From: Anders Sandberg (asa@nada.kth.se)
Date: Thu Sep 11 2003 - 15:05:52 MDT
On Thu, Sep 11, 2003 at 07:06:55AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:
>
> On Thu, 11 Sep 2003, Michael Wiik wrote:
>
> > Sometime in the past two weeks, I briefly saw a posting on (maybe)
> > slashdot, re some article discussing mankind deliberately devolving into
> > a nonsentient species as an end result of adapting to the environment
> > (this considered being cheaper than the reverse).
>
> I'm skeptical. Humanity has too much potential to modify the
> environment given its current biotechnological or future
> nanotechnological skills. Evolving to a phase state where
> there are fewer humans? Perhaps. Evolving to a phase state
> where most humans are uploaded? Sure. Devolving rather than
> manipulating the environment? I don't think so. The survival
> instinct is too strong.
This is based on Karl Schroeder's _Permancence_. Some idea spoilers:
Schroeder's argument is based on that it is the ability to change the
environment and ourselves that is the problem. Intelligence arises, he
suggests, because a species has no particular adaptations making it
suided for the environment it finds itself in. So instead it develops
intelligence enabling it to at first succeed better in the environment
and then to change the environment to suit itself - first locally, the
globally as it becomes more powerful. Eventually it becomes able to
change environments and itself in arbitrary ways. It is at this point it
will remove all discrepancy between itself and its environment. The
species is perfectly adapted to its world, and there is no pressure for
more intelligence. In fact, as long as the now artificial environment
and the species change together they can "devolve" quietly into a
non-intelligent form, which is the ultimately stable state.
Schroeder's argument is a long-range argument. In his novel he mentions
that several species appears to have built galaxy-spanning empires and
gone post-alien in the past, but eventually (sometimes after fairly long
periods) all ended up in the above non-intelligent state. His point is
that over truly long spans of time it might be nearly impossible for
civilizations to escape this kind of evolutionary attractors. In his
novel there are two species that have tried, with some mixed success.
One is called the Chicxulub...
I personally don't think his argument is true, but it is interesting. It
leaves out the fact that a diverse civilization will always have some
individuals creating offshoots even if the main trunk is fossilizing,
and it ignores that the social environment created by other people is
far more complex than any natural environment and co-evolves strongly
with the species. I don't think "will to live" works as an argument,
though.
BTW, Schroeder has some interesting criticism of the singularity and new
worldtypes on his blog http://www.kschroeder.com/ - there are some
interesting ideas there.
> Does raise an interesting perspective with regard to the Fermi
> Paradox though. If you *know*, and I mean *really* know, that the
> universe is doomed to collapse or expand/decay into nothingness --
> does that eventually (on relatively short time scales relative
> to the age of the universe) sap the will of a species to survive?
_Permanence_ has a somewhat similar situation; there it seems clear that
the universe is in a long-term steady state situation (either a real
steady state or chaotic inflation, I forget which) and that intelligence
does not last. So what motivates people to do longterm stuff? I think
the answer for the protagonist is a bit simplistic, essentially
Nietzsche's dictum that one should live every moment to the fullest
since it will recur an infinite number of times, but that might serve to
amplify a long-term ambition (I love doing long-term stuff, hence I
should be doing it).
I think a real answer to your question would be more diverse. Different
people and species will have different answers. The idea that something
that ultimately ends thus is pointless is a culturally particular
construction. One can easily imagine cultures that see something good in
finitude, for example. And again, if a species is relatively diverse
there will be individuals with sufficiently unusual ideas to go on.
This actually undermines the anti-colonization argument, since there
would always be a few individuals of each supercivilization (and that
can be quite a few) that would consider running away and starting their
own new civilization to be great. That would produce a new wave of
civilizations, that in turn would produce daughters. The Robins scenario
would start.
-- ----------------------------------------------------------------------- Anders Sandberg Towards Ascension! asa@nada.kth.se http://www.nada.kth.se/~asa/ GCS/M/S/O d++ -p+ c++++ !l u+ e++ m++ s+/+ n--- h+/* f+ g+ w++ t+ r+ !y
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