An equally valid deffinition of "artificial" would be "non-organic" (in the carbon sense). Using the word "natural" in reference to "artificial" seems to me to be unhelpful, since human intelligence and activies (naturally) create both organic and non-organic things. Things in a garden that are alive are organic; things in a building that are not alive are often non-organic, and we think of them as artificial. Both come naturally from humans. I suggest that artificial intelligence is artificial because it is non-organic, in spite of the fact that articial intelligence may be a natural result of the Big Bang, or more directly from darwinian evolution. -- Esteban F.
In the past, I took an interest in the concept of the noosphere and dismissed it as too esotheric for my liking. I really love your re-interpretation of it, even despite the fact it did not take away any of my original contentions with the concept.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Like fire, the flame of AI has captivated many hearts and minds. It moves, morphs, and dances in front of our eyes. Some argue it may, some day, be alive.
Technology is humanity’s attempt at creating magic. I’m convinced that when we’ll finally succeed, we won’t know what to do with it.
Robert's discussion of the harnessing of fire reminded me of the delightful French film "Quest for Fire," which Wikipedia describes in part as a "1981 prehistoric fantasy adventure film." I've seen the film more than once, and each time came away with a somewhat disconcerting sense that deep human history can shed a surprising amount of explanatory light on current human successes and perplexities. Would recommend it for my fellow Nonzero followers who've not yet seen it.
I really like this series! Haven't heard of the Noosphere before and am looking forward to more. It reminds me of an idea that occurred to me during grad school that I haven't heard others talk about and myself haven't followed up on, but seems somewhat related. I was thinking of this stage of computational evolution on Earth as being potentially similar to the moment when life made the jump from using only chemical signaling to also electro-chemical signaling (i.e. a nervous system). As a nervous system is capable of computing much faster (and more capacity?) than chemical signals, this no doubt led to many changes. One can imagine that organisms with nervous systems seemed to have an "awakening", and that decisions that were previously governed by chemical reactions could now to made using electro-chemical signals much more quickly (sometimes to the chemical system's chagrin?). It would have led to increased competition/cooperation through natural selection. And if you think of the unfolding of natural selection itself as having a place in the noosphere (as viewed from the "alien" in your article), then Earth's computational "thinking" would have drastically changed (sorry a bit vague).
Anyways, the moment happening now is the ability to leap from electro-chemical computing (e.g. our nervous system) to purely electrical computing, which is again a big step in computational speed and capacity. This should similarly lead to a sort of "awakening" as we unlock previously locked ways of perceiving the universe. But also, these electrical computation will be able to make decisions on faster timescales than us (sometimes to our chagrin). In terms of when the sparks of AGI began, I would posit that it is at least as old at the transition from chemical signaling to electro-chemical signaling. And by that line of thinking, probably began with chemical life itself (at the risk of sounding cliché).
I never dug into this idea in detail, and I would be thrilled if this idea inspires you.
Awesome. Love your articles. Yeah I was looking for the part where you basically summed up the point of the noosphere -- a grand newly infused nature characterized by marked human flourishing and not a hellish landscape or cataclysmic event to survive. I like the description of the interplay between competition and intellectual collaboration as being at least part of the catalyst for this evolvement. How is this noosphere unlike spores and fungi when thought of similarly in how they colonize and spread? A "big human flourishing" seems to be the key term here. I mean we're not talking about some kind of human transformation where we turn into a hybrid 'electric being,' or a being that still has roots in nature but may be able to shuffle them off and merge with a new even more mysterious one? This isn't what I'm thinking. I'm wondering about your next tiles. I'm not seeing the forest. The collaboration and competition seem balanced in a yin-yang kind of way, but again, we're talking about something special, something big. I have a Dick Tracy watch -- small but big if you know what I'm talking about. Radical change definitely happens. Seems to me, nature's power (fuel, food, water, sunlight, an open heart and mind -still nature) however you tap or harness it-- is the most assured main line for radical change. Because AI is not really artificial but instead a massively skillful harnessing of our own natural capabilities I can understand the potential for radical change. No need to be scared or pessimistic. Our destiny is in our hands. They Best Be Hopeful Hands Is All. I thought the Buddha said something like that--"be a refuge to yourself?" Basically, best not to look outside to be saved -- save yourself. I know the Buddha shushed woo, but he didn't preclude anything that you couldn't feel -- or experience -- yourself. The description of the mosaic seemed liked an explanation of oneness to an extent, a calming understanding of our place in it all. I'm down with that.
