The problem of the "pleasure dial"

A common theme in science fiction today is the question of "mind uploading." As neuro- and cognitive scientists reverse-engineer the workings of the brain, the biological organ which produces the mind, we are increasing interested the possibility of replicating nature's technology. Using a sufficiently powerful computer, we might simulate a brain in all of its neural complexity, thus establishing a platform upon which to emulate a mind and even consciousness. In fact, attempts are currently underway to simulate the brains of mice (http://bluebrain.epfl.ch/).

Supposing we attain the technical prowess to emulate a human brain and all its outputs, including mind and consciousness, raises many questions which are both interesting and troubling. This is a favorite variety of question among science fiction authors and philosophers, who have now spilled many electrons before them. For example, if a virtual human is emulated on a computer, would wiping that computer's data constitute murder? This theme was taken up in the recent film Ex Machina. A secondary theme the film delved into was the titillating question of whether a virtual being should be programmed to experience corporeal desires. Aren't our sex drives and appetites essential elements of the human experience? If not for these desires, to what might consciousness be directed? In another recent example out of Hollywood, Transcendence, a young scientist (Johnny Depp) succeeds in "uploading" his entire neural connectome to a computer, thus creating a virtual copy of himself. Shortly thereafter, the scientist is assassinated. Those he left behind must take on the question of whether or not the virtual copy is really him. The digital Depp claims that he is, and by all accounts appears to possess the memories, sentiments, and dreams of the man who died. But how can we be sure?

Technological developments that raise exciting possibilities for the future also tend to attract attention among science fiction authors and philosophers. Certainly the possibility of uploading our minds to a potentially faster, more upgradeable, and longer lived platform than the 3 lb glob of fat between our ears excites us. By uploading, we may transcend the limitations of biological existence, unlocking the possibilities of exponentially increasing intelligence and functional immortality. Living as informational beings, we are unhindered by physical mass. Able to travel at the speed of light, the confines of time and space can no longer hold us. The universe thus opens up to humanity and a truly space-faring civilization becomes possible. I could go on about that one.

With these possibilities, of course, come new fears. One of the problems that worries me is what I call the "pleasure dial." If our senses and appetites are virtual, why can't they be tweaked so that I feel joyful all the time? Or better yet ecstatic? What's to stop an individual from cranking the pleasure dial full blast, achieving a state of ecstasy that never ends? It would be the theoretical maximum of happiness and satisfaction. Bliss unadulterated by any form of want. Why would anyone ever want to leave this state since it is by design perfect? I wouldn't. And nobody else would. So what then would come of humanity? What would inspire us to do new works? I fear we will reach a stable equilibrium, wherein we are all locked away in our own private euphorias. And in such a condition we would persist, unmoving and unchanging, until the power goes out. And when it does, there will be nobody around to fix it. And that is how humanity would end.

Why do we take so many drugs?

For a society prosecuting a 'war against drugs' for the last 30 years, we do an awful lot of drugs. This is true for illegal drugs--highlighting the consummate failure of the drug war by its own standard--but more to the point let's talk about the legal kinds. In one category, we're given all the kinds that tweak our bodies this and that way so we can eke out a few more pitiful years at work by day and in front of the HD whatevers by night. What I'm trying to get it is the role of the drug companies in our lives, in a broad sense. Between their advertisement and kick-back system to the doctors, they have has going to the doctor for trivial problems and come out with a simple and easy solution. One qualifier: it's addictive and you're going to have to take it forever.

So the live-longer drugs are one category, and the other category are those that we take for other reasons. This is where we can really learn something about ourselves. So let's take a look at the drugs we take for reasons other than prolonging the inevitable. You have your illegal kinds and your legal kinds. For today, let's disregard the illegal ones, as they more or less by definition are the ones our society frowns upon and to be involved with them you're essentially "outside" of the mainstream. Let's talk about the he ones the well-behaved people take.

First, there's coffee. Everybody takes that. This drug is sold on every goddamn corner from here to Seattle. Jesus, it's not even that good anymore. Coffee electrified me two or three times when I was 19 and has since been more about getting out of bed. There's alcohol. Alcohol is wonderful because they have a wide selection of varieties, for every price point and socioeconomic circumstance. We love alcohol because it lets us shrug off the oppressive distancing from each other capitalism demands. Isn't it so unnatural that in our offices they put what are essentially blinders around your eyes, ensuring that you are only able to see the work to be done in front of you? You may not talk to one another! You may not make any unnecessary noise! So what if your ancestors for 10s of thousands of years sang songs and socialized while working, they didn't have iPhones! Obviously they were miserable, unlike us. /sarcasm. But if you absolutely insist on speaking to another person, you may only speak to them in certain approved ways, on approved topic. Do not talk about politics! We have to play catch-up, so no more leaving together for lunch, either. Just eat your frozen rations and be quick about it. If you lack vigor, drink coffee! For the love of Ford, it's the only free thing around here for a reason!

