State of the Species

My fellow humans, we’ve come a long way. Throughout our brief history on earth, we’ve tried to come to terms with a remarkable ability, its source, and what best to do with it.

Through relatively minor mutations, our species gained a much bigger brain featuring an affinity for language, learning and a rich sense of self. These changes made us human; finally the universe had an audience.

Man’s consciousness and freedom (even the illusion of it) gave us the ability to defy our instincts, for better and worse. We tamed nature, finding safety and comfort at the top of the food chain. As a result, our minds were free to explore matters other than survival and we found the big questions: what are we, where are we, and why are we here?

Timeline of Life
We’re an invisible sliver on this scale, anatomically modern humans evolved about 200,000 years ago. This post is brought to you by Battlestar Galactica.

However, the appearance of these incredible abilities got to our heads. The species we are today is uniquely unnatural. We exploit our planet’s resources unlike any other living thing, wrecking nature’s delicate balance in the process. Most importantly, we have lost our innate sense of self-preservation, first as individuals and consequently as a species. The loss of our sense of self-preservation arose ironically out of our unique skill at the task. Simply put, we’re too smart for our own good.

This loss is significant because our species has a duty to survive in, learn from, and explore this existence. The immensity of our universe suggests that some form of life has developed elsewhere, but intelligent life like our own species is certainly rare. As observers, we have the ability to collapse the randomness of our universe into an understandable, tangible reality. We owe it to the ridiculous events that brought us here to stick around for more than our paltry few hundred thousand years.

The solutions to our current situation are generally drastic, as they require the reacquisition of our sense of self-preservation by mounting massive individual and communal attacks on our social structures. Individual self-preservation is impossible when we are uneducated or willfully ignorant of the destructive nature of our way of life, and species self-preservation cannot be realized as long as we kill one another across imaginary lines and leave our own to starve while we eat to excess.

Why is it so difficult? Being a human today means being buffeted down a turbulent river of pressures and fears imposed by our society’s needs. For fleeting moments I can hold my ground and even feel the calm wake I leave behind, but just as quickly I find an excuse for my own weakness and am pulled under (what use is it?).

Unfortunately, I’m pessimistic about the solutions, mainly because I understand how important it is to change but still do nothing about it. There’s a disconnect between my actions and their consequences that is easier bridged by more of the same. Damming the river can be accomplished in only two ways: either the majority of our species stands together to hold our collective ground, or we face some catastrophe that forcibly redirects its flow. The latter is easier. If our species’ focus is forced to self-preservation, perhaps then we might have a chance to finally abandon our old ways and reeducate ourselves and our descendents into positive, sustainable cultures. Homo sapiens is special, there is no question about that. Where we go wrong is in thinking that we can’t go extinct.

What do you think? Is the situation less dire than I think, are there alternative solutions?

  1. Well, I’m not the most well-versed person in terms of human history, behavior, and so on, however, one thing caught my attention:

    […] species self-preservation cannot be realized as long as we kill one another across imaginary lines and leave our own to starve while we eat to excess.

    If by that you mean war and gluttony, then it’s not all so human-specific. In fact, it’s a common animal behavior (just look at the social structure of other primates, for example). Maybe you’re suggesting a more Marxist-like world, but then we’d be more like ants than apes, no?

    The human species, I believe, hasn’t evolved to sustain itself as a whole, but rather, to sustain a small subset that grows as the “elite” while the rest act support and “cushion.” This, to me, is evident when observing the behavior of animals (specifically some monkeys) and noticing the similarities with human social structure and basic nature. This might, in some screwy way, render war and gluttony purposeful.

    I can’t say I have much solid proof to show for it, and not all my thoughts are fully thought out, but it’s something to think about (I hope). Too answer your question at the end, I don’t think it’s that mad. We, humans, might screw ourselves badly, but not totally.

    Either way, I’ve come to the conclusion that nothing matters in the world and I should just live life by the moment (since we’re all effectively machines void of free-will as we believe it to be), which would render this issue meaningless. But maybe I’m just depressed.

    (It’s 2:02 a.m. and I’m pretty tired, so excuse me if I’m not stating anything purposeful).

    Mike P.

