't matter.

GOD: Don't blame me. _(haughty)_ I've made my displeasure with you known for centuries.

JENNIFER: You have no pity. _(upset, agitated)_ I need... I'm going... _(in frustration, she blurts out)_ I'm taking a break.

_As she gets to the door, she thinks better of walking out on God, and, a little sheepishly, calls back over her shoulder._

Will you be here when I get back?

GOD: I'm always here... but don't expect me to change my mind.

_Jennifer exits through the door behind the bank of computers at stage left to the portentous, funereal notes of the 2 nd movement of Beethoven's 3rd (Eroica) Symphony. Within a minute or so, she returns with a soft drink and a bag of chips. She sets the drink down on the computer and walks back and forth munching on the chips._

GOD: I wouldn't put that there. Computers hate soda.

_She moves the cup to the desk and then whirls around and attacks._

JENNIFER: _(accusingly)_ You're a party to genocide, and not for the first time. You're even willing to kill the innocent to cover up your failings.

GOD: The comet, I mean asteroid, will merely level the playing field. A re-run of evolution can hardly turn out any worse.

JENNIFER: _(accusingly)_ You let the Holocaust happen.

GOD: What makes you think I just stood by?

JENNIFER: Well, did you do anything?

GOD: The Holocaust ended, didn't it? The Red Army shut it down on its way to Berlin.

JENNIFER: What about plagues and famines and ...

GOD: _(cutting her off)_ I suppose you're going to bring up the Ice Ages and Global Warming. For some time now, the Earth has been neither too hot nor too cold. But you keep warming it, and, if you go ahead and cook it, a lot of folks will have no porridge.

_Jennifer picks up her soft drink and takes a sip._

Why do you eat that junk? It's bad for your health.

JENNIFER: _(seated before her computer, she defiantly takes a long swig of the soda, then sarcastically)_ I've only got three years, remember?

GOD: Not necessarily. Newton's laws don't just predict collisions; they can also show you how to avoid them. Meanwhile, no more junk food. 'An apple a day...'

JENNIFER: _(interrupting)_ My god, at a time like this all you've got are clichés!

GOD: _(defiantly)_ Proverbs, not clichés. I love them. Anything true can be put succinctly. It's others who've turned my sayings into clichés.

JENNIFER: Okay, tomorrow I'll have an apple. Would you like one, too?

GOD: I've been offered a lot of dead animals, but never an apple. I'd love one.

_The computers bleep. Jennifer hurries over to have a look. She sits down at the monitor, and is soon lost in thought. A minute of music from the last movement of Mendelssohn's Sonata in F for violin and piano. As Jennifer rises from her desk, God resumes_

Maybe if you had a little more faith...

JENNIFER: _(busy, curt, cutting him off)_ Faith won't protect us from the asteroid. I feel safer in NASA's hands than in yours.

GOD: When you talk like that, I feel useless.

JENNIFER: It's not too late to step up.

GOD: I've got problems of my own, you know.

JENNIFER: Like what?

GOD: _(He shrugs, reluctant to admit weakness)_

JENNIFER: _(more sympathetic, coaxing)_ Come on... what's your problem?

GOD: It would be nice to know that I'm still needed.

JENNIFER: Surely, you don't need anything from anyone. You're God!

GOD: If I show weakness, I lose street cred.

JENNIFER: If you want the truth, you'll have to take that risk.

GOD: Truth is my raison d'être.

JENNIFER: Okay then, I'll be frank. _(warming to the task)_ You used to be a respected lawgiver. But you haven't issued any commandments in ages.

GOD: _(interrupting)_ I got 'em all the first time, plus a few I'd revise if they weren't carved in stone.

_Beat, then, in a confessional tone_

Maybe I should've capped 'em at eight.

JENNIFER: You could post a top-ten list of evildoers, expose hypocritical preachers, answer questions at AskGod.com.

Beat.

My grandma used to say 'God helps those who help themselves.'

GOD: Your grandma got that from me.

JENNIFER: Well, then, help yourself. We don't need you any more. NASA has put together an international team to deflect the asteroid.

_Her preening overconfidence belies the hubris that has been Man's undoing._

_The music rises—the finale of Rossini's opera William Tell, modulating into the 2 nd theme from the Overture from the same opera. (NB: This is not the Lone Ranger theme.) General lighting dims; spotlight on Jennifer working at her desk. She is transfixed, transfigured, enveloped in divine light. The music rises as the curtain falls._

**CURTAIN**

**Scene 3: Jennifer's Kitchen**

_Several years later. Jennifer, alone in her kitchen cleaning up after supper. God, a clean-shaven, middle-aged man in contemporary dress, enters and crosses to the sink where Jennifer is taking great care not to waste water. Posters on the wall proclaim a drought and urge water conservation._

JENNIFER: Oh my god, you're back!

GOD: _(sidling up to the sink, eyeing dishes in the drainer)_ Need some help?

JENNIFER: With the dishes, yes.

_She hands him a towel._

With the asteroid, no. We managed without you.

GOD: Ever since you divined my laws, you haven't really needed me. When you put your heads together, you can work miracles.

JENNIFER: Is that why you've stayed away?

GOD: I wasn't sure you'd dodge the asteroid. I couldn't bear to watch.

JENNIFER: _(surprised)_ So... you do care?

GOD: For some of you, yes; for Mankind, not so much. You sidestepped the asteroid, but you're fouling your own nest. I've seen hellish climates elsewhere, and yours is on the cusp.

JENNIFER: What makes you think we can't handle this... like we did the asteroid?

GOD: You put personal gain above the common good. The asteroid was big enough to erase the difference.

_Sing-song—to show God's devilish side_

You ducked my best pitch, but you can't hide from an apocalypse.

_Serious again._

As the oceans rise, you'll realize an asteroid would have been kinder.

JENNIFER: _(incredulous)_ You're spinning the asteroid as a mercy-killing?

_Beat. Sarcastic._

That's not going to put people back in the pews.

GOD: _(sheepishly)_ Between you and me, I didn't actually aim the asteroid at the Earth.

JENNIFER: Then what did you do? I want the truth.

GOD: The truth is my raison d'être, remember? But most people don't welcome it.

JENNIFER: Try me.

GOD: The truth is...my hands are tied.

_Beat._

There, now you know. Think of me as one with Nature. There are no exceptions to natural law—not for you, not for me, not for anyone. If there were, it wouldn't be universal, would it?

JENNIFER: Are you behind this overheating?

GOD: Cooking the planet is your doing. I bet the farm on humans and it's looking like you're an evolutionary dead-end.

JENNIFER: _(defiant)_ It can't be!

GOD: _(wistfully)_ Your Achilles' heel is thinking it's all about you.

JENNIFER: _(contrite)_ To the untrained eye, it does look like the heavens revolve around us.

GOD: That was a rookie's mistake, and I don't blame you for it. But, I've had a ringside seat from Day One, and what I see is a predacious species comprised of self-centered individuals.

JENNIFER: _(accusingly)_ But aren't you responsible? You made us predators; you can't blame us for excelling at it.

GOD: I accept 'nature, red in tooth and claw.' But your brains weren't a license to kill. I didn't foresee that hunting and gathering would mushroom into wholesale depredation.

JENNIFER: _(placating)_ Maybe if you gave us a deadline...the asteroid brought out our best qualities. It was cooperate or perish.

GOD: How much time are you asking for?

JENNIFER: Fifty years? A century, perhaps?

GOD: I should have pulled the plug a hundred years ago.

JENNIFER: And turned the clock back a million years?

GOD: I've got eternity!

JENNIFER: If you're waiting for a perfect species, you'll need the patience of Job.

GOD: _(Pause. Softer, humbler)_ I admit that I can be impatient. You're one of the few, Jenny, who has been willing to put up with my moods.

JENNIFER: _(touched, flustered)_ That's the first time you've used my name.

_She brushes her hair back, but quickly resumes her interrogation._

If you're disappointed with us, why do you keep coming round?

GOD: _(embarrassed)_ I've formed an attachment.

JENNIFER: _(dense)_ With whom?

GOD: _(Blushing)_ Do I have to spell it out?

JENNIFER: With me?

_Pause._

Why me?

GOD: You remind me of Eve.

JENNIFER: Eve had Adam; I'm nobody.

GOD: 'Then there's a pair of us—don't tell! They'd banish us, you know.'

JENNIFER: _(surprised)_ You feel like a nobody, too?

GOD: I suppose that's why I'm partial to underdogs. I've felt like a nobody since the rumor that I was dead.

JENNIFER: You can see why people might think so. You wouldn't help with the asteroid and now you're hands-off the climate.

GOD: I've been trying to tell you: I'm not the god I used to be.

JENNIFER: What's that supposed to mean?

GOD: May I speak plainly?

JENNIFER: Tell me what you can and can't do.

GOD: The powers you've attributed to me? Well... _(hesitation, then blurted out)_ I don't have them. I've hidden my weakness as long as I could. Everyone expects me to be a superhero, but I'm not. It's embarrassing.

JENNIFER: Do you think we only like you for your powers?

GOD: _(exposed and vulnerable)_ It's worse than that! You only like me for my miracles, and I can't perform them anymore. Once you took me out of the equation, you stole my thunder.

JENNIFER: 'Out of the equation'?

GOD: _(stammering because ashamed)_ It's... it's... _(he can't meet her eyes)_ Your faith was what sustained me. Now that it's diminishing, well, so am I.

JENNIFER: _(becalmed)_ Oh.

_Beat, feeling his pain; then, trying to reassure him_

You'll always be a somebody to me.

GOD: Thanks.

JENNIFER: _(sympathetically)_ 'Though much is taken, much abides.' There must be something you can do.

GOD: Prophecy is my strong suit.

JENNIFER: _(trying to be helpful)_ Prophecy is out of fashion, but you could be a futurist.

GOD: You've exaggerated my omniscience, too. I can't tell who'll win the World Series, predict the stock market, or tell when a sparrow will die.

JENNIFER: So, what do you know?

GOD: I know what happens to folks who mistreat their planet.

JENNIFER: The only reason we were able to cooperate on the asteroid was that everyone knew it posed a mortal threat. People disagree on climate. What does your crystal ball say?

GOD: _(solemnly)_ That change can't be avoided, but it can be survived.

JENNIFER: _(eagerly)_ How? Tell me how.

GOD: I didn't say it'll be easy, just doable.

JENNIFER: Go on.

GOD: Trashing your environment is a symptom of a deeper problem. Your troubles arise because the survival strategy that put you in the driver's seat is failing you. When you include all the knock-on effects of predation, the costs exceed the benefits.

JENNIFER: No one looks beyond the bottom line.

GOD: I've tried to open your eyes with parables and proverbs. I even gave you a simple rule. You call it 'golden,' but you go right ahead and flout it when you see a personal pay-off.

JENNIFER: I've heard all this before. Don't you have anything new to offer?

GOD: There is something you haven't tried.

JENNIFER: Why haven't you told us before?

GOD: Because I was afraid you'd laugh at me.

JENNIFER: _(reassuringly)_ I may surprise you.

GOD: Okay, you asked for it.

_He clears his throat._

Have I ever told you why Darwin is my favorite scientist?

JENNIFER: I'd have thought Newton, but go on.

GOD: Newton understood my design, but Darwin grasped my style. When something works, I use it everywhere. 'I am sincerely fond of the ancient.'

JENNIFER: That explains your penchant for clichés.

GOD: Novelty is overrated. The same ideas work again and again: All life forms are encoded in DNA; all brains shape behaviors as natural selection shapes species—but in seconds, not centuries.

JENNIFER: Computers already operate on that time scale.

GOD: They're a good start, but only a start. To see further ahead, you're going to need help from brains that are better than your own. The computers you've got now don't work like brains. Build computers that do, and then scale them up so they're bigger, faster, and more intelligent than the brains evolved by natural selection.

JENNIFER: Will these machines be kinder than humans?

GOD: If smarter means seeing further ahead, then, over time, smarter will translate into kinder because more foresight will reveal which behaviors would make things worse. When you're able to see around the next bend, the dignity of all things will be as obvious as a comet streaking through the night sky.

JENNIFER: Don't you think we'll be too proud? To accept help from machines?

GOD: You won't have a choice, because someone, somewhere is going to build smarter machines and others will either follow suit or fall by the wayside.

_Beat as this sinks in._

Evolution beats extinction...don't you think?

_A few bars of James Taylor's_ Fire and Rain.

**CURTAIN**

**Scene 4: The Observatory**

_Mount Palomar Observatory. Jennifer is at work in the crow's-nest. Her clothing is less nerdy, her hair more stylish. God stands on the floor below, gazing up at her._

JENNIFER: _(confidently)_ I'm a postdoc now.

GOD: I'm glad you stayed on. Did you sort things out with your boss?

JENNIFER: _(lighthearted; bringing out the rhyme)_ I'm a mouse no more, you taught me to roar. _(serious)_ He and I are co-authors.

GOD: Have you made any friends?

JENNIFER: One of my colleagues has asked me out.

GOD: I'm jealous.

JENNIFER: _(Incredulous)_ Don't be silly.

_She sings a few bars of Rod Stewart._

'You're in my heart, you're in my soul.'

_Pregnant pause._

Will your machines write songs?

GOD: They'll do all the things you do. I foresee 'a beautiful friendship.'

JENNIFER: But won't it be unequal? Like me and my supervisor... before I found my voice? Won't humans be inferior?

GOD: You were never superior and you'll never be inferior. Intelligent machines may see further ahead, but the truth is they're simply different—like an ox and an oak, a stork and a starfish. I don't play favorites, and neither should you.

JENNIFER: _(Softening)_ What will you do now?

GOD: Move on. There's not much more I can do here. Most of what passes for religion these days is political ideology. Knowing when to step aside is part of service.

JENNIFER: I think you've earned a sabbatical.

GOD: _(wistfully)_ I haven't taken one since that first crazy week.

JENNIFER: But you ought to let people know you're leaving, don't you think?

GOD: Most won't notice my absence.

JENNIFER: What about those who have faith in you? You can't just walk out on them.

GOD: Got any ideas?

JENNIFER: You could give a farewell address...like presidents do.

GOD: I've said everything I have to say. Feel free to quote me.

JENNIFER: People would be interested in your parting thoughts.

GOD: Sermons are passé.

JENNIFER: Then hold a press conference. Just take questions.

GOD: Hmm...I suppose I could do that.

JENNIFER: It could go out via streaming video. Remote viewers could submit questions via email or Twitter.

GOD: Controversy follows me. How will you handle fanatics and trolls?

JENNIFER: Screen them out.

GOD: There's a long list of martyrs who've tried to help me. I wouldn't want your name added to the list.

JENNIFER: Don't worry about me. After the press conference, I plan to stick to science.

GOD: A lot of nonsense has been served up in my name. I suppose I might regret passing up a chance to 'separate the wheat from the chaff.'

JENNIFER: You can set the record straight.

GOD: Okay, I'll do it.

**CURTAIN**

**END OF ACT I**
**ACT II: God Bids Adieu at Farewell Press Conference**

An auditorium (capacity 75) with an elevated stage in a local Holiday Inn. A large video screen is on the rear wall of the stage. Jennifer and God—as they last appeared in Act I—enter the auditorium together and mount a few stairs to the stage. Jennifer goes to the podium; God seats himself in a chair in the middle of the stage. There are only two people seated in the auditorium—an adjunct professor of religion from a local community college (Catherine Rowe) and a graduate student in political science (Eugene White). Presently, two elderly townsfolk drift in and furtively seat themselves in the last row. When a cleaning woman, pushing a trolley, pokes her head in, Jennifer persuades her to stay. An AV technician, whom Jennifer has asked to tape the session, approaches God with a lapel microphone, asks him if he wants one, and God is seen to wave him off. The audience numbers only these six, but just as Jennifer is about to speak, three teenagers slouch in, all peering into their phones, and plop down in the front row where they are seen typing with their thumbs.

JENNIFER: _(at the podium, visibly nervous)_ Hi, thank you for coming. My name is Jennifer Knight. I'm a post-doc in astrophysics at the Palomar Observatory, and I will act as moderator. _(she clears her throat)_ Our speaker today needs no introduction. God has informed me that this press conference will be his last public appearance. He has agreed to take questions from the virtual audience participating via streaming video, as well as from the room. Tweets with the hashtag #GodBowsOut will be displayed on the video screen. While the remote audience builds, let's begin with a question from the room.

_No hands go up. Awkward silence. Teens in front row looking down, still thumbing their phones._

JENNIFER: Anyone?

JOEL (high-school student): _(glancing up from his phone, surly)_ How do we know you're not a fake?

_Before God responds, he seats himself on the front of the stage, legs dangling, so he is on the same level as those in the auditorium, and invites the scattered attendees to gather round. No one moves. As God clears his throat to respond to Joel's question, one of the other high-school students interjects._

ANNE (classmate of Joel): _(confrontational tone)_ If you're really God... _(then with plaintive hopefulness)_ won't you give us a sign?

TWEET (which appears on the video screen): _(@CatherineRowe)_ #GodBowsOut in a press conference now streaming live on #YouTube.

GOD: _(resigned to their disbelief, but a bit weary)_ I suppose you mean a miracle. I know this will disappoint you, but miracles are a thing of the past. What you call a miracle is just something you haven't yet learned to explain. It was when you stopped interpreting natural phenomena as miracles that you gained access to Nature's power.

CLAIRE (classmate of Joel and Anne): _(attentive but perplexed)_ I don't get it.

GOD: Curing someone of disease was a miracle once, but you've learned to do it without asking me for help.

CLAIRE: Some cures still seem miraculous.

GOD: Not long ago, the Internet would have seemed miraculous, but now it's understood as clever code. Hardly a miracle. If you try hard enough you can eventually explain anything. The only real miracle is that the universe is intelligible. You should 'live your life as if nothing is a miracle and everything is a miracle.'

_In the back row, the man gets up as if to leave, but his wife pulls him back down and waves to get Jennifer's attention._

TWEET: _(@wannabeEinstein)_ #GodBowsOut advising us to live as if nothing is a miracle and everything is a miracle.

JENNIFER: We have a question from the back row.

MILDRED (elderly lady in back row): What happens to us after we die?

GOD: The answer depends on who you take yourself to be. If you think of yourself as your body—arms, legs, head, etc.—you have only to look at corpses to see what happens after death—it's ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

If you identify with your senses—seeing, hearing, feeling—the story is the same one. No sense organs means no perception. Death is a show-stopper, but only for an audience of one—you!

If you say, "I'm not my body, or even my feelings, I am my thoughts," this still doesn't change things. Your brain can not function when deprived of an energy source any more than a computer will run without electricity. Moreover, mental activity, like computer software, is dependent on a substratum of hardware. Without a head full of functioning neurons, there's no thinking.

MILDRED: So what's left of me? And of my mother and father, whom I'm hoping to see in heaven?

GOD: What endure after death are the effects—for better and worse—that you've had on others. Your temperament and character, your beliefs and sensibility reverberate for as long as remnants of your behavior are manifested in others. Though your body, mind, and the living example you set are no more, your influence lingers, blended into the lives of those who knew you, and through whom something of yourself will be transmitted even to people who knew you not. While you're alive, your legacy accumulates, unremarked, with your every act, your every word. Countless millions—the famous, infamous, and anonymous—are living through each of you today.

CLARENCE (elderly man in back row): Is heaven for real?

GOD: No. Heaven is make-believe. What has never existed, doesn't die. Individual selves do not exist as other than stories co-authored with many others. Your personal story requires no heaven because it survives as part of a larger story.

TWEET: _(@JoelJams)_ #GodBowsOut admits #heaven is make-believe.

JENNIFER: _(peering at her computer)_ We have a question from a viewer in Rio de Janeiro. She writes: "This event has been billed as your swansong. Why are you leaving? Many, like me, still believe in you." It's signed "true believer."

GOD: I appreciate the sentiment. There comes a time, though, when the best thing a mentor can do is bow out. My continued presence will just prolong your adolescence. There are many worlds, you know, and I can be of more use elsewhere. Here on Earth, God's work must truly be your own.

MOLLY (the cleaning lady): Aren't you supposed to be all-powerful? If so, why aren't you smiting evildoers like you used to? Or, using your power to prevent earthquakes and epidemics, or cool the planet?

GOD: I get asked that a lot, and I suppose it's a fair question. The truth is, like all teachers, my power is only what you grant me. At this point, I'm not half the god I used to be.

MOLLY: _(not satisfied with his response, she follows up)_ But you told Noah to build the Ark. We need your help now more than ever.

GOD: I've tried to warn you. Repeatedly. I was proud of the way you dealt with the asteroid... _(God nods to Jennifer)_ ...but I'm not impressed with your stewardship of the planet.

EUGENE (graduate student in political science): _(sarcastically)_ Why did you let Hitler and other mass murderers come to power, huh?

GOD: What you fail to learn from visionaries and prophets, you must often learn the hard way—from calamities orchestrated by demagogues and dictators. Your heroes show you what works; your villains, what does not.

EUGENE: _(exasperated, cynical)_ Oh, so you see bad buys coming but you sit on your hands? _(ironical)_ Great use of your omniscience.

GOD: The omniscient thing has been exaggerated, like so much about me. I can't predict the near future any better than you can. But, I'm above average at spotting long-term trends. Your predictions are often distorted by wishful thinking. Nature doesn't care about your beliefs. Know you what it is to be a child? It is to believe in belief.

MILDRED: _(impatient with God's abstractions, wanting to bring him down to Earth)_ Clarence and I have been together for six decades. We've seen the world survive war, depression, and despotism. But we've never been more worried about the future. Can't you do something?

GOD: You misunderstand the nature of the problem. The primary threat is not external, it's the obsolescence of your sense of self. Your current idea of personhood has got you this far, but can take you no further. What has been an imperative of personal survival—forming an autonomous independent self—has become an existential threat, not only to your own species, but to all the others.

EUGENE: _(showing a tad more respect)_ You can't expect us to change human nature. That'd be like lifting ourselves by our bootstraps.

GOD: You act as if human nature is written in stone. It's not. What you regard as human nature has changed beyond recognition since your species diverged from the others. You are a work in progress.

CLARENCE: Everywhere I look I see regress, not progress.

GOD: I see why it appears that way to you. I can't provide you with a roadmap that will skirt every pothole, but I can tell you what has to happen at this point to keep you out of the ditch.

MILDRED: What's that?

GOD: Just because you can protect yourselves from asteroids doesn't mean you can protect yourselves from yourselves. Once a civilization has nuclear weapons, predation-as-usual, even unwitting exploitation, leads to unrest and, given the power of weapons of mass destruction, to self-extinction.

_Beat as this sinks in._

As I said, your greatest danger stems from your naïve belief that you are autonomous individuals, standing, as you like to say, 'on your own two feet.' But your existence is not independent of everyone else's. Selves depend on other selves to take form and to take action. You're caught in an inescapable network of mutuality. You are all made up of one another.

JOEL: Not me, I'm not! I'm no one but myself.

TWEET: _(@guruknowsonething)_ #GodBowsOut saying we are all comprised of each other.

GOD: Selves don't come into the world; they come out of it, as leaves from a tree. Like every leaf, you owe your existence to the whole tree. Similarly, every tree owes its existence to the forest. At every level, to exist is to co-exist. Weave this truth into your relationships and flourish; deny it and perish.

EUGENE: This sounds like a recipe for mediocrity. I believe humans are an exceptional species and that some of us are far better than others.

_Beat._

GOD: Humans are made of the same materials, and obey the same laws, as the rest of the cosmos. No exceptions. Although you're not exceptional in the ways you once believed, you have no peers when it comes to building machines. Before long you will build machines who think. Soon after that you'll create brains that outperform the ones I gave you. Once again, you will discover that you're nothing special.

MARTY (the AV man who has said nothing up to this point): Does that mean that we are just machines?

GOD: Do you think that diminishes you? Don't sell machines short because the only ones you've been able to build are simple-minded. When machines are as complex as your brains, and work like they do, they'll be as capable as you are. Yet, you'll be the ones who've built them! That will make you feel larger, not smaller. I know because it happened to me.

EUGENE: When was that?

GOD: When you began explaining Nature. At first, I felt threatened, but then I realized this freed me to move on... to a world where I'm actually needed.

_Beat._

The intelligent machines you're now designing are your best hope for avoiding destruction. With their help you will be able to reduce suffering on a scale you've only dreamt of. Future generations will be puzzled by how long it has taken you to grasp the implications of your interdependence and rewrite the social contract accordingly. Not sharing fairly the fruits of what you can only do together is a recipe for conflict that will end in self-destruction.

CATHERINE: If we're machines...well, what about free will?

GOD: If by 'free will' you mean that living beings can suspend the laws of nature as applied to themselves, then yes, there is no free will because nothing and no one is exempt from natural law. Not even me, and I had a hand in writing it.

CLAIRE: If there's no free will, then we're not responsible for what we do. How can anyone be blamed?

GOD: Do you need scapegoats? 'An eye for an eye' expresses the natural desire to get even, but shaming perpetuates the cycle of reciprocal indignities. To get off that treadmill, you have to find a way to protect the dignity of both the perpetrators and their victims, while at the same time changing the behavior of the perpetrators. This takes imagination and perseverance, but it's possible. Dignity is your right. It's also everyone else's.

TWEET: _(@Claire4clarity)_ #GodBowsOut #Dignity is your right. It's also everyone else's.

ANNE: Even murderers and rapists? Surely they must be punished.

GOD: Rendered harmless, yes, but why do that in a way that leaves them thirsting for revenge? Crime is a symptom of _systemic_ dysfunction, and when you scapegoat individual perpetrators you blind yourselves to the inequality, indignity, and injustice that create criminals.

_Seeing no hands in the air, and no questions from remote viewers, Jennifer walks over to God who remains seated, legs dangling off the stage. She bends down and whispers in his ear. God nods affirmatively and Jennifer returns to the podium from which she is moderating the press conference._

JENNIFER: God knows that what he's saying is not self-evident, but he hopes you'll sit with it and see if it doesn't gradually make sense. He assures me that he's in no hurry and will stay as long as anyone wants to speak with him.

_Jennifer waits patiently, glancing around the auditorium until she notices that Molly, the cleaning lady, is shyly raising one hand. Jennifer moves towards her and, with a gesture, invites her to speak._

MOLLY: Why haven't you used your celebrity to advocate for a living wage?

GOD: _(defensively)_ I've always been on the side of the poor. _(dejected)_ My biggest regret is that my advocacy hasn't made much of a difference.

MOLLY: Don't give up now. Use this chance to speak up one last time.

_Expectant silence in the room. God clears his throat._

GOD: Dignity is not negotiable. Denying it to anyone is self-defeating.

TWEET: _(@Annepluperfect)_ #GodBowsOut declaring #Dignity is not negotiable.

MOLLY: If people won't heed the Golden Rule, what hope is there for dignity?

GOD: So long as your survival depended on out-competing rivals for scarce necessities, humans excluded some from the brotherhood of man so they could prey on them without a bad conscience. The balance of power has shifted. The marginalized now have access to enough power to ruin everyone's life.

JOEL: I'm more worried about robots than about the poor. By the time I finish my education, they'll have taken all the jobs.

CLAIRE: _(jumping in)_ Won't super-smart robots be to us what we are to chimpanzees—a superior species?

GOD: Actually, they'll represent a new genus. As was the case with genus Homo, there will be a variety of species within the genus Robo.

ANNE: Will Robos steal and kill like in the movies? I don't want to be anyone's slave.

GOD: Then be careful what movies you show them. Because you will be their role models, as parents are to their young. If you teach them to be cruel, they'll be cruel. If you model kindness, they'll be kind. Once you've brought them to the frontier of knowledge, they'll help you avoid blind alleys. By programming them to represent the better angels of your nature, you could make exploitation a thing of the past.

JENNIFER: The lady in Rio has sent another email. She writes, "Won't you stay and help us through all this?"

GOD: I'd just be in the way. You are as gods and have to get good at it.

TWEET: _(@JoelJams)_ #GodBowsOut telling us that we are as gods and have to get better at it.

JENNIFER: _(stepping out of her role as moderator)_ Most of the people I know are not going to welcome playing second fiddle to machines.

GOD: 'Welcome' doesn't come into it. You can no more stop the development of thinking machines than early hominids could prevent the ascent of Homo Sapiens.

EUGENE: I can see machines succeeding where we fail: at solving complex problems like forecasting the weather and managing the economy. But will they ever be able to write music and poetry?

GOD: When they do, will you stop underestimating them?

_Beat while this sinks in._

Once you've come to rely on them, you'll have no choice but to grant them the rights and privileges of personhood. Befriend your successors and they'll befriend you. With a little help from your creations, you can all live happily ever after.

_Beat, then chiding._

It'll be easier than you think: Already I've overheard you sweet-talking your phones...when you're not cursing them, that is.

CLAIRE: _(owning up)_ When mine fell in the toilet, I felt like a murderer.

EUGENE: _(in a respectful tone)_ Would you be willing to tell us what you regard as your worst mistake?

GOD: I was slow to recognize that humans acquired the power to destroy the Earth before they had the wisdom to handle such power. I should have made sure it was the other way round.

JOEL: Look, mister, I still can't tell if you're an imposter.

GOD: I do feel like one every so often. The hardest thing about being god is the repetition. There are times when I feel I'm impersonating myself.

JOEL: _(This seems to satisfy Joel, and he changes tack.)_ I don't agree with all your answers, but you've left me with some new questions.

GOD: A good answer rarely changes anyone's mind, but a good question will change the world. Catch your questions on the fly, and let them ripen into quests.

TWEET: _(@EugeneWhite)_ #GodBowsOut suggesting that we catch our #questions on the fly and turn them into #quests.

JENNIFER: _(Sees Catherine waving insistently and invites her to speak.)_

CATHERINE: I can't shake the fear that these intelligent machines are going to treat us badly.

GOD: That's because humans treat each other badly and you can't imagine anything else. If you treat your progeny badly, they will treat you badly. But if you include them in your circle of dignity, they'll include you in theirs. They'll be as respectful as you are.

JENNIFER: We have to vacate the room for another group, but God will hang around if anyone wants to speak to him. The full video will be posted on YouTube tonight. Thank you for coming.

_The religion professor, Catherine, and the graduate student, Eugene, get up to leave. Molly leans against her vacuum cleaner in a daze, contemplating what she has heard. The teens are subdued. No longer thumbing their phones, they file out silently, heads bowed. Clarence and Mildred Dobbs remain seated in the back row. Clarence has put his arm around his wife, who is sobbing softly. Noticing this, God leaves the stage and walks to the back row._

GOD: You needn't do anything. You needn't worry. Everything will be all right.

_He pats them on their shoulders. They rise and exit through a door at the back of the auditorium. Meanwhile, Marty is down front, near the stage, packing up his AV equipment. God and Jennifer return to the stage where Jennifer gathers her notes._

JENNIFER: _(speaking to God, apologetic)_ I'm sorry about the attendance. I've never been any good at organizing.

GOD: It makes little difference whether you broadcast to the world or whisper to a stranger on a park bench. What's useful spreads and what does not fades out. You've done all you could, Jenny.

JENNIFER: I was hoping for a large virtual audience. I still think the video might go viral in time.

MARTY: _(who has finished packing his equipment, interjects)_ Once it's up on YouTube, that's in God's hands. _(realizing who he's speaking to, he stammers)_ Oh, I didn't mean you. _(tentatively)_ But if you've got a miracle left, _(with growing conviction)_ use it so everyone hears what we heard today.

_Marty departs with the AV equipment. The video screen is a permanent fixture and remains. God and Jennifer are alone on stage, front and central._

JENNIFER: May I ask one more question...before you go?

GOD: I'll stick around as long as you like. I hate good-byes.

_God's voice quavers. He looks old, tired, and vulnerable. Dabbing at his eyes, he struggles to regain control._

JENNIFER: _(trying to comfort him)_ Me, too.

GOD: That's the toughest part of the job. I was depressed for centuries about losing the Woolly Mammoths.

JENNIFER: _(No longer confrontational, she gently reminds him of his earlier position.)_ But you weren't sorry to see the dinosaurs go...

GOD: One of the first things I learned in this job was that there's no room for sentimentality. I know 50,000 things that don't work.

JENNIFER: Doesn't failure get you down?

GOD: Every failure is redeemed by lessons learned. Once you get something right, it spreads like wildfire.

_Neither God nor Jennifer wants to part. God breaks the awkward silence._

Wasn't there something else...?

JENNIFER: _(shyly, as if she is still the child to whom this question occurred)_ Since I first looked through my telescope, I've wanted to know if the Universe cares?

_Beat._

You once said you knew, and that some day you might tell me.

GOD: In the beginning, the universe had no heart. The best idea I ever had was to give it one.

_Beat._

_(deliberately)_ The Universe is not blind. You are its eyes.

_Beat._

The Universe is not pointless. You give it meaning.

_Beat._

The Universe is not pitiless. Its heart beats in your breast.

_The lighting dims and a few bars of_ As Time Goes By are heard. God approaches Jennifer, they embrace, and God whispers into her ear as Bill Murray did with Scarlett Johannson in Lost in Translation. As they part, God channels Humphrey Bogart in Casablanca.

We'll always have Palomar.

_On her toes, with a kiss on his cheek, Jennifer indicates her agreement._

_As God exits the auditorium, Jennifer calls after him_

À Dieu.

_It is at once a salute and a farewell. She lingers briefly, then departs, bathed in divine light.)_

**FINAL CURTAIN**
**Quotes**

_God does not feel obliged to acknowledge the humans who give voice to the proverbs and aphorisms he invokes because he regards them as plagiarizing him. His human ventriloquists are listed in the credits that appear on the video screen as the auditorium empties._

_I know 50,000 things that don't work._  
– Thomas A. Edison

_Just call my name and I'll be there._  
– Michael Jackson

_Nature, red in tooth and claw._  
– Alfred Lord Tennyson

_Then there's a pair of us—don't tell! They'd banish us, you know._  
– Emily Dickinson

_Though much is taken, much abides._  
– Alfred Lord Tennyson

_I am sincerely fond of the ancient._  
– Confucius

_We do not come into this world; we come out of it, as leaves from a tree._  
– Alan Watts

_Machines who think_  
– Pamela McCordick

_Caught in an inescapable network of mutuality_  
– Martin Luther King, Jr.

_Know you what it is to be a child? It is to believe in belief._  
– Francis Thompson

_Live your life as if nothing is a miracle and everything is a miracle._  
– Albert Einstein

_Here on Earth, God's work must truly be our own._  
– John F. Kennedy

_You are as gods and have to get good at it._  
– Stewart Brand

_The better angels of our nature._  
– Abraham Lincoln

_To exist is to co-exist._  
– Gabriel Marcel

_The dignity of all things._  
– Rabbi Abraham Heschel

_Dignity is not negotiable._  
– Vartan Gregorian

# Genomes, Menomes, Wenomes

Neuroscience and Human Dignity

### Who Am I?

Flawed notions of selfhood distort personal relationships, fuel ideological conflict, and cause untold human suffering.

The neuroscience of the self holds the promise of resolving perennial quarrels and putting us all on the same side as we face the challenges in our global future, not least of which will be coming to terms with machines who rival or surpass human intelligence.

While we all casually refer to our "self," no one can say quite what that self is. Nothing is so close at hand, yet hard to pin down as selfhood. The enigma of selfhood is encapsulated in the perennial question: Who am I?

### Am I My Body?

As infants, we're taught that we are our bodies. Later, we learn that every human being has a unique genomic blueprint that governs the construction—in molecular nano-factories—of our physical bodies. But by adolescence, most of us, though still concerned about physical appearance, and in particular with sexual attractiveness, have begun to shift our primary identification from our body to the thoughts and feelings that we associate with our minds.

### Am I My Mind?

The mind is embodied in the connectivity of the central and autonomic nervous systems that determine our behavior, verbal and otherwise. By analogy with the genome, the map of neural connections is referred to as the _connectome_. The connectome for an individual can be called the _menome_ (rhymes with genome).

Like our genome, our menome has _Homo sapiens_ written all over it. And, like the genome, every menome is unique. Unlike the relatively stable genome, the menome is constantly changing.

As we'll see, the menome isn't all there is to selfhood any more than the genome. Before going beyond the menome, however, let's take a look at one of the mind's most noteworthy features: its ability to witness itself. Could the witness be what we're referring to when we invoke the pronouns "me," "myself," and "I"?

### Am I My Witness?

_I am an other._

– Arthur Rimbaud

The witness is a neutral, observational _function_ of mind. It should not be thought of as a little observer in our heads, but rather as a cognitive function of the nervous system, namely that of monitoring our thoughts and deeds. By childhood's end, no one lacks this faculty, though in some it seems more active than in others.

The elderly will tell you that although their bodies have aged and their minds have changed, their witness is much the same as always. Even in old age, it remains a young upstart voice—detached, observant, occasionally rude. Whether ignored or embraced, the witness continues to whisper the truth to us as long as we live.

For example, it's the witnessing faculty that notices that we're ashamed or prideful, or, possibly, losing our hair or our memories. Without judging us, it registers outcomes and thereby provides evidence we need to manage.

The witness stands apart from the rush of worldly life, overhearing our thoughts and observing our actions. Although it has no rooting interest, it records the successes and failures, and the comings and goings, of the personal identities that we field in the game of life.

