ZetaTalk: Lack of Choice
Note: written May 15, 1997.

To humans, who observe that their computers often seem more intelligent than other humans, our assertion that the rules we must observe regarding sentient or conscious thinking machines prevent our machines from becoming alive must seem confusing. A retarded human who can barely recall the sequences necessary to put one leg into a set of trousers is alive and conscious, but a powerful computer monitoring a myriad of logic threads simultaneously is not. Just how does that compute! The difference is subtle, and where the line may seem blurred to humans who are confusing performance with intrinsic intellectual independence. i.e. choice, the issue is not confusing to us. We will expand on the differences between performance and choice.

• Quite often, and in fact most often in machines developed in higher densities, the performance of the machine is superior to the performance a life form could attain. This should not be surprising in that the machine was developed for this reason - because the life form desired more rapid or reliable performance than they could attain, or tired of the redundant activity required when the life form itself was performing the activity. This is precisely why humans invented computers, which at first did simple calculations rapidly and with almost unerring accuracy. This is still why humans press for faster speed and the ability to handle more complex calculations, as the computer allows for insights requiring the processing of immense amounts of data, or rapid analysis of the data for on-the-spot decisions. Nevertheless, the computer is performing as its masters directed.

• Entities form in the life forms that DNA makes possible not because there is activity, which in any case takes place in a swirling nebula, but because of the possibility for choice. The readership can relate to this if they think of common situations they themselves face almost daily. They rise in the morning. In this they have a choice, as they can choose not to rise, to sleep on for more minutes or hours, to refuse to rise ever until they die in bed, to engage in all manner of activities in bed from affectionate or sexual interchanges with their mate to reading or masturbation or simply scratching. In all of this the choice is theirs. Now imagine that one was required to rise automatically, no choice, and proceed through a regimen of steps such as tooth brushing and dressing in a pre-defined outfit, every day, day after day, without any foreseeable change. Too boring! Humans have been known to kill themselves due to unrelenting boredom, and forming entities simply do not incarnate into such situations.

• Machines are not intelligent as in being capable of thought, they are simply well programmed and capable of adaptive reasoning. Where this differs from the free choice that DNA that has evolved into complex organisms can sustain, is in the degree to which the initial programming dictates the outcome of conclusions. Machines adapt to the environment, but always within the dictates of their initial programming. Living organisms have multiple branches in their logic trees, in that these branches can be grown in response to the environment and past choices, where machines in fact do not have branches. What might be taken for a machines logic tree is in fact a predetermined branch dictated by the initial program.

Thus, the rule that machines, no matter how complex, cannot carry incarnating souls is not one that needs enforcement. It happens quite naturally as the entities simply don’t linger!

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