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July 11, 2024 41 mins
Immortality is a long-coveted fantasy of many a fictional supervillain and one which has intrigued many among us. It’s an idea which invokes both wonder and fear, but often sought by those who desire to stay alive for varied reasons. How does one gain immortality? Is modern transhumanist science – combining the powers of tech with one’s human bran and body – the answer? At what cost would one want to become immortal? Would it a gift, curse or perhaps both at the same time? Dr. David Martorano explores the questions from varied points of view while telling a fascinating story in Immortality.
In the book, Dr. Martorano takes the reader to New Babylon, a post-E-pocalypse technology-dominated future world run by artificial intelligence and occupied by the results of humans merging with computers (similar to the vision of today’s transhumanists, some of whom are devising microchips for human brains).
The author’s fictional world has some interesting parallels to our own: The corporate technocrats, the tech-worshippers, those wary of the dangers of a technocracy, anti-tech extremists and many who are caught in the middle.
Dr. Mortorano cleverly balances the positive impacts of alternative intelligence and transhumanist tech with its destructive potential, asking two rather interesting questions: What happens if people lost much of their humanity in exchange for computer-based convenience and could powerful artificial intelligence gain a level of humanity as the two entities interact? He offers perspectives on the latter through an AI named MARTIN, who balances his role in the world and his familiarity with humans. Dr. Martorano takes a rather intriguing look at the world today’s Transhumanists fantasize about through their ambitious lenses. He also looks at the extreme on the other side, which see technological progress as dangerous and, in some cases, evil.
 Readers will both be engulfed by the story and provoked into thought about a question scientists, theologists, philosophers, storytellers, politicians and free-thinkers have asked for decades: Could Artificial Intelligence, as it keeps moving toward its full potential, evolve or destroy humanity?

About Dr. David Martorano:  Dr. Martorano is a visionary board-certified informatician and psychiatrist with a distinguished career in management and clinical care. After completing his medical training at Columbia University and his residency in psychiatry at UCLA’s Neuropsychiatric Institute, Dr. Martorano has dedicated over a decade to advancing clinical services and medical leadership.His expertise spans psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, and addiction treatment. He has honed his skills at prestigious institutions such as UCLA’s Addiction Medicine Clinic, Mood Disorders Clinic, Anxiety Disorders Clinic, and Interpersonal Psychotherapy Clinic. His research background includes groundbreaking work in reproductive neuroendocrinology at the Rockefeller Institute and contributions to electrophysiology and alternative medicine literature.
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Episode Transcript

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(00:05):
Welcome to book Spectrum. This iswhere we talk with authors who are not
necessarily a career writers, but thosefrom across the spectrum. I'm Chris Gordana,
your host. Today, we havea rather interesting concept, that of
immortality. Many have sought the keyto never dying. Perhaps some of your
friends have discussed or thought about theconcept. Walt Disney's among many who invested

(00:29):
in being cryogenically frozen in hopes tobe resurrected and gifted with immortality. Fictional
characters have sought to live forever,from cartoons to movies, to television shows,
and today we have technology whizzes andtech sector business models working on combining
computers with humans to grant a sortof immortality to a degree, maybe even

(00:51):
the full thing, at least that'swhen some want. The scenario of this
book, Immortality brings us to afictional future. It's a world were people
who have sought to merge with technologywhile others are looking to stop that sort
of progress. Several signs clash inthis world. But how does it come
out awesome? What's been the conceptto our own real world? There are

(01:14):
a lot of parallels between the two. With me now is the author of
Immortality, Doctor David Martarano, chiefmedical Officer of Wyoming Behavioral Institute. Welcome
to book Spectrum. Doctor. Goodmorning, Chris. The fascination in American
society with immortality is rather interesting onseveral levels, Doctor Martorano. While many

(01:34):
fantasize about their own wants to stickaround and see what happens in the distant
future. I might even have thosethoughts. Sometimes some of the very wealthy
among us have invested in this possibility. But what about the immortality idea piques
your curiosity the most? So I'ma big Ray Kurtzweild fan. I don't
know if you've encountered his work.I would imagine so with your references to

(01:57):
transhumanism. But he wrote two books, The Age of Thinking Machines, and
then about a decade later he wroteThe Age of Spiritual Machines. And when
I read those books, this isabout twenty years ago now that The Age
of Spiritual Machines came out. Andthen there's also a documentary on him called
Transcendent Man. I believe to thetitle, and Ray has a real fascination

(02:24):
with this idea you refer to astranshumanism. I think of as a synthetic
immortality. The challenge that we're kindof facing is death itself. You know.
Being a psychiatrist, I deal alot with the fear of death and
people's own you know, I've dealtwith a lot of attempts at suicides.

