Part 11 (1/2)

The alien engineers had designed the system to enjoy full planetary communications coverage by means of satellites and surface relays, but the idea hadn't worked too well since nothing had been put into orbit and surface relays tended not to last very long. This enabled some of the organisms without strong defenses to remain protected, for a while, from the more metal-hungry empires by sheer distance. But, to allow for communications blackouts and interference, the aliens had also provided a backup method of program and data exchange between robots and factories, which took the form of direct, physical, electrical interconnection. This was a much slower process than using radiolinks, naturally, since it required that the robots travel physically to the factories for reprogramming and reporting, but in a self-sustaining operation far from home the method was a lot better than nothing. And it kept the accountants happy by protecting the return on the investment.

With defects and deficiencies of every description appearing somewhere or other, it was inevitable that some of the organisms would exhibit partial or total communications breakdowns. Factory Seventy-three, built without radio facilities, was started up by programs carried overland from Sixty-six.

None of its robots ever used anything but backup mode, and the factories that it sp.a.w.ned continued the tradition. But this very fact meant that their operating ranges were extended dramatically.

So the ”defect” turned out to be not so much of a defect after all. Foraging parties were able to roam farther afield, greatly enlarging their catchment areas, and they frequently picked up as prizes one or more of the territories previously protected by geographical remoteness. Furthermore, selective pressures steadily improved the autonomy of the robots that operated in this fas.h.i.+on. The autodirected types, relying on their comparatively small, local processors, tended to apply simple solutions to the problems they encountered, but their close-coupled mode of interaction with their environment meant that the solutions were applied quickly: they evolved efficient ”reflexes.” The teledirected types, by contrast, tied to the larger but remote central computers, were inclined to attempt more comprehensive and sophisticated solutions, but-as often as not-too late to do any good. Autodirection thus conferred a behavioral superiority and gradually a.s.serted itself as the norm, while teledirection declined and survived only in a few isolated areas.

The periodic instinct to communicate genetic half-subfiles back to their factories had long become a universal trait among the robots-there could be descendants only of ancestors who left descendants-and they responded to the decline of radio as a means of communication by evolving a compulsion to journey at intervals back to the places whence they had come, to return, as it were, to their ”sp.a.w.ning grounds.” But this method of reproduction had its problems and posed new challenges to the evolutionary process.

The main problem was that an individual could deliver only half its genome to the factory, after which the Supervisor would have to store the information away until another robot of the same type as the first happened to show up with a matching half; only then could the Supervisor pa.s.s a complete copy to its Scheduler. If, as frequently happened, the Supervisor found itself saturated by a peak workload during the intervening period, it was quite likely to delete the half-subfile and allocate the memory s.p.a.ce to other, more urgent things-bad news for the Fred that the data had come from, who would thus have enacted the whole reproductive ritual for nothing. The successful response to this problem came with the appearance of a new mode of genetic recombination, which, quite coincidentally, also provided the solution to an ”information crisis” that had begun to restrict the pool of genetic variation available for compet.i.tive selection to draw on for further improvement.

Some mutant forms of robot knew they were supposed to output their half-subfiles somewhere, but weren't all that sure, or perhaps weren't too particular, about what they were supposed to output it into.

Anything with the right electrical connections and compatible internal software was good enough, which usually meant other robots of the same basic type. And since a robot that had completed its a.s.signed tasks was in a receptive state to external reprogramming, i.e., ready for fresh input that would normally come from the factory system, an aspiring donor had little trouble in finding a cooperative acceptor, provided the approach was made at the right time. So to begin with, the roles adopted were largely a matter of circ.u.mstance and accidental temperament.

Although the robots' local memories were becoming larger than those contained in their earlier ancestors, the operating programs were growing in size and complexity, too, with the result that an acceptor still didn't possess enough free s.p.a.ce to hold an entire ”How to Make a Fred” subfile. The donor's half, therefore, could be accommodated only by overwriting some of the code already residing in the acceptor. How this was accomplished depended on the responses of the programs carried inside the various robot types.

In some cases the incoming code from the donor was allowed to overwrite entire program modules inside the acceptor, with the total loss to the acceptor of the functions which those modules controlled.

This was usually fatal, and no descendants came into being to repeat such mistakes. The successful alternative was to create s.p.a.ce by tr.i.m.m.i.n.g nonessential code from many modules, which tended to leave the acceptor robot with some degradation in performance-usually manifesting itself as a reduction in agility, dexterity, and defensive abilities-but at least still functioning. The sacrifice was only temporary since the acceptor robot would be reprogrammed with replacement modules when it delivered its genetic package at the factory.

