Humanity Has Come Too Far to Just Roll Over
In spite of my doomish outlook on the future of Homo sapiens, i.e. the impending evolutionary bottleneck, and my lament that our species is simply not sapient enough, which is why the former is in my thinking, I still believe that humanity represents the epitome of evolution. And, I am damned if I will stand idly by and watch us go extinct. In spite of all our foolishness, our squandering of resources, our pollution of the Ecos, and our inability to strategically manage ourselves for the long term, we have accomplished some mighty things that we can be proud of. We have amassed significant knowledge about the universe and ourselves. We are the beings that have grappled with the understanding of our own origins and evolution. Indeed, we actually comprehend a great deal about evolution as the process of origin and adaptation. We embody the Universe understanding itself.
I refuse to accept that it has all been in vain.
Lest you mistake me for a fatalist or believing in destiny on the basis of some ethereal “spiritual” nature, let me disabuse you of that perception. I take this position on the basis of what I see as a principled argument regarding the nature of evolution. This argument won't sit well with indoctrinated biologists, IBs, (I am a recovering IB). If you are in that category the first thing you will experience is a knee-jerk reaction to what I say, followed by an absolute conviction that I have taken leave of my senses, or “really don't understand evolution.” Note that this is the reaction my ideas draw from people who learned evolution theory in college twenty years ago and have not kept up on the theoretical side. But, in my own defense, I will say that over the past decade or so, I see more and more biologists, especially systems biologist studying evolution theory, coming to the same basic conclusion that I have.
Put baldly, macroevolution is “progressive”.
What I mean by this is that over evolutionary time the information processing capacity of the biosphere has developed toward a maximum. Note that information processing capacity means the ability to process the information content of received messages. This takes a lot of unpacking, more than I can put into a blog (buy my systems science book when it is published for a full explanation). For the purposes of this piece I will simply state that the practical embodiment of this statement is simply that over the evolutionary history of our planet, larger, more complex, and capable (meaning adaptive) brains have developed to deal with ever more complex environments. This does not mean that all animals have evolved more complex brains. It simply means that more complex environments have offered opportunities for more complex brains to evolve in the same way that new food sources offer opportunities for speciation to take advantage of them. The argument is based on theoretical results from emergence of increasing complexity under conditions of the availability of ‘free’ energy (in the technical thermodynamic sense). The Earth has been existing in the flux of high potential available energy for billions of years, providing the driving force permitting higher levels of complexity to develop. More complexity means more information (again in the technical sense).
Traditional evolutionary biologists have been loathe to talk about progress, even in this sense, because they fear the dreaded “teleological” interpretation of evolution. That is a slippery slope toward creationist interpretations (or nowadays its disguised form as “intelligent design”). But the reality is that evolution has produced progressively larger, smarter brains over time (BTW: a similar kind of argument applies to plants but the details of information processing are clearly different than for animals!) This is undeniable. And the culmination (to date) is in the human brain that we all carry around in our skulls. A corollary to this thesis is that human brains are able to handle more different kinds of information (this has to do with the theory of ‘meaning’, again in the technical sense), i.e. different kinds of intelligences to base more kinds of adaptive behaviors, than any other animal we know about. Different animals are generally bound to fairly specific niches and so only need to solve problems within the framework of those niches. But humans seem able to adapt to almost any environment or multiple niches by virtue of inventing things like clothing and shelters that allow them a level of control over their environments not generally shared with other creatures. We have the capacity to eat a tremendous variety of foods, some of us have even adapted genetically to be able to, for example, digest lactose through adulthood. Our options are huge.
Microevolutionary Changes With the Advent of Extrasomatic Energy
Microevolution occurs when there are shifts in the genetic pool. There may exist a number of sufficiently different alleles of a particular gene (but also clusters of genes affecting some particular trait) that provide different levels of fitness based on the extant ecological conditions (e.g. climate). Genetic drift means that some of these alleles are beneficial in the population and tend to push down, in relative frequency, ones that are less so. Over shorter periods of time with respect to the life of the species, there can be some small changes that are directional when the environment selects in that direction. Given a long enough time with a reasonably strong selection, this can lead to forms of speciation (allopatric or sympatric) thus affecting the macroevolutionary path.
For humans the environment has included cultures that have arisen due to human inventiveness. The biggest single factor in the success of cultures has been the increasing availability of exosomatic (outside the body) sources of energy used to do economic work. As long as this energy flow was increasing, invention and cultures could develop higher levels of complexity. And this was a major source of microevolutionary trend in human evolution. Humans have adapted genetically to culture (this is really a great example of co-evolution). The ability to digest lactose (above) is an example. And cultures have adapted to human invention where energy flow permitted. In essence this is just another realization of the above mentioned principle of energy flow permitting the development of greater complexity.
Humanity's exosomatic energy flows have generally always tended to increase, but not monotonically smoothly. It has generally taken the form of step functions where, for example, the discovery of a new source leads to a rapid exploitation (dependent on the rate of travel at the time) followed by a long period of logistical-form increase in that exploitation. The latest such find has been fossil fuels. The result was the industrial and green revolutions.
Microevolution is noted for the fact that changes in morphologies and behaviors can come and go depending on relatively short term stochastic fluctuations in environmental (niche) contingencies (long term studies of Darwin's finches have shown this). Such fluctuations can be seen in the rise and fall of civilizations. These fluctuations, however, could not affect macroevolution in that they were geographically and temporally local while human dispersion (emigrations) were not prevented. Most generally, an argument can be made that the underlying cause of these fluctuations (i.e. civilization falls) were due to the rapid over-exploitation of resources, in particular the exosomatic energy resources such as available fuels. ‘Rapid’, here, means relative to the natural replenishment rates for nature. Cutting down a forest for firewood in a few generations was never sustainable.