Coffee is the gateway drug to the dwindling middle class. It's necessary to work that much harder than the next sucker. Keep it up and you can make middle-management. That's right, you can be the guy with the cheap tie who works Saturday and has Tuesday off. Coffee to get us to work, coffee to work our asses off, coffee to do it some more, and more alcohol to bring us down and help us forget what we did all day.

And these people don't even have health insurance. For the denizens of the working professional class, you get access to much more powerful stuff. With your prescription drug benefits, your doctor can give you all you need to cope with constant anxiety of losing your fragile position over those who die young, failed or failing relationships, egocentrism, and no chance of doing any else because you're the endured servant of the banks who gave you the money to buy the SUVs, the tract homes, the HD whatevers, and the "designer Italian" loafers made by a 14 year old in Vietnam. We'll start you out on Xanax (44 million prescriptions in the US). "This will help you," says the doc. He's got a white smock, so "seems legit." Now the Xanax may make it a bit difficult to get up on the morning, but a simple, habit forming, morning amphetamine-salt (25 million US prescriptions) will take care of that. You're going to need some Valium (14 million US prescriptions) to get to sleep at night, and might as well start you on the Ativan (25 million US prescriptions) to help with that vague sense of panic that sometimes come out when you realize that you don't really remember what happens during the day anymore, but periodically take stock of the home and family crumbling around you. "Is Daughter 15 already? Why does she hate me so much and should she be wearing that? Maybe I should get her some of this, too. I think she has a disorder. Depression "runs in our family." Now I'm on Seroquel (16m) and Effexor (15m) and life is just a blur. Come to think of it, I lost my job 6 months ago and those appear to be foreclosure papers on the table. Oh, hell, I mind as well just take them all.

Meanwhile….

 

Source: http://psychcentral.com/lib/2010/top-25-psychiatric-prescriptions-for-2009/

Measuring the self over time

The self isn’t a persistent thing. It fades in and out of existence, conjured by a biological machine like the stale image from an old slide projector. It comes and goes, not with a regular ebb and flow like the tide, but erratically, motivated by some external factors which we must come to understand. With its arrhythmic beat we pulse in and out of existence. Cogito ergo sum, “I think, therefore I am”, but what then are we for the moment when we thought not?

Indeed, the self fades in and out of existence. Deindividuation is one way of it—to relax the burden of selfhood and exist momentarily as part of a whole. This is what occurs within the crucible of the mosh pit, where under the intense heat of molten flesh, fire of rage and thunder of blast beats, the self all but disappears. No self-centered thoughts like behavioral propriety, no thoughts of what others will say, no plans for the future, no wrangling over the past. No thoughts of bills to pay, papers to write, careers to make, statuses to update, dates to keep: Only the most vague sense of right now. Mosh, push, shove, survive, dance, and howl in Bacchic annihilation.

My heart is pounding out of my chest, 180 BPM. Throat is raw and lungs about to burst. The blast beat fades into a melodic transition. The weak signal from the self slowly emerges—pulling me back from the edge of oblivion. Retreat. Breathe. Maintain.

Safely out of the pit, I become aware of myself again. The burning pain in my chest, and a certain surprise at my recklessness. I see the girl I was flirting with before. There’s another guy she’s talking to. Who is he? Is he more impressive than I am? What does she think of me? Where do I stand? Jealously, longing, anxiety, anger, resentment, my Machiavellian mind is assessing the situation, estimating probabilities, and calculating a course of action. I have become fully self-conscious.

Where and when does the self disappear? This may be a key to understanding what we really are. Therefore, we must develop a means to measure the self. Observe the dynamic correlation between consciousness interacting with time. Understand this mysteriously evolving relationship, a temporal function, but what else? Evolutionary theory suggests thatthe ‘what else’ is a function of selection pressures. The self is an adaption that favored survival and reproduction under a certain, but ultimately unknowable, set of circumstances. Yett we can conjecture, and not altogether ignorantly. The self was called upon when I was preoccupied with the girl from the dance floor, but not when I was in battle. Within the battle I was gone. My body was on its own, running an emergency, autonomous program called berzerker rage. Who was around me didn’t matter. The berzerker has no need of nuanced social distinctions. In the presence of a mate, social distinction is paramount; n-player multidyadic chess. Everybody is against everybody, but we are all locked in varying degrees of interdependence. Men and women can’t mate without one another and men can’t fight alone. To do this, nature packed the human body plan with three and a half pounds of biological cognition, tuned to optimize an expected payoff across countess simultaneous and parallel utility functions; calculations far too complex for any computer of my day.

