What happens after the Singularity?
Posthuman beings and why humanity might shut itself down
Computers are getting smaller. And smaller. And smaller again.
They used to fill entire buildings. Then they filled entire desks. Now they fit in our pocket. Soon enough, they’ll be the size of blood cells, gliding through our bodies and connecting to our brain.
At that point, the applications are limitless.
- Rather than reading this post, you could simply download my thought and understand my perspective immediately.
- Rather than talking to your friends, you could telepathically communicate with them. Even if they were on the other side of the world, you could appear in front of each other virtually.
- Rather than watching sports stars fight it out on the field, you could pop into their mind and see everything from their perspective.
- Rather than spending years learning how to code, you could instantly absorb all of Mark Zuckerberg’s programming skills.
- Rather than being stuck with one body, you could control a dozen bodies, doing countless things all at once.
- Rather than being stuck with a hundred billion neurons, you could borrow some artificial brainpower and radically enhance your intelligence.
- Rather than being stuck in the boring old real world, you could fully immerse yourself in virtual reality and create and explore virtual worlds of incomprehensible magnificence.
Sounds pretty fantastic, eh?
Let’s take it a little further…
Eventually, humanity will be completely digital. Most time would be spent in virtual worlds. Even if someone wanted to do something in the real world, they could simply operate a swarm of collaborative nanobots (utility fog) to get things done.
Let’s take it a little further, again…
Humans (or posthumans) will no longer need food, sleep, sex, love, or holidays at the beach. Computers can work at peak performance all of the time. All of those primitive desires are simply inefficient and a waste of time. The defining characteristics of humanity would cease to exist.
You wouldn’t need to know how to walk… right? Robots can do that for you. In virtual worlds you could simply fly around.
You wouldn’t need to know how to open doors. A door? What do you need a door for? For your house? Why would you want a house? To sleep? To eat? To shower? No… what kind of posthuman needs a house, right?
Let’s take it a little further, yet again…
When I think of paradise or a utopia, I imagine my friends and I immersing ourselves in the beauty of the world and in the joy of friendship. We’d mess around, go jet-skiing in the Bahamas, snorkel the Great Barrier Reef, go sailing, kite-surfing, skydiving, meet new people, maybe go on some adventurous road trips, or go camping out under the stars. Just all around have a good time, free of care.
But, would a posthuman me still desire these things? No, he wouldn’t. A posthuman me that is trillions of times more intelligent than I am today would have no desire to do such lame, primitive activities.
A posthuman me would also be capable of editing its own brain, a fact that opens up the desperately confusing prospect of deciding how I should think and structure my brain.
What would be the goals of a posthuman me? If it could edit its own brain, wouldn’t it realise that everything is merely subjective, a mindset, a perspective?
Would a posthuman me really have any desire to float around a vast, cold, empty universe for eternity?
Would it have any desires? Probably not. It could just edit those desires away.
There wouldn’t be anything for it to strive towards, any problems for it to solve. Then again, even if there were, it could just edit the part of it’s mind that compels it to pursue goals and solve problems.
It could remove its survival instinct, an archaic remnant. It could eliminate the primitive desires for approval, acceptance, and glory.
This line of thought reminds me of the following quote:
The real danger is not that computers will begin to think like men, but that men will begin to think like computers.
— Sydney J. Harris
Would we all just become superintelligent calculators, drifting aimlessly through the universe?
But let’s not stop here.
Let’s take it even further…
Imagine living in a nightmare world where everyone is identical. Everybody in the entire world is a clone. Every single house in the world looks the same. Every single car is the same. Every single job is the same. Everybody has the same dog. There is no such thing as male or female, either. Everybody is the same. Everybody knows the exact same stuff as you. Everybody thinks the same things as you. Everybody does the same things as you. At the same time. To the second. It’s a world of clones.
Sounds pretty nightmarish right? Life would be pretty damn awful. Boring as hell.
Well, that’s exactly how posthuman life will be.
Everybody can share all of their knowledge, all of their memories, all of their ideas and thoughts. Likewise, everybody can share their (and hence have the same) amazing skills and abilities as everybody else.
Let’s just repeat that. Everybody has the same memories, knowledge, skills, abilities, and so on.
Everything that makes you who you are — everything that makes you you — will cease to matter.
Everybody will just be like duplicate Chrome browser shortcuts: They do the same thing and access the exact same information.
Everybody will turn into a single being.
You will cease to exist.
Humanity’s ultimate destiny
Increasingly advanced technology will leave humanity in situation not too dissimilar to the following:
What used to be humanity is now a giant blob of digital intelligence aimlessly floating through the vast, cold, empty universe. This giant blob is a single person — the result of the merging of all human minds. The blob autonomously maintains itself.
What it might do
There are two actions the blob might take.
- The most likely option is that the blob simply shuts itself down.
- Alternatively, the blob might dumb itself down and edit its brain to restore some primitive instincts. It would then immerse itself in some random virtual worlds and try to occupy itself.
Please feel free to share your thoughts!
