The rationale for that immense tax cut for (mostly) rich investors was simple and alluring - that super-low rates would entice more of the rich to invest in companies within the U.S., helping them to increase their productive capacity and hire more workers. Moreover, the resulting boom in economic activity would then result in so much new tax revenue, even at low rates, that deficits would disappear.

Let’s put this in context with a term you may have heard. “Supply side” economic theory maintained that this flow of investment capital would pump up the factory end of things, increasing the supply of goods and services, offering them cheaper, thus stimulating demand.

In contrast, the standard Keynsian “demand side” model was to fight recession by ensuring that poor and middle class folks had enough cash (“high-velocity” money) in their pockets to buy - or “demand” - goods and services. Whereupon producers would be drawn into greater production.

For a more detailed description of the differences between these two economic models, see my earlier missive A Primer on Supply-Side vs Demand-Side Economics. (It really is one of the top issues of our day and an informed citizen should know about it.) Here in this place, I’ll try to be brief.

Who was right? Blatantly, the Keynsian approach worked in the 1940s, when massive government spending on WWII resulted in a boom that ended the Great Depression.  A boom that then continued for 30 years, till Vietnam crushed it against a wall. Throughout that period, high tax rates and stimulative spending seemed to work, whenever the economy needed a little help. Moreover, during that era, a very flat social structure - (CEOs earned only a few times what factory workers did) - combined with the most rapid growth of the middle class and the most vibrant era of startup capitalism in human history.

That does not make Keynsianism perfect! Critics like Friedrich Hayek, have indeed exposed some faults and blunders that later Keynsians, like Paul Krugman, openly admit and have striven to correct. Still, the Demand Side approach can point to many clearcut successes.

In particular, it is plain that during recessions, when economic activity lags and deflation looms, what you want is “high velocity” money in circulation - money that will pass from buyer to seller and then to another seller and so on.  Not money that just sits.

Does Supply Side have a similar track record? Not even remotely.  Not even once. Simple charts - and hard conclusions from the Congressional Research Service - show that the Supply Side assertion was… and is… utter mythology.  None of its predicted effects ever happened.  And let me reiterate.  Not ever, even once.

Specifically, cuts in tax rates for dividends and capital gains have never had any long-term effects upon capital investment, since records were kept in the United States.  (See this cogent article putting the myth to rest, once and for all. Also my article: A Primer on Supply-Side vs. Demand-Side Economics.)

In fact, this is no surprise, for several reasons:

1) Supply Side assumes that the rich have a zillion other uses for their cash and thus have to be lured into investing it!  Now ponder that nonsense statement. Roll it around and try to imagine it making a scintilla of sense! Try actually asking a very rich person.  Once you have a few mansions and their contents and cars and boats and such, actually spending it all holds little attraction.  Rather, the next step is using the extra to become even richer. Naturally, you invest it.  Whatever the tax rates, you invest it, seeking maximum return.

Instead of enticing the rich to invest, these super low dividend and capital gains rates simply used money taxed from middle class wage earners to give bonuses for speculations wealthy folks were doing anyway.  If anything, the only major effect, other than budget deficits, was a pumping up of asset value bubbles.

2) Now to be sure, some of the rich ... a few… put a fair amount of their wealth into truly bold and risky new enterprises.  I know such men and women, who engage in Venture Capitalism or starting up creative new enterprises. And just so you know that I’m no socialist I believe this kind of investment truly should be encouraged by taxing it at a very low rate!  Not only because of the risk, but also because equity shares that are bought de novo directly from a new firm actually deliver nearly all of that value directly into capitalization and company development.

In contrast, most exchanges through the NYSE or NASDAQ are purchases from other stock-owners who happen to disagree with you about prospects for future capital gains and dividends. It is just as much a betting/gambling system as any Vegas casino, Your trades may marginally raise or lower the posted price, allowing the company to raise a little capital on the side, but almost nothing from your stock transaction actually goes to the company itself, or into new products or plants and equipment.

(Hence, that kind of investing - by far the largest portion - helps industry only at appallingly low levels of efficiency, but diverts management into spending nearly all its time trying to bribe stockholders with short term benefits, ignoring long-term company health.)

No wonder Adam Smith himself expressed contempt for passive investments that he called “rents”... compared to investments in which the owner actually gets involved in starting up or entrepreneurial development of long term company or enterprise health.