    Jan 30, 11:05 PM #

  2. Hi Mike,

    (It’s 2:02 a.m. and I’m pretty tired, so excuse me if I’m not stating anything purposeful).

    Not at all, that’s a great point and it shows my generally idealist view. I think the way we’re looking at the functions of war and selfishness (as subtly distinct from self-preservation) depends on how “special” we perceive humanity to be.

    My view on our special-ness is not based in religious teleology (though perhaps elements of Marxism as you suggest), but rather our actual specialness among the creatures that evolved on this planet (namely our relatively highly developed consciousness). So, while we should maintain the ecologically imposed sense of self-preservation common to all life, we should also hold onto our special-ness. By that I mean we should protect the drops of Self in our brothers and sisters because it is special.

    The human species, I believe, hasn’t evolved to sustain itself as a whole, but rather, to sustain a small subset that grows as the “elite” while the rest act support and “cushion.” This, to me, is evident when observing the behavior of animals (specifically some monkeys) and noticing the similarities with human social structure and basic nature. This might, in some screwy way, render war and gluttony purposeful.

    That’s a good point. I don’t think the growth of the human population is sustainable. The catastrophe I was talking about in the post probably serves the same function as war and gluttony do now, but the responsibility would be removed from human hands. I cannot see the destructive principles of our current culture being revised by more war and greed. The uncontrollable catastrophe serves the purpose of instilling the shocking notion that our way of life didn’t work and that if humanity hopes to succeed that it must live differently.

    Thanks for an awesome comment Mike.

    Thame

    Feb 1, 08:51 AM #

  3. An over abundance of food is the sole cause of man’s population explosion. A tipping point is on the very near horizon of our existence. A tipping point which will mark thousands of megadeaths. By 2020 man’s population will be reduced to a couple hundred thousand healthy people.

    Going forward, food production will have to be carefully monitored so as to not repeat our terrible fate.

    Barris Monkey

    Feb 1, 09:23 PM #

  4. Barris Monkey: An over abundance of food is the sole cause of man’s population explosion. A tipping point is on the very near horizon of our existence.

    Good point, I read a book recently called Ishmael that examined the “mythology” behind this idea. Basically, humans’ capabilities screwed up nature because of the way we compete for resources (in a much more destructive way than other animals). Since we can make all the food we need, we’re no longer bound by the normal rules of our ecosystem.

    Thame

    Feb 2, 08:57 PM #

  5. Man’s consciousness and freedom (even the illusion of it) gave us the ability to defy our instincts, for better and worse.

    I’m a little unsure that we can substantiate this. Just because we don’t behave as if we’re acting directly from, as a linear product of, our instincts, there’s a case to be made that our behavior is no less emergent from those gene-codified routines than fight-or-flight. We seem to attach to ideas a sense of import derived, fundamentally, from a sense of self-preservation. What we identify as “self-preservation” may appear to have little to do with survival; but if we look a little deeper, there seem to be indications that even such trivial items as fashion or performance metrics or number of Facebook friends contribute to a measure of success within the species. I claim that these behaviors, trivial or otherwise, supervene on our survival instinct(s); that however we go about it, our decision structures, complex or not, are built from a bin of Lego blocks of only a few shapes and colors. This parallels the perceived evolution of our cognitive apparatus; it makes sense that the modes of human behavior would develop greater variety through iterative recombination of the same simple building blocks as our ancestors, just as evidence suggests our brain developed by refining and expanding using similar building blocks as our ancestors.

    Thame, this is one of the reasons I’m really looking forward to listening to your interviews on consciousness. I’m working to understand consciousness (albeit more narrowly than that), and have initially started with a couple layers of abstraction: the material brain and its methods of codifying sensory input; and the mapping of patterns of neuron storage to “conscious” metaphors, cf. conceptual metaphor :

    The regularity with which different languages employ the same metaphors, which often appear to be perceptually based, has led to the hypothesis that the mapping between conceptual domains corresponds to neural mappings in the brain.

