Survival Smarts

A secondary question popped into my mind recently, as I was pondering a related primary question. I find this often happens to me: I find myself mulling over a primary question for which there seems to be no immediate or obvious answer. As I continue to contemplate that question, a secondary question often comes to mind. When I shift my attention to that second question—which is usually a more profound one—clarity sometimes comes.

The initial question that spoke to me recently was “What should I be doing right now?” At any given time, we face choices. We must choose what to do or how to respond to something, hundreds of times a day. Our response is most often an unconscious one, and we do quite well with most of those kinds of choices. They are also usually rather straightforward and don’t require a lot of attention on our part. 

There are other times, however, when it's not at all clear what we should do… when things get complex, and we find ourselves wrestling with the issue at the conscious level. This can be especially true, when we've had a question bother us for some time, and we've just not been able to come up with a good answer. Often it's because the primary question that appears before us is not really digging down to an essential level; it’s not getting at the real issue.

So, as I pondered my primary “What should I do?” question, a secondary one came to mind. I realized it was more fundamental: “What do I need to know?” I think this secondary question came to mind, because I feel that knowledge must often precede action; in order to do something right, I need to have the appropriate knowledge first. 

We need to have some basic kind of knowledge, in order to choose wisely; to thrive, or even to survive. If I have a reasonably accurate knowledge about something, then my response—my action—will be smarter. In contrast, I can't expect to do things well, if I'm confused or deluded. Thus that more fundamental question came to mind: “What do I need to know?” Maybe I was getting somewhere.

In fact, this more basic question is an appropriate one for any creature. Every critter wants to survive, to stay alive, and therefore needs some crucial knowledge about how to do so. For example, any animal “knows” it needs to avoid eating poisonous things. A bee “knows” how to locate pollen. A bird “knows” to avoid hawks. And those creatures who have acquired the necessary knowledge (by surviving) pass it on to their offspring. This is an excellent example of the process of evolution, as well as the origin of natural intelligence.

While most animals naturally respond to what they need to know and thus what they need to do, we humans have been granted a more advanced level of cognition. So, rather than respond inherently and immediately, we ruminate on the question. We imagine various alternatives and envisage the future. We try to factor many possibilities into our choices. We are driven by the fact that we not only want to survive—we want to thrive. This is a special quality we humans have. It has brought us to the dominant position we occupy today.

All this cognitive power of ours can lead to complications and problems, however. Some of us, when we wonder about what to do, decide to try to seek control. A major objective of our technologies has been to deliver that control—whether it be over Nature or each other. Technology has given us the power—we believe—to secure our welfare and safety. The danger is that, although we've gained some command over our existence through the use of technology, it often becomes a greater threat, which may come to control us. Technology has a way of getting out of hand. It’s not necessarily a smart way to survive.

SETI Reset—Part 2

In the last post I began to describe a few possible reasons why our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI) has as yet not found any signals arriving from outer space. Here are a few more suggestions I offer.

(2) Other alien civilizations may not have chosen to pursue a similar technological path as we have. Our technology too often has led to weapons that harm living beings. I can conceive of a civilization deciding to have taken a more sensible and peaceful approach and thus avoided technology’s harmful side effects, by avoiding much of our problematic technical inventions, such as the many types of weapons we’ve created. Would it not have been possible for Earth’s humans to have decided to put its energies into a spiritual society, rather than a high-tech and dangerous existence?

(3) Life may indeed be common out there, but the chances of it progressing beyond a single-celled state to a multi-cellular, more complex phase, may be quite low. Life on this planet stayed at a microbial state for about three billion years, before favorable conditions evolved to allow it to grow large enough to build things like cars and computers. Those propitious conditions were not inevitable. Life on Earth could still today easily be simple, single-celled critters, waiting patiently to grow more complex. 

(4) It took 4.5 billion years for “intelligent” life to evolve on Earth, so there's a low probability that life elsewhere (at the present) is at a similar stage of technological development to us. They may not reach that stage for a few billion years yet, or have long ago passed through it. I say “pass through it,” because an argument can be made that if life is to survive in the long term, it may have to get past dabbling with hazardous technological toys.

And finally, (5) Life anywhere in the universe may be doomed to evolve into a technological stage, after which it inevitably extinguishes itself. We on Earth seem to be headed towards what is often called an “omega point”—a time where we dramatically transform from civilization’s chaotic and exponential path, towards a sustainable way. It may be that that omega point could be the arrival of a completely different kind of intelligent life on Earth… if we survive to that time.

So the search for SETI will go on. We are curious creatures, and we want to know if there are others like us out there. It appears increasingly likely that extraterrestrial life might well exist, given our recent discoveries of extrasolar planets and Earth-bound extremophile-kinds of life. If the discovery of life in the vastness of the universe comes about, it would be an incredible discovery.

