Life, so goes the theory, has evolved over time (lots of time) to adapt to its surroundings. Slightly different surroundings bring slightly different adaptations and voila, we have the staggering variety of life here on Earth in mere millennia. Humans, of course, share this trait. Black People turned into white people over thousands of years while in colder climes, Asians stayed in the sun too long and got squinty eyes and all the rest of it.
The problem now is that we as a species are not allowing nature to catch up. We are constantly inventing new things, changing our environments to suit ourselves. Essentially we are adapting the environment to suit ourselves. The problem with this is it may freeze evolution where it is. We are essentially telling natural selection to go stuff itself, we are perfect as we are and we’ll change everything else to suit us, thank you very much. So we give nature no chance to move on to the next evolutionary step. We can’t read minds, we can’t fly and we can’t be a mind with no body, ever, because we can’t evolve.
Also with medical technology we are keeping those negative evolutions (or devolutions) that would normally kill off the lucky recipients of such changes. So humans as a species are in the midst of a simultaneous devolution and evolution. This can only spell trouble. Taking an extreme and definitely politically incorrect view point, do we really need millions more idiots running around this world just because of the ‘sanctity of life’ and we have prevented them from taking the natural course and killing themselves off.
Of course there is arguments against this and its all value judgements, and its impossible to draw the line. Do we let an otherwise healthy, intelligent person die of cancer just because they ‘evolved’ that way? Or do we have an IQ cutoff for babies and kill them because they are a ‘devolution’? It all gets too complicated so we just go on as we are, and suffer/enjoy the consequences.
The biggest problem I see though is not the evolution/devolution dichotomy, but the possibility that we create something that we can’t control, and ruin everything for everybody. Evolution previously took care of this. If it didn’t work, you died, if it did, you survived. Now with the pace of humans altering their environment to suit themselves, there is no such automatic control.
If genetic modification of crops somehow reduces or eradicates the nutrional value of those crops, there is no way to go back, we’re all screwed. One interesting project I just came across the other day is ‘Blue Brain’. It is essentially a project modelling an entire rat brain from the ground up. They have successfully modelled a single neocortical column, the basic building block of all mammalian brains including humans. The cool thing about this is that when the set it to run, the column created its own networks between its neurons. It essentially grew as a real brain did. Of course it is miles off being true AI, but it is a long way there already.
And this is one of the scariest things about altering our environment, altering it to suit us, instead of altering to suit our environments. What if we create AI and can’t control it. It could be the end of the human race. I have a feeling that all intelligent life reaches this point at some point in its life. We can go one of two ways here, wipe ourselves out, or move onto the next evolutionary stage in our development. And I think its going to be dumb luck, not good management as to which it turns out to be. Bring on The Terminator.
The problem now is that we as a species are not allowing nature to catch up. We are constantly inventing new things, changing our environments to suit ourselves. Essentially we are adapting the environment to suit ourselves. The problem with this is it may freeze evolution where it is. We are essentially telling natural selection to go stuff itself, we are perfect as we are and we’ll change everything else to suit us, thank you very much. So we give nature no chance to move on to the next evolutionary step. We can’t read minds, we can’t fly and we can’t be a mind with no body, ever, because we can’t evolve.
Also with medical technology we are keeping those negative evolutions (or devolutions) that would normally kill off the lucky recipients of such changes. So humans as a species are in the midst of a simultaneous devolution and evolution. This can only spell trouble. Taking an extreme and definitely politically incorrect view point, do we really need millions more idiots running around this world just because of the ‘sanctity of life’ and we have prevented them from taking the natural course and killing themselves off.
Of course there is arguments against this and its all value judgements, and its impossible to draw the line. Do we let an otherwise healthy, intelligent person die of cancer just because they ‘evolved’ that way? Or do we have an IQ cutoff for babies and kill them because they are a ‘devolution’? It all gets too complicated so we just go on as we are, and suffer/enjoy the consequences.
The biggest problem I see though is not the evolution/devolution dichotomy, but the possibility that we create something that we can’t control, and ruin everything for everybody. Evolution previously took care of this. If it didn’t work, you died, if it did, you survived. Now with the pace of humans altering their environment to suit themselves, there is no such automatic control.
If genetic modification of crops somehow reduces or eradicates the nutrional value of those crops, there is no way to go back, we’re all screwed. One interesting project I just came across the other day is ‘Blue Brain’. It is essentially a project modelling an entire rat brain from the ground up. They have successfully modelled a single neocortical column, the basic building block of all mammalian brains including humans. The cool thing about this is that when the set it to run, the column created its own networks between its neurons. It essentially grew as a real brain did. Of course it is miles off being true AI, but it is a long way there already.
And this is one of the scariest things about altering our environment, altering it to suit us, instead of altering to suit our environments. What if we create AI and can’t control it. It could be the end of the human race. I have a feeling that all intelligent life reaches this point at some point in its life. We can go one of two ways here, wipe ourselves out, or move onto the next evolutionary stage in our development. And I think its going to be dumb luck, not good management as to which it turns out to be. Bring on The Terminator.
2 comments:
Thoroughly interesting read young man. i'm quite taken with the vibe of the last few blogs.
you can see the evo/devolution withing smaller communities than inter continental examples, that's what is really scary.
take an eastern suburbs pub and compare it with, say, a western suburbs bar and bistro... the difference in speech, posture, mentality etc etc is staggering and its less than a 25 minute drive.
I'm not so much worried about AI taking over. what worries me is that more and more people are transforming into these pokie playing meth addicted drones.the ability to speak is being replaced by the ability to groan and bark. look at the kids in that austrian mad house, they communicated with each other via part german part grunts and part barks. utterly amazing.
AI is to blame for this i guess- because of technology we no longer have to communicate one on one to do banking or to buy things. sms speak/ msn/ the internet.. man, are we sure we haven't reached our peak?
some of the greatest literature/music/ etc has come from the 17/1800's.. i hardly see them speaking of shannon noll in 200 years as a pinnacle of greatness
the bar is being raised by a smaller and smaller percentage and a seperate bar is so inconceivably low that im often left wondering what the fuck has happened.
i cant be bothered writing something as articulate as dylans reply, but i will say that this blog is fantastic funkmaster. easily the best by anyone for several months.
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