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

9. HOW CAN A MINDCLONE BE CONSCIOUS OR IMMORTAL IF ITS NOT EVEN ALIVE?

I think computer viruses should count as life. I think it says something about human nature that the only form of life we have created so far is purely destructive. We've created life in our own image.
- Stephen Hawking

Watch a quick VLOG summary of this Question

It is amazing that out of the countless trillions of ways molecules can be arranged, only a few million ways result in things that can reproduce themselves. The biologist E.O. Wilson estimates there are about 13 million species, broken down as follows:

Insects 9 million
Bacteria 1 million
Fungi 1 million
Viruses 0.3 million
Algae 0.3 million
Worms 0.3 million
Plants 0.2 million
Protozoa 0.2 million
Echinoderms 0.2 million
Mollusks 0.2 million
Crustaceans 0.2 million
Fish 30 thousand
Reptiles 10 thousand
Birds 10 thousand
Amphibians 5 thousand
Mammals 5 thousand

It has been estimated that since the Pre-Cambrian Explosion 540 million years ago, during which the predecessors of most of these species arose, upwards of 90% of all species are extinguished each 100 million years due to environmental catastrophes. Hence, even counting the ways life might have been organized in the distant past, not more than a few hundreds of millions of molecular patterns have worked. In comparison, a practically infinite number of molecular patterns are possible given the dozens of atomic building blocks nature has to work with and the astronomical number of possibilities for stringing these atoms together in three-dimensional space.

Far, far less than one in a thousand molecular patterns will result in something that lives. It is not just about the magic of the DNA and RNA molecules. Most forms of even those molecules would not result in organisms that felt obligated to eat, excrete and respond to stimuli. Only the rare special cases of viable DNA and RNA molecules can do that. Very precise nucleotide sequences are needed to organize random atoms into protein building blocks that work together so symphonically that a reproductive being results. Life is a miracle because it is so unlikely.

Yet, we are inundated with life. Our skins crawl with bacteria, and our planet teams with skins. This is because life works very well. No matter how rare it is in theory, once it occurs it multiplies, for that is what life does. Rocks crumble and aggregate, but lives copy and proliferate. Most importantly, life also mutates. This is because the process of copying DNA is imperfect. Mutations result in diversity among life forms, and this diversity is crucial to life’s success. Diversity enables life to keep trying out new forms of molecular organization. Forms that work well spread and ones that don’t become rare or extinct.

The lesson of life is just this simple: no matter how unlikely something is in the first place, once it occurs it will become prevalent in those niches in which it continues reproducing versions of itself.

Life owes its improbable existence to an exceedingly rare kind of code. This life-code does two things unique to life. First, it enables self-replicating order to be structured out of disorder. Second, it enables that order to be maintained (for a while) against all the forces that make things fall apart. Wow yourself with this: life-codes are merely a mathematical sequence, like a formula, that shazam-like transforms randomness into purpose and entropy into organization. Life-codes are a real-world Harry Potter incantation, expressed in numerical silence. Any string of numbers that can God-like summon beings out of inanimate dust is as amazing as this universe gets.

Mathematics is invisible. We see its shadow when it gets expressed in something tangible. DNA is a molecule of life because it expresses a mathematical code that organizes viable patterns of molecules out of the inert chemical soup surrounding us. The patterns are viable because they self-replicate and they maintain their order, for a time, against Nature’s forces of disorder. The patterns are visible as nucleotide sequences, but their capabilities are based upon the arithmetic of the sequences – the specific numbers of A, T, G and C molecules that are required to direct the assembly of a specific protein needed to maintain a life process.

From the mathematical underpinning of biochemistry we can state an elegant definition of life: the expression of a code that enables self-replication and maintenance against disorder. Rocks are not alive because they are not the expression of a code. But the algae that covers a rock is. Microsoft Word is not alive because it doesn’t self-replicate (humans copy it). But software that could self-replicate and maintain itself against degradation would seem to be as alive as algae.