    A third abstraction layer involves the maps from the domain of conceptual metaphors to our “intellectual” activity, such that, for instance, we can relate science and superstition as variations on the same activities. Here again I invoke the Lego metaphor (unironically), such that we have a finite collection of elemental or basic conceptual metaphors and form all our wondering and hypothesizing and such from them. One profitable result of this perspective is to see how even our scientific method is theory-laden , such that Ockham’s Razor doesn’t always do justice to our investigative efforts. It’s a bit more than that, at least in its brewing, somewhat tenuous like a dream after waking up.

    The species we are today is uniquely unnatural. We exploit our planet’s resources unlike any other living thing, wrecking nature’s delicate balance in the process. Most importantly, we have lost our innate sense of self-preservation, first as individuals and consequently as a species. The loss of our sense of self-preservation arose ironically out of our unique skill at the task. Simply put, we’re too smart for our own good.

    If we were unnatural at all, then I might concur that we were uniquely so; but to say that we are unnatural is to say that we are, as a result, as an effect, driven by causes from outside of nature. If I throw 100 Lego blocks onto the floor, and they end up combining into a cube, however low the probability of that happening, so long as it’s nonzero this is not an {un-,super-}natural result.

    Of course, that says nothing about whether or not we are wisely using our resources. In the absence of a point of reference on which to base a value judgment thereof, I’ll just say that it’s not necessarily most conducive to our continued survival that we use the planet the way we do. However, I think the picture’s more subtle than to say that it’s a result of our having lost our sense of self-preservation. Just as we can construct a confounding logic game (e.g., “Everything I say is a lie, including this sentence.”), we can, at the unit level, act in the interest of self-preservation and still, on a larger emergent scale, end up confounding that action.

    Keep up the good work. The combination of your medical studies and your philosophical inspection is a great resource.

    Cheers,

    Daniel

    Daniel Black

    Feb 10, 08:52 AM #

  6. Hey Daniel,

    I’m a little unsure that we can substantiate this. Just because we don’t behave as if we’re acting directly from, as a linear product of, our instincts, there’s a case to be made that our behavior is no less emergent from those gene-codified routines than fight-or-flight.

    I agree. Our new behavior is an inevitable product of the evolution of the building blocks you’re talking about. Take, for example, how humans eat. For most other animals (primates included), taste has some effect on how much they eat and whether they return to that food source. We, on the other hand, can derive so much pleasure from food that even the strongest satiety signals aren’t enough. The experience of eating something delicious is so strong that it, in a sense, defies our instinct of being full.

    This parallels the perceived evolution of our cognitive apparatus; it makes sense that the modes of human behavior would develop greater variety through iterative recombination of the same simple building blocks as our ancestors, just as evidence suggests our brain developed by refining and expanding using similar building blocks as our ancestors. […] If we were unnatural at all, then I might concur that we were uniquely so; but to say that we are unnatural is to say that we are, as a result, as an effect, driven by causes from outside of nature.

    Definitely, I think my original wording was a bit off because I like what you’re saying. Our behavior is, as you say, still defined by our genetic history, but the product of our evolved repertoire is an animal that doesn’t quite fit into nature the same way (the reason for this being a general subversion of “old” behaviors).

    A third abstraction layer involves the maps from the domain of conceptual metaphors to our “intellectual” activity, such that, for instance, we can relate science and superstition as variations on the same activities. Here again I invoke the Lego metaphor (unironically), such that we have a finite collection of elemental or basic conceptual metaphors and form all our wondering and hypothesizing and such from them.

    Very cool, maybe the last interview or generally computational theories of mind would be an interesting complement. Metaphors are also in some ways algorithms in that there’s a procedure for evaluating the relationships between variables.

    Thanks Daniel, maybe we could Skype an interview? I’d love to hear more about what you’re working on.

    Thame

    Feb 11, 03:20 PM #

  7. Hi, Thame,

    Take, for example, how humans eat. For most other animals (primates included), taste has some effect on how much they eat and whether they return to that food source. We, on the other hand, can derive so much pleasure from food that even the strongest satiety signals aren’t enough. The experience of eating something delicious is so strong that it, in a sense, defies our instinct of being full.

    This is fascinating, and where I faulter; I don’t have the facility with the physiological / neurological information, and don’t know precisely where to start. The largest limitation right now, though, is that I’m currently spread a bit thin (with which you can certainly identify).

    I was for a while subscribed to the Brain Science Podcast . I will do so post haste. Look at episode #39 about the mirror neuron.