But on the scale of the whole Earth, humans have been enjoying essentially always increasing sources of free energy, thus resulting in the explosion of technology, macroevolution of culture (on a much shorter time scale than human genetic evolution), and the corresponding explosion of human population.
There have been some conjectures advanced regarding microevolutionary effects on the human genome as a result of the rapid development of our technological cultures. We've heard, of course, about the prevalence of myopia as a result of the invention of glasses, for example. There are also arguments advanced that some of seeming increase in the prevalence of some genetic diseases or genetically implicated conditions, like autism, are the result of over compensation or mitigation of the disease in the population and the consequent survivability/fecundity increase in those individuals carrying, if not expressing, the proclivity.
In other words, we can and should expect that our massive increase in available energy, especially over the past two hundred years (about 10 generations) would have effects in the microevolutionary trends in OECD populations. One such effect, that I think might have some teeth, is that humans have been moving inexorably toward lower individual levels of general intelligence. The Flynn Effect, notwithstanding, there are good reasons to believe that some of the general intelligence factor components are either atrophying or have actually been micro-selected against in modern technological societies. An example of atrophy would be the loss or reduction in individuals' abilities to do mental arithmetic due to the advent of calculators. But that ability could presumably be restored if calculators were eliminated. That, as far as I know, has not been tested. Another explanation, derived from what seems to be more experience with difficulties teaching children basic math skills these days, using essentially the same methods as in earlier days, is that some underlying factor that supports learning to do basic math in the head has diminished, and just in the last two or three generations! The variables to be teased out in this example are now too complex and the time too short to really be able to get anything like an answer. But we should not rule out the possibility that we are, as a species, tending toward being individually less mentally fit as we cede more of our capabilities to technologies just as much as is the case in our physical capabilities. In the latter case, there is no clear indication that this has a genetic drift basis except, as mentioned above, in some changing disease prevalence cases.
Regardless whether the effects in changing behaviors (and physical aspects) observed recently are due to microevolutionary processes or just short-term adaptations it is still true that given a long enough time and some number of generations (including the effects of increased mobility and the consequent increase in the rate at which alleles can mix into the general population) some microevolution will obtain. Mankind has had access to significant extrasomatic energy for several thousands of years. Here is what worries me. We have grown soft, not just spoiled, though that too. We are genetically not prepared to deal with a world in which our major sources of energy are exosomatic (non-food) and significantly more than our somatic sources and will soon be gone.
The Positive Side of the Influence of Cultural Evolution on Human Evolution
Let's accept the possibility that co-evolution of the human-culture complex has indeed pushed the human genome in some directions that have become increasingly dependent on exosomatic energy flows. In other terms, human fitness now depends on the continued presence of high-powered energy flows. Take away those flows, as in the depletion of fossil fuels, and our ability to survive and procreate will decline accordingly. How much will depend on how far the microevolutionary process has moved us in that direction and on how quickly the loss of flow progresses. If we have become strongly reliant on extrasomatic energy, genetically speaking, and the decline in available energy is rapid enough, then the consequences will be catastrophic. Everyone is likely to have their own opinions about either of these aspects. I even expect that many people will deny the microevolutionary argument out of hand, assuming and believing that we are essentially the same Homo sapiens that evolved at the end of the late Pleistocene. They will envision that even if the energy goes away, that humans will be able to rapidly adapt back to living off of much lower resources and give up our technological lifestyles. Life will be hard, but possible. I actually expect this to be the prevalent argument, and indeed expect any number of comments here pointing this out to me.
But I would suggest caution. No one really knows what we have become. With the exception of a very small number of primitive aboriginal populations that have been truly isolated from the rest of humanity, we have nothing to really compare our current selves with. All anyone can say at this point is that we are definitely not the same gene pool that existed at the beginning of the Holocene. How that has affected our fitness capacities vis-a-vis a more primitive environment is anybody's guess. I would not be sanguine about assumptions. The relative frequencies of alleles that might confer fitness in a wild environment have shifted as the migrations from rural to urban areas have proceeded. Sure the alleles are still somewhere to be found in the general gene pool. And perhaps people who currently live in more primitive situations today are still fit to survive when the energy goes away. But, unfortunately, it is exactly these same wild areas that may be most negatively impacted by climate change in the future. So I am not laying bets on any particular outcome arising by chance.
Rather, I think we should embrace any positive changes in our gene pool arising out of our co-evolution with cultures. After all, there have been some spectacular achievements of culture besides more machines and easier living. Think of the knowledge we've amassed. Think of the truly great art we have created.
I cannot lament that our current state makes us vulnerable to traumatic selection in the future because the price we pay will have purchased something much more than just a large population. It has produced cultural artifacts of unbelievable value. In a very real sense, the biologically-natural exuberance of our kind has produced a greater wealth than we, ourselves, can begin to fully appreciate. Sure we know that our cultures have made life very easy, physically. But we have lost sight of how enriched humanity is by virtue of its explorations. It is a shame, perhaps, that the fruits of those explorations were paid for by the evils of our exploitations. We could never have achieved the level of technical knowledge we have were it not for capitalism and conflicts. I am not sure there might have been any other way to have reached this point. Even though I am convinced that sapience failed to keep up with cleverness in our evolution, I cannot claim that was some kind of tragic error. I can imagine, quite the opposite, that it was a necessary condition for producing the knowledge wealth that we have. Ironic.