But in return for these complications and superficial penalties came the immense benefit that the subfiles presented at the factories were complete ones-suitable for dispatch to the Schedulers without delay and the attendant risk of being deleted by overworked Supervisors. The new method thus resolved the reliability problem that had plagued the formerly universal ”as.e.xual” mode of reproduction.

The information crisis that it also solved had developed through the ”inbreeding” caused by the various Supervisors having only the gene pools of their respective ”tribes” available to work with, which made recombination difficult because of the restrictive rules imposed by the alien programmers. But the robots swapping genes out on the surface were not always averse to adventuring beyond the tribal limits, knew nothing and cared less about programmers' rules, since nothing approaching intelligence or awareness was operative yet in what was unfolding, and proceeded to bring half-subfiles together haphazardly in ways that the aliens' rules didn't permit and which the Supervisors would never have imagined. Most of the offspring resulting from these experiments didn't work and were sc.r.a.pped before leaving the factories; but the ones that did radiated functionally outward in all directions to launch a whole new, qualitatively distinct phase of the evolutionary process.

The demands of the two s.e.xual roles reinforced minor initial physical differences and brought about a gradual polarization of behavioral traits. Since a female in a ”pregnant” condition suffered the loss of some measure of self-sufficiency for the duration, her chances of delivering (literally!) were improved considerably if her mate happened to be of a disposition to stay around for a while and provide for the two of them generally, thus helping to protect their joint genetic investment. Selection tended, therefore, to favor the genes of this kind of male, and by the same token those of the females who mated preferentially with them. As a consequence a female trait emerged of being ”choosy” in this respect, and in response the males evolved various repertoires of rituals, displays, and demonstrations to improve their eligibility.

The population had thus come to exhibit genetic variability and recombination, compet.i.tion, selection, and adaptation-all the essentials for continuing evolution. The form of life-for it was, wasn't it?-was admittedly somewhat strange by terrestrial standards, with the individuals that it comprised sharing common, external reproductive, digestive, and immune systems instead of separate, internal ones . . . and of course there were no chains of complicated carbon chemistry figuring anywhere in the scheme of things. . . . But then, after all, what is there apart from chauvinism to say it shouldn't have been so?

Afterword, 1996 For those who read the book, we left Carl Zambendorf and his companions out on Saturn's moon, t.i.tan, waiting for the j.a.panese s.h.i.+p due in six months, and also for the possibility that a sequel to the book might follow-which a lot of readers spotted and asked for.

One of the most persistent requests was from Owen Lock, who succeeded Judy-Lynn as editor-in-chief at Del Rey Books. Owen liked the aliens that the Prologue talks about, who had built the robot factory s.h.i.+p, suffered from cost accountants, and who had conceived an alien counterpart of Murphy. ”I want,”

Owen said, ”a sequel that shows us the aliens.”

I didn't really want to write a book along those lines because it involved major difficulties that I a.s.sumed Owen appreciated. But he somehow talked me into it, and I signed a contract, still with no real idea of what form the story would take.

Then, one day, Owen and I had lunch in New York. ”I reread 'Code of the Lifemaker' over the weekend,” he informed me. ”I'd forgotten. Those aliens all got wiped out a million years ago.”

”Owen,” I said, ”That's what I've been trying to tell you. It makes it kind of difficult to tell a story about them today, doesn't it?”

His reply was, ”You're a resourceful writer. I have confidence that you'll come up with something.” And for the rest of the meal he refused steadfastly to return to the subject.

Now, to me, a ”sequel” implies a story that follows from the one before and involves the same characters that the reader has come to know and wants to see more of. That meant it had to revolve around the central figures from ”Code,” whom we'd left solidly in the twenty-first century. On the other hand it had also to feature the aliens, who were extinct before humans existed. How to reconcile two such irreconcilables? I didn't want to resort to a cop-out like time travel, which hadn't been antic.i.p.ated in any way in the first book; nor was I happy with something weak, along the lines of, ”Well, actually they weren't all wiped out . . .” and so on.

And lo and behold, a way out suggested itself. As a hint, I'll mention that a major help on this book was Hans Moravec of the Robotics Inst.i.tute at Carnegie Mellon University, who has written a lot on uploading consciousness into computers or other non-organic hardware. The sequel is called The Immortality Option and was released by Del Rey as a hardback in February, 1995, ma.s.s-market paper edition a year later.

