People Factory
From 'Science Wish List' by R Bartlet (April 25 1994)

The knowledge that we can live forever would let humans catch a glimpse of where they're going - the obvious companion to this is to understand where we come from. The commonly accepted explanation of where we came from is put by Isaac Asimov, the author of many science and science fiction books -

'The only possible scientific conclusion (one that does not involve supernatural action, of which we have no evidence whatsoever) is that random combinations of simple molecules that existed in Earth's atmosphere and oceans about four billion years ago built up more complicated and still more complicated molecules. Eventually, molecules formed that were sufficiently complicated to possess the properties we associate with life.' ('The Exploding Suns' by Isaac Asimov, 1985)

The explanation which is presented here totally agrees that there was no supernatural action involved. However, it does not agree that the only possible scientific conclusion is one that calls upon randomness. This explanation calls upon established technologies like space travel (which it extrapolates to the 4th spatial dimension of time) and biotechnology (which it extrapolates to the advanced state biological science will undoubtedly occupy in decades to come). It then conjectures that these technologies are applied in a theory-of-everything manner Me so that input is consistent with output (humanity's origins must be able to consistently produce humanity's present makeup).

If humans have a role to play in the 'creation' (recycling) of the universe* it only seems consistent that we should also play a role in the 'creation' (recycling) of ourselves (learning how to live forever is one way of recycling ourselves - a second way is described by the poem below):

* Extraterrestrials may actually be genetically modified humans who have terraformed and colonised other planets, then travelled through space and time to (in some cases) 20th century Earth.

The people from Earth said to those from the UF0 -
'You are not like normal people! You must go away!'
But the little grey men in the flying saucer were not alien,
Though they came from other planets via another dimension.
They were genetically engineered, terraforming, space
travelling, time travelling, and descendent
Of women and men who inhabit our world in our century:
people known as 'proto-little grey men'.

When they came to the 1990s,
Those strange ones from the 2090s,
A prototype little grey man became abducted,
His memories erased because he was hypnotised.
From his body a cell was first obtained and afterwards cloned.
Then into the clone's brain a copy of his mind was loaded.

Repeated gene reforming made many diverse grey girls and men
Who went back in time (through artificial wormholes of the fourth space dimension).
[3 dimensions - length, width and height - exist in familiar space:
physicist Prof. Hawking says time is 4th dimensional space.]
And from the dust of the ground and from the clays
They made beings with apelike body and face.
Apes' adaptations (evolutions) over time
Created beings of almost human kind.
Via EEGs and brain scans, grey clones' minds were duplicated
And, via downloading, to adapted ape brains were transmitted.
(To explain life after death and the out-of-body experience,
Into bodies of matter may be downloaded bodies of photons.)

This energy influx changed brains and was a breath of life-
Processing what they could, apes became more aware of life;
Creating the very human traits of Cro-magnons
And 20th and 21st century humans.
(Anthropology suggests Cro-magnons were the first whose behaviour was humanlike:
Other beings - like Neanderthals - possessed traits that were clever but were still apelike.)

Finally - what comes out of a People Factory? People . . . or 'human machines'? TIME will tell:

April 2 1996, TIME AUSTRALIA Letters, GP0 Box 3873, Sydney, NSW 2001

Dear Editor,
'Can Machines Think?' (TIME - April l):

If a chess playing computer called Deep Blue is compared to an 'unconscious' part of the brain (say, the cerebellum - that part of the hindbrain controlling balance and coordination), then future parallel computers might be compared to the limbic system (those internal brain structures concerned partly with emotion) and the cerebral cortex (that intricately folded, 1/8th inch thick, surface of the right and left hemispheres that allows us to remember, understand, organise and create).

What would happen if we connected Deep Blue to a couple of parallel computers that were connected to each other, whose input came from D.B. and whose purpose was to process Deep Blue's signals (the 'cortex' computer could separate signals of long term significance -such as those concerned with the overall state of the match - from those with short term relevance - such as those connected with the wisdom of moving a particular piece to a certain place)? If the 'cortical computer' processed the former signals (called 'logical' and 'intuitive') and sent the latter 'emotional' ones to the 'limbic computer' for processing, would world chess champion Garry Kasparov find himself challenged by a conscious opponent who could 'feel deeply blue' yet, because the cortical and limbic computers are connected, use logic/intuition to rise above those feelings, harnessing the energy from the feelings to boost its chess playing effectiveness?

Suppose we built such a Deep Blue-parallel computers system from organic components whose particles of matter consist of pulses of electromagnetic energy serving as the 'ones' and 'zeros' of computers' binary language (a possibility deduced from 'What's Hiding in the Quarks?' - TIME, Feb. 26) and miniaturised it to fit inside a skull attached to a body (maintaining a body would naturally require the system to have additional parts). Wouldn't we then have what philosopher Daniel Dennett might term 'human machines' - if we also one day develop the technology to travel through four dimensional space Ye time ('It has been argued by James Hartle and Stephen Hawking that . . . the most probable structure for space-time under some circumstances is actually four-dimensional space.' - THE MIND OF GOD by Paul Davies, p. 63, published by Simon & Schuster, 1992), the human machines could be you and me.

Wouldn't it also be a good idea to build a nonphysical backup system that would be downloaded into the physical brain and could continue functioning after the original material structures became disorganised and died? This backup would be similar to what was imagined by 17th century philosopher/scientist/mathematician Rene Descartes ('an immaterial, somewhat autonomous soul that steers the body through life').

Consciousness would be extra-special if space-time itself, not just matter particles, had the equivalent of computers' binary digits (another possibility gleaned from 'What's Hiding in the Quarks?') Then brains would be parts of a 'cosmic computer' and since everything would be included in one computer-generated display, consciousness would have instant access to anything in space or time. Physicist David Bohm would then be correct when he contends that human consciousness (which is a product of the brain's nerve cells) should be regarded as part of a unity that includes the entire universe; neurophysiologist Karl Pribram would be correct when he says the mind works like a hologram (see the last part of 'Cosmos Factory'); and as Albert Einstein stated, matter would be interchangeable with energy (we could regard matter as 'frozen' or 'condensed' energy).