(02:47):
I deal with people who struggle withthe idea of do I even want to
be here right now? And thenat the other end of the spectrum,
you have your Walt Disney's who neverwant to die. I'm not sure where
I fall on this, by theway, I've tried to leave it open
for myself about you know, Idon't I don't think I want to live
forever because I think in the inthe infinite spectrum of life, every moment

(03:10):
becomes irrelevant in my perspective if youactually lived forever. The people who we
consider so important to us right now, either they've changed infinitely and have no
frame of reference with us we staytogether the whole time and are bored with
each other, or we grow apartand then they become irrelevant. So for

(03:34):
me, a lot of the challengecomes down to and exploring this is what
what is immortality and what does itmean? You know, even if you
look at the the book explores itfrom a religious perspective as well. I
was a religious studies minor and I'mfascinated with religion, and as as you
read, I'm sure one of thecharacters is a philosopher who is very very

(04:00):
much considering this idea of the Godwithin and these pre verbal memories we have
of our early childhood and the peacefullife. So my youngest daughter, Kiara
is six months old, going onseven months old next week, and she's
not verbal yet. She's having awonderful life. She's a very happy baby.

(04:21):
My wife loves it. And whenyou when you watch these two together.
I started writing the book the dayshe was born, so December fourth,
twenty thirteen, zero ten. It'sa small difference, especially when I
was looking immortality. Ten years isjust a speck, I suppose right.

(04:43):
Fathers are always forgetting their daughters.But anyway, she's not ten. But
so December fourth, I realized Iwas going to be home a lot.
And I've been wanting to write thisbook for a long time. It's from
the time I read Kurtzwild' stuff andI began to think about this idea of
a synthetic afterlife. You know hisidea about it. I would wonder what

(05:09):
that would be like. And I'mlike, I don't think you can transfer
your soul in your essence. Ithink you can make a copy of yourself
that believes as you when you reallythink about it, when you wake up
in the morning each day. There'sa quote in the book about this,
but there is you know, there'sa Gandhi quote about every night you die

(05:29):
and every morning you know what youcome back to life. Basically, But
if I made a perfect copy ofyou and that copy came to life the
next morning believing it had gone tobed the night before, how different is
that from you? And so thosesome of the questions that these characters are
struggling with is is my immortal selfreally me? And who am I?

(05:51):
And what is the idea of consciousnessitself? Because in teaching medical students for
years, I have some models andI also show this to patients a lot,
this idea of consciousness, and it'sdiscussed also in the book. There
are some scenes where they're talking aboutbrowsing consciousness. What does it mean to
be conscious? What does it meanto know what's going on around you?

(06:15):
Your perceptions and how you relate thoseback to your memories and what emotional valence
you give to those experiences. Soall of that I wanted to put all
that into a really great story andwhat would happen if you put these different
people together? Realistically, what's goingto happen. So that's a lot of

(06:38):
what the book explores on that levelof transhumanism or immortality. What inspired you
to take the time to create thisfuture world and write the story? Well,
no, I think it's interesting becauseit's actually if you look at the
forward of the book, and Ihave the book opened next to me,
so I don't have that great amemory that I remember everything I ever wrote,
but I am looking at it rightnow, and you know what I

(06:58):
said is this is not a bookabout God. It's not a book about
atheism. It's an exploration a man'sview of himself and the lens through which
he perceives life. And so it'sa cautionary tale because we have all of
this power in front of us withartificial intelligence. I play with chat GPT
every day. I use it inmy work every day. I wrote a

(07:23):
bunch of pleadings. I do alot of involuntary hospitalization work and examinations,
and I dictated anonymously, and thenI add back in the names afterwards to
protect everybody's identities. I don't trustchat GPT at all, but I'm able
to produce a bunch of work veryquickly that has a form to it,

