Homo Cybens

In a recent Times Op -Ed piece (“Is the Universe a Simulation?” NYT 2/15/14) the mathematician Edward Frenkel cites a paper written by the physicists Silas R. Beane, Zohreh Davoudi and Martin J Savage,” entitled “Constraints on the Universe as a Numerical Simulation.” According to Frenkel, the writers of the paper “outline a possible method for detecting that our world is actually a computer simulation.” It’s something that would account for how we are able to discover mathematical theorems from Euclid to Poincare. It’s also something which answers another question which Frenkel poses, “if math is only a product of the human imagination, how do we all end up agreeing on exactly the same math?” The answer, according to Frenkel, is that humans are merely “discovering aspects of the code that the programmer used.” Of course, taking this idea one step further, can we all agree that if the universe as we know it is not now a computer program, than it will one day be, not one, but many. Forget about programmers. Computers will program their own realities which will be more naturally selective than so called reality. Man as a biological organism is rather frail, but cybernetic images are eternal and capable of producing all the elements of human life, including taste, touch and consciousness that we find within the rather anachronistic invention known as Homo sapiens. Indeed nature itself can be looked at as an anachronism together with the vessel in which it’s contained, so-called spaceship earth. There are those who toss and turn anxiously about the environment and the fate of our progeny. Some philosophers like Samuel Scheffler of NYU, author of Death and the Afterlife, even worry about the fate of human endeavor in a world with no future. The Towering Inferno was a famous thriller of the 70’s which prefigured the fall of the Twin Towers. But the earth will be obsolete long before it becomes a spherical inferno hurtling toward a dying star. Mankind will have abandoned it eons before for the pleasures and possibilities of cyberspace.

Life After Life

Physicists tell us the universe is expanding and that someday we will all be shrouded in darkness. Stars will be further apart than ever and the hope of discovering other civilizations will become increasingly diminished. The analogy might be that of the Manhattanite who sells his expensive  apartment to satisfy his dream of owning hundreds of acres in some place like Nebraska, Colorado or Oklahoma, where land is still affordable and the idea of Manifest Destiny still survives in some form. The wish for the uncluttered existence is satisfied, but there is the loneliness of not having another human in sight. Man is a social animal and the laws of physics seem to be mitigating against our prospectively widowed planet some day finding eligible suitors who will provide a safe harbor from her self-created environmental storms. It would have been consoling to imagine our descendants shipping out on a space ship millions of years from now for some new found land. Samuel Scheffler, an NYU professor who has a dual appointment in law and philosophy has written a book called Death and the Afterlife which deals with this very subject. The afterlife is not a world that we the living will occupy. It’s a world that exists without us, but whose existence confers meaning on the things that we do today. By the time astronomers located a planet compatible to human life (something like the world found on the holographic level of Star Trek) it would already be too far for even a space ship that could negotiate speeds approaching the speed of light, were such technology ever in the realm of possibility. Remember the famous Twilight Zone "Time Enough at Last," where Burgess Meredith plays a bookworm who yearns to satisfy his dream: to be left alone so he can read. He gets his wish when a nuclear blast destroys everyone but him. However, he is damned to a life of hopelessness when he smashes his glasses? Both his present and his future are taken away.

The Afterlife Reified

Paradise of Bhaishaijyaguru

NYU has produced eminent scholars in the fields of philosophy and law. The late Ronald Dworkin and Thomas Nagel are two of the most notable examples. In a recent Sunday Review, Samuel Scheffler, another NYU professor whose appointment bridges these two disciplines broached a question that is not often taken up by either lawyers or philosophers and that’s the afterlife (“The Importance of the Afterlife. Seriously,” NYT, 9/21/13). Scheffler isn’t dealing with the question of whether there is soul that lives on in heaven or hell. He is dealing with the life that goes on after we are gone and his premise is that many things wouldn’t make sense in this life, if we didn’t think human life was going to go on after us. It’s a little bit the notion that Beckett expresses humorously in Endgame when Clov asks “Do you believe in the life to come?” and Hamm replies, “Mine was always that.” Scheffler isn’t dealing with questions of heaven or hell. He avoids theology by materializing the question of the afterlife, in much the way that insurance companies do. From an actuarial point of view why would one want to expend energy on certain activities, if the world were coming to an end? “If you were a cancer researcher, you might be less motivated to continue your work,” he remarks. The end of the world would have a similar effect on “an engineer working to improve the seismic safety of bridges.” But when he brings up the question of novelists, playwrights and composers he’s on shaky ground. Sure most creatives dream they will produce classics that will live on forever. But the fact is that few do. Within a generation or two many well-known writers will fade into oblivion. Updike might have staying power, but few people today talk of John O’Hara, the author of Appointment in Samarra and Butterfield 8 who was a legend in his time. Ever hear of a writer named John P. Marquand who won a Pulitzer for The Late George Apley in 1938? How many Rembrandts, Beethovens and Tolstoys are there in recorded history? Must a writer maintain the delusion of immortality in order to function? Or is there something to be said for the fact that writing, composing and painting would have a function even if Chicken Little were right and the sky was falling. After all in the case of a doomsday scenario who is going to write the eulogy for the human race? Who is going to provide the music at the service? Who will provide the design of life’s final brochure?