The value of our culturally-based discoveries, however, depends on there being human entities in the far future who will be able to curate and even use the best parts of our knowledge. There clearly can not be as many beings as exist in our world today. The carrying capacity would not be able to handle eight billion individuals consuming resources at even a fraction of what we have. But a small population of people in the future, using the best parts of our knowledge, discriminately balancing their needs and desires with nature's ability to supply those resources and absorb the waste products would be sustainable. They could live in comfort and technology could provide an appropriate amount of spare time (from necessary work such as growing food and repairing shelters) for those arts that make us human after all.
My March 29, 2010 blog regarding “What Should We Fight to Save?” really says it all. It would be a pity on a grand cosmic scale to have evolved to this state just for it to have ended up as scrap with no intelligent observer to appreciate what we have accomplished. What the co-evolution of humanity and culture has accomplished.
The Universal Fitness Test
When you look at the stars do you really believe that intelligent life only evolved on this tiny rock? I suspect most of my readers, like myself, have a strong belief that there must be others out there somewhere. Whether there exists any possible technology that allows beings on one planet to reach another star system, whether we have been or could be visited by beings from another world, need not be at issue. The question is, is it possible for such beings to achieve a stable, sustainable civilization that permits the continued evolution (co-evolution) of the sentient-technology complex within the context of a planetary ecosystem?
Lately there has been an explosion of discovery of stars with planetary systems. We are now seriously looking for Earth-type planets that might harbor life. We even have a pretty good idea of what absorption spectra to look for to see signs of free oxygen in atmospheres, an almost certain sign of carbon-based life (not to exclude other possibilities, of course). The main lesson taken home so far is that almost everywhere we look we find signs of planetary formations. This lends credence to the likelihood that there are living worlds out there, many of which could harbor life forms like us.
For a bit of fun let's suppose that there is a technology that allows faster than light travel between worlds just as our science fiction writers have envisioned. Given the age of the universe and the distribution of star types/ages and galactic formations, isn't it likely that life has evolved on a vast number of worlds? Wouldn't many of these have developed intelligent life? And wouldn't many be older than Earth, thus allowing those ‘people’ to have reached the technological civilization stage, and beyond what we have achieved? Shouldn't the universe be teeming with intelligent explorers, and shouldn't we have expected some of them to have explored us?
Enrico Fermi asked similar questions. And reports of UFOs aside, he noted that none of these supposed beings has ever left credible evidence of their existence. Nor have they openly visited us, the pyramids notwithstanding (smiley goes here). He asked, “Where are they?” I can think of one reason that they, if they exist, would want to remain undetected. I posit an evolutionary law that applies to the universe as a whole. While there may have been many intelligent beings evolve on many planets, I suspect most of them went through a similar predicament as we are entering now, a self-induced bottleneck event that either led to extinction or eventual evolution to a wiser species. The latter might very well have then re-developed a technological civilization based on wisdom rather than greed and novelty. Eventually, they reached the stars.
And maybe they have visited us. But also, I can imagine that any technological capacity to go to the stars would allow also an ability to stay undetected. Why would they? Simple. They have a “Prime Directive” just like StarTrek! They have a hand's off policy until a race proves itself by evolving that wisdom-based culture. They are letting nature take its course with us. Fermi is answered.
We have to pass the Universal Fitness Test (UFT) before we can hope to join the explorers. And that test is whether or not we can evolve to wiser beings. Can we?
We could, of course, leave it to chance. Maybe we will get lucky and there will be survivors of the bottleneck and somehow the environment will select for wisdom. Several readers have pointed out how they think it more likely that only the brutes will survive and breed in that future. If that scenario plays out than we would have failed the UFT for certain.
Astute readers will have noticed I asked “can we”, not “will we”. This could imply intention. In other words, we would seek to so evolve and pass the UFT! Is that even possible?
We humans have begun to grasp the nature of evolution itself. Our science is certainly not complete, but it is highly advanced. And what does this mean in a philosophical sense? We humans represent the universe coming to self realization! Just as we humans represent evolution producing a self aware, conscious creature, we collectively, humans and culture, are conscious for the universe. At least we are a bit of the universe becoming a little self aware. Think of the recurrency here. The universe produces, through evolution, brains able to comprehend evolution. They understand it so well they can affect its future direction. That is part of the UTF, understanding evolution to the point of intervening in the process to achieve a desired outcome. The bottleneck provides us with the opportunity to take the test itself. We might hope to succeed, pass the test, if we take our future into our own hands now.
To argue that this is interfering with nature (the Frankenstein argument) is just too late and too weak. We have already done this. We have already interfered with nature in so many ways. True we blundered ignorantly into doing so. We were just making tools to feed and clothe ourselves without ever knowing what our industry would create in the future. We just did it because we evolved to do it. But now we have both knowledge and are on the brink of being eusapient beings. I do not believe in “original sin”. We are what we are because evolution produced us this way. In other words, we are not interfering with nature at all. It is nature interfering with itself! But I do believe we could now perform a sin, the sin of cowardice. We could fail to act for fear of failing. Then we would have certainly failed by not acting.
The world would not be better without us, as some people claim. It would be better with many fewer of us, that is certainly true. But it would also be better, in the sense of evolutionary progress, with us as better beings. We could be wiser beings. We could pass the UFT intentionally, whatever that really means. Evolution will continue as long as our sun produces sufficient energy. That should be for several billion years. Surely that would give us adequate time to become explorers too.