But the human brain is more than an information-computational system, it’s a hybrid dynamical-system with both logical and mechanical hardwiring. We can solve problems by thinking about them, or rely on essentially mechanical processes requiring virtually no computation. Computation is costly and isn’t always necessary. When instinct is enough, let the conscious mind rest. In the crucible of battle, the self will have nothing of the blood and the death and the gore, and reason it’s way out the door! No, the self doesn’t get to play then; s/he sits this one out.

Thoughts on consciousness

Why don’t we give children and adolescents the vote, i.e., allow them to make decisions about sex, alcohol, and war? The simple answer is because we accept the premise that they are as yet too young to grasp the full consequences of their action. If they can have no conception of the consequences of their actions, then how can they attain genuine awareness of what it is they’re doing? If our working description of consciousness is as the state of awareness concerning what it is we’re doing and, crucially, why we’re doing it, we may therefore be imply the conclusion that adolescents lack it, or at least that its yet incomplete.

I find it interesting that when we recall events from the past (even fairly recent past) it still seems as if they took place at a time before we gained the property of awareness we currently posses. Perhaps we might shrug off this uncomfortable feeling: bah... I was so x back then! where x is some accessible description of one’s own character or demeanor. In other words, I was at that time not yet come to my wits... unduly influenced by a deformation of awareness. Back then, we “didn’t know” about things that we do now. How naive we were. Surely, if you would have asked us at the time we thought we were aware, then we would have affirmed it to you as confidently as we would today. But if we know today that in the past we would have, in fact, been wrong, how can we be sure that we won’t be saying the same thing about right now some days or years in the future?

A week or so ago my professor of cognition asked us the question ‘what is consciousness’. It occurred to me that, whatever it is, it must have something to do with what I call the absolute presence of now. For lack of a better term, I’m talking about the cerebral rush of colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures, that collect together to form a pool of self-hood. Mirror! Mirror! On the water, who is the most x of them all? Compared with the absolute presence of now, memories from even a moment ago are pale shadows of their former glory. As the present slides inexorably forward on a line of time, what was the present becomes a memory and its characteristic intensity of the present will be ripped from it and rushed into what is coming.

Let’s restate what’s been suggested: consciousness is inseparable from the present, and it also appears to be the mechanism that confers intensity to impressions. If these two premises are true, then it would explain why memories are so pale: since consciousness is bound to the present, it cannot be applied to impressions from the past, for if it was we would be experiencing all over again the past with the absolute presence of now. Additionally, it seems these premises may also explain our apparent inability to ascribe consciousness to some minds from the past, as well as children and adolescents. Specifically, the mechanism of consciousness may play a role in how we generate theories of other minds (i.e., are able to perceive other people and animals as having minds). Without the personal experience of consciousness, we may be unable to incorporate the property of consciousness into a theory of other minds. Since we cannot experience consciousness within impressions from the past, we are unable to believe that minds in the past had consciousnesses either. In memories, everybody is sleepwalking, going about the world, interacting with people and things, but lacking awareness.

Putting this together: ‘Consciousness’ is a sensational result following an impulse whose function is to trap our attention around colors, sounds, smells, tastes, and textures happening now. If it didn’t carry out this function, we might wind up making decisions upon what was true in the past (but no longer). Obviously, this could be dangerous and may have been subject to evolutionary pressure. In sum, consciousness is only another cognitive bias on a long list of others. This consciousness bias causes us impressions from the present to stand out among impressions from the past, or memories, and thus exert greater influence on decisions to be made now. Impressions from the past may still be influential, but only in a preconscious, online process in which all impressions from the past are combined into a single feeling about is happening: a sense of goodness, comfort, stress, or danger, and reoccur as a new impression and considered along side the rest occurring now. Consciousness also seems to play a role in generating theories of mind, perhaps by establishing bounds around the impressions that influencing the decisions of others. Interestingly, we don’t treat all minds equally. Children made forgivable mistakes because they didn’t know any better, but criminals had intent. Genuine internal states seem more likely to be granted to people we distrust or are threatened by, but not those whom consider benign; i.e. children, adolescents, ourselves, and perhaps a close circle of kin who we can as well imagine being more like naive pawns of external conditions during the moment of any past actions, achieving at best only a deformed awareness that cannot be culpable for the consequences of its actions.

A question for another day: If consciousness is only a side-effect of a mechanism to bias evaluations of the newest impressions, can free will exist? It would there is very little left for a will to do. Rather, the hardware of the mind is estimating a utility function, or a fitness function, and discharging a behavior most likely to maximize the function.