THE REVEALED WORD.

OF G.o.d.

In connection with a creationist lawsuit that I read about awhile ago in California, the creationists' lawyer was quoted as saying to a reporter, ”They'd better be able to prove that evolution is right.” Thus, if evolution cannot be proved beyond question to be fact, the lawyer was saying, then it's just as much a theory as creationism, and if one deserves to be called scientific, so does the other. Now, I certainly wouldn't dispute the right of anyone to believe what they choose and to express those beliefs freely. But when attempts are made to pa.s.s those beliefs off as science, when they're nothing of the kind, and to force them on the educational system as such, that's another thing entirely.

The fallacy with the above claim is its a.s.sumption that all degrees of uncertainty are equal-by the same logic we could argue that since George Was.h.i.+ngton can't be proved absolutely and conclusively to have existed, then the case for Santa Claus is just as solid. But more interesting is the cause this gives to reflect a little on the differences between science and other belief systems. For everything that I read of the public debate surrounding the case succeeded only in missing the point of the issue entirely, which has nothing to do with whether evolution or creationism-or neither, for that matter-is right or wrong. The issue is understanding what it is that makes a belief genuinely ”scientific.”

Science never claims anything to be finally and absolutely proved. So in that sense every scientific belief is ”just a theory.” A demand for evolution to be proved beyond a question to be fact is an absurdity that fails to comprehend what science is all about. Although we speak loosely of a theory being ”proved by experiment,” philosophically this is impossible. The best that an experiment can hope to do for a theory is fail to falsify it. An experiment does this when all of the results agree with the theory, and not one observed, incontestable fact contradicts it. Even this doesn't prove a theory true-the agreement could still be a coincidence due to other, perhaps totally unsuspected causes. All that can be said is that the theory wasn't shown to be wrong.

The difference sounds like hairsplitting, but it's crucial. It means that in science your theoretical boat must be watertight everywhere-one hole is enough to sink it. For example, experimental results and astronomical observations acc.u.mulated before the late nineteenth century all accorded with Newtonian mechanics. Later measurements, however, such as the speed of light in different directions and of the precession of Mercury's...o...b..t, contradicted its predictions and were sufficient to invalidate it as a general model. Since then, of course, relativity has accommodated the new facts while continuing to explain the old; but this no more proves relativity to be ”true” than Newton's unification of terrestrial and cosmic motion proved the earlier ideas true. As was the case with the Newtonian system for almost three centuries, relativity has so far survived all attempts to find a flaw. It skates on the same pond.

One of the most important criteria that science demands for a theory to be acceptable as a serious candidate for consideration is that it be falsifiable. It was precisely the fact that it could be tested and shown to be false that made Newton's a genuinely scientific theory. Whether it ultimately survived or failed the tests is not the point. This is why the contention that ”some UFOs might be alien s.p.a.cecraft” is not answerable by scientific inquiry. Yes, some of them might be, and however many specific instances are shown not to be, the speculation can never be shown to be untrue. It is unfalsifiable. (The inverse theory-that no UFOs are alien s.p.a.cecraft-can very simply be proved untrue, but not by any of the claims submitted to date as evidence.) And creationism is unfalsifiable, since every fact, every new discovery that might be made, any result of any test that might be imagined-can all be dismissed with the a.s.sertion that ”it was created that way.” Hence, even before any debating or appeals to evidence, creationism fails the most basic test. It is not ”scientific,” and no amount of legal semantic juggling can make it so.

Science has never made any claim to infallibility. What makes a belief scientific isn't whether it turns out to be true or not, but the process by which it is arrived at. It seems ironic that those who preach knowledge of absolute truths tend to be the first to accuse scientists of being arrogant.

How does creationism measure up against other criteria by which a belief is judged as being scientific?

