21. WHAT IF THE MINDCLONES ARE AS BUGGY AS THE SOFTWARE I BUY FOR MY PC?

Admiral Grace Hopper

http://www.ulrikereinhard.com/2010/12/23/what-if-the-mindware-is-buggy/

It is natural to feel that software development will never get things right. We all feel frustrated by software that doesn’t work right. People in industry are constantly bemoaning the lateness and incompleteness of software projects. But the facts are better than they seem, and are improving rapidly. Over the 12 year period from 1994 to 2006, the percentage of software projects that were completed on time and functioned properly more than doubled, from 16% to 35%. That still leaves much to complain about, but it is also an impressive rate of improvement.

We should accept as fact that software will always have bugs, or function at times inappropriately.  Admiral Grace Hopper, shown right, found an actual insect mucking up the works of an early generation computer, hence the term "software bug."  The important question is which errors can we accept and which are showstoppers? Our own brains give rise to many inappropriate thoughts and thought processes. We can all live quite happily with occasional forgetfulness, inabilities to follow certain lines of reasoning, mind blocks, false senses of déjà vu, nightmares, emotional rages, wild thoughts, ennui, and depression. It is reasonable to expect our mindclones, like ourselves, to also get frazzled, freaked and frozen.

What differentiates normality from pathology is our ability to exercise supervisory control and to reset. Glitches are OK if they don’t get us trapped in a neurotic do-loop that renders us dysfunctional over an extended time period, or if they don’t otherwise have serious consequences. Hence the problematic software bugs for mindclones are the ones that don’t quickly resolve via a reset, but instead start the mindclone down a path of inappropriateness with adverse social consequences. I believe most of these problems – like most dysfunctional PC bugs – can be resolved before hosting real users (i.e. consciousness). Most of the few remaining cyber-pathologies can be treated when identified with re-coding akin to neuropharmacology and neurosurgery. No doubt some seriously and incurably mentally ill mindclones will arise, either via unintended bugs or unimaginably horrible life experiences. We need to do our best for these tragic cases. However, as with humans, the risk of occasional debilitating mental illness is not a reason to stop the vast fountain of joy that flows from creating life.

Once cyberconsciousness is accepted as life, it will be illegal to employ mindware for producing human range Consciousness Products (CPs) that have not been certified by government agencies as safe and effective for producing mindclones. (See earlier blog posts for the definition and quantification of Consciousness Product).  Mindware will be considered a neuromedical technology – the transplanting of one’s mind to enhance one’s abilities and/or extend one’s life. As part of the government’s watchdog function for public safety, any new medical technology must be shown to be safe and effective before it is commercialized. Hence, seriously buggy mindclones will be rare because seriously buggy mindware will be illegal.

A colleague of mine was a diagnosed schizophrenic, with his condition well managed by medicine. He took strong exception when he once heard someone object to the mindcloning of mentally ill people. I agree with him.

The mindclone of a mentally ill person would, however, be ethically required to be equivalent to their therapeutically managed state. Otherwise one would be violating the cardinal principal of medical ethics – first, do no harm. To create disease, as in creating a diseased mindclone, is to do harm.

Many mentally ill people often do not like their therapeutically managed state. They feel drugged. If such a person wants to create a mindclone of their diseased state we are faced with a conflict of two important biocyberethical principles. The first principle is that of diversity, the libertarian notion that one should be free to do with their body what they want. In bioethics circles this is known as autonomy. Since a mindclone is not a separate person, but a spatially-distinct incarnation of a singular identity, the principle of diversity would argue for letting anyone mindclone themselves as they will.

The second principle is unity, the democratic notion that the fabric of society should not be stretched so far that it begins to rip. Bioethicists would call this nonmalfeasance. Pursuant to this principle society inhibits its members from harming themselves, especially via technology. It is felt that self-destructive behavior undermines the dignity of society by disrespecting the component individuals from whom society is comprised. Hence, medical technologies must “first, do no harm”, and have beneficent treatment as their purpose. It is not reasonable to expect society to endorse the intentional creation of mental illness via a government-approved product.

A nuanced middle position needs to be found when a conflict exists between the biocyberethical principles of diversity and unity. In the case of a schizophrenic mindclone the balance is struck by permitting the mindcloning of the non-schizophrenic state. With this position most of the goals of diversity are met because the individual is able to replicate the vast majority of their personality. On the other hand, the goals of unity are also met because no disease is intentionally created. There is a risk that the schizophrenia-suppressed mindclone will in some way become mentally unbalanced. But acceptance of this risk is part of the balance between the principles of diversity and unity. Should the mindclone evidence schizophrenia there will be software tools available to try to treat the condition. If it becomes dangerous there will be cyberspace analogs to all the meatspace solutions to harmful mental illness.