What a tragedy if we are nothing more than a shooting star, blazing brightly for a short while and then gone forever. The reason this would be a cosmic tragedy is that Earth would be left less evolved and the potential for any other creatures to replace us is probably very slim and, in any case, would take far too long. We have to succeed. I wonder what life is like on planets where the sentients failed the Universal Fitness Test?
Far too much subjective valuation here. 'Better' and 'worse' are not scientific concepts. They are extrinsic emotional assessments that only exist within human brains. You may care about the continued existence of humans, but the 'cosmic universe' couldn't care less. And you may care about knowledge and technology etc, but as all religious people conclusively prove, clinging to fantasy is as good a survival strategy as any other (85% of the world's population believes in divine imaginary friends). Indeed, a lot of 'knowledge' (beyond basic survival stuff) may just be another way of sending handicap signals to fellow humans, similar to those sent by peacock's via their extravagant tails; i.e. "I have lots of time and energy to spend learning stuff over and above that required to survive."
On the subject of progressive evolution, just like in the world economy, economies of scale (limited by the laws of physics) are the inevitable result of competition in a limited environment. Thus, single celled organisms have teamed up to create multicellular organisms to defeat their competitors and, when the laws of physics make further increases in the size of individual multicellular organisms impossible, multicellular organisms have then teamed up with other multicellular organisms to create social multicellular organisms. Relevant to this 'progressive' view of evolution are AJ Lotka's Maximum Power Principle and Lars Witting's work on denisty dependent competitive interactions.
Posted by: Matthew Watkinson | May 07, 2011 at 11:30 PM
Hi Matthew.
First I am not claiming this to be a scientific treatise. This blog was started for the express purpose of generating questions about subjects that are of importance to humanity, informed, I hope, by science, but not purporting to be science in its pure form.
What I am seeking is understanding, not mere factual knowledge. I am interested in the larger meaning of what the sciences tell us. Perhaps from that comes a more productive framework for thinking about those questions.
But let me ask you this. In characterizing value judgments as subjective, and implying they are no good to science, you have set up the historical straw man argument about the differences between subjective and objective. The former gets denigrated while the latter is elevated. But where do human (and personal) values come from if not arising as a natural process? Even if they arise in the brains of humans, they must have a purpose and cause. Is science forbidden from ever investigating these realms simply because of this ancient false dichotomy between subjective and objective? I should think our program ought to include reconciliation or consiliance of the seemingly different domains. Actually this is already in the program of a number of neuroscientists who recognize that despite the methodological problems, subjective experience needs to be accounted for when observing (objectively) behavior, especially in brain imaging studies.
Not sure what the relevance of your comment on religious people, etc. was.
Am familiar with MPP and competitive interaction theory, mostly through H.T. Odum's work. And my systems science book will go into the differences between cooperative vs. competitive logistics in fairly great detail.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 08, 2011 at 09:13 AM
George- this has to be one of your more Speculative and philosophical posts…!
I find it so interesting because I have been thinking along these lines for years and indeed have touched on these themes quite a few times( not always coherently) in my past comments.
Spot on with the evolutionary theory learned 20 years ago- things have moved on with epigenetic HGT adaptive mutation etc if a long way from Dawkinesq (how on earth did that guy become a intellectual giant of this culture?) selfish gene ideology (cultural assumptions projected onto zoological derived genetics)
Life is a chimera, it’s the balance of contained conflicts of competition and co-operation, co-operative gene swapping is ubiquitous in the world of viruses and bacteria.
It is quite possible to entertain teleological ideas without being reduced to the level of creationists, creationist like theologists depend on an external agency to animate, control or ‘wind up’ dead material rather than seeing matter as self complexifing and adaptive without needing supernatural forces to evolve and change. Indeed, after years I’ve found it more liberating and productive to think of ‘end causes’ or reasons, ‘whys’ to stimulate novel routes of inquiry. Remaining in the reductionist- nihilist random/absurd universe frame of mind requires so many convoluted ad-hoc rationalisations that it starts to resemble the very denial ideology they set out to abolish.
Adaptive evolution in humans since the arrival of agriculture is obvious in many studies. I believe western anthropologists (I’ve lost the link) tried living with native aborigine tribes living strictly on their hunter-gather diet and had to give up after 6 months or so because of health problems caused by mineral depletion, not because the aborigine diet lacked them, but because they did not have-or have lost the enzymes to extract them.
Anarchic pritivists like Derrick Jensen and John Zaran never bother to discuss or attempt to state what the social structure will be after the crash/collapse because they say that we will simply be forced to revert back to hunter-gather pre-civilised lifestyle and because we have done it in the past for so many millennia we don’t need to organise a any structure – it will happen naturally. This assumes a lack of biological dietary adoption in the last 10K years..
Thinking out loud teleologically one may be tempted to ask a few pertinent questions about this universes evolution…. The most obvious one is how and why a universe full of nothing but homogenous hydrogen plasma managed to converted itself in 13.7 billion years into a living planetary ecosystem complete with brains of sufficiently complexity to begin comprehend itself- self awareness. Is it really nothing more than the inevitable outcome of natural laws of physics, a random fluke which in a re-run could never be repeated. The problem with the million-monkeys-on-typewriters argument is explaining why they do not relapse into gibberish…the complexity meshes together too neatly to be random. If the rise of civilisation was a accident then why did it occur simultaneously and independently in geographically far apart locations?
Could it be that civilisation was a evolutionary necessary development to further emergent self awareness and complexity of the universe via humanity? Is it mere co-incident that all the raw materials necessary to power an industrial civilisation were ready waiting for the right species?