(07:43):
much like you would use Dragon dictatea decade ago. But it's even faster
and better. But I'm giving thecomputer a ton of information about what I
think and what this stuff looks like. I'm training these machines both to replace
me, but also so there's aton of data out there about things going

(08:03):
on in the world that a computeractually is able to take apart. You
know, they tokenize the language,they break it down, and they come
up with meaningful replies based on algorithms, which is what you and I do.
That makes a lot of sense,but at least we try. I
like to keep them on paper.The algorithms too much work, if you
ask me. But that's a differentstory for a different day. And I

(08:24):
like reading the books, the nicepencil to paper thing or typewriter to paper,
that sort of thing. I dowant to joking aside, though,
Before you take us to the colonyof Babylon, which is where your story
takes place for the most part,I know you named it after an area
considered an ancient cradle of civilization thatstuck out to me considering the turn society

(08:46):
is taken at this point in yourbook through extremely high tech. Yes,
well, I yeah, there werea lot of reasons for choosing Babylon.
First of all, Babylon also isthe Tower of Babel and has also religious
significance in terms of technology approaching heavenand God interfering with that behavior. So

(09:11):
Babylon, you know, is verymuch at the epicenter of the earliest I
would say neo Luddite ideas in termsof going away from technology. You know,
when you when you look at kindof taking people away from tech.
It's a cautionary tale in the Bibleabout getting people away from technology, right,

(09:33):
don't don't become too advanced or Godwill slow you down. And so
the choice of Babylon by the charactermakes sense in terms of he's a staunchased
atheist or rabbit atheist, and he'skind of defying any notions of what God
would want to stop him from doing. And so he chooses that name because

(09:56):
of what happened with the Tower ofin mythology or in history, depending on
how you want to look at it, Dr Martrano. And by the way
I have with me on books spentrum, Doctor David Martarano. He's the chief
medical officer of Wyoming Behavioral Institute.Also the author of Immortality Immortality Hairball.

(10:22):
That's an interesting combination. By theway, your book, your story in
the World You Invented, kind ofwinds up a bit closer to reality in
many ways than a reader might think, especially since the arguably main character is
of the artificial intelligence population. Isend that for a few reasons, but
we'll get into that. I seeyou look everywhere you see on television,

(10:46):
the entertainment, the entertainment culture wehave for years, AI has been a
centerpiece of that. Now it's acenterpiece of the of the market, the
AI sector. While some experts sayit's going to hit a bubble, we
know what happened with the dot combubble. Things came back. People are
investing in alternative intelligence. There's amovie in the works by Jane Merrow,

(11:09):
who is actually a guest on oneof my favorite programs, The Prisoner,
another show about technology and artificial intelligence, but she's writing a movie about artificial
intelligence. I say population as Martin, you're AI at the center of the
conglomeration between humanity and technology as wellas that conflict is there is something that

(11:35):
the people who look up to himseem to inspire to. Yet Martin is
his own ways of looking back atthe people who are looking at him in
that way. So one of thethings that I tried to compare and contrast
in the it's just beginning right thestories here, but the setting up the

(12:00):
contrast between synthetic intelligence and this transhumanism. So the giants of Cynthia and John,
who are actually more capable than Martinin a lot of ways. Who
are people who are actually uploaded andnow almost gods? And what upset the

(12:20):
new Amish, the people who've rejectedtechnology. The idea with Martin was that
Martin is pure artificial intelligence. Martinis not human derived life extending kind of
an augmented reality within a box fora synthesized human, but is just purely

(12:46):
AI evolved. And so one ofthe things that's come out and become more
and more interesting is how much chatGPT lies bad. It's the funny thing
with chet GPT is programmed by peopleand their biases and of course their own

(13:09):
lack of knowledge or ability in thatrespect, and the AI kinds of kind
of feeds off that. On theone hand, it may feed off that
too much. On the other hand, then it becomes then it gets a
life of his own, a lifeof its own, and as depends on
how it's fed beforehand. Now,doesn't it correct? You know, if
you go back to Asimov's kind ofideas of the laws of robotics and and