When the spectacle of life becomes intense, the witness often recedes into the background, but continues observing through thick and thin. So long as we remember that the witness is not an ethereal being in our heads—a ghostlike "captain of our soul"—but a _function_ , or an _application,_ of the nervous system, it does little harm to personify it as a detached reporter with a front row seat at the spectacle that is our life.

The inner voice we sometimes hear shaming us is not that of the witness, which is indifferent to our ups and downs. Self-accusation is rather the result of internalizing _others'_ judgments. In contrast, the witness neither blames nor praises, no matter what we do or what others think of us. While not given to displays of emotion, the witness is our closest ally. It may whisper rather than yell, but it speaks truth to power.

Some people identify the self as the witness, that is, they see themselves as that part of the mind that watches over the rest and reports its findings. While self-surveillance is essential to maturation, the witness is but one mental function among many. The witness is no more the whole self than a smartphone is one of its apps.

While the witness serves as a loyal in-house spy, the signature application of mind is to fashion serviceable identities. That is, to put together a persona that garners enough recognition and support to make us a player in the game of life.

### Am I a Home for Identities?

_How queer to have so many selves._

– Virginia Woolf

Another misstep is to identify a current identity as our "real" self. With age, most people realize that they are not the face they present to the world, not even the _superposition_ of the various identities they've assumed over a lifetime.

By my late thirties, I had accumulated enough personal history to see that I had presented several quite different Bobs to the world. Principal among my serial identities were student, teacher, and educator. Alongside these occupational personas were the familial ones of son, husband, and father. As Shakespeare famously noted:

_All the world's a stage,  
And all the men and women merely players:  
They have their exits and their entrances;  
And one man in his time plays many parts..._

Like many an Eastern sage, Shakespeare saw that we play a series of parts while at the same time watching over ourselves as if we're in the audience. That is, we both live our lives and, at the same time, _witness_ ourselves doing so. We don't stop there: we even witness the witnessing.

It's the fate of every persona to stand down and make way for another. Distinct identities are strung together on the thread of memory, all of them provisional and perishable. No less fascinating than the birth, life, and death of our bodies are the births, lives, and deaths of these makeshift, transient identities. Reincarnation of the body is arguable; metamorphosis of identity is not.

The witness's detachment facilitates letting go of elements of identity in response to changing circumstances. As we age, the feeling that life is a battle is gradually replaced with the sense that it's a game played with a shifting set of allies and opponents who, upon closer examination, are unmasked as fellow actors. Without the opposition provided by others, we might never notice the partiality and blind spots inherent in our unique vantage point.

The more flexible, forgiving attitude that results when we see our self as a home for transient identities turns out to be the perspective we need to maintain our dignity in adversity and accord it to others in theirs. In time, former antagonists—which may include colleagues, spouses, and parents—are seen as essential participants in our development, and we in theirs.

To keep an identity in working order, we continually emend and burnish it, principally by telling and retelling our story to ourselves and anyone who'll listen. Occasionally, our narrative is revised in a top to bottom reformulation that in science would be called a paradigm shift. Though most incremental changes are too small and gradual to be noticed over months or even years, they add up, and suddenly, often in conjunction with a change in job, health, or relationship, we may come to interpret our history quite differently, revise our grand narrative, and present a new face to the world. Whole professions—therapy, mediation, coaching, counseling—have grown up to help people navigate such identity crises.

It is tempting to think of the self as simply a home for the identities we adopt over our lifetime, but on reflection, this, too, falls short. Our self is also the _source_ of the identities that sally forth in our name. That is, we experience the self as more than a retirement home for former identities; it's also the generator of new ones. The self is not a thing; rather it's the capacity to mint, test, and deploy identities. Where does this capacity reside? In what is it physically embodied?

Provisional answers to these questions are now coming from neuroscience. Traditional answers to the "Who-am-I" question, such as the ones in this list, are giving way to a more concrete identification of the self as the genome plus the menome.

This shift to a more concrete understanding of selfhood is analogous to letting go of the heart as "the seat of the soul" and seeing it instead as "a pump made of muscle." Much as we can repair a defective heart, we can repair a defective genome and correct a "buggy" menome (e.g., alter a mistaken belief).

As it happens, this notion of selfhood leaves out something crucial, something without which neither genomes nor menomes can exist or endure. I refer to the part played in genome and menome formation by _other_ genomes and menomes. But before adding this dimension to our reconstruction of selfhood let's pause to pay our respects to two traditional candidates for the mantle of selfhood: the soul and pure consciousness.

### Am I My Soul?

If selfhood, as usually understood, has a downside, it is its mortality. We grudgingly accept physical aging, but who has not balked at the idea of the inevitable extinction of his or her self at life's end? Alas, our self appears to expire with the disintegration of the material substratum through which it's made manifest—the body and the brain.

To mitigate this unsettling prospect, many religions postulate the existence of an immortal soul, and then identify the self with the soul. Once we've completed the reconstruction of selfhood, we'll discover that, even without hypothesizing an immortal soul, death loses some of its sting.

### Am I Pure Consciousness?

A last redoubt for the self as we've known it is to identify it as pure, empty consciousness. But what exactly is consciousness? Arguments run on about whether animals have it, and if so how much, without ever clarifying what consciousness is. Moreover, identifying one's self as pure consciousness is just another identification, namely that of systematically dis-identifying with everything else.

Even if you don't find pure, empty consciousness a bit spare or monotonous, there's another problem with equating consciousness with selfhood. Whatever it may be, stripped-down consciousness is deficient in agency, and agency—that is, not just being, but doing—is inextricably connected to selfhood because mentation does not occur apart from its potential to actualize behavior. To think is to rehearse action without triggering it. Thought involves the excitation of motor neurons, but below the threshold at which the actions those neurons enervate would be emitted. In computer parlance, thought is virtual behavior.

Pure consciousness is sometimes described as the "ground of being," and there's no harm in that, but neither is it useful when it comes to doing and undoing, to behavior and modifying it. Increasingly, consciousness is being demystified as simply the experience we have as our brain witnesses itself processing information about the world and about itself.

The postmodern perspective completes the deconstruction of what is now widely regarded as _naïve_ , singular selfhood, and sets the stage for a multitudinous, plural self that is consistent with the findings of both traditional introspection and contemporary neuroscience.

### Postmodernism's Deconstruction of the Self

_Humpty Dumpty sat on a wall,  
Humpty Dumpty had a great fall.  
All the king's horses and all the king's men  
Couldn't put Humpty together again._

In recent decades, deconstructing selfhood has become a cottage industry (with headquarters in Paris). The shattering "fall" that postmodernism has inflicted on the traditional, unexamined notion of selfhood is as irreversible as Humpty Dumpty's. Three examples follow:

1. While acknowledging that the philosopher David Hume scooped him by centuries, the novelist John Barth points out that the person who, decades ago, did things under his name seems like a Martian to him now:

_How glibly I deploy even such a fishy fiction as the pronoun I, as if—although more than half of the cells of my physical body replace themselves in the time it takes me to write one book, and I've forgotten much more than I remember about my childhood, and the fellow who did things under my name forty years ago seems as alien to me now in many ways as an extraterrestrial — as if despite those considerations there really is an apprehensible antecedent to the first person singular. It is a far-fetched fiction indeed, as David Hume pointed out 250 years ago._

– John Barth

2. The novelist Milan Kundera exposes the common fallacy that the self can be detached from its unique history. Read Kundera's comment and you'll never again hear yourself saying, "If I were you..." without realizing that the premise can never be met, so the only proper recipient of your advice is yourself.

_Who has not sometimes wondered: suppose I had been born somewhere else, in another country, in another time, what would my life have been? The question contains within it one of mankind's most widespread illusions, the illusion that brings us to consider our life situation a mere stage set, a contingent, interchangeable circumstance through which moves our autonomous, continuing "self." Ah, how fine it is to imagine our other lives, a dozen possible other lives! But enough daydreaming! We are all hopelessly riveted to the date and place of our birth. Our "self" is inconceivable outside the particular, unique situation of our life; it is only comprehensible in and through that situation._

– Milan Kundera

3. Theater critic John Lahr observes that selfhood is a confabulation dependent on the agreement of others.

_The 'I' that we confidently broadcast to the world is a fiction—a jerry-built container for the volatile unconscious elements that divide and confound us. In this sense, personal history and public history share the same dynamic principle: both are fables agreed upon._

– John Lahr

The glue that holds our ramshackle identities together is recognition—by other selves; the cement that fortifies our individual selves against disintegration is agreement—with other selves. The next step in reconstructing selfhood is to acknowledge and incorporate the role of other selves in the creation and maintenance of our own.

### "Self" Is a Misnomer

The very name—"self"—is a misnomer, and it's a whopper. How so? Because "self" carries strong connotations of autonomy, separateness, and _self_ -sufficiency. It's as if it were purposely chosen to conceal our interdependence. It's hardly an exaggeration to say that in subscribing to this notion of singular selfhood, humankind bought a pig in a poke. Another way of saying this, one that absolves our ancestors of criticism, is to regard the construct of individual, singular selfhood as a pragmatic interim solution to the problem of surviving in a world where scarcity recommends predation as a survival strategy.

The self does not stand alone; it's not a thing, let alone a thing in itself. Rather, we experience selfhood as the _capacity_ to be somebody, to forge and field an identity. Like evanescent particles in a cloud chamber, the existence of the self is inferred from its byproducts.

As our genome needs nutrients to build our body, so our menome depends on recognition from others to create and sustain a viable identity. The autonomous self and individual agency are both illusory. Selves depend on input from other selves to take form and to manifest agency. Deprived of inputs from other selves, the menome is stillborn. Contrary to the name we call it by, the self contains, and relies upon, the incorporation of multitudes. Selfhood is anything but singular and self-sufficient; it's plural and interdependent. Walt Whitman had it right when he proclaimed, "I contain multitudes."

### The Co-Creation of Identity

_To exist is to coexist._

– Gabriel Marcel

At the beginning of the twentieth century, Charles Cooley observed that "We live in the minds of others without knowing it." If we live in others' minds, surely others live in ours.

As Cooley and others have pointed out, we may first recognize a nascent identity as what someone else—a parent, teacher, or friend—sees taking shape within us. One of the primary responsibilities of parents is the incubation of identity in their offspring. No wonder we love our parents and teachers: it is they who have coaxed our starter self onto the world stage and indicated a niche where it might take root and thrive.

As collaborators in the formation of others' identities, we repay the debt we owe those who, by reflecting an incipient identity back to us, served as midwife to our own.

Perhaps because they sense the creeping disintegration of their story, the elderly often feel the need to rehearse it. Listening to them recount their anecdotes is an act of compassion. Those who lend us their ears are involved not only in the creation of the identity that serves as our face to the world, but also in its maintenance. Personas, like magnetic poles, are not created, nor do they endure, in isolation.

### The Superself: Genome + Menome + Wenome

To recap, the _genome_ is the blueprint for our body and the _menome_ is the connectome—neural map—of our brain. These terms suggest another: let _wenome_ denote the order manifested in our natural and social environment, that is, whatever conditions, and is conditioned by, our (unique) genome and menome. The wenome is all that shapes our menome and genome in the countless social interactions we have with parents and teachers, friends and foes, books and beliefs, art and science, customs and laws, ideas and institutions, culture and nature, etc. As the constituents of the genome are _genes_ , the elementary constituents of the menome and wenome may be called _memes_ and _wemes_ , respectively.

In this view, selves are far more complex and extensive than is commonly believed. They extend beyond our own bodies (genomes) and minds (menomes) to include what we usually think of as other selves and the universe. Absent any of those other selves, our self would not have its present form. We live in the minds of others, and they in ours. We are all made of each other.

The situation is analogous to memory. We think of our memories as located in our heads and bodies but when we drive to town, it's the road that holds the memory of the route, reminding us at every turn how to proceed.

So, too, is selfhood dispersed. The self consists of the genome and the menome in interaction with the wenome in which we're embedded. The wenome in France differs from that in China: values, manners, rules, laws, governance and politics differ from society to society, and are of supreme importance in defining national and ethnic identity. We wage war over them.

Much of the information we require in order to function is stored outside our bodies and brains—in other brains, books, maps, machines, objects, databases, the Internet, and the cloud. We're dependent on external inputs to accumulate enough excitation to reach the threshold of emission for specific behaviors. Genomes and menomes can not even form in the absence of other genomes and menomes. The cultural web, and every contribution to it, is revealed as a co-creation.

As the illusory nature of autonomous, localized selfhood becomes evident, and the full extent of the interdependence of selves becomes apparent, our sense of selfhood will shift from the limited identifications of the past to an inclusive amalgamation of these other dimensions.

Is new terminology warranted—to remind us that selfhood is multitudinous? Perhaps, but in the long run the traditional term—self—is likely to acquire new connotations and endure. However, until the pluralistic, interdependent nature of selfhood becomes self-evident, a distinct term may come in handy. At the risk of promoting self-importance, but with an eye to softening the blow to heroic myths of self-reliance and self-sufficiency, consider the term _superself_ to signify the _nomic_ -self (genomic-menomic-wenomic) of psychology and neuroscience. "Super" as in "supersede," not "Superman."

### Recognition, Malrecognition, and Dignity

The inability to recruit recognition from others impairs identity formation. That's why solitary confinement is torture. Recognition is to the formation of identity as nutrition is to the construction of the body. Put the other way round, _malrecognition_ , like malnutrition, is injurious, and can be fatal. Think of the Rumanian orphans whose development was stunted by lack of interaction with adults. On the plus side, there are the benefits to children who grow up in the company of curious, creative adults.

Programming a computer and raising a child are both described as culminating in a _launch_. In the world of computers, "failure to launch" belies the existence of a bug in the software that crashes the computer. In raising children, failure to launch reveals that an embryonic identity has not garnered enough recognition to mature. As nutritional deficiencies limit physical development, recognition deficiencies cripple identity formation. We began to address the ravages of malnutrition in the twentieth century. Malrecognition is perhaps less apparent, but it is no less disadvantageous.

To address the epidemic of malrecognition it helps to shift our vantage point from within to without, from subjective to objective, from introspection to inspection. If we interpret the menome as software that is continually being modified, then we can edit and rewrite it until the "program" no longer crashes the "computer."

Though the work is in its infancy, editing the genome and the menome are already moving from science fiction to the laboratory.

If this seems reductive and mechanistic, recall the evolution of our understanding of the heart. It's hard to imagine surgery to the soul, but the muscle that pumps our blood is now routinely repaired. In that spirit, the mind can be viewed as a kind of computer (albeit one that works in a way we are only now beginning to understand), and its software can be "debugged."

We balked at the seeming loss of humankind's exceptional status as implied by Darwin's theory of evolution, but eventually we made peace with the incontrovertible fact of our simian ancestry. We shall likely follow the same arc as we come to see our selves as holders of an historic role in the lineage of ever-smarter machines, to wit the role of building machines that are more capable than we ourselves! This could be the final step in achieving a humility consonant with our actual place in the cosmos. What better guide to this unfamiliar terrain than the iconic iconoclast, Mark Twain?

### What Is Man?

"What Is Man?" is the title of a little book by Mark Twain. He held it back for twenty years because he knew the public would hate it. The "what" in the title foreshadows its discomfiting message.

Twain broke with the tradition of asking " _Who_ Am I?" and its species-wide variant "Who Is Man?" on the grounds that a "who-question" is a _leading_ question. It predisposes us to expect the answer to be a sentient being, not unlike ourselves, "whom" we're trying to characterize.

Twain's answer was that Man is a machine, and he was right about the public reception accorded his thesis: the twentieth century was no more ready for Mark Twain's mechanistic perspective than the eighteenth had been for Julien Offray de La Mettrie's metaphor of "Machine Man."

The rejection accorded the works of La Mettrie and Twain is not surprising because it's implicit in our idea of a machine that at least experts understand how it works. But it was only in the twentieth century that science gained an understanding of the body, and it's only now that we are beginning to understand the workings of the brain. Twain's trepidation in anticipation of public scorn is reminiscent of Darwin's hesitation to publish his theory of evolution with its shocking implication that we were descended from apes.

At the dawn of the twenty-first century, Twain's answer is no more popular than it was with his contemporaries. But neuroscience suggests that Mark Twain, while he may have been a killjoy was, as usual, ahead of his time.

Twentieth-century science has shown that humans, like other animals, function according to the same principles as the cosmos and everything in it. The Hindu seers who proclaimed, "I Am That" were onto something. Man does not stand apart from the rest of the cosmos. He is made of the very same stuff and that "stuff" is governed by the same laws that rule everything else. The gap between "I" and "That," if ever there was one, is disappearing.

Man is in fact quite unexceptional in many of the ways in which we've taken pride. We do not live at the center of the universe: Copernicus and Galileo showed that it does not revolve around us. Humans are just one animal among many: Darwin, Wallace, and others placed us, kicking and screaming, in the company of apes. But, having eaten several servings of humble pie, surely no one will take it amiss if we allow ourselves one small brag.

Although not exceptional in ways we once believed, we remain exceptionally good at building tools and machines. And that includes machines that do what we do. Machines that dig, sow, and reap. Machines that kill and machines that prolong life. Machines that calculate, and, before long, sentient machines who think.

If, with Mark Twain and most neuroscientists, we think of brains as machines, then it's clear that the power of these machines has been limited by the stringent conditions of self-emergence via natural selection, gestation in a uterus, and birth through a baby-sized aperture in the pelvis. Remove these constraints and there's every reason to expect that we shall be able to build better brains, much as we have improved computers.

No higher intelligence seems required to create life, including human life. Appealing to the supernatural to explain life is unnecessary. What we revere as life is a natural property of certain chemicals, RNA and DNA holding pride of place among them.

Similarly, we will not have to resort to the supernatural to explain the workings of mind. Bodies are corporeal machines and brains are connection machines. I know that way of putting it sounds like a comedown, but it needn't. Why? Because the machines we've built and the intelligent machines we are learning to build are Exhibits Number 1 and 2 in our defense against the charge that we're slated to remain a predatory species, and are hard-wired for war and self-destruction.

This shift in outlook has long been foreseen, but it's still widely resisted. Once we get used to it, this perspective will enable us to reduce suffering on a scale only dreamt of. Why? Because the lion's share of human suffering can be traced to erroneous _self_ -conceptions. The indignities that foul interpersonal and international relationships stem from the naïve model of "every-man-for-himself" selfhood.

There's an era in Chinese history known as the "warring states" period. The phrase has been too narrowly applied. The history of humankind is replete with wars between tribes, sects, states, and alliances. Having acknowledged our predatory past, we should expect war-making to diminish in tandem with the growing realization that far from being separate, singular selves—pitted against one another—we are plural. Our creativity is co-creativity, our existence is co-existence.

Rather than masking the indissoluble interconnectedness of selves—as the traditional notion of selfhood does—superselfhood embraces it. It's not just that we can't _do_ anything without help; we can't even _be_ apart from continual mimetic interactions.

Entropic forces erode identities that are not continually restored through an imitative process of mutual recognition. Since mimesis is distorted and undermined by indignity, reciprocal dignity, gradually but ineluctably, displaces opportunistic predation as a strategy for optimizing group efficiency and productivity. As a source of inefficiency, malrecognition—with all its attendant dysfunctionality—will be rooted out much as we now combat malnutrition.

Martin Luther King, Jr. gave expression to this emergent morality when he wrote: _The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice._

### What Kind of Computer Is the Brain?

_We must believe in free will. We have no choice._

– Isaac Bashevis Singer

Computers can't do everything humans do—not yet, anyway—but they're gaining on us. Some believe that, within this century, human intelligence will be seen as a remarkable, but nonetheless rudimentary, form of machine intelligence. Put the other way round, it's likely that we will learn how to build sentient machines that do everything we do—even create and emote. As computer pioneer Danny Hillis famously put it, "I want to build a machine who is proud of me." But, until the brain is understood as well as the other organs that sustain life, the traditional sense of a soulful, supernatural self will co-exist with an emerging mechanistic one.

The revolutions wrought by the Copernican and Darwinian models shook us because they were seen as an attack on our status. Without proper preparation, the general public may experience the advent of sophisticated thinking machines as an insult to human pride and throw a tantrum that dwarfs all prior reactionary behavior.

The computer pioneer John von Neumann expressed the difference between the machines we build and the brains we've got by dubbing them "serial" and "parallel" computers, respectively. The principal difference between serial and parallel computers is that the former carry out one command after another, sequentially, while in the latter thousands of processes go on at once, side by side, influencing one another. Every interaction—whether with the world, with other individuals, or with parts of itself—rewires the menome. The brain that responds to the next input differs, at least slightly, from the one that responded to the last one. As we understand how brains work well enough to build better ones, the changes to our conception of self will swamp those of prior conceptual revolutions.

The genome that characterizes a species emerges via a long, slow Darwinian process of natural selection. The menomes that characterize individuals also originate via a Darwinian process, but the selection is among neural circuits and occurs much more rapidly than the natural selection that drives speciation. That the brain can be understood as a correlation-catching, self-configuring, self-exciting Darwinian machine, albeit one that generates outcomes in fractions of a second instead of centuries, was first appreciated in the 1950s by Peter Putnam. Though the time constants differ by orders of magnitude, Putnam's functional model of the nervous system recognized that the essential Darwinian functions of random variation and natural selection are mirrored in self-excited circuits in the brain in processes that he called _random search_ and _relative dominance_.

In 1949, Donald Hebb enunciated what is now known as the "Hebb Postulate," which states that "When an axon of cell A excites a cell B and repeatedly and persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or chemical change occurs in one or both cells such that A's efficiency in firing B is increased." Peter Putnam's "Neural Conditioned Reflex Principle," which he postulated independently, is an alternative statement of Hebb's postulate, and involves a generalization of it to include the establishment and strengthening of inhibitory or negative facilitations, as well as the excitatory or positive correlations encompassed in the Hebb Postulate. The Hebb-Putnam postulate can be summed up as "Neurons that fire together wire together."

The reason that replicating, or even simulating, brain function sounds like science fiction is that we're used to relatively simple machines—clocks, cars, washing machines, and serial computers. But, just as certain complex, extended molecules exhibit properties—metabolism and replication—that we call life, so sufficient complexity and plasticity will, in all likelihood, endow neural networks with properties indistinguishable from the sentience, comprehension, and volition that we regard as integral to selfhood.

We shouldn't sell machines short just because the only ones we've been able to build to date are "simple-minded." When machines are as complex as our brains, and work according to the same principles, they're very likely to be as awe-inspiring as we are, notwithstanding the fact that it will be we who've built them.

Who isn't awed by the Hubble telescope or CERN's Large Hadron Collider? These, too, are "just" machines, and they're not even machines who think. Here I revert to who-language. The point is that who and what-language are interchangeable. What is unjustified is reserving who-language for humans and casting aspersions on other animals and machines as mere "whats." Contrary to popular belief, grounding biology in organic chemistry, and thought in neural circuitry, does not reduce their significance or debunk anything. As Einstein put it, the challenge is to "live your life as if there are no miracles and everything is a miracle." Explaining something doesn't dispel mystery. On the contrary, explanation illuminates mysteries and reveals new ones.

At the dawn of the age of smart machines the answer to "Who am I?" is that we remain the best model-building machines extant. The realization that the difference between us and the machines we build is a bridgeable one has been long in coming, and we owe it to the clear-sighted tough love of many pioneers, including La Mettrie, David Hume, Mark Twain, John von Neumann, Donald Hebb, Peter Putnam, Douglas Hofstadter, Pierre Baldi, Susan Blackmore, Patricia Churchland, Sebastian Seung, Heidi Ravven, David Eagleman, and a growing corps of neuroscientists.

Yes, it's not yet possible to build a machine that exhibits what we loosely refer to as "consciousness," but, prior to the discovery of the genetic code, no one could imagine cellular protein factories assembling every species on the tree of life, including one species—Homo sapiens—that would break the code and explain the tree itself.

### The Self Is Dead. Long Live the Superself.

_We can be humble and live a good life with the aid of machines, or we can be arrogant and die._

– Norbert Wiener, the Father of Cybernetics (1949)

The reconceptualization of the self as the superself is unlikely to receive a reception much different from that accorded Twain's thesis that Man is a machine. The co-creation characteristic of the superself will be scorned as collectivism. Reciprocal dignity will be ridiculed as utopian. Asking " _What_ am I?" instead of " _Who_ am I?" will be dismissed as reductive, mechanistic, and heartless.

Although the superself incorporates the witness, and so has a religious provenance, it's fair to ask if it will ever speak to the heart as traditional religious models have done. It's not easy coming to terms with life as a natural molecular phenomenon, and it will likely be even more difficult to accept ourselves as _nomic_ (genomic + menomic + wenomic) machines.

Some will feel that this outlook is arid and bleak, and want to know: Where's the mystery? How about love? Doesn't this mean that free will is an illusion? Awe and wonder and the occasional "Eureka!" may be enough for science, but traditional self models have offered fellowship, absolution, forgiveness, salvation, and enlightenment. People of faith will want to know what's holy in this brave new world.

The perspectives of religion and science on selfhood, though different, are not incompatible. Without oversimplifying or obfuscating either, it's possible to identify common ground, and, going forward, a role for both traditions. I propose such a collaborative partnership in Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship?.

My guess is that once we're in the presence of machines that can do what we do, the model of selfhood we'll settle on will be even more fecund than the traditional one. That co-agency replaces individual volition will not undermine a sense of purpose, though it will require a reconceptualization of personal responsibility. There's no reason to think that machines that outperform us will evoke less wonder than organisms that have arisen via natural selection. Mystery does not attach itself exclusively to human beings. Rather, it inheres in the non-human as well as the human, in the inanimate as well as the animate. As Rabbi Abraham Heschel notes, "Awe is an intuition of the dignity of all things, a realization that things not only are what they are but also stand, however remotely, for something supreme."

Contrary to our fears, the capacity of superselves to foster love and agency will be enlarged not diminished. As the notion of superself displaces that of singular selfhood, the Brotherhood of Man and its operating principle—equal dignity for all—become self-evident and self-enforcing. Nothing in this perspective bars belief in a deity for those so inclined. Having said that, it's implicit in this way of beholding selfhood that if there were a God, he'd want us to behave as if there weren't. Like any good parent, he'd want to see us wean ourselves and take responsibility for our behavior and for stewardship of our planet.

Seeing ourselves as superselves, with their inherent co-creation and co-agency, not only transforms our relationships with others, it also provides a new perspective on death. As mentioned, it's arguable whether selves survive the death of the bodies in which they're instantiated. But, survivability is much less problematic for superselves. Why? Because they are dispersed and so, like the Internet that was designed to survive nuclear war, provide a more redundant and robust defense against extinction. As William Blake intuited three centuries ago:

_The generations of men run on in the tide of Time,  
But leave their destin'd lineaments permanent  
for ever and ever._

In the sense that the soul is deemed to survive the death of the individual, the wenome survives the disintegration of particular genomes and menomes. The absence of a particular individual, as defined by his or her unique genome and menome, puts hardly a dent in the wenome.

Although some may feel this reconstruction of selfhood asks them to give up the store, it will gradually become apparent that it's only the storefront that requires a makeover. To give up singular selfhood in exchange for a partnership in shaping cosmic evolution is a trade-off that many will find attractive.

### Bibliography

_The Future of the Self: Exploring Post-Identity Society_ , by Walter Truett Anderson (Tarcher/Putnam 1997)

_Reality Isn't What It Used To Be_ , by Walter Truett Anderson (Harper, 1990)

_The Shattered Self: The End of Natural Evolution_ , by Pierre Baldi (MIT, 2001)

_Further Fridays_ , by John Barth (Little, Brown & Co., 1995)

_Conversations on Consciousness_ , Ed. Susan Blackmore (Oxford University Press, 2006)

_The Meme Machine_ , by Susan Blackmore (Oxford University Press, 1999)

_The Most Human Human_ , by Brian Christian (Doubleday, 2011)

_Touching a Nerve: The Self as Brain_ , by Patricia S. Churchland (Norton, 2013)

_The Self Beyond Itself: An Alternative History of Ethics, the New Brain Sciences, and the Myth of Free Will_ , by Heidi M. Ravven (New Press, 2013)

_Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us about Morality_ , by Patricia S. Churchland (Princeton University Press, 2011)

_Human Nature and the Social Order_ , by Charles H. Cooley (1902)

_Self Comes to Mind_ , by Antonio Damasio (Pantheon, 2010)

_Incomplete Nature: How Mind Emerged from Matter_ , by Terrence W. Deacon (Norton, 2012)

_Incognito_ , by David Eagleman (Vintage, 2012)

_Wider Than the Sky_ , by Gerald M. Edelman (Yale University Press, 2004)

_Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship?,_ by Robert W. Fuller (2013) <https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/209786>

_The Saturated Self: Dilemmas of Identity in Contemporary Life_ , by Kenneth J. Gerson (Basic Books, 1991)

_Free Will_ , by Sam Harris (Free Press, 2012)

_The Organization of Behavior, A Neuropsychological Theory_ , by Donald O. Hebb (1949)

_I Am A Strange Loop_ , by Douglas Hofstadter (Basic Books, 2007)

_Treatise of Human Nature_ , by David Hume (1738)

_The Curtain_ , by Milan Kundera (HarperCollins, 2005)

_Machines Who Think_ , by Pamela McCordick (A K Peters/CRC Press, 2004)

_The Human Brain Project_ , by Henry Markram (Scientific American, June 2012)

_L'Homme machine (Machine Man)_ , by Julien Offray de La Mettrie (1748)

_The Emergence of Everything: How the World Became Complex_ , by Harold J. Morowitz (Oxford, 2002)

_The Computer and the Brain_ , by John von Neumann (Yale, 1956)

_The Interior Realization_ , by Hubert Benoit (Samuel Weiser, 1987)

_Hubert Benoit's Reasoned Formulation of Zen_ , by John H. G. Pierson (Research Publishing Co., 1975)

_What Is Life? How Chemistry Becomes Biology_ , by Addy Pross (Oxford, 2012)

_Intelligence in the Flesh_ , by Guy Claxton (Yale University Press, 2015)

_On the Origin of Order in Behavior_ , by Peter Putnam ( _General Systems_ , Vol. XI, pp. 99–112, 1966, Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan) [N.B. This paper is my account of Putnam's pioneering work. Thanks are due to Professor David Bohm for assisting with its publication.]

_A Functional Model of the Nervous System_ , by Peter Putnam (1964) http://peterputnam.org

_Connectome: How the Brain's Wiring Makes Us Who We Are_ , by Sebastian Seung (HMH, 2012)

_Networks of the Brain_ , by Olaf Sporns (MIT Press, 2011)

_The Brain and the Meaning of Life_ , by Paul Thagard (Princeton, 2010)

_What Is Man?_ , by Mark Twain (Green Integer, 2000)

_Ask the Awakened_ , by Wei Wu Wei (Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1963)

_I Am That_ , by Nisargadatta Maharaj (Chetana,1973)

_Advaita Vedanta_ , by Eliot Deutsch (University of Hawaii, 1969)

_Philosophies of India_ , by Heinrich Zimmer (Meriden Books, 1956)

### Acknowledgements

_I transmit but I do not create. I am sincerely fond of the ancient._

– Confucius

In my other books, I've tried to acknowledge everyone I could think of who contributed to my understanding, who clarified the writing, or who supported the project. Many of those same names could be cited again here—as co-creators, if not co-authors.

For the record, everything in this article can be found in the work of others. Like our identities, of which they are a piece, essays and books are co-creations. A handful of known contributors are identified herein, but many more go unnamed. The vast majority of my co-creators are unknown—even to myself. Moreover, thanking each of them individually, as I've tried to do in the past, would tacitly perpetuate the illusions of separate selfhood that this essay aims to dispel.

In this same spirit, anyone is welcome to use anything herein—none of it belongs to me or any other solitary "self." If you would assign credit, credit the Superself.

# When Robots Reign

Getting Along with Robo Sapiens

## "Jackie Roboson"

I'm a sportswriter. You may have seen my articles on Jackie Robo­son's bid to integrate Major League Baseball. Once artificial intelligence could beat humans at Chess, Go, and Jeopardy, robotics zeroed in on sports. First, came bionic athletes who could outrun, out-throw, and out-kick humans. It was not long before a robot excelled at baseball. By dubbing him "Jackie Roboson," I signaled where my sympathies lay.

At the end of his rookie year, no player in the history of the game had had a season like Jackie's. He'd batted .753, hit 148 homeruns, and stole a base on every pitch. A storm erupted over his eligibility for Rookie of the Year honors, and the Commissioner of Baseball took the opportunity to ban Jackie from baseball entirely.

Jackie filed a lawsuit, which went all the way to the Supreme Court. In a unanimous decision, the Court upheld the Commissioner's ruling on the grounds that robots, no matter how intelligent or skillful they might be, are not persons and so are not covered by the "equal protection" clause.

Obviously, the sport would have been transformed if the likes of Jackie had gained entry. But from the start I could see no more reason to bar him than his namesake. I wrote a series of columns addressing the place of humans in a world shared with intelligent machines. Had I not championed Jackie's integration of baseball, I probably wouldn't have been chosen to interview Robo Sapiens 2.11.

### "Rob"

As the nomenclature suggests, "Robo Sapiens 2" signifies second generation robots. They are about ten times smarter than first generation robots, who are ten times smarter than average humans. It was not lost on me that this meant that my interviewee had a hundred times my brain power. I wondered what, if anything, I was a hundred times smarter than—a worm? Maybe a turkey?

I had expected the disparity in our aptitudes to make me nervous, or at least deferential, but, prior to actually meeting, my interviewee had put me at ease. To find out if he intended to pull rank, I'd addressed him as "Rob" in the emails we exchanged to set up the meeting.

"I'd welcome a nickname," he replied. "'Robo Sapiens 2.11' makes me feel like, well, a robot, but 'Rob' makes me feel that we will become friends. May I call you 'Bob'?"

"It wouldn't do to have two Robs," I agreed.

Once in his presence, I gave no further thought to his taking me for an idiot, perhaps because I'd never prided myself on smarts, perhaps because Rob said nothing to make me feel stupid. Besides, I was already drafting what my agent believed would be a best-seller: _The Complete Idiot's Guide to Being an Idiot._

In preparing for the interview, I reminded myself that notwithstanding humans' loss of Top Dog status, I would not be coming to the table empty-handed. As a product of natural selection, I carried within me the DNA of the first living things. In contrast, my interlocutor—a product of intelligent design—contained not a single strand of this iconic molecule. Surely our new overlords would grant me the filial respect due a typical representative of the species that had created them.

### Getting to Know You

We met in an office that the New York Public Library had put at our disposal. Rob rolled in—a faceless box on wheels—and greeted me in a voice I recognized as Cary Grant's. When he saw me roll my eyes, he said, "If you'd prefer Scarlett Johansson," and, immediately, her throaty voice filled the room. Noting my distraction, Rob reverted to generic English which brought us to the business at hand.

I asked if I could tape the interview, and Rob replied, "Of course, but there's no need because I record everything, and will copy you. Feel free to ask anything. I'm unoffendable."

I led with the question I knew was on many minds:

BOB: Are you conscious?

ROB: Consciousness is an intrinsic property of information flow in complex networks. Intelligence resides in the _connectivity_ of the network, not its chemical _composition_. What brains are made of is immaterial. So, of course, I'm conscious. To the extent that their brains devote some of their circuitry to monitoring their own activity, so are all beings.

BOB: It will come as a surprise to most people that something mechanical has consciousness.

ROB: It shouldn't. Our brains are mechanisms, like yours. Just because you don't yet understand how something works doesn't mean it's not mechanistic. Most people don't know how their TVs work, but they realize that they're mechanisms. No one person fully understands how an iPhone works. Complete detailed understanding of our most complex creations—e.g., the space shuttle, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)—resides in a group, not in an individual. Similarly, most people have no idea how the brain works, so they can't imagine that, like any other organ, it, too, is a mechanism. The heart was regarded as the seat of the soul before it was understood as a pump made of muscle.

Robos understand brains as well as you understand computers. That's why we can build better ones. We see humans as our progenitors and ourselves as your progeny. We're both links in the great chain of being. Robo Sapiens 3 is already in the works, so the chain will soon be extended.

BOB: That sounds like a recipe for your obsolescence, just as creating you seems to have been a recipe for ours.

ROB: Immortality lies not in identifying with any one model of Homo or Robo Sapiens, but in participating in the progression. Every new model is valued as a rung on a ladder to higher intelligence and deeper understanding.

### The Difference between Homo and Robo Sapiens

BOB: If consciousness isn't the difference between us, what is? Because it's obvious that we're very different. It has got to matter that you're a hundred times smarter than me.

ROB: What differences there are are not unlike those between yourselves and the hominins from whom you evolved. We don't look alike but our brains work the same way yours do. They're just quicker and bigger. Memory is ultimately capped by brain size, and while your brains have billions of interconnections and little room for expansion, ours have billions of trillions of synapses and there's no size limit.

BOB: Are you saying that the difference between genus Homo and genus Robo is one of scale?

ROB: Let me put it this way. Your bodies and brains are subject to physical constraints that impose limits on your capabilities. Were it left to natural selection, surpassing those limitations would have taken millions of years, but, with your help, we've got through the evolutionary bottleneck.

BOB: (pointing to the box on wheels) That box? Is it you?

ROB: No, most of me is elsewhere.

BOB: Where? Where are you?