    Metaphors are also in some ways algorithms in that there’s a procedure for evaluating the relationships between variables.

    Definitely. I’m actually trying to sort out some computability ideas, albeit without the greatest depth in recursion theory, etc. I wanted to do my undergraduate capstone on some computability stuff, especially since it overlaps this; but that might not see the light of day. What I’m very loosely considering is a quasi-algebraic structure to these various layers of abstraction, such that we might find isomorphisms between them, and between different languages, where language at least feels like the codification of a culture’s conceptual framework. In this sense, then, we might find algebraic comparisons between cultures via comparisons of their languages. That’s a bit much, but I’m curious to see how machine translation as a field progresses and might be used for this sort of an analysis.

    Thanks Daniel, maybe we could Skype an interview? I’d love to hear more about what you’re working on.

    I’m exceedingly flattered, and even though I imagine I’d make a not-quite-engaging interviewee, I’d jump at the chance to have a discussion to work out some of the concepts. At the moment, it’s all stray notes spread around Moleskines and my phone and a Tumblr, and is not even so well-formed as the goofy “proofs” various cranks spew from time to time. It’s certainly not my idea, though I was a bit dashed to find something similar already expounded upon by none other than Douglas Hofstadter, entitled Analogy as the Core of Cognition (via Mark Pilgrim ). That said, I’d like to think I can offer something, but it feels very lame and cook-ish right now. Very garage-tinkerer-without-a-clue.

    If all of that sits okay with the aims of your interviewing, I’d be delighted to have a conversation once the quarter’s met it’s cold demise.

    Daniel Black

    Feb 25, 09:31 AM #

  8. Turns out, Hofstadter’s article appeared in The Analogical Mind , the table of contents for which gets my mouth watering a bit.

    Daniel Black

    Feb 25, 09:59 AM #

  9. Hey Daniel, I’m hot on your heels answering these comments! Thanks for the podcast recommendation, I’m a little low on music so this should make for more interesting driving.

    Definitely. I’m actually trying to sort out some computability ideas, albeit without the greatest depth in recursion theory, etc. I wanted to do my undergraduate capstone on some computability stuff, especially since it overlaps this; but that might not see the light of day.

    I’ve been pretty interested in computational theories of mind since watching Battlestar Galactica. I think the next few posts are going to explore that topic a bit (progress towards, ethics of artificial intelligence). I feel like this is one way I might actually be able to understand consciousness.

    What I’m very loosely considering is a quasi-algebraic structure to these various layers of abstraction, such that we might find isomorphisms between them, and between different languages, where language at least feels like the codification of a culture’s conceptual framework.

    That’s a really interesting topic. Philosophy of language is my weak spot, it’s just so incomprehensibly “meta”. I’ll have to add an introductory text to my already long reading list (on which Hofstadter’s Godel, Escher, Bach is next).

    Very garage-tinkerer-without-a-clue. If all of that sits okay with the aims of your interviewing, I’d be delighted to have a conversation once the quarter’s met it’s cold demise.

    That sounds great!

    Thame

    Feb 25, 01:56 PM #

  10. The pace of evolution is quickening as time goes on just as the pace of technological progress increases as time goes on. But both technology and man are intertwined as the next major stage of evolution will (I am absolutely convinced of this) lead to a merger of man and machine. Something akin to downloaded conciousness into machines is the next stage of physical evolution.

    But our spiritual and moral evolution is also at question. With unending war still consuming man, evil anonymous commenting on DirtyPhoneBook destroying lives, and the unyielding sting of poverty affecting so many and an increasing number of people one question really remains.

    What the hell is up with humanity?

    Gerald

    Mar 31, 01:34 PM #

  11. I think that the most important question to be insightfully asked, reasoned, and answered is, “Where are we headed if we maintain the path upon which we currently march?” Do we inspire hope? Do we have a prayer? I look around and see single mothers caring for countless children with welfare that they are spending at McDonalds on food that is making their children sick and unfit for anything more than being a drain on the rest. And the cycle continues… One day, there will come “a savior”. We just have to ask, “for whom?” and “are we the enemy?”

    MorgueControl

    Oct 27, 05:45 AM #

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