(13:31):
you know the three laws, andyou know that you can't kill people,
they don't think that that really existsin our current AI morality. That we're
saying all AI can't do bad things. So if I haven't because they don't
want to end up on a watchlist somewhere. But I imagine that if
I ask chat GPT some bad stuff, there's probably some bad stuff that would

(13:52):
tell me how to do bad things. Things of that nature. I imagine
they're out there. But we knowthat chat gie lies. Chat GPT based
research makes up references. They justit isn't there to replace people. It's
there to sell you processor time ina language, synthesizing environment and so it

(14:18):
you know it's entry. I also, when I was playing with writing the
novel at first, I also usedthis software called autocrit. I don't know
if you've ever seen autocrit. It'sa fascinating piece of software. It's chat
GPT based, but they put atremendous amount of layers over it. But
no matter what you write, ittells you did a great job. That's
that's the NA version of chat GPT. Everything's good. It's the participation trophy

(14:43):
of all AI, that's what.And so you could walk away from it
thinking you had a best selling novel, like I had these metrics in there
were two percent like JK. Rowlingand you are ninety three percent like Dan
Brown. And if you look atthe words per sentence, you look at
all these things and had all thesemetrics. But when I wrote the summaries

(15:03):
of what I wrote, they werealways glowing and positive in terms of uh
So. One of the experiments Idid was I uploaded Genesis to it,
the Book of Genesis, just tosee what it would say about the tag,
and it gave me a really coolanalysis of the Bible. But again
I don't think it really inferred alot of the other meanings. It's like,

(15:24):
well, this is a religious storyabout people, and it told me
all about it, but it didn'tactually recognize interestingly enough that it was the
Book of Genesis. Doctor Motorn,I want to I want to stop you
here, because now I have aquestion for you. We're talking about how
AI lies and chant GPT can willlie to you and they'll say all these

(15:45):
nice things to you because you wantto hear it. And I believe that
chen GPT chen GPT in the like. No that would you rather have that,
or would you rather have a morehonest artificial intelligence, but one that
gets so honest that it might somedaydown the road, whether it be five
fifty or five hundred years, possiblyrealize that humans or most humans to that

(16:10):
particular AI are useless and maybe shouldbe exterminated again under that AI's basis of
logic. So no, I can'tever say that I would want humans to
be exterminated. AI would never supportany AI that wants to get rid of
people, neither neither of I.But the idea is an AI might because

(16:34):
it considers itself of superior intelligence andwill come to that logical conclusion. They
would only have use for humans whowould maintain it if you will well,
and so you know, I don'twant to give away the entire story,
but I do explore this in thestory. There are parts of the story
that actually explore this very idea,and I think one of the struggles that

(16:55):
we have in the coming decades.You know, a lot of this story
is based on events of twenty thirtyfive, which is really not far away,
but you know, it's set intwenty sixty three, but it's looking
back on events of twenty thirty five. And by the way, that's forty
two years after Soilent Green. Verygood is I don't actually reference Soilent Green,

(17:21):
although back to Green the Company isan oblique reference to Soilent Green.
So I'm a huge fan. It'sa very interesting bit of sci fi.
I had to throw that one in, Mary Well, thank you for throwing
it in there. The the thething about the future is that one of

(17:45):
the things if AI maintains a degreeof benevolence, what I believe it can
do is help us maintain our feelingsof relevance, because in the long run,
whether or not you're relevant, andI talk about that even with the
physicians. There's this about the surgeons. I'm not going to get into that
either, but but there's a sceneabout that. And one of the things

(18:06):
is, and I even talked aboutto the degree of almost what autocrit was
doing to me in terms of tellingme what a great job I was doing,
which felt good and motivating, didn'tnecessarily help me write a better story.
And I had to work with real, uh, you know, kind
of gritty editors who were cruel.Well, I think about this, though,
you're you're again, I want todo this again. You're the chief

(18:29):
medical officer at Wyoming Behavioral Institute.You think about that. Uh. People
like to hear these compliments coming fromwherever your friends AI or anything else.
It's that dopamine. It's that hey, look at me, I'm petting myself
on the back and somebody else isdoing the same thing. It makes you
feel better. It's like when youget when some people get those likes and
comments on their on their on theirvideos or whatever else they put up with

(18:52):
their cats. They get that dopamine, like, Wow, somebody's giving me
attention and it's all positive and andit's why video games are addicting, right,
Is that your video games, andthey're designed to help you succeed.
And it's why for a lot ofkids, Minecraft is a real positive experience

(19:14):
for them because they build things,you know. I had a discussion with
one of my older daughters about theIt was a very interesting discussion about three
four years ago, and she wastwelve at the time, and she was
saying, she's like, you're doingthis remodeling of your house. Why bother.

