This post brought to you by Tony Pray
“We will soon discover whether this bold evolutionary experiment of combining a large fore brain with opposable thumbs was really a good idea. Over the next decade, our species takes its university finals. Get revising.” —Amory Lovins
This link to an article by Amory Lovins might also be of interest.
Speaking of human evolution brings some questions to my mind that I think could be a seed for some interesting discussion. In his seminal work “The Naked Ape”, Desmond Morris proposed that we assume the viewpoint of an alien visiting earth for the first time to observe the behavior of this strange species. I’d like to propose that we use this same device to take another look at h. sapp., with an eye to understanding in particular our interaction with all of the toys and tools, widgets and gadgets from which we seem never to stray too far.
Without our tools, we are at best severely under equipped to survive, much less thrive, in the world. This is true for clothing, shelter, transport, agriculture and practically every support mechanism for humanity at large. True, there are extreme religious sects that strictly limit the types and extent of tools that can be used, but even these sects use basic tools such as clothing and agricultural implements to survive.
Even our near relatives, the great apes and chimps use tools in a very limited way, e.g.a stick as a crutch or to probe the depth of water in a creek. No other species even comes close in terms of the range of uses we’ve invented for our tools.
Our alien observer, seeing us for the first time might well note the obvious external differences between us and the apes, but on second look would surely see that the use of tools and the sophisticated use of language set us apart far more than any external appearances.
If our alien was inclined to classify the different levels and types of tool uses he found, (For convenience I’ve designated all alien observers as he since I’m not an exobiologist and the masculine pronoun requires one less keystroke.), There are some likely classifications that come to mind:
Clothing
Agriculture
Levers and clubs
Simple machines
Chemical processes such as fire
Electricity
Nuclear processes
Computing
Biotechnology
Nanotechnology
Notice the accelerating pace of the changes? Ray Kurzweil would have us all believe that in 50 years we’ll have reached a “Singularity” where no one would recognize the changes we’ve gone through. I contend that we have already passed the event threshold to several mini-singularities and that the accelerating pace means we’ll hit more if we survive.
My mother-in-law was born in 1909 and lived to be 96 years old. She had as much chance of grasping the world around her in the beginning of the 21st century as did a bronze age shaman understanding an assembly line. It was simply beyond her grasp. She wasn’t too worried about it though because she knew she was an honored part of our family and that she would be cared for inside our little community.
I think we’re all very likely to find the world is beyond our individual grasp as we move ahead, but I’m not too worried either, because one of the tools I failed to mention in the list above is communications. Our alien visitor, seeing many of us walking around with strange totemic devices held tightly to our heads, or seeing others of us with odd looking metal extensions from our ears might think at first that these were decorative devices but close observation would eventually show that these devices enabled emergent behaviors that are simply not possible without them.
The classification, after the discovery that the totems are really communications devices, might look something like this:
Species identified as: homo connectus (Networked human)
This species has a startlingly wide variety of specialized sub types, varying in color from albino through black with varying shades of brown, red or yellow. Living in small colonies until a certain population density is reached, the species then herds together into giant hives using clever strategies to handle waste removal and feeding.
That this is a hive mind was not immediately clear since individual members of the species seem able to survive and even to reproduce in isolation from the “queen”, (in this species the “queen” may be male or female and appears to be selected from a pool of mindless drones by random selection criteria). However, this species, like another species observed earlier locally identified as the ant, has evolved subtle ways to mark territory ant “communicate” with its fellows. As the ant uses scent to mark a trail and communicate the likelihood of finding food to other ants, the homo connectus (hereinafter HC) uses a mixture of physical markings and electro magnetic frequency calls to pass information to its hive mates.
Just as with the ants, this produces emergent behaviors from the hive that no individual can comprehend, much less create alone. The activity that attracted the attention of the survey crew to this species was our discovery of artifacts produced by them in orbit around the planet. It appears that the species produces “scouts” driven to search for new territory. Closer examination also revealed that the species has reasonable control over many external chemical processes and there may even be some isolated evidence in some hives of control of gross nuclear reactions.
There are frequent wars between hives, and this seems to have accelerated the evolution of the species as a whole by first mixing isolated populaces, then applying intense environmental pressure through “war” and ordinary environmental pressures. The result over the past few thousands of years has resulted in much higher levels of electromagnetic activity than was observed in past surveys, with a concomitant increase in populations and mixing of various hive populations to produce many new hybrids. This increase in population pressure is predictably overloading the carrying capacity of the environment in many areas, working with “wars” to winnow the hives and individuals unable to adapt to the changed circumstances.
Some recent emergent behaviors from some of the various hives have led us to believe that the species does have a chance to survive for the long term, since the most maladaptive hives seem to self-destruct and be absorbed into more successful ones. Close observation is warranted for the next few years as many of the environmental factors such as water shortages, freakishly powerful weather patterns and so on will force many existing hives into migrations that will lead to more “wars” between the hives. The resulting species might evolve survival strategies we would find of interest… end of report.
For your consideration - To an outside observer, we might well appear to be a hive mind, a loose collective mind that is far more capable than any individual member. Given that observation, it seems to this unit (forgive the SF references) that it might not be a bad idea for us to begin exploring better ways to get to “good” collective decisions. As the world becomes increasingly complex, we need to develop effective bullshit filters, find better ways to store, sort, cross-reference and access information, distribute it and observe the effects. The scientific method has served us well so far and I believe it has to be the basis of the next level of consciousness. Unfortunately, my observation of the overall intelligence of the hive mind is that it’s spottily brilliant but generally stupid. We’re part of an idiot savant. m
Group decision making needs to be improved, at least for the group(s) I want to continue to be a part of. As an individual, I’d like to survive and thrive and for my group(s) to thrive.
Game theory, evolutionary biology, history, the scientific method, markets and other disciplines should inform the experiments needed to get to better decisions. In my observations, the larger a group gets, the dumber the decisions it seems to make. We’re not well equipped to handle more than about 150 close acquaintances in a world where billions have something to say.
How can we improve our particular hive(s).