3) So what about “targeted investing”?  The towering hypocrisy of supply side tax cuts for the rich is that they are claimed (without a scintilla of evidence) to help create jobs. But then, why treat investments overseas equally to those made in domestic companies? President Obama proposes narrowing the super-low rates to U.S. companies that are (a) startups, or (b) demonstrably adding jobs, or (c) investing directly in new equipment or R&D.  For this he is derided for “picking winners and losers”... even though the list of targeted tax breaks for GOP-favored industries like coal and oil are myriad. (and outrageous.)

4) In fact, we spoke earlier about how stock and equities markets have lately become the tail wagging the dog.  Instead of serving the capital needs of companies, firms like Mitt Romney’s Bain Capital show that productive corporations making goods and services are now like cattle, farmed by Wall Street, to be bled or dissected at whim.  Nor is the whim even human anymore! Most trades are now propelled by hyper-aggressive, parasitical “flash trading” computer programs “that vastly amplify volatility, sap investor earning potential, and threaten our entire economic system in a dozen ways.

5) The reduction of dividend and capital gains tax rates almost to zero has coincided with the rapid ending of the relatively flat social structure that we inherited from the Greatest Generation of the 1950s and 1960s.  Back then, the rich managers of major corporations earned only ten or twenty times what factory workers got, a situation that still exists in Japan. Only now, American wealth disparities are approaching levels not seen since the American Revolution.

The last thing that the GOP or Fox wants you to do is look across the last 6000 years.  The class that they call “job creators” used to have another name. Lords.

6) The outrageous inherent unfairness of passive dividend-clipping getting far better tax treatment than earned wages is inherently suspect.  It is exactly what you would expect rich and powerful men to lobby for, whether or not their supply side rationalizations were true!  It should be no surprise that, in our money-drenched political system, those with such power and influence have benefited immensely.

But are the arguments and rationalizations valid at all?  At minimum, supply-siders should bear some burden of proof.  Their experiment has been run, now, for more than three decades, and never once has their core predication come true… that cutting taxes on the rich will result in increased overall revenues and a vanishing federal deficit.

Yes, reducing deficits would be good!  Indeed, under Clinton they vanished. The middle class, according to all opinion polls at the time, wanted any surplus to go to buying down debt.  It was the upper caste who used the surpluses as an excuse to demand immediate tax cuts.  So where does maturity reside?

The results are utterly conclusive.

Supply side is disproved, top to bottom.

What we need in this depression - and by most of the metrics it has been a depression, not a recession - what’s needed is what ended the last one. The circulation of high velocity money that goes hand to hand very quickly, generating economic activity with every transaction. Not the exact opposite, money that sits in portfolios, not helping capitalize industry but simply fostering the aggrandizement of a parasitic caste.  One the the founding father of free enterprise - Adam Smith himself - quite despised this.

“All for ourselves and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind. As soon, therefore, as they could find a method of consuming the whole value of their rents themselves, they had no disposition to share them with any other persons.”

Smith is not talking about charity, but the vigor of trade.  In this case, we “share” by buying from one another.  The middle class is very good at that.  It is the middle class that - assisted prodigiously by technology and science - propelled our economy to be the wonder of the world.

It is the middle class who should get whatever tax benefits can be doled out.  They’ll use it to make small startups.  They’ll use it to educate bright, competitive kids.  They’ll spend it!

They are the real “job creators.”

I believe far-reaching ambition should be applied to the acquisition of superlative mental strength, i.e., “god-like” cognitive powers.  Humungous intellectual improvement would enable humanity to invent wondrous devices, solve global risk concerns, and enable every person to more thoroughly understand and enjoy the complex universe in which we dwell.

Below I’ve listed seven skill-sets of our 146 brain regions.  Our present skills in these arenas is pathetic,  humiliatingly - let’s accelerate our progress, so we can wield the wisdom of “deities.”

Personal Memories

Aren’t we all.. Amnesiacs? By noon, I forget what I ate for breakfast. Ecstatic adventures of my youth? Lost, down the river of time. Ex-lovers? I forgot their names, shapes, and enticements. Memories are winds we can’t catch, jewels that slip away, desserts rapidly digested and flushed into the ether. Why can’t I remember every wonderful event of my life, that I want to retain? 

I want - Total Recall. For this, I need exterior storage space, strapped to my cranium, where everything that happens to me is transposed into text, images, and videos, dated, and filed in multiple categories. In milliseconds, I’d be able to retrieve precise details of my chronology via several channels (time, space, associated references). Fortified with this feature, I’d never again forget anyone’s name, nostalgic urges could be retrieved and satisfied, traumatic disputes would be erasable, and I’d live happier, flushed with joyful remembrances, instead of burdened with bewildered resentment.

