For one reason or another, I seem to spend a lot of my time dealing with death. Sometimes it’s quite direct in friends, family, etc. and sometimes it’s friends or family who have lost someone, and come to me for advice or support. While I’ve nearly written this post several times before, yesterday was the event which made me a little more able to explain my thoughts on the matter. My best friends had to say goodbye to one of their beloved cats, after a short illness, and I wondered how they’d explain it to their 3 year old. I don’t know how they have explained it – only how I would.
I wouldn’t say that I’m a religious person. I don’t have any particular opinion on heaven, hell, souls, afterlives, reincarnation or anything else. I’m more than happy to accept the possibility that when our bodies fail – that’s the end for our conscious selves too. However, before you think that this is about to get bleak – at the same time, I do believe that our influence continues through others and continues to shape the world forever.
It is my opinion that our bodies are just organic machines. I believe that artificial life is as valid as “real” life. It isn’t that I believe that machines should have the same “rights” and privileges as living beings, but that living beings, particularly humans, have a rather over-blown notion of how “special” we are. With thorough enough behavioural and linguistic research, I believe that we can develop a system which fully replicates the human responses to stimuli – and that the system could therefore be considered “human”, in the same way that Quorn chicken-style pieces are considered as valid basis for a curry as actual chicken-pieces. The artificial being may have eidetic memory, but may lack the ability to get around as easily – variables which could easily apply to a given human too.
So, if we are but organic/biological software, loaded into the RAM of a time-limited self-sustaining hardware shell – how can we “live forever”? When the power is removed, the software is wiped. There is no backup copy (perhaps a strength of our silicone counterparts), no “reload from last save” and so on. This is where I believe that the “butterfly effect” comes into play.
Your “machine” is part of a bigger whole. Even if you generally stay out of everyone’s way, the fact that you bought coffee one day, may mean that someone else can’t get coffee later. That you watch a TV show, may mean the difference between it staying on air or getting cancelled, which then impacts other people’s jobs and lives. You might tell a child a story, which impacts on their world view, or influences their actions months, years, decades down the line. Perhaps they tell another child the same story, and from there, that person’s life is affected.
This is why teachers and lecturers are sort of immortal. Teacher-Bot steps into the classroom every day, and upgrades the software on hundreds of other units, perhaps thousands or tens of thousands through their life-cycle. The law of averages would provide that, almost certainly, some of those units will become Teacher-Bots. Some of the units they upgrade will also become Teacher-Bots, and so on, all because you were affected, encouraged, inspired, to do it by one of your Teacher-Bots. Perhaps after a generation or two, it is no longer distinguishable as part of “you”, but your influence lives on, reaching out down branches to affect ever increasing numbers of people. Your shell has stopped working, nobody can speak to you, but you speak to them every time they make a decision.
Now to bring this back to the child and the cat. The cat is no longer visible or interactive, but it will always be mentally present for the child. When she sees another cat like him, she will remember him. Perhaps she pulled his tail once, he fought back, and she modified her behaviour as a result. Maybe she fed him, brushed him, or cared for him in a way in which she learned something. He was “just a cat” – but his presence in the child’s life will influence her actions and behaviour for the rest of her life.
We are each just software, running on a meat-machine, and our output provides parameters for all of the other instances around us.
