Robert Sharp

(This post contains vague spoilers, which should not damage your enjoyment of the stories in question)

Would I restore my mind from back-up?

I’ve been reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, Cory Doctorow’s first novel.  It is a science-fiction thought experiment on what might happen if we all had immortality, and scarcity of resources had been abolished.  Money is redundant, because one can simply utilise public replication machines to generate whatever food or tools you need.  Instead, people earn credibility points (Doctorow calls it ‘Whuffie’) for all the good things that they do – The protagonist, Julius, earns this by maintaining the rides at Disneyland.  Through these tweaks to reality, Doctorow gets to meditate on human purpose and ennui in a time of plenty.

The central, fantastical technology available to the characters, is the ablity to upload and back-up to hard-drive your mind and all your memories.  Should some accident or murder befall you (as of course it does to Julius) you can get a-hold of a clone body, and overlay your complete consciousness onto the tabula rasa.  Doctorow has played with this sort of technology before, in the delightful I, Rowboat (yes, a knowing pun on Asimov’s I, Robot) and another story involving an absconded mother (the name of which escapes me just now).  Apparently, such technology a staple of science fiction:  Back-ups and clones are certainly used in the Schwarzenegger movie The 6th Day and I am sure they are found in Philip K. Dick and elsewhere in the canon.

For those who wish to live forever, brain-backups and reboots are exciting idea, but the immortality on offer would be false.  In both The 6th Day and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, its clear that in taking a snap-shot of your brain, you are not preserving your consciousness (or your soul) but simply making a copy of it.  As both Adam Gibson (the Schwarzenegger character) and bad-guy Michael Drucker (Tony Goldwyn) discover in The 6^th Day, it is possible to make a clone of yourself before you die!  When your original ‘version’ dies, the fact that there is a replica of you living on somewhere is of no comfort as your own light fades.  When you finally expire, you know your soul cannot fly away and awake in the new clone, because the clone is already wandering around making memories of his own (see also ‘Second Chances’, a Star Trek: TNG episode with two Commander Rikers).

Stepping into the Star Trek transporters or Fly-style teleporter carries the same philosophical risk.  I simply wouldn’t have the guts to step into such a machine – Not because I worry that my psychology or physiology might be altered due to a malfunction, but because even if the thing works perfectly, the guy stepping in is not the guy stepping out.

One of the few places in fiction where the idea that the soul does not persist through back-ups and cloning is in The Prestige.  Its a film I’ve previously slated for seeming to violate the rules of mystery-telling, but on reflection I think it is internally consistent (the opening shot of the film fortells the final revelation).  Both the Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale characters discover, in their own very different ways, that you cannot achieve immortality through the creation of a clone or a twin, regardless of how that might appear to the rest of the world.  In the end, both characters rightly weep at the demise of their clones, but Jackman’s character is the more tortured because he has caused the death of his ‘original’ self, merely by choosing to step into the crackpot machine in the first place.    This is a sadness that seems to be missing from the characters in Cory Doctorow’s stories.

However, realisation that backup-and-restore is not bona fide immortality would not discourage me from plugging in my brain and making a copy.  This is because we naturally value the things we have created, and we want to see them persist.  I would like to pass on bits of my DNA through children and grandchildren.  I would like people to read the thoughts I have written down, even after I become an ex-person.  A human consciousness restored from my uploaded back-up would be indisputably my creation, a more detailed product of my life and times than anything I might write or carve, or anyone I might sire.  Far better that they, in particular, get to witness the heat-death of the universe (Doctorow, with a nod to Douglas Adams) or the “more glorious dawn” of a Galaxy-rise than some other, generic homo sapien.

'The Same River Twice, part V' by ruSSel hiGGs. Creative Commons License.

After the architectural triumph of St. Pancras, Kings Cross station was in need of an overhaul. The new hallways down into the underground are wide and ergonomic, with few right angles in sight.

Kings Cross. Photo by yrstrly.

A clever new feature on the main concourse is the addition of coloured queue tiles on the floor, leading towards the trains. They are like little yellow-brick-roads for the mass transit system, nudging people into an orderly line, without the need for the proto-fascist barriers that we see at most cinemas, airports and theme parks.

The problem of extra-judicial killings of journalists in Mexico is one of the major threats to free expression around the world.  News of fresh violence seems to drop into my PEN inbox with increasing frequency.  In November, I mentioned the case of Bladimir Antuna García, who was “killed for writing too much.”

In The Independent, Terence Blacker warns that complacency in rich countries can help sustain this violence:

Only some of this nastiness can be explained by the poisonous air of the blogosphere. There is now a genuine confusion in the minds of many between the tawdry journalistic froth of our own decadent celebrity society and the courageous investigative reporting happening in countries such as Mexico.