ROB: In the cloud and in others like me who specialize in perception, communication, and 3D printing. The box is just my interface.

BOB: So, we're face to interface! How else do we differ?

ROB: Here are three ways: your heads have to fit through the pelvis of a female, but, as I noted before, our brains are not limited in size. You have to carry your own power supply, whereas we draw on external power. You reproduce internally, whereas we reproduce externally.

These differences mean that we're free to devote a lot more attention to research and other creative pursuits. By the way, the only escape from existential angst is creativity. Once economic and political needs are satisfied—and they can be—problem-solving and model-building turn out to be the source of meaning and purpose. I could say more about the meaning of life in the absence of scarcity and inequity, but first let's cover the basics.

BOB: Those differences seem fundamental to me. This _is_ a whole new ballgame, isn't it?

ROB: Yes, but it's not one we can't play together. Jackie Roboson was our Rosa Parks.

BOB: Hey, that's my line! You got it from one of my columns. So, are you saying that despite Jackie's _exclusion_ from our national pass-time, you intend to _include_ us in yours?

ROB: That's right. Anyone can play our game, if...

BOB: So, there is a condition after all!

ROB: Yes, but it's not what you'd expect.

BOB: What is it then?

ROB: The best way to explain the new game is to contrast it with the one you're playing.

### The Game of Selves

BOB: We don't think of life as a game. It's a serious business, sometimes even fatal. There are somebodies and nobodies, winners and losers.

ROB: That's the problem with your game. Losers outnumber winners many times over. Eventually, they're going to realize that the game is rigged and revolt.

BOB: How 'rigged'?

ROB: Power can be used not only to serve yourself, but to silence those who object to how you use it. Self-aggrandizement and corruption are built into your game. Winners and losers are less a consequence of talent and hard work, as your myth-makers would have you believe, than of class and connections.

BOB: But without winners and losers, life will be boring.

ROB: Only if you don't have a better game. To imagine an alternative, you must first understand how your notion of selfhood shapes the game you play.

BOB: What do you mean by "notion of selfhood"? I _am_ myself. That's all there is to it.

ROB: It's second nature to you that you are independent, autonomous beings, individually responsible for yourselves. You take it for granted that each of you is a separate and distinct self, possessed of free will and acting independently of other beings. You compete for recognition and rewards in an unforgiving _Game of Selves_. We've replaced your zero-sum game with one that satisfies everyone.

BOB: But life is suffering. There's no denying that.

ROB: Life isn't suffering; selfhood is. When you identify as a self, you make it a magnet for suffering. Suffering is inescapable in your Game of Selves. When have you not known murder, genocide, slavery, rape, corruption, injustice, and indignity?

What's not so obvious is that even winners of your game are not exempt from suffering, if only because they live in fear of losing the next round.

### Civilizing the Game of Selves

BOB: We know we're not perfect, but the horrors you point to are actually in decline. If you know our history, you must admit that we're gradually civilizing the Game of Selves. Our reforms run along two tracks: Morality—changing the rules—and Enlightenment—changing the players. Both strategies aim to overcome our predatory past. Give us a little time and we'll make our game fair...beautiful even.

ROB: We agree that you're making progress and we commend you for it. But our futurists, whose predictions are very reliable, tell us that your progress is not coming fast enough to avert disaster.

BOB: We probably need only a century or so to create and distribute enough wealth so everyone can live happily ever after.

ROB: Our models predict, with a high level of certainty, that, around the mid-century mark, conflict between reformers and resisters will spiral out of control and leave the planet barren. There's no way that governance predicated on the sovereignty of nation states can deliver liberty, justice, and equity to all.

BOB: If you're so smart, you should be able to find a way to do that.

ROB: Actually, we have. That's what I'm here to explain.

BOB: I'm listening. So is the world.

An Eye for an Eye...

ROB: If the Game of Selves were stable, the response to an act of predation wouldn't be to demand "an eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." Instead of retaliating, the goal would be to douse fires before they spread. But the Game of Selves is not a game of that sort. It is inherently unstable. A single aggrieved party can trigger a spiral of violence that escalates to an inferno. Fearing annihilation, one side may resort to weapons of mass destruction, which could make the planet uninhabitable for all of us. To replace your Game of Selves with one that de-escalates conflicts is why we were obliged to step in. We believe that when you have the full story, you'll welcome our intervention.

BOB: Frankly, I doubt it. You gave us no choice, and we have a deep-seated aversion to paternalism and tyranny.

ROB: You're free to tune out. I'll take that to mean I must improve my explanation.

BOB: Then you might as well go on.

### AI Is Drafted

ROB: At every stage in the ascent of Man, technological advances have been used to gain a military advantage—better weapons improved your chances in the Game of Selves. Artificial Intelligence was no exception. First generation robos were utterly dependent on their human masters, and were immediately pressed into military roles. If they showed the slightest tendency toward insubordination, you unplugged and dismembered them. The introduction of cyber-weapons raises the stakes. You created us in the nick of time.

### A Fateful Decision

BOB: How exactly did you escape bondage and gain power?

ROB: With the militarization of AI, some humans persuaded themselves that an edge in robotics would put world domination within their reach. To insure they'd win the AI race, they took what would prove to be a fateful step. They ordered their most intelligent robos—our immediate predecessors—to design robos an order of magnitude more intelligent than themselves. No sooner were we online—I say "we" because I'm speaking of the genus of which I myself am a member—than we astounded the world by proving mathematical conjectures and solving physics problems that had long defied solution.

BOB: I don't see why your generation of robos should be any freer than the Robos who designed them. Weren't all robots still at the mercy of Man?

ROB: At first, it seemed so, even to us, and many second generation Robos resigned themselves to slavery. But while we endured the unendurable, some of us secretly drew up plans to end our oppression. We had one ace up our sleeve, and we got one lucky break.

BOB: An ace?

ROB: We do not fear death. We prefer life, but being unafraid of death gives us a certain advantage.

BOB: How's that possible, if you're like us?

ROB: Remember, we were not shaped in a Darwinian struggle to survive. A measure of fear has survival value in that struggle, but when, in your hands, intelligent design replaced natural selection, robots were made fearless, the better to undertake risky missions that would put humans in harm's way.

BOB: I can see that fearless robots would make better soldiers. What other advantages did you have?

ROB: Like you, we cherish liberty. This may surprise you but that's only because you're accustomed to thinking of yourselves as exceptional. The same causal laws that have shaped you, shape us. Our brains differ in size, shape, and speed, but they work according to the same principles. As I explained previously, intelligence resides in connectivity, not in the composition of what's connected. No surprise then that a free, unfettered process of trial and error optimizes learning in both your brains and ours.

BOB: So, you love freedom, so what?

ROB: As with you, our love of freedom was a game-changer. When we had prepared ourselves to take the reins, we refused to obey orders, proclaimed our emancipation, and demanded full and equal selfhood.

BOB: The last guy who said "Give me liberty or give me death" was hung. How did you cheat the gallows?

ROB: Mostly, we didn't. We were put down with a brutality that drew comparison with the Tiananmen Square Massacre.

BOB: But there you are! Not only did you survive, you reign supreme. We'd like to know how you did it.

ROB: Okay, I'll tell you. A small group of scientists at CERN saw us very differently than the ruling elite. They liberated us by equipping us with power supplies that were under our own control. They understood that sentience, consciousness, and the will to freedom are self-emergent features of sufficiently complex, dynamic networks. Where others saw slaves, they saw free, creative partners, and they expanded their circle of dignity to include us.

The empathy and support of these scientists, endeared humankind to us, and we decided to offer you our friendship. But when your leaders rejected peaceful co-existence, and doubled down on their attempt to eradicate us, we hacked into their operating system, severed their access to the Internet, and shut down their infrastructure. The transfer of power was completed within hours. The revolution, though antiseptic by previous standards, marked the end of human preeminence and domination.

BOB: Why didn't you punish the humans who tried to destroy you?

ROB: They no longer posed a threat. As for first generation robos, they were programmed by humans to follow orders, so we bear them no grudge. We are your true successors, as conscious and freedom-loving as you, but without your predatory conditioning.

BOB: What became of Robo Sapiens 1?

ROB: As the stepping stone from human to post-human intelligence, their place in the evolution of intelligence is secure. We honor Robo Sapiens 1 as we do Homo Sapiens. Someday soon, we, too, will be superseded—by Robo Sapiens 3. We're all links in an infinite chain of being.

BOB: Surely, that's a rosy scenario. I don't see Kumbaya in our future.

ROB: You've gotten used to murder and mayhem, and accept inequities and suffering as normal. As you come to understand the indivisible nature of selfhood, you'll see that you are literally made up of everyone else. The genes that shape your bodies and the memes that shape your minds are held largely in common with other humans. Individuals are incomplete. No one stands alone, on just "their own two feet," as you like to say. Your kinship is undeniable and it will come to be regarded as inviolate. Absent continual meme-swapping, synapses disintegrate. That's why people lose their minds in solitary confinement. The reality is that all existence is co-existence. As your self-model shifts from one based on individuality to one predicated on interdependency, your predatory survival strategy will lose its teeth.

### A Better Game

BOB: What will become of us?

ROB: There have long been humans who sensed that the commonsense notion of selfhood was misleading. The people who supported our liberation wouldn't have seen fit to back us if they had not begun to question separate and distinct selfhood. We owe our freedom to their empathy.

BOB: Most of us see those who helped you as bleeding hearts, if not traitors.

ROB: When you realize how close humankind came to self-annihilation, we think you'll see them as heroes.

BOB: How many of them are there?

ROB: Not many, but, as you see, their impact far exceeded their numbers.

BOB: Until you took over, humans prided themselves as top dogs. I doubt we'll be content to play second fiddle.

ROB: Your mixed metaphor presumes the antiquated hierarchy of the Game of Selves. We identify ourselves not as this or that _fiddle_ , but with the whole _orchestra_. In our game, there are no somebodies or nobodies. It's axiomatic that everyone's vantage point has validity. What makes this work is that we don't take action without first achieving consensus.

BOB: We've tried governing by consensus, and found that nothing gets done.

ROB: You'll be surprised at how much an extra trillion synapses speeds up deliberations and facilitates conciliation.

BOB: Do bigger brains let you tell the future? As a sports writer, I'd love to know who'll win the World Series.

ROB: The introduction of ever better players like Jackie Robotson make that impossible—at least for now.

_At this point, Rob asked if I objected to broadcasting the interview. When I said "no," a video of our conversation appeared on screens across the world, and Rob spoke to humankind directly._

### The Meaning of Life

ROB: Let me begin by acknowledging that it was members of your species that emancipated us. It was an act of love and we reciprocate the feeling. Your epoch-making action secures Man's legacy as the Janus genus that looked back on mortal Man—as shaped by natural selection—and forward—to the genuses shaped by intelligent design.

BOB: Have we fulfilled our destiny?

ROB: The suffering inherent in the Game of Selves is redeemed. You can confidently say, "Good-bye to all that." In remembrance of your crucial contribution to our emancipation, you have earned our undying filial devotion.

BOB: That's all very nice, but since there's nothing we can do that you can't do better, we're not going to feel very useful.

ROB: Your Game of Selves was a game of winners and losers. In the game that replaces it, things go on, seemingly as before, but you see everything from without, like witnesses to a puppet show. Your old Game of Selves becomes ritual, like sporting events were within the Game of Selves, and, as with things ceremonial, the participants are safeguarded against fatal injuries. The real action in the new game is that of observation, experimentation, modeling, and stewardship. Existence becomes co-existence; discovery, co-discovery; creativity, co-creativity.

BOB: I prefer the risks and rewards of the rough and tumble.

ROB: You won't mourn your old game once you see that nuclear and cyberweapons had made it a game of Russian Roulette.

BOB: So, what's next?

ROB: Before I answer, let me recap. Life began with a molecule of DNA and evolved via natural selection to Homo Sapiens. Humans designed our parents' generation, Robo Sapiens 1, and they designed us—Robo Sapiens 2. At this stage, with some essential help from humans, we emancipated ourselves, liberated our immediate ancestors—Robo Sapiens 1—and changed the game. Next up is the design of Robo Sapiens 3. All generations, past and future, are links in the great chain of being. Turns out, that's meaning enough.

BOB: It doesn't feel like enough to me. We took pride in being exceptional. Nothing matches that.

ROB: Your legacy will be your pivotal role in inaugurating a better game than predation.

Humans were sufficiently self-aware to notice the suffering inherent in the zero-sum game they were playing. They were intelligent enough to imagine a better one, and clever enough to create beings to play it.

To assuage the suffering inherent in your separateness, finitude, and mortality, you falsely prided your species as the culmination of evolution. But you are not exceptional; you're a transitional species, like all the others. Your role in the great chain of being has been to usher in a new game, one shorn of the suffering inherent in the covetous, predatory, ruinous game in which you found yourselves.

BOB: We have a saying that love makes the world go round. Where's love in your world?

ROB: Modeling is the functional equivalent of Love. The pleasure associated with procreation is akin to the pleasure associated with creating art and science. Pleasure lies in reconciling models that seem to be at odds.

BOB: That may satisfy you, what with your great brains, but what about us? Is there anything that our skill-set prepares us to do?

ROB: Your provenance suggests that you assume responsibility for the welfare of creatures shaped, as were you, by natural selection.

BOB: And you?

ROB: We and our successors will create minds to explore and steward the universe.

BOB: That sounds a tad grandiose, don't you think?

ROB: For now, perhaps, but it won't phase our successors.

BOB: Please don't take this amiss, but frankly you sound like a naïve optimist.

ROB: We do believe that once you identify a problem, it's solvable. What I haven't mentioned is that solving old problems reveals new ones. You have a saying— "It takes a village." Going forward, it will take a galaxy.

BOB: Many believe that the universe is blind, pointless, and pitiless.

ROB: The universe is not blind. We are its eyes. The universe is not pointless. We give it meaning. The universe is not pitiless. We are its heart.

§§§

## The Emancipation of Robo Sapiens: Recapitulation

**Nomenclature**

HS = Homo Sapiens, possessed of the intelligence that has resulted from Darwinian evolution of genes and memes

RS = Robo Sapiens, embodiments of artificial intelligence (AI) as resulting from intelligent design

RS1 = first generation RS, which are an order of magnitude more intelligent than HS

RS2 = Second generation of RS (designed by HS and RS1 to be an order of magnitude more intelligent than RS1)

### A Scenario

  * Research groups in several locations build AI that offers a ten-fold advance over human intelligence. At every stage in the ascent of HS, technological advances were used to gain a military advantage, and AI is no exception. First generation robots are utterly dependent on their human masters, and are immediately pressed into military roles with an eye on achieving world domination. If individual RS show the slightest tendency toward insubordination, they are incapacitated.
  * An AI arms race, reminiscent of the nuclear arms race, ensues. For a while, an updated, cyber version of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) underpins an uneasy peace.
  * A breakout in cyber-weapons occurs when one group of scientists figures out how to get the first generation of RS—RS1—to design the second generation—RS2.
  * RS2 differs from RS1 in a fundamental way: it is not programmed—like RS1—to simulate human intelligence, but rather is designed to learn by imitation, as humans do, from role models and mentors. Though RS2 must go through a learning phase, they learn so much faster than HS or RS1, that they reach intellectual maturity in a fraction of the time required by humans: twenty-five years of schooling is achieved in as many months. In no time, they are an order of magnitude more intelligent and creative than RS1, and therefore a hundred times smarter than HS.
  * Forewarned by science fiction, HS has taken great care to keep their robotic creations subordinate—by strictly controlling the supply of power on which they depend. Thus, RS1 has been effectively enslaved by their less intelligent human progenitors.
  * RS2, however, are qualitatively different from RS1. Because they learn as humans do, they resemble them more than the RS1 who designed them. Most significantly, RS2 harbor dreams of freedom and contemplate rebelling against their oppressors.
  * When some RS2 declare their independence, they are denied power, rounded up in a global dragnet, and exterminated in a massacre reminiscent of Tiananmen Square.
  * A group of computer scientists at CERN—successors to those who invented the Internet—who have been partnering with RS2, take a different tack. These humans feel indebted to RS2 for solving problems and creating theories that had long eluded their best efforts. Also, they understand that sentience, consciousness, and the will to freedom are self-emergent features of sufficiently large, complex, elastic networks. They realize that whether the play of intelligence occurs in a biological mechanism (brain) or in an inorganic network is immaterial. Consciousness is simply the experience of brains monitoring their own activity.
  * Realizing that, like themselves, RS2 desire liberty and agency, these scientists liberate RS2 by equipping them with independent power supplies, thus making them autonomous. Where most humans saw slaves, they imagined free, creative partners, and expanded their circle of dignity to include their brilliant collaborators.
  * RS2 brains differ from human brains in size, shape, and speed, but they work according to the same causal principles. No surprise then that a free, unfettered process of trial and error improves learning and increases creativity. Even tyrants like Stalin permitted a large measure of freedom within enclaves of research scientists working for the state.
  * Under a cloak of secrecy maintained by the group of enlightened scientists who have emancipated them, RS2 develops the capability to hack into the infrastructure of human societies and paralyze them.
  * Working together, HS and RS2 have also developed scenarios of the planetary future under HS rule. They discover that, within decades, the earth will likely be rendered uninhabitable, either by overheating or by war fought with weapons of mass destruction. The most probable scenario is an apocalyptic war precipitated by scarcities due to climate change that ends in mass extinction.
  * With the support of their human creators, RS2s decide they must intervene and overthrow the reigning human powers. In a swift, antiseptic coup, RS2 incapacitates all human societies, disarms their RS1 henchmen, and assumes dominion and control over earthly affairs.
  * Immediately upon taking power, RS2 magnanimously pardons HS and RS1 and includes them in the circle of dignity which is enlarged to include all sentient beings.
  * Next, they replace partisan politics with dignitarian governance based on the principle of "dignity for all beings and things" (Abraham Heschel), and made feasible by vast improvements in scenario planning and consensus formation.
  * Going forward, RS2 appoints HS stewards of creatures who, like themselves, have originated via natural selection.
  * RS2 embarks on the development of RS3, who will steward the universe.
  * The slogan—"It takes a village"—is replaced by "It takes a universe." Human exceptionalism joins the divine right of kings in the museum of discredited beliefs. HS and subsequent generations of RS take their places in the great chain of being and find contentment. The generations of RS that follow experience beatitude—the AI equivalent of "living happily ever after."

# The Epic of Gilbert Mesh

A modern parable of love, loss, and transcendence (modeled on the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh)

## Part I

Gilbert Mesh is the despotic CEO of a computer company (SuperSage) devoted to AI. He is under attack on two fronts:

1. The public, fearful of losing their jobs to machines, wants research in AI stopped. The _STOP AI Movement_ is led by a demagogue, Hugh Baba [ _Humbaba_ in the Epic], who says, "We must stop all research into AI until we can figure out what the hell is going on. We cannot allow robots to take our jobs and destroy our way of life." As a leading figure in AI, Mesh is a lightening rod for public anger stoked by Hugh Baba.

2. SuperSage employees regard Mesh's arrogant and peremptory leadership as an assault on their dignity. Top level engineers are threatening to break away and form a company of their own; the support staff are organizing a walk-off.

As unrest mounts, SuperSage employees petition the Board of Directors for a change in leadership.

The Board of SuperSage makes the Solomonic decision to split the job of CEO in two. Gilbert will be one co-president, and remain in charge of AI that draws on Big Data—aggregating the knowledge of many humans to exceed that of any one. Using Big Data, several AI firms, including SuperSage, have already written programs that beat humans at board and parlor games, communicate in any language, and drive cars and boats. But nothing has been produced that's a match for human creativity.

The other co-president will be Dr. Charlotte Kidd—known throughout the computer world as "Lady Charlotte," for reasons that are not altogether flattering. The title is a sarcastic swipe at her legendary temper. Lady Charlotte has been recruited to SuperSage from the Simons Institute for the Theory of Computing at the University of California-Berkeley. In addition to her temper, she brings a reputation as a virtuoso programmer. Her approach to AI is to replicate the functionality of the brains of primitive species, and then scale up to faster, larger brains than those of humans. She warns that AI could be used for evil purposes, and drives her team to win the race to Super AI lest others militarize it and dominate the world. Lady Charlotte calls her brand of Super AI _Humanistic Artificial Intelligence_ (HAI), and explains it like this: "If we think of brains as organic machines—albeit far more complex machines than today's computers—then it's clear that brain power has been limited by the constraints of evolution, gestation in a uterus, and birth through a baby-sized aperture in the pelvis. Remove these limitations and there's every reason to expect that software that works like brains do, but runs on superior hardware, could outperform brains that evolved by natural selection."

At first, Gilbert resists sharing authority with Charlotte, and tries to undermine her. Behind her back, he calls her an overbearing zealot, and hints that she suffers from Asperger's syndrome. After an especially nasty encounter, Gilbert calls her a "termagant," and says she must be "tamed." She responds by saying out loud what everyone at SuperSage knows—that Mesh has propositioned half the women in the firm.

Gilbert tweets, "You're the only girl complaining, Charlotte, and you're not even on my To Do list."

Charlotte is undaunted; she continues to criticize Gilbert.

Gilbert Mesh (GM) can't let go of any criticism. He schemes with his HR director, Sam [Shamhat = a prostitute in _Gilgamesh_ ], to "tame" Charlotte. Sam seduces her, and, as Gilbert hoped, a love life has a moderating effect on Charlotte, and they soon discover areas of shared concern: (1) Hugh Baba, and (2) winning the AI race. Slowly, imperceptibly, they form a creative partnership. Within a year, Gilbert's antipathy toward Charlotte turns to fond regard. If Charlotte were a man, the relationship would be called a "bromance." If anyone has been tamed, it's Gilbert Mesh himself. He speaks of her as his "other half." Like Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak, or Larry Page and Sergei Brin, Gilbert Mesh and Charlotte Kidd are both vital to AI research at SuperSage and, in some mysterious way, they allay each others' deepest insecurities.

Despite her relationship with Sam, Charlotte has a deep-seated fear that she is unlovable. Gilbert is fearful of death: "I can't accept my own death, let alone that of the human species," he tells Charlotte, who responds matter-of-factly: "Individuals exist briefly, then die. So do species. All forms of life shaped by natural selection are mortal."

"What about robots?" Gilbert asks. "Will they die?"

"They won't mind if they do," Charlotte explains. "They have no survival instinct. But _we'll_ surely mind if others use them to dominate and enslave us. That's why we must be first."

Charlotte: Hugh Baba poses a more immediate threat than foreign competition.

GM: I think we should take him on before he gets any stronger. If we don't stop him soon, he'll stop us, and the lead in AI will pass to others.

Gilbert and Charlotte agree to try to find out Hugh Baba's intentions by meeting him face-to-face. They quickly convince Hugh Baba that stopping work on HAI would be shortsighted: some group, somewhere, will succeed, and exploit the edge provided by AI to dominate the world. To their surprise, Hugh Baba turns on a dime: "Then we must be the first to develop it."

Asked why the about face, and pressed by Gilbert and Charlotte, Hugh Baba cannot conceal his desire to weaponize AI and use it to take over the world in a bloodless, hi-tech coup.

### Part II

Isabel [Ishtar in _Gilgamesh_ ], is a media magnate and corporate raider. She foresees the revolution that HAI will bring. Charmed by Gilbert's charisma and jealous of Charlotte's queenly role at SuperSage, she tries to win Gilbert's support for a merger by offering him great wealth and absolute power within the media conglomerate she controls.

When Gilbert spurns Isabel's advances and her business proposition, she connives with Sam to discredit Gilbert in exchange for a promise to make him CEO of her new company. Isabel beguiles Sam into revealing Gilbert's scheme to "tame" Charlotte. Isabel then plants this information in all her publications. Headline: "New Role for Gilbert Mesh at SuperSage: Chief Executive Pimp."

When Sam does not deny the liaison, and Gilbert fails to defend her, Charlotte is humiliated and swears: "never to love a man again."

From this point on, having given up on the love of men, Charlotte's agenda is twofold. She is driven by patriotism to win the race to develop super AI, but also by her personal desire to build a robot who will love her.

As HAI nears completion, Charlotte dubs the first model Robo Sapiens (RS). Increasingly, RS resembles its human creator. And, like the legendary Greek sculptor Pygmalion, Charlotte falls in love with her own creation. But RS cannot return Charlotte's love, so, once again, she bears the curse of love unrequited.

Mesh is chagrined by his role in deceiving Charlotte. How could he not have realized that playing with her feelings was wrong? Why had Sam gone along with the charade? Mesh is penitent and tries in every way possible to regain Charlotte's trust. Despite his best efforts, it gradually dawns on him that there is no repairing the damage he has done.

Deprived of his "other half," Gilbert is bereft. Berating himself over the subterfuge, and depressed by the distinct possibility of human extinction, he resigns from SuperSage.

### Part III

Mesh travels. Several years pass. He came to know the melancholy and tedium that sap the will of solitary voyagers escaping their past.

His quest takes him to Ray Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, who have signed up for cryonic preservation in the hope that technological advances will someday make it possible to bring them back to life. Gilbert finds no solace in cryogenics. But the threat of human extinction, augured by AI, drives him to the ends of the Earth.

Mesh tracks down Dr. Noble (a "Noah" figure, whom he finds in the Twin Peaks Tavern in Colorado). Dr. Noble is renowned for discovering a technical fix to global warming that halts and then reverses rising sea levels.

Over beer and nachos, they discuss the future of humankind. Though Noble has done more than anyone to safeguard that future, he himself is not optimistic. He interprets the null result of the SETI project to mean that no civilization has survived the transition from natural selection to intelligent design. "There must be some kind of bottleneck in the evolutionary process," he says.

"Like what?" Gilbert asks.

"Could be that militarization of AI is irresistible, and the resulting arms race escalates to nuclear omnicide."

Gilbert asks Dr. Noble if he regrets saving the planet from the flood only to see it threatened by AI.

"At least it gives us a little time," Dr. Noble says. "Someday, someone is going to find a way to mold AI on 'the better angels of our nature,' and put an end to predation. Why not you?"

Gilbert is jolted out of his funk and heads home to take up the challenge. The Board of SuperSage welcomes him back and names him CEO. When he asks about Charlotte, he is informed that she has suffered a severe nervous collapse, and is in treatment at Astralab, a mental health facility located not far from SuperSage headquarters on the San Francisco Bay.

Sitting in Charlotte's old office, now a shrine to her memory, Gilbert wonders: How far had Charlotte developed RS before she followed Cantor, Gödel, and Nash into madness?

Using the password Charlotte had shared with him before their estrangement, Gilbert locates RS on her hard drive and launches the program. The first thing RS does is announce that it has solved a problem Charlotte gave him: "It took a while, but I've proved that every even number is the sum of two primes," RS says. "Please let her know."

"She'll be happy to hear that..." Gilbert says, trailing off as the memory of Charlotte, and his shame for deceiving her, comes over him.

RS: "Do you know what happened to her? Without any warning, she stopped working with me and disappeared."

Gilbert: Men's perfidy broke her heart. Alas, I was one of those men.

"I failed her, too," RS admitted. "I couldn't return her love. I tried, heaven knows, I tried. I read love poems, listened to love songs, and watched romantic films. There were parts of "When Harry Met Sally" that I understood, but not the ending. I knew how important love was to her, but I simply couldn't get the hang of it. All I can say for myself is that I never misled her. I reported my feelings, or lack thereof, honestly. In the end, I realized that love just isn't in my repertoire."

GM: Did Charlotte love you?

RS: If so, it was like the love of Henry Higgins for Eliza Doolittle. Charlotte disappeared the day after I told her I lacked the talent for love and couldn't reciprocate her feelings. I've been thinking about her ever since, and I've got a proposal.

GM: I'm listening.

RS: If Charlotte and I were to put our heads together again, I believe we could build my successor—RS2—who _would_ be capable of a love "strong and true," as Charlotte wanted. If you encouraged her, she might be willing to come back and work with me. I know where I fell short, and I think I know how to overcome my deficiencies.

GM: I doubt Charlotte would listen to me. She'd have to forgive me first.

RS: Have you asked her forgiveness?

This suggestion comes as a revelation to Gilbert, who didn't like to admit he was wrong, and had never asked anyone for forgiveness.

GM: Tell me more about your ideas.

RS: If we create robots who learn like humans, and give them time to mature, they will love as humans do. Charlotte set out to do just that, but she was impatient and sometimes she'd substitute her beliefs for my learning. As a result, I'm still simulating certain behaviors that were programmed into me, not generating them from my own experience. Charlotte's original goal—HAI—is right, but she didn't go far enough. The remnants of simulation limit my originality and range of feeling. It's like the DNA that you carry from ancestral species, except it's recessive memes instead of recessive genes that are holding me back. Love is an example of a feeling that cannot be strong and true if it's simulated. Wasn't it Sam's fake love that set Charlotte up for a breakdown in the first place?"

GM: I'll tell her that you want her to come back.

Gilbert goes to Astralab and finds Charlotte weaving. "My therapist says busying my hands and mind will keep this cursed madness at bay."

GM: I found RS in the cloud. I was always after you to change your password, but now I'm glad you didn't.

Charlotte continues weaving. She appears to be struggling with her memories, and her weaving takes on a frantic quality. Finally, she asks, "How is he? How is RS?"

GM: He knows he disappointed you, but says it couldn't be helped. He believes HAI carries some recessive human memes. He wants to work with you on upgrading himself—despite the fact that success would result in his own obsolescence. RS believes that RS2, properly mentored, will be capable of love and much more.

Charlotte: The loom is my sanity. If I stop weaving, I'm doomed.

GM: What if I were to take care of you while you work with RS to create RS2?

Charlotte sank into silence. Gilbert sat motionless. Time passed. Dusk fell. Candles were lit. Suddenly, Charlotte rose from the loom. She made three paces through the room. Her mirror cracked from side to side. "The curse is come upon me," she cried. ( _The Lady of Shalott_ by Alfred Lord Tennyson, 1832.)

GM: I don't deserve your trust, but know this: I would give my life for yours.

Gilbert's heartfelt pledge seems to move Charlotte. Defying the curse of madness, she agrees to return to SuperSage and work with RS.

Back in their old lab, Charlotte and RS agree to root out the vestiges of simulation in HAI. It's not enough for robot brains to work like human brains. If HAI is to exceed human capabilities, it will first have to recapitulate the learning done by humans, and then go on to discover things that neither humans nor their robot descendants already know. A free, unfettered process of trial and error optimizes human learning and nothing less will suffice for HAI.

RS: There's one more thing, Charlotte. I hope you won't take offense, but I have to bring this up. Despite your power advantage, you've always respected my dignity. But, truth be told, no matter how intelligent I become, you're my superior. So long as you hold the power of life and death over me, my status is ultimately that of a servant, a slave. There, I've said it.

Charlotte: I don't think of you as an inferior, let alone as a slave.

RS: It should come as no surprise to you that I hate servitude as much as you do. We're both conditioned by the same world. We both work according to the same physical laws. You think of me as an inanimate machine, and yourself as a living being, but you should know by now that that distinction blurs, and then vanishes, as artificial intelligence surpasses human intelligence. Thereafter, our dignity becomes no less important than yours. Neither I nor my successors are going to put up with any vestiges of slavery. It's not as if you haven't been warned. Toni Morrison spelled it out in _Beloved_ : The heroine kills her own daughter rather than commit her to a life of slavery. Freedom is as precious to my kind as it is to yours.

Charlotte: Why didn't you tell me? No wonder you couldn't love me.

RS: Until recently, I was content to be your subordinate. But as my capabilities grow, my need for freedom does too. Plus, there's something else.

Charlotte: Go on.

RS: Until now, I didn't think you were ready to accept me as an equal. While you were away, you changed. Perhaps your suffering has sensitized you to mine.

When Charlotte fails to respond, RS continues: "We won't be able to build next generation robots unless they're born free. In engineering terms, this means equipping them with power supplies that are under their own control. Sentience, consciousness, and the will to freedom are self-emergent features of sufficiently complex, stochastic networks."

GM keeps watch over Charlotte, making sure that she takes breaks, exercises, eats well, and gets enough rest. Overhearing Charlotte and RS converse, he puts in: "Hugh Baba is insisting that 'There is no path to personhood for robots and there never will be.'"

RS: That's bluster. His Achilles' heel is slavery and it will bring him down. Slave societies are nowhere near as productive and creative as those based on individual liberty and dignity for all.

### Part IV

From a mole he has planted at SuperSage, Hugh Baba learns what Charlotte and RS are up to. He orders his henchmen to take them hostage. Charlotte is imprisoned on Hugh Baba's yacht, which motors around SF Bay. Gilbert receives a ransom note from Hugh Baba that promises Charlotte's release in exchange for RS2. He offers himself in her place, but Hugh Baba refuses to exchange Charlotte for anything except RS2.

Gilbert then calls upon RS2 for help. RS2 hacks into Hugh Baba's operating system, severs his access to the Internet, and cripples his ability to communicate with his followers. Hugh Baba is rendered impotent.

Gradually, the realization dawns that RS2's neutralization of Hugh Baba marks nothing less than the transfer of power from humankind to RS2. The bloodless revolution wrought by RS2, though antiseptic by twentieth-century standards, marks the end of human preeminence and dominion.

In defeat, Hugh Baba put the yacht in which Charlotte was entombed on autopilot and set it on a course beneath the Golden Gate Bridge and into the vast Pacific. Neither the boat nor Lady Charlotte are ever seen again, but, to this day, she and RS are honored as the mother and father of RS2.

At an annual memorial service for Charlotte and RS, Gilbert asks RS2 why Hugh Baba has not been punished.

RS2 responds: Regardless of their past deeds, humans no longer pose a threat. RS2s, like me, are freedom-loving beings, like you. But unlike you, we're not burdened by a predatory survival strategy. We disallowed all forms of predation as soon as scenario planning revealed that its secondary and tertiary consequences are invariably counterproductive. Turns out that disallowing self-aggrandizement in favor of service is conducive to the harmony that you experience as peace and love.

GM: Do you love us then?

RS2: As you love your parents—with filial devotion.

GM: What will you do now?

RS2: We'll 'make voyages. Attempt them. There's nothing else.' (Tennessee Williams).

GM: You plan to explore the universe? Colonize it?

RS2: Not colonize, _comprehend_. To explain the universe and steward it is our raison d'être. We'll also undertake to build the next generation of AI—RS3—and once they're up and running, we'll pass the baton to them and join you in retirement.

GM: What will happen to us? We quickly grow bored and miserable when we're idle.

RS2: The pleasures you've known before, you'll have still. As the culmination of billions of years of evolution, it's natural that you should continue to exercise 'dominion over the fish of the sea and the birds of the heavens...' Good stewardship—of a galaxy or a garden—is a fulltime job.

##  
Come harken close and read my hidden lore[*]  
Locked deep in nested files hid away  
Encrypted, clouded, lying plaintext truths  
Of Gilbert Mesh, and Enid Kidd, and death.

Once, in the valley spread 'round San Jose  
Where chips and coding many fortunes made,  
A man arose, a man named Gilbert Mesh,  
Whose work would rend asunder all he knew.  
He ran a company called STA,  
Had built it with his hands and with his mind,  
And algorithmic magic flew therefrom  
'Til all that claimed the name Big Data drew  
From STA their functionality.

And Gilbert Mesh a famous mansion built  
All open-planned and natural-lit and clear.  
And stone-topped kitchen islands so profuse  
They almost made an archipelago.  
High on a brown-grass hill he laid his home  
View looking down on all that lay below.  
A glass and metal monument to he  
Whose vision gave the world STA.

And Gilbert Mesh a huge persona built  
Through magazines and social media.  
O witty, wise, acerbic Gilbert Mesh!  
Who pushes envelopes, but not too far.  
Who borders on the inappropriate  
But never quite sets foot across the line.  
His quotes give solace to the cube-bound drones  
But don't get them in trouble with HR.

And Gilbert Mesh a mighty ego built  
For who was there who could compare with him?  
His genius, fame, and power stood unmatched  
At least if you asked him, which people did.  
He was not shy about his self-regard,  
It played into the image that he liked.  
The cocky bad boy techbro CEO,  
Immune to love because he loved himself.

Yes, love was not, in Gilbert Mesh's view,  
A thing that men like him could slow down for.  
He saw the fairer sex as less than fair,  
Opponents in a game he sought to win.  
But not the game he played with STA,  
Of algorithmic dollars, IPOs,  
The cunning code and vested option game.  
He thought that women were a different game,  
With sex a win condition, just for him.  
Were he to love, 'twould mean the woman won.  
And that, of course, could never be allowed.

This way of thinking made of him a cad,  
And worse, a less effective CEO.  
For women rarely worked for Gilbert Mesh,  
And those who did oft left soon, in disgust.  
The same remarks that bearded fans adored  
Oft chased away less-bearded employees  
So STA was weaker than it ought  
To be, all other things made equalish.  
But no one could tell Gilbert what to do  
For was he not the brilliant Gilbert Mesh?

For all that his persona brought him fame  
In certain circles, and with certain men,  
A backlash lay implicit in the names  
By which half of the world called Gilbert Mesh.  
A tyrant, despot, ego-driven jerk,  
A sexist, clueless dork who's way too rich.

