Volume 1, Issue 4
4th Quarter, 2006


On Genes, Memes, Bemes, and Conscious Things

Martine Rothblatt, Ph.D.

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The father of conscious bemans is Alan Turing, who gave us a test that says that if something seems real, then it is good enough to be real. Copies of conscious things are conscious if they seem to be conscious. Because consciousness is almost synonymous with subjectivity, none of us really know in the absolute sense if any of us are conscious, because we live our daily life based on what seems to be real or conscious. Therefore, if a computer seemed to be conscious, then it would work for all of us.

Another way of looking at consciousness is to compare it to pornography. Back in the 1960s, there was a major debate over Rothblattwhat was obscene or not. Magazines such as Screw were all the rage and cities like Kansas City were trying to put their publishers in jail.[1] The issue went all the way up to the United States Supreme Court and they finally asked the basic question, “What is obscene?”  Justice Potter Stewart came to the conclusion that you cannot define it, but you know it when you see it.[2]

Consciousness is the same type of entity. We can end up with a useless philosophical discussion about what is or is not conscious. Yet we all know it when we see it. That was Turing’s insight.

We also need to be aware that different kinds of consciousness exist. Too often, we fall into the error of thinking that consciousness is an either/or state. We can look at consciousness as being on a continuum of hard core consciousness to soft core consciousness.

When will be be able to beme ourselves up into transbeman states? Right now, mind files exist in a virtual reality on the Internet. People are creating more of themselves in websites such as secondlife.com.[3] Richard Morgan has laid out a number of scenarios for ex vivo consciousness.[4] We cannot predict an exact date, but remember that only sixty years ago, Vannevar Bush predicted a memory extender machine that is available today in desktop, PDA, and ipod versions.[5]

A bemex hypothesis to complement the memex hypothesis – a bemex is a device in which an individual stores enough of their bemes and which is equipped with mindware so that it may function as our alter ego. It is an analog of one’s consciousness that can be replicated with speed and flexibility paralleling Vannevar Bush’s definition of a memex. Kurzweil predicts the arrival of this bemex capability for the year 2030. We are certainly within the horizon of this and we should be debating the related ethical issues.

How do we value cyberconscious lives? There is a cartoon that shows a widow who gets a letter from her husband who died in Iraq and receives a few thousand dollars. Someone else took a drug and had a heart attack and got two million dollars. The point is that if we cannot even figure out how to equally value human lives, it will be even more tricky to figure out how we value beman lives. Certainly, there will be many who claim that beman lives have no value at all, that they are mere constructs like cartoons.

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Footnotes

1. Screw magazine is a New York-based pornographic tabloid newspaper published by Al Goldstein from 1968 to 2004. Now Screw is published by DJK Productions and edited by Kenny Law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Screw_magazine August 28, 2006 4:20PM EST (back to top)

2. Screws v. United States, 325 U.S. 91 (1945). FindLaw.com August 28, 2006 4:30PM EST (back to top)

3. SecondLife - An online society within a 3D world, where users can explore, build, socialize, and participate in their own economy. http://secondlife.com/ August 28, 2006 4:33PM EST (back to top)

4. Richard Morgan (b. 1965) is a British science fiction author who wrote, Altered Carbon, a science fiction novel set some five hundred years in the future in a universe in which the "United Nations Protectorate" oversees a number of planets settled by human beings, it features protagonist Takeshi Kovacs (the final "cs" is pronounced "ch"). Kovacs is a former United Nations Envoy and a native of Harlan's World (settled by the Japanese yakuza with Eastern European labor). Wikipedia.com August 28, 2006 4:36PM EST (back to top)

5. Dr. Vannevar Bush’s visionary 1945 Atlantic Monthly article entitled, “As We May Think” which proposed a memory extender machine to organize the public record. The Atlantic Monthly.com August 28, 2006 (back to top)

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