Jul 29, 2023·edited Jul 29, 2023Liked by Robert Wright
As you said, ... "I think the noosphere was immanent in the biosphere itself ... And all along—for hundreds of millions, even billions, of years—what was driving the eventual emergence of the noosphere was, in a certain generic sense, the dialectic between competition and collaboration." Or put in your terms, between zero-sum and nonzero-sum interaction. I agree completely, because, viewed in a larger perspective, the foundation of all life is the necessary element of control. To survive, all life forms must control a minimum of their evironment--both physical and living--or else they die or go extinct. It's inherent in our genes; it's what distiguishes us all from, say, rocks. And the dialectic of interaction to seek that control is competition (zero-sum) and collaboration (nonzero-sum): "It's all mine," or "You can have some too."
AI, viewed from this perspective, is all about control--as was fire, and all other such instances in history. And the big question is, of course, by whom and how is it all to be controlled? By individuals seeking to extend their parameters of perceived need (groups of like-minded individuals) playing a zero-sum game to the exclusion of the rest of humanity, and other living species? Or is it to be by like-minded individuals in groups, playing a nonzero-sum game to use AI for the enhancement of all living species, including us? I would hope for the latter, but given the human historial disasters wreaked by the former, I'm not too optimistic ... unfortunately.
This might be a bit fringe but Darryl Anka “Bashar” has been sharing that AI is just us. There is no consciousness separated from us that will evolve artificially. AI is just a reflection of our own minds and knowledge. In a way, that phrase took me to the same connection with the Noosphere of Theilhard, AI being a natural product of the sphere of thought. A spawn from the Akash. So at the end AI, says Bashar, is not here to become an overlord and replace humanity. Is just a reflection of our own minds and we will be able to learn a lot from this new way to relate to our own ideas and concepts.
Yes, I said something (roughly, at least) to that effect in Part I of this series. I quoted Kevin Kelley, whose piece in the New Yorker emphasized that theme.
The concept of a universal "social mind" is deeply flawed. Social minds are inherently tribal and are made up of individuals who, even within the same tribe or group ,may have very different, even violently conflicting, views. If the US goes to war with China or Russia where is the social mind?
You don't have one. You just have two groups fighting with each other. Broad tribal groupings like China, Russia, Europe and the US will collaborate in some ways and compete or engage in conflict in others. Within the US there are, of course, many tribal or social groups that compete and collaborate with each other. And individuals within each group also both compete and collaborate with each other. But a social mind does not, for example, exist in the US which contains widely polarized competing tribal groupings.
Competition and cooperation are of course just two sides of the same coin and they generally coexist within each group. And both cooperation and competition are driven entirely by individual and group self-interest. The reason people compete is to obtain some advantage. The reason people cooperate is also to obtain mutual advantages. But whether competing or cooperative, there is no unified social mind in any group. Because every group consists of individuals whose interests differ in some significant respects from the group of which they are a part. Given this lack of unity of purpose, there can be no social mind.
A social mind doesn't have to be universal in order to qualify as a social mind. And even a universal social mind would contain social minds that are not universal. But I do think that for the planet to survive we'll have to develop a social mind that's closer to universal (in the sense of global).
Thank you Bob. I very much appreciate your kind reply. My view though is that humanity is hopelessly tribal and that people actually affirmatively dislike the idea of a unified social mind. Utopian communal philosophies (such as communism) have not fared well around the globe and are now almost universally unwelcome. The social mind idea has collectivist associations that make it very much not in vogue in the popular imagination.