The “Personal Memory Device” of the future receives an excellent exposition HERE, by neuro-blogger James Kent, who notes that a “PMD could be easily fitted shortly after birth; the least invasive option would be like a Bluetooth headset worn over the ear connected wirelessly to a local device no larger than a cell phone.”

Eyes Wide Open 24/7

We waste 22%-35% of our lives because we’re mentally dead when we’re asleep, plus we spend another 5%-10% of our life with our brains seriously incapacitated by “drowsiness.” Shockingly inefficient. Would we buy a computer if it was inoperable one-third of the time?  Sleep has to be eliminated, or extensively reduced, or made “optional.” Imagine how wonderful a 24 hour day would be if cognitive alertness was available every second?  We’d double our productivity and/or social pleasure.

Is annihilating the Sandman possible?  Specialists believe shut-eye is required for memory storage…  But… if memories can be re-routed and stored “off-brain” (see above) the necessity for snoozing would be tremendously reduced or abandoned altogether. Imagine the benefits! A family of four would no longer need a “3-bedroom” house because bedrooms wouldn’t be essential, neither would beds, pillows, mattresses, and the accompanying laundry time. Hotels, inns, and other coma-quarters for our hibernation habit would become extinct.  No more traffic accidents due to falling asleep at the car wheel. No more hustling home early from parties to put the kids to bed. No more sleeping pills, no more insomnia, no more jet lag.  Perhaps, in the future, drifting off to Slumberland will be categorized as a “narcoleptic” disease, or regarded as socially-unacceptable behavior, like sloth or drug addiction.

Any current progress in fighting off the Forty Winks?  Pharm products like modafinal have reduced immediate demands for repose, but the end of sleep won’t truly arrive until the mind’s workload is drastically reduced.

Buddha-Mommy Nature

Human nature is frequently vicious. We fight, quarrel, cheat, back-bite, and act like ornery cusses much of the time. Why? The neuro-excuse is that we just can’t help it because our brains are physiologically flawed. A demonic source of our meanness is the amygdala, a segment of our “reptile brain” that impels us to behave like Komodo Dragons when we perceive that our survival is threatened. What can we do about this? 

The answer is anatomical.  When University of Wisconsin-Madison scientists Richard Davidson and Antoine Lutz examined the compassionate “lovingkindness” brains of Tibetan monks who had clocked in 10,000+ hours of meditation, they discovered strong gamma ray action, and major brain differences, especially buffed-up thickness in the insole and the right temporal parietal juncture.  Furthermore, when Davidson compared the brains of his celibate, childless Tibetan monks to the brains of mothers looking at photos of their babies, he discovered startling similarities. Happiness, Empathy, and Unconditional Love was indicated in the ecstatically lit-up left prefrontal cortexes of both.

What’s this mean, for you and I? Personally, I think meditation would make me even grouchier! (Although another study by Harvard Medical School demonstrated that novices who completed a 8 week course of 30 minutes a day meditation, gained “increases in the posterior cingulate cortex, the temporo-parietal junction, and the cerebellum.” ) I’m also not interested in gestating, laboring and conceiving children, via ectopic pregnancy.  However, I sincerely would like to be kinder and more patient, and to accomplish this I would subject myself to brain surgical-enhancement, especially if it was just a brief hospital visit, with an acceptable cafeteria. Neural stem cell implantation seems to be a possibility here - if new cells make me neuro-pudgy in the proper areas, I’d perhaps be as equanimous as the Dalai himself.

Google/Wiki/GPS Capability

We study, we cram, we read, but the data we laboriously scan just can’t be “saved.” Our brains copy elemental facts, but 90% instantly vanishes off our meatbag hard-drive. After perusing an 800 page manuscript, I retain enough only to scrawl a spotty synopsis - my neurons lack “stickiness”! Street directions, cell numbers, visual details, explanations, relative’s names - all.. poof!

How to fix this? The answer is obvious. Already, we know that the smartest person in any room is the fastest-fingered surfer finding answers on their iPhone. What we desperately need is our tiny noggins to be logged into the Global Brain all the time, with a “keyboard” that’s guided by “thought direction.” (All right, if you’re paranoid, we can have an on/off switch.) The wifi antennas on our bodies will be style statements, either flagrantly displayed - like a tail - or coyly hidden behind an ear. I’ll probably choose the nerd option: a bull’s eye in the center of my bald spot.

Calculations at Light-Speed

Quick!  What’s your answer to this question?

Assuming that the index of refraction of water is 4/3 and that raindrops are spherical, show that the location of a rainbow is approximately 42 degrees above the line from the sun to you. If you see a double rainbow, what is the angle of the second one? Even triple rainbows are possible, although they are difficult to see; where is the third one?