Look at the coincidences : millions of years Carboniferous Age to lay down oil and coal deposits, enormous fossil fuel deposits, metals that were so abundant near the earth's surface, that domesticable animals and plants suitable for agriculture were so accessible even that genes expressed only in higher animals were present in the genome hundreds of millions of years before they were ever needed and are still present in the form of junk DNA- maybe for future specisiation?
Is it possible to have the instruments of modern science which have expanded our consciousness of the universe, the telescopes satellites, the electron microscopes and gene sequencers the silicon chips without a huge global industrial machine to support it?
Of course there has been the terrible curses of civilization as well as the gifts, millions of exploited victims and perpetrators have paid the physical and psychological cost. Technology is not a justification to ignore these facts. For what purpose? Perhaps Self awareness is a cosmic imperative and Nature, the universe, even mathematical systems tendency toward increasingly complex order and, more significantly, organisation, could only be fulfilled by a differentiation of roles, of specialisation, within a complex industrial society?
Art and culture have expanded the consciousness within and through civilisation, the complexity of orchestral music and cinematic representation, the mass communication of artistic experiences have been enhanced by the technology of recording and mass media. This is a increase of emotional/cultural awareness of the universe via humanity.
But something has gone drastically wrong in the last 40 years or so, all the utopian technological dreams of the 50’s and 60’s have crumbled apart. The programme of control and domination of nature has hit the buffers..the world and nature are far more complex than those dreamers supposed. We now have crisis in multiple areas of civilization, environment resources and climate change, finance and money, medicine and new autoimmune diseases, society and globalization, education and culture ….everything gives a very good impression of falling apart at the seams.
Is this an accident or has this some environmental purpose?
Or could it be envisioned as humanities next evolutionary step in a collective transition to a higher level of organization? We all grasp that the old ways of thinking have reached their limits and that convergence of crises is the result of this wrong or inappropriate thinking. The old ways are so powerful and built into our whole system and money culture that perhaps only the destruction, the collapse or the enforced contraction is the only thing that could make us change our mode of living and thinking?
Like a drug addict who has to experience rock bottom to bring home the futility of their lives, before they can change.
The idea that the universe, and Earth, was pregnant with life, with intelligence, with civilisation, with the entire course of separation and reunion, from the very beginning is something I find fascinating..
I find it entertaining and illuminating to speculate that that the primordial planet was a fertile womb seeded by genetic material from space, this material encodes a program for the eventual rise of technological civilisation, the present crisis is a necessary and painful development to the next phase transition to a higher level of consciousness and life.
Posted by: GaryA | May 09, 2011 at 07:09 AM
As a layman with a mutual concern about mankind's future I find your articles fascinating. I like how you mix the scientific with philosophical musings.
It certainly is chilling to have the unique honor of being the first species to be able to matter-of-factly discuss our potential impending extinction.
Posted by: John D | May 09, 2011 at 08:26 AM
George,
I have a simple question.
Are Ants and Bees Intelligent, or just Humans that think they might be ?
What do you think ?
Dean
Posted by: Dean Robertson | May 09, 2011 at 01:00 PM
GaryA,
You've said it better than I could have! Bravo.
I just got through ordering "Principles of Social Evolution" by Andrew Bourke after reading a favorable review (by Stuart West) in Science, 25 Mar. 2011. From the review it sounds like he, you, and I are all on a similar wavelength. I hope to obtain more information on the 'science' behind some of these speculations that might satisfy Matthew's concerns!
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Hi John D.
Thank you. As for our ability to discuss our own extinction, is this not somewhat similar to our ability to consider and think about our own personal demise? We don't like to talk about it, except that we make out wills because we recognize the inevitability of it.
I have an outline for a blog series, or possibly a book, tentatively titled: The Last Will and Testament of Homo sapiens. You can guess the theme and message!
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Dean,
Ant and bees are as intelligent as their econiches require. Since their adaptation as colony eusocial animals allows them to use collective intelligence to very great effect, each individual doesn't need to have much higher level intelligence that simple reactive response with short-term memory-based anticipation. See my research work on what I called a moronic snail, an "intelligent" robot called MAVRIC.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 09, 2011 at 01:50 PM
George; that looks like a very interesting book will have to place on my wish list.
Although I criticised Jensen and Zeran there are radical environmental writers who are thinking well in advance of the rest of us-they are visionaries who can articulate far better than I can the poetic depths of the crisis. Ran Prieur, Charles Eisenstein and, in England, Paul Kingsnorth.
Like a lot of people I become jaded with the incessant dismal failures of this insane society and cut myself off for a while but always return invigorated, after reading inspired words such as these:
Quote from Charles Eisenstein:
We have grown accustomed to enormously impoverished lives. Yet a buried memory remains of what life can and should be, a memory sometimes brought to the surface in those lucid moments of joy and connection. I speak to this memory and this knowing. I wish to remind myself and everyone that a far more beautiful world and life is possible, and that this possibility demands a revolution in human beingness.
My other interest (shared with Ran Prieur) is in finding how to create (or rather nurture the conditions which lead to) a society which mimics natural ecosystems in being decentralised with bottom-up adaptive connections, with no central controlling centre and loaded with redundancy to skirt around losses/adaptations.
All historic attempts to control society by top-down hierarchical structures have been dismal failures-as I’m sure you are aware.
This kind of society would be as different as the present one as an action man doll is to a human being. Our present globalised civilization has the lethal combination of low ecological complexity (monocrop agribusiness, Americanised cultural homogeneity etc) with high technological complexity which is prone to diminishing returns and an ever escalating regime of techncal fixes.