The genius of Darwin was to see a continuous chain of life in an immense scattering of broken shards of separated links. We can build on Darwin by presenting a continuous chain of life-codes in what otherwise looks like disparate phenomena. Specifically, RNA, DNA and software life- codes are links in an evolutionary chain. It is the chain of mathematical sequences capable of organizing self-replicating and self-maintaining entities out of inert building blocks. This view is consistent with the so-called “disposable soma” theory of evolution, “soma” being the Greek word for body. The theory says that bodies are DNA’s way of making more DNA. I’m taking the theory one level higher: somas are math’s way of making new self-replicating codes.


Nature surprises us with new life-codes just as she surprises us with new variations on existing life-codes. Nature will select new life-codes that are superior self-replicators in their niche just as she selects the best replicating variations on existing life-codes. Life-codes that give rise to many adaptable variations will become more dominant, just as phyla that give rise to many adaptable species become more prevalent. It is simply a step-up of scale to understand that evolution operates on types of life-codes as well as on the offspring of life-codes. DNA, as a type of life-code, is itself subject to a struggle for survival just as are the millions of species that use it as their code for organizing order out of raw nature. It is exciting to be alive at the time that new kinds of life-code, based in software rather than molecules, make their initial appearance.

We Bring Improbable Things to Life

The numbers of ways to write software are as unlimited as the ways to string molecules together. It might seem as unlikely for software to become alive as it was for molecules to become alive. Yet while it took eons for earth’s first molecules to self-replicate, people have already hit upon certain strings of software code that reproduces itself. We call them software viruses. People have also organized lines of code into sequences that respond to stimuli. These programs are familiar to any gamester or avatar user. Humans endlessly mutate (“hack”) software the way cosmic rays and random chemistry mutate our genetic codes. A good argument can be made that these hacks have already produced software with most if not all the qualities of life.


Just like life, software is organized, and exchanges energy with the environment. It takes in electricity and sheds heat via its hardware, much as a genetic code takes in nutrients and sheds waste via its body. As with living molecules, living software can reproduce, respond to stimuli, develop and adapt. Programs are written that go out onto the web, find compatible freeware, cut and paste it into the original code and continue developing. Humans and other life forms develop analogously: we go out into our natural environment, incorporate food and compatible experiences.

There are of course many differences between organic life and software that has characteristics of life. But the simple lesson of life remains the same: No matter how unlikely living software is, once it occurs it will become prevalent in its niche if it can continue reproducing itself.

Now, these are undeniable facts: there is universal fascination with software (e.g. applications), software has a gigantic stake in the economy (e.g. chips) and the energies of hackers worldwide are mind-boggling (e.g. web apps). These forces are as prolific in producing living software prototypes as Mother Nature was in producing living RNA/DNA prototypes. Organic life clicked “on” then, and cybernetic life is clicking “on” now. Improbability becomes inevitability when numbers get large. There are a very large number of people working on imbuing software with the characteristics of life.


The differences between organic and cybernetic life are less important that their similarities. Both are mathematical codes that organize a compatible domain to perform functions that must ultimately result in reproduction. For organic life, the code is written in molecules and the domain is the natural world. For cybernetic life the code is written in voltage potentials and the domain is the IT world. We call organic life biology. It seems fitting to call cybernetic life vitology .

In biology the mathematically coded nucleotides organize nearby atoms into ever-larger molecules. These molecules, such as proteins, do life’s work of reproducing by bulking up and (if sufficiently evolved) trying to stay safe. In vitology the mathematically coded voltage levels organize nearby sub-routines into ever-larger programs. These programs do life’s work of reproducing by occupying more firmware and (if sufficiently evolved) trying to stay safe.

It is interesting to recall that molecules also depend upon electron-based voltage levels to stay connected. Atoms bind into molecules via either covalent or ionic electron coupling. Hence, at the most general level, vitology is a life-code that requires only electrons, while biology is a life- code that requires atomic nuclei as well as electrons. The electron-based life-codes of vitology must be seated in compatible computer hardware, while the atom-based life-codes of biology must be seated in a compatible nutrient milieu. The main point is that biology and vitology are each abstract mathematical codes that spell out the path to self-replication in organic and IT environments, respectively. Thus, stripped to its essence, all life is but the expression of self-replicating codes.

What Is Life?