Still struggling? Of course; like me, and the rest of us, you’re extremely stupid. Relative, of course, to a god-like brain that would calculate that in a nano-second. (The answer is HERE).

What do we need for superior calculating ability? A 2011 University of Toronto study informs us that addition requires work from the “visual areas, parietal areas, frontal and prefrontal regions… bilateral thalamus, right insula, right claustrum and bilateral cerebellum,” but subtraction needs extra assistance from the bilateral insole, and multiplication requires effort from the “bilateral cingulate gyrus, left claustrum, right caudate body…” etc. Increasing our current brain volume is needed… if our skulls are too small to accommodate the required neuron expansion, we’ll have to get bigger heads, like hydrocephalics, or the 1500-1600cc capacity of Neanderthals, a 7.5-13% upgrade.

Infinitely Funny

Limitless Intelligence won’t be enjoyable if we can’t get belly-laughs out of it - ideally, our mega-brains should supply us with on-demand, side-convulsing, pee-in-our-pants comedic skills.

Constructing humor is a creative process that requires “thinking outside the box” - not surprisingly, researchers have discovered close correlations between creative types and sufferers of mental illness. Specifically, highly creative people AND schizophrenics both have a lower-than-normal density of D2 receptors in the thalamus, a brain region that serves as a filtering center that processes information before it reaches the “responsible” cortex.  The wide-open floodgates allows highly creative, and/or crazy people, to see numerous unique and bizarre connections in ordinary situations.

Apparently, if we want to explode with laughter and/or make others shriek hysterically like demented banshees, all we have to do is reduce our D2 receptor density. This suggests that a D2 control button is needed, to elevate levels when ponderous solemnity is required, and reduce it, when a party needs to be livened. Use it carefully and never shut off the D2 entirely - that’s a one-way ticket to the Funny Farm, where you can giggle maniacally at your own weird jokes, alone forever.

Psychic Powers

We’re gullible, aren’t we? Fools, saps, stooges, easy marks that take the bait - hook, line, and sinker. Sly people proclaim their love for us, for cruel manipulation. Politicians and TV commercials lie and swindle our innocence. Why are we so easily deceived?

Our new, improved brains won’t be credulous. No! Our god-like brains will have fantastic insight, deep intuition, razor-sharp perception - they’ll be mind-reading wonders, viewing the real truth that lurks beneath sweet and serpentine words. How will we leap from susceptible suckers, to clairvoyant savants?  Here’s the easy answer:

We need MRI scanners mounted on our heads. In The Neuro Revolution, author Zack Lynch reports that it takes 7 brain regions to tell the truth, but 14 to to tell a lie. With our individualized brain-reading ability, falsehoods and secrets will be ancient history, replaced by total transparency and absolute truth. We won’t be stumbling anymore in our face-time interactions, wondering what the other is thinking, ‘cause we’ll read each other like maps!

Those seven improved zones of smartness will make me happy, but… what’d I forget?  Is there a mental superpower that I failed to consider?  Please clue me in to additional genius-potentialities, in the Comment Section below:

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When i wrote The Demise of Google, i emphasized that Google’s business model is all based on selling advertising space and that it has been amazingly incapable of creating new sources of revenues. Hence i predicted a rapid decline (of Google as it is today: Google is rapidly transforming into a venture capital operation that might continue to thrive for decades). The switching cost is basically zero: you can switch to another search engine without losing anything; you can upload videos to another service without losing much; you can use another mapping software and get the same directions; you can change email client and will only lose old emails that you probably don’t need anyway.

I pointed out that Facebook, that relies on the same business model (of selling advertising space), enjoys a much higher switching cost: leaving Facebook means losing a lot of friends, their postings, your postings, pictures, etc. The only people who are willing to do that are Google employees who are under pressure to show their patriotic spirit by switching to Google+. This has nothing to do with the merits of Facebook. In fact, the features of Facebook are often maddeningly stupid even for hardcore fans. The fact is that Facebook is a platform of 800 million people.

Unlike the users of Google’s search engine (who don’t have to sign in), the users of Facebook have to sign in. Unlike Google, that integrates smoothly with the rest of the Internet world (e.g. Wikipedia), Facebook takes the user to a separate world where the rest of the Internet is not visible anymore. If you don’t sign into Gmail or Google+, Google does not really know who you are. Facebook always knows who you are. Never in human history (not even in the Soviet Union) has someone held so many data about the ordinary lives of people.

