The Age of Spiritual Machines is really an insightful book. It is a study of the future of computing and computational intelligence. It forces us to rethink what we mean by intelligence and consciousness, not merely at a technological level, but at a philosophical level. What do you do when your computer feels sad that you are turning it off and declares, “I cannot let you do that, Dave?”

What do we mean by intelligence? The traditional yardstick of machine intelligence is the remarkably one-sided Turing Test. It defines intelligence using comparative means — a computer is deemed intelligent if it can fool a human evaluator into believing that it is human. It is a one-sided test because a human being can never pass for a computer for long. All that an evaluator needs to do is to ask a question like, “What is ?” My $4 calculator takes practically no time to answer it to better than one part in a million precision. A super intelligent human being might take about a minute before venturing a first guess.

But the Turing Test does not define intelligence as arithmetic muscle. Intelligence is composed of “higher” cognitive abilities. After beating around the bush for a while, one comes to the conclusion that intelligence is the presence of consciousness. And the Turing Test essentially examines a computer to see if it can fake consciousness well enough to fool a trained evaluator. It would have you believe that consciousness is nothing more than answering some clever questions satisfactorily. Is it true?

Once we restate the test (and redefine intelligence) this way, our analysis can bifurcate into an inward journey or an outward one. we can ask ourselves questions like — what if everybody is an automaton (except us — you and me — of course) successfully faking intelligence? Are we faking it (and freewill) to ourselves as well? We would think perhaps not, or who are these “ourselves” that we are faking it to? The inevitable conclusion to this inward journey is that we can be sure of the presence of consciousness only in ourselves.

The outward analysis of the emergence of intelligence (a la Turing Test) brings about a whole host of interesting questions, which occupy a significant part of the book (I’m referring to the audio abridgment edition), although a bit obsessed with virtual sex at times.

One of the thought provoking questions when machines claim that they are sentient is this: Would it be murder to “kill” one of them? Before you suggest that I (or rather, Kurzweil) stop acting crazy, consider this: What if the computer is a digital backup of a real person? A backup that thinks and acts like the original? Still no? What if it is the only backup and the person is dead? Wouldn’t “killing” the machine be tantamount to killing the person?

If you grudgingly said yes to the last question, then all hell breaks loose. What if there are multiple identical backups? What if you create your own backup? Would deleting a backup capable of spiritual experiences amount to murder?

When he talks about the progression of machine intelligence, Kurzweil demonstrates his inherent optimism. He posits that ultimate intelligence yearn for nothing but knowledge. I don’t know if I accept that. To what end then is knowledge? I think an ultimate intelligence would crave continuity or immortality.

Kurzweil assumes that all technology and intelligence would have all our material needs met at some point. Looking at our efforts so far, I have my doubts. We have developed no boon so far without an associated bane or two. Think of the seemingly unlimited nuclear energy and you also see the bombs and radioactive waste management issues. Think of fossil fuel and the scourge of global warming shows itself.

I guess I’m a Mr. Glass-is-Half-Empty kind of guy. To me, even the unlimited access to intelligence may be a dangerous thing. Remember how internet reading changed the way we learned things?

I seek comfort in the fact that his memories live on. His love and care, and his patience with my silly, childhood questions will all live on, not merely in my memories, hopefully in my actions as well.

Perhaps even the expressions on his face will live on for longer than I think.

Death is as much a part of life as birth. Anything that has a beginning has an end. So why do we grieve?

We do because death stands a bit outside our worldly knowledge, beyond where our logic and rationality apply. So the philosophical knowledge of the naturalness of death does not always erase the pain.

But where does the pain come from? It is one of those questions with no certain answers, and I have only my guesses to offer. When we were little babies, our parents (or those who played the parents’ role) stood between us and our certain death. Our infant mind perhaps assimilated, before logic and and rationality, that our parents will always stand face-to-face with our own end — distant perhaps, but dead certain. With the removal of this protective force field, the infant in us probably dies. A parent’s death is perhaps the final end of our innocence.

Knowing the origin of pain is little help in easing it. My trick to handle it is to look for patterns and symmetries where none exists — like any true physicist. Death is just birth played backwards. One is sad, the other is happy. Perfect symmetry. Birth and life are just coalescence of star dust into conscious beings; and death the necessary disintegration back into star dust. From dust to dust… Compared to the innumerable deaths (and births) that happen all around us in this world every single second, one death is really nothing. Patterns of many to one and back to countless many.

We are all little droplets of consciousness, so small that we are nothing. Yet, part of something so big that we are everything. Here is a pattern I was trying to find — materially made up of the same stuff that the universe is made of, we return to the dust we are. So too spiritually, mere droplets merge with an unknowable ocean.

Going still further, all consciousness, spirituality, star dust and everything — these are all mere illusory constructs that my mind, my brain (which are again nothing but illusions) creates for me. So is this grief and pain. The illusions will cease one day. Perhaps the universe and stars will cease to exist when this little droplet of knowledge merges with the anonymous ocean of everything. The pain and grief also will cease. In time.