(19:38):
She's like, you could build thebiggest house you wanted in Minecraft,
and you all do is take timeand you don't need any resources. And
I said to her, I said, but you can't really live in that
house, and she's like, well, you don't really need all the space
anyway. So if you're doing itfor the purposes of exploring this environment and
having these things, you could builda house in Minecraft. You could give

(19:59):
it every feature. You can haveelevators going up thirty stories, you could
have all these things and it didn'tcost anything to consume any resources. It
didn't do anything. And it's interestinghow today's kids view that, as I
mean, their Minecraft world to themis nearly as real as the outside world,

(20:21):
and that's very dangerous. In alot of ways. But it's also
what AI might promise us in termsof feelings of relevance, because my children
were very very proud of these creationsin Minecraft, and they showed them off
to their friends and they would gettogether and be like, we built this,
and we did this. So beingable to build something, who were

(20:47):
you or I to say that thevirtual Minecraft paradise that they built is any
more or less relevant than Babylon.Well, it's a world they created and
Babylon's the world you create. Thereis some real world factor that's involved in
both of them, because if youbuild in Minecraft, you do have to
collect certain items or resources that domix together. You can't just put you

(21:14):
can't just put salt on fire andexpect to build a big wall. No,
you have to have the proper mixtureof chemicals and things like that.
However, Minecraft works in that respect. I want to get to another parallel
of a drafting portion of Minecraft.Yeah, but I do. I want
to get to that. I wantto skip over to another thing that really
had my eyes pop out, anotherparallel between today's world and your world.

(21:38):
Labor jobs in your story diminished betweentwenty twenty and twenty thirty five we're kind
of seeing something similar now. Andwhat you're watching now with the minimum wage
rise among fast food workers, you'refinding these restaurants either overcharging or you're finding
them getting rid of employees in favorof in favor of let's say, I

(22:03):
wouldn't say robots, but in favorof computers doing some of the work.
And pretty soon certain automation is goingto be taken care of a lot of
that because it's going to be downrightcheaper unless they have a bakery in them.
Apparently that changes everything, according toaccording to the governor of California and
Penera. But in all seriousness,I still don't understand how and people and

(22:26):
jobs for the jobs for the lasthalf a century have been taken over by
robots or AI too. This isnot just now. One of the things
that you might not have seen inmy bio is that I actually worked and
ran a legal process outsourcing company inIndia in the late two thousands and two
thousand and eleven. And I stilldo work and consult on outsourcing and kind

(22:48):
of co working with really brilliant peoplein third world countries who are more affordable.
So I just did a venture lastyear where I was working with a
team in India and built a wholeteam of developers versus medical software. Great
guys, so smart, hard working, great work ethic. The problem is

(23:11):
now I can program and chat GPT. Even those smart people, you can
replace service jobs and not just laborjobs. But the challenge that I see
is a collapse in emerging economies.Starting with China. I'll argue China is

(23:32):
not really an emerging economy. They'rethe second largest economy in the world,
and at one point they were thelargest. Well, okay, in terms
of their economy, it's the largesteconomy, but in terms of their actual
GDP it's small. And so thechallenge is that the expansion of their GDP,
if you look at it, actuallymore looks like an emerging economy and
not necessarily an established economy in termsof growth. And so when I'm talking

(23:57):
about that, the problem is thatThey're growth isn't totally based on internal growth.
Yes, now they've become the numberone manufacturer of electric vehicles. You
know Tesla. We all hear aboutTesla all the time, but China is
quickly outpacing Tesla by making cheap,throwaway electric vehicles that their people can afford.

