Existential Revolution
We are on the very precipice of the greatest technological revolution in the history of our species. To understate this would be to do disservice. Within most of our lifetimes, the paradigms by which we understand the world will evaporate, the mechanisms that drive our economy, our culture, our governments with be fundamentally and permanently altered. Our understanding of what it means to be human itself will be challenged, and with it our understanding of faith, religion, and how we behave towards each other. There are three massive upheavals coming, each related, and each interdependent.
Fossil fuels will run out, and they will run out within our lifetime. Each of them are finite resources, and not only is the amount of our consumption of them increasing, but the rate of our consumption is increasing. The effects of the end of oil, coal, natural gas, etc, are far reaching. It effects not only whether or not we can drive, but it drives our manufacturing (petroleum is used in the manufacturing of nearly every single product you will buy this year), our transportation, our shipping, our production of electricity. Yes, we could drill in untapped reserves. But it is only a stopgap, not a long term solution. It will only postpone the inevitable, and perhaps not by very long. With this in mind, perhaps the time has come that we not only become cognizant of how we drive our economy through these fuels, but how to aggressively replace them now. Without a sufficient means of powering the globe in the face of the collapse of oil, we face effectively driving ourselves back to the eighteenth century.
The greatest impact, however, is the absolute devastation to industrial agriculture. Since the end of the First World War, petroleum powered industrial agriculture has ensured the exponential growth of our species. Further advancements in health care, sanitation, and access to infrastructure, all powered by petroleum products, have advanced not only the global population, but life expectancy as well. It could be surmised that the collapse of oil would have immediate and devastating consequences in terms of survivability for billions of people. This, combined with the far reaching socioeconomic repercussions of a global famine constitutes a massive existential threat to the long term survivability of the species as a whole.
The second major upheaval is the coming technological revolution. A moment, described by Ray Kurzweil, as the Singularity, is a coming moment where machine intelligence matches, and then exceeds human intelligence. The mechanism driving this is colloquially referred to the Law of Accelerating Returns. It suggests that while technological complexity is increasing, the rate at which it is developing is also increasing, meaning, ultimately that the rate of technological development is an exponential increase. More to the point, the rate of technological development is in fact doubling every ten years. As machine intelligence grows more complex, the tasks which machines can handle also grow more complex. It is estimated that within the next twenty years, half of all jobs currently being done by humans will be done by machines. Any politician that claims to be on any path that will create more jobs is flat out lying. The future holds fewer jobs. Which should, and ought, to force us to ask a question we, as a species, have not asked. What, in the absence of work, is the purpose of being human? Of course, before we ask that question, we should probably take a look at how we will support the existence of nearly eight billion people when less than half of them are exchanging time for money at a traditional job.
The next revolution is our evolution. As the rate of development and complexity increases, the medical technology that keeps our bodies alive will pass several thresholds. First is the longevity of our bodies themselves. Geneticists are already working on finding a final solution to cancers and aging. It seems very abstract, but the reality is that our biological lifespans are about to explode. The question is not about if we can break the biological causes of death, but when. The truth is that it is extraordinarily likely that not only within our lives, but within the next few decades, death by aging will no longer be compulsory. Of course this raises second and third order issues. If we are separated from our biological imperatives, what is the purpose of continually expanding the species? How do we begin to define our common human experience when the human experience is fundamentally and permanently altered?
There is a movement called transhumanism, and no, it has nothing to do with gender identity. As our understanding of our own bodies increases along with the complexity and intelligence of the machines we create, we come close to the Singularity. At this point, there are two divergent roads. We can either augment our bodies and our minds (which we already do) or our machines, with intelligence surpassing ours, continues its evolution independent of our intervention. With the current climate, it seems likely that both paths will be travelled, with those members of our species who have become transhuman directing their own evolution, while our machines direct their own.