We should be aiming for high ecological complexity (diversity of small scale organic agriculture) with less technological complexity- or machines which again mimic natural cyclic modes of operation.
In this society there is no centralized organisation, each part is dependent on all the others, the most successful are those who best fulfill their function in meeting the needs of the whole. There are people with greater physical and mental powers naturally, but there is no hierarchical mechanism to leverage these internal powers into external powers written into the system.
The only ‘authority’ is when someone is respected for understanding something better than others.
Are we dreamers or visionaries?
Posted by: GaryA | May 10, 2011 at 06:33 AM
George,
So, Ants & Bees have their econiches, does Man have an econiche ? What is his/her intelligent purpose ?
Dean
Posted by: Dean Robertson | May 11, 2011 at 07:24 AM
Experiencer, experiencing and experience are all predicated upon conscious awareness. That awareness, with accoutrements of experiencer, experiencing and experience is the one root of all individual sentiences and any universe(s) that they perceive in all complexity.
Every universe is predicated upon that awareness.
Posted by: Robin Datta | May 13, 2011 at 07:47 AM
George,
I like your musings and feel that you have woven a wonderful tapestry of the highest levels of thought.
I read Why Some Like it Hot on the coevolution of genes and human food culture. I have read much by Gary Paul Nabhan as I enjoy economic botany
http://www.amazon.com/Why-Some-Like-Hot-Diversity/dp/1597260916
I am not sure however once the fossil fuels are gone and the uranium and thorium that we will ever have the energy to visit other planets never mind other solar systems, If we can develop net energy fusion that could be a game changer.
We could then possibly explore emergent properties on other worlds!
Posted by: Larryshultz | May 13, 2011 at 07:35 PM
@ larryshultz
Peak oil is not about fossil fuels being 'gone' - as far as petroleum geologists can tell, we've still got about half of them left, and it's likely that most of that will remain where it is for at least the next few centuries, if not millennia. The issue is that it's the half which is harder (more energy intensive) to extract.
The point is that, given the much lower population conditions Prof Mobus outlines in a possible sustainable 'ecotechnic future' (nod to John Michael Greer), it may well be possible at some point in the future to extract sufficient fossil fuels to kick start some sort of space program. At the least, perhaps a space elevator, and from there, space-based energy sources could take over.
In fact, this seems like a promising premise for a hard sci-fi novel, beginning with the cultural debate that such a society might undertake when it realizes that such a thing was possible - while at the same time *seeming* to violate the fundamental principles - sustainability - of the society. Hmmm....
Posted by: Oz | May 14, 2011 at 07:12 PM
GaryA,
I generally agree with your observations. Top-down structuring of hierarchies for management are not terribly successful. However that doesn't mean that hierarchical management structures are inappropriate. Natural complex adaptive systems need strategic, tactical, logistical, and operational subsystems in order to survive in complex, dynamic, and non-stationary environments. The difference between a top-down (engineered) structure and an evolved system is not that there are no hierarchies, but rather the bottom-up evolved hierarchies are organized by what works rather than what some one person thinks should work.
All complex human societies have been a mix of evolved structures and intentionally designed ones. As a species, our organizational tendencies are still evolving. We haven't quite figured it out. That compounded with the continued emphasis on political power, self-aggrandizement, etc., the current species' subconscious drives, causes the dysfunctions we see in hierarchical governance.
I suspect human society is on track to evolve to greater cooperation and much less competition and that we would see more natural and workable management/governance structures based on sapient cooperation. That is, after the bottleneck!
Visionary, I hope!
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Dean,
Certainly we have an econiche! It just happens to be extraordinarily broad in scope. As extreme omnivores with the ability to construct technology to protect ourselves from the elements we can invade nearly every kind of ecosystem. But that is our econiche.
I don't quite understand what you are asking about intelligent purpose.
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Robin,
Very Vedic!
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Larry,
I don't expect US (that is Homo sapiens to visit other worlds, or even have enough energy to leave this one for space. I could see a distant progeny, the eusapient, eventually finding sources of energy necessary to have a comfortable civilization for a reasonably small population.
I still hold out for cold or warm fusion (maybe the Bussard Polywell)! But I also think it would be best for Earth if the development (if possible) should wait until humans are much wiser than they are now.
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Oz,
What is going to change about the thermodynamics of extracting fossil fuels in the future that would allow future generations to extract some of the remaining resources? If our current technology cannot do it at sufficiently high EROI, what kind of future technology could be developed (especially given that our current ability to invent depends greatly on fossil fuels!) that would make future extraction practical?
Greer and I have a few things in common regarding the fits-and-starts undulating down side of peak. Where we differ is in the assumptions made about the rate of decline. I suspect Greer's assumptions were based on Hubbert's curve which shows a negative logistic that is really just a reflection of the shape of the up side. Hubbert had no real theory to support this and more recently the curve is coming under increasing criticism. My own theoretical (physics-based) model suggests a much steeper down side which, at some point, will likely trigger a financial meltdown re: continuing investments in low EROI oil. We could see a complete shut down of the tap as the wide-boundary EROI of the average barrel of oil gets below four or five.
Greer may also be assuming there will be a significant contribution from alternatives that will keep the total net energy curve from crashing. I have also modeled the addition of (probably unrealistic) alternatives assuming a WWII crash program and assuming very favorable EROIs (e.g. some of the claims made for wind). Even with this addition and aggressive growth rates for conversion, the starting base is simply too small to make any real effective change in the down slope of net energy over the next 100 years. Greer bases a lot of his assumptions on historical precedents for declines in other civilizations. But there is no precedent for global decline based on such radical diminishment of net energy.