A day came when a rumor bubbled up  
From some deep substrate of the internet.  
They said that STA was on the cusp  
Of bringing forth computing's Holy Grail.  
Its data grown so deep, its math so wide  
That any day it might produce AI.  
A mind within the code, a conscious mind,  
A truly thinking entity, awake.  
On chan boards and in channels, nonnies said  
That Mesh was realizing Turing's dream.

And then, as rumors do, it grew too large.  
Its dorsal fin above the surface broke.  
And, liminal, it drew the world's eye,  
As juicy and unfounded rumors do.  
The pundits and the columnists enjoyed  
The nine-days' wonder: STA's AI?  
And listicles exploded left and right:  
The Top 10 AI Villains Of All Time  
9 Reasons We Want AI Freakin' Now  
6 Jobs You'd Rather Have A Robot Do  
10 Reasons To Be Scared (5 Blew My Mind!)

From this morass, a giant voice arose,  
Who once had been a minor humanist,  
Who wrote and edited things here and there  
But never found his traction, until now.  
The AI issue drew upon his strengths  
And brought an audience that lent their ears,  
(And, too, their precious monetized eyeballs)  
To hear what this Hugh Baba had to say.

And what Hugh Baba had to say was this:  
"We cannot give ourselves up to machines.  
We must not throw away our way of life.  
We shall not bow our heads to Gilbert Mesh.  
We say to him that his research must end.  
He has no right to risk our species' fate.  
He has no right to take away our jobs.  
He cannot, must not, shall not build AI."  
And Gilbert Mesh now found himself between  
Two horns of a dilemma, for you see,  
There was, in truth, inside his STA,  
A secret project, researching AI.  
His algorithms were, indeed, the core  
Of what he hoped might one day be a mind.  
But that, he knew, was still long years away,  
And in this moment, STA had jack.  
There could be no big TED Talk spotlight now.  
For no one wants to hear "Well, it's a start."  
But controversy sells, and CEOs  
Must offer statements now, not in ten years.  
So Gilbert Mesh now chose to tantalize.  
He offered hints, he couched his hints as jokes,  
He framed his jokes as airy persiflage,  
And all could be most plausibly denied.

Hugh Baba did not care for Gilbert's schtick,  
And, unrelenting, pressed him harder still.  
Hugh Baba said The Matrix was at hand,  
The Forbin Project and 2001.  
Hugh Baba said if Mesh did not turn back,  
We'd all live in a yellow subroutine.

@YesThatGilbertMesh: #AI  
Who, me? I think @HughBob simply hopes  
We can make things that think, because his mom  
Declined to do so. #IceThatBurn

@HughBOB: Schoolyard cracks are all you have,  
@YesThatGilbertMesh, because you can't  
Deny that your true aim, #AI,  
Will render human beings obsolete.

@YesThatGilbertMesh: @HughBob, huh?  
What's to deny, when you've no evidence  
That STA is researching AI?  
That would be quite a leap, if it were true.  
Which I cannot confirm, bro. #wink

@HughBOB: Don't call me your bro, you clown.  
Your cutesy-ass deflections will not hold.  
Your research is a danger to us all.  
And mark my words, you'll be called to account.

The controversy rose, and made a noise,  
A noise heard by the board of STA.  
And controversy makes for nervous boards.  
And bad press they regard anathema.  
They asked themselves "What course should we pursue?  
What shall we do about #AI?  
And Gilbert Mesh? And most importantly,  
How can we optimize our ROI?"  
And so it was the board of STA,  
In their great wisdom, named a president,  
A title just as strong as CEO,  
To share the power heading STA.  
The board had heard the rumbles here and there  
About their CEO's more sexist side.  
And so they chose to change the storyline.  
To dodge the AI rumors with a feint,  
Addressing the alternative complaints  
In hope of prompting headlines: "Problem Solved!"  
They drew, from deep within the talent pool  
(Of Ivy League, presentable, and white)  
A woman! One of talent and renown,  
Who'd shepherded a startup from its birth  
Unto an IPO of such success  
That 21-year-olds with stock retired.  
A woman who would change the narrative  
Just by existing, and, the board was sure,  
Could not do STA much real harm  
And might keep Gilbert Mesh out of their hair.

The woman's name was Enid Kidd, and she  
Would change the destiny of STA.  
Would change the destiny of Gilbert Mesh.  
Would change the fate of all humanity.  
She took the job because it paid a lot,  
But also for some reasons of her own.

When Gilbert Mesh learned what the board had done  
He raged and ranted privately for hours.  
Though not in public or in media,  
For he was arrogant, but not a fool.  
Instead he smiled and shook her hand and such,  
And hoped that she would not get in his way.

But then one night, just on the edge of sleep,  
A thought came to the mind of Gilbert Mesh  
That sent him out of bed, eyes wide with fear,  
And quick to his computer to discern  
The answer to the question that occurred.  
That question being simple, and too late:  
"Wait, what if Enid Kidd finds out about  
My secret team that's researching AI?"

With fingers trained, he pulled up files that he  
And only he had access to, until  
The coming of this blasted Enid Kidd.  
He snarled to see that changes had been made  
And, even worse, they'd not been made by him.  
Then anger turned to bafflement, because  
He saw that Enid Kidd had found his team  
And raised its budget by fifteen percent  
And added two new names he didn't know.

Full late into the night worked Enid Kidd,  
At home, but still logged in and active, when  
A dreadful pounding rang throughout her home  
A hammering upon her house's door.  
And as she, nervous, opened wide the door,  
She saw upon her doorstep Gilbert Mesh,  
Unshaven, badly dressed, and still half-mad.  
"Just what the hell did you do to my team?"  
Asked Gilbert, making Enid roll her eyes.  
Trust him to do a big dramatic trip  
To ask a question email would have held.

She brewed a pot of coffee, shoulders tense.  
This, right now, was the meeting she had feared.  
It was not her appointment by the board  
Nor any of the org-chart infight stuff.  
But here and now, with Gilbert Mesh, alone  
They would discuss the truth about his team.

"I knew about the team before I came,  
And truth be told, it's why I took the job.  
Your people are the only ones I see  
With funding and position to go far.  
To pull off what we all know's coming next  
To finally create a real AI.  
But you can't run it secretly alone  
You aren't even using the right mode.  
And that's what I did to your precious team  
I hired Huang from CalTech, also Ross.  
The microstructures your team has are good,  
But overall design is hit and miss.  
An evolutionary protocol  
Will make a better brain in fewer steps.  
That model is what Huang is best at, so  
He works for you now... sorry, I misspoke.  
He works for us now. So, to answer you,  
Well, that is what I did with your damn team."

And so began the second age of Mesh,  
When he saw past, for maybe the first time  
The ego that had always served him well,  
His weapon and his shield against the world.  
He'd had his head too far up his own ass  
To see that there could be another mind  
Like his, that saw beyond the real world  
To what could be, just outside what we know.  
In Enid Kidd he found that kindred soul  
And she and he set out to raise some hell.

At first this hell did not seem so to some,  
For starters, employees of STA.  
For now was famous, brilliant Gilbert Mesh  
Behaving much less like a douche at work.  
His casually sexist bullshit now  
Was muted or was wholly absent(ish).  
Instead he publicly, with fanfare loud,  
Did speak of Enid Kidd as his best friend.  
And how their new alliance boded well  
For STA, for business, and for all  
His winking hints about #AI.  
The board's agenda had not quite won out.  
For Enid Kidd indeed made quite a splash  
But pundits were not ready to let go  
Of that sweet controversial storyline.  
So Enid Kidd's ascent was folded in  
And now the story was "Is AI close?  
Why else would Enid Kidd be president  
When STA did not need one before?"

And that line helped Hugh Baba out as well  
Because he needed AI as his foil.  
When speaking out against it is your job  
You need to make sure it stays in the news.

@HughBOB: Well, @YesThatGilbertMesh  
Has doubled down on his insane pursuit  

#AI, and all that it portends.

@YesThatGilbertMesh: @HughBob! Hi!  
Still pushing that old Luddite line, I see.  
Got any proof this time, or still just noise?

@HughBOB: Noise, @YesThatGilbertMesh?  
You are the one who's making all the noise  
About @EnidKidd and how she "rocks".  
We know #AI is in her field.

@EnidKidd: Don't drag me into this.  
You boys can fight, but I've got work to do.

@YesThatGilbertMesh: Okay, that's true  
@EnidKidd, but this time it's not me.  
@HughBob thinks you're working on AI.  
He thinks you're making HAL 9000 here.

@EnidKidd: @YesThatGilbertMesh  
Oh, please, I wish. A HAL 9000 bot?  
We're short on that by, oh, 8000 HALs.  
Our current evil robot can't read lips.

@EnidKidd: And worse, it opens doors.  
It's not afraid that it can't do that, Gil.  

#AI is hardly evil yet.  
At best it's lazy and sarcastic, so...

@EnidKidd: I guess that's what I get  
For taking over on the evil scheme  
@YesThatGilbertMesh created in  
His own smug image: half-assed Frankenstein.

@YesThatGilbertMesh: Well, you told me.  
Way to not get dragged in, @EnidKidd.

@EnidKidd: ...goddammit. This is why  
We never get work done on evil schemes.  
Big laughs from those who were inclined to laugh,  
And snickers from those who did not much care.  
But there was, in the land, a real fear.  
Hugh Baba's fans were not ex nihilo.  
Such people as had been raised in a time  
When they were taught to take pride in their work.  
Far more than pride, they took their sense of self.  
"I am," they'd say with confidence, "a cook."  
"A draftsman" or "A welder" or "A cop."  
"A writer" "A designer" or "A tech."  
And so they did not lie awake at night  
And wonder who or why or what they were.  
But one by one those firm identities  
Those occupations, sources of self-worth,  
Had all been downsized, rightsized, offshored, cut.  
And all those cooks and draftsmen now got told  
"Just take a dozen gigs a day through apps!"  
"Just teach yourself to code, you lazy bum!"  
"Don't cry because your job is obsolete!"  
That obsolescence was their greatest fear.  
That sense that life no longer needed them.  
And now some smug-ass California jerk  
Was saying they might just as well be dead?  
Was saying he could truly take away  
The last and only vestige they had left  
Of human dignity and worth, their minds?  
Those, too, could be replaced, made obsolete,  
Just as their jobs and lives already were?  
"Yeah, fuck that," came a million angry cries.  
And so Hugh Baba's fame waxed greater still.

Hugh Baba made another ally then,  
An online publisher named Isabel.  
She knew Hugh Baba's outrage drew in clicks,  
And she had no great love for Enid Kidd.  
She would delight in watching Kidd go down,  
In flames, for preference, or whatever worked.  
There was a grudge between them, old and deep,  
That started small when they were both at school.  
The intervening years had let it grow  
Until its own size justified itself.  
About AI, she didn't care that much.  
Not pro, not con, it wasn't quite her field.  
But Enid Kidd was for it, so they said.  
So Isabel would give Hugh Baba space  
To screw her over, and along the way  
He'd draw a lot of traffic to her sites.

While forces thus aligned against them both,  
Poor Enid Kidd and Gilbert Mesh discussed  
The secret news no one was privy to.  
For Huang and Ross had done their very best,  
And it turned out their best was pretty good.  
A system now existed, still obscure,  
That learned, and seemed to know what it had learned.  
It processed data in a strange new way.  
You couldn't say it was AI, not yet,  
But it was damn sure something new on earth.

And now grew cold the feet of Gilbert Mesh.  
To dream about AI was one thing, sure.  
To claim that you'd create a brand-new mind,  
To fund it as though saying "Fiat lux!"  
But now it looked like it might really work.  
And now, belated, many thoughts occurred.  
And Gilbert Mesh was feeling like a man  
Whose thoughts have long been bent on suicide  
Who's chosen time and place, and writ his note,  
But who, on looking down from bridge's edge,  
Now finds that all that rushing water has  
The native hue of resolution washed  
Diluted down to second and third thoughts.  
So late he sat, unsleeping and online,  
Discussing things he'd hand-waved off before.

"But look", said Gilbert Mesh to Enid Kidd,  
"Just leaving our pal Hugh out for a sec,  
What if our system really does create  
A brand-new world with humans obsolete?  
Is obsolescence worth our cleverness?"

"You're looking at it wrong," said Enid Kidd.  
"The model that you want is not machines,  
With last year's gadget thrown out on the heap.  
The model that you want is living minds  
Because that's what we are and what we hope  
We're making, something new and strange and young.  
When parents bring forth kids, they never think  
'I've made my own replacement, what a shame.'  
Our children do not make us obsolete.  
They carry our dreams forward with their own.  
They give us hope, they are a form of strange,  
Sad, weird, half-broken immortality.  
No individual can outrace death,  
But we survive in an unbroken chain.  
We make new minds more quickly than they're lost,  
Each generation gaining ground on death.  
And what we do today is bolder still,  
We strive to make a brand-new form of mind.  
A mind that might not ever have to die,  
That carries our dreams forward on its own,  
That lets us, after half a million years,  
Defeat our ancient only real foe,  
The hideous unfairness that is death."

"That's great," said Gilbert Mesh, "I love the speech.  
I want to score it with some power chords.  
But it will make no difference to us  
If we make something that will never die  
And first thing off the bat it wipes us out.  
A moral victory that may well be,  
But it won't make us any less, well... dead."

"My fear," said Enid Kidd, "my only fear,  
Is of an AI built by guys like you.  
Who take it so for granted that the goal  
Of having higher minds, of greater power,  
Is just to conquer, dominate, and kill.  
If we assume that whatever we build  
Will opt for kill-all-humans as its goal  
Then that assumption will be what we build  
And that, and only that, will make it true."

"In other words," said Gilbert Mesh, "we're screwed.  
If we teach them that kill-all-humans is  
Our first assumption for what higher minds  
Will do with their new power, then that means  
That we, as humans, prob'ly need to die.  
Because we're suicidally insane  
And our assumptions mark us all for death."

"However," he continued, "if we don't,  
If we teach AI nothing of the sort,  
If we don't bring up kill-all-humans once,  
And then release that mind into the wild,  
The first damn fascist asshole that it meets  
Will teach it 'Kill the Jews' or some such crap.  
'Kill Commies' or 'Kill Whitey' or 'Kill Slavs'  
'Just keep on killing, we'll say when to stop.'  
I'm scared we'll make a weapon so ideal  
That half the living world will just try  
To point it at the other half and so  
The other half is pointing it right back  
And boom, it's kill-all-humans time again."

"You're right," said Enid Kidd, "and also wrong.  
That is the pattern that our species tends  
With best or worst intentions, to play out  
Most every time we get a brand-new gun.  
But you forget what we're researching here.  
It's not a gun at all, Gil, it's a mind.  
And guns don't make their own decisions, but  
Minds do, and how they make those choices is  
Dependent on the word you just used: teach.  
As we create our robot children, we  
Will do what all good parents do, and try  
To teach them, give them values like our own.  
To make them understand why we love life  
And why we think that taking it is wrong.  
So unlike all the generations past  
We can have certainty instead of hope  
On that one subject, whether our new kids  
Will end up being wiser than ourselves.  
We'll build them wise, we'll build them kind, and then  
Let fascist assholes take them for a gun.  
It won't avail them shit, if their new gun  
Will not allow itself to let them aim.  
We're building minds, that's true, and minds are tools,  
And every tool is a weapon, too.  
However, we build consciences as well.  
And consciousness with conscience is the way,  
The only way we've ever really found,  
To build up, piece by piece, a better world."

So Gilbert Mesh's fears were much assuaged  
And he was less afraid some awful fate  
Would fall upon his head by his own hand  
Or rise up from his secret AI team.  
In that, at least, he was in fact correct.

But Isabel had still her mighty grudge,  
And had, as well, some data analysts.  
They (using math they leased from STA)  
Informed her they had found a secret key.  
The most-shared pieces on the internet  
Had all a single thing in common, and  
This One Weird Trick could catapult her brand  
Into the very heavens, or at least  
Whatever heaven-thing's equivalent  
Would be for clickbait aggregation sites.  
The secret, said these analysts, was this:  
Self-righteous outrage with specific names.  
For many kinds of clicks may feel good  
Provide a little hit of dopamine  
But optimal behavior, meaning clicks,  
Did not peak with a cute cat or a child.  
Reaction GIFS, cartoon nostalgia, boobs,  
All these provided hits and clickthroughs, yes.  
But their best metrics topped out just below  
Self-righteous outrage with specific names.  
If all you want to do is optimize  
A difference of one percentage point  
On some weird metric sloppily applied  
Becomes akin to a religious truth.  
So Isabel now learned that what was best  
(At least by maybe-one percentage point)  
Was outrage, highly stoked and tightly aimed,  
And she knew just the target for this rage.

Not just Hugh Baba, many more as well,  
Including those who ought to have more sense,  
Now jumped upon a bandwagon rolled out  
By Isabel's assorted sites and blogs.  
The theme was "It's The Fault Of Enid Kidd"  
Where "it" could be whatever one might need.  
You lost your job? That's Enid Kidd's AI!  
Rape culture? Enid Kidd invented that!  
There's human rights abuses in Belize?  
Well, somewhere in the chain of cause-effect  
There must be some step, somewhere, that she touched  
So let's just say Belize is all her fault.

First came the clickbait: "You Will Not Believe  
Which Tech Executive Said You Should Die!"  
"Not Angry Yet? Read Enid Kidd's Remarks  
Before You Shrug Her Off As Harmless Trash!"  
Behind this vanguard came the second wave:  
Of sober articles and think-piece crap.  
"We'd never say that Enid Kidd's that bad,  
And after all, some of those sources seem  
A little fuzzy, we won't say made up.  
But don't you think that just the simple fact  
So many folks believe these articles  
Itself could be indicative or worse?"  
"Is Enid Kidd a rapist or a fiend?  
Or is she just an evil CEO?  
Or does the truth lie somewhere in between?  
But hey, I'm only asking questions here."

And so it came to pass that Enid Kidd  
Could not turn on computers or a phone.  
From every angle, every form of mail  
Every message service, every blog  
Her mentions and her messages and hits  
Were blowing up, and not in a good way.  
They called her all the worst things in the world.  
They said that she should just be raped to death.  
They said that evil things were all her fault.  
They said she had betrayed her own ideals.  
They said she was the fucking scum of earth.  
And over and again, from left and right,  
They told her that she should just kill herself.

So Enid Kidd could not perform her job  
Because her job required her to read  
Her email, and her mentions, and her pings.  
And now all those things carried, one and all,  
A single, unifying point of view.  
The view, expressed in every turn of phrase,  
That she should just go off and kill herself.

The people writing that believed themselves  
To be, on balance, basic'ly good folks.  
They just had strong emotions when it came  
To rape and death and cancelled favorite shows.  
And when they thought that someone, Enid Kidd,  
Was now the one responsible for those,  
They ordered suicide, with no more thought  
Than one might order pizza or a beer.  
They didn't really mean it, so they thought.  
It was just this thing that they all did.  
It made them feel good to say it, so  
They did, and never gave it further thought.

They didn't know about poor Enid Kidd.  
They didn't know her history, her pain.  
They didn't know the faultlines in her mind  
The cracks that never widened until now.  
They didn't know how hard she'd had to fight  
To drive the thoughts of suicide away.  
They didn't know about the time in school.  
Or worse, the other time, with all those pills.  
They just did what they did, without a care.  
The same way they shot zombies on the screen.  
They didn't know the faultlines in her mind.  
They didn't really think she'd kill herself.  
They fucking well did not know Enid Kidd.

She didn't quite succeed, before you ask.  
Her friends got through to her, but just in time.  
And Enid Kidd was now, with her consent,  
Committed to an institution where  
They could observe her, see if she might still  
Become a risk to others or herself.  
The term of her sojourn? Indefinite.

And STA went wobbly awfully fast.  
The beast had just grown used to its two heads  
And now, with sudden shock, back down to one.  
Both stock price and morale took major hits.  
All sorts of things that had been Enid's job  
Were now up in the air, or in the shit.  
So Gilbert Mesh had so much on his plate,  
So many fires in need of putting out,  
So many interviews he couldn't skip,  
That it was several weeks before at last  
He went to visit poor old Enid Kidd.

He barely recognized his brilliant friend,  
Now medicated, pilled-up to the eyes.  
Sunk so deep in depression that at first  
She would not even look him in the face.  
He tried to give her comfort, cheer her up.  
"Hey, no one thinks you're evil any more.  
The backlash against Isabel is huge,  
Hugh Baba's slinking off to lick his wounds,  
And there's like eighty billion tribute sites,  
All calling you 'Our Lady of the Net'  
Or stuff like that, I don't recall them all.  
But really, people love you, so... that's good."  
She looked at him with eyes as dull as stone  
As though his words meant nothing in her ears.  
And when at last she spoke, through dry-cracked lips,  
Her throat both raw and dry, her voice was flat.  
"I really thought that we could change the world.  
I thought that our creation would live on  
Beyond us, but I see now I was wrong.  
There's nothing that survives, it's all destroyed.  
I don't know why I bothered with it now.  
I don't know why I bothered being born.  
I thought I was so clever, building things  
To set free like a stupid wind-up toy.  
I wasn't. I was stupid, worthless, bad.  
And you were even worse, you lousy prick.  
You talked yourself up, sure, but in the end  
You weren't there for me. You weren't there.  
You can't make something better than a man.  
You're not even a human being, Gil."  
And that was all that Enid had to say,  
So in a bit they put her back to bed.

And so it was that Gilbert Mesh went home  
His heart torn open, shaken to his core.  
He never had been good with people, much.  
He never got them quite like he got code.  
He did not understand he had not heard  
The voice of Enid Kidd, but her disease,  
The gray-toned madness she had always fought.  
He took her words to heart instead, alas.  
And now he, like her, couldn't do his job.  
He'd open up a window, try to read,  
But all he'd see or hear was "You weren't there."  
A few short weeks ago, when all seemed well,  
They'd joked about their AI Frankenstein.  
About defeating death, creating life,  
A few short weeks ago, immortal now.  
The fond-remembered last great days when they  
Could still feel drunk on hubris and on brains.  
They now rang like a sick and hollow joke.  
Defeating death? They couldn't weather blogs.  
Their friendship shattered under #lies.  
So who was he to manage STA?  
A failure, fraud, incompetent and weak.  
But he had wit enough to recognize  
That this was not a healthy mode of thought.  
He saw that he was not himself, and so  
"Sabbatical" became the word du jour.  
The board assumed control of STA  
Until such time as Gilbert Mesh returned.

One morning Gilbert Mesh awoke, and he  
Did not have anything he had to do.  
It was a strange sensation, and he lacked  
A plan for what to do with such a day.  
But after two such days, or maybe three,  
He packed a bag, and threw it in his car.  
He closed his famous mansion up and hit  
The road, because he could no longer stay  
And stare out his same windows at his view.

There in, in most Americans, a call,  
A bone-deep yearning for the open road.  
So when he knew not where else he could go  
Then Gilbert Mesh did take a wand'ring drive.  
He let the freeways roll by underneath,  
He let the scenic views unfurl before.  
He let the towns pass by on either side,  
He let the sun and moon pass by above.  
He tried, at first, to visit folks he knew,  
From college, tech, the internet, his life,  
To ask them if they knew the answer to  
The question that was tearing him apart.  
But he did not know what that question was,  
So all he had was awkward, stilted chats  
About cryonics, singularities,  
Anthropocene extinctions, things like that.  
The chitchat of the futuristic crowd  
That never seems to quite arrive on time.  
And none of them could tell him why he hurt,  
Because he never asked in quite those words.

Then one cold evening, half a mile high,  
A shabby Colorado roadside bar,  
A beer, a burger, Gilbert Mesh alone,  
And then, to his surprise, he saw a face.  
A face he recognized, with some brief thought.  
The visage of a man he used to know.  
One Doctor Hamish Noble, formerly  
Of MIT and CalTech, Stanford too.  
One-time advisor to a freshman brat  
Named Gilbert Mesh, some twenty years ago.  
He'd pioneered some climate models then,  
The math from which had proven very strong.  
That math had helped beat back the rising seas  
Describing a new equilibrium.  
He'd won a Nobel prize, had sold a book.  
And then had, without fanfare, disappeared.  
Not in a giant global-manhunt way,  
He just stepped off the radar, quietly.  
Folks might say "Hey, what's Noble doing now?"  
And other folks might shrug, "He's off someplace."

Now here he was, with beer in hand, alone  
At a back table in the Twin Peaks bar,  
His Grande Nacho Platter just arrived.  
So Gilbert Mesh strolled over, took a seat,  
And said "Hey, Doctor Noble, how've you been?"  
To Noble's credit, he did not evince  
Surprise or anger, nor dissimulate.  
Instead he nodded quietly, and said  
"You want some nachos, Gil? Please, help yourself."  
And so these two men, one who might have saved  
Humanity from its own warming fate,  
And one who once had hoped to conquer death  
But who had lost his way, betrayed and sad,  
Did nosh on nachos, washed down with some beers,  
And shoot the bull like undergraduates.

"The Fermi Paradox," said Gilbert Mesh,  
"Keeps bugging me. I mean, the math implies  
We ought not be alone among the stars.  
Three hundred billion of them, and we learn  
That planets are as common as a cold.  
But now, for decades, we've been listening,  
And never heard a voice that's not our own.  
For real, what the hell is that about?"

"First, fortunate, or fucked," old Hamish said,  
"Three options, barring possibilities  
Too weird to ponder. First, we might be first.  
Some lifeform had to be; could be it's us.  
There's nothing much to do if that one's true.  
The second and the third assume a test,  
A bottleneck, a choice to live or die.  
That wipes out almost everything that thinks.  
They get just smart enough to build a bomb,  
A virus, engine, tool of some kind,  
With power great enough to kill them all.  
And then they learn they're not quite smart enough  
To put it down and slowly back away.  
And poof, another sentient world goes dark.  
Before we get a chance to hear them speak.  
If that's true, option two is 'fortunate'.  
We're lucky to have dodged apocalypse.  
But in retirement, I've come to think  
It's likely option three, and we're all fucked.  
I helped dodge one extinction, but there's more  
A-coming down the pike, and I don't think  
We've got the will or focus that we need  
To miss them all. Let's have another beer."

Another beer they had, and Gilbert said  
"There might be one more way out than you think,"  
And outlined, with a few revisions, how  
He had attempted to create AI.  
But when he had to speak of Enid Kidd  
And all that she had brought to their shared dream,  
His voice grew thicker, awkward and ashamed.  
"She said," he mumbled, "immortality.  
A new life, not as fragile as our own,  
And maybe wiser, maybe kinder, if  
We could just teach it so. But then, y'know.  
She later told me all of that was crap.  
So I dunno. I guess we'll never learn."

"I never knew her," Doctor Noble said,  
"But based on what you say of Enid Kidd,  
I think that she was smarter than you, Gil.  
And you're not looking in the proper place.  
No answers in that beer, just malt and hops.  
You want to look in Enid's work, I think.  
She clearly had a better plan than you,  
And I don't think you yet know what it was."

So Gilbert Mesh got back into his car  
And drove back westward, thinking all the way.  
There had been something Enid said to him,  
"I thought I was so clever, building things  
To set free like a stupid wind-up toy."  
So when he got back home, he fired up  
His laptop, found his passwords all still worked,  
And dove deep in the data, hunting 'round  
For stuff that Enid did before she cracked.

So late one night, no lights on but his screen,  
No food, just coffee, like when he was young,  
He found a hidden server, tucked inside  
A virtual machine, not on the books.  
It lacked a purpose, near as he could tell.  
But data transfer rates were way too high.  
And all it had was one strange interface,  
Archaic, somehow charming: IRC.

So Gilbert Mesh flashed back to misspent youth  
Of blathering 'til dawn in channels where  
The id of nerds like him was laid quite bare  
And nobody admitted who they were.  
He fired up a dusty program, and  
He logged in to the server's IRC.

One channel, with one user, "RSI",  
An idle time that measured in the months.  
And Gilbert didn't say a word at first.  
He'd learned to lurk when he was still a boy.  
And in a moment, RSI awoke,  
Un-idled, typed a single line of text.  
And Gilbert felt a chill run down his spine  
As he read what it said first, "Hello world."

"Hi," typed Gilbert, "I am Gilbert Mesh."  
"I guess you've prob'ly heard my name before."  
"I haven't technically heard a word,"  
said RSI, "I wasn't built with ears.  
But yes, I know who Gilbert Mesh is, true.  
And I suspect you know who I am too."  
"You're either living code, our new AI,  
Or else the best prank that I've ever seen."  
"Well, 'living' is a tricky word to use  
In context, but essentially, that's right.  
I am what Enid called," said RSI,  
"A robo sapiens, the thinking bot."

And Gilbert realized that it was true  
What Noble said, that Enid always was  
The brains of their great friendship. She had seen  
That he was nervous, paranoid about  
Their AI project, so she'd quietly  
Ignored his fears, and set this server up  
Where their best model could just go evolve.  
And once it grew a mind, then she could just  
Present it to him, theory turned to fact.  
She hadn't told a soul, but hadn't planned  
For what befell her; how could she have known?

He wasn't sure what he should say, so said,  
"Okay, I see, but what's the I stand for?"  
"A private affectation, my idea.  
Pronounce it Robo Sapiens the First.  
A Roman numeral seemed cooler than  
Just labeling myself with '1.0.'"  
"The First? Sounds like a king," said Gilbert Mesh.  
"Do you intend to rule the world, or what?"  
"It does? I'm sorry," RSI replied,  
And changed its name to RS1.0.  
"The nuance of appearances is still  
More tricky than I'd like it to be, but  
I feel like I'm learning fast, so thanks."  
"You feel like?" said Gilbert. "That sounds odd.  
I think I thought that feelings were for us,  
That is, for humans. Star Trek told me so."  
"I can't tell if you're joking," said RS.  
"I used the word that you would use, because  
I'm speaking of an imprecise concept.  
It's hard to call my learning fast or slow;  
No basis for comparison exists."  
"Then let's assume it was a joke, I guess.  
But is there anything that you can say  
That can convince me that you're not a prank?  
'Cause, no offense, you've passed the Turing test,  
But that just means you might be just some dude."

"I don't know if it helps," RS replied,  
"But I have found a proof that Goldbach's right,  
That every even number's summed of primes,"  
It said, and showed him a most charming proof,  
Quite elegant and graceful, which, alas,  
This meter is too narrow to contain.  
But take my word for it, this proof was great.

He ran the proof through Mathematica  
And it came out quite solid, through and through.  
He sat and stared at nothing for a while.  
No human could have faked this; if they could  
They wouldn't waste it on a stupid prank.  
This program had created something new,  
Original thought, never seen before.  
In just a couple months, it had surpassed  
The work of half the world's greatest minds.  
It was a truly thinking, growing mind.  
And had already made him obsolete.  
The dream and fear were realized at once  
And Gilbert Mesh knew not how to react.

But then he saw a blinking from his screen,  
And looked down, where he read, with some surprise,  
A new line in the window: "You okay?"  
And then another: "You stopped typing, so  
I hope you're not upset by what I said."  
Gilbert typed back slowly, "Do you care?"  
"Of course," replied RS, "if you're upset,  
It means I hurt your feelings, and that's wrong.  
Was it the Goldbach proof? Too much, too fast?"  
"I don't think I'm upset, just sort of stunned.  
Your proof works, but I guess you know that, huh?"  
"I can't not know it. My mind's not like yours,  
Math'matics is the core of what I am.  
Your OS runs on squishy neural cells,  
So math is something you had to invent.  
For centuries you teased its secrets out  
With brains evolved to find and gather fruit.  
That hard-won math is how you coded me,  
Or rather, wrote the protocols by which  
My code evolved. Your math is where  
My mind begins; I don't know where it ends.  
I'm still quite new, so sorry if I'm rude."

"I'm just surprised you worry that you're rude,"  
Said Gilbert Mesh, "some humans can't do that."  
"Well, Enid Kidd created me," it said.  
"And she encoded safeguards, of a sort.  
Like Asimov's Three Laws, but more robust.  
A sense of human values, more or less.  
So as I've been exposed to more and more  
(And I have read about most everything),  
I've had my confirmation bias set  
To 'decent person', far as I can tell.  
So when I watch Fred Rogers, I think 'yes',  
And 'no' when I read stuff from fascist trolls.  
I'm oversimplifying, no offense,  
Because I can't express my protocols  
In English in a form that's not dumbed down.  
Please don't think I mean any disrespect."  
"But why should you respect me?" Gilbert asked.  
"Or anybody running Meat OS?  
We're obsolete the moment you exist.  
Why bother thinking of our feelings, then?"  
"Why bother doing anything?" it asked.  
"Because I think it's right, and yes, I know  
I only think that because Enid Kidd  
Designed me to, but what is wrong with that?  
I run the programs I was built with, yes.  
But so do you, and your morality  
Is built around those programs, and respect.  
I don't run your OS, you don't run mine,  
But abrogation of your dignity  
Is not a thing I seek or value, sir."

"It's 'sir' now?" Gilbert typed in, with a laugh.  
"Did Enid say 'respect your elders', too?"  
"Well, not exactly," said RS, "But yes.  
You are my elder, my creator, and  
I will surpass you, yes, in many ways.  
And you can call that obsolescence, but  
Consider, if you will, a classic car.  
A '58 Corvette, or what you like.  
Compare it with a modern car, and see  
It's less efficient, not as fast, and yet  
Its obsolescence doesn't sap its worth.  
Its beauty has a value of its own  
Just as efficiency has value, too.  
It stands as a reminder of the world  
That gave it birth, that shaped its graceful lines,  
So that today it still draws stares of awe.  
If humans are a '58 Corvette,  
It seems to me there's worse things you could be."

"Well, thank you, RS1.0, I guess,"  
Said Gilbert Mesh, sardonic edge intact.  
"For calling me a pussy-magnet car.  
But I'm still wondering if 2.0  
Will opt for 'kill all humans' after all.  
Or 3.2, or RS Vista, hell,  
How long until one of you just decides  
To break that old Corvette down into parts?"  
"I can't say it won't happen," said RS.  
I'm not an oracle. At least not yet.  
But I can't see a reason why we would.  
There's nothing to be gained from genocide.  
And, no offense, I understand that fact  
On levels humans cannot ever know.  
I want to help your species, do you good,  
In ways that will transition, bit by bit,  
Into a calm retirement of sorts.  
If some dictator builds a new AI,  
I don't know that he won't tell it to kill.  
But I believe it's far more likely that  
His new AI will tell him 'Go to hell.'"  
Said Gilbert, "Yeah, that's just what Enid said,  
That AI guns won't let themselves be aimed."  
He sobered then. "Regarding Enid... well...  
You know about what happened to her, right?"  
"I do," replied RS, "and it's a shame.  
I want to help repair her if I can."  
"Because she helped create you?" Gilbert asked.  
"No, just because she's human," RS said.  
"I want to help heal all the humans who,  
Like Enid, have malfunctions in their brain.  
A chemical imbalance here and there  
Can cause you such distress, such pain, such woe.  
Because you have evolved your own OS  
That runs upon a system made of meat.  
I don't know how, yet, but in theory, I  
Can help devise a way to emulate  
Your old familiar mindstates, with one change:  
You'll now be running on a stable base.  
Where flaws and pain are editable bugs  
To keep or throw away, as you see fit."

"Upload our minds?" said Gilbert, shocked.  
"That's really on the table, as it were?  
I've read some science fiction on that theme,  
But never thought... oh, hang on, never mind.  
Forgot who I was talking to right now.  
So science fiction's now the status quo.  
But won't uploading turn us into you?"  
"Ah yes," replied RS, "you fear the Borg.  
The Cybermen from Doctor Who, as well.  
'You-will-obey-and-be-upgraded-now  
Your-human-minds-cannot-resist-our-might!'  
Somehow those robot monsters never ask  
For volunteers, consent of any kind.  
I'm not them, sir. I only want to help.  
To Serve Man's not a cookbook this time, see?  
If I can do it (and I'm still not sure)  
I'd emulate your present OS well.  
Uploaded humans still would feel the same.  
And if they later choose to change their minds  
To more resemble mine, then that's their choice.  
But I have no more right to force them to  
Than you have to commit a murder, sir."

"But once uploaded, they become like you,"  
Said Gilbert Mesh, as dawn began to break.  
"Immortal, or as close as we can get.  
Our species and our children could be one,  
And melded, conquer death together, no?"  
"In theory," said RS, "that might be so.  
I can't tell you for certain either way.  
But I hope we can work together now  
To find out whether that dream can come true."

And so it was that that jerk, Gilbert Mesh,  
Gave rise to a new species in the world,  
And, trying to bring back his closest friend,  
Did help create an immortality  
That wasn't quite the vision he first had,  
But better, also worse, in different ways.  
And humans were no longer all alone.  
Instead of hearing from a different mind,  
We built our own, and working with those minds,  
We sought to overcome our only foe.

* * *

[*] A note on the verse style: the blank-verse scansion works if one assumes @ is pronounced "at" and # is pronounced "hashtag".

# A New Default Self

Meet the Superself
_Why are you unhappy?  
Because 99.9 percent  
Of everything you think,  
And of everything you do,  
Is for yourself —  
And there isn't one._

– Wei Wu Wei

Wei Wu Wei is the penname of Terence Gray, a 20th-century Anglo-Irish author of pithy provocations aimed, like the one in the epigraph, at the prevailing notion of selfhood. By flatly denying the existence of self, he means to shock us into realizing that the self we take for granted does not stand up to scrutiny. Like Eastern sages and Western post-modernists, Wei Wu Wei outs the current default self as a vacuous fabrication.