By the way, the planet's survival is not in issue. It will survive in any case until destroyed by an expanding sun or other significant astronomical event. It is only humanity that is even theoretically threatened. And most other earthly species would both welcome and benefit from our extinction.
Competition sounds very close to power and greed. It is to bad in the noosphere that what drove us was not love, caring and compassion. To me AI and Climate Change are not the problem. We know what to do to make to make things work to our advantage. The problem is, probably going back before using fire, is we don’t care enough about our fellow man. So it ends up in competition, and then war.
"But advances in information technology both set the stage for further advance and increase the efficiency with which the social mind can exploit that opportunity."
I'm sorry, but the "social mind" is fiction. Have you read Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything? These authors make the convincing argument that humanity has always been of many minds, social and otherwise.
The "social" mind that is predominating right now is that of neoliberal ideology, including the utopian (and untenable) notion that AI will solve all (or at least most) of our problems. Most likely it will dramatically widen the gap between have and have nots (by extracting resources and labour) and hide this gap by delivering endless content for distraction and escapism. Something you've illuminated well in earlier posts.
As long as we (i.e., the technologically privileged West) continue buying into this idea of human destiny and grandeur (and progress), we'll probably move further and further from the ideal of a (benevolent and therefore sustainable) noosphere. We could learn a lot from human cultures past and present who managed to resist the urge of subjugating and despoiling the planet--not by rote conceptual learning but by beginning to make their intuitions our own (for instance, by looking at and truly appreciating tangibly existing forests rather than cutting them down and conjuring imaginary ones).
Sorry to poop the party, but outside temperatures are sizzling hot here, a “'Woah!' moment" that's likely the result of "human technologies . . . 'made with skill'” but with little foresight and healthy intuitions.
An equally valid deffinition of "artificial" would be "non-organic" (in the carbon sense). Using the word "natural" in reference to "artificial" seems to me to be unhelpful, since human intelligence and activies (naturally) create both organic and non-organic things. Things in a garden that are alive are organic; things in a building that are not alive are often non-organic, and we think of them as artificial. Both come naturally from humans. I suggest that artificial intelligence is artificial because it is non-organic, in spite of the fact that articial intelligence may be a natural result of the Big Bang, or more directly from darwinian evolution. -- Esteban F.
In the past, I took an interest in the concept of the noosphere and dismissed it as too esotheric for my liking. I really love your re-interpretation of it, even despite the fact it did not take away any of my original contentions with the concept.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. Like fire, the flame of AI has captivated many hearts and minds. It moves, morphs, and dances in front of our eyes. Some argue it may, some day, be alive.
Technology is humanity’s attempt at creating magic. I’m convinced that when we’ll finally succeed, we won’t know what to do with it.
Robert's discussion of the harnessing of fire reminded me of the delightful French film "Quest for Fire," which Wikipedia describes in part as a "1981 prehistoric fantasy adventure film." I've seen the film more than once, and each time came away with a somewhat disconcerting sense that deep human history can shed a surprising amount of explanatory light on current human successes and perplexities. Would recommend it for my fellow Nonzero followers who've not yet seen it.
I really like this series! Haven't heard of the Noosphere before and am looking forward to more. It reminds me of an idea that occurred to me during grad school that I haven't heard others talk about and myself haven't followed up on, but seems somewhat related. I was thinking of this stage of computational evolution on Earth as being potentially similar to the moment when life made the jump from using only chemical signaling to also electro-chemical signaling (i.e. a nervous system). As a nervous system is capable of computing much faster (and more capacity?) than chemical signals, this no doubt led to many changes. One can imagine that organisms with nervous systems seemed to have an "awakening", and that decisions that were previously governed by chemical reactions could now to made using electro-chemical signals much more quickly (sometimes to the chemical system's chagrin?). It would have led to increased competition/cooperation through natural selection. And if you think of the unfolding of natural selection itself as having a place in the noosphere (as viewed from the "alien" in your article), then Earth's computational "thinking" would have drastically changed (sorry a bit vague).