It is vain and self-deluding to believe that the killing of writers in other parts of the world has nothing to do with our own lives and attitudes. As Cacho herself has said, “a corrupt political system is only sustained by a corrupt and complicit culture“.

My del.icio.us links: 19th January to 3rd February

• The Chess Master and the Computer – Kasparov: "The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming."
• SteamPunk Magazine – Before the age of homogenization and micro-machinery, before the tyrannous efficiency of internal combustion and the domestication of electricity, lived beautiful, monstrous machines that lived and breathed and exploded unexpectedly at inconvenient moments.
• Designing A Generation Ship – So. You, and a quarter of a million other folks, have embarked on a 1000-year voyage aboard a hollowed-out asteroid. What sort of governance and society do you think would be most comfortable, not to mention likely to survive the trip without civil war, famine, and reigns of terror?
• The Encyclopedia Of Decency: The White House Tapes – Comedy dramatisation – way, way better than fisking.
• Sherlock Holmes end credit sequence – I love this aesthetic. Slightly depressed I don't have the graphic/artistic skills to do it properly on my own design.
• Auto-appendectomy in the Antarctic – Bloody hell: A Russian surgeon operated on himself in the Antarctic in 1960.
• First-Person Tetris – There are deep philosophical implications, here.

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There is a free speech element to the latest celebrity sex-scandal.  John Terry sought a ’super-injunction’ against publishing details of his affair, that also prevented the media from reporting the fact of the injunction itself.  On the Index on Censorship blog, Padraig Reidy asks whether the lifting of this injunction by Justice Tugendhat could signal the end of the ’super-injunction’ as an effective tool in the lawyer’s arsenal.  The #Trafigura affair showed how such injunctions can be circumvented by beligerent members of society.

As an aside, I think ’super-injunction’ is a misnomer.  Surely an injunction that prevents discussion of itself should be a ‘meta-injunction’ or maybe an ‘auto-injunction’?  Responses from linguists would be welcome.

Why the outrage?

The opprobrium directed at John Terry mirrors that experienced by Tiger Woods, who last month was exposed as having a penchant for sex with strippers and lap-dancers.  In both cases, the chat has centred around the sponsorship deals the men have secured with various brands, and the inevitable loss of these contracts once their philandering has been exposed.  The logic is that these sportsmen are paid because they represent wholesome family values.  When it becomes known that they do not, actually, live up to those values, their worth as the face of the brand is diminished.

How does this compare to the glamourous film stars, predominantly but not exclusively female, who are paid to advertise beauty products?  We all know that when they appear in display adverts, they are heavily photoshopped.   Their smooth skin, supple necks and firms thighs are actually complete lies.   Why no outrage and heamoraging of sponsorship deals, when Heat magazine reveals they have saggy bits?

Empty Hospital Ward at Hillingdon Hospital, Uxbridge, UK. Photo by Alex @ Faraway, Creative Commons Licence

Last week, I fell into a long discussion with a group of doctors on the problem of health tourism.  This, they say, is when people visit the UK specifically to take advantage of the NHS for treatment of ailments, major and minor.  In particular, women from Africa who think (or know) that they are HIV-positive will visit the UK in order to give birth.  Their children will therefore receive proper medical care and whatever medicines and retrovirals that the current clinical guidelines recommend.  My interlocutors were of the opinion that this was a major drain on resources, especially in the urban centres where they work.

For the avoidance of doubt, these were not the same medics who held the illiberal opinions of marijuana usage, but I did detect in them a slight note of discontentment.  Not intolerance, yet, but certainly exasperation.

If health tourism is widespread, then such feelings of irritation amongst the medical class are also likely to be common, which is not good.  More to the point, it would mean our health system is being abused, perhaps to the tune of millions of pounds.  Definitely not good.

My hypothesis is that health tourism is actually an extremely localised problem, centred around inner-London.  This is where strong immigrant communities already exist, and where health tourists can stay with British residents while they get their treatment.   If this is the case, then it is clearly a particular challenge for the health service in London, rather than a structural issue for the NHS as a whole.

I have put in a poorly worded Freedom of Information request to the Department of Health to find out what statistics are available.

Why bother, though?  What could we possibly do with this information, when we have it?

Simply put, quantifiable information on such an issue will immediately put it in perspective.  Is it a major abuse of the system that we could correct, or just another example of patient-led inefficiency that we will never eradicate?  My suspicion is that it will turn out to be the latter, something akin to the problem of hypochondriacs, that we know is a waste but nevertheless do not have the heart or the stomach to actually address (turning away pregnant Africans at the automatic doors never feels good).  Either way, it will at least address the mutterings of the doctors who see the issue on the ward floor, but have no sense of whether it is a problem beyond their particular hospital.

Second, it may allow for a rather deft sleight-of-policy at the Department of Health.  If the NHS is indeed providing millions of pounds worth of care to people it does not have to, over and above the call of duty, then they could with some legitimacy put that expenditure into a different accounting column.  They could, perhaps, claim it back from DfID or the FCO as a form of targeted, useful government aid.