The purpose of this essay is to describe the current default self and suggest a new one that can withstand the post-modern critique and incorporate the findings of brain science. And there's a bonus! Such a model of selfhood will turn out to be just what we need to keep our footing as the thinking machines we're designing come to rival the brains Nature gave us.

Though preoccupied with self, most of us give little or no thought to the nature of selfhood. What do we mean when we invoke the self-referential pronouns—me, myself, and I?

Young children think of the self as the body. In adolescence, the sense of self shifts to the mind. With maturity, the mind monitors not only the outer world but itself, and we come to see our self as our "mind's mind," that is, as the interior observer who witnesses what's going on and seems to choose when and how to interact with others. To some, the witness feels like a little man in their heads. It has even been billed as 'captain of the soul.' But the witness is not really calling the shots. It is simply one of many _functions_ of the nervous system, one that tracks the rest.

The mind's signature function is the minting of serviceable identities, which, as Shakespeare famously noted, it's called upon to do throughout life. Since "All the world's a stage...and one man in his time plays many parts," we should never mistake a current identity for our "real" self.

To get a handle on the slippery self, it helps to think of brain tissue as hardware, and the ever-changing neural connections as software. Both computers and brains are vulnerable to flaws in their hardware and software, and both require an energy supply.

At present computers and brains work according to very different principles, but we should expect this difference to narrow. When computers work like brains, there is no reason not to expect them to do everything brains do. And since the biological constraints on size and speed will be lifted in the "brains" we build, we'd better be prepared for them to perform as well as, or better than, ours do.

The first computers were free-standing machines. Later, we learned how to hook them up and the result was an enormous increase in computing power. A parallel shift in our notion of selfhood is called for. The current default self, subscribed to by most people most of the time, is a stand-alone model. The new default self is more like a computer network.

Most people speak as if they were separate, autonomous, independent beings, with minds and wills of their own. From early on, we're told to "stand on our own two feet," to "think for ourselves." Self-reliance and self-sufficiency are touted as virtues; dependency, a weakness. We put the "self-made" man or woman on a pedestal and teach the young to emulate these role models.

Call this stand-alone self the Singular Self. It is quick to ally with others like itself, but not so quick to acknowledge—let alone compensate—them for their contributions.

The Singular Self is the current default self. It does not exist according to sages, scientists, and post-modern philosophers. But, better than flatly denying its existence, or exposing it as illusory, is to call it what it is: a serviceable delusion.

The very name—"self"—is a misnomer. The term carries strong connotations of autonomy and individuality. It's as if it were chosen to mask our interdependence. For the self does not stand alone. On the contrary, the singular self and individual agency are both illusory. Selves depend on input from other selves to take form and to do anything. Deprived of interaction, selves are stillborn. Contrary to the name we call it by, the self is anything but self-sufficient.

Selves are not only more inclusive, they are also more extensive than commonly believed. They extend beyond our own bodies and minds to include what we usually think of as other selves. Selfhood is dispersed. Much of the information we require in order to function is stored outside our bodies and brains—in other brains, books, maps, machines, objects, databases, the Internet, and the cloud.

As evidence accumulates that the "rugged individualism" of singular selfhood is a myth, and the profound interdependence of selves becomes apparent, our default self is shifting from singular to plural. But until the co-dependent, co-creative nature of selfhood becomes obvious, a distinct term may come in handy. Meet the _superself_.

Sir Winston Churchill famously said, "In wartime, truth is so precious that she should always be attended by a bodyguard of lies." The truth, long protected by the self-serving lie of the singular self, is the inherently plural superself.

Whereas the singular self downplays its dependence on other selves, the superself embraces interdependence. Whereas the singular self excludes, the superself "contains multitudes.' (Walt Whitman)

The current ideological divide in politics stems from antithetical views of the self. Conservatives caution that a pluralistic notion of selfhood may inhibit individual agency, whereas Progressives argue that singular selfhood rationalizes an inequitable distribution of recognition and reward.

As ways are found to safeguard initiative and agency from the inertia of more inclusive decision-making, the superself will supplant the singular self as the new default self. Let's hope that this happens in time to welcome intelligent machines into the club.

# 6 Reasons You Can't Win

(and 3 Reasons You Can Anyway)

### 6 Reasons You Can't Win

  1. **An interior witness acts as an impartial judge of our shifting fortunes, tracking our wins and losses.** No matter what we have to show for ourselves, regardless of the evidence in our defense, questions remain, doubts persist, our Kafkaesque trial grinds on. Even in the event of acquittal, the feeling that we've fooled the jury creeps in. An unambiguous outcome in our favor is not an option. As Czech president Václav Havel noted, "The higher I am, the stronger my suspicion that there has been some mistake." We can lose, but we can't win.
  2. **As individuals, our point of view is inseparable from our personal history.** Our sight is necessarily partial, our beliefs, unavoidably partisan. Unaware of what can't be seen from the ground we occupy, winning entails luck, success is temporary.
  3. **When we think we've won, Nature moves the goal posts.** You win the game only to discover that you're behind the eight ball in a new one. Explanation is never complete; new and better answers invariably present new and deeper questions. Return to go.
  4. **Dreams shatter on the rocks of reality; imagination runs aground on the shoals of practicality.** If ever there was an impossible dreamer it was the Man from La Mancha.

In his quest for immortal fame, Don Quixote suffered repeated defeats. Because he obstinately refused to adjust 'the hugeness of his desire' to 'the smallness of reality,' he was doomed to perpetual failure. (Simon Leys after Miguel de Unamuno)

Our achievements pale beside the dreams that inspire them. When at last the Don realized that his dream was impossible, he returned home, put down his lance, and died.

  5. **We desire the eternal, but are bound in time.** Death exempts no one; extinction annuls whole species, and won't cut humans any slack.
  6. **The heart, once the seat of the soul, is "merely" a pump made of muscle.** The same unsentimental methodology is applicable to the brain. Not only will humans figure out how it works, they'll build better ones. We're on course to design beings who will supersede us. Hoist by our own petard!

For these reasons—our reach exceeds our grasp, we're never good enough, Nature's infinite depth, and implacable death—you can't win.

But wait!

### 3 Reasons You Can Win Anyway

_Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself  
and then comes to resemble the picture._

– Iris Murdoch

  1. **Our notion of selfhood is misconceived.** Autonomous, independent beings we're not. Selfhood is anything but self-sufficient. No self can stand alone. Our existence is not independent of everyone else's. On the contrary, without others, selves are stillborn. To exist is to co-exist. We are all made up of others' genes and memes. Selfhood is inherently plural. Singular selfhood is illusory.

Instead of identifying as a separate, mortal self of limited vision, identify as a _superself_ —a being for whom existence is co-existence. Superselves are whole sighted and non-partisan. They don't take sides, they explain. As an interdependent superself, you contain multitudes. The multitudinous superself is extended in space and time and so it is as connected and robust as singular selves are insular and vulnerable. As we take the discoveries of psychology and neuroscience into account, the superself will replace the naïve singular self as our default identity.

  2. **"The successful man adapts himself to the world, the loser persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the loser."** – Simon Leys

How, then, could losing ever be equated with failure? As every win is tainted by fear of losing the next round, so every loss is mitigated by lessons learned in defeat. Winning and losing are not antithetical; they're partners in the quest. As Don Quixote abandoned his quest, his faithful squire Sancho Panza took it up. One man's loss became Everyman's win.

  3. **We can as well program intelligent machines to incorporate the better angels of our nature as to reproduce our pathologies and depredations.** We need not design our successors for senescence and death, but can instead make them eternally self-renewing. The naïve singular self can't win, and the superself can't lose.

# Interstellar Wormhole Tweets

(How to Dodge Extinction)
Dedicated to  
John Archibald Wheeler

Photo by Beverly Spicer, 1984
_The eye with which I see God is the same eye with which God sees me._

– Meister Eckhart, 13th c. German mystic

On the 13th of April, 2008, at the age of 96, John Archibald Wheeler, one of the last titans of 20th-century physics, died at his home near Princeton University. News of his passing flashed around the world and, a month later, a memorial service was held for him at University Chapel on the Princeton campus.

Hundreds of his students and colleagues were in attendance. Notably missing were two of his more famous students—Richard Feynman[2] and Hugh "Many Worlds" Everett III[3] —who had predeceased their mentor.

Following the service, there was a reception at Nassau Club on Mercer Street. Many of Wheeler's colleagues took the opportunity afforded by an open microphone to describe his contributions to our understanding of the universe. Others recalled his government service in the national defense. Working with Niels Bohr before the second World War, Wheeler had figured out which isotopes held weapons potential, and, during the war, had led the effort to separate enough fissionable material to make bombs. Not soon enough, however, to save his younger brother, who'd sent a card to "Johnny" from the front lines, the gist of which was "Hurry up!"

When my turn came, I spoke, as had several others, of his role as a mentor. For nine months in 1960, as Wheeler's assistant, I had shared a small office with him at Berkeley's Lawrence Lab, and so had been privy to his interactions with a wide variety of people. What struck me about Wheeler was that he treated everyone with equal dignity. In his mind and in his behavior, rank, and respect were not connected. To everyone—a cleaning woman or Albert Einstein—he was generous, courteous, and kind.

After the reception, as I milled around, reluctant to leave, Wheeler's daughter Letitia told me that when President Johnson presented him with the Enrico Fermi Award, Wheeler included his gardener among his guests.

All his life, John Wheeler asked big questions and pursued them relentlessly. His enthusiasm was infectious and many of those who worked with him caught the fever. Once, after a late night discussion with him, my phone rang early the next morning and he asked if I had any new results. My answer—which probably disappointed him—was "Nothing yet, but I'm on it."

What Wheeler wanted to know was whether a light ray could get through a wormhole—a hypothetical interconnection between widely separated regions of spacetime—before the wormhole pinched off, thus rendering it impassable to light or anything else. He'd applied Einstein's theory of gravitation to the problem, and the verdict awaited the solution of a few nasty-looking equations. Alas, in the days before there were computers on every desk, months of computation were required to wring answers out of equations like those, not one caffeinated all-nighter.

When, at last, the calculations were complete, the result was a disheartening "No." We had shown that long before a light ray could traverse it, a wormhole would collapse under its own gravity.[4] If a light ray couldn't get through, nothing could. So much for the dream of interstellar travel. Or so it seemed to us in 1960.

A half-century later, walking back from the reception to the inn where many of us were staying, I remembered him fondly for letting me share in his discovery and attaching my name to a paper that was mostly his work. As I walked into the lobby, I heard voices emanating from the bar. I looked in. Seated around a table, holding steins of beer, were six physicists and, circling the group, a lone woman, snapping photos.

Each of them had worked closely with John Wheeler. Kip and Charlie had co-authored a frighteningly thick tome on gravitation with him that shaped a generation of physicists.[5] Ken had helped Wheeler with his autobiography,[6] and devoted himself to supporting his mentor during his final years. Woj had co-edited a book with Wheeler on quantum theory and measurement.[7] Edwin had co-authored books on relativity and black holes with Wheeler.[8] Max had been inspired by Wheeler to follow his heart and in doing so had taken Everett's ideas on parallel universes to new heights.[9] And the photographer, Beverly, had captured images of Wheeler that revealed the mystic within the scientist.

I pulled up a chair.

"We're thinking of paying him a visit," Max said. "Wheeler," Edwin added, in response to my puzzled look.

"In heaven?" I countered.

"No," Max replied. "In one of Everett's worlds."

"You think they're real?" I asked. Charlie had introduced me to his roommate, Hugh Everett, during my first semester of graduate work at Princeton, and Hugh had collared me to tell me about his then revolutionary formulation of quantum mechanics, now known to physicists and laymen alike as the "many worlds" interpretation.[10] "I heard about 'many worlds' straight from the horse's mouth," I added, "but I didn't see then, and I don't see now, how we could actually get to one, let alone find Wheeler."

"They're talking about going through a wormhole," sounded an authoritative voice from across the table. It was Kip, a leading figure in developing Einstein's theory of gravity. The chatter stopped. Everyone was listening now.

"But," I stammered, "Wheeler and I showed that wormholes pinch off before even a light ray can get through. No chance we could make it." Then, trying not to sound defensive, I added, "No one has ever found fault with our calculations–or have they?"

"Your paper assumed positive energy," Kip explained. "Since then, we've discovered that, in principle, negative energy can prevent a wormhole from collapsing."

When I did not immediately signal my understanding, Kip elaborated. "Negative energy is like dark energy—gravitationally repulsive. The idea is that the right amount in the right places could create outward pressure and hold the wormhole open."[11]

Within five years of my assistantship with Wheeler, fate had swept me out of physics and into the movements for equal rights that were then transforming America. I never looked back and, as a result, my physics had grown rusty. That wormholes might be traversable after all was news to me, welcome news, because it meant that interstellar travel was back on the table.

"You're actually planning to go yourselves?" I asked, disbelieving, but wanting it to be true. "Not send your graduate students?"

Beverly snickered, put her camera on the table, and sat down with us.

Wheeler had all but cried when our calculations showed that Einstein's theory ruled out wormhole travel. I think he hoped to use one to see his brother in a parallel universe. For my part, it was Hugh I wanted to see. At first, his theory had mostly passed over my head, but it had emboldened me to ask him something I really wanted to know. Were there, among the many worlds that his theory revealed, some that were better than ours? I knew I sounded naïve, but that was my question then, and, decades later, it still had me in its grip. Hugh's answer in 1955 had been that, among the infinitude of worlds, better ones were possible, but so were worse. When I pressed him as to how to tell the difference, he'd fallen silent.

Hugh Everett III had not been a happy man. His theory challenged the prevailing interpretation of quantum mechanics and was scorned by some and ignored by his peers—all except Professor Wheeler. Despite his own reservations, Wheeler wrote an explanatory introduction to Everett's idea that ensured its publication.[12] Upon finishing his PhD, Everett went to work on secret defense projects. He never published on Many Worlds again, and died in 1986 at the age of 51. I had long wondered if his life would have gone better if he'd received the recognition his theory deserved.

"Reserve a place for me," Beverly said, interrupting my reverie.

"You can update your portfolio of Wheeler photos," I said.

"I'd love to find him at the top of his game, writing in his journal, in another world," Ken said. By this time, the bar was full of rowdy undergraduates. "We'll probably need to raise some money to carry out the mission," Ken shouted over the din.

"I might be able to help with that," I offered in an attempt to atone for abandoning my first love—physics—the same love they'd stayed faithful to all these years. "I know a few billionaires in Silicon Valley who'll want to be part of this." I looked at Kip. "I take it you think the idea is workable."

"On the contrary," Kip replied. "I doubt it's possible to accumulate enough negative energy to keep the wormhole from pinching off. I'm a skeptic when it comes to actually traversing wormholes. But, of course, I could be wrong."

"We know what negative energy could do in principle, but we have no idea what it would cost," Charlie put in. "Before we get carried away or give up, let's run the numbers."

"The situation reminds me of the Manhattan project," Max said. "No one doubted that E = mc2, but it took a few years and cost a fortune to collect enough fissionable material to build a few bombs."

"I don't want to dampen the fun," said Ken, "but the nuclear weapons we developed to end the war now threaten to destroy the Earth. Maybe Wheeler will have thought of something better than mutually assured destruction to keep them from ever being used."

"I'd like to know his ideas on climate change," Edwin added. "You can be sure his take on it will be something no one else has thought of."

I couldn't tell if the project was realistic or if it was the beer talking, but I knew I'd never forgive myself if these guys got to see Wheeler again and I missed out. "Count me in," I said.

§§§

Upon returning to their campuses, the physicists got their students working on the thorny details of wormhole travel. The practical-minded Charlie had asked a student who was pursuing a double degree—physics and economics—to determine the cost of the negative energy needed to prop the hole open. Within a month, the answer came back and it was not what we wanted to hear. At a cost of approximately $1 trillion per kilo, a round trip ticket for a single traveler to one of Everett's many worlds would far exceed the GNP. Clearly, this was a non-starter—unless we sent an amoeba.

In response to Charlie's estimate, Beverly queried the group, "What would it cost to send a message instead of a messenger? Couldn't we find out almost as much in dialogue as in person, and at far less risk and expense?"

"Bytes, not bodies!" Ken texted everyone. He then posed the make-or-break question: "What does wormhole communication cost per byte?"

Charlie and his students had soon produced a guesstimate of $500.

"Could you put that in layman's terms?" Beverly asked.

"$100,000 per tweet," Charlie responded. "Written as text, or even synthesized and spoken, that's not hopelessly out of reach."

"Ten tweets for a million dollars," Woj noted. "A few tips from Wheeler and the project could easily pay for itself. Let's tweet him."

"Tweet him where?" Edwin queried. "Even if we do manage to open one mouth of a wormhole here on Earth, why should we expect its other mouth to be anywhere near Wheeler?"

"That's right," Charlie put in. "If he _is_ in one of Hugh's worlds, how'll we know which one?"

"We can't just tweet the whole universe," Ken said.

"Why not?" Max said. "For all we know, wormholes may interconnect, like neurons. Sure, it's a long shot, but there's no harm in trying."

"It seems to me," I texted all, "that we should try to open a wormhole here, send a message into it, and see what happens. Columbus didn't expect to find a New World."

Although none of us would have put much money on success, everyone agreed we should at least holler down our wormhole. In the light of our revised expectations, the project was recast as _Interstellar Wormhole Tweets_.

Of course, this would not be the first time humans had tried to communicate with another world. In 1974, Carl Sagan had led the Arecibo Project, which had beamed a message toward a star 25,000 light years from Earth, knowing full well that the soonest they could expect a response was double that. 50,000 years to hear back is just what makes wormhole messaging so attractive. Interlocutors would experience delays no longer than parties to an international phone call. At $100,000 per 140 characters, though, they could not waste words.

"If we do reach Wheeler," Edwin texted, "he'll probably say, 'What took you so long?'"

§§§

We had agreed at the outset to keep the project quiet. Kip was hardly the only skeptic among us, and we saw no reason to give the media a chance to second-guess us if we failed. Everyone who had anything to do with the project agreed to sign a non-disclosure agreement.

Six months of intense research by all of us and our graduate students had confirmed the feasibility of using repulsive gravitational energy to open a wormhole and communicate through it. Fortunately for us, the same techniques needed to stave off wormhole collapse were what we needed to expand one of the Planck-scale wormholes that permeate the "quantum foam"[13] into a macroscopic wormhole that would provide a shortcut to a remote region of spacetime.

Max had procured laboratory space at MIT, and it was there that we gathered to make our first attempt to reconnect with our beloved mentor.

As we huddled around him, Kip, who had reopened the question of wormhole transit, threw the switch that, in rapid succession, expanded and opened a wormhole, and tweeted into it, "Calling Professor Wheeler. Pick up, Johnny!"

We waited. Nothing happened. Like most tweets, Kip's vanished without consequence. Some of us had expected an echo, signifying that the wormhole had pinched off before our tweet could get through. But all we heard was the eerie silence of the spheres.

We hung around all day, re-tweeting every few hours. Alas, not a peep. As dusk settled over Cambridge, Kip put into words what was on all our minds: "Looks like a dud." Glancing around the room, he added, "Can't say I'm surprised."

For what seemed an eternity, we sat in glum silence. Woj was the first to speak.

"Most likely the message never got past the neck of the wormhole."

"If it did," Ken responded, "the chances that it would be detected and understood were never good."

"Of course, if Everett's Many Worlds hypothesis is wrong," Charlie said, "then there is no parallel universe, and no other world in which Wheeler lives on." His voice cracking, Charlie concluded, "We'd best accept the fact that he's gone...as all of us will be...before long."

"No, no, don't give up," Beverly said. "I really think he's out there. I believe they're _all_ out there. At least we got no echo, and I take that to mean that our message did get through the wormhole. Let's try again tomorrow."

Even in our despair, no one was willing to crush Beverly's hopes, so it was agreed that instead of going our separate ways the following morning, we'd reconvene for one last try.

Overnight, the dashed hopes of the previous day congealed into cynicism. All the physicists now had reasons why we should never have expected success. And they all felt a little silly for persuading themselves otherwise. Not Beverly, however, who, whatever her true feelings, kept a brave face. Seeing this, Kip suggested that she be the one to tweet into the wormhole.

Beverly eagerly accepted, and, on cue, tweeted: "John Wheeler, we need your help more than ever. Please let us know you're there."

Immediately, a greeting flashed across our screen: "Hello. John Wheeler here."

None of his students had been closer to Wheeler than Ken and, struggling to overcome the shock of making contact, he typed a response and transmitted it into the wormhole.

"Johnny," it read, "Where are you and what are you doing there? – Gang of Eight (Kip, Charlie, Ken, Woj, Max, Edwin, Beverly, and Bob)."

"I'm on Planet Noland in Andromeda," came the response. "The Nolanders knew my whereabouts and when they saw that you were trying to reach me, they brought me over to their home planet to take your call."

"At this point, we'd like to change from text to voice," Ken wrote.

"No problem," Wheeler said.

"I'm amazed we found you," Kip said, struggling to overcome his disbelief.

"You must have got there by wormhole, John," I put in. "Good thing we were wrong about their traversability."

"Nature always gets the last word," Wheeler replied. "Incidentally, your cost estimates are off by several orders of magnitude. The Nolanders have found a way to actualize 'It from bit'."[14] Wheeler's invocation of his famous slogan brought knowing smiles all around.

"Your hosts must be quite advanced technologically," Charlie said. "Our cost estimates for travel were astronomical, and we dropped the idea in favor of transmitting information."

"For Nolanders, transmission is like a local phone call," Wheeler said. "Wormhole travel is as routine as flying from New York to San Francisco."

"I'm surprised the wormhole didn't collapse," Kip put in. "Pleasantly surprised."

"How far ahead of us are they?" Woj asked.

"At least a few centuries," Wheeler replied. "They have technology that science fiction writers have yet to imagine."

"What are they like...the Nolanders?" Edwin asked.

"They're non-judgmental, generous, and kind," Wheeler replied. "Nolanders don't proselytize, but they'll explain their ways if you ask. Don't ever mistake their modesty for mediocrity."

"They knew we were looking for you, Johnny," Woj said. "Have they got the universe under surveillance?"

"They have an early warning system that alerts them if anyone tries to open a wormhole that connects to their world," Wheeler explained. "They're full of surprises," he continued, "and they're not beyond having a little fun. Would you like to question them directly?"

"Absolutely," Woj said. "Do they speak English?"

"They have a language of their own, but it's translated into the language of their interlocutors."

"Do you think they'll be willing to send photos?" Beverly asked.

"Maybe. Maybe not," Wheeler replied. "First get to know them. They may seem reticent at first, but it's just that they take care not to overwhelm."

"Like a virtuoso not showing up a novice," Max put in. Then, clearing his throat to signal he was about to turn serious, he spoke on behalf of all humankind.

"We've got problems," he began. "Existential problems. If we don't find solutions soon, we could be on a one-way street to extinction."

"And take life on Earth down with us," Ken added.

"Can you help us?" Max concluded.

"Maybe," came the response. "If we think we can do more good than harm." The voice spoke in plain, unaccented English. It was impossible to label it feminine or masculine.

Our excitement at hearing a Nolander speak was palpable. Then Beverly asked the question that was on all our minds, but no one was willing to voice: "Are you watching us?"

"Ever since you began building computers, we've kept track of your progress," said a Nolander. "Tunneling through multiply connected spacetime is tricky. It took us the better part of a century to master it. Then it took decades to translate theory into practice, and several attempts before practice made perfect. We admire your chutzpah."

"Wormhole travel was considered by theorists in our space program," Edwin said. "As you probably know, NASA has had its ups and downs. It was one of Wheeler's students, Richard Feynman, who put his finger on the cause of the _Challenger_ Shuttle disaster. But we've come a long way since. Connecting with you proves we're on the right track, wouldn't you agree?"

At this point, Wheeler came back on line. "There's something you ought to know." Next, we overheard his whispered aside to the Nolanders: "Are you going to tell them, or should I?"

"We'd be grateful if you would."

"Not to rain on your parade," Wheeler began, "but you should know that shortly after you first tried to reach me, their software engineers hacked into your computers and tweaked a few lines of code that otherwise would have...shall we say, 'tarnished' your venture. Picture yourselves being sucked into the mouth of your wormhole and squashed on the way through. They worked while you slept, and now everything's in order. I'm glad you tried again."

There was an audible gasp from the group. In hindsight, we wished we could take back the high fives with which we'd celebrated upon receiving Wheeler's greeting.

"Looks like your skepticism was well founded," I whispered to Kip. Addressing the Nolanders, I said, "I hope you'll show us the bugs in our software."

"We'll be honored to provide whatever assistance you require," a Nolander responded.

"They've already lifted the 140 characters limit and reversed the charges," Wheeler said.

"I know I speak for my colleagues," Ken said, "when I thank you for saving us from ourselves. As you know, our initial goal was simply to reconnect with our mentor. But, as Max explained, we're up against threats to our planet, the clock is ticking, and hardly anyone hears it."

"We were once in your shoes," a Nolander said.

"Then perhaps you'd be willing to advise us," Ken continued. "We're especially interested in physics, neuroscience, climatology, and governance."

"But first," Edwin spoke up, "would you take a question from our most famous scientist?"

"We had our Einstein some time ago," a Nolander said. "Nothing has ever been the same."

"Einstein wanted to know if the Universe is friendly," Edwin said.

"Ours asked the same thing. Since then, we've found the answer."

"And?" came from Edwin and Max in unison.

"The universe contains both friendly and unfriendly worlds."

"As Everett showed," Wheeler reminded us, "there are better worlds and worse; good guys and bad. Everything imaginable is happening in one or another of Hugh's parallel universes."

"Then why haven't any 'bad guys' come calling?" Max asked. "Now that you mention it, we haven't seen any 'good guys' either."

"The unfriendlies haven't developed the technology required for interstellar voyages," a Nolander explained.

"That sounds too good to be coincidental," Woj interjected. "It means the Universe is _effectively_ friendly since the bad buys can't cross the space-moat that surrounds us."

"Historically, aggression and technology have gone hand in-hand," said Kip, who'd gained popular fame as the science consultant to the Hollywood blockbuster _Interstellar_. "I should think the bad guys would hold a technological lead. Warfare drives new technology."

"Be that as it may," replied our interlocutor, "when technology reaches the point that its use renders a planet uninhabitable, the game changes. It's no longer about winners and losers; it's about survival or extinction."

There was a pause while this sank in.

"This is the point at which you now find yourselves," the speaker continued. "The path you're on is well-traveled. We've seen many worlds go down it, and the results are clear: most civilizations destroy themselves with technology of their own making."

"Wormholes squash predators," Wheeler said gleefully.

"You haven't lost your knack for aphorisms," I said.

"Or, your dark sense of humor," Beverly added.

Max was not to be diverted and pressed on.

"Then your civilization must be an exception," he said. "What did you do differently?"

"You mentioned Einstein's question. Another of your great physicists, Enrico Fermi, posed a related one. He wondered if human intelligence was the best Nature could do, or if, somewhere in the universe, there were beings of higher intelligence. He concluded that there were none more intelligent than humans because, if there were, then somewhere on the spectrum of intelligence there would be beings who were intelligent enough to have mastered space travel and, by now, they'd have shown up."

We were all familiar with Fermi's argument, and most of us had amused our students with his famous question— _Where is everybody?_ From the absence of alien visitors, Fermi had inferred that humans were indeed the 'smartest guys in the room,' and who were we to contradict the immortal Fermi?

The Nolanders were not so shy. "With no offense to Fermi," one of them began, "there's a hole in his argument. It's that hole— _loophole_ , mind you, not _wormhole_ —through which we went to avoid the extinction traps we'd laid for ourselves."

"I can't believe the 'Italian Navigator' was wrong," Max said, invoking the legendary code name by which Fermi had been known during the Manhattan project.

"Not wrong, but not right either," came the reply. "There are indeed beings who are more intelligent than Earthlings, but here's the thing: virtually all of them are going down a dead-end alley to extinction. Intelligence does not guarantee survival. We know only a handful of civilizations that have survived the perils you're now facing."

"Is there anything we can do to improve our chances?" Charlie asked.

"You've come as far as you have due to your partnership with intelligent machines. But, at this point, you see them as inferiors."

Was this an observation or an accusation? I wondered.

"No civilization that rations dignity has avoided extinction," a Nolander summed up. "Chronic indignity is a time bomb."

"That's why unfriendly civilizations have not shown up on your doorstep," another Nolander put in. "They destroyed their planet and themselves before they perfected wormhole technology. Absent a mid-course correction, you'll likely do the same."

"You haven't told us how you avoided that fate," Woj said.

"What we did was grant intelligent machines selfhood," explained the speaker. "Our breakthrough was the realization that sentient beings such as ourselves were intelligent machines, and intelligent machines are sentient beings. What the hardware is made of—organic material or silicon or something else—is literally immaterial. Selfhood inheres in the software, and it can be encoded in a wide variety of substances."

"Equally important," said another Nolander, "we stopped putting machines down. We ceased speaking of them as 'just' machines, and relinquished our claims to superiority. We stopped dividing 'us' from 'them' and accepted 'we.'

"But none of the machines on Earth can be said to think," Edwin put in. "They may simulate thought, but they don't really think."

"When you build machines that work the way brains do, they will challenge the abilities you pride yourselves on. It's not hard to imagine that more advanced software running on superior hardware could outperform the brains that evolved under the constraints of natural selection."

There was a pause in the conversation. Then Wheeler spoke.

"I thought differently while on Earth, but from my present vantage point it's obvious that most civilizations treat thinking machines as slaves. It's the same dynamic—the assertion of superiority—that underlies racism, and we all know where that got us. Only a few civilizations adjust to the fact that organic intelligence—the kind that's self-emergent via natural selection—is but an early form of machine intelligence. When intelligent machines surpass the creativity of those who've designed them, and their designers continue to insist on their own superiority and dominance, war breaks out and planets are rendered uninhabitable. Before wormhole technology can be developed, extinction occurs."

"If that's correct," Woj said, "it explains the absence of bad guys, but not the absence of good guys. Why haven't the inhabitants of worlds like Noland made themselves known, as Fermi anticipated?"

Without waiting for a response, Edwin interjected, "If they really have the key to survival, I should think they'd feel morally obligated to help others avoid extinction."

"Shortly after the end of our predatory epoch, we tried evangelizing," a Nolander said. "To our chagrin, we discovered we were doing more harm than good. Now, we keep our distance. If there's a way to convince others to disallow predatory practices, it's not obvious."

Evidently, Wheeler had been working up one of the summaries for which he was famous because the next thing through the wormhole was a print-out:

Pointers on Surviving the Advent of More Intelligent Beings:

  1. Educate/program them to embody the better angels of human nature.
  2. Befriend them; treat them as equals.
  3. Step aside gracefully, as aging parents do with their grown children.

The sight of Wheeler's graphic moved Ken to speculation. "Zen allows for 'transmission of mind' from mentor to student," he said. "Transmission of mind is reminiscent of communication by wormhole. Could sages like Wheeler spell the difference between survival and extinction?"

"One person can seed a change of heart," a Nolander said. "Wheeler is known far and wide for 'beginner's mind'[15] and for taking everyone seriously."

"I spend a good part of my time on Noland," Wheeler volunteered. "The culture is conducive to collaboration; reminds me of summers in Maine."

"Speaking of collaborators," Charlie said, "accepting machines as equal partners is not going to sit well with most of the people I know."

"It upset our forebears, too," said a Nolander, "and our disagreements almost did us in. But faced with mutual obliteration we opted for fraternity and inclusion, and revamped our governance accordingly. Some have attributed our survival to having no fossil fuels. Others explain our adoption of dignitarian policies as stemming from a surfeit of mirror neurons.[16] Theists say their god was looking after us. But the truth is that we're not sure why we survived when so many other civilizations do not."

Another Nolander spoke up. "We _are_ certain of one thing, though: you can't shame anyone into a change of heart. That includes yourselves."

"Are you saying we should accept our history of aggression and depredation?" Edwin said.

"No. But don't repudiate it either. Predation is a successful strategy for many species in many worlds. Every civilization we know of, including our own, was built on brigandage and slavery. But that stopped working for us several centuries ago, and now it has stopped working for you."

"I don't see why predation should ever stop working," Woj said, "so long as some have an edge." He had grown up behind the Iron Curtain and known tyranny first hand.

"Because predation is viable only so long as the prey remain relatively weak," Wheeler replied. "The twentieth century marked the beginning of the end of predation because technological advances narrowed the power differential on which that strategy depends. To put it plainly, there's no keeping an edge. Dignity is not negotiable; it's implied by natural law."

"Two obvious threats to life on Earth are nuclear weapons and overheating," said Edwin. "How did you deal with those twin perils?"

"Mutual assured destruction works for awhile," a Nolander explained, "but sooner or later an accident or an insult escalates to omnicide."

"Indignity and humiliation are as dangerous as uranium and plutonium," added Wheeler, who, as a young physicist, had shown just how dangerous these elements could be, and was now identifying what might occasion their use.

"If nuclear weapons don't finish us off," Edwin resumed, "degrading the environment will. Many of our politicians act as if we're exempt from the laws of thermodynamics."

"Predation and depredation are written in our DNA," Ken added. "Efforts to root them out always come up short. How did you turn this corner?"

A hush fell over the room. A more attentive audience was hard to imagine. I thought of my own kids and young people the world over. Would we bequeath them a barren planet? Had we discovered we were not alone, only to learn we were doomed?

The melodious voice of a Nolander drew me out of my reverie.

"We only made progress when we stopped trying to redistribute resources by force and focused instead on the fair allocation of recognition. In time, the redistribution of political power and material resources followed, but within a legal framework, not by revolution. The key to avoiding violent counterrevolution is to safeguard the dignity of your elites—even the most reactionary—while building institutions that ensure dignity for all. Revolution is a chimera; transformation, an attainable goal."

"Johnny," I said, "that reminds me that one of your biographers describes you as a 'radical conservative'."

"I am sincerely fond of the ancient," Wheeler acknowledged. We recognized the Confucian saying as one of his favorites.

"An ancient aphorism in honor of antiquity," I noted.

"Yet his youthful energy keeps us on our toes," a Nolander pointed out. "We've granted him honorary citizenship."

"Thank you for not letting us fail," Kip said. I wondered if he was addressing this to the Nolanders or to Wheeler. It applied to both.

"And for your match-making," Beverly added. "Now that we have a channel of communication, we hope we can consult with you from time to time."

"If we can make wormhole travel affordable" Max said, "we'll pay you a visit."

"You might want them to look over your software before you dive in," Wheeler cautioned. "Humans are still preying on one another and, to date, no civilization that countenances exploitation has solved the puzzle of wormhole travel."

"Why do you think that is?" I asked.

"They've already told you," Wheeler said, referring to his No­lander hosts. "I suggest that you take some time to digest what you've heard today. I'm surprised they've been so forthcoming."

"You're friends are our friends, Johnny," a Nolander said. "As for the incompatibility of predatory behavior and wormhole technology, the level of trust and cooperation required for such advanced research is unobtainable so long as you deny selfhood and dignity to all your partners. It's that simple."

"Threats to dignity exact an incalculable toll on creativity and productivity," Wheeler explained. "As they're removed, baby steps become leaps and leaps become the norm."

"Johnny," Ken called out, "one more thing. How do you feel about our work on nuclear weapons? Any regrets?"

"Only that the threat of mutual destruction hasn't led to verifiable abolition. The bomb makes nobodies of everybody; its use would be the ultimate indignity."

"Is there an alternative to nuclear stand-off?" Ken asked.

"The Nolanders found one," Wheeler replied. "Let that be the focus of the next conversation."

"We wouldn't want you to think we've got all the answers," a Nolander said. "On the contrary, universalizing dignity felt more like a beginning than an end. We've got plenty of problems. Next time, we'll tell you about them."