We cannot yet travel to the many distant worlds and directly observe life there... and maybe we never will—given the immense distances. So we continue look out there, building receivers to apprehend any EM signals flying through our region of space; which could prove that we are not alone. But is the presence of an “intelligent” species out there really going to be detected only by our reception of a technological signal they emit? Could there be other kinds of contact that we’ve not yet imagined? We'd best keep our minds open.

Next time I will describe yet another, rather weird possibility, for reconsidering the SETI issue… that we may already have been contacted and absorbed into a super intelligent civilization’s domain.

Tool Mistreatment

Tools have been of tremendous benefit to humans. From the early use of stone tools (dating back millions of years... even before humans arrived on the scene) to the latest artificial intelligence (AI) machines, tools have enabled us to extend our senses and multiply our physical capabilities far beyond what nature gave us. Those first stone tools brought our ancestors powerful new ways to smash nuts to get at their interior, to cut up meat, to clean animal hides for clothing, and even to fashion other tools.

When those ancestors subsequently learned how to make metal tools, their capabilities dramatically expanded. The later invention of telescopes and microscopes extended our visual capacity out to the stars and into the interior of biological cells. The list is limitless. It extends all the way to today's computers that bring us almost unimaginably powerful capabilities—possibly the most impressive of which is AI.

Human culture would likely have remained on a par with chimpanzees, had we not been able to create this increasingly complex and powerful lineage of tools. A fascinating question that is often posed is how our big brain and our fantastic tools are causally connected. Can we attribute the evolution of our wonderful tools to our capacious cranium, or did our increasingly sophisticated tools demand a bigger brain to use them? It's sort of a chicken-and-egg conundrum. Whatever the answer, modern humans certainly depend on and benefit from our many kinds of tools.

Tools are a form of technology. The definition of a tool is traditionally considered to be a hand-held device, used for a specific type of occupation. In contrast, our modern tools are usually thought of as a form of technology—a word that generally describes machinery or equipment developed from or for scientific purposes. With these definitions, we can see that those primitive hand-held tools gradually morphed into various forms of technology. (Interestingly, the root of the word technology is the Greek word tekhnologle, which means “the systematic creation from art and/or craft.” This craft process seems to me to be exactly how the early stone tools came about.)

Unfortunately, tools and technology have also had a dark side—from the first stone hammer to the latest AI machine. Tools seem to have invited mistreatment from their very beginnings. The same rock that was used to crack a nut also soon got used to crack a human skull. Sharp flaked stone tools that allowed our ancestors to cut up a gazelle also got used as a weapon to cut up other humans. Those primitive metal knives cut meat better than stone, but soon saw use in warfare. And so it went, throughout our evolution.

A current mistreatment of a high-tech tool that billions of people have enjoyed using—Facebook—is causing all kinds of trouble for many people. Facebook is valued for its ability to keep people in instant and handy touch with each other, but there's a dark side to its use that is emerging. Commercial interests use big data algorithms to determine intimate behaviors of Facebook users and then entice them to buy billions of dollars worth of stuff they otherwise would not have bought—without those targeted ads.

Multinational actors use the same intimate data to manipulate people's behaviors through the use of fake news and other biased misinformation. Facebook, Google, Amazon, and other online businesses all exploit the power of AI—ostensibly to offer us convenience, but also to amass huge amounts of money by swaying our choices. And of course, many technologists today worry about the future dangers of AI robots—which some fear will either eliminate many current forms of employment or even enslave their creators, us humans.

I am not equipped to explain why it is that Homo sapiens is such a brilliant creator of so many wonderful tools that make our lives so pleasant, but then also get used as one form of weapon or another—weapons which make so many lives miserable, or even terminate them. Philosophers and pious people have pondered and debated that issue for millennia. They have offered many diverse explanations—and most of those explanations clash with each other.

Whatever the cause of human behavior that leads us to mistreat our tools, there certainly are countless examples of how we've perpetually done it. One factor is that we seem to be suckers for the latest technology. Show me a new, convenient and efficacious tool, and I'll want one. Tell me about an attractive technology that's about to be offered, I'll want one. Our initial intentions are rarely wicked; we simply focus on the advantages, and thus we enthusiastically pursue the new tool.

But sooner—rather than later—it seems that someone will find a way to mistreat the new tool; even if they don't deliberately do so. Is it greed? Laziness? Merciless competition? Seeking power over others? Or is it largely due to the fact that we just move too fast, and can't seem to pause and exercise a little precaution? I suppose it's all of these and more.

Yes, tool mistreatment is an ancient bad habit of humans. It's caused untold suffering. And it doesn't appear that we are in the process of reining ourselves in. The scary part is the fact that our tools have become so powerful that their misuse can do damage beyond our control.