OTH: I applaud Greer's attempts at getting people to think about relocalization, etc.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 16, 2011 at 11:52 AM
@ George
First, thanks as always for such an incisive and insightful post! I don't comment often, but I read each post, and deeply appreciate your views and intelligent and passionate explorations in so many diverse areas!
Regarding space flight in the future: it was mostly whimsy, my idea about future gens kick starting a space program.
But in response to your valid question, I would simply note that the looming inability to continue the fossil fuel extraction process has many fathers. It's not simply an ERoEI which is 'too high' in absolute terms. It is a function of the overall complexity in our society which sets that threshold (Tainter's diminishing returns at play).
For example, looking at the Limits to Growth system models, there are several factors interacting which render the diminishing ERoEI a problem. To take one example, the 'pollution' factor in that model will presumably diminish over time as GHGs slowly dissipate/are absorbed, such that this constraint in the model will change, thus changing the output curves (though feedback loops responding to those forcings may of course result in permanent shifts which render that assumption invalid). I can't but wonder what might happen if we played with that model in such a way as to figure out if we could jigger the constraints to attain some state where a one-shot attempt to bootstrap access to space might not become feasible. I'm not a systems guy (yet), so I don't know.
I'm imagining a concerted effort, undertaken by a future society (hundreds of millennia, or even millions of years from now?), to avoid a buildup in overall societal complexity, and focus solely upon building specific technologies needed to achieve that one goal. A sort of selective complexity, if you will, aligned with how that gets expressed in the systems models.
I don't maintain this is likely - I don't even know if it's possible (even if so, we'd need to have a helluva lot more sapience than we exhibit now! maybe the dolphins would help...) - which is why I characterized it as whimsical and cited it as a premise for a sci-fi novel! :)
If this notion is completely implausible, feel free to tell me so and in so doing crush my boyhood dreams of astronauts and space opera. ;-)
Regarding Greer: my sense is that he has often been misinterpreted - not to put words in his mouth, but I think his 'long descent' is really the idea that collapses of civilizations takes decades to play out, but he has advanced several times that the serial crises that comprise such a collapse can be swift, abrupt, and of severe magnitude. That is, it may be a matter of semantics.
I rather see this as similar to Horowicz's notion of catastrophic bifurcation, only iterative. To those of us living through it, such crises will be collapses. But from the macro-viewpoint of the human species that Greer takes, these will unfold over a long period of time.
On his blog this week, he actually responded specifically to a comment that expressed this same confusion (his recent posts indicate he thinks collapse is very near now - which seems to contradict the 'long descent' hypothesis) - unfortunately, the blog platform ate that comment and Greer's clarifying response. :( I probably did a miserable job trying to remember what he said.
I also think Greer's focus on the immediate need for cultural conservation (esp. of appropriate tech toolkit) implies a rejection of the linear decline' case.
I think that you and he are much closer on this than you may think. It would be interesting for the two of you to put your heads together and find the points of similarity and departure, and to understand the factors which underlie the latter. I for one would welcome the insights that might spring from such a meeting of two brilliant and thoughtful minds.
Posted by: Oz | May 16, 2011 at 04:31 PM
Should have noted: Horowicz explains catastrophic bifurcation in his FEASTA paper entitled 'Tipping Point", located here:
http://www.feasta.org/documents/risk_resilience/Tipping_Point.pdf
Posted by: Oz | May 16, 2011 at 04:37 PM
What if the Anglo-American Power Elite had determined as long as 30-40 years ago that 80-90% of the human ape population are not worthy of the next evolutionary step forward (or backward), and that their self-selected academic, scientific, corporate, political, and mass-media elite influentials have been preparing the mass mind for one or more events that would result in the culling of the world human ape population by 80-90% over a generation or less?
What would be the most efficient methods for permanently ridding the planet (and the Power Elite) of 8-9 out of 10 of us in a relatively short period of time?
A series of worldwide nuclear detonations disguised as asteroid strikes?
A global false flag operation in which hostile "extraterrestrials" from the Rings of Uranus detonate neutron bombs or use millions of alien-shaped drones and alien-like fighter ships to take out billions of people in a War of the Worlds-like attack? The survivors would be left to die from their injuries, disease, and starvation?
And after the population is so thoroughly terrorized, the remnant unnecessary population is offered free passage on spacecraft to escape or into underground shelters that are processing centers where they are herded into death chambers and exterminated. Possible?
A highly virulent pathogen is released in the air and water supplies over large metropolitan centers? Those who survive are deemed too contagious to live and are killed on sight, burned in mass graves, or allowed to die from disease and starvation?
What kind of global economic, political, and social conditions would be required for the Power Elite to be compelled to carry out such actions on a regional or global scale?
Would people be allowed to volunteer to be exterminated in a humane way?
While this sounds like some nightmarish sci-fi movie plot, at 7 billion people and counting, Peak Oil, peak oil exports, and food insecurity rising dramatically, I'm not so sure that this would not be a practical solution, and I might even consider volunteering to do my part to avoid living the nightmare.
Posted by: Nemesis | May 17, 2011 at 07:05 PM
George
I keep forgetting to ask your opinion of the 'Left in the dark' theory of brain development.
http://leftinthedark.org.uk/node/4
http://beyond-belief.org.uk/
Briefly this states that humanity is suffering from a progressive neurodegenerative condition that has distorted our perception and altered our sense of self.
Apparantly this is gaining increasing acceptance- many scientists are intrigued and there is considerable anacdodal evidence to back this radical idea; there have also been a few articles for the layman in Psychology today etc.