Many experts have tried to lasso the definition of life. They often disagree: some emphasize biology, others physics, some requirements are Darwinian, others spiritual. They are all talking about pretty much the same things we think of as being alive – plants, animals, and microbes. The problem is that none of the definitions are consistent and complete to everyone’s satisfaction. Some definitions exclude sterile worker bees, while others exclude flu viruses. Every boundary falters at its edge. So, why bother trying to come up with a one-size-fits-all definition of life?

There are no philosophically compelling reasons to define life. The reasons are all utilitarian. Humans are passionate about categorizing things, for much the same reason they like to build fences. It stakes out a territory that can be used for one’s benefit. Defining organic life as biology empowers biologists to be the source of expertise on the organic aspects of life.

I’ve just suggested a new kind of life, vitology, because software is arising that has the functions of life, but not the substrate of biology. As this living software evolves some versions will unambiguously seem to be alive, and soon thereafter other versions will aggressively claim to be sentient and conscious. All life forms try out, via mutation, different shapes and behaviors – software won’t be any different. If these sentience or consciousness claims are helpful to survival, we can expect seeing more software adopt the same position. It is not necessary to posit that the vitological software “wants” to survive for this to occur, any more than it is necessary to posit that bacteria “want” to survive. It is simply that things that do survive become more prevalent and things that don’t tend to disappear.

We can either deny vitological claims of consciousness, or broaden membership in the huge family of life. To do the former is to incite a long, unpleasant conflict. Think slavery and its disavowal of African humanity. To do the latter requires more than the biologist’s expertise. Hence, avoiding a conflict amongst substrates – flesh versus firmware, wet versus dry, natural versus artificial, DNA coded versus digitally coded – this is a reason to (re)define life.

Biologists purport to be the experts on defining life. They believe it is something that is (1) organized, (2) exchanges matter and energy with the environment, (3) reproduces, (4) responds to stimuli, (5) develops and (6) adapts. If something meets these criteria, then biologists will study it.

Physicists have also tried to define life. Physicists are the experts on physical reality, of which life is certainly a part. To these scientists, life is something that – for a while -- runs counter to the Second Law of Thermodynamics. This law says that everything in the universe is becoming more dis-ordered and random. Since life actually builds and maintains order in a defined area, it alone seems to defy physics and thus gives it a unique defining characteristic. In the words of Erwin Schrödinger:

“A living organism [like everything else in the universe] continually increases its entropy – or, as you may say, produces positive entropy – and thus tends to approach the dangerous state of maximum entropy [thermodynamic equilibrium, when nothing moves], which is death. It can only keep aloof from it, i.e., alive, by drawing from its environment negative entropy [which means order or structured things]….”

Physicists will concede, however, that their definition also has exceptions. Nobody feels that stars or galaxies are alive, and yet these objects build and maintain order at the expense of the cosmic things they suck up. Many of these environmental intakes would qualify as “negative entropy”, or ordered things, such as when a galaxy grows by swallowing another galaxy. The growth of a star by accretion of atoms blasted into space by supernovae is not so different in terms of Schrödinger’s definition than the growth of bacteria by assimilation of terrestrial carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen.

We’ve sent several spacecraft to the surface of Mars with sensitive equipment to detect whether or not there were chemical signs of life in the Martian soil. The results were ambiguous. Even the top exo-biologists could not agree on whether the chemical signs we measured in the Martian soil were signs of life.

It is tough, if not impossible, to come up with a consistent and complete definition of life. For most people life is something “natural” that “acts alive.” We think something “acts alive” if it moves under its own power, like a stick that suddenly makes us jump because it turns out to be one of the three thousand species of insectoid walking sticks (Phasmatodea). We think something is “natural” if it is not man-made at all, or man-made only from living components. For example, a new breed of dog may be man-made, but we don’t doubt the Labradoodles are alive since they are made by hybridizing labradors and poodles. Similarly, baby humans are man-and-woman-made, but from things that act alive, like sperm and egg cells. On the other hand, the best man-made robot came from things like silicon and rubber that are not considered living. Hence, we don’t think robots are alive.

The Martian experience highlights a problem with another possible criteria for defining life: does it possess DNA or RNA? These are the molecular codes for making the forms and functions of everything we think of as living. Scientists feel that we can’t assume life evolved these same molecular codes off the earth. Furthermore, there are things such as viruses that possess RNA and yet are not admitted into the textbooks of life. This is because they are inert unless and until they are brought inside a cell.