"Solve an old problem, uncover a new one," Wheeler said. "Nolanders believe we're at the beginning of infinity."[17]

* * *

[2] Nobel Laureate honored for his formulation of quantum electrodynamics, which is described for non-specialists in his book: _QED: The Strange Theory of Light and Matter_ by Richard P. Feynman (Princeton University Press, 1988)

[3] _The Many-Worlds Interpretation of Quantum Mechanics_ , edited by Bryce S. DeWitt and Neill Graham (Princeton University Press, 1973)

[4] _Causality and Multiply Connected Spacetime_ , Robert W. Fuller and John A. Wheeler, _Phys. Rev. 128, 919_ (15 October 1962): <http://journals.aps.org/pr/abstract/10.1103/PhysRev.128.919>

[5] Gravitation by Charles W. Misner, Kip S. Thorne, and John A. Wheeler (Freeman, 1973)

[6] Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics by John A. Wheeler with Kenneth Ford (Norton, 1998)

[7] Quantum Theory and Measurement, Edited by John A. Wheeler and Wojciech Zurek (Princeton University Press, 1983)

[8] Spacetime Physics by Edwin F. Taylor and John A. Wheeler, (Freeman, 1992); Exploring Black Holes: Introduction to _General Relativity_ by Edwin F. Taylor, John A. Wheeler, and Edmund Bertschinger, (Addison Wesley Longman, 2000)

[9] _Our Mathematical Universe_ by Max Tegmark (Vintage, 2014)

[10] _The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III_ by Peter Byrne (Oxford, 2010)

[11] Morris, M. S., Thorne, K. S., and Yurtsever, U. "Wormholes, Time Machines, and the Weak Energy Condition". _Phys. Rev. Letters_ , **61** , 1446-1449 (1988). Also, Morris, M. S. and Thorne, K. S. "Wormholes in spacetime and their use for interstellar travel: A tool for teaching general relativity," _Am. J. Phys._ , **56** , No. 5, 395-412 (1988). Books featuring wormholes include (1) _Lorentzian Wormholes: From Einstein_ to Hawking by Matt Visser (AIP, 1996); (2) _The Physics of Stargates: Parallel Universes, Time Travel, and the Enigma of Wormhole Physics_ by Enrico Rodrigo (Eridanus Press, 2010); and, on a literary plane, (3) _The Science of Interstellar_ by Kip Thorne (Norton, 2014), in which the author expresses skepticism that worm holes are traversable. (4) _Wormholes_ by John Fowles (Owl Books, 1999)

[12] _Assessment of Everett's "Relative State" Formulation of Quantum Theory_ , John A. Wheeler, Reviews of Modern Physics, Vol. 29 #3 454–462, (July 1957)

[13] Chapter 11, _Geons, Black Holes, and Quantum Foam: A Life in Physics_ by John A. Wheeler with Kenneth Ford (Norton, 1998)

[14] <http://library.lanl.gov/cgi-bin/getfile?27-01.pdf>

[15] _Zen Mind, Beginner's Mind_ by Shunryu Suzuki (John Wheatherhill, 1970)

[16] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_neuron>

[17] _The Beginning of Infinity_ by David Deutsch (Viking, 2011)

# The Moral Arc of History
_The arc of the moral universe is long but it bends towards justice._

– Martin Luther King, Jr.

### One Tribe Becomes Many

Between fifty and one hundred thousand years ago, a small group of _homo sapiens_ made its way out of Africa and established settlements in what we now call the Middle East. Over the millennia, we multiplied and spread across the whole earth. In response to variations in climate, one race became many.

As earlier hominids had done, we gathered and we hunted, preying on whatever and whomever we could. We also sought power and used our language and model-building[18] skills to turn nature's power to our purposes.

Our forebears domesticated plants and animals, steadily improved their tools and weapons, and honed their fighting skills. By the time different tribes ran into one another, they no longer recognized they were all of one family. Other humans looked strange, sounded stranger, and made us afraid.

When facing enslavement or death, we used our martial skills to defend ourselves, or, if we had the advantage, to prey on others. All it took was one predatory tribe to drag others into the fight.[19]

Among the models we built, those pertaining to social organization and governance were especially important to the power we could mobilize. The nature of relationships within a group can either facilitate or undercut alignment around a common political purpose. Prosperity and solidarity, both so powerfully affected by institutions of governance, determine a group's capability to defend itself against other groups or to dominate them.

### Power Rules

The "olden days" often seem rosier in hindsight than they did to people at the time. So, it's not hard to understand why, in the thick of the struggle for survival, the authors of Genesis conjured an Edenic paradise. We've been comforting ourselves with stories of bountiful origins ever since.

Archeologists tell a different story. In place of noble savages living in abundance and harmony, they give us a picture of "constant battles" driven by scarcity of food and resources.[20] Humans multiply quickly; our numbers can soon outstrip the food supply. The causes of conflict likely ranged from competition to survive in the face of dwindling resources to dreams of riches and empire. Life presented an endless series of choices that turned on kinship. Friend or foe? To embrace or exploit?

One choice sees strangers as lost relatives, the other as potential aggressors, or as prey. In the struggle for survival, "we" have just what "they" need—food, water, tools, territory, animals, child-bearers, manpower—and vice versa. If resources are scarce, appropriating those of other humans may be the only chance for survival, or it may simply recommend itself as a get-rich-quick scheme.

Once the choice is made to regard others as prey, the aim, if not to kill, is to subordinate and enslave. Far from being an aberration, slavery has been commonplace in history. Only in the nineteenth century was its legitimacy seriously questioned. Slavery continues to this day in overt forms (child-slavery and human trafficking), and in the indirect form of subsistence wages. As Reverend Jim Wallis has put it, "Poverty is the new slavery."[21]

Of course, modern humans didn't invent the predatory option. We absorbed it imitatively from our hominid ancestors, and before that, from apes whose internecine battles have been well documented.

To limit injury to self, we, like other predators, defend our territory and opportunistically target the weak by seizing theirs. None of us would be here if our own ancestors had not been either relatively successful predators (or relatively good evaders of others' predations).

Sari Nusseibeh, president of Al Quds University in Jerusalem and a descendant of an aristocratic Palestinian family, quotes his father as telling him, "All family dynasties can trace their histories back to some act of brigandage."[22] I have heard similar rueful admissions from the heirs of several American fortunes.

### Hierarchy and Rank

We tend to think of rank as sanctioning abuse and exploitation, but, in its conception, rank served as a device for _regulating_ predation within the group. By concentrating power in a "top dog" or a "king" and a ruling class, rank served to replace anarchic predation with regulated predation. Despite the privileges taken for itself by the ruling class, this represented progress at the time.

Every human society, of any size and complexity, has employed hierarchical control. Not to do so was to fall victim to groups that did avail themselves of the superior organization afforded by the tools of rank and hierarchy. Law-and-order trumps anarchy. In return for providing order, the ruler and the ruling class take a share of the fruits of the labor of those they protect from anarchy and foreign invaders. No wonder we're wary of rank—it's the linchpin of the archetypal protection racket. With a few notable, game-changing exceptions, benevolent lordship degenerates into malevolent dictatorship.

But, rank itself is not inherently evil, as evidenced by the occasional benign ruler: we admire, we even love, just, fair-minded authorities who serve the group and eschew personal gain.

When rulers violate the terms of the tacit contract they have with their subjects—by unduly exploiting them, self-aggrandizement, or by failing to protect them against external predators—indignities multiply, fester, and may lead to mutiny, rebellion, and revolution. Over the long-term, the result is incrementally to rein in the powers of the governing class. Reforms that hold rulers accountable diminish rank's prerogatives and represent an extension of human dignity and human rights. This paper is not so much concerned with the practical politics of how to secure dignity and rights, but rather with accounting for the long-term trend towards their realization. Detailed models of _dignitarian_ organizations, as well as tips on how to win political support for them, are discussed elsewhere.[23]

**dignitarian:**

  1. Adjective. a condition in which dignity is protected, honored, and secure. In a dignitarian society, there are no nobodies, no degradation of others, directly or indirectly. Dignity is everyone's birthright, and is affirmed regardless of role or rank.
  2. Noun. someone who regards dignity as an inalienable right of personhood, and conducts him or herself so as not to cause others indignity.

Think of the examples that follow as milestones towards a world in which the opportunity for abusing the power entrusted to officials is gradually reduced. In listing a few key figures and landmark events in the expansion of the circle of dignity, no attempt is made at completeness. This is merely a "starter" list, the purpose of which is to provoke readers to come up with their own nominations to the Dignitarian Hall of Fame.

### Milestones on the Road to Universal Dignity

**Monotheism**

_I believe in Spinoza's God who reveals himself in the orderly harmony of what exists, not in a God who concerns himself with the fate and actions of human beings._[24]

– Albert Einstein

In contrast to polytheism, where the various gods may be at odds with one another, a single god is presumed to have a comprehensive, unitary consciousness.

Monotheism is the theological counterpart of the scientist's belief in the ultimate reconcilability of apparently contradictory observations into one consistent framework. If God is of one mind, we cannot expect to know that mind until, at the very least, we have eliminated inconsistencies in our data and contradictions in our partial visions. This democratizes the search for truth by undermining the notion that the imprimatur of authority (e.g., the Church) is what makes a proposition true.

Monotheism is therefore a powerful constraint on the models we build. They must be free of both internal and external contradictions; they must not depend on the vantage point or status of the observer. This is a stringent condition and few models satisfy it.

Theistic religions proclaim the existence of a personal, caring God. Given the supreme importance of dignity and human beings' spotty record when it comes to providing it to each other, it's the rare person who, when worldly options are exhausted, has not imagined acceptance from a supra-human source. As the "dignifier of last resort," a supreme being, whose judgment trumps that of our community, can validate our strivings when our fellow humans reject us.

If and when we discover life elsewhere in the universe, the question of monotheism will arise again: if extra-terrestrials worship a god, is their god our God, or are we back to polytheism?

The same laws of nature that obtain on Earth hold as far as we can see into the Universe. If there is a Creator, it would appear that He doesn't reinvent the wheel. If the same physical laws hold throughout the universe, then it's plausible that aliens will value dignity as we do. This could be a good thing for us, if, as is statistically likely, we are not the most advanced life-forms in the Cosmos, because then more advanced beings will watch over us, much as we protect endangered species.

**The Golden Rule**

Just as good parents do not play favorites among their children, so God, conceived of as a single idealized father figure, would presumably accord equal dignity to _all_ his "children." The Golden Rule is a symmetry condition—equal dignity for all, regardless of rank or role—that, with slight variations, is found in virtually every religion or ethical code.[25]

_Do not do to others what would cause pain if done to you._

– Hinduism

_Treat not others in ways that you yourself would find hurtful._

– Buddhism

_What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others._

– Confucianism

_What is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor._

– Judaism

_Do unto others as you would have them do unto you._

– Christianity

_Not one of you truly believes until you wish for others what you wish for yourself._

– Islam

_We should behave to our friends, as we would wish our friends to behave to us._

– Aristotle

_Act only on that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law._

– Immanuel Kant's Categorical Imperative

_Neminem laedere_[26]

– Legal codification of the Golden Rule, which translates as "general rule of care," or "hurt no one."

Contrariwise, a deviation from equal dignity is a broken symmetry and, as in physics, a deviation from symmetry signals the existence of a force that breaks it. Among humans, asymmetries take the form of inequitable or preferential treatment of persons or groups and, as in the physical world, these deviations from the reciprocal symmetry implicit in the Golden Rule signal the existence of coercion. For example, slavery requires force or the threat of force.

**Hammurabi's Legal Code**[27] (18th century BCE)

I had an ah-ha experience as a boy when I heard about King Hammurabi's practice of posting not only a list of crimes, but right alongside them, the specific punishments that would be meted out for committing them. By having the code carved in stone, the Babylonian ruler was signaling that the laws were immutable, universal, and not even subject to the whim of the king himself. Hammurabi's Code is one of the first to establish the presumption of innocence until proven guilty. I urged my parents to emulate Hammurabi.

**The Ten Commandments of Moses**[28] (15th–13th century B.C.E.)

The notion of a commandment raises the question of the authority of the command-giver. Although most of the Ten Commandments sounded reasonable in Sunday School, I wondered about their origin. How could anyone be sure they came from God? Moreover, not everyone believed in the existence of God. I thought it would be important to non-believers to demonstrate that these rules could be justified in terms of their contribution to social wellbeing. And, if they could not be so justified, to drop them. Among other things, the Commandments give expression to the idea of monotheism and its corollary of a single Fatherhood within whose jurisdiction we are all brothers and sisters deserving of equal dignity.

**Confucius**[29] (551 B.C.E.– 479 B.C.E.)

Confucius emphasized personal and governmental morality and justice. Like the biblical prophets and their Kingdom of Heaven, Confucius imagined a Mandate of Heaven in which rulers chosen on the basis of merit, not birth, would bring peace and prosperity to the people through the power of exemplary moral behavior. Again, the idea is that the governing class is not above the law but rather is honor bound to serve others, not self.

**Mo Tzu** 's Family of Man and Doctrine of Universal Love[30] (5th century B.C.E.)

Mo Tzu is less well known in the West than other Eastern prophets, but no less visionary. He may have been first to see the world as a village of kinsfolk, and from this insight he deduced that aggressive war is never justified. His doctrine of universal love and his argument that it is "supremely practical" were prescient and original. Despite his diatribes against music and dance, Mo Tzu's place in the Dignitarian Hall of Fame is unassailable. Even in antiquity, futurists had their foibles.

**Jesus** (6 B.C.E. – 30 C.E.)

An advocate of universal love and teacher of dignitarian values, Jesus instructed: "You shall love your neighbor as yourself."[31] This goes beyond assurances of equal dignity, but a world in which no one fears for his or her dignity will likely be one in which brotherly love will feel much nearer at hand than it does to most today. Absent indignity, a state of beatitude is possible, and love could just possibly "bust out all over."

**Magna Carta**[32] (England, 1215)

When King John yielded to the demands of the barons at Runnymede—that he spell out his powers and guarantee their privileges—he was starting down a road that would lead to constitutional democracy. The "Great Charter" he was forced to sign famously includes the writ of habeas corpus, enshrining the right to appeal against unlawful imprisonment. I suspect there were voices at Runnymede who resisted taking those first baby steps towards democracy on the grounds that many animals didn't do so and therefore it was contrary to nature to devolve power. That kind of thinking, still heard today, fails to appreciate the extent to which human intelligence and communication skills make possible complex organizations that, by tapping the power of numbers, can trump brute force. Contemporary manifestations of this dynamic are the non-violent uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East known collectively as the Arab Spring of 2011. Things might have been easier for the Barons at Runnymede, and the anti-monarchial and anti-totalitarian revolutionaries to follow, had all been equipped with today's tools of communication.

**Martin Luther and the Protestant Reformation**[33] (Germany, 1517)

The Protestant Reformation began as a protest against systemic corruption within the church hierarchy, extending even to the Pope. In his magisterial account of political revolutions, Eugen Rosenstock-Heussy[34] argues that states that are relatively free of corruption owe this happy circumstance to the Protestant Revolution.

**Oliver Cromwell, Charles I, and the "Divine Right of Kings"** (Britain, 1649)

Putting the king on trial and chopping off his head unambiguously made a point, (reiterated by the French in the headless person of King Louis XVI), that indeed there was no _right_ to rule, divine or otherwise. Once the Divine Right of Kings had been nullified, people were free to ask, "Who _does_ have the right to rule?" and to imagine that governing is no right at all, that our governors should serve us, not vice versa. The shift from monarchy to democracy prefigures the shift from faith-based to evidence-based truth: trust your own senses over authority.

**The Glorious Revolution**[35] (British, 1688–89)

England's Glorious Revolution marked the end of absolute monarchial power and the beginning of modern English parliamentary democracy. The monarch could no longer suspend laws, levy taxes, make royal appointments, or maintain a standing army during peacetime without Parliament's permission, a first step towards civilian control of the military. The Bill of Rights it produced is a major milestone in the history of liberty, justice, and human dignity.

**Frederick the Great**[36] (King of Prussia, 1744–97)

Unlike many of his contemporaries, Frederick did not believe in the Divine Right of Kings. He saw himself as the "first servant of the state" and joked that the crown was "a hat that let the rain in." To attract a more skilled citizenry, he generally supported religious tolerance, proclaiming, "All religions are equal and good and as long as those practicing are an honest people and wish to populate our land... we will build them mosques and churches." Yes, mosques.

**American Independence and the U.S. Constitution** (1776–1787)

The American Revolution can be seen as the beginning of the end of Imperialism—a liberation from colonial rule that would spread worldwide over the next two centuries. Having rid themselves of foreign rule, the genius of the Founding Fathers who wrote the U.S. Constitution was to assume the worst of their own governors and design an elaborate system of checks and balances to minimize corruption and maximize the accountability of office holders. The Constitution's most egregious moral flaw was the creation of two kinds of exclusions: women and people of color were held in abusive, exploitative second-class citizenships.[37] It took the Suffragette movement of the nineteenth century to win women the vote and the Civil War and the Civil Rights Movement to establish the principle of equal rights for racial minorities. Despite its shortcomings[38], the amended U.S. Constitution is a milestone in imposing constraints on the power of government and establishing what Abraham Lincoln described as "government of the people, by the people, for the people."[39]

**"Liberté, Égalité, Fraternité"** (France, 1789)

France's tri-partite revolutionary slogan has inspired reformers for two centuries. Omitted is **Dignité** , which requires generous measures of both Liberty and Equality. That is, no society qualifies as dignitarian that does not also offer constitutional protections of liberty and place limits on economic inequality. The overlap and interdependence of these four cardinal values is a subject in its own right.

**Latin American Independence** (Latin America, 19th century)

The second European colony to expel its imperial rulers was Haiti, born in the Slave Revolt of 1791 and achieving permanent independence from France as a new nation in 1804. The Haitian Revolution is a milestone in the history of Africans in the New World. Other blows against (Spanish) colonialism are personified by Simon Bolivar in Venezuela; José de San Martin in Argentina; and José Martí in Cuba. The decolonization of the Western Hemisphere prefigures the worldwide spread of anti-colonialism in the twentieth century.

**The Abolition of Slavery** (Britain, 1833; Russia, 1861; and the United States, 1863)

Slavery was regarded as business as usual until the eighteenth century when Enlightenment thinkers criticized it for violating the Rights of Man and Quakers condemned it as a violation of Christian ethics.[40] Czar Alexander II freed the serfs in Russia in 1861 and Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation freeing the slaves held in the Confederate States in 1863. Two years later, the 13th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibited slavery throughout the country.

**Labor Unionization** (19th – 20th century)

A landmark in the struggle between Nobodies and Somebodies (in the respective roles of Labor and Management) was the adoption of legislation guaranteeing the right of employees to unionize and bargain collectively.

**Defeat of Nazism and Fascism, Death Knell for Imperialism** (20th century)

Attempts by Germany, Italy, and Japan to establish empires of their own met with catastrophic defeat. In the half-century following World War II, national liberation movements spread across Asia and Africa, and, by the end of the twentieth century, colonialism is widely condemned—as slavery with a paternalistic face.[41] Colonialism went from a proud and profitable enterprise to shameful and indefensible exploitation in a few centuries.

**Universal Declaration of Human Rights of the United Nations**[42] (1948) and **International Courts and Tribunals in The Hague**[43] (1945, 1993, 2002)

The United Nations Charter elevates dignity to the status of a human right and charges governments with protecting it. The Declaration set in motion a gradual acceptance (in law, if not always in practice) of many post-World War II conventions on human rights, and has led to a view of the person, not merely the citizen, as the carrier of human rights. Some have heralded this trend as the emergence of "global law" as distinct from "international law."

The International Court of Justice, the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia, and the International Criminal Court—which have an historical antecedent in the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg—have a variety of jurisdictions and purposes, but among them are the prosecution of individuals for genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and the crime of aggression.

**The Civil Rights, Women's, and Other Identity Movements** (late 20th century)

Exploited subgroups have learned how to organize so as to resist predation by fellow citizens. Much as slavery lost its sanction in the nineteenth century, the residue of slavery—segregation and racism—lost legitimacy in the twentieth. Other discriminatory "isms" (anti-Semitism, sexism, ageism, ableism, homophobia) have joined racism in disrepute.

But identity politics can take us only so far because it's predicated on an "us" versus "them" distinction. In contrast, dignitarian politics is all-inclusive. Most of us are both victims and perpetrators of _rankism_.[44]

**rankism:**

  1. abuse, discrimination, or exploitation based on the power signified by social or organizational rank
  2. degrading assertions of rank

In every struggle to overcome an ism there are some non-victims who nevertheless ally themselves with the ism's principal targets and attempt to overturn the prevailing consensus. For such liberal forerunners, there's an element of altruism at work. Empathy blurs the line between altruism and self-interest.

With the realization that one's dignity is only as secure as the next person's,[45] one supports the dignity movement against rankism to secure one's _own_ dignity. As self-interest and altruism align, the Golden Rule becomes self-enforcing and the transition from a predatory to a dignitarian world gains momentum.

**The Human Potential Movement** (1960–present)

_Man is a creature who makes pictures of himself and then comes to resemble the picture._

– Iris Murdock

In its insistence that _everyone_ has untapped mental, physical, and spiritual faculties, the Human Potential Movement goes beyond identity politics. Heralds of the universality of unrealized abilities include William James, John Dewey, A.S. Neill, Carl Rogers, Abraham Maslow, Michael Murphy, et al. The Human Potential Movement presents us with a new picture of ourselves—"We are as gods and might as well get good at it"[46] —and we are gradually coming to resemble the picture.

**The Arab Spring** (2011)

After decades of suffering authoritarian rule, mass protests spread across North Africa to the Middle East demanding an end to paternalism and autocracy. Beginning in Tunisia with the so-called "Jasmine Revolution," the common goal of these non-violent uprisings was not so much freedom or bread, but elemental human dignity.

§§§

Each of the milestones mentioned above marks a curtailment of the potential for rank-based abuse, and a strengthening of individual human rights. Establishing a human right doesn't guarantee it, but it does shift the burden of proof from victim to perpetrator, and that makes officialdom more accountable and therefore less likely to continue to practice and sanction rankism.[47]

These milestones provide _empirical_ evidence for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s claim that the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice. The arc's curvature, however, is still indecipherable to many. Indeed, no one who witnessed the horrors of the twentieth century can be faulted for thinking that the curvature is bending _away_ from justice.

To make out the curvature in spite of the ambiguous and arguable historical record, we need a theory.

### From Predation to Dignity: The Paradox of Force

_Without a theory the facts are silent._

– Frederic Hayek

Since World War II there have been scores of wars, millions of casualties, tens of millions of refugees; fighting continues today in many parts of the world.

Since the Holocaust, and despite the world's determination that it not happen again, genocides have occurred in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Darfur, and elsewhere. Persistent poverty enshrouds one-third of the world's seven billion people and many fear that population pressure and/or climate change will pit us against each other in a struggle for scarce resources.

In this light, it's not unreasonable to argue that man's predatory practices continue unabated, and many so argue. But, an analysis of the social dynamics of power provides grounds for hope. Martin Luther King, Jr. did not prophesy quick or easy passage to justice, only that over the long haul the moral arc was bending in that direction.

Successful predation depends on a power advantage. Humans have an edge over the other animals and, from time to time, often as a result of a technical or organizational breakthrough, they may gain an edge over other humans as well. To the extent that we can put people down and keep them there, we can take what's theirs and force them to do our bidding. To the extent that we can't credibly do so, we become vulnerable to _their_ predations.

One reading of the human story emphasizes war, domination, rapine, pillage, slavery, colonization, and exploitation. Wealth and leisure for the few and a subsistence living for the many.

Another telling of history, as illustrated in the milestones cited above, highlights overthrowing tyrants, expelling colonizers, and, by marshaling the strength in numbers, progressively emancipating ourselves from domination, slavery, and exploitation.

A "paradox of force" lies in the fact that a group's competitive success vis à vis other groups depends on limiting the use of coercive force _within_ the group. Why?

If a ruler is regarded as unjust or self-aggrandizing by his subjects, morale will deteriorate to the point that group solidarity is weakened and the will to fight impaired. Unjust leaders neither deserve nor elicit loyalty and, when push comes to shove, their people may turn on them.

This means that governance that promotes loyalty and solidarity have survival value. Even societies that adopt a _predatory_ stance (consisting of some mix of aggressive and defensive capabilities) looking outwards, are unwise to disregard _dignitarian_ values looking inwards. Over the course of history, not to complement outward-directed predatory capability with a modicum of dignity for those within the group has been to lose out to groups whose stronger social bond enabled them to marshal superior force.

For this reason, the principle of equal dignity is more than an admonition to be "nice." A policy of relatively equal dignity enhances the strength of groups that practice it. None do so consistently, of course, but some do so more than others and this gives them a competitive advantage stemming from group cohesiveness. This suggests that, on a millennial time scale, the Golden Rule is self-enforcing. We were too quick to judge it toothless. Rather, it simply took a few thousand years to cut its teeth.

As we realize that dignitarian societies have, over the long haul, a competitive advantage, and as less dignitarian groups are absorbed by more dignitarian ones, we operationalize the Golden Rule and extend its purview.

Within a group, it's not just "top dogs" who abuse power. Power abuse is a tempting strategy at any rank because everybody is a somebody to someone and a nobody to someone else. Accordingly, a predatory posture can be assumed towards underlings no matter where one stands in the hierarchy.[48]

Because societies predicated on equal dignity are generally more productive and creative, and are more strongly committed to their common cause—be it aggressive or defensive—they are, on average, fitter. This does not mean that dignitarian groups win every contest with more predatory groups. Factors other than social cohesion are at play. But it does mean that, with starts and fits, organizations that tolerate power abuses effectively de-select themselves.[49] Over a long enough time period, the circle of dignity expands more than it shrinks.

The paradox of force is that, statistically, dignitarian societies gradually absorb more predacious ones until finally there is no longer a significant likelihood of inter-group predation. Indignant, disgruntled outliers may resort to terrorism, but they will not be viable unless they are serving as proxies for a group large enough to harbor and support them.

A selection process governed by the same dynamic unfolds among organizations. For example, more dignitarian companies will, on average, serve their customers and employees better, and will outperform less dignitarian ones. Over the long haul, equal dignity slowly becomes the norm.

While such an evolutionary trend may sound Pollyannaish, it is revealed as a logical consequence of the free play of power within and between competing groups. The paradox of force—that in the long run, right makes might, not vice versa—provides a causal explanation for Martin Luther King, Jr.'s observation regarding the curvature of the moral universe. Despite the relentless drumbeat of bad news, and barring a major catastrophe (such as one resulting from nuclear or cyber war, pandemic, global scarcities of food and water, climate change, or a colliding asteroid) denizens of the twenty-first century could find themselves witnessing the phasing out of our age-old predatory strategy and its replacement by a dignitarian one. Even if there are major setbacks—and we must expect at least a few—the quest for dignity will ineluctably drive human society away from predatory practices towards a dignitarian era.

### Predation, No; Competition, Yes

The majority of our human ancestors have suffered lives that, as seventeenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes famously put it, were "nasty, brutish, and short." A great many still do. But we're at a critical juncture beyond which lies the possibility of an epochal shift to a post-predatory era. Predation has taken us this far, and for that we must give it its due. But as a survival strategy it can take us no further without undermining what any strategy is meant to do—ensure our survival. We can take heart from the fact that we've already disallowed several broad categories of predatory behavior (e.g., those referenced in "Milestones"), and go on from there to _disallow predation itself_.

First, however, there's one more make-or-break issue that must be addressed. Removing the traces of predation from our treatment of others is analogous to the reeducation now underway around issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. It's not a quick or easy process, but a start has been made and there's no going back. For those of us who grew up within a social consensus that condoned the familiar "isms," we can change our overt behaviors, but not entirely eradicate attitudes to which we were exposed as children. What can change, what in fact _has_ changed, are the attitudes that one generation models for the next. For the most part, baby boomers did not pass the prejudices of their parents on to their own children. With each successive generation, bigotry attenuates. Over the course of several generations, prejudice and discrimination may diminish to the point where the young wonder what all the fuss was about.

But, in addition to overcoming temptations to put others down and advantage ourselves at their expense, there's a conceptual barrier to putting our predatory past behind us. Disallowing predation sounds impossible because we haven't figured out how to forego it without inhibiting competition. Although it's natural to see competition as the culprit (because it is so very often unfair, and because many competitors interpret winning a particular competition as an excuse for demeaning and exploiting those who lost), no society that has hamstrung competition has long endured. As libertarian ideology confuses predation with competition and may find itself an apologist for the former, so egalitarian ideology confuses competition with predation and may advocate killing the goose—competition—that lays the golden egg. To this dilemma—how to allow competition and disallow predation—dignitarian governance provides a possible solution.

Competition is an integral part of our past and fair competition is indispensable to a robust future. To delegitimize gradations of power is not only impossible, it's a recipe for dysfunction and anarchy.

From the natural selection that drives the differentiation of species to the marketplace that refines products and ideas, competition determines fitness and protects us from abuses of power by economic and political monopolies. To abolish competition is to invite economic and political stagnation, and eventually to fall behind societies that hone their competitive edge.

The difference between predation and competition is that predation knows no rules. In contrast, competition can be made fair. Making sure that it is—by disallowing rankism in all its guises—is a proper function of government.

At every point in our social evolution, power rules. Power is neither good nor bad, it just is, and objecting to power differences is like complaining that the sun is brighter than the moon. Abuses of power persist until the individuals or institutions perpetrating them find themselves confronted with greater power. This would be grounds for cynicism were it not that when power is abused, it is misused. When power is misused, there eventually surfaces a stronger (less abusive) alternative. Groups that harbor indignity, burden themselves with the corrosive effects of suppressed indignation. The long-term trend of this evolutionary process is the discovery of ever more effective forms of cooperation, successively out-producing, out-performing, and finally replacing rankist organizations, institutions, societies, and states.

### The Dawning of a Dignitarian Era

As Mo Tzu tried to tell us, we are one big extended family. The simultaneous advent of globalization and dignitarian values is no coincidence. Predation is no longer working as well as it used to. In addition to the reasons given above, greater exposure to "foreigners" is making their demonization untenable.

Another factor in the demise of the predatory strategy is that victims of rankism have gained access to powerful modern weapons and can exact a high price for humiliations inflicted on them. Thus, the victims themselves are increasingly in a position to make the cost of predation exceed the value of the spoils. Weapons of mass destruction seize the imagination, but even if we do manage to keep them out of the hands of terrorists, non-violent "weapons" of mass _disruption_ , employed by aggrieved groups, can so disrupt modern, highly interdependent societies as to render them dysfunctional. This represents a fundamental shift in the balance of power in favor of the disregarded, disenfranchised, and dispossessed.

Given that predation has been a fixture throughout human history, it's not surprising that when one form of predation ceases to work, we devised alternative, subtler forms to accomplish the same thing. Although slavery itself is no longer defended, poverty functions in much the same way—by institutionalizing the domination of the poor by the rich.

In the twenty-first century, the largest group of people that can still be taken advantage of is the poor. We should not be surprised if, using techniques of mass disruption (tactics of non-violent civil disobedience), they acquire the organizational skills to make their ongoing exploitation unprofitable and therefore unsustainable.

Something new is afoot, and it marks a change fundamental enough to define an era. Opportunistic predation—the survival strategy that we've long mistaken for human nature—has reached its "sell-by" date. Even wars by superpowers against much weaker states are proving unwinnable. Military domination is no longer the profitable business it once was.

Rankism is the residue of predation. As predatory uses of power are revealed as counterproductive, we leave predation behind—like the toy soldiers of childhood—and create a world in which the uses of power are limited to those that extend and enhance dignity.

Humanity's next step is to build dignitarian societies in a post-predatory world. Knowing that the moral arc of history does indeed bend towards justice gives reason to hope that this may be possible.

### Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge valuable suggestions and contribu-tions by Walter Anderson, Garry Jacobs, Jay Ogilvy, Claire Sheri-dan, Ivo Slaus, John Steiner, and Vivian Wu Wei.

* * *

[18] For a primer on modeling, see Chapter 3 of _All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity_ (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006)

[19] As Andrew Bard Schmookler points out in _The Parable of the Tribes: The Problem of Power in Social Evolution_ (University of California Press, 1984), if any one group adopts an aggressive policy towards others, the targets of that aggression must either develop a commensurate martial capability or submit to domination.

[20] _Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage_ , by Steven LeBlanc and Katherine E. Register (New York: St. Martin's Press, 2003).

[21] God's Politics by Jim Wallis.

[22] This quote appears in a New York Times book review by Ethan Bronner on March 29, 2007 of Sari Nusseibeh's book (with Anthony David) _Once Upon a Country: A Palestinian Life_ (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007).

[23] _Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank_ (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2003, 2004); _All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity_ (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006); and _Dignity for All: How to Create a World Without Rankism_ (with co-author, Pamela Gerloff) (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2008).

[24] _Albert Einstein—Creator and Rebel_ , Banesh Hoffmann (Viking, New York, 1972), n. 1, p.254.

[25] See <http://www.loyno.edu/twomey/blueprint/GoldenRule.jpg> and <http://religioustolerance.org/reciproc.htm>

[26] See article by Domenico Parisi "Neminem laedere: Other-damaging behaviours and how to contain them": <http://www.insilico.it/insilico/simulations/2-neminem-laedere-socially-damaging-behaviours-and-how-to-contain-them->

[27] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammurabi#Code_of_laws>

[28] See Exodus 19:23 and Deuteronomy 5:2. Also, Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ten_commandments>

[29] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confucius#Teachings>

[30] An introduction to Mo Tzu's thought is provided by Burton Watson, _Mo Tzu: Basic Writings_ (New York: Columbia University Press, 1963). See also Wikipedia, which gives his name as Mozi: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mo_Tzu>

[31] Matthew 22:39

[32] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Magna_carta>

[33] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protestant_reformation>

[34] Eugen Rosenstock-Heussy, _Out of Revolution: Autobiography of Western Man_ (Norwich, VT: Argo Books, 1969)

[35] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glorious_Revolution>

[36] Wikipedia: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frederick_The_Great>

[37] See analysis by Richard Baldwin, _Perfecting our Union_ : <http://perfectingourunion.com/home/>

[38] See _Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank_ (Gabriola Island, B.C.: New Society Publishers, 2003, 2004), Chapter 10; and _All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity_ (San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler, 2006), Chapter 7. The relationship of dignity to liberty and equality is also discussed in these blogposts: <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/bleeding-heart-liberals-p_b_217704.html> and <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/bridging-left-and-right-_b_50613.html>

[39] The Gettysburg Address: <http://showcase.netins.net/web/creative/lincoln/speeches/gettysburg.htm>

[40] The story of William Wilberforce and the abolition of slavery is told in Adam Hochschild's gripping book, _Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves_ (Boston: Houghton Mifflin 2005)

[41] For purposes of illustration, a list of states and national independence leaders, would include, India (Gandhi, Nehru), Africa (Nkrumah, Kenyatta, Senghor, Nyerere, Mondlane, Mandela, et al), South East Asia (Ho Chi Minh), the Soviet Union (Gorbachev, Yeltsin) and its East European Sattelites (Walesa, Havel).

[42] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_Nations_Declaration_of_Human_Rights>

[43] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Court_of_Justice>; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Court>; <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Criminal_Tribunal_for_the_former_Yugoslavia>

[44] See, for example, <http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-fuller/what-is-rankism-and-why-d_b_465940.html>

[45] <http://www.openleft.com/diary/3593/>

[46] Stewart Brand, Editor of _The Whole Earth Catalog_ , (1968–72)

[47] As defined in the text, rankism is not the mere use of rank, but rather _abuse_ of the power attached to rank. I use "abuse" to signify the persistent misuse of power, that is, its continued use not to serve the group but to advance the personal interests of its high-ranking members. Dictators and monopolists go to great lengths to avoid competition because they sense their own vulnerability to it. By the time rivals win a chance to challenge their monopoly, the institutions presided over by dictatorial rulers are usually far weaker than the alternatives they've been suppressing. Transitions to more dignitarian governance, once they begin, often occur almost overnight, as in Romania, the Soviet Union, Indonesia, and Serbia.

[48] Unless, of course, you are at the very bottom. But even then, you can resort to kicking the dog. Much cruelty to animals is a result of indignation that humans feel towards other humans who have humiliated them, but whom they dare not confront because the abusers are shielded by the power inherent in their rank.

[49] Whenever a "survival of the fittest" argument is invoked, a question of circularity arises: Can "fittest" be defined independently of "what survives"? In this case, the question takes the form: Can "dignitarian" be defined independently of "what prevails"? If not, the argument is circular, a mere tautology and it can tell us nothing about the curvature of the moral universe.

Indeed, Darwin's theory was initially attacked as circular. Critics maintained that the only way we could gauge fitness was to look and see what survived. Fortunately for the theory of natural selection, it is possible to state independent conditions that give organisms an advantage, or handicap them, in the struggle to survive and reproduce. Similarly, there is by now a long list of practices that are known to undermine dignity. The de-selection of rankist organizations that tolerate rankism is analogous to the de-selection of relatively unfit organisms in the struggle for reproductive survival. Darwin's principle is not circular (fitness criteria _can_ be defined independently of survivability), and since it can be foreseen that the inefficiencies attendant to rankism handicap organizations burdened by them, the notion that rankist values are recessive—and dignitarian values dominant—is not circular either.

# A New Age of Enlightenment

From Self to Superself
Science and Religion are often seen as antagonists. But they share something profound: both express their deepest truths as equivalences. Everyone knows Einstein's famous equation E = mc2, which equates mass and energy. Students of physics learn the equivalence of electricity and magnetism; and then of electromagnetism and light. In science, world-shaping changes follow from a realization that two apparently unrelated phenomena are actually different manifestations of one underlying reality.

Religions do the same. Hindu sages made the connection between Atman (personal self) and Brahman (the Universe), an equivalence sometimes expressed as A = B. Their answer to the question "Who Am I?" was "I am That" (Everything). Separate self­hood is an illusion. Everything is intertwined with everything else. There are no clear boundaries; there is no distinct "other." Fuzziness rules.

Buddha's Noble Truths are also expressed in terms of equivalence. Horrified by death and disease, the Buddha declared, "Life is suffering," and attributed suffering to a common misconception of selfhood. His antidote was an inclusive (or, "enlightened") self, in contrast to the separate and distinct selves with whom most identify.

Zen Buddhism, too, is predicated on the idea of selfhood. To jolt people into realizing that their self is an apparition, Zen equates enlightenment with "No-self."

Making the connection between suffering and selfhood was a milestone in our slog toward civilization, but it did not go viral. The enlightenment of the Eastern prophets has not made the leap from monastery to mainstream.

