Hybriduality and Geoethics

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 A good case can be made that all life is really infovitology because it is information processing, sharing and transcending behaviors that make something alive.  Nevertheless, up until now, all vitological life has been expressed via biological substrate, and hence there is utility to understanding the impact of that biovitological medium on the infovitological message.   Similarly, we are at a cusp of time when autonomous information processing, sharing and transcending capability will be incarnated into computational hardware.  That hardware will impose its unique limitations on the life process, and hence there is value in understanding cybervitology as a category of life.  Ultimately, however, information processing, sharing and transcending capability will become platform independent by achieving the ability to reorder atoms at will using nanotechnological tools.  This will be the advent of truly infovitological life.

One can also envision categories of transontological life such as: transbiological life (mostly biological but also cybernetic and/or informational) and transcybernetic life (mostly cybernetic but also biological and/or informational) for many years to come.  There is substantial work for scientific researchers to do in the years ahead to categorize organic, inorganic and software entities in accordance with their relative capabilities for autonomy, coopetency, and transcendence.   In this regard, an important sub-field of protovitology should be recognized, which deals with the characteristics of entities having some but not all of the ACT features. 

There is also substantial work for ethicists, lawyers, sociologists, policymakers and theologians to do in the years ahead to assay the relative rights or protect-able interests of entities in accordance with their ACT capabilities.  At the end of the day, though, it should not be the organic or inorganic, or biological or informational, nature of life that determines how it is respected, any more than it should be the gender or exterior appearance of a person that determines their fate. Categorization of life forms is useful for many purposes, but one of those purposes should not be the denial of the privileges and responsibilities accorded to living beings. 

One of England’s leading medical ethicists, John Harris, has observed[11] that “a right means there exists valid moral reasons for not denying something.”  For example, a right to life means there are moral valid reasons not to deny someone their life.  One such reason would be that if people could have their lives taken from them, then all society would feel unsafe, insecure and unpleasant.  On the other hand, if a condemned murderer is said to forfeit his right to life, it is because there are not morally valid reasons to prevent his execution.  Everyone will not feel insecure because everyone is not a condemned murderer. 

What does this have to do with vitology, the study of life?  John Harris’ formulation helps us to see that the right to life should not be withheld from cybernetic or informational life because there are valid moral reasons to respect these forms of life.   In addition to the argument of the preceding paragraph (which biovitological life forms might dismiss on ontological grounds), there is the following strong argument.  Ending something that is making the world a better place makes the world a worse place for all.  Consequently, there are morally valid reasons to not deny life to a cybernetic or software being that demonstrates Autonomy, Coopetency, and Transcendence.  

[T]he right to life applies to all vitology.

If such entities are making the universe a more satisfying place, one in which some of us are at a little less risk of random harm,

there is no moral reason to end their life.   Consequently, cybervitological and infovitological beings have a frank right to life.  Quite analogous arguments support the biodiversity movement’s efforts to forestall extinction of species.  In summary, the right to life applies to all vitology.

It is apparent to anyone that not all life is created equal.   Different vitological beings satisfy the ACT criteria for life to different extents.  Dogs evidence greater autonomy, coopetency and Transcendence than do bacteria.   A quantifiable hierarchy of life results from a more detailed examination of the three criteria for life.  That hierarchy is based on a V score derived from the following function:  V = A*C*T, where V is the vitological index, A is a quantified autonomy value calibrated as the exponent to which 10 must be raised in order to best estimate an entity’s maximum number of decisions per second.   This value ensures the entity is, in fact, processing information.  C is the empirically obtained number [12] reflecting the percentage of the time that an entity consensually shares information, multiplied by 100.  The multiplication factor enables the C value to be combined equally with the A value.  T is an empirically obtained number reflecting the percentage of the time that an entity is using information to improve the universe, again multiplied by 100.

A maximal [13] vitology score of 1,000,000 (or 1M) would result from an entity with the processing power of every atom in the universe (approximately 10¹⁰⁰ atoms, give or take a few million trillion), that maximally shared information (C=100) and that devoted all of its efforts to enhancing universal order (T=100).  Let’s assume, for sake of illustration, that humans consensually share information only half the time (C=50), and that society devotes less than 10% of its time to building a better world (T=10).  Then humanity has a vitology value of 500 times the exponent of mankind’s mental processing capability, which is about 10²⁶ calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1000 connections per neuron times 200 signals per second times 10 billion humans).  In this illustration, the vitological hierarchy value of humanity would now be about 13,000 (=500 times 26) on a scale from 1 to 1,000,000, or .013M.  Interestingly, an individual person who consensually exchanged information half the time and devoted only 10% of his or her efforts to increasing universal order would have a V score of 8000, or .008M.

By comparison, a typical insect brain can handle up to 10⁶ calculations per second (A=6), rarely communicates consensually (but almost constantly using non-consensual chemical signaling), and makes minimal efforts to establish a more ordered universe.  Assigning, for the sake of illustration, Coopetency and Transcendence scores of C=1 and T=5, we get the result that a typical insect may have a V score of 30, or much less than 1% of that of a human.  A MacIntosh computer also has a V score of about 30, representing a 1 Megahertz processor, minimal consensual communications capability, and minimal contributions to a better world. 

It may seem that the Vitology Index is rigged against insects and PCs by virtue of their low scores for consensual communications and Transcendence.  This is not the case because there is widespread agreement that the “gold standards” of “higher life” are the abilities to engage in meaningful communications and to use tools to create a less random world. 

Coopetency measures “consensual communication” to assay how frequently, and to what extent, an entity can (a) frame an idea, (b) communicate it to another entity, (c) have that entity understand the idea, (d) frame a response, (e) communicate that response, and (f) have the original entity understand the response. 

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Footnotes

[11] Harris, J. (1985) The Value of Life:  An Introduction to Medical Ethics, Routledge: London

[12] The empirical determination of vitological numbers can be accomplished in at least two different ways.  First, it is possible to do a “time and motion” analysis of a being, or enough beings to be representative of a species.  Such a time and motion analysis will result in a percentage of time allocated to components of the vitological index.  Alternatively, an assessment can be made of the percentage of time that either the most simple living entity we know spends on components of the vitological index.  Then all other beings and species can be assigned a multiple of that value based on how much more time they spend.

[13] One reason to have such a broadly enumerated scale such as 1-1,000,000 is that there is such a plethora of different species.  There are already over one million differently named insect species, plus about another 600,000 named non-insect species, ranging from 270,000 named plant species to 4,650 named mammal species.  However, it is estimated that named species represent only about 10% of the currently existing species, with millions of insect species, hundreds of thousands of bacteria, nematode and virus species, and tens of thousands of protozoan species deduced yet to be discovered.  While the industrialization of natural ecosystems is reducing this species’ count at an unprecedented rate, new non-biological species of life, such as computer hardware and software systems, are now being created at a very fast rate.