The peculiarity of RNA and DNA could be circumvented by defining life as “anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to a code that is subject to natural selection.” Natural selection requires a code to replicate with some incidence of mutation (error) so that alternate versions of a life form can have a differential chance to thrive in new or changing environments. Under this definition, everything that biologists call life would be life because all those species have a code subject to natural selection, i.e., DNA or RNA. In addition, some things that biologists do not call life, such as viruses, would be considered alive because their code is subject to natural selection when it is in a compatible environment (a cell). On the other hand, things that are not called life, such as crystal rocks or neutron stars, are not alive because they are not operating in accordance with a replicable code.

An important feature of this all-encompassing definition is that it would include software viruses and other programs that either propagate, or disappear, in accordance with their environmental compatibility. In this case, the environment is information technology such as hardware, firmware and software.

A software program is a code, much like DNA or RNA. It instructs other software to do things as DNA instructs other molecules to do things. If software codes can make many copies of themselves, they will become prevalent, just as is the case for DNA-based beings. If software codes fail to significantly self-replicate, they will become “missing links”, disappearing from reality over time. If software codes mutate, such as by inaccurate copying, they will usually not function at all, or not function differently. Similarly, most DNA mutations are either benign or fatal. Sometimes, however, a software mutation could be beneficial in its original or in a new computing environment. In such rare cases, that software mutation would become the preferred form of the program, and would proliferate. Again, it is the same situation with DNA. It is thanks to millions of rare beneficial DNA mutations out of a countless greater number of dysfunctional ones that plants and animals arose from simple cells.

Schrödinger recognized the key role of DNA/RNA-based chromosomes in providing the source of order by which living things uniquely defy the Second Law of Thermodynamics:

“An organism’s astonishing gift of concentrating a ‘stream of order’ on itself and thus escaping the decay into atomic chaos – of ‘drinking orderliness’ from a suitable environment – seems to be connected with the presence of the ‘aperiodic solids’, the chromosome molecules, which doubtless represent the highest degree of well-ordered atomic association we know of – much higher than the ordinary periodic crystal – in virtue of the individual code every atom and every radical is playing here.”

The order of the chromosome that Schrödinger sees as behind the uniqueness of life is not different in function from order of self-replicating, self-maintaining software code. Consequently, life is that which has an order-constructing code enabling the entity to maintain itself against disorder. The requirement for self-replication, or Darwinian selection, simply extends this code-based definition of life into multiple generations. In essence, the living “entity” that is doing battle against disorder becomes the species rather than a member of the species. Humans, for example, are alive because they are members of a species that have a code (DNA) enabling order to be fabricated out of the environment for the benefit of maintaining the species’ battle against disorder (staying alive long enough to create subsequent generations that do the same thing).

Combining these considerations, we can answer the question of what is life as follows:

Life is anything that creates order in a compatible environment pursuant to a Darwinian code. If the code is Darwinian (subject to natural selection) then it must be self-replicating and it must structure a host (Schrödinger’s ‘negative entropy’) for itself that lasts long enough to self-replicate. As Joel Garreau has observed, chickens are the egg’s tool to make more eggs.

Biology versus Vitology: A Sixth Kingdom, Fourth Domain or Second Realm

Our consistent and complete definition of life will not satisfy everyone. Biologists will not see their commonality with software engineers, even though the simplest and most elegant definition of life includes both their subject matter. To solve this problem it might be necessary to admit that there are two different kinds – or realms -- of life: biological life, and vitological life.

Biological life is anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to a DNA or RNA code. Indeed, the current taxonomical division of life into three domains (archaea, bacteria and eukaryota) is mostly based upon systematic differences in these codes. (Despite these systematic differences, the most advanced eukaryota, mammals, have one-third of their genome in common with the most primitive domain, archaea.) Previously, biological life was sub-divided into five kingdoms (monerans, protists, eukaryotes, fungi and animals) based on the structure and function of each group’s cells.

