A letter to Ray Kurzweil
Hi Ray,
I just completed reading most of your book - “The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence”. It’s very interesting. Your book intrigued in me some thoughts about life and the universe. You wrote about the density of intelligence in spacetime. While the density of intelligence in spacetime may be theoretically limited by the principle of uncertainty and maybe also by the second law of thermodynamics, it may be possible to overcome those limits by future technology. While you wrote that chaos is increasing and space is expanding in time, it seems to me that if spacetime will pass some limit of intelligence (if the density of intelligence will be high enough), then chaos will decrease in this area of spacetime and possibly spacetime itself will shrink. This might cause some interesting phenomena - for example, the arrow of time might be reversed, and a black hole might be formed. It might be that the black holes we have in the universe are areas where the density of intelligence has increased beyond such a limit.
You also wrote that the universe after the big bang was a very hot place. But I thought heat is a measure of chaos. If there was much order and not much chaos in early history of the universe, then it seems to me to have been very cold, maybe close to the absolute zero temperature.
I also read your point that a theoretical universe without a consciousness does not really exist. While at first my view was that is wasn’t true, because there are many planets (and also places on earth) without life and nobody claims those places don’t really exists. But when I thought about it, I realized that Yehova (God) exists everywhere and it is Yehova’s consciousness that make things exist. So you’re probably right, a universe can’t exist without Yehova being aware of it. But there can be places in the universe without biological life, for example the planet Mars and some deserts on planet earth. It seems to me that your statement about universe consciousness is something like “I think, therefore I am” at the universe level.
I want you to know that your prophecy about technology creating its new generation of technology is quite frightening. When computers (I don’t like to refer to them as “machines”) are smart enough to do everything without us, even to reproduce and create better computers without us, then they will probably don’t need us - at least not so many of us. I wonder what they will do with us. They might decide to exterminate us, or at least minimize our number and keep us under control. It can be something like “planet of the apes” but the apes will be computers. In this case, the future may seem like your quote of Theodore Kaczynski or Rossum’s Universal Robots by Karel ÄŒapek (both of them I didn’t know until reading your book).
Another thing - how do you know the Big Bang really existed? The laws of physics contain uncertainty and we don’t know anything without doubt. We use our common sense in a probabilistic way - if something is very probable, we assume it is true. I assume you exist, and you assume I exist (I assume), but we don’t know that for sure. Even if we meet each other, we will not know that for sure. So, what is the probability that the Big Bang actually happened? No human was there to actually record it. There must be some doubt, like in everything else in reality. Yet, you refer to it in your book as if it was history.
It seems to me that the universe is a question and intelligent life is the answer. When there are more questions than answers, chaos grows and the universe expands. When there will be more answers than questions, order will grow and the universe will shrink. Eventually, when all the questions are answered, the universe will cease to exist.
I would like to know which books would you recommend, after reading this book? Do your other books contain information not contained in this book? Or are other books different versions of the same book? Especially I’m interested in your books about computer science and technology. Which of them do you recommend?
Best Regards,
Uri Even-Chen
Speedy Net
www.speedy.net