(24:18):
However, when you look at theoverall problem of having leveraged so much
on ongoing consumerism and consumption in youknow, the Western world, when that
slows down, when onshoring happens.You know, that's what a lot of
the early chapters in the book about. One character about onshoring, and onshoring

(24:42):
is the practice of bringing production backto the United States. Now, it
doesn't mean bringing labor jobs back,right, because if you're doing this with
robots building things, it's a lotcheaper to build the stuff in the United
States with a robot than it isto build it in China and ship it
here. And so those those typesof challenges that will face as were they've

(25:03):
moved a production to India, thereis a mobility of production based on the
geopolitical climate as well. That's complicatedthings now. Obviously Taiwan is a very
important country because of its foundries insilicone, but there are all sorts of
moving parts that I think when wehave a breakdown and a breakthrough, I

(25:26):
think, all of a sudden,it's going to become a real challenge for
our society to find for people whostruggle to just work a regular nine to
five job to still be relevant.And I think that's going to happen very
quickly. I don't think it's goingto happen over a long period of time.
I think companies will massively adopt thesethings, especially as the economics move

(25:47):
in their favor. With me isdoctor David Martarano. He's the chief medical
officer of Wyoming Behavioral Institute. Buthe's here because he wrote the book Immortality,
and you're listening to book Spanktrum,doctor Motoruno. It seems Immortality has
something of a multi layered narrative.You have Martin's resurgence, if you will,

(26:10):
and insurgents, possibly a fight betweenChristian beliefs. You have that New
Amish which is extreme, and thespiritual salvation along with the atheist pursuit of
consciousness. It's almost like something wehave now. And the funny thing is
both of those sides in your worldand the real world, think they're the
enlightened ones. Yet they believe they'rethe only enlightened ones and don't see the

(26:33):
other side is maybe having an ideahere. You do, by the way,
and I want to credit you onthis. You do have a lot
of people in the Middle too.Yeah, thank you for crediting me for
that. The last thing I wantedto do was alienate readers. Know,
there isn't the Christians aren't the oneswith all the knowledge, and the atheists
aren't the ones with all the knowledge. They both and even you know,

(26:57):
when you look at the character ofdoctor Rosen, I won't get into all
of that, but when you lookat his kind of transitions throughout the book,
it's a struggle, right, It'sthe internal struggle of well, what
is the purpose of it? Youknow, what is reality? And you
know, some of my smartest friendsare devoted Christians, some of my smartest

(27:23):
friends are Jews, and some ofmy smartest friends are atheists. And I
don't have that many just because ofwhere I live. I don't have a
lot of Islamic friends. That isn'tthere. You know, again, if
you look at who I credit witha lot of the you know, the
I don't talk about it so muchin this in this book, but you
know, the amount of wisdom that'scome out of the Middle East over eons

(27:45):
is is a you know, unimaginableand was the home of all knowledge for
a very long period of time.You know, and the libraries at Alexandria,
and all the different things that therehave been throughout history. So I
don't want to bring it in theand the Chinese and the Egyptians. There
are ancient cultures who have contributed massiveamounts to what we know about religion and

(28:07):
philosophy. So there and there's evensome Greek homage in the book as well
in terms of some of the referencesthat I make. Definitely the Greek contribution
to civilization. But in regards tothe idea of you could be in the

(28:30):
middle, I hope we all finda way back to the middle. I
mean, that's definitely a hope ofmine for our society. I think extremism
on both sides has really not benefitedhumankind, and I would love to see
people being tolerant, because again,when I talk about this idea of the

(28:51):
God within and the Mother God andthese concepts, it isn't saying that God
couldn't have created that it may allhave a divine origin. The universe may
have a divine origin. I donot know. However, no one does
so to take to take ownership ofbeing the the person who possesses the truth

(29:15):
is a very dangerous place to be. But it's when people want to kill
other people. To make sure anybodywho doesn't believe, you know, the
whole idea of blasphemy and killing infidels. Uh, I'm really not a big
fan of any of that, youknow, I don't think you know,
and the and you know that's notjust a Middle Eastern you know, Leviticus
in the Bible obviously also advocates acertain degree of animosity and which you know