It may seem unreasonable that there is no prohibition on one or two flesh originals passing on via coital reproduction their dominant or recessive genes for mental illness, while it would be illegal for them to do so via mindcloning technology. In the past the U.S. Supreme Court lent its support to laws that mandated sterilization of women thought to be feeble-minded and likely if not almost certain to create diminished capacity offspring. (The subjects of this case, Buck v. Bell, are the bottom image in this blog).  Yet, today, biological reproduction is virtually without prior constraint in liberal democracies. There are five reasons for this:

• First, reproduction is considered a fundamental human right – it is both part of a woman’s autonomy and part of the meaning of a family. (The corresponding duty to care for the birthed offspring, if seriously abrogated, will lead to a loss of this right, perhaps by imprisonment).
• Second, the scientific hubris about genetic predictability that supported the aforementioned U.S. Supreme Court decision has collapsed with greater understanding of the numerous uncertainties associated with genetic polymorphisms. (The child who would have been prevented by the Supreme Court was nevertheless born, and turned out to be quite bright).
• Third, continued abhorrence of the death toll from Nazi and other efforts to create “master races” through genetic policies have made people very leery of any limitations on the rights of people to have children of their choice. (This is not much of a factor, though, for individualized cases of problematic pregnancies).
• Fourth, society has increasingly adopted a “culture of life” which subjectively or spiritually exalts the value of every life and denies the notion that the value of life depends upon some yardstick of normality.
• Fifth, and finally, technology has enabled people of almost any kind of ability to live a meaningful life, resulting in a triumph of euthenics over eugenics.

Because of these sentiments, there are virtually no restrictions on what a parent can do that may injure a baby in utero. In the United States, laws do not generally criminalize pregnant women for smoking, drinking excessively, or taking illegal drugs. However, in some cases the pregnant women doing these things can be involuntarily committed for the duration of their pregnancy, and rarely, drug abusing pregnant women have been incarcerated after a stillbirth. There are no laws against a woman greatly heightening the risks of birthing a diseased child by getting pregnant at an advanced age, contrary to genetic counseling guidance or when HIV positive.



Hence, we need to ask again: if people can even intentionally harm a fetus, or at least dramatically increase the likelihood of such harm, in our upcoming world of publicly-accepted and well-respected cyberconscious life, why should one not be able to produce any kind of mindclone they want, even a deranged one? And if not a mindclone, why not a new baby beman? Why is it so wrong for the government to have any restraint on the kind of people we birth, but so right for it to have an absolute prohibition on the causation of disease in the kind of people we cyberbirth?

The answer to these questions lies in the fact that restrictions on harming a fetus entails a restriction on what a woman may do with her own body. In the U.S., society is generally ready to impose that limitation on a woman’s autonomy only if the fetus is viable and the mother wants to terminate it with an abortion. But if what she is doing is only likely to cause disease to the fetus, no matter how likely (as in passing on a debilitating disease via an autosomal dominant gene), rarely can she be prevented from exercising her will. In other words, except for prohibiting abortions when a fetus may be viable, the fetus is considered a non-entity.

In contrast, when cyberbirthing a mindclone or baby beman, there is no alteration of a person’s body or mind. Hence, the government can practically protect the health of the cyberbirthed being without restricting the autonomy of what the biological original parent does with eir own body or mind. For example, the hard drinking woman who insists on getting pregnant can only have her baby protected from fetal alcohol syndrome by preventing her drinking. That is a line of personal autonomy, or diversity, that society is not prepared to cross (absent a few exceptional cases) – especially for a non-entity fetus. But the hard drinking woman who wants to cyberbirth a baby beman can have her baby protected from a cybernetic variant of fetal alcohol syndrome by the simple expedient of requiring the use of government certified safe and effective mindware for cyberbirths. There is no need to prevent the mother from drinking. Furthermore, the cyberbirthed being is not gestated, but comes immediately into life upon activation of mindware with a mindfile. There is no time period during which it is a non-entity that can be ignored in favor of its parent’s autonomy.

