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    Requiem for Humanity — Star Wars vs. Stone Age
    By Alan Hoshor | April 20th 2012 02:24 PM | 3 comments | Print | E-mail | Track Comments
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    About Alan

    Alan Hoshor is a long time resident of the Pacific Northwest. Originally trained in Forestry at University of California, Berkeley; he has had a...

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    SUMMARY

    George Friedman has observed that the entire pattern of traditional life is collapsing and no clear alternative patterns are emerging. This view is appropriate to our times. The human race is in transition. No one; human or artificial intelligence can predict the outcome of our next century. What can be predicted is the evolution of a number of technologies whose inertia makes them unstoppable. Genetic engineering, nanotechnology and robotics are the harbingers of a very different community of intelligent life forms on earth. With the addition of artificial intelligence these four technologies will be the basis for the intelligent life that continues to evolve on Earth and within our solar system.

    We have created a Star Wars civilization, with Stone Age emotions, medieval institutions, and god-like technology - Edward O. Wilson, 2012
    Few people alive today will look on this future with anticipation. I doubt that even Ray Kurzweil will continue to believe in immortal man; even if he does achieve that milestone in this century. The Universe that we know is an environment without an example of immortality. Even stars are in a constant evolution. Stellar evolution starts with a molecular cloud and ends with a planetary nebula restarting the cycle of a stellar life. All levels of the known universe demonstrate a continuous fight for resources. The microcosm of life’s evolution on Earth is no different. The Technology Augmented Bioengineered (TAB) humans emerging from this twenty first century will be competing between themselves; as well as competing with newly emergent forms of non-biological life. An immortal mind derived from Homo sapiens will be a museum piece. It will not have the knowledge, mental capacity or speed of thought to even usefully communicate with the intelligences emerging from this century. Proponents of virtual immortality imagine that they will have augmented brains able to maintain their humanity while ensconced in an artificial brain. This egocentric concept is an outcome from our old lower brain. All of our instincts and emotions evolved over millions of years to create the soul of modern man. These instincts and emotions are not knowledge. They are essentially the same in all humans. As such, they could be replaced by a single identical subsystem in an artificial brain attempting to replicate a human; but why? These instincts and emotions were important for survival in our past evolutionary biology. They will be counterproductive in artificial intelligences, robots, and eventually suppressed or discarded in TAB humans.

    Homo sapiens have existed for only the last 500,000 years. In contrast, early protoctist life is 590,000,000 years old. Primates have lived on earth for more than 16 million years. Our anthropocentric optimism about the greatness of human civilization has little to substantiate it. Seen in the perspective of life’s evolution on our planet, Homo sapiens will have one of the shortest life spans of intelligent species. There is little possibility that we will ever reach the mean lifetime of mammal species. Many of these will outlive our species by millions of years.

    What should you, I and our children do to prepare for this new world? A tough question. It is easier to identify what not to do. Fighting the forces of change didn’t work for the Luddites and won’t work for modern fundamentalist religions. Having children, raising them, and socialization with neighbors and relatives are the greatest functions of the Amish family. This traditional pattern of family life is collapsing. The Amish, Islam and similar groups will find themselves so isolated from future societies that they will share no common values. This disparity will make it hard to persist the traditional social patterns of rural life. Within a few more generations it will be difficult to see any difference between the Amish and any other aboriginal culture. These sidelined communities will endure, hopefully without persecution. However, they will have given up their option to contribute to the future of humanity. Given that the majority of the world continues to have faith in a creator it is certain that some of these religions will develop beliefs that encompass TAB humanity as part of God’s plan. For those that don’t, the consequences of intolerance of change will inevitably lead to massive social conflict. As I said in the prolog, we are beginning a frightful, rapid and messy evolution into multiple new intelligent species. Conflict is inevitable. As the last few generations of humanity we will constantly be faced with choices for which our evolutionary evolved skills have not prepared us. No choice is left to maintain our old patterns of life. We are on a steep slope sliding towards extinction.

