What Good Are They, Anyway?

BY CHRIS EDWARDS

A THOUGHT EXPERIMENT IS ONE THAT EXISTS PURELY IN the mind and it differs in purpose from a scientific experiment because the object is to clarify analogical reasoning rather than to collect experimental evidence. The scientific community does not scoff at thought experiments, but rather treats them as being occasionally useful for clarification. Some of these experiments, partially through their flashy names, are now embedded in the intellectual lexicon. “The Trolley Problem” and “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” get used quite a lot in ethics and economics. Yet, the thought experiment remains underused. 

Thought experiments, when framed by scientific principles and shaped by logic, can clear up much of the confusion in what may broadly be conceived of as the problems inherent in the entire modern conception of knowledge and theories about knowledge. Scientific experiments exist to collect research data; thought experiments exist to help us collect our thoughts and correct our perceptions. As a scholar and teacher my interests are in the development of cross-curricular lessons and insights. Thought experiments function in a traditional philosophical sense by actually solving problems. However, they also, and probably more than any other teaching method, require students to think at a deep level in the subject of analogy. What is similar and what is different between cases? In addition; thought experiments always require students to study the situation in a meta-cognitive way, but challenging their own base assumptions involving the subjects at hand. They might be the key in breaking away from the passing-on-of-received-knowledge-and-skills educational model that still dominates.

Thought experiments come in different categories, and some experiments will overlap. Three of the most famous involve: (1) the concept of a future Singularity (the point where the universe itself becomes conscious); (2) the “Trolley Problem” (a riddle of sorts that engages one’s emotional and cognitive reasoning skills); and (3) “The Prisoner’s Dilemma” (a construct of game theory and is tied to rational choice).

Ray Kurzweil and the Singularity The concept of a technological “singularity,” established by the inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil in his bestselling 2005 book The Singularity is Near: When Humans Transcend Biology, consists of the notion that humanity and technology intertwine to move history in a specific direction. Kurzweil imagines a scenario where current trends regarding technological complexity will continue until they reach an inevitable singularity point where the universe will “wake up.”

Kurzweil’s prediction cannot be described as new but in order to analyze him and the flaws of his thought experiment he must be compared to the appropriate historical philosopher. It is tempting to compare the philosophy of Kurzweil with that of the Jesuit theologian Pierre Teilhard de Chardin (1881–1955), since both men noted that the evolution of humanity and society trends toward ever greater levels of complexity.

Kurzweil’s ideas about predicting the future are also similar to those of Karl Marx, who believed that by understanding history it becomes possible to predict an inevitable future outcome. But, in fact, Kurzweil’s philosophy is more analogous with that of St. Thomas Aquinas, who was commissioned by the Catholic Church in the 13th century to “prove” the tenets of Christianity using the then newly recovered Aristotelian logic. Aquinas, as Bertrand Russell pointed out, was not a true philosopher since he already knew the conclusion and tried to blaze a trail of reason backwards. When this proved impossible, Aquinas could simply use faith as a crutch. Although different in form, this is the same flawed approach to a philosophical thought experiment that Kurzweil takes.

Before pointing out the errors of Kurzweil’s thought experiment regarding a future “singularity” it is first necessary to encapsulate his theory: Kurzweil’s major assertion is that human evolution should be divided into six epochs. 1. Epoch One involved Physics and Chemistry, which included the storing of information in atoms. 2. Epoch Two, titled Biology, included the transformation of matter into “life,” and thus of physics into biology.

3. Epoch Three, titled Brains, involved the evolution of the human brain.

4. Epoch Four, called Technology, involved the creation of information and hardware systems. These first four epochs are interesting, and Kurzweil is outstanding at describing a process that has already occurred.

5. Epoch Five is the Merger of Technology and Intelligence, which Kurzweil describes like this: “The methods of biology (including human intelligence) are integrated into the (exponentially expanding) human technology base.”

6. Epoch Six is even more dramatic, in that Kurzweil predicts that all of the particles of the universe will be endowed with data processing capabilities and will also be able to store knowledge. This is the point where the universe will “wake up.” (Besides this, an awful lot of good things, including eternal life, are supposed to come to humanity in the future.)

Unfortunately this thought experiment, one where Kurzweil predicts and imagines the future is built upon three major logical and scientific errors. The icon of Kurzweil’s techno-theology is the “S” curve, designed to show exponential growth in the power of technology. Kurzweil correctly sees technological evolution as being an extension of biological evolution, but does not take into account all of the aspects of this analogy. In nature, complexity comes with an energy cost, so organisms don’t become complex just for the sake of it. Simple organisms, such as worms are as abundant as simple inventions such as ink pens because sometimes complexity isn’t worth the energy and simplicity is good enough.

Technology evolves to survive in the market, not to be complex, and if the cost is too great to supply a return then the rate of complexity will slow down. Exponential growth can slow, stop, or recede very quickly if the energy cost is too great. Flight, for example, did evolve rapidly between Kitty Hawk and the first Moon landing, but the cost of deep space exploration is simply too great to justify, so manned flight complexity settled into jet travel. Even at the pinnacle of that stage—the Supersonic Transport, or the Concorde—went into reverse due to economic and political restraints on the upward sloping curve. Even when humans made it to the Moon, we were, practically speaking, no closer to landing people on Mars than we were before leaving Earth.