Posted by: GaryA | May 19, 2011 at 06:34 AM
Hi Oz.
I've sent Greer messages on several occasions, as I do get down to Ashland from time to time and thought it would be nice to chat. He has never responded so my guess is he is not interested since I have suggested a much faster and steeper decline than I thought he was describing.
I'm always open to discussion though!
Thanks for the link. I will try to get to checking out Horowicz soon.
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Nemesis,
How would this "power elite" function or continue to live high on the hog without a slave class to produce the wealth they consume? Would they actually want to eliminate the workers knowing that that would be like killing the goose that lays the golden egg? Of course, if they are stupid enough to have let the world get into this condition in the first place they would be stupid enough to cut off their own noses despite their faces!
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GaryA,
I will need to read more. At first glance, however, it seems the rhetoric being used is a bit sensationalistic, which tends to excite my QE senses! I will pursue it and try to get back to you.
That there are anomalies in our psychological models is now well understood. The Heuristics and Biases program (Kahneman & Tversky) that is uncovering many previously overlooked failings in our so-called rational selves demonstrates that the human brain is much less able than many had previously thought.
There is also some growing evidence that we have been evolving toward a more collective/cooperative-based perception of ourselves and the world (similar to the Asian world view of the role of the individual in the collective). We seem to be headed toward needing multiple minds working on problems that might have required only one mind a hundred generations ago, or so. That is intriguing as well.
The idea that neurodegeneration is somehow at play seems to imply an excuse that we are getting 'worse' in some sense, as if we were once 'better' in that same sense. My own thoughts tend toward the idea that we were headed in the 'right' direction (more sapience) but got side railed by our inventiveness and since the advent of agriculture, have not had strong selection forces pushing us further in that direction.
Degeneration, on the other hand, seems to require some negative selection or poisons! I'll have to read more, though.
George
Posted by: George Mobus | May 20, 2011 at 12:01 PM
Dear George,
You have successfully confused me by claiming a genuine, non-sophistic and non-semantic difference between 'understanding' and 'knowledge'. And indeed by claiming that the existence of subjective feelings might mean they define the subjects to which they are applied in some way. I do not doubt that subjective feelings exist and can be studied (it was extremely disingenuous of you to suggest that because they are extrinsic to their subjects I don’t think they can be studied as natural processes that are intrinsic to themselves, perhaps even in a straw-man argument type of way), and that objective valuations are no better than subjective valuations in the great scheme of things (objective values are only important if you’re trying to reach objective conclusions, which I mistakenly assumed you were trying to do: “question everything – particularly those things for which there is no answer”), but I also do not doubt that the cause or purpose of a subjective feeling does not change the objective value of the creator or subject. You are clearly very attached to the “blazing star” of humanity for example, but who or what exactly would miss this “blazing star” if the species became extinct (beyond our parasites and viruses of course, which would also then be extinct probably)? My suggestion is that nothing would miss it and that the only way humans, like yourself, can suggest that our extinction would be “cosmically tragic” because we’re a “blazing star” (self-declared) is because of self-importance generated by circular logic (“I think humans are important because they can make spaceships so we are important because we make spaceships.”). Yes, it may be perfectly natural and biologically rational for humans, and indeed all other sentient entities, to inflate their own importance, but that doesn’t mean any of us actually are all that important.
In summary, I really thought “question everything” might also refer to you questioning your own beliefs. Thus I erroneously waded into a subjective debate that you don’t particularly want to solve. Now I know, I will leave you to lament the possibility that planet earth will one day be full of life that doesn’t contain Homo sapiens, safe in the knowledge that we won’t succeed (whether we “have to” or not) and that planet earth will still be absolutely amazing anyway (the planet will still be of life for goodness sake (for a while anyway)! How will that ever be diminished by anything, never mind the loss of the most narcissistic species ever to walk upon its surface?!).
Question nothing that you already believe peeps. It’s much easier that way.
Kind regards,
Matthew
Posted by: Matthew Watkinson | May 25, 2011 at 02:42 AM
Matthew,
Ouch!
Now tell me again about beliefs that don't get questioned. Truly(?) narcissism or simply lack of something else (my candidate remains sufficient sapience, but to each their own)?
Since I don't think I said or implied that there would be anyONE to miss us if we departed, I think you have mischaracterized my meaning. The reason I labeled it a tragedy is that it would go against the larger scale pattern of evolution. I understand your proclivity to be satisfied with the animals that will be left behind having then a more "natural" condition without man around to force select them to man's desires. I would like to suggest that this insight of yours may or may not hold a great deal of validity, but you certainly hold it to be truth and that motivates comments like the above. In other words look into a mirror before projecting onto others.
Having said that I will still maintain my link to Fishsnorkle's plug for critical thinking, which I have on my academic home page. It is one of the best treatments of the subject I've seen and I recommend it to all of my students.
George
[EDIT: I got to thinking more about the "most narcissistic species" line. That would imply there are less narcissistic species than humans. I wonder which ones. Is there a minimal level of narcissism for species. And, finally, what does it mean for a species (as opposed to an individual) to be narcissistic? Is there a gene for it that has spread throughout the gene pool? Just saying...]
Posted by: George Mobus | May 25, 2011 at 03:59 PM
Projecting an individual personality trait on to whole species smacks of scale chauvanism...:-)
Matthew; I would suggest it is the universes emergent self comprehension through the human brain (the only known site) which confers significance on humanity not above other life forms, but unique nevertheless.
Posted by: GaryA | June 01, 2011 at 07:19 AM