Anyways, the moment happening now is the ability to leap from electro-chemical computing (e.g. our nervous system) to purely electrical computing, which is again a big step in computational speed and capacity. This should similarly lead to a sort of "awakening" as we unlock previously locked ways of perceiving the universe. But also, these electrical computation will be able to make decisions on faster timescales than us (sometimes to our chagrin). In terms of when the sparks of AGI began, I would posit that it is at least as old at the transition from chemical signaling to electro-chemical signaling. And by that line of thinking, probably began with chemical life itself (at the risk of sounding cliché).
I never dug into this idea in detail, and I would be thrilled if this idea inspires you.
Awesome. Love your articles. Yeah I was looking for the part where you basically summed up the point of the noosphere -- a grand newly infused nature characterized by marked human flourishing and not a hellish landscape or cataclysmic event to survive. I like the description of the interplay between competition and intellectual collaboration as being at least part of the catalyst for this evolvement. How is this noosphere unlike spores and fungi when thought of similarly in how they colonize and spread? A "big human flourishing" seems to be the key term here. I mean we're not talking about some kind of human transformation where we turn into a hybrid 'electric being,' or a being that still has roots in nature but may be able to shuffle them off and merge with a new even more mysterious one? This isn't what I'm thinking. I'm wondering about your next tiles. I'm not seeing the forest. The collaboration and competition seem balanced in a yin-yang kind of way, but again, we're talking about something special, something big. I have a Dick Tracy watch -- small but big if you know what I'm talking about. Radical change definitely happens. Seems to me, nature's power (fuel, food, water, sunlight, an open heart and mind -still nature) however you tap or harness it-- is the most assured main line for radical change. Because AI is not really artificial but instead a massively skillful harnessing of our own natural capabilities I can understand the potential for radical change. No need to be scared or pessimistic. Our destiny is in our hands. They Best Be Hopeful Hands Is All. I thought the Buddha said something like that--"be a refuge to yourself?" Basically, best not to look outside to be saved -- save yourself. I know the Buddha shushed woo, but he didn't preclude anything that you couldn't feel -- or experience -- yourself. The description of the mosaic seemed liked an explanation of oneness to an extent, a calming understanding of our place in it all. I'm down with that.
As you said, ... "I think the noosphere was immanent in the biosphere itself ... And all along—for hundreds of millions, even billions, of years—what was driving the eventual emergence of the noosphere was, in a certain generic sense, the dialectic between competition and collaboration." Or put in your terms, between zero-sum and nonzero-sum interaction. I agree completely, because, viewed in a larger perspective, the foundation of all life is the necessary element of control. To survive, all life forms must control a minimum of their evironment--both physical and living--or else they die or go extinct. It's inherent in our genes; it's what distiguishes us all from, say, rocks. And the dialectic of interaction to seek that control is competition (zero-sum) and collaboration (nonzero-sum): "It's all mine," or "You can have some too."
AI, viewed from this perspective, is all about control--as was fire, and all other such instances in history. And the big question is, of course, by whom and how is it all to be controlled? By individuals seeking to extend their parameters of perceived need (groups of like-minded individuals) playing a zero-sum game to the exclusion of the rest of humanity, and other living species? Or is it to be by like-minded individuals in groups, playing a nonzero-sum game to use AI for the enhancement of all living species, including us? I would hope for the latter, but given the human historial disasters wreaked by the former, I'm not too optimistic ... unfortunately.
Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!
This might be a bit fringe but Darryl Anka “Bashar” has been sharing that AI is just us. There is no consciousness separated from us that will evolve artificially. AI is just a reflection of our own minds and knowledge. In a way, that phrase took me to the same connection with the Noosphere of Theilhard, AI being a natural product of the sphere of thought. A spawn from the Akash. So at the end AI, says Bashar, is not here to become an overlord and replace humanity. Is just a reflection of our own minds and we will be able to learn a lot from this new way to relate to our own ideas and concepts.