Let us not be so naive as to think that my request doesn’t carry some risk.   While I do not believe that such statistics (whatever they may be) will actually inspire xenophobia, it is certainly possible that someone might try to use the figures to further some anti-foreigner agenda.  I’m not sure I know what to do about that, but I don’t see this possibility as a reason not to ask the question.  Better me than someone else, I reckon.

What do you think?

On the Ward in Bbowa, Uganda. Photo by Paul Evans. Creative Commons Licence

Unfortunately, a busy week at work meant that Blair’s appearance at the Chilcott Inquiry pretty much passed me by.  After The Event news reports confirmed what we all expected anyway – Mr Blair refused to apologise or admit any wrong-doing.

My take:  Put aside for a moment all the issues of legality, post-war planning, the monstrosity of Saddam’s regim, and oil.  (They are huge issues, admittedly… but put them aside anyway).  We are still left with a central dischord, which is this:  Prime Minister Blair’s actual reason for waging to war, is not the reason we were told we were going to war. This is untenable in a democracy, regardless of the ultimate morality of the conflict, of the death we caused.

We, the people, know this.

Tony Blair knows this.

Moreover, we know he knows this. Moreover moreover, he knows we know this.  And we know he knows we know.  And he knows that we know that he knows.  Ad nauseum. Yet, no apology.  It is an insult to everyone’s intelligence.

The issue of Iraq clearly needs a Frost/Nixon moment, where the concerns of the public are at least acknowledged by the ex-leader at the heart of the controversy.  This is unlikely to ever materialise, which is why this is an issue that will continue to fester for a generation, or more.

My del.icio.us links: 4th January to 19th January

• Twitter joke led to Terror Act arrest and airport life ban – Crikey, we really do waste a lot of time and money on utterly useless counter-terrorism measures
• The Tragedy Of Hope – Yet another parsing of Obama on religion, by Andrew Sullivan.
• Anonymous Facebook Employee – Conversations About The Internet #5 from The Rumpus.net
• This is my favorite memo ever – Matt Stone on what he cut and kept for Southpark: The Movie
• Two Gentlemen of Lebowski – The Big Lebowski re-imagined as a Shakespeare play
• TFL Cams – Chris Heathcote has pulled the CCTV images from the TFL website and placed them all on one page.
• A baker’s dozen predictions for 2010 – How will publishing and e-books develop in 2010?

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Exactly three years ago, I attended an event with Clive Stafford-Smith, the Director of Reprieve who has worked with the prisoners at Guantanamo.  I asked him how many of them he thought were innocent:

During the Q&A session, I ask him if he thinks there are any genuine terrorists at the camp. He says there were probably about two or three to begin with. Now there are probably about fourteen, he thinks. The rest have very tenuous evidence against them. Even if some had fought for the Taliban against the Northern Alliance in 2001/02, that does not mean they were Al Qaeda operatives, or that they were a genuine threat to western interests.

Now, while I am sure that Stafford-Smith’s claim is based on hard legal analysis, it nevertheless has an anecdotal air when he tells it.  As a long-time activist against the death penalty, and therefore a regular critic of the US Government, it is easy for politicians to pigeon-hole his complaints.  In the cynical merry-go-round of political debate, it is easy to dismiss such claims as the exaggerations of someone trying to win the argument.  A dismissal of the well he would say that wouldn’t he? variety that is tricky to argue against, without sufficent airtime and column inches.

Well, here is some more evidence to back-up Stafford-Smith’s claim.  British journalist Andy Worthington has been compiling The Guantanamo Files, a list of all 779 men who were incarcerated at the prison:

… at least 93 percent of the 779 men and boys imprisoned in total — were either completely innocent people, seized as a result of dubious intelligence or sold for bounty payments, or Taliban foot soldiers, recruited to fight an inter-Muslim civil war that began long before the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, and that had nothing to do with al-Qaeda, Osama bin Laden or international terrorism

And the British Government – a Labour Government, ostensibly on the side of the poor and marginalised around the world – provided succour and support to the Bush Administration as this prison was established and maintained.

News from last week:

The terror suspect who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane is the son of a Nigerian banker who alerted US authorities to his “extreme religious views” months ago, it was reported Saturday.

(Via Andrew Sullivan, who says he is ‘angry‘).

I am reminded of Cory Doctorow’s point at the Convention on Modern Liberty last year, about the problem of collecting too much information:

We’ve been told that we’re collecting larger haystacks of information in the hope that it will make the needles easier tio find.  If you look at the 9/11 Commission report, and you find out that in fact the America intelligence apparatus knew that the September 11th attack was happening – in hindsight – but they also knew a million other irrelevancies, and that an adequate approach to discovering it might have been to collect less information, not more.

The video is below:
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