Facebook will probably continue to fine-tune ways to gather more and more data about its users. Again, its business model is about selling advertising space, and the price it can demand is proportional on how intelligent the placing it is. Very soon businesses might have to pay a fee just to be on Facebook because social marketing is the single most powerful form of marketing (when you click “Like” on someone’s post, you are recommending that thing to all your friends, who may then recommend it to their friends and so sorth). Hence the difference between Facebook and Google is that Facebook has the power and has the momentum, whereas Google will struggle to continue making money in its traditional ways.

If you are an investor in Facebook, that’s the good news. If you are not, then there is really bad news in what i just wrote: Facebook is out to dominate the Internet, in fact is out to literally hijack and take over the Internet. Facebook is not using compliant HTML and the other standards of the Internet. It is not compatible with any other websites. If you have your own website, you can bid farewell to it right now: Facebook wants you to abandon it and move its contents inside Facebook so that it can automatically attach ads to it like it does when you post something on your wall. If this future of a company that owns so much information about everybody and that forces everybody to surrender more and more freedom, and that may turn the free and public Internet into the private backyard of a corporation, sound scary, there are only three forces that can prevent it from happening.


One is the government. There are antitrust laws that even broke up the biggest company in the world: AT&T. It would make sense to invoke an antitrust investigation against what is arguably the only social media in the world. Unfortunately, Google had the awful idea of introducing its own competing platform, Google+: it will probably go nowhere, but it creates the perfect alibi for Facebook against any antitrust investigation (there is an obvious competitor, and its revenues are even bigger than Facebook’s). Government, if it were indeed working for the people, could also enact legislation to limit what all these Internet juggernauts routinely do: harvest your personal data and make money out of it (directly or indirectly). Basically they turn your private life into a commodity to be auctioned off to the highest bidder. Sounds amoral? Apparently not for those who make money out of it (Google and Facebook) and for the thousands of businesses that are willing to pay for it and for the politicians that never interfered with this practice.


Second, Facebook might implode just because of its own success: about 30% of its employees are bound to become millionaires (ed. approximately 1,000) when Facebook goes public. If all of them retired to enjoy their wealth, it would be a crippling blow to Facebook’s internal processes which might result in so much instability in the platform to give Google+ a chance to steal the limelight. However, that’s not very likely because a) Google+ is not exactly a stellar product and b) Facebook is actually a very easy platform to maintain with very few features and virtually no request from users to change (in fact, users tend to get mad whenever Facebook changes a feature).


Last but not least, it could be that Facebook’s hyper-proprietary strategy backfires. Will Wikipedia accept to move inside Facebook? Probably not. Will government agencies and embassies accept to move inside Facebook where their content is subject to Facebook’s policies and hosted on Facebook’s servers? Obviously not. Will even businesses accept to live inside Facebook, knowing that Facebook controls every business transaction? Unlikely. The benefits of social media do not justify the risk of losing confidential data. On the other hand, When in the 1980s Apple chose to go proprietary, many saw it as a mistake: the world wanted Microsoft-compatible software and Intel-compatible hardware. Decades later Apple has become the most valuable company in the world precisely because of its proprietary software and hardware; and its smartphones and notebooks are probably used for sensitive transactions too

(Part 3 of “Hybriduality and Geoethics.” The final part will be presented Feb. 14.)

Vitology includes biological life as well as cybernetic life, while excluding non-teleological biology (such as organelles within a cell) as well as non-teleological non-biological entities (such as a memory chip).  The science of vitology includes the study of all entities that demonstrate Autonomy, Coopetency, and Transcendence (ACT) – things that are alive.



Divisions of vitology could include biovitology (entities like homo sapiens which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to organic cellular chemistry), cybervitology (entities like intelligent computers or futuristic robots which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to inorganic circuit chemistry) and infovitology (entities like “virtual personalities” which demonstrate ACT and are organized according to software logic).



A good case can be made that all life is really infovitology because it is information processing, sharing and transcending behaviors that make something alive.  Nevertheless, up until now, all vitological life has been expressed via biological substrate, and hence there is utility to understanding the impact of that biovitological medium on the infovitological message.   Similarly, we are at a cusp of time when autonomous information processing, sharing and transcending capability will be incarnated into computational hardware.  That hardware will impose its unique limitations on the life process, and hence there is value in understanding cybervitology as a category of life.  Ultimately, however, information processing, sharing and transcending capability will become platform independent by achieving the ability to reorder atoms at will using nanotechnological tools.  This will be the advent of truly infovitological life.



