Should We Use Paradimensional Technologies?

Objections to Using Dimensional Technologies

Consistently, people wonder if the technologies I've developed are simply "experience machines"; a good number of otherwise agreeable people, upon learning about my designs, object to my work on moral grounds. Barring the occasional bit of outright haughtiness this kind of misunderstanding is not the fault of those who misunderstand. Those who know me know that my motives are driven entirely by my desire for a more peaceful reality, but that, because I am trained as a physicist, my ability to express philosophical points might be more than a little bit limited.

I am not the "super neuropsychologist" that Robert Nozick wrote about in 1974, though I was born in that year. My technologies are not the experience machine he imagined. What he imagined was a machine, not unlike a Matrix built for one, which could plug into a person's brain and give them any experience they choose while their body floats in a tub. Would you plug in? For most people it depends on whether or not it's a permanent state, and whether or not they can remember the experiences that they have in the machine.

They ask, Say, I was in the machine for two years and had the experience of training to become a great basketball player. Would I remember the experience and still have the knowledge and technique, if not the physique, to be a great basketball player once I emerge from the experience machine? they ask.

Asking the question in itself demonstrates exactly what Nozick was interested in learning about. It demonstrates that what forms the crux of whether or not such an experience machine would be ethical is indeed whether there is any chance of continued engagement with a deeper reality that goes beyond the machine-generated experiences.

Nozick identified three main reasons that people tend to give for their objections against his experience machine. First, people wish to actually do things instead of experience them. Second, people wish to actually be a certain kind of person, rather than have the experience of being a certain kind of person. Third, we want to be engaged with a reality that is deeper than what we can fully access; that is, we want to be part of something that is bigger than us, something which has repercussions that go beyond the realm of one's own experience.

1) People want to do things. My technologies do not work without conscious effort on your part. My technologies do not provide an experience of anything. They are merely tools you can use to interact with the substance of the universe. The experiences that you have in that universe are secondary to the actions you take - just like in this universe.

I hate to use this metaphor, but clarity demands it: What I've created is like Microsoft Windows for reality. Further, when one uses my technologies, they are merely creating a landscape, in which they will do things.

2) People want to be certain ways. My technologies are essentially transformational in nature.

But they do not transform the user. The user is the active element. The user may naturally shape their own body according to the universe that they create. To be very clear, I do not mean that one turns on the machine, imagines that they are a great basketball player, and suddenly they are a great basketball player; instead, the user shapes a universe in which it would be either inevitable (that is, with practice) or certain (that is, with physics) that the user would become or would have become a great basketball player. Shaping the world in such a way takes work. It does not render the user without agency. In fact, it renders unto the user as much agency as they choose.

The Element of Surprise

3) People want to be engaged with a deeper reality. A deeper reality is one which goes beyond that which is immanent for a person. The world in which we live is one that we don't fully understand. This element of surprise in reality is what gives the possibility of ethical ennoblement to us humans, to our desires, and to our actions. We cannot ever know whether we will be successful, if life is worth living, if there is good in the world, or why we exist - and because of these things, the life a human or any sentient being is, at root, an act of either great courage or great foolhardiness. The distinction between a courageous life and a fool's life - well, that's a question of ethics. But it is worthwhile to ask from where does the element of surprise in reality come? With some reflection, many people would claim that it is the fact that we humans do not completely understand the universe that ennobles us - that is to say that it is exactly because our limited understanding of reality and our limited ability to act in reality present such a contrast to the vastness of reality our existences become noble. People who would agree with that point might tend to dismiss my technologies as unethical because they seem to remove the element of surprise from reality by putting the ability to shape reality into the hands of humans.

I insist that this is no good reason to dismiss my technologies. My technologies are not the moral equivalent of video games, they are not the Holodeck, and they are definitely not the Matrix. Firstly, I disagree with the idea that the element of surprise in the universe emerges from the contrast of limited human faculties with the grandness of the universe. Secondly, I see the ability to shape reality as nothing new to humanity at all. Indeed I feel that it is our birthright to meddle in the universe.

One point at a time, then. I am of the mind that life itself is the source of surprise in reality. The contrast between the limited ability of life and the vastness - though, in terms of agency, utterly empty - universe is not what ennobles life. No. The disconnect between life and the universe is what life is, and that life is where true surprise comes from. There is support for this in the work of Charles Darwin, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Henri Bergson, so I will not labor the issue here. The contrast is secondary to the human, then, its product.

As for the following complaint: that a human-created universe is one in which everything will be predictable to the mind of humans, and will therefore be lacking in anything ennobling to human beings. Hogwash. We humans have been altering our universe - insofar as we understand it - for a long, long time, and we have been consistently surprised by it and ourselves. If it weren't for living things such as ourselves, there'd be nothing surprising at all!

There is a fourth objection that might be piled upon the three that Nozick wrote about.

4) People wish to be engaged with other people, with social reality. This point needs little explanation, for most humans favor the company of others. Those who do not may readily use my technologies and live solitary lives if they so please. Those who prefer other people may use my technologies to either create sentient beings or to engage with other pre-existing sentient beings such as us humans. My interface technologies permit people to interact with other interface users directly in any way to which both users agree; users may also interact with earthbound persons (non-users) as insubstantial images.

Experiments with Baboons

An early experiment with my dimensional technologies took place in February this year. The outcome is most interesting and should be considered by anyone using my technologies. The subject was grafted with a warp beacon before engaging the reality interface. A warp beacon is a signature warping of a dimensional space that is attached to a consciousness. Its purpose is to allow us to register the continued presence of user in reality, though it could hypothetically be used to track any kind of sentient being.

0800, 10 February 2010. Subject entered the Synergy Core.

0803. Sensors indicate the addition and removal of dimensional axes in the pocket universe. Alterations continue for the next twelve minutes.

0805. Communique A received. "universe meets my desires"

0806. Communique B received. "perfect world"

0811. Subject appears in imagistic form in the laboratory.
"Doctor Phock and Xenophon, Jamal. The universe has been shaped to my desires and it is perfect now. I am in love. My consciousness expands through channels of love for my self created world I understand your experiment is a success Doctor Phock."
The image disappears after forty seconds.

0814. Communique C received. "re-forming"

0815. Sensors indicate that stability has been reached in the pocket universe. Simultaneously the warp beacon smooths out, and the presence of the subject no longer registers.

Significantly, the subject was not a human, but rather an artificially enhanced savanna baboon. The experiment was carried out a second time on another artificially enhanced savanna baboon, with redundant results. Because the linguistic capabilities of the baboons were similar on account of the identical technologies used in enhancing the baboon's cognitive capabilities, the communiques are identical except for the order in which laboratory associates were addressed during the imagistic apparition. (The second subject addressed us as "Doctor Phock, Jamal, and Lord Xenophon of the Horses.") The communiques' time stamps are also identical, suggesting some measure of regularity in the processes. However the second experiment yielded two additional timestamps.

0827. Warp beacon reactivates.

0831. Locate warp beacon.

Two days later, I was able to confirm that the beacon was indeed affixed to a newborn baboon in central Ethiopia. Interestingly, the warp beacon's new host is a member of the hamadryas species, and not the savanna species, suggesting continuity between the two groups, or something even greater. No similar reactivation has been registered for the first subject.