    Comments

    Gerhard Adam
    What should you, I and our children do to prepare for this new world? A tough question.
    Not a tough question.  There's nothing to do.  Individuals do NOT evolve; populations do.  Therefore you cannot change or "prepare" any more than T-Rex could decide to become a bird.
    This disparity will make it hard to persist the traditional social patterns of rural life. Within a few more generations it will be difficult to see any difference between the Amish and any other aboriginal culture.
    Not likely, because humanity is setting itself up for a big crash.  Most people are so wrapped up in a fantasy future, they overlook the basics of biology.  They think everything is trivial or unimportant except for their own agendas and they don't realize they've already lost the biological battle.  

    Gerhard Adam | 04/25/12 | 15:51 PM
    AlanHos
    Hi Gerhard, T-Rex did not have the intellectual tools to influence the future. Remarkable people affect the future (i.e. populations) all the time. Epigenetics respond to the environment within an individual within their lifespan, and can then be transmitted directly to offspring. Not that this will be a practical method of dealing with our impending future. It is unfortunate, but I agree that humanity usually ignores the basic consequences of social/cultural collective actions. But I agree with Edward O. Wilson that it is our capacity for culture, and our stone age emotions that has currently won the biological battle. Dominating and out-competing all other life. So I'd make your statement another way. The rules of biological battle have changed due to scientific accomplishments. Our challenge is to play in this new game before we have time to evolve answers in evolutionary time. As I've said repeatedly, we are poorly prepared for this challenge. Cheers,
    —
    Alan Hoshor
    Alan Hoshor | 04/27/12 | 16:57 PM
    Gerhard Adam
    T-Rex did not have the intellectual tools to influence the future.
    I believe that's where you're making a mistake.  You're presuming that we are using our intellect to influence the future.  As I stated, individuals pursuing their own interests are determining what is or isn't developed, and it will be political, social, and economic forces that determine what is available.

    The individual will continue to behave as they always have, merely looking out for what is the most advantageous or curious today.  Our evolution is as much out of our control as T-Rex's was. 

    Even for those that think we are capable of controlling the future, let alone whether we actually are, have nothing on which to base their proposed outcomes, except wishful thinking.  There isn't a single instance of someone being able to predict what the future holds, least of all, how it will affect humanity in general.  Therefore, we don't know what evolutionary consequences exist for humans, whether it be from genetics, epigenetics, behavioral, or cultural influences.   We like to pride ourselves on our intellect, but I suspect we've already reached the pinnacle and we will gradually decline to some extent.  Even those that want to argue for augmented intelligence have no concept of what they're proposing, since even the "wildest" claims are little more than suggestions for increased "storage" in the brain, which has never been demonstrated to be a problem.

    The implicit assumption is that we lack "knowledge", but we don't even know what that means, because the only thing we can propose is providing more information as if the two are synonymous.  We already have preliminary evidence in this "information age", that more information doesn't produce more intelligence.  If anything, we've demonstrated over the past few decades, that we've become more insular and more inclined to engage in confirmation bias, than we are in expanding our horizons.

    Certainly there are some people that will always be the exception, but when one examines humanity at large, I see no indications that any of these futurist claims have a chance of achievement.

    More importantly, those that predict a stabilizing population has missed the basics of population biology.  No matter how many people choose to reduce the number of children they have, and no matter how much economic success is correlated to such behaviors, it misses the main point.  There are always people that will disagree and continue to have children, regardless of others beliefs.  Whether this be for religious reasons or something else, the point is that reducing the number of children born to most people, will simply shift the population growth to those that don't share those views.  Given enough time, those attitudes will then prevail and the rules of biology state that the group or organism that grows the fastest and the most will always win in the end.  So, the efforts of trying to curtail population growth is only going to affect those that may share that belief, while those that don't will continue to outpace everyone else.

    We don't currently see that effect, because they are a relative minority, but given the claims of future population stabilization advocates, that trend can change very quickly.  As a result, we will never achieve the stabilization sought for, and it's simply another example of presuming that statistical claims override individual actions.
    Gerhard Adam | 04/27/12 | 17:07 PM