One can also envision categories of transontological life such as: transbiological life (mostly biological but also cybernetic and/or informational) and transcybernetic life (mostly cybernetic but also biological and/or informational) for many years to come.  There is substantial work for scientific researchers to do in the years ahead to categorize organic, inorganic and software entities in accordance with their relative capabilities for autonomy, coopetency, and transcendence.   In this regard, an important sub-field of protovitology should be recognized, which deals with the characteristics of entities having some but not all of the ACT features. 



There is also substantial work for ethicists, lawyers, sociologists, policymakers and theologians to do in the years ahead to assay the relative rights or protect-able interests of entities in accordance with their ACT capabilities.  At the end of the day, though, it should not be the organic or inorganic, or biological or informational, nature of life that determines how it is respected, any more than it should be the gender or exterior appearance of a person that determines their fate. Categorization of life forms is useful for many purposes, but one of those purposes should not be the denial of the privileges and responsibilities accorded to living beings. 



One of England’s leading medical ethicists, John Harris, has observed [11] that “a right means there exists valid moral reasons for not denying something.”  For example, a right to life means there are moral valid reasons not to deny someone their life.  One such reason would be that if people could have their lives taken from them, then all society would feel unsafe, insecure and unpleasant.  On the other hand, if a condemned murderer is said to forfeit his right to life, it is because there are not morally valid reasons to prevent his execution.  Everyone will not feel insecure because everyone is not a condemned murderer. 



What does this have to do with vitology, the study of life?  John Harris’ formulation helps us to see that the right to life should not be withheld from cybernetic or informational life because there are valid moral reasons to respect these forms of life.   In addition to the argument of the preceding paragraph (which biovitological life forms might dismiss on ontological grounds), there is the following strong argument.  Ending something that is making the world a better place makes the world a worse place for all.  Consequently, there are morally valid reasons to not deny life to a cybernetic or software being that demonstrates Autonomy, Coopetency, and Transcendence.  

If such entities are making the universe a more satisfying place, one in which some of us are at a little less risk of random harm, there is no moral reason to end their life.   Consequently, cybervitological and infovitological beings have a frank right to life.  Quite analogous arguments support the biodiversity movement’s efforts to forestall extinction of species.  In summary, the right to life applies to all vitology.

It is apparent to anyone that not all life is created equal.   Different vitological beings satisfy the ACT criteria for life to different extents.  Dogs evidence greater autonomy, coopetency and Transcendence than do bacteria.   A quantifiable hierarchy of life results from a more detailed examination of the three criteria for life.  That hierarchy is based on a V score derived from the following function:  V = A*C*T, where V is the vitological index, A is a quantified autonomy value calibrated as the exponent to which 10 must be raised in order to best estimate an entity’s maximum number of decisions per second.   This value ensures the entity is, in fact, processing information.  C is the empirically obtained number [12] reflecting the percentage of the time that an entity consensually shares information, multiplied by 100.  The multiplication factor enables the C value to be combined equally with the A value.  T is an empirically obtained number reflecting the percentage of the time that an entity is using information to improve the universe, again multiplied by 100.

A maximal [13] virology score of 1,000,000 (or 1M) would result from an entity with the processing power of every atom in the universe (approximately 10100 atoms, give or take a few million trillion), that maximally shared information (C=100) and that devoted all of its efforts to enhancing universal order (T=100).  Let’s assume, for sake of illustration, that humans consensually share information only half the time (C=50), and that society devotes less than 10% of its time to building a better world (T=10).  Then humanity has a vitology value of 500 times the exponent of mankind’s mental processing capability, which is about 1026 calculations per second (100 billion neurons times 1000 connections per neuron times 200 signals per second times 10 billion humans).  In this illustration, the vitological hierarchy value of humanity would now be about 13,000 (=500 times 26) on a scale from 1 to 1,000,000, or .013M.  Interestingly, an individual person who consensually exchanged information half the time and devoted only 10% of his or her efforts to increasing universal order would have a V score of 8000, or .008M.

By comparison, a typical insect brain can handle up to 106 calculations per second (A=6), rarely communicates consensually (but almost constantly using non-consensual chemical signaling), and makes minimal efforts to establish a more ordered universe.  Assigning, for the sake of illustration, Coopetency and Transcendence scores of C=1 and T=5, we get the result that a typical insect may have a V score of 30, or much less than 1% of that of a human.  A MacIntosh computer also has a V score of about 30, representing a 1 Megahertz processor, minimal consensual communications capability, and minimal contributions to a better world. 