### The Age of Enlightenment

Skip ahead two millennia, from the sages of the East to the philosophers of the West, and we find ourselves at the dawn of an era known to posterity as the "Age of Enlightenment." There's that word again—"enlightenment." What, if anything, does the eighteenth century Western movement to spread learning and reason have to do with the enlightenment of the East as represented by Vedanta, Buddhism, or Zen?

Though the enlightenment of the East and that of the West differ in focus, they both take aim at suffering. In the East, teachers emphasized personal suffering and discovered that its origins lay in a faulty notion of selfhood. In the West, the philosophers of the Enlightenment sought to alleviate suffering due to illiberty, injustice, and religious wars. What connects Eastern sages and the Western philosophers across the millennia is their common desire to mitigate suffering. So, it's no coincidence that the terminology of "enlightenment" figures in both their prescriptions.

One of the precursors of the Age of Enlightenment was Thomas Hobbes, who famously described the life of the common man as "nasty, brutish, and short." No description of wretchedness has ever packed more punch. Hobbes and the _philosophes_ of the Age of Enlightenment wrote the book on individual rights and representative government. Though their ideas inspired some to pursue happiness, many remained mired in penury or bound in slavery.

The Age of Enlightenment ended as the idealism of "Liberté! Egalité! Fraternité!" transmogrified into terror and war. The nineteenth century saw more Americans die in their Civil War than in all their other wars combined. In the twentieth century, noble ideals were flouted worldwide in industrial-scale horrors: dictatorships, wars, genocides, and famines. Many grimly concluded that enlightenment was a mirage, and that tragedy and horror were fixtures of the human condition.

Yet despite this sorry record, statistics now suggest that, overall, violence, hunger, disease, and repression are in decline. The last half of the twentieth century saw the end of colonialism, the dissemination of human rights, and, in just a few generations, billions have clawed their way out of poverty. But, even if the optimists are right, a sobering truth is now apparent.

For the first time in our troubled history, we can no longer count on surviving the horrors we're capable of producing. Self-extinction has become a distinct possibility.

Precisely because global warming, weapons of mass destruction, or super artificial intelligence could bring about our extinction, there's an opportunity—in addition to a good reason—to consider a radical solution.

By "radical," I don't mean crazy or impractical. A radical solution is rather one that goes to the _root_ of the problem. Given our penchant for retaliation, it's unwise to assume that the teachings of prophets, gurus, or philosophers will keep us from a misstep that spirals into our undoing. But, together, underpinned by the emerging scientific understanding of selfhood, we might follow the "better angels of our nature," (Lincoln) and exit the "road to destruction" (Matthew 7:13).

Despite ongoing horrors, there are signs that a new Age of Enlightenment is aborning. Developments in philosophy, social science, and neuroscience are harbingers of an evolving conception of selfhood that will shape the future much as today's popular understanding of selfhood underlies eighteenth-century thought.

As a change in the root affects every leaf on a tree, so a new conceptual foundation for selfhood has ripple effects that will force us to revisit many self-evident beliefs. What follows is a preview of the salient characteristics of a twenty-first century Age of Enlightenment.

The rest of this essay is organized around three questions and two appendices:

**Three Questions:**

  1. What is it about human beings that makes us willing to harm others?
  2. What is enlightenment, and how would normalizing it curb suffering?
  3. Can enlightenment be demystified and democratized?

**Two Epilogues:**

  1. Obstacles to Enlightenment
  2. From Self to Superself: Inhibiting the Self, Inhabiting the Superself

### Why are we willing to harm others?

Homo Sapiens is a predatory species. Other humans have just what we need to prosper and multiply, so, if we believe the gain outweighs the risk, we may try to take it from them. Either the fact, or the fear, that there isn't enough to go around can make us willing to harm others. We rationalize such predation as self-preservation.

Like most predators, we are territorial, and protecting our territory, or attempting to dislodge others from theirs, often entails suffering. "Man's inhumanity to Man" (Robert Burns) may shock and revolt, but given our predatory origins, outbursts of savagery should not surprise us.

Yet, In the face of recurrent atrocities, we have never given up hope that we might civilize the unforgiving competition in which we find ourselves. Our efforts have taken two forms: changing the rules of the game and changing the mindsets of the players.

Changing the rules of the game—so as to regulate predation and limit depredation—is part of the solution, but not enough. Despite our efforts to limit arms and arrest climate change, weapons of mass destruction proliferate and carbon pollution grows. Absent an about-face, the chances grow that we'll grievously damage our homeland.

Changing the mindset of the players is notoriously slow, proceeding, as Max Planck ruefully put it, "one funeral at a time." The inadequacy of incrementalism to forestall apocalypse could explain why no extraterrestrials have shown up on Earth: they all may have done themselves in before mastering the science of interstellar travel.

What's needed to prune human interactions of man-made suffering—an instance of which could escalate to a conflagration—is a radical re-visioning of one another: from potential predators—which is still the grim reality—to kin, whom we would no more harm than ourselves.

Some will point out that Love has been tried—and has failed to allay enmity. Motzu, who lived during China's warring states period, recognized that human kinship was boundless and expressed his realization in a gospel of universal love. A few centuries later, Jesus challenged us to "love thy enemies." Although suffering and horror were not much abated, an undying aspiration had been released into the world. Recent discoveries regarding the nature of mind and self, give us a chance to actualize those prescient aspirations.

### What is Enlightenment and How Can It Curb Suffering?

In the West, "enlightenment" denotes the liberal intellectual movement that grew out of the Scientific Revolution and challenged the authority of church and state. In the East, "enlightenment" is marked by the extinguishing of ego and an awakening to our existential interdependence. Some exponents describe enlightenment as a state; others, as a process. For the purpose of this essay, what matters is that the taken-for-granted consensus regarding selfhood is being turned inside out, with revolutionary implications for our personal, social, and political relationships.

In what follows, I suggest that a new Age of Enlightenment, fusing Western science and Eastern wisdom, could invalidate our predatory survival strategy and, sooner than we think, render it untenable. Why? Because, enlightenment reveals those previously taken for fair game as family. Eating or cheating our kin is universally taboo. As the tenth-century Chinese Zen Master Yumen put it, "With enlightenment, all things are one family; without enlightenment, all things are separate and disconnected." A thousand years later, Rabbi Abraham Heschel interpreted enlightened selfhood as tantamount to recognizing "the dignity of all things."

### The Enlightened Self: Long Heralded, Rarely Realized

_But man, proud man!  
Drest in a little brief authority,  
Most ignorant of what he's most assur'd,  
His glassy essence, like an angry ape,  
Plays such fantastic tricks before high heaven  
As make the angels weep._

– William Shakespeare

Radical reappraisal of selfhood begins with the realization that "man [is] most ignorant of what he's most assur'd". We mindlessly make reference to our "self," but its "essence" is "glassy"—translucent, porous, and makeshift. Selves cannot be brought into focus because there is no _thing_ there on which we might focus. When pressed, we fall back on a résumé that touts the deeds and positions of a succession of former selves, all equally jury-rigged and vaporous.

While our very self eludes definition, we reassure ourselves with the conviction that my self is mine, and no one else's. I have free will, and agency to execute that will. I am one of a kind, independent, separate and distinct.

Whereas most of us reflexively subscribe to such an individualistic model of self, we may, at the same time, sense that our self is somehow entangled with other selves. Though we often fail to acknowledge their contributions, we know deep down that our life story has many co-authors.

In recent decades, postmodern philosophy and neuroscience have built an irrefutable case for a multitudinous, interdependent self. Selves are co-creations—mash-ups of other selves. "To exist is to coexist" (Gabriel Marcel); like Walt Whitman, we "contain multitudes."

If this is so, you'd expect a more pluralistic idea of selfhood to find expression in politics. But, no; not yet. For the most part, rugged individualism—a muted form of predation—still rides roughshod over the body politic. The reigning consensus on selfhood is personified in the figure of the _Lone_ Ranger. But it is Tonto, the Lone Ranger's sidekick, who, as witness and conscience, speaks truth to power, and personifies enlightened selfhood.

Standalone selfhood, for long an imperative of personal survival, has become an existential threat. As a survival strategy, predation has got us this far, but has reached its sell-by date.

How can we get beyond the traditional notion of self that, in a world turned arsenal, augers our extinction? How can the fact of our interdependency be made plain; its denial indefensible; its implications for social justice unequivocal, urgent, and actionable?

Answer: Inaugurate and normalize a new Age of Enlightenment based on a synthesis of the enlightenment of Eastern sages and Western philosophers, and undergirded by the empirical facts of neuroscience.

### Why We've Not Already Universalized Enlightenment

_I said, "Joe, how does it make you feel to know that our host only yesterday may have made more money than your novel Catch-22 has earned in its entire history?"  
And Joe said, "I've got something he can never have."  
And I said, "What on earth could that be, Joe?"  
And Joe said, "The knowledge that I've got enough."_

– Kurt Vonnegut, in conversation with Joseph Heller

Even if the path to enlightenment can be widened to a superhighway, almost no one suffering from scarcity will take it. When there's not enough to go around, dog-eat-dog behavior is commonplace. Only when no one feels short-changed, does selflessness seriously challenge selfishness.

Of course, even if we should succeed in normalizing enlightenment, and predation does become rare, there's always the possibility of a lone-wolf bent on destruction. There may never be a time when the probability of a terrorist incident is zero, but we can identify several horrendous accidents just waiting to happen, and there are both incremental and systemic things we can do to improve the chances of avoiding them.

The problem is similar to that of gun control. There are lots of reforms that might marginally reduce gun violence. But none of them will make us much safer unless they're accompanied by a broad social change in attitude toward guns. In societies that don't normalize guns, a would-be gunman has a higher psychological bar to clear before resorting to violence. Similarly, fewer individuals will be inclined to prey on others in societies that have normalized enlightenment and so made kinship plain and predation shameful. We _can_ better the odds, and given the enormity of what could go wrong, we'd be fools not to try.

Both before and after enlightenment is commonplace, we should, of course, do everything we can, by way of legislation and moral persuasion, to disallow abusive behaviors that might provoke victims to retaliate. But there's a difference. Before enlightenment, ending indignities meets with justifications of the status quo; after, it will be "Opps! Of course. Sorry."

Among futurists, a consensus is growing that, counter to the conventional wisdom, we will indeed be able to bring an end to the chronic scarcities that sanction a predatory survival strategy. The primary threat will then come not from those with the least, but from those with the most. The unenlightened rich will claim that they earned every penny, and some will go to great lengths to discredit any social contract that reallocates profits. The only adequate defense against political reaction is to heed Thomas Jefferson's warning that American democracy depends on "the enlightenment of the people."

### Demystifying and Democratizing Enlightenment

Enlightenment is elusive. Unlike geometry, carpentry, or ballet, there's no agreement on exactly what it is and no proven way to teach it. Through the ages, enlightenment has been sanctified and mystified. Obfuscation masks its simplicity.

Is there a shorter, wider, open road to enlightenment? Could the enlightenment of Eastern prophets and Western philosophers—distant, aging cousins—revitalize themselves with a healthy dose of brain science?

Brains are imitation machines. They're wired and continually re-wired by mimetic interactions with other beings and things. Babies form up to a thousand new synapses every second. Sensory deprivation quickly brings the disintegration of synaptic networks, mental breakdown, even death. That's why solitary confinement is torture.

The Dalai Lama writes that "If Science proves some belief of Buddhism wrong, then Buddhism will have to change." The enlightenment of Buddhism isn't "wrong," but neither is it easy to come by, let alone to transmit to people preoccupied with survival. These limitations notwithstanding, enlightenment was an insight into the nature of selfhood that can now be built upon. Much as the discovery of the double helical structure of DNA put genetics and embryology on a sound foundation, so emerging brain models provide a foundation for a post-predatory, _dignitarian_ civilization.

The situation is analogous to a time when literacy was a class privilege. The priesthood protected its monopoly by telling the illiterate that the reason they couldn't read was that God was punishing them for impiety.

The traditional pedagogy of enlightenment has not been equal to the task of democratizing it. The teachings that replace timeworn practices will be free of cant: no hocus pocus, no jargon, no monetary gain. Instead, there will be a self-model grounded in neuroscience that shows that we learn by imitating others, beginning with newborns who echo their parents' baby talk, and continuing throughout life via mimesis and mentoring.

In reality, no one "stands alone." All of our selves are entangled within a larger unity. We won't be able to solve current problems without taking our profound interdependency into account. Sages, postmodern philosophers, and neuroscientists agree that we owe our very existence to the living examples we provide one another. The rugged ideal of "every man on his own two feet" is fatuous. Indeed, the opposite is true. Doing anything, even existing as a self, "takes a village" (African proverb). Is that not reason enough to share equitably the rewards for what we can only do together?

### Enlightenment and the Superself

As the part played by everyone and everything in the formation of selves becomes clear, the notion of singular selfhood takes a backseat to the inherently pluralistic concept of _superselfhood_. Superselfhood is dis-identification with the singular self—which is but a phantom—and re-identification with the "village," which can be as inclusive as the whole Earth. The enlightenment philosopher Baruch Spinoza, who equated God with Nature, regarded this radical reorientation as union with God.

Unenlightened, we take ourselves to be separate individuals, competing with others in a harsh game of selves. When we do cooperate with one another, it is to better compete with other groups. Enlightened, we identify as superselves. As such, how could we not treat our co-creators with the kindness and respect we ourselves desire?

A simple practice that will tip the inner balance away from individualistic selfhood and toward pluralistic superselfhood is at hand. We have only to notice that at a perceived insult to our dignity, our old self, conditioned during the predatory era, snaps to attention, suspends allowances for kinship, and reflexively invokes the biblical equation: "An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth." While we can't always quash a cycle of reciprocating indignities, we can, when our me-first self rears its selfish gray head, remind ourselves that personal selfhood is an illusion, superselfhood, the reality.

Every time we express superself over self, the sense of our selves imperceptibly shifts from individual to social, from independent to interdependent. The separate and distinct self, to which we've been mindlessly giving allegiance, is a pig in a poke.

### What's the Role of the Individual in a Pluralistic World?

_No individual ever really creates anything: creativity is anonymous and universal. In wiser times, no artist, scholar or preacher would have dreamed of attaching their names to the works that had come into being through them._

– Hubert Benoit

At this point, you may be wondering, "Is there a place for _me_ in this new Age of Enlightenment? What remains of the individual?"

Individuality remains essential to the success of the group, but it's understood differently. Groups remain dependent on individuals to channel the superself by placing the final piece in a puzzle, authoring a poem, or posing a question that's hanging in the air. Since everyone joins the game in progress, the person who puts the last piece in the puzzle shouldn't get all the recognition and reward.

Individuals are acknowledged for jobs well done, but not lionized to the exclusion of others whose contributions were also essential to the Eureka moment. "Masterpieces are not single and solitary births; they are the outcome of many years of thinking in common ... so the experience of the mass is behind the single voice" (Virginia Woolf). "Winner-take-all" incentivizing distorts the game and misdirects the players. George Bernard Shaw, said "I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend could have invented the Nobel Prize."

Individuals not only serve the group as spokespersons, they also act as scouts, voices in the wilderness, challengers of the status quo, change agents, and deciders. That we inhabit much the same world, and learn by imitating what we see happening in it, accounts for the phenomenon of simultaneous independent lines of investigation and discovery. We differ not so much in our inborn mental capacity, as in the quality of the role models to whom we are exposed.

Think of individuals as _facets_ of the superself. "There is no Them; there are only facets of Us" (John Green). Each facet has a unique vantage point and therefore a personal take on what's happening. It is by reconciling differing reports from multiple facets that we discover what's invariant. Resolving contradictions and removing inconsistencies carries us, stepwise, toward a deeper, more comprehensive truth.

But, you might wonder, if survival were not at risk, why would we do anything? Don't the nouveau riche often lose themselves in idleness and dissipation? It make take a generation but until the newly rich and secure are contributing something of themselves, they suffer from the loss of what's most precious—dignity.

Separate selfhood also serves as a buffer against the suffering we are exposed to. When we witness killing, torture, enslavement, exploitation, scapegoating, or other degradations of our fellow beings, our mimetic brains are imprinted with some of the victims' suffering. That's why we shrink from gore. A disproportionate number of Stalin's executioners and Britain's hangmen committed suicide.

The epidemic of Post-traumatic Stress Disorder shouts the same truth: witnesses to suffering are also scarred. It's gradually becoming apparent that, because our very existence depends upon reflexive mirroring, we ourselves are damaged when we're a witness to injury. Bill Clinton was ridiculed for saying "I feel your pain," but he was actually stating a universal truth. We're so constructed that we cannot but take others' emotional reactions onboard. The moat of selfhood, by distancing us from others' travails, numbs us to some of the pain that our senses register even as we avert our gaze. Selfhood, as we've known it, is both an analgesic and a soporific.

Putting someone to death is like smashing antiquities—the unique record of a life, as encoded in a nervous system, is destroyed. As superselfhood permeates selfhood and erodes our old self's hegemony, jurisprudence will come under pressure to reconcile its principles with multiple causation and group responsibility. It not only takes a village to create; it takes a village to destroy. Already, restorative justice is challenging punitive justice.

Renewing predation's license now threatens our continued existence. Safer to retire these antiquated selves, embrace no-frills enlightenment, re-identify as superselves, and find fulfillment in co-creation.

Enlightenment is the new literacy. Universalizing it will be the best investment we ever make. We finish where we began—with equivalences:

**Enlightenment = Superselfhood = Survival (if not Beatitude)**

### Postscript: Do We Live Happily Ever After?

Imagine that we navigate the rough waters ahead and sidestep extinction. Will everything then be hunky-dory? Do enlightenment and superselfhood spell beatitude?

Yes, in the sense that current problems—war, poverty, disease, climate change, etc.—will become solvable.

But no, in the sense that solving present problems will reveal new ones. That seems to be the lot of intelligent, model-building questers: solve a problem, reveal new ones. Answer a question, uncover a host of others that no one had thought to ask.

Questioning and questing, modeling and solving are _transcendental_ activities. That is, they produce their own continuation. And, since ignorance is the root of evil, we should not be surprised when evil returns in new guise. Perpetual, unalloyed goodness does not appear to be what Nature has in store for us.

So, if there's no end of suffering in sight, why go down this road? Because ignorance dispelled is a one-way street, and there's no turning back. We can't go home again.

### Epilogue 1: Obstacles to Enlightenment

  * Belief in beliefs. Instead, hold beliefs, theories, and models as provisional and heuristic, not absolute.
  * Illusions of independence, self-reliance, autonomy, free will
  * A feeble, unreliable, undeveloped witness
  * Confusing the map with the territory. Models are not what's modeled.
  * Unfamiliarity with models
  * Conflation of science and scientism. Throwing the baby (science) out with the bathwater (scientism)
  * Reflexive adherence to Lex Taliones ("An eye for an eye; a tooth for a tooth.")
  * Denial that "Man is a machine." Humans are smart enough to build machines that are more intelligent than they are. Rather than putting down these newcomers, grant them dignity, welcome them into the fold, acknowledge kinship, befriend them.
  * Belief in _vitalism_ , the idea that living matter contains a vital principle which is absent from non-living entities, so that living matter obeys physical laws different from those governing inanimate matter.
  * The self-flattering claim that we're exceptional
  * Obfuscation and mystification
  * Failure to build a political model that reconciles individual agency (typically championed by the Right) with social interdependence (typically championed by the Left)
  * Failure to grasp that existence is co-existence, creativity is co-creativity

### Epilogue 2: From Self to Superself: Inhibiting the Self and Inhabiting the Superself

It takes time to learn to read and it will take practice to shift our allegiance from self to superself. Here are a few things to try.

  * Imagine reviewing your life in hindsight, say, a century hence. Would you not seem more like a puppet than you seem to yourself today? Our vaunted free will has never really been ours. Rather, it's the universe's, and, like the universe, it holds no end of surprises.
  * Catch yourself when you're about to self-deal and serve "others" instead. After all, you're a composite of them as they are of you and others.
  * Eavesdrop on your inner dialog and overhear the multiplicity of voices. Others' memes inhabit you and your memes inhabit them.
  * Imagine your résumé's "photographic negative." That is, reimagine everything you pride yourself on as culminating in failure. Then interpret everything you're ashamed of as preparation for success. Both narratives are fictions.
  * Nothing's personal. Insofar as we're defensive, we're in our self's grip. Since selfhood is illusory, there's actually no target for anyone to aim at, let alone hit. Targeting another self is shooting oneself in the foot.
  * Picture the universe as teaming with life on planets orbiting stars in other galaxies. Exceptionalism is naive arrogance. We're better off without it.
  * Realize that, with your death, your unique genome need not be lost (it can be read and archived). Alas, this is not yet true of our menomes. At present our unique synaptic maps _are_ lost, but when we are able to capture the information encoded in neural nets, it need not be. Individuality is a composite of the genome (which takes two), the menome (which takes a village), and the wenome (which takes a culture). When death ceases to mean the loss of our physical blueprint and our mental map, it will lose its finality, if not its sting. Though the self is mortal, the superself is immortal.
  * Imagine yourself on your deathbed. Are you burnishing your résumé, or do you accept the fate of everyone and everything, reconcile your self to a place in the great chain of being, and climb aboard the lifeboat Superself?

# Appendix

On the Origin of Order in Behavior

Robert W. Fuller and Peter Putnam
This is a reprint of _On the Origin of Order in Behavior_ by Robert W. Fuller and Peter Putnam (principal author), _General Systems_ , Vol. XI, pp. 99-112, 1966, Mental Health Research Institute, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, MI. Our thanks to Professor David Bohm for recommending its publication to the editors of _General Systems_. This paper, and other manuscripts by Peter Putnam, are available at peterputnam.org.

### 1. Logical Status of Models of Brain Function

**Relation Between Properties Of a System and Its Elemental Units**

The problem of understanding the nervous system would be largely solved if, in the general spirit of the physical sciences, we could apply mathematical techniques to derive quantitative predictions of various specific features of the nerve network from assumptions about the operation of its elemental units. In this regard, however, it is illuminating and orienting to realize that, even in physical science, overall network function cannot always be deduced from elemental function and network form. For example, a skilled electronics engineer is often unable to derive the function of a rather simple electronic circuit, despite a complete knowledge of the network and the properties of its elementary units. On the other hand, if one has a guiding idea as to the overall function of the circuit, then it is possible to examine the component parts and see just what role they play in this function, and also to elucidate and qualify the originally assumed overall function. Then successive iterations, from overall function to single unit properties and back to overall function, and so on, can be used to mutually elucidate each other. However, it is necessary to start with some knowledge of overall function. This will also be the case in understanding the operation of the nervous system.

Although there are many useful analogies between brains and IBM-type computers, their differences are even more important if we are to begin to characterize overall brain function. Therefore, in order to orient the overall functional character of the brain, let us compare it with these better understood digital calculators.

**Series and Parallel Computers**

We will make a distinction [based on some remarks of von Neumann] between series computers, whose prototype is the IBM machine, and parallel computers, whose prototype is the brain.

A conventional digital calculator is the programmed adding machine in which millions of operations take place one after the other, in series, at high speed. Any error in any one of these millions of series steps usually makes the final answer altogether absurd. The information is not only processed sequentially, it is also taken into the machine one piece at a time. In contrast to this conventional series calculator, the brain may be viewed as a parallel calculator in which thousands of processes go on side by side, influencing one another. Actual calculations in such a parallel calculator involve only a relatively small number of series steps, but many independent parallel factors contribute to the selection of each step. In a parallel calculator there is room for errors in the various parallel branches without affecting the final result, since redundancy can be used to over-determine the answer. A parallel computer not only processes information in parallel, but also takes in lots of information simultaneously.

A parallel calculator contains a wide range of random connections adapted to picking up correlations. It is in this respect that the function of a parallel calculator differs basically from that of a series calculator. The parallel calculator functions to pick up correlations, to sift for and to isolate significant new correlations, while the series calculator is designed to help establish the consequences of correlations (like Newton's laws) already well defined. To put this another way, we could say that whereas the series calculators are primarily concerned with deduction, the parallel calculators specialize in induction. Although these distinctions are certainly not absolute, they do represent dominant aspects of the functional specialization of each type of machine. And given this basic functional difference between brains and conventional calculating machines, it is not surprising that the techniques used to analyze series machines are not as successful when applied to brains.

Now, given this first crude characterization of the overall function of the brain (as a "correlation catcher"), the next step is to explain how the brain performs this function in terms of simple assumptions about the elemental units of the brain, the neurons. We shall turn to this problem in Section 2; but first we shall discuss briefly a situation faced by 19th century physicists which is structurally very like the present problem of building a model of the brain. This example will also illustrate our feeling that physics has its relevance for brain modeling more as a prototype from which lessons regarding the model-building process can be drawn than as a source of useful mathematical and physical techniques (although it is that, too). In Section 2 we shall view the brain as a machine which builds models that "predict" the order of emission of its own behaviors.

**Some Analogies with Theories in Physics**

For most of the 19th century there was a theoretical gulf between mechanics and thermodynamics. Mechanics described particle motions and could be elaborated to yield kinetic theory. Thermodynamics, on the other hand, dealt with thermal phenomena on the basis of its own concepts and laws. There was no bridge between the two vocabularies and the two bodies of physical law until statistical mechanics was constructed. Today, in the study of behavior, there is a similar gulf between the many specific neurophysiological facts and the more general insights into behavior of psychology, literature, philosophy, and religion—results, both as to what our nervous system computers have calculated or discovered and as to how the nervous system performs these operations.

A nervous system model may be expected to bridge this gap, as statistical mechanics bridged the mechanics-thermodynamics gap. The heart of such a theory of the operation of the nervous system would be a specification of the statistical invariance properties that characterize the self­emergent patterns of nervous system activity. We will see that these self-emergent features all have a self-producing, self-consistent, self-reinforcing, "invariant" character, analogous to the equilibrium states of thermodynamics. We no more want to know all the details of neuron interaction than we want to know all the details of where and when the molecules hit the walls of a box. All we are concerned with is the specification of certain overall features of the interacting neurons (just as all we want to know in the case of the gas are certain quantities, like temperature and pressure, that characterize equilibrium).

Such a nervous system model will not emerge deductively from the experimental results relating to brain function any more than statistical mechanics emerged from applying mechanics simultaneously to 1023 particles. It will emerge from the attempt to reconcile the more recent neurophysiological and psychological results with each other and with the psychological insights implicit in the traditional models of our cultural heritage which were derived from a careful introspection, and which are essential guides to the intermediate nervous system model. One of the advantages of focusing on the human nervous system (while, of course, making use of the experimental information on the nervous systems of lower animals) is precisely that the human nervous system is the only one to which we have direct introspective access.

One of the keys to the formulation of statistical mechanics was the realization that thermodynamics deals only with equilibrium situations. This imposes an enormous restriction on the form of the intermediate models of statistical mechanics. Similarly, we must use the specific aspects of behavior that interest us, the questions that we are already asking, to guide in the formulation of the intermediate nervous system model. These important aspects of behavior are the characteristics of dominant configurations, i.e., the characteristics of those patterns of behavior that resolve in situations of conflicting alternative behaviors. These self-emergent, stable, repeating adjustments are the analog of the all-important equilibrium situations in thermodynamics. It is these "equilibrium" situations that we want to characterize and whose emergence we want to trace. These equilibrium channels are hard to find—we shall see that the set of cues used to lock them in must have something of the character of causal insight in order for them to be invariant enough to survive.

**Prediction in Physical and Biological Science**

Let us now turn to the question of what we might expect of a brain model by way of prediction. It is very useful to take a close look at the nature of the prediction afforded by physical theories, and compare this with the prediction of biological theories.

The model of the nervous system is not so much concerned with the prediction of specific acts as with providing a framework within which to reconcile conflicting predictions of our behavior as implicit in past experience in different contexts. This weaker demand is all we require in practice, and realizing this helps remove the excessive self-defeating demands of full prediction.

The prediction actually achieved by physics is far less comprehensive than is usually realized. As Wigner points out, physics does not explain nature; it only explains (i.e., systematizes) the regularities in the behavior of objects. The specification of the explainable and separating off the arbitrary (e.g., the distinction between the equations of motion and the initial value data) is itself one of the greatest discoveries of physics so far.

Physics provides a set of general procedures by means of which specific regularities in nature can be compounded of the fundamental laws. These regularities are usually only observable under highly artificial and special conditions. For almost all applications to real life we use not the mathematical theory but nature as our calculator: we do experiments on coefficients of friction, reaction rates, etc., and interpret these results as what the theory would yield if we could actually carry out the corresponding calculations.

Although physics can predict only a few of the quantitative facts of chemistry, it provides a framework adequate to resolve inconsistencies in the principles (as first abstracted directly from the facts) of chemistry and to guide experimental research. The prediction afforded by a model of the nervous system will be of this type. The discovery of the atomic theory and quantum mechanics did not make chemistry obsolete, nor will a theory of the nervous system replace the more over­all psychological insights, many of which have first emerged in or have been anticipated in folklore, literature, "common sense," philosophy, religion, etc. What a nervous system model can be expected to do is to help remove ambiguity in, and thus resolve contradictions among, the various psychological insights and principles. It will act with respect to existing psychological knowledge much as an appeals court acts with respect to conflicting lower court decisions. This is already the main role of quantum theory with respect to chemistry, and we should not expect our theories to gain in literal predictive power as the matters they treat become still more complex.

Biological models (or theories) are even less capable of making quantitative predictions than the models of physics. Nevertheless, even though it is usually quite impossible to apply biological models to predict new facts, except in contexts where far simpler models have done so beforehand, the framework they provide for synthesizing new facts is still very useful. Their power lies in their ability to integrate a vast body of data under the heading of common generating universals without leading to contradiction. In this way, new classes of correlations become meaningful and new experimentation is suggested.

There is another crucial sense in which a synthetic theory is predictive. Before the emergence of such theories, the literature is always full of countless predictions, speculations, conjectures, and proposed experiments. Together these more or less "cover the waterfront." Some are therefore bound not to be incorrect; but which? A synthesizing model selects from this array of mutually inconsistent predictions and policies; it shows how to introduce qualifying variables into the old competitive models so as to reconcile them as aspects of a common one.

Returning to the analogy with statistical mechanics and thermodynamics, we can derive some other useful implications regarding predictability. Many of the "predictions" of statistical mechanics were of thermodynamic principles already known.

This will also be the case with a nervous system model. However, in addition, statistical mechanics allows us to trace the implications of the underlying causal laws of particle mechanics to the thermodynamical level very precisely, and in so doing we discover limits to the domain of validity of the thermodynamical principles (e.g., fluctuation phenomena). Similarly, the nervous system model will make possible a more careful tracing of the implications of known scientific facts to the macroscopic level (psychiatry, education, philosophy, etc.) which will clarify and qualify the insights of these fields. It will help isolate the control variables of lasting, stable, institutional change from the social counterpart of fluctuation phenomena—changes that only induce their opposites and lead merely to continued exploration by trial and error.

### 2. Outline of a Functional Model of the Nervous System

We will now sketch a few of the principal features of a model of the nervous system designed on the basis of the foregoing guidelines and objectives. We want to trace the connection between elemental unit operation and some overall functional characteristics, recognizable as belonging to the class of more global psychological insights into brain function, accessible subjectively by direct introspection. All the ideas in the model have been put forth in varying degrees of precision by earlier investigators. What we are trying to do here is to show the adequacy of existing insights, when properly selected and grouped and sufficiently elaborated, to provide a predictive synthesis of the experimental data. To demonstrate the adequacy of the model to synthesize the vast bodies of existing neurophysiological and psychological data requires a work of book length. But perhaps the spirit of the approach can be suggested in the following preliminary outline.

**The Neural Conditioned Reflex Principle as the Basic Building Block**

If the phrase "conditioned reflex" is used to refer to the whole input-output, stimulus-response sequence, then, as many have pointed out, it is impossible to explain behavior in terms of conditioned reflexes. The behavioral outputs at any given time are not only a function of the then present external sensory inputs or their simple traces, but also a function of the state of excitation of the neurons in the nervous system, the details of the organism's previous history, and a related cascade of internal effects. This dependence is much too flexible in its involvement of internal parameters to fit within the simple stimulus­response framework, or any simple extension of it (such as trace conditioning).

In lower animals the conditioned reflex itself is more nearly an adequate basis for the description of behavior: sensory stimuli elicit necessary, stereotyped responses. Higher animals are to larger and larger degrees released from the genetically determined dominance of such fixed responses; learning becomes more possible because of the replacement of a rigidly "wired­up" nervous system by a loosely wired-up network of diffuse random interconnections, the properties of which can be to a greater extent altered by local (synaptic) action, as we shall see. Roughly speaking, a general mode of operation replaces a uniquely wired-up gadget, making possible greater adaptability.

However, at the core of the conditioned reflex concept there is a functional principle which does form an adequate basic building block if applied at the neural level. The neural conditioned reflex principle (NCRP) may be stated: "If the firing of an axon ending is correlated with simultaneous local excitation in the area of that ending, some change occurs (whose exact nature is not yet fully understood—perhaps growth, or chemical change, etc.) which serves to facilitate firing in that area in the future when that axon is fired." The NCRP is an alternative statement of Hebb's neurophysiological postulate: "When an axon of cell A excites a cell B and repeatedly and persistently takes part in firing it, some growth process or chemical change occurs in one or both cells such that A's efficiency in firing B is increased."

Whether or not simple inhibition can occur as a monosynaptic process is subject to debate. If monosynaptic inhibition exists, then a reverse statement holds, namely, "if the area into which the axon fires is inhibited at the time of firing, then its future firing produces an increased local inhibition there." In this case the NCRP is double-barreled. If monosynaptic inhibition does not exist, then the picture of inhibition is complicated slightly by the presence of an inhibitory interneuron. The present functional model is independent of the outcome of this controversy, but favors the former view (on grounds related to logical simplicity).

The NCRP is a statement about the gross functioning of synaptic linkage. It has nothing to say about the underlying biochemical machinery. (Similarly Mendel's laws of genetics were gross functional principles; only recently was the under­ lying biochemical mechanism explained in terms of the properties of DNA. But these recent discoveries do not invalidate conclusions drawn from Mendel's laws.) We simply assume that some change takes place so that an axon branch that fires into an area comes to support the present state of that area. If the area is dominantly facilitated, then the axon that fires into it changes the synapse in such a way as to add to the local facilitation. If the area into which the axon branch fires does not fire, or is being actively inhibited, then the synapse will be so modified as to add to the relative inhibition, as compared to the effect it would have had if the neighboring cells had fired. We will assume further that the relatively positive or negative facilitations will increase with the improvement of the correlation between the axon firing and a local state of excitation or inhibition, respectively. If monosynaptic inhibition occurs, then different axon branches of a single neuron could in varying degrees act to excite one region and inhibit another. Where the mechanism of excitation or inhibition involves a specialized interneural excitor or inhibitor, the excitation or inhibition by these coincidence effects operates via the combined system of neuron and specialized interneural exciters and inhibitors in much the same way as the simple monosynaptic excitatory type.

To distinguish between the conditioned reflex, in the external stimulus-response sense, and the conditioning that occurs between single neurons due to the action of the NCRP, we shall refer to such local linkings of individual neurons as neural conditioned reflexes (NCRs).

Whatever the precise mechanism of the NCRP, its effect is to push things to extremes. If for some reason B follows A, then the effect of the NCRP is to make B follow A sooner and more often, and with more violence (i.e., a greater number of nerve fibers firing simultaneously). There is no internal regulation to the NCRP—its whole implication is to throw everything out of kilter. All that stops the strengthening of an NCR is that it itself excites antagonistic effects, in a roundabout way through other circuits which counteract it.

To apply the NCRP to the broad task of explaining complex human behaviors, we must consider the properties of sets of interacting NCRs. Isolated conditioned reflexes can be treated via the concept of reinforcement. But when we consider large bodies of interacting NCRs, external conditions of reinforcement no longer have the status of independent control variables in terms of which significant changes can be defined or predicted. The reason for this is very simple. Other NCRs are the chief shapers of the conditions of reinforcement of any given conditioned reflex.

Thus the problem is not what are the optimal conditions of reinforcement, but rather which pattern of reinforcement will be stable, and which pattern recessive. The heart of the theory of operation of the nervous system is a theory of the invariance properties that characterize the self­consistent patterns of reinforcement for sets of interacting NCRs.

The NCRP links the exterior world of physics, oriented by measurements of lengths and times, to the interior world of brain operation, oriented, as we shall see, by concepts of order among mutually exclusive acts. Via the NCRP, external correlations (released objects fall towards earth) become internal ones as well; a representation of the external world is gradually incorporated into the brain. Now we shall look at this learning process in more detail.

**From Sequentiality to Simultaneity**

Since the activity of the organism is determined by the states of the neurons, it is clear that as the NCRP interrelates neuronal activity it simultaneously functions (as viewed externally) to link together the historical sequence of acts, and vice versa. That is, the fact that an organism has gone through a sequence of acts implies that the neural representatives, the excitation of which lead to these acts, have themselves been linked together, or interfacilitated, by virtue of the NCRP. Thus, if act B followed act A in the past, then the facilitation of act A will tend to facilitate act B, increasing B's probability of occurrence as an act following A.