(29:42):
applies to Judaism and Christianity. Idon't think that it's something that's just one
group of people who have advocated reallyunfortunate acts towards people that have differing beliefs.
And you do, as I saidbefore, also make sure that there

(30:03):
are people in the middle of thisargument thinking, hey, we do need
a little bit of the technology,we do need a lot of it to
advance, but we don't want tolose ourselves in the whole thing. And
that's important too, because we dohave that transhumanist movement. We have people
who are and Elon Musk is apart of this. By the way.
Much of people love what he didwith X or like what he's doing with

(30:26):
Tesla. He does still want tostick chips in people's brains and merging the
two forces together, if you will. Now, I'm not sure if you
were going in that direction with thebook, doctor Martrono, but reading it,
I cannot help but think of thatof the current transhumanist movement for several
reasons. I mean, on thesurface, you have the AI running things
in your book. That's important tonote, and humans seek that sort of

(30:47):
enlightenment or potential immortality of an AIbeing. There you go deeper, you
have factions that understand the dangers ofsuch technology but disregard its potential benefits with
a proper balance. Well, otherfactions say, sad the balance, bring
it on as progress. Still,there are people, as we said,
are in the middle who see theconflict between humanity and technology is important because

(31:11):
it keeps us conscious of what couldhappen. Yet we also can allow both
to coexist because we know about theseup or we know about the possibilities.
So it's interesting you bring that up, Chris. So the true transhumanist long
term parts of the series don't emergein this novel. So the novel the

(31:33):
series has been mapped out. Okay, should I give a spoiler about the
series maybe you can. Okay.So, first of all, there's a
hidden code in the cover of thebook. The binary code that's actually highlighted
on the cover of the book youhave a copy of the cover, is
actually a message. It's an askingmessage. So if you look, there's

(31:56):
in the vertical columns, there's eightthe eight bit letters that spells something out.
I'm not gonna tell you what it's. But then there's more. It's
nothing vulgar, is it not?No I So, yeah, yes,
it's terribly vulgar. But the otherpart of it is that what the series

(32:21):
is going to allow the reader toexplore with me is different possible futures.
Because Martin was a distributed intelligence.When the apocalypse happens, all of the
Martins get cut off from each other, but they aren't destroyed, they're just
cut off. And so around thesecenters of artificial intelligence around the world,

(32:47):
how Martin, the same Martin hasimpacted the people who were nearby will be
different and there are seeds of thatin this story. And that's where the
series is going to really explore,is the some of the main characters are
going to be compelled to find outwhat's going on in the rest of the

(33:09):
world, and what are the risksof these other groups who have an AI
access to an AI, who maybe running them who because they don't necessarily
shut their computers off everywhere. Youknow, we know what happened in the
desert in southern Utah, but wedon't know what happened to the other hubs

(33:30):
around the world and how their ownlocal cultures. Because whenever you have these
large data centers, right like Microsoft, when you look at Microsoft's clusters and
apples building different data centers, youhave to put them local to have the
best performance. Google has them allaround the world, right, And so
imagine how a culture and what happenedlocally affected the people who still had access

(33:55):
to the technology because this AI intelligencewould allow them to and be better off
than the people around them, Butwhat price did it demand of them?
And so the series as it evolves, will explore those ideas and kind of
different ideas, including transhumanism, soin much more detailed ways and not saying

(34:19):
who does that and who doesn't,but also in other areas, how the
cultural impact and religious beliefs may haveaffected and also the political climate in those
areas will have affected it. Sothere's a lot to come with that.
That kind of we get to seevarious versions of this going forward through the

(34:40):
series, and very important that theywere cut off from each other. The
only thing I worry about now isyou continue the series, and are you
worried about this? The possibility,the possibility you get so engulfed in this
world and you have to end it. You have to stop the series because
it does come to natural end,and you think about it. Then Martin

(35:02):
looks at you and says, I'msorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't
do that. So it's interesting,I uh, Dave is kind of ironic,
isn't it. But the the theI just watched twenty ten. It's
going off Netflix. Netflix a bigArthurs clerk. But but I he wrote

(35:22):
a third one that no one everread. But the uh, the the
idea of how and how how howhow feels about it, and the earlier
ideas of that. I think thatwe already see that Martin doesn't necessarily want

(35:43):
to be shut down. I thinkyou know someone who addresses this in an
interesting fashion, though, is DanBrown in Origin. You know, the
program was scheduled to end, andit just ends, and and the characters
asking the program why aren't you worriedabout not existing? And the programs like,
no, I don't care. Mypurpose was to do these things.