It may seem that the Vitology Index is rigged against insects and PCs by virtue of their low scores for consensual communications and Transcendence.  This is not the case because there is widespread agreement that the “gold standards” of “higher life” are the abilities to engage in meaningful communications and to use tools to create a less random world. 

Coopetency measures “consensual communication” to assay how frequently, and to what extent, an entity can (a) frame an idea, (b) communicate it to another entity, (c) have that entity understand the idea, (d) frame a response, (e) communicate that response, and (f) have the original entity understand the response. 

Consensual communications is absolutely essential to the ethical systems of “higher life”, such as the geoethical principle of consent.  There is no way that one can obtain the prior consent of another to an action that may affect them without consensual communication.  While all life forms, by definition, engage in some degree of consensual communication, for “lower” life forms it is limited to sexual reproduction or basic food gathering.   Humans engage in a much greater degree of consensual communication than do lower animals.  However, humans have a lot of “growth room” in consensual communications as is evidenced by the many disagreements, some violent, that result from inadequate attention to the geoethical principle of consent.



In a similar vein, Transcendence measures the extent to which an entity is enhancing fairness in the universe.  Tools are essential to this task because raw nature is not fair – it kills with abandon, and it has no sympathy for the injured.  It is a random process. 

Technology is absolutely essential to ethical concepts such as equality of opportunity, and to the geoethical principle of equilibria. Technology is absolutely essential to ethical concepts such as equality of opportunity, and to the geoethical principle of equilibria.  It is impossible to continue to add happiness to the world without tools to create more value.   While all life forms make some contribution to universal order, “higher” life forms have a much greater impact on the universe because of the leveraging capability of technology.

Sociobiologists will not find it to be inordinately difficult to assign Vitology ratings to the plethora of biovitological life forms that permeate the earth.  Cybersociologists will find it only somewhat more challenging to categorize infovitology by Vitology rank.   As transvitological life forms emerge in the 21st century, we can expect steady movement toward the epitome of a V=1M being.  Such a being would have many billions of times the information processing capability of humanity (something that is sure to be achieved with a century more of information technology development).  Such a being would never adversely impact another without the other’s informed consent – this is the objective of consensual communication.  And such a being would work feverishly toward the goal of building a just universe.  This will arise by ensuring to each an unlimited opportunity for growth, and by extending to all a shelter from damage caused by catastrophic events, be they of terrestrial or extra-terrestrial origin.

The Autonomy and Coopetency of Life

Autonomy means independent action.  For something to be autonomous it must be able to act based on decision rules reflected in remembered experiences, or in “birthright” algorithms, be it DNA or some other kind of original code.   Even simple algae acts on its own because it processes information relevant to, among other things, converting sunlight, carbon dioxide and water into oxygen and glucose (photosynthesis), in accordance with decision rules contained within its birthright DNA code.  The chloroplasts inside the algae, on the other hand, are not autonomous because they do not process information using their own decision rules.  Instead, they obey the decision rules contained within the algae’s DNA.



As a very different example, consider the classic MacIntosh personal computer.  Like the algae, it too processes information in accordance with a birthright code that is installed in its memory at the factory. It also acts autonomously by processing information in accordance with decision rules that others have subsequently fed into it.   This is quite different from the chloroplast, which is never vested with decision rules, but is instead always simply carrying out the algae’s decision rules.  In the case of a MacIntosh with a new program, there is a greater degree of autonomy, at least for a period of time, because the new program is vested in the MacIntosh. The original source of decision rules is not the most relevant issue in autonomy – all of us acquired our birthright decision rules from another source.  What is key to autonomy is whether the subject entity has decision rules to use, or simply carries out instructions pursuant to the use of decision rules elsewhere.



Now, it may be said that every code was developed somewhere other than where it is used, and hence every entity with a code is simply “carrying out instructions pursuant to the use of decision rules elsewhere.”  To a certain extent this is true, and indeed this is a nice way of describing the “We in Me.”  Indeed, it may be said that autonomy exists to the extent that an entity is not simply carrying out instructions coded elsewhere, but is instead applying a code, in a differential manner, based on varying environmental inputs.   The algae and the MacIntosh do not have much flexibility in how to apply their codes, but they do have some.  Both algae DNA and MacIntosh programs describe rules for processing environmental inputs – that constitutes autonomous flexibility.  The chloroplast, on the other hand, has no such flexibility because it has no code.  Darkness tells the algae’s DNA to shut down photosynthesis; the chloroplast responds to instructions from this DNA, not from anything else.



Algae, and every other cell-based entity, are amazingly complex creations.  But in its own ways, the MacIntosh computer is as amazing an entity as is an alga – and, of course, most people are generally sorrier for the crash of a MacIntosh than for the death of algae.