Perhaps in light of the coming Evolutionary Revolution, we need to think critically about our values as a species. Specifically we need to define what the greatest shared values are, how we transmit them to the next generation, and how we maintain the greatest aspects of our species while ending the transmission of social values that are destructive towards the species as a whole. We must think of the consequences of our ideas, we must think in terms of the millennial effects of our values, and we must free ourselves from becoming slaves to emotions ruling the near term choices which could have far reaching repercussions.
Anthropology, can give us the language to describe the world around us, and more importantly identify those cultural and social phenomena which either propel us forward or are destructive towards the more noble pursuits of the species. While the various disciplines within Anthropology can give us insight into the historical past, I believe the discipline, writ large, can provide the context and the content to help us define the direction and the trajectory on which we will choose to evolve. Or at least it should.
I know many of these things will cause consternation. Many well meaning religious people will reject, or at least attempt to reject the coming revolutions. And I cannot blame them. The singularity can best be described as an event horizon. It is a moment beyond which we cannot predict. It is the moment in our evolution where one world ends and another begins. We cannot predict what paradigms will hold, what values, beliefs, behaviors, or norms will remain relevant. But we can begin having those discussions now. But as a community, and within the confines of a disciplined approach. We must collect data and evidence, we must study that data and evidence, and from that evidence alone can we make decisions regarding our future. I think, perhaps, if we and our forefathers had made more evidence based decisions, the world would be in far less chaos. And perhaps, were society to collapse tomorrow, the future might not be completely bleak if we were to do the same.
What is to come should not be terrifying. It is different. It is fundamentally different than anything us our our ancestors have ever experienced. So for those of us who will see it, it ought to be tremendously exciting. We should attack our understanding of this coming age with the deepest curiosity, treading lightly, taking notes, and understanding before deciding. The entire universe will be ours to explore, including our own evolution.
Don't listen to politicians. Listen to the scientists. The researchers. The anthropologists. The theologians. The mathematicians. Listen to the people who try to bring us closer as people. Who try to make the human experience better. Whether the next age of our species is one of privation, death, and suffering, or one of exploration, understanding, and life, rests entirely on our shoulders.
Note: If you came here thinking I was going to talk about my politics, that was clickbait. But you learned some stuff, right? So it wasn't bad clickbait, right? It was for a noble cause.
Fossil fuels will run out, and they will run out within our lifetime. Each of them are finite resources, and not only is the amount of our consumption of them increasing, but the rate of our consumption is increasing. The effects of the end of oil, coal, natural gas, etc, are far reaching. It effects not only whether or not we can drive, but it drives our manufacturing (petroleum is used in the manufacturing of nearly every single product you will buy this year), our transportation, our shipping, our production of electricity. Yes, we could drill in untapped reserves. But it is only a stopgap, not a long term solution. It will only postpone the inevitable, and perhaps not by very long. With this in mind, perhaps the time has come that we not only become cognizant of how we drive our economy through these fuels, but how to aggressively replace them now. Without a sufficient means of powering the globe in the face of the collapse of oil, we face effectively driving ourselves back to the eighteenth century.
The greatest impact, however, is the absolute devastation to industrial agriculture. Since the end of the First World War, petroleum powered industrial agriculture has ensured the exponential growth of our species. Further advancements in health care, sanitation, and access to infrastructure, all powered by petroleum products, have advanced not only the global population, but life expectancy as well. It could be surmised that the collapse of oil would have immediate and devastating consequences in terms of survivability for billions of people. This, combined with the far reaching socioeconomic repercussions of a global famine constitutes a massive existential threat to the long term survivability of the species as a whole.