If software-based forms of life were to be accommodated within the current domain-based vision of life, the resulting phylogenetic tree might look something like the following figure, created by biologist and cyberlife pioneer Nick Mayer. A fourth domain, “digitaea” would accompany archaea, bacteria and eukaryota. Note that digitaea branches off of animals and hominids just as those groupings branched off of plants and fungi long ago. Three species of digitaea are suggested: stemeids that are mindclone continuations of hominids, nanoids that are new life forms assembled from self-replicating nanotechnology, and ethereates for new purely software-beings, lacking any physical instantiation.


In fact, it is awkward to categorize vitology using biology’s domains and kingdoms since both DNA and cell structure is irrelevant to purely code-based life forms. Vitological life is anything that operates in a compatible environment pursuant to an electronic code that is subject to natural selection. The limitations to Darwinian and electronic codes is to emphasize that we are talking about life-like beings – things that are part of a class that can self-replicate, compete for resources and survive – and to codes that are written in 0 and 1 energy states in pieces of technology.

Vitological and biological life are developing radically differently. Vitological life is in many respects more primitive than prokaryotic cells, which lack even a nucleus. A software virus is about as functional as a biological virus. On the other hand, there are software modules such as web crawlers and navigation routines that can outsmart the cleverest animals on the planet. These modules are not alive, for they lack any drive to self-replicate, but they could be cobbled into a larger program that did meet most or all of the expectations of life. Most remarkable is that all these jigsaw pieces of vitological life popped into being within a few decades.

Meanwhile, biological life continues to change so slowly that we marvel at the genius of a Darwin to see the continuity amidst all the extinct pieces. Mutations arise, and specie dominance changes, especially amongst bacteria. But everything is incremental. There are no fundamental new biological capabilities popping into being analogous to navigational guidance software.

Vitology benefits from Lamarckism, the ability of offspring to inherit characteristics acquired during the life of its parents, whereas biology generally does not. Acquired characteristics cannot be biologically inherited, but they can be (and usually would be) inherited by copying software forms of life. This difference greatly accelerates the evolution of vitological life. It is also perhaps the clearest way to demarcate the vitological from the biological realms of life.

There is no a priori reason why living things should not inherit in a Lamarckian manner, but it is a fact that biological beings generally do not while vitological beings generally will. Giraffes are not able to rewrite their DNA code to incorporate useful characteristics they acquired, such as a more muscular neck, but must instead await random genetic mutations that lengthen the neck. A cyber-Giraffe, however, would necessarily have changed its code to cyber-muscularize its neck, and would thus necessarily pass onto its cyber-offspring the lengthened neck.

Vitology is proceeding as if the brain, the eye, the limbs, the vital organs and the basic cell all developed at once, but as separate entities. None really looked alive except maybe the basic cell – the rest were just really cool tools without a future or a past. A Darwin could see the inevitability of software hacks that would stitch the entities together into a piece of life par excellence. He would realize that once such hacks occurred, the resultant being would self-replicate like crazy. That is what life’s program would tell it to do. It would have the smarts to carry out that program despite obstacles and enemies.

It is obvious that vitology is developing millions of times faster than biology. Vitology is parallel processing in decades what biology serially processed over epochs. This difference of phylogeny, their unique domains of competence and their customized tools for achieving reproduction are what makes it unobvious that they are just two different approaches to life. But squint at that mutating self-replicating code at the core of it all, and at the common life-like functions they share, and it becomes clear that strings of digits spell life just as well as can strings of molecules.

Mindclones are alive, just not the same kind of life that we are accustomed to. They are functionally alive, albeit with a different structure and substance than has ever existed before. Yet, that is the story of life. Before there were nucleated cells, eukaryotes (of which we are comprised), such things had never been seen before – not for nearly two billion years. That is time duration that bacterium had an exclusive claim to life on earth. Before there were multicellular creatures there were only single cell creatures – from their perspective, the first slime molds were not so much a life form but a community of single cell creatures. And so the story goes, down through the descent of man. We must judge life based upon whether it streams order upon itself – self-replicates pursuant to a Darwinian code and maintains itself against the tendency to dissemble – and not get picky over what it looks like or what flavor of Darwinian code it uses. Using this objective yardstick, vitology will be alive.

Mindclones, sitting at the apex of vitology, will feel as full of life as we do from our perch atop the summit of biology. Aware of themselves, with the emotions, autonomy and concerns of their forbearers, mindclone consciousness will bubble as frothily alive as does ours.