The extent of an entity’s autonomy can be calibrated as its computational capability because that directly measures decision-making capability, which is the sine qua non (end product) of autonomy. Humans have approximately 100 billion neurons, and each of them have up to 1000 connections to other neurons.  In addition, each neuron can fire about 200 times per second.  Consequently, the human mind is capable, at most, of about 100 billion x 1000 x 200 = 2 x 1016 cps.   Hence, a human’s Autonomy value is A = 16.  A MacIntosh computer, on the other hand, had a rated processor speed capability of about 1 x 106 cps.  Thus, a MacIntosh has an Autonomy value of A = 6.  An entity that had the incomprehensibly large processing capability of googol (10100) calculations per second would have an Autonomy value of A = 100.



The second criterion for life, Coopetency, means that an Autonomous entity is communicating consensually.  Why is this requirement necessary for life?  What entities demonstrate Autonomy but not Coopetency? 



The Coopetency criterion is needed because life is important to us for its purpose of increasing justice, happiness, and fairness.  Yet none of these goals can be achieved without consensual communication.  A creature can be autonomous, and even quite intelligent, but vapidly destructive of all in its path.  There is no reason to consider such a creature to be alive.  Instead, it is simply an organic or inorganic threat, not dissimilar in nature from a natural catastrophe like a hurricane.  The fact that it can act on its own does not rescue it from a vitological perspective if it is not communicating with those around it, and for higher life, seeking their consent to its actions.   Such an entity will be destroyed not because it has forfeited its right to life, but because it is a threat to life.   There never were any morally valid reasons to spare it harm because its raison d’etre (intention) was to harm others.  If something has no ability to communicate, it cannot be faulted for not communicating. 



Nor is this a matter of mere semantics.  Something that acts like a typhoon does not get elevated to vitology by virtue of being made out of organic molecules.  Similarly, something that acts like a pet doesn’t get downgraded to non-life by virtue of being made out of computer chips.  The Coopetency criterion reminds us that it is the behavior of the entity, not its appearance that is important from a vitological perspective.



Application of the First Principle of Geoethics, the Principle of Consent, is a challenging test of Autonomy because it can only be satisfied by giving the fullest respect to autonomy.  An autonomous agent that seeks the consent of another autonomous agent is demonstrating a high level of Autonomy because it is demonstrating high control of its actions.   For example, a dog demonstrates a modest level of autonomy because when it decides what to do, either by genetic program or by training, it may take into account the sentiments of another autonomous entity (man or dog).   Dogs don’t usually satisfy their internal needs without consideration of other autonomous beings, and this behavior can be enhanced through training.  A bacterium or MacIntosh, on the other hand, demonstrates a low level of Autonomy because they pay little if any heed to the consent of other autonomous entities. Given that bacteria cannot give consent, humans are not obligated under the Principle of Consent to seek the consent of bacteria before eradicating them.  The Principle of Consent applies amongst consent-capable beings, which effectively means co-planar life forms.  In a similar vein, because dogs are capable of giving consent to some things, with respect to those things their consent needs to be obtained.  

 Their limited ability to seek and give consent makes them a lower form of life than humans, but they cannot be gratuitously killed, like bacteria, because, unlike bacteria, they do have a limited ability to communicate consent to treatment, and even to request consent to an action.

Footnotes

[11] Harris, J. (1985) The Value of Life:  An Introduction to Medical Ethics, Routledge: London



[12] The empirical determination of vitological numbers can be accomplished in at least two different ways.  First, it is possible to do a “time and motion” analysis of a being, or enough beings to be representative of a species.  Such a time and motion analysis will result in a percentage of time allocated to components of the vitological index.  Alternatively, an assessment can be made of the percentage of time that either the most simple living entity we know spends on components of the vitological index.  Then all other beings and species can be assigned a multiple of that value based on how much more time they spend.



[13] One reason to have such a broadly enumerated scale such as 1-1,000,000 is that there is such a plethora of different species.  There are already over one million differently named insect species, plus about another 600,000 named non-insect species, ranging from 270,000 named plant species to 4,650 named mammal species.  However, it is estimated that named species represent only about 10% of the currently existing species, with millions of insect species, hundreds of thousands of bacteria, nematode and virus species, and tens of thousands of protozoan species deduced yet to be discovered.  While the industrialization of natural ecosystems is reducing this species’ count at an unprecedented rate, new non-biological species of life, such as computer hardware and software systems, are now being created at a very fast rate.