Well, in the first place science seeks to be objective, which means having no preconceived notions about how things ought to be-no advance commitment to any holy book, sacred doctrine, or political, social, or economic ideology that has to be upheld as a first priority. Science is an open system based on skeptical appeal to evidence, and uses inductive logic to formulate general principles from specific observation. A pseudoscience-of which creationism is an example-is a closed system based on uncritical appeal to doctrine, and uses deductive logic to infer specific accounts of how the world must be to conform with its inviolate principles. The goal of science is to discover what the reality out there is. To this end its conclusions are always open to revision-or might even be abandoned completely-in the face of new evidence: the belief structure follows the facts. But a pseudoscience contrives to uphold a belief structure that exists before any evidence is considered, and to maintain itself subsequently, it must deny or distort any facts that it finds inconvenient. Darwin did not set out to prove evolution because it reflected any ideas he might have had about how societies should function, or because he found it emotionally appealing. He ended up proposing it because he found it best explained the facts available to him. Like an explorer, which it is, science charts new territory as it finds it, and while at times it might base its choice of direction on hunches, it draws its maps from the reality that it encounters. it accepts that whatever is true will remain so, with complete disregard for the intensity of human convictions or the number of people who can be persuaded to share them. Is this creationism?

When science has ama.s.sed it facts, it attempts to construct a theory to explain them. A successful theory must be consistent with all the facts, contradicted by none, and survive experiments aimed at proving it false. It sometimes happens that two or more rival theories meet all of these requirements, which poses the problem of having to choose between them. The guideline in a situation like this is ”Occam's razor,”

which says, in effect, go for the simplest explanation-the one that accounts adequately for all the facts and requires the fewest a.s.sumptions. It won't guarantee that we'll never have to change our minds later, William of Occam warns . . . but it's the way to bet.

This means explanations based on familiar, well-understood principles are to be preferred over far-out fancies-true, a poltergeist might have upset the cookie jar, but the presence of a three-year-old in the household suggests a more promising line of inquiry. Ideas which are compatible with existing, well-supported bodies of knowledge and experience take precedence over ones that aren't. Thus, when a disciple of the maharis.h.i.+ shows a photograph of somebody allegedly levitating, the onus is on him to prove that the picture is genuine (easily done by staging a repeat performance before witnesses), not on us to accept it. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof. Hence the skepticism of most scientists toward, for example, claims of ESP abilities-there is nothing in the realm of undisputed, demonstrable fact that can't be accounted for more simply by such familiar mechanisms as carelessness, self-deception, or deliberate fraud, which we know happen. Introducing ”paranormal” phenomena to explain any of it is neither necessary nor justified. A new, more elaborate theory is called for only when facts have been shown, incontestably, to be true, which cannot be reconciled with the simpler, already existing model.

Relativity was accepted because it explained observations that Newton's system couldn't; quantum mechanics arose from the failure of measured results to support earlier models of thermal radiation.

Evolution does indeed offer a consistent and comprehensive interpretation of facts acc.u.mulated from a whole range of disciplines that include paleontology, geology, zoology, botany, embryology, biochemistry, comparative anatomy, anthropology, and behavioral psychology, to name just some. It establishes a common framework within which observations collected from many fields of investigation and tested independently all fit together and have reason for being the way they are-as geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky put it, ”Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” The facts are explained. But is the evolutionary explanation the simplest? Although the a.s.sertion may appear strange to some on first sight, yes, it is-it's the simplest that can be offered for the facts available at the present time. Simplicity here has nothing to do with the shelves of books devoted to the theory of the years of study necessary to comprehend it. It has to do with a.s.sumptions-how much has to be taken on faith. The less that is a.s.sumed, the simpler the theory. And evolution requires very little: merely the laws of physics and probability-introduced, moreover, not on an ad hoc basis to prop the theory up, but as derived independently within the entire body of scientific knowledge.

What can be said in this respect of creationism? First, it offers no reason why-why the anatomy of different species should show any relatedness at all; why the fossil record should show its progressive acc.u.mulation of change; why embryos of different species should be more alike at earlier phases of growth, why isolated populations should diverge. . . . The inevitable rejoinder that ”it was made that way”

merely acquiesces to the fact; it explains nothing. We could say the same about anything and add not one sc.r.a.p to our understanding of it. But on the other hand, creationist theory requires the a.s.sumption that a creator exists, that a supernatural judge of morals exists who is concerned about the day-to-day affairs of people on this planet, that both these being are one and the same, that it communicated its motives to chosen writers of ancient books, that those writers were correct, and honest, in interpreting the source of their inspiration, that later translators were equally infallible . . . and a long list of similar premises that no physicist would entertain for a moment as a basis for constructing a theory. The property insurance would be pretty expensive to cover an edifice built on foundations like that.

A scientific theory explains most and a.s.sumes least. Creationism explains nothing and a.s.sumes everything.

Lastly, the value of a scientific theory is judged by its power to predict-not in the sense of ”psychic”

predictions headlined by supermarket tabloids, but in the sense of predicting further experimental results.