But, unlike the tourist, I can read the book again and again. Although I click as much the second time around and ponder as hard, some things do get through.

When I read Siddhartha, I asked myself if the names like Kamala and Kamaswami were random choices or signified something. After all, the first part “Kama” means something akin to worldliness or desire (greed or lust really, but not with so much negative connotation) in Sanskrit. Are Vasudeva and Givinda really gods as the name suggests?

But, I’m getting ahead of myself. Siddhartha is the life-story of a contemporary of Buddha — about 2500 years ago in India. Even as a young child, Siddhartha has urges to pursue a path that would eventually take him to salvation. As a Brahmin, he had already mastered the prayers and rituals. Leaving this path of piety (Bhaktiyoga), he joins a bunch of ascetics who see the way to salvation in austerity and penances (probably Hatayoga and Rajayoga). But Siddhartha soon tires of this path. He learns almost everything the ascetics had to teach him and realizes that even the oldest and wisest of them is no closer to salvation than he himself is. He then meets with the Buddha, but doesn’t think that he could “learn” the wisdom of the illustrious one. His path then undergoes a metamorphosis and takes a worldly turn (which is perhaps a rendition of Grahasthashrama or Karmayoga). He seeks to experience life through Kamala, the beautiful courtesan, and Kamaswamy the merchant. When at last he is fully immersed in the toxic excesses of the world, his drowning spirit calls out for liberation from it. He finally finds enlightenment and wisdom from the river that he had to cross back and forth in his journeys between the worlds of riches and wisdom.

For one who seeks symbolism, Siddhartha provides it aplenty.

• Why is there a Vaishnava temple when Siddhartha decides to forgo the spiritual path for a world one? Is it a coincidence or is it an indication of the philosophical change from an Advaita line to a patently Dwaita line?
• Is the name Siddhartha (same as that of the Buddha) a coincidence?
• Does the bird in the cage represent a soul imprisoned in Samsara? If so, is its death a sad ending or a happy liberation?
• The River of life that has to be crossed — is it Samsara itself? If so, is the ferryman a god who will help you cross it and reach the ultimate salvation? Why is it that Siddhartha has to cross it to reach the world of Kamala and Kamaswamy, and cross it back to his eventual enlightenment? Kamala also crosses the river to his side before passing on.
• The affection for and the disillusionment in the little Siddhartha is the last chain of bondage (Mohamaya) that follows Siddhartha across the river. It is only after breaking that chain that Siddhartha is finally able to experience Nirvana – enlightenment and liberation. Is there a small moral hiding there?

One thing I noticed while reading many of these great works is that I can readily identify myself with the protagonist. I fancy that I have the simple greatness of Larry Darrell, and fear that I secretly possess the abominable baseness of Charles Strickland. I feel the indignant torture of Philip Carey or Jay Gatsby. And, sure, I experience the divine urges of Siddhartha. No matter how much of a stretch each of these comparisons may be. Admittedly, this self-identification may have its roots more in my vanity than any verisimilitude. Or is it the genius of these great writers who create characters so vivid and real that they talk directly to the naked primordial soul within us, stripped of our many layers of ego? In them, we see the distorted visions of our troubled souls, and in their words, we hear the echoes of our own unspoken impulses. Perhaps we are all the same deep within, part of the same shared consciousness.

One thing I re-learned from this book is that you cannot learn wisdom from someone else. (How is that for an oxymoron?) You can learn knowledge, information, data — yes. But wisdom — no. Wisdom is the assimilation of knowledge; it is the end product of your mind and soul working on whatever you find around you, be it the sensory data, cognitive constructs, knowledge and commonsense handed down from previous generations, or the concepts you create for yourself. It is so much a part of you that it is you yourself, which is why the word Buddha means Wisdom. The person Buddha and his wisdom are not two. How can you then communicate your wisdom? No wonder Siddhartha did not seek it from the Buddha.

Wisdom, according to Hermann Hesse, can come only from your own experiences, both sublime and prosaic.

We now know that there is a time lag of about half a second between the moment “we” take a decision and the moment we become aware of it. This time lag raises the question of who is taking the decision because, in the absence of our conscious awareness, it is not clear that the decision is really ours. This finding has even cast doubt on our notion of free will.

In the experimental setup testing this phenomenon, a subject is hooked up to a computer that records his brain activities (EEG). The subject is then asked make a conscious decision to move either the right hand or the left hand at a time of his choosing. The choice of right or left is also up to the subject. The computer always detects which hand the subject is going to move about half a second before the subject is aware of his own intention. The computer can then order the subject to move that hand–an order that the subject will be unable to disobey, shattering the notion of free-will.

Free will may be a fabrication of our brain after the real action. In other words, the real action takes place by instinct, and the sense of decision is introduced to our consciousness as an afterthought. If we could somehow limit our existence to tiny compartments in time, as Zen suggests, then we might not feel that we had free will.

Ref: This post is an edited excerpt from my book, The Unreal Universe.