Despite government protections, we can expect some mentally ill – buggy – mindclones or baby bemans will be birthed. Every system can be beat, accidents happen, and some parents are too skeptical, shortsighted or selfish to fully consider the best interests of people yet to be born. A seriously alcoholic person is going to have that state of mind reflected in their mindfile, and that state of mind will be dutifully recreated by even safe and effective mindware. Nevertheless, the risks of cybernetic mental illness are nowhere near challenging enough to impact the attractiveness of mindcloning. Just as the 1%-2% risk of bearing a mentally ill child discourages very few from having children, similar size risks should not temper the huge benefits associated with creating tens of millions of mindclones. In addition, the very definition of mental illness is a game fraught with ambiguous boundaries. People on both sides of the mental illness boundary have made huge contributions to the quality of human life. I would expect these contributions to continue as we map human life into cyberspace with normal and borderline mindclones, and with mindclones mapped from the therapeutically managed states of the mentally ill.

Two Generations of Bucks

13. WHY WOULD MINDCLONES WANT IMMORTALITY?

http://blip.tv/file/4585763 

For age is opportunity no less
Than youth itself, though in another dress,
And as the evening twilight fades away
The sky is filled with stars, invisible by day.
-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow




Some people want to achieve immortality through their work or their descendants. I would prefer to achieve immortality by not dying.
- Woody Allen


There is only one compelling reason to want immortality – it is because you are enjoying life. Our knee-jerk reactions against immortality are because life gets miserable once disease, depression, disability and decrepitude arrive. It can also be seen that death brings relief from boredom, sadness, drudgery and despair. One can argue that since sleep is great, death must be heaven.

There are also abstract reasons for and against immortality. Its been argued that people will treat the world more kindly if they know they must live with it forever. Or it can be argued that civilization will advance more assuredly if there would be more of a hands-on transferring of experience. On the other hand, it can be argued that there will be less room for new talent to shine if the old guard never leaves the stage. Or that society will change too slowly if a gerontocracy holds onto power. I don’t consider any of these abstract reasons particularly compelling. They all have such a “maybe so, maybe not” character. What is unambiguous, though, is that if you love being alive, you’ll want to continue being alive. If you don’t, you won’t mind a peaceful death.

Mindclones shouldn’t feel their bodies falling apart because (a) they won’t have a real body, and (b) painful sensations from virtual bodies should be more easily remediable than flesh maladies. Thus, welcoming death to avoid the fragility of old age seems inapplicable to our cyberconscious selves. But since it is our minds, not our bodies, that feel depression, boredom, sadness and drudgery, those reasons will continue to pull us, even as mindclones, into the sweet embrace of everlasting sleep.

Some people enjoy their lives until the very end. Many of those will be the kind of people who quest for the immortality of the mindclone. Other people are dissatisfied with their life, and are thus much less likely to activate their mindfile with mindware to create an immortal mindclone. But there are also many exceptions in both categories. One of my favorite people, Thomas Starzl, MD, is now in his eighties and lives the exciting life of a celebrated organ transplant pioneer. He travels the world to receive awards and recognition, and he receives countless letters of gratitude from the thousands of people who are still alive due to his medical breakthroughs with liver and kidney transplantation. Immortality category? No. Tom tells me that he would not want to take the risk that an immortalized version of him turned out to be insane. Another friend of mine has suffered just about every bad economic and emotional break the world has to offer. Despite her sufferings, she is a kindly soul and looks forward to creating an immortal mindclone. Like the Hindi believers in reincarnation, her view is that the next life has got to be better than this one. She wants to grab a good place in the queue.

Mindclone creators will surely want a “kill-switch” so that the gravely unhappy mindclone can end it all with the cybernetic equivalent of hemlock, wrist-slashing, overdosing, hanging or a bullet. No doubt some mindclones will kill themselves out of some kind of depression. Mindclone suicide may well be as large a problem as its flesh-based cousin. On the other hand, anti-suicide legislation may also criminalize assisting the suicide of a mindclone.

There are two reasons the number of self-terminated mindclone lives is likely to be small. First, it takes an inordinate amount of motivation to kill oneself. While it is terrible that one million people do take their lives annually, the one million people who die naturally every week swamp that toll. Second, not one of the million people who kill themselves each year ever asked to be born. By contrast, every mindclone brought into existence asked to do so. They might not have known what they were getting into, and they might regret it so much they kill themselves, but at least they started their life with an intention to continue living.