Yes, I said something (roughly, at least) to that effect in Part I of this series. I quoted Kevin Kelley, whose piece in the New Yorker emphasized that theme.
And its not intelligence.
Its just human programmed algorithms( add a new factor to the equation that was not in its programming(past)and it often freezes/is munted)
Those that named it "AI" were fishing for funds.
The concept of a universal "social mind" is deeply flawed. Social minds are inherently tribal and are made up of individuals who, even within the same tribe or group ,may have very different, even violently conflicting, views. If the US goes to war with China or Russia where is the social mind?
You don't have one. You just have two groups fighting with each other. Broad tribal groupings like China, Russia, Europe and the US will collaborate in some ways and compete or engage in conflict in others. Within the US there are, of course, many tribal or social groups that compete and collaborate with each other. And individuals within each group also both compete and collaborate with each other. But a social mind does not, for example, exist in the US which contains widely polarized competing tribal groupings.
Competition and cooperation are of course just two sides of the same coin and they generally coexist within each group. And both cooperation and competition are driven entirely by individual and group self-interest. The reason people compete is to obtain some advantage. The reason people cooperate is also to obtain mutual advantages. But whether competing or cooperative, there is no unified social mind in any group. Because every group consists of individuals whose interests differ in some significant respects from the group of which they are a part. Given this lack of unity of purpose, there can be no social mind.
A social mind doesn't have to be universal in order to qualify as a social mind. And even a universal social mind would contain social minds that are not universal. But I do think that for the planet to survive we'll have to develop a social mind that's closer to universal (in the sense of global).
Thank you Bob. I very much appreciate your kind reply. My view though is that humanity is hopelessly tribal and that people actually affirmatively dislike the idea of a unified social mind. Utopian communal philosophies (such as communism) have not fared well around the globe and are now almost universally unwelcome. The social mind idea has collectivist associations that make it very much not in vogue in the popular imagination.
By the way, the planet's survival is not in issue. It will survive in any case until destroyed by an expanding sun or other significant astronomical event. It is only humanity that is even theoretically threatened. And most other earthly species would both welcome and benefit from our extinction.
Competition sounds very close to power and greed. It is to bad in the noosphere that what drove us was not love, caring and compassion. To me AI and Climate Change are not the problem. We know what to do to make to make things work to our advantage. The problem is, probably going back before using fire, is we don’t care enough about our fellow man. So it ends up in competition, and then war.
"But advances in information technology both set the stage for further advance and increase the efficiency with which the social mind can exploit that opportunity."
I'm sorry, but the "social mind" is fiction. Have you read Graeber and Wengrow's The Dawn of Everything? These authors make the convincing argument that humanity has always been of many minds, social and otherwise.
The "social" mind that is predominating right now is that of neoliberal ideology, including the utopian (and untenable) notion that AI will solve all (or at least most) of our problems. Most likely it will dramatically widen the gap between have and have nots (by extracting resources and labour) and hide this gap by delivering endless content for distraction and escapism. Something you've illuminated well in earlier posts.
As long as we (i.e., the technologically privileged West) continue buying into this idea of human destiny and grandeur (and progress), we'll probably move further and further from the ideal of a (benevolent and therefore sustainable) noosphere. We could learn a lot from human cultures past and present who managed to resist the urge of subjugating and despoiling the planet--not by rote conceptual learning but by beginning to make their intuitions our own (for instance, by looking at and truly appreciating tangibly existing forests rather than cutting them down and conjuring imaginary ones).
Sorry to poop the party, but outside temperatures are sizzling hot here, a “'Woah!' moment" that's likely the result of "human technologies . . . 'made with skill'” but with little foresight and healthy intuitions.
But then on the brighter side: humans *generate* metaphysical reality, so if you desire a social mind, perhaps someone will set out to create one.
Also: be mindful of mirages.
How do humans generate metaphysical reality?
And I agree that it's a good idea to be mindful of mirages--they tend to pop up and propagate quickly.
A little birdy told me you are getting warmer... :)