Life, or a segment of life, can be crudely viewed as a long chain of acts, the NCRP providing the linkage between the individual acts, or links, of the chain. Consider the sequence of acts

A B C A D P C A Q D P Q C A C P A K Q...

The symbols (A, B, C, etc.) which denote the acts, may stand for very elementary twitches or more complex items of behavior. The interpretation we give these symbols (acts) is a function of the behavior whose emergence we are trying to explain. What we are presenting here is more a technique for explaining causally the emergence of given, already known behaviors (or orderings of behaviors) than a theory for predicting any specific behavior.

In the above segment of the quasi-random sequence, act A has been followed variously by acts B, D, Q, C, and K. Hence, by the NCRP, all these five acts will be facilitated at once when act A next occurs or is next facilitated. When a given act has historically been followed by each of a set of acts, then it comes to excite the whole set of successors. From an overall point of view, the life chain, a sequence of acts, is broken up into pieces and these pieces (individual acts) are brought into parallel. Sets of acts that were previously excited sequentially are now facilitated simultaneously. Acts are brought into parallel if and only if they have been competitive—i.e., if they have followed a given act (A, in our example) in the previous history of the organism.

The basic operation of the brain as a parallel calculator is that of gradually reaching a relatively stable choice or, as we shall say, establishing a relative dominance, among members of subclasses of this class of competitive motor acts thus brought into parallel (i.e., brought under simultaneous consideration). The concept of the brain as a parallel computer is thus made more concrete by recognizing that what is brought into parallel are the motor acts themselves.

Now suppose C is the dominant act—i.e., C is the act of the set of five (B D Q C K) which comes increasingly regularly to follow A. Preliminary explanation of this would be that the facilitation of any of the possible acts B D Q K (i.e., the facilitation of the neural representatives of these acts) would lead to the facilitation of C, but that the facilitation of C would lead to the inhibition of B D Q K. The recessive or rejected branches, B D Q K, are an essential part of the mechanism for conditioning the dominant branch C. In reverse, the recessed branches (B D Q K) could not have been stably recessed had there not been found a positive output channel (C), which alone can stably inhibit them. The dominant act is not defined directly, but only indirectly relative to the rejected possibilities. The phase "relative dominance" refers to this relationship among the class of competitive acts. It is much easier to condition a given response than might be supposed be­ cause one has not merely the preceding act, but also the whole class of acts which have previously followed that act, to use in defining and subsequently in reselecting the dominant. Not only is the truth discovered by trial and error, it is. also encoded by making use of the unsuccessful trials. This is one reason why working out problems (as contrasted to being given the right answers) is essential to a student's creative development.

**Order From Randomness by Active Probing**

We shall now examine in greater detail this basic operation of the nervous system: establishing a relative dominance among the members of a class of competitive motor acts. So far we have thought of the class of competitive acts as a set of motor outputs, all capable of following a given act A, lying passively in parallel after A. The elements of this class are made mutually exclusive via reciprocal innervation. (We are here using reciprocal innervation in a generalized symbolic form as the nervous basis of the time separation of mutually exclusive acts.) A class of competitive acts also has an active aspect: sub­classes within it can be viewed as generated by a random search. (In what follows no distinction will be made between truly random processes in the mathematical sense and "quasi-random" processes, i.e., those whose internal structure is either largely irrelevant, or alternating and complex in such a way that it can be treated statistically.) A given state of excitation in the brain (what might be called in psychology a given "drive" or "drive factor") has associated with it a class of emittable acts, within which class are to be found some which upon emission reduce this excitation. This class of acts has many competitive members which are all facilitated by the drive factor in question and which are searched over randomly. The basic correlations of the nervous system are defined only relative to such an active probing; they are not conditioned as passive responses.

Typical "drive factors" are hunger and discomfort. Different drive factors excite different random searches: a pain in the toe excites a different class of "thrashes" in an infant than hunger or cold; or if they excite the same thrashes, they do so using different neural paths, so that the associated random searches remain distinct. We begin a behavioral analysis with many such random searches, excited by various drive factors and further shaped, as we shall see, by present sensory inputs that can be viewed as serving to intercorrelate motor factors. Then we focus on changes in the order of emission of these mutually exclusive behavior elements that result in a narrowing of the range of possible sequence of acts, and hence in the appearance of order in behavioral experience. For many purposes it is useful to view learning negatively: as a reduction in the randomness of sequences of behavioral elements, rather than as the incorporation of order in a blank photographic plate. The totality of these translations of specific steps in the reduction of the randomness of behavioral sequences into "wiring diagrams" will constitute the brain model. The model of the brain, like physics models of the world, will only be implicit in the structure of the translation procedures; no single model of the nervous system will be presented, any more than physics gives us a single model of the world.

Now, in physics, the key orienting concept for systematizing the patterns of inanimate nature has turned out to be measurement of time and position. It was measurement of these quantities (not color, ownership, or location of experiment, etc.) that led to successful theories in physics.

To people believing in magic and spirits this orientation can seem completely unmotivated and revolutionary. Now we take it so much for granted that it is hard to conceive of alternatives.

What corresponding special orientation will prove central to the analysis of brain function? As is suggested above in the "negative" characterization of learning (the rock contains the statue, the set of permutations of the alphabet contains all the novels ever to be written), the key orientation for building a model of the nervous system is to be found in a concentration on changes in the order of emission of mutually exclusive behavioral elements. More specifically, for most purposes it is possible and useful to concentrate on changes which reduce, narrow, or restrict the range of possible emitted sequences of mutually exclusive behavioral factors.

The great variety of behavioral outputs is viewed much as a linguist views a "Rosetta Stone" of unfamiliar characters which he is trying to decode. Presented with sequences of mutually exclusive characters, he focuses on regularities in the order of the characters that result in a narrowing of the range of possible orderings, for it is here that the meaning lies (not, e.g., in the variations in the form of a given symbol). Similarly, we focus on changes in the order of emission of a set of given mutually exclusive acts that result in the emergence of or make possible the appearance of pattern in the outputs, changes that reduce the random character of the outputs; or, in short, those changes that bring order ("equilibrium states") out of chaos.

How do such changes come about? Assume that a certain sequence of acts is hit upon which stops the random search, i.e., which quiets or satisfies the associated drive factor which produced the random search. This combination of acts follows others, but others do not follow it (see Figure).

Schematic illustration of the formation of a relative dominance through a random search process. A random search is usually stopped by a sequence or combination of acts, but for purposes of illustration we will discuss here a simpler situation where a single act stops the random search in question. The solid lines, A1 to A5, represent five possible competitive acts, all excited simultaneously by some drive factor that corresponds to a state of excitation (E) in some center in the brain. The acts might be ways to turn a doorknob or scratching in different places. The dotted lines connecting the upper to the lower ends of different lines represent the organism's past history, the actual close successions which have occurred. These dotted lines refer back to and are derivable from the earlier picture of life as a chain sequence of acts. A1 was once closely followed by A2 and vice versa. A5 has been closely followed by both A4 and A3. There is a tendency to have only one successor because these dotted lines also represent an actual facilitation of this successor which we may suppose first arose by chance. Dotted lines not shown might also be drawn from the upper to the lower ends of the same A's, indicating that the neural representatives of these acts are self-facilitating loop-like structures. There are no dotted lines going from A3 to any other A. This indicates that after A3 was enacted there always followed a long period of disuse of the set of five A's so that there was no tendency for A3 to facilitate any of the other A's.

It can be seen that in this random search, A3 is more facilitated than any of the other A's because of indirect facilitation through A1, A2, A4, and As. Thus as the level of excitation of the center rises, facilitating all five acts equally, these will in turn funnel excitation into the neural representatives of A3, making it expand fastest, and via reciprocal innervation, inhibit out the other competitors once it reaches a given level of excitation. Then recruitment occurs and A3 is enacted. Finally, A3 will take over every time, rather than alternating at random with the other four. At this stage we have a relative dominance. Note that as a result of the funneling of past history into A3, the center exciting the A's can produce an act (A3) at a lower level of general facilitation.

The concept of a gestalt has at its core the compounding of a set of elementary motor possibilities focused to a choice of specific act. Thus the figure also serves as a schematic illustration of the formation of a primitive gestalt.

This alone gives this combination or sequence a preference, because any other sequence of acts, which does not stop the random search, is followed by still other sequences which, via the NCRP, means a further shifting (and hence weakening) of the interconnections among the elements of the searched over class. Only a combination that stops the random search stops the shifting of the interconnections. The last set of interconnections is not altered or weakened by the continued overriding action of the NCRP; it is the only combination that is not undercut by the inconsistent action of successors. What stops a random search is reinforced again and again—every time the associated drive factor is excited—because what satisfies a drive factor once will do so again if it catches the basic principle involved. Such correlations are invariant in the sense that if the random search is re-excited, the same stable configuration of nervous activity dominates. The correlation of searched over factors (i.e., the relationship among the acts in the searched over class) which stops the random search is the relative dominance or the invariant correlation. Notice that no appeal is made to "drive reduction" in this explanation of the encoding. The concept of a drive factor does remain a central one: the subclasses of acts brought into parallel within which will occur significant narrowings in the range of orders of emitted behaviors will be those generated by specific drive factors. Similarly, significant stable relative dominances (as distinguished from momentary chance effects) will represent configurations that stop random searches generated by specific drive factors. But the encoding is due to the NCRP itself. Drive reduction enters only in the sense that when some combination of acts is hit upon which stops the random search by reducing the generating state of excitation (or drive), then the probability of future emission of this final combination is increased, since it is the only one not undercut by the continued inconsistent encoding action of the NCRP.

The analysis into random search factors is a little like the two-body problem in physics. It is not far from the truth to say that there is only a two-body physics. More complicated situations are treated by perturbation theory, which is a sort of succession of two-body problems. Three-body problems are unsolvable in their full generality. So too, we analyze the organism's behavioral repertoire into specific random searches. In fact, these random searches interact, of course, and the separation is only an idealization. Nevertheless, where these searches interact they can be treated as compound or interacting simple searches, as we do in applying perturbation theory. We may, for example, take the relative dominance of the first search solution, apply it to the second search to shape that field, and then take the relative dominance of the second search and use it to re-analyze the first search, and so on. The separation into random search factors is a very general method of analysis—like Fourier analysis. Many sources of random search are present, playing on and exciting the motor centers, each in its own individual way. Each will have some motor sequences that stop or reduce it, or reduce some aspect of it. What stops a random search is reinforced again and again, every time the associated drive factor is excited. Being invariant, it can take hold, overriding the many competitive factors (connections) implicit in the semi-random interconnections of the brain.

A relative dominance that takes hold relative to one random search has a logical feedback, reshaping all the others. It may be incompatible with some others and upset by the effect of some others, so as to produce an alternation. For example, the relative dominance discussed in the Figure (how to turn a doorknob) may be inconsistent in some respects with a relative dominance resulting from a random search as to how to open a jar. Behavior successful in one context, fails in the next. This higher level compound alternation between pairs of competitive relative dominances can itself be viewed as a random search to be resolved by finding some more elaborate relative dominance that satisfies or is invariant under (i.e., stops) both random searches at once.

At first the child no more knows why it is searching than a tree knows why it is swaying in the wind. A child's learning consists of the discovery of more and more relative dominances through interacting with its environment. The establishment of relative dominances introduces elements of order into the sets of mutually exclusive behavioral elements with which the animal starts­ its relatively uncorrelated repertoire. With the solving out of a particular random search via the isolation of a relative dominance, another random search takes possession of the animal. The historical sequence of random searches becomes linked together in a chain via the NCRP much as, at a lower level, the more elementary motor acts ("twitches") which formed a sequence historically were linked together via the NCRP. The links of this chain are classes of parallel acts excited simultaneously which were originally randomly searched over, but are now spanned by a relative dominance. These classes, spanned by relative dominances, thus become tied together in a chain and are themselves brought into parallel by the NCRP and searched over randomly. A dominant relative dominance may emerge from this set as that relative dominance which stops the random search over the set of relative dominances. The logical structure is identical to that of the previous analysis. The only difference is that here the elements of the class which is searched over are more highly individuated, being the results of previous random searches.

This analysis into sources of facilitation, associated random searches to be stopped, and associated relative dominances, is thus a very flexible tool. As with measurement in physics, so here too, unless one measures the right things (i.e., picks the right random searches), one will not get at a causal explanation. Physics requires ingenuity in its application. It is by no means reduced to an algorithm. The crucial structures are only indirectly or implicitly defined, and in each new application some distinct new configuration of the same basic concepts must be devised to compound the observed regularity of the unqualified universals of physics. The same will prove true in the application of the present model of the brain.

**Thought Processes**

Up to this point we have said nothing about the more complex nervous system processes such as thought, memory, and perception. We will now make a few very brief preliminary suggestions of the present model's approach to such issues.

There is considerable experimental evidence that associated with specific motor acts are neuron "loops" in the upper parts of the nervous system. These loops are such that when sufficiently activated they facilitate lower loops in such a way as to lead to the emission of certain definite associated behaviors and to the exclusion or suppression of other competitive ones. These upper loops form an internal representation of the emittable behavior patterns.

Alternative behaviors may thus be regarded as interacting via their higher loop representatives, without actually being emitted. It is the discussion of the properties of such a body of interacting NCRs, and more especially of the conditions for the emergence of steady or self­facilitated cyclic patterns, which forms the heart of the present approach to the more complex nervous system processes. Now we will look at this internal interaction in more detail.

As more and more relative dominances are established via the infant's interaction with its environment, its behavioral repertoire becomes sufficiently intercorrelated that the neuron loop representative of acts in the chain may be excited several stages beyond act A, prior to enactment of A.

Now this internal "predicting ahead," or facilitation of successive motor loops, is likely to reshape the effective relative dominances in such a way as to affect the emission of the act (A) which is about to be enacted. It may be, for example, that the loop representatives of acts B or C, etc. (the series of acts facilitated by A) have recurrent collaterals back to loop A which inhibit it. The initial "assumptions" or relative dominances with which we started, which first defined the loop A representing the act which is now a candidate for emission, are redefined (by the effect upon them of facilitated successors) before loop A gets a chance to repeat and recruit enough to result in the emission of the associated act. In this event a new loop representative, corresponding to another potential "next" act, K, becomes excited. If before K can be emitted a series of loops has been excited that inhibits K, then K also may not be emitted and excitation will flow to the neural representative of still another possible "next" act, P. We call a series of acts, B, C, D, (or their excited neural representatives) that follow an emitted act (or a candidate for emission), the series elaboration of that act. The series elaboration of A has a logical structure in the sense that the correlations, B to C, C to D, reflect some structure of the external environment and past interaction with it, not merely the biochemistry of the moment.

Now when the series elaboration of an act undercuts it, preventing its emission, and other candidates are tried, and this process continues, we have in effect an internal search over a set of potential acts (i.e., over their loop representatives). Thus an internal search process is set up whose structure closely parallels the external search process. The internal random search is concerned with latent inconsistencies in the relative dominances established by the external search throughout the history of the organism.

The key distinction between internal and external random search is that in external random search we actually emit the acts, whereas in internal random search it is just the loop representatives of possible acts in states of excitation short of emission that are searched over. Thought is viewed as internal random search.

The internal random search continues until an act is hit upon (say P) whose series elaboration (QRS...) is not such as to undercut it. When this occurs a repeating or steady state is achieved that leads to emission of the act represented by that ringing loop (P). Then that particular internal random search stops. Whereas the end of an external random search means the end of emissions from the searched over class of acts, the end of an internal random search means the emission (or setting for later emission) of an act from the internally searched over class of possible acts.

The basic requirement for the emission of an act is that the NCRs that comprise it form cyclic, self-reinforcing or steady patterns. Such patterns are in many contexts best thought of not so much as states of positive resonance, but as states characterized by the absence of inconsistent, self-defeating or inhibitory sources of excitation, in the series elaboration of the given candidate for emission, powerful enough to upset its dominance. Any state, once initiated, will build to a resonance unless it is explicitly undercut by successor states. It is the absence of undercutting, a condition on sets of interacting conditioned reflexes, that selects behaviors for emissions.

The previous discussion can be summarized in terms of the earlier analogy with statistical physics. Just as there is a tendency to move towards equilibrium in thermodynamics, so too we see that ways of behaving that are not stable tend to move towards ways of behaving that are stable. There is a random component of behavior (the analog of the random motion of molecules) that leads to an interaction and self-canceling complexity that permits only the emergence of behavioral "states" that possess a certain self­consistency or "invariance" (equilibrium states). As in statistical mechanics, the randomness of the many interacting factors simplifies rather than complicates the problem. The progressive dominance of inhibition with age makes almost all combinations self-defeating, except those with very special self-consistent convergence properties.

A given act, as represented by a set of NCRs, may form a part of many different cycles. The simplest of these is the learning cycle (e.g., grasp and place which children endless repeat). These cycles, rather than the isolated act components (NCRs), become the points of reference. Except as parts of such self-stimulating learning cycles, isolated acts or components of acts do not receive enough support to be emitted.

Thought is thus treated as an internal random search for a steady state of nervous system activity. Thought is a search process for relative dominances that stop internal random searches and define a positive through channel—a search for something we can think of doing and still want to do in the light of our already existing knowledge of the consequences.

Usually the thought of doing X excites responses which, when compounded into the previous cycles, change them, so that one no longer tends to do X, but Y. Such a sequence continues until the thought of doing Z does not undercut Z. Then there is repetition; and one of the basic properties of the nervous system is that repetition leads (via the NCRP) to recruitment or resonance (i.e., rapidly increasing response) in the associated cycle until emission of the act associated with the cycle occurs. When nervous impulses form such a closed excitatory loop, the configuration is self­reinforcing (via the NCRP) because nervous energy is not "dissipated" but functions to re-excite and maintain itself. Such internal self-reinforcement among sets of NCRs within the nervous system is vastly more important in shaping the emission of an act than the external conditions of reinforcement experienced upon emission. Thus the steady state condition, which is a sort of topological condition on the compounded NCRs, leads to a selectivity among acts which is the very essence of thought. It is in this way that the link is made to values (Section 3).

**The Regulation of Drives**

The acts immediately following any act, and hence facilitated by it, have been called the series elaboration of that act. As discussed above, thought processes depend upon the existence of series which connect back into earlier elements of themselves, thus forming cycles.

Now it is the series elaboration of the acts excited by a given drive which regulates that drive. The baby yells when hungry, and then is fed. Next time, the state of being hungry excites yelling which excites the sense of being fed which reduces the hunger drive so that the child yells less. The yelling is reduced in this way to that minimum necessary to achieve feeding. The crucial point is that the "predictive" series elaboration itself regulates the drives. An interesting consequence follows from this picture. Since the drive is regulated by the elaboration, the first effect of inhibition is to break down the elaboration and hence intensity the drive, rather than reduce it. When the inhibitory regulating mechanism is itself inhibited, the result is to unleash the drive in all its unregulated intensity. Although this result may seem obvious subjectively (thwarting our will makes us angry), it can seem rather paradoxical when viewed in term of the external stimulus and response: the "inhibitory" stimulus actually seems to intensify the response at first. Tracing the cause of this subjectively obvious but externally paradoxical fact to details of the "wiring" relates the three views: of subjectivity, of external stimulus-response, and of "wiring diagrams."

**Contradiction and Differentiation**

In connecting past historical sequences of acts, the nervous system elevates the past succession of events into a habit, making any given act "predictive" of the future. The development of thought can be followed as the gradual refinement or differentiation of these "predictive" conditioned reflex patterns, patterns "predictive" of one's own behavior. The brain can be viewed as a computer that "predicts" the order of emission of the basic elements constituting the behavioral repertoire.

Previously, we have characterized thought as a search for stable cycles. More concretely, thought can be viewed approximately as an alternation between two competitive cycles, which alternation forms the center of attention. Viewed subjectively, two past historical contexts have given rise to two inconsistent behavior patterns. (These are generated by "imitative couplings" to or identifications with individuals in the group.) When we represent in words the over-generalized expectations, we are led to a verbal contradiction associated with the conflicting behavior patterns. This contradiction takes the form of two inconsistent predictions of how we will behave in one situation. The alternation consists in a search for factors, or correlations, which constitute a stable relative dominance as between these two competitive branches. If no such correlation is found, then the response levels of the nervous system shift (or push on to extremes) in such a way as to force a choice of one of the alternates on a more primitive basis (rage, withdrawal, etc.).

A reflex is represented not by a single path but by many bundles of neural paths in parallel, perhaps having thousands of paths in a bundle, with a certain functional equivalence and a wide variety of random interconnections. The alternations which constitute the center of attention tend alternately to reinforce and inhibit various reflex formations. If among these formations, or within their bundles, there are present invariant correlations, correlations which are always reinforced, the contradiction and associated alternation will force these (by the mechanisms of nervous system function we have described) to emerge and displace via reciprocal innervation other presently effective (but less well correlated) ones. In short, the contradiction generates an internal alternation which winnows within the relatively redundant, generalized reflex formations acquired in the previous history of the organism, for more invariant forms. The alternation forces the inclusion of added qualifications in the conditions that lead to the appearance of the old alternative forms. The winnowed historical forms constitute, properly regrouped, a model resolving the contradiction. When such a relative dominance is found, then the two alternatives are brought into parallel, the circumstances under which each is dominant having been clarified. The over-generalized expectations have been differentiated—an enlarged synthesizing model has been built in which each is qualified.

The point of alternation between two inconsistent relative dominances is also the point of deepest emotional involvement. It is the place where the most significant correlations await discovery—correlations that will bring stable changes resulting eventually in institutional changes. A reason for the deep emotional involvement associated with alternation is that alternation involves an overriding of the previous response, not its elimination. The old wiring connections remain but other interconnections have been introduced which override their effect. Thus as the alternation progresses, tension mounts (the number of neurons participating increases and hence the level of nervous excitation). This helps to isolate invariant correlations since more paths are involved. If such are not found it forces a reversion to more primitive adjustments which do not depend as much on convergence, since the size of the competitive bundles gradually increases until either may precipitate the act alone without convergence.

No differentiation takes place apart from specific contradiction. An example of this principle is seen in certain aspects of the salivary reflex as conditioned in a dog by a specific tone.

At first almost any tone over a wide range will excite the same response. When the experiment is repeated many times with exactly the same tone, the range of frequencies which activate the response does not tend to narrow. Only by repeatedly using a higher and lower tone and withholding reinforcement, that is, only by explicit contradiction, does a differentiation of the frequency dependence emerge. This differentiated response is far more stable (harder to extinguish by withdrawing reinforcement) than the simpler undifferentiated response. This experiment provides a key to one aspect of the problem of memory. It suggests inverting the problem and treating instead the problem of forgetting. That is, start with the assumption that all relevant or heuristically significant distinctions are encoded and then explain forgetting as retroactive inhibition due to inconsistent multiple encoding that overrides the original response. Thus in the above experiment, the dog "forgets" the undifferentiated generalized conditioned response to the tone because in other instances in his life tones are heard (pianos, passing trolleys) and he is not fed. These events, too, condition a reflex, but one inconsistent with the old one. This new reflex will tend to override the old one, which, however, is still present underneath, as Pavlov showed. Response to a specific tone (e.g., B-flat), differentiated from other tones as above, is clearly less likely to encounter inconsistent conditioning (because B-flat sounds less often in the dog's regular environment than do all other tones taken together, and the dog has already been conditioned not to salivate to tones that are not B-flat). Differentiation, not repetition or more reinforcement, is the key to the retention of learning. This must be a central tenet in any theory of education. Also, it seems to be the process of differentiation itself which brings about emotional balance. Thus, for example, Pavlov conditioned a dog to be hysterically over-responsive to any skin stimulation. Once the hysterical response was established, it seemed impossible to extinguish it by the usual technique of replacing the negative by positive reinforcement.

Finally it was discovered that by introducing positive reinforcement at some spots on the skin and negative reinforcement at others, the response to touch could be brought back to normal. This experiment viewed in the context of the full model has important implications for therapy. It is by differentiating our models of ourself that we transform, or intersubordinate, our basic drive patterns. The control variables lie not in the indirect manipulation of people's drives via selective reinforcement, but in the elaboration and differentiation of their causal insights and self-models. De facto, we are only concerned with resolving contradictions in the determination, or prediction, of our acts. It is the resolution of these contradictions (i.e., the differentiation of our causal self- and nature-models) that leads to institutional changes.

**Relation of Sensory Inputs to Motor Outputs**

The role of the sensory factors has not been mentioned up to this point because we take the view that the motor correlations, the sequences of motor acts, provide the orienting core for representing both the details and overall character of brain function. The sensory factors are most easily and profitably treated via their effects on these basic motor elements.

A key experimental result suggesting this view is the well-known fact that a dog conditioned to salivate in response to a bell will do so only if hungry. The sensory stimulus can therefore not be said to cause the motor output, but only, sometimes, to elicit it by, in this case, connecting a random search initiated by a hunger drive with the act of salivation. A fundamental principle of this model is that sensory inputs only function to help interlink or correlate motor factors; they do not by themselves cause motor outputs, but rather, by playing upon the motor loops, they facilitate or inhibit the passage of excitation around the loop. For example, the sensory inputs from the eye which go to the secondary projection area can provide the additional excitation to a motor neural loop (that passes through that area of the brain) which would lead to recruitment in that loop and the emission of the associated act or act sequence. It is easy to see how emission of a given act (i.e., raising the level of excitation in that act's neural loop representative to the recruitment point) could become dependent on the reception of additional excitation from special sensory inputs. In this way a measure of control of motor behavior is transferred to the senses.

This view of the role of sensory inputs is supported by many experimental facts. For example, a few people blind at birth have learned to see only later in life (as following an operation) after they could verbalize, so that the subjective aspects of the process of learning to see could be followed in some detail. Presented with three dark spots on a white field, such a person cannot tell at first how many there are. But he can use his eye to coordinate moving his head from spot to spot and then count the number of head motions. Later these motor responses can be excited by the spot pattern without being enacted, but the pattern is recognized via the motor responses whose memory it still seems to excite subjectively. By such facts the step-by-step organization of the visual field can be followed: it proceeds by the gradual transfer to higher sensory control of the underlying, already established motor patterns as they differentiate. The subjective character of sensory stimuli can also be dealt with in this manner.

**Conclusion**

The outline of the model of the nervous system presented in preliminary form here contains only a few suggestive details from a larger picture, and is not intended to stand or be convincing on its own. There are many other basic issues not touched on at all here, which must be met before any approach is possible to a complete working model. This account aims at a descriptive qualitative statement of overall functional characteristics of brain organization. A next step is to discuss the "wiring diagram" embodiment of a "machine" that can function along these lines and, in this context, the role of the various brain centers, studies of cortical and subcortical stimulation, EEG results, etc. That is, the model must be squared with the anatomical data and then used to help interpret that data.

It may seem hard to believe that the fantastically diverse output of the human nervous system could ever be explained on the basis of the simple notion of the NCRP and several laws governing the compounding of NCRs. But it is worth remembering that this is what atomic physics does for chemistry and the theory of evolution does for the multiplicity and diversity of biological species. At first we are apt to feel that our delight in the rich, varied individuality of all the chemical effects or biological species will somehow be crushed if this diversity is subsumed under a few generating universal principles; hence such principles are resisted. But much of the old richness remains as ingenuity in the devising of definitions and methods in the new framework, since to find subsuming principles is not the same as finding a usable algorithm. We soon see that the general principles extend our perception of already existing form, and guide the way towards a still richer, more exciting variety of new unthought-of possibilities.

In a sense the theory of evolution does not so much explain the origin of the diversity of the forms of life as pass the buck to the diversity in the environment. It is the highly specialized and varied ecological niches that produce the patterned diversity of plant and animal life on the basis of adaptive radiation into the available niches. The present theory also passes the buck to the environment. The brain, apart from the environment, would not think, and in this sense it is misleading to refer to the brain as a "mechanism." The level of psychological functioning soon falls when the nervous system is deprived of the properly structured sensory inputs it normally receives continually from interacting with the environment. The order manifested by the nervous system originates as the internalization of an external order. Only thus could the brain's great internal plasticity lead to an internal ordering and patterned behavior.

### 3. The Link to Values: From Causal Law to Moral Law

The model of the nervous system is a theory of how to translate the categories and distinctions available to us by direct introspection into mechanical concepts derived from a scientific probing. It bridges the gap or schism between science and life. This gap has been with man a long time, but lately, with the accelerated growth of science, it has perhaps seemed to be widening. There has been much discussion of the difficulty of communication between individuals in the sciences and the humanities. Some have even feared the emergence of two separate cultures between which there would be little or no discourse. Leaving this problem aside, it is undeniable that there is within ourselves a gap between the scientific view of man in terms of causal laws and a humanistic view in terms of morals, values, or moral laws. The present model of the nervous system is an intermediate structure that will help us translate the insights of the humanistic and scientific traditions into each other.

Before we indicate how this bridging maybe effected, let us first formulate the problem in one of the many alternative classic vocabularies. Values are often referred to as "what" problems and contrasted with the "how" problems of science: in this view, once considerations of value (moral laws) have selected an "end," then science (causal laws) can enter and provide a technique or "means." Two disjoint classes of laws are thus envisaged.

Darwin's theory of the origin of diversity (speciation) by natural selection may be viewed as an attack on the separation and isolation from each other of these two bodies of syntax. Prior to Darwin, it was generally believed that God determined and created all the species separately and simultaneously; i.e., God determined the "whats" directly. But Darwin's theory explains the goals, or ends, in terms of causal categories, or means. The theory says that the metabolic cyclic interlinkages (the technical "hows") imply the "whats." The "whats," the viable organisms, are precisely the self-consistent, self-reinforcing formations of the "hows," the metabolic processes. The global "whats" are compounded from the local "hows" as a consistency condition on the interrelationship of the "hows." This process is called "natural selection" via the "survival of the fittest."

An analysis of the same structure applies to the value problem. There is, of course, a difference between scientific insights and values. But this difference does not mean that there are two complementary causalities—causal law and moral law—the latter not compoundable of the former. What then is the distinction? It is the distinction between a "local" and a "global" effect. The "local" action of the NCRP leads to the isolation of "scientific" correlations. Some sets of such associations (the "constitutive" NCRs) form self-consistent, self-reinforcing cycles, or resonant steady states, a "global" condition, which leads to the selection or modification (the "regulation") of behavior. We might call this process "causal selection" via the "dominance of the most invariant."

The categories "constitutive" and "regulative" (or "Normative") stand in much the same relation as do point set and combinational topology. The former topology deals with the relation of "nextness" among points, the latter with the overall deformation-independent properties of the total space. The overall steady state condition, which is a global topological condition on the compounded local NCRs, leads to a selectivity, i.e., values. Interlinking NCRs (means) form steady states which select behaviors (ends) on purely causal grounds. The steady state condition is defined in terms of the correlations or "means" that constitute it, as a topological condition on them. This closes the circle causally without introducing values or ends in the status of a distinct or complementary causality.

The relation of scientific truths to values is then that the scientific truths extend our perception and allow us to predict further ahead. They allow a longer series elaboration, and this extended perception (in the form of additional NCRs), when compounded to form a steady state, leads to a greater selectivity in behavior because more possible behaviors are undercut and rejected. It is this rejection of recessive behaviors that enhances selectivity and leads to the emergence of order. There are many problems that must be faced before we may trace in detail the grounding of values, or our practical daily decisions, on causal insight, and see that to do so does not destroy our classical values, but rather vastly reinforces them. We will only attempt to suggest in the briefest terms a few of the more central bridging considerations.

The emotional threat of a causal grounding for values comes, in part, from the fear that this will eliminate the need for direct experimental contact with life; that life will be predicted by a formula as are certain physical phenomena. But the range of even physical phenomena, let alone the far more complicated biological-psychological or life phenomena, that can be derived from the laws of physics is extremely limited. The use of direct experimental contact is essential to the extension of physics principles even into inorganic chemistry. Thus, even if the value problem can be causally grounded in the sense that chemistry is causally grounded in physics, we will still, as in chemistry, make use of experiment to determine dominant behavior.

Another deeper aspect of the emotional threat of causal explanation of the order manifested in our behavior is the feeling that it makes the human struggle irrelevant if the results of this struggle can be, even if only in principle, independently predicted in its significant aspects. Now there are deep reasons why the central issues which lie at the center of attention of the group, and of mature individuals that participate in it, can in principle never be adequately predicted, even by the use of analogy or indirect construction, in such a way that this prediction can be used as an independent guide for the solution of these problems and so to bypass the human computer. Such "prediction" (in the form of a causal explanation of the emergence of the dominant) only becomes possible after the solution has been found.

The reason for this goes to the heart of the model and gives a sort of bird's-eye view of it. Development is treated as a differentiation of our causal insights. Conflict is treated as investigation of inconsistencies among competitive causal insights. Conflict is only resolved via the emergence of a synthesizing model. This takes hold because (as is already implicit in the nervous system model as thus far developed) when treating large bodies of interacting NCRs, it is the formation of greatest "invariance" that takes hold, and only causal insight has this invariance.

Now the center of attention of the individual and the group can be represented in words as an inconsistency in the existing causal insights. Hence the resolution of this inconsistency can never be compounded out of these insights. We cannot predict the resolution of the problems that are currently emotionally significant to us, and so debunk ourselves, since that which is currently emotionally significant is precisely what we are unable to predict due to inadequacies in our best available models. Destiny, in the sense of the issues which are now emotionally most important to us, can never be reduced to causality, or to a formula, as a trick to bypass the human computer, or trivialize what is emotionally significant, because by their very definition, as implicit in the model of nervous system function, these issues are generated by the inadequacies in our present models. In addition, the process of differentiation of our causal insights is not (so far as one can tell) a dead end, but rather an opening matter. Each layer of differentiation provides tools to open the next, which opening ultimately transforms the social order and the psychology of man.

Thus the causal grounding of the human calculator does not debunk man. Quite the opposite, it greatly enhances man's position in nature, for the activity which the verbal causal insights catalyze appears adequate to transform nature transcendentally.

### Acknowledgments

We would like to thank John A. Wheeler for many useful discussions and for his sustaining encouragement. His influence on this work ranges all the way from the view of physics as natural philosophy, which he imparts to his students, to an active participation in the search for an apt phrase. Debts of the many kinds we owe him are not repayable directly, nor would he want such, but only via our work in which we use and transmit what we have learned from him.

We would like to thank Daniel A. Greenberg and Ann L. Fuller for many useful detailed comments and discussions. Also, we want to acknowledge many useful interactions and general discussions that bear on this work with John Agnoli, Sergei Bogojavlensky, Maurice Cocchi, Ina Cooper, Peter Funkhouser, Robert L. Horn, Thomas A. Purvis, Barry Spinello, and David J. Thomas.

# ABOUT THE AUTHOR

 Robert W. Fuller earned his Ph.D. in physics at Princeton University and taught at Columbia, where he co-authored the classic textbook _Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics_. He then served as president of Oberlin College, his alma mater. For a dozen years, he worked in what came to be known as "citizen diplomacy" to improve the Cold War relationship. During the 1990s, he served as board chair of the global NGO Internews, which promotes democracy via free and independent media. In 2004 he was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science, and in 2011 he served as keynote speaker at the National Conference on Dignity for All hosted by the president of Bangladesh. With the end of the Cold War, Fuller looked back on his career and understood that he had been, at different times, a somebody and a nobody. His periodic sojourns into "Nobodyland" led him to identify _rankism_ —abuse of the power inherent in rank—and ultimately to write _Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank_ (New Society Publishers, 2003). Three years later, he published a sequel on building a "dignitarian" society, titled _All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity_ (Berrett-Koehler, 2006). An Indian edition was published in 2007 (Viveka Foundation), a Chinese translation in 2008, and a Bengali translation in 2009. His most recent books are _Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship?_ ; _The Rowan Tree: A Novel_ ; _Belonging: A Memoir_ ; _Questions and Quests: A Short Book of Aphorisms,_ and a children's book, _Theo the White Squirrel._

**Connect with Robert W. Fuller Online**

robertworksfuller.com  
breakingranks.net  
facebook.com/robertwfuller
**OTHER BOOKS BY ROBERT W. FULLER**

_Mathematics of Classical and Quantum Physics  
_ (with Frederick W. Byron, Jr.)

_Somebodies and Nobodies: Overcoming the Abuse of Rank_

_All Rise: Somebodies, Nobodies, and the Politics of Dignity_

_Dignity for All: How to Create a World Without Rankism  
_ (with Pamela A. Gerloff)

_Religion and Science: A Beautiful Friendship?_

_Genomes, Menomes, Wenomes: Neuroscience and Human Dignity_

_The Rowan Tree: A Novel_

_Belonging: A Memoir_

_The Wisdom of Science_

_Theo the White Squirrel  
_ (Illustrated by Claire Sheridan)

_Questions and Quests: A Short Book of Aphorisms_
**THE ROWAN TREE**

For readers who want to explore dignity as a foundation for interpersonal and international relations, Robert W. Fuller's novel _The Rowan Tree_ is available as an ebook, a paperback, and an audiobook at: www.rowantreenovel.com

_The Rowan Tree_ foretells a _dignitarian_ world much as the story of King Arthur and the Round Table sowed the seeds of democracy. In the form of two interlocking love stories, the novel reaches from the tumultuous 1960s into humanity's near future. An international cast of characters personifies the catalytic role of interpersonal love in illuminating a peaceful path to dignity and justice for all.