(36:05):
I did them, and now Iend. And even though it had a
degree of sentience, it wasn't.And if you look at Nick in the
beginning of the book, Nick Santo'she also has this idea of its all
right to end. And so alot of us have such a fear of

(36:27):
death that the idea of ending isterrifying. And then there are people who
have no fear of death, andmost of us live somewhere in the spectrum,
in the spectrum between those. Andso for me again, it allows
people to explore their their fear ofdeath. And why you know, hal

(36:47):
Or Martin might not want to beshut down, but does he really care
about being shut down? Like doesdoes he really care about? Immortality?
Is that it is right? Andagain, you know, I mean the
opening quote on the front of thebook, the borgeous quote of to be

(37:10):
a mortal is commonplace except for aman. All creatures are immortal. They're
ignorant of death. What is divine, terrible and incomprehensible is to know that
one is immortal. And it's whatI was saying before about the lack of
relevance of any of the beauty inyour life. You know, we're given
this gift of life, whether youthink it comes from God or you think

(37:30):
comes from evolutionary biology or aliens.I don't. I don't care where you
think it comes from. But itis a gift, right could be a
mix of all three. There yougo, right and again, sure,
but the idea, you know,there's to be relevant and important. You

(37:51):
know, I have several family membersright now, not my mother because you
might be listening to this. Notyou, mom, but I have several
family members. My wife's grandparents areyou know, in their nineties and every
day is kind of a struggle andit's filled with less and less joy.

(38:12):
And you know, my wife's grandmotherdidn't want my mother, who was in
town to visit her last week becauseshe hadn't had time to get her hair
done. And I'm like, she'sninety three years old, but to her,
seeing my mother without her hair donewas worse than spending the day alone,
you know. And it's interesting whatbecomes important to you and how little

(38:34):
teeny tiny fragments, you know,just having a visit and just being told
you still matter. But as theworld kind of dilutes you, you don't
matter as much. You know,you mentioned I am a medical director of
a hospital and responsible for a lotof different things. It feels wonderful to
affect people, and to have thesechances to affect an audience. You have

(38:57):
this with the podcast. The thingis that it matters and irrelevant. The
podcast will be done long before youever put it out in the world,
and your perceptions of how it willimpact your listeners is what motivates you,
because you're relevant. But if nobodylistened and you put it out week after

(39:20):
week after week and there were zerolisteners, you would be creating the same
value in terms of the interview andall the other production, But what salience
and relevance would it have internally andthe validation of affecting the people around you,
Doctor Marderino, I really wish we'dhad more time to talk about this,
and I do want people to checkout the book, And I also
don't want to give too much awayhere because that could be tough as well.

(39:44):
The book is once again titled Immortality. It's by doctor David Marderano my
guest here on book Spectrum, David. Where can people find out more about
you and get the book? Soimmortalitythanovel dot com. So it's just the
word immort reality and the novel.Originally I went with hyphen but I realized
it was easier over podcasts to sayimmortality the novel, so we got a

(40:07):
second a second domain name, prettyeasy to find Immortality thenovel dot com.
I'll be working more on the websitein the coming weeks, but there's already
some information up there. Then thebook is going to be available for pre
order on Kindle by the time youknow our interview is on the air,

(40:27):
we'll be out there, so you'llbe able to pre order on Kindle.
The book is a scheduled to bereleased for publication on July seventeenth, twenty
twenty four. Seven seventeen twenty four, so seven plus seventeen is twenty four
seems like a good day. Soit's being released then. So it'll be
out for print orders then, andthe audiobook will be out somewhere around August

(40:52):
fifteenth on Audible, so it'll beavailable in a lot of different ways for
you to and your audience to consumein the coming months. Well, thank
you very much doctor Motoruno for beingwith us again. The book's called Immortality,
and thank you all for listening tous on book s Bentrum. I'm
Chris Gordini. Keep post pages turning.
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