In this expanded interview transcript, inventor Ray Kurzweil discusses birth, death, and the potential offered by non-biological thinking processes.
By: Lucas Conley

Fast Company: First off, without death, CEOs will never give up their jobs. There won't be any succession plans.

Ray Kurzweil: I don't think we need to kill people off to provide opportunity for new leadership and creativity. The marketplace of ideas and technologies is going to expand -- it has been for years. Look at the computer industry. 60 years ago it was a handful of research projects, and now it's a trillion-dollar industry.

FC: But biotech? Who's to say how quickly it will advance?

Kurzweil: A lot of people say you can't really tell the future, and there are certain things that are hard to predict. What will Google's stock be three years from now? That's hard to predict. But if you ask me what it will cost to sequence a base pair of DNA in 2010 or the cost to move a megabyte of data wirelessly in 2015, those things turn out to be remarkably predictable.

"There should be a one to one correspondence between brain events and conscious events and brain scientists will someday find the proper correlations."

There is, to be sure, a genuine problem in the phenomenon of quantum measurement, but I will not discuss it here. It concerns introspective systems, where subject = object so that the basic conception of a single subject observing an ensemble of objects must be modified.
- David Finkelstein

Mark Medweth
Department of Psychology
Simon Fraser University
medweth@sfu.ca

Whether we experience confusion, frustration, or enjoyment, such experiences take place through the mind. Thus, whether our interests are psychological, scientific, or religious in nature, it would seem important for us to understand the workings of the brain. If the ego or "self" (interchangeable words in Buddhist philosophy) plays a role in these experiences as well as abnormal development, as some psychologies would propose, we should more carefully examine what part they play in our psychological well being. An examination of some basic tenets concerning the ego, "self," or "I" from a Buddhist perspective reveals a very different view from traditional Western personality theories.
The Western Self

The importance of the ego or "self" which emanates from Western psychology is explicitly extensive. Ego Psychology, typified by Freud, emphasizes the development of the capabilities of the ego (Muzika, 1990). Cognitive-behavioural therapy deals, in part, with inappropriate self-ideas and fosters changes in attitudes we hold about the "self" (Muzika, 1990). Allport lists a strong ego identity as a descriptor of maturity while Erikson adds ego-integrity to his psychosocial stages of the life cycle (Goleman, 1981). Generally speaking, a wide-spread Western assumption suggests that the ego, "self," or "I" is thought of as a separate system, apart from such aspects as the body, spirit, or even matter in some cases (Welwood, 1976).

While Eastern perspectives of psychology may agree with some Western views of development and treatment (De Silva, 1985), there is a fundamental disagreement as to whether the ego is necessary for normal psychological functioning (Nitis, 1989). In fact, in regarding the conception of "self" as the main source of all suffering, putting an end to the "self" is a key focus of Buddhist psychology. While there are more than 200 varieties of psychotherapy, few of these would suggest that the "self" is an illusion (Muzika, 1990). Most would, in fact, attempt to strengthen such aspects of the person, making them more capable of bearing the pain of one's experience. Since Western traditions would highlight the disappearance of self-other boundaries in major psychoses and borderline cases, it is understandable that the idea of transcending the "self" or ego might be dismissed as regressive psychopathology (Walsh, 1988). However, some of the greatest Buddhist scholars maintain that Western science has yet to learn enough about the brain to appreciate the Eastern understanding of the mind and its implications (Komito, 1983). An examination of general Buddhist views of the "self" leaves the West with much to think about.

The "hard problem" of consciousness, according to which scientific models cannot explain the "qualia" or "first order experiences", is misguided if it is used to imply that we need more than structures and functions to explain conscious experience.

First person experiences or qualia are the essentially subjective, personal feelings or experiences that each of us have (e.g. the feeling of "redness" or "cold"), and that cannot be described by words, formulas, programs or any other objective representation. According to some consciousness theorists, such as David Chalmers, an agent without such qualia would merely be a "zombie", a creature that may behave, sense and communicate just like a human being, but that would lack the most crucial aspect of consciousness. The "hard problem" of consciousness research then consists in elucidating the nature of first-person experiences.

We believe that this approach is essential misguided. If the hypothetical zombie behaves in all respects indistinguishably from a person with consciousness, then the principle of the identity of the indistinguishables would force us to conclude that the "zombie" has consciousness. How else would we know that the people around us aren't zombies? We assume they have conscious experience similar to ourselves because they behave in all other respects similar to us. But if you would take this reasoning seriously, then you might start to get nightmarish fantasies in which you are the only real, conscious person in the world, and all the others are merely sophisticated automatons that pretend to be like you.