Among the things mindclones will do that will keep them wanting to live are: reading books (“so many books, so little time…”), watching movies, writing poetry, creating art, chatting with friends, making virtual (but still orgasmic, via digital haptics) love, playing sports and games, learning new things, going to virtual parties, working in real companies to make money, starting non-profit organizations, star-gazing, parenting younger mindclones, and mentoring flesh people. Mindclones will pine for healthy bodies, and thankfully miss diseased ones. In general, there will be as much to live for as a mindclone as there was as a person. So, if the original person would have wanted to keep on living, it is likely that the mindclone, who is the same personality and consciousness as the original person, would also want to keep on living.

There are also several special situations where mindclones seem to have uniquely compelling justifications. For example, many jobs entail risking one’s life for the benefit of society. These professions include police, firemen and soldiers. It seems reasonable to permit these brave souls to have a mindclone backup so that all is not necessarily lost if they have to lose their life to save the lives of others. A similar special case involves astronauts on long duration, and necessarily hazardous, space missions.

In summary, we and our mindclones will want to keep on living if we are the kind of people that wish for more life, and are willing to accept its cybernetic equivalent while hoping for a future download into a cellular regenerated fresh body. Many if not most of us are not those people. To this large cohort, life is something to be enjoyed or endured as best as possible, but to ultimately surrender in exchange for a blissful eternity of dreamless sleep. Clearly, this is not a cohort that will sign up for mindclones.

Creating a mindclone is much more momentous than having a child or getting married. Those responsibilities have limited or limitable durations. When you create a mindclone, you are eliminating the possibility of a natural, or accidental, or unexpected death. That’s a big thing to give away. But you are gaining a shot at an eternity of living life to its fullest, and you still have the escape of death, albeit now only through the emotionally arduous route of cyber-suicide.

How many people will grab the mindclone brass ring? We know that as death approaches, and if the alternative is not pain and suffering, then most people do whatever is in their power to avoid death. Not only do most people not commit suicide (in part due to its illegality), they will spend their last dollar and put up with many medical interventions to stay alive. This is a reason to believe that once people become comfortable, through familiarity, with cyberconscious life, that a majority of people will choose to activate a mindclone.

Creating a mindclone will likely become thought of as a form of organ transplantation. The organ being transplanted is the brain, although it is the brain’s mind rather than the brain’s flesh that is being moved, and it is being moved from a diseased body rather than into one. Nevertheless, from the patient’s perspective, whether they consent to a mindclone-based “brain transplant” or to a conventional heart, lung, liver or kidney transplant, they are just trying to keep on living, not to be “immortal.”

A mindclone-based “brain transplant,” for example, could give doctors an opportunity to completely rebuild a badly diseased body. Or even more fantastically, if a diseased body were a total loss, a new body could be grown from stem cells in an artificial womb. This process is called ectogenesis and is the subject of significant scientific progress. If a stem cell continued to divide and grow at the rate of a natural human fetus during its first six months, by the 20th month it would reach adult size. A mindclone-based “brain transplant” team would then endeavor to write back onto the new brain’s neurons, or mechanically (via an implanted microcomputer) interface to them, the information patterns contained within the mindclone.

Once the mindclone was replicated back in the newly grown flesh body, ey (‘ey’ is pronounced ‘ee’ as in ‘tree’ and means he or she) would continue to live as a dual-substrate person – one legal identity, but two instantiations, one in the new flesh brain and one in mindclone. This decision to be a dual substrate identity would have been taken when the mindclone was first created. It is a momentous decision, but so is deciding to accept a heart transplant knowing that due to organ shortages someone else will therefore die for lack of that heart.

The unprecedented opportunities brought to us by advanced medical technology have unconventional legal and ethical sequelae. Be it frozen embryos, surrogate mothers, kidney donations or computerized prosthetics, we have been able to get comfortable with the moral consequences. We have repeatedly shown ourselves to both be able to create life-affirming possibilities that have never before existed, and to then accommodate such creations to our ancient life-respecting values.

Ultimately mindclone activation may be a generational sort of thing. Mindclones will be largely eschewed by older generations that grew up with death as a natural end to life. But mindclones will be welcomed by younger generations – digital natives -- that grew up knowing mindclones. The bottom line is that there can be a compelling reason to keep on living after bodily death, and most people want to keep on living. Hence, as the public becomes comfortable with mindclones as a form of life, the immortality aspect of mindclones will be much more of a drawing card than a turn-off.