The second major upheaval is the coming technological revolution. A moment, described by Ray Kurzweil, as the Singularity, is a coming moment where machine intelligence matches, and then exceeds human intelligence. The mechanism driving this is colloquially referred to the Law of Accelerating Returns. It suggests that while technological complexity is increasing, the rate at which it is developing is also increasing, meaning, ultimately that the rate of technological development is an exponential increase. More to the point, the rate of technological development is in fact doubling every ten years. As machine intelligence grows more complex, the tasks which machines can handle also grow more complex. It is estimated that within the next twenty years, half of all jobs currently being done by humans will be done by machines. Any politician that claims to be on any path that will create more jobs is flat out lying. The future holds fewer jobs. Which should, and ought, to force us to ask a question we, as a species, have not asked. What, in the absence of work, is the purpose of being human? Of course, before we ask that question, we should probably take a look at how we will support the existence of nearly eight billion people when less than half of them are exchanging time for money at a traditional job.
The next revolution is our evolution. As the rate of development and complexity increases, the medical technology that keeps our bodies alive will pass several thresholds. First is the longevity of our bodies themselves. Geneticists are already working on finding a final solution to cancers and aging. It seems very abstract, but the reality is that our biological lifespans are about to explode. The question is not about if we can break the biological causes of death, but when. The truth is that it is extraordinarily likely that not only within our lives, but within the next few decades, death by aging will no longer be compulsory. Of course this raises second and third order issues. If we are separated from our biological imperatives, what is the purpose of continually expanding the species? How do we begin to define our common human experience when the human experience is fundamentally and permanently altered?
There is a movement called transhumanism, and no, it has nothing to do with gender identity. As our understanding of our own bodies increases along with the complexity and intelligence of the machines we create, we come close to the Singularity. At this point, there are two divergent roads. We can either augment our bodies and our minds (which we already do) or our machines, with intelligence surpassing ours, continues its evolution independent of our intervention. With the current climate, it seems likely that both paths will be travelled, with those members of our species who have become transhuman directing their own evolution, while our machines direct their own.
Perhaps in light of the coming Evolutionary Revolution, we need to think critically about our values as a species. Specifically we need to define what the greatest shared values are, how we transmit them to the next generation, and how we maintain the greatest aspects of our species while ending the transmission of social values that are destructive towards the species as a whole. We must think of the consequences of our ideas, we must think in terms of the millennial effects of our values, and we must free ourselves from becoming slaves to emotions ruling the near term choices which could have far reaching repercussions.
Anthropology, can give us the language to describe the world around us, and more importantly identify those cultural and social phenomena which either propel us forward or are destructive towards the more noble pursuits of the species. While the various disciplines within Anthropology can give us insight into the historical past, I believe the discipline, writ large, can provide the context and the content to help us define the direction and the trajectory on which we will choose to evolve. Or at least it should.
I know many of these things will cause consternation. Many well meaning religious people will reject, or at least attempt to reject the coming revolutions. And I cannot blame them. The singularity can best be described as an event horizon. It is a moment beyond which we cannot predict. It is the moment in our evolution where one world ends and another begins. We cannot predict what paradigms will hold, what values, beliefs, behaviors, or norms will remain relevant. But we can begin having those discussions now. But as a community, and within the confines of a disciplined approach. We must collect data and evidence, we must study that data and evidence, and from that evidence alone can we make decisions regarding our future. I think, perhaps, if we and our forefathers had made more evidence based decisions, the world would be in far less chaos. And perhaps, were society to collapse tomorrow, the future might not be completely bleak if we were to do the same.
What is to come should not be terrifying. It is different. It is fundamentally different than anything us our our ancestors have ever experienced. So for those of us who will see it, it ought to be tremendously exciting. We should attack our understanding of this coming age with the deepest curiosity, treading lightly, taking notes, and understanding before deciding. The entire universe will be ours to explore, including our own evolution.
Don't listen to politicians. Listen to the scientists. The researchers. The anthropologists. The theologians. The mathematicians. Listen to the people who try to bring us closer as people. Who try to make the human experience better. Whether the next age of our species is one of privation, death, and suffering, or one of exploration, understanding, and life, rests entirely on our shoulders.
Note: If you came here thinking I was going to talk about my politics, that was clickbait. But you learned some stuff, right? So it wasn't bad clickbait, right? It was for a noble cause.
Comments
Post a Comment