Millions of people rely on strong coffee every morning to really wake up. All-night truck drivers sometimes take amphetamines to stay conscious on the road, and for centuries South American peoples have chewed coca leaves to stay alert and increase physical endurance. Yet none of these compounds are specific “consciousness” drugs. They stimulate waking along with many side effects. A novel pharmaceutical, modafinil (provigil), may be the most specific consciousness-promoting drug yet.

Can neuroscientists say anything interesting about consciousness? Judging by the stream of books and conferences on the topic, you can safely assume they believe they can. What makes Benjamin Libet different from all the others writing on the subject, though, is that he has actually spent the past 40 years experimenting on the topic. His findings have played a central role in others' speculations. Now he has put his life's work into a single short book.

The core of Libet's findings can be simply summarised. If I sit on the edge of my bed and decide to wiggle my toes, the brain processes necessary for the wiggling to occur begin about half a second before I am aware that I have made the decision. Libet finds this troubling; if the brain processes precede my sense of having made a decision, what part does my conscious decision making play? Who indeed is the "me" that does the "deciding"?

Patients describe it as like being buried alive. The worse part is not the pain, they say, although that can be excruciating, but the horror of being paralysed, unable to talk and yet totally aware of what the surgeon is doing to you.

Suffering like this could be greatly reduced. A large international trial has proved that a simple "awareness" device, called a BIS monitor, can cut the number of cases of awareness during surgery by 80 per cent.

The device is already used to monitor the depth of anaesthesia in some hospitals in the US, but few anaesthetists in the UK or Australia use it.

The trial was run by Paul Myles of the Alfred Hospital in Melbourne, Australia, and Kate Leslie of the Royal Melbourne Hospital. Leslie says that the evidence is so compelling that BIS monitoring should always be used during the 5 per cent or so of operations where there is a high risk of awareness. Myles goes further, arguing that it should be used for the 50 per cent of operations where there is a chance of awareness occurring.

Other anaesthetists argue that the BIS monitor and others like it need to be more accurate before they are routinely employed. Disturbingly, though, it seems that many anaesthetists do not even recognise the need for a monitor because they grossly underestimate the likelihood of patients becoming aware.

Daniel Dennett took on the grandees of philosophy while still a student at Harvard and Oxford, then turned to pioneering and controversial work on artificial intelligence. With Richard Dawkins he has fought the 'Darwin Wars' and, when not sailing or farming, sculpting or playing jazz, is writing a new book opposing the rise of supernaturalism.

Queen’s psychologists have discovered that our ability to assess how other people are feeling relies on two specific areas of the brain.

The findings, published in the April issue of the Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, are expected to have implications for the treatment of developmental disorders such as autism.

Led by Mark Sabbagh, the study is supported by a grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC). Also on the team, from the Queen’s Psychology Department, are Margaret Moulson and Kate Harkness.

The study helps us understand the neural bases of everyday “theory of mind”: our ability to explain behaviour in terms of mental states like intentions and desires. “What we’re showing is that an important first step in theory of mind is being able to decode other people’s mental states, and that this skill is carried out within a very specific neural pathway,”says Dr. Sabbagh.

Sitting at lunch on the patio of his home here one muggy day last June, Francis Crick was expounding on the mind-body problem and the thorny subject of the human "self."

Where is the line between mind and matter? he asked. Aside from the neurons in our brains, the human body contains tens of millions of neurons in the enteric nervous system, which extends into the stomach and intestines. "When you digest your lunch is that you?" Dr. Crick asked.

Body and mind are the twin problems around which Dr. Crick's life has spiraled, much like the double helix structure of DNA that he and Dr. James D. Watson are famous for discovering half a century ago. Though his research on "the molecule of life" is what he is best known for, in his 28 years at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies, his work has focused on the mind, and in particular the question of consciousness.

Until recently, that subject was viewed with deep suspicion in scientific circles, but Dr. Crick has led a campaign to make it acceptable. These days it is even fashionable. While some philosophers claim that consciousness is a phenomenon outside the purview of material science, Dr. Crick dismisses such arguments with the imperious confidence that is part of his legend. "The mechanism is the important part; the rest is just playing with words," he said in a recent interview.