Change, the Future and the ETH

When Julius Caesar crossed the Rubicon in 49 BCE, sparking the civil war which led to the ultimate replacement of the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire, it was on horseback, leading his legions of soldiers armed with swords, spears, and other similar weapons.

When the Roman Empire in the West fell in 476 CE, after five centuries as the pre-eminent power in the ancient world, it was to Germanic armies that wielded more or less the same equipment as Caesar's legions had. When Belisarius re-captured large parts of the Western Empire in the middle of the 6th century for Emperor Justinian, he too led armies that would not have seemed unfamiliar to Caesar.

Belisarius

Thus, while there were certainly changes in tactics, and formations, and even to some degree materiel, the armies led by Belisarius looked much like the armies led by Caesar six centuries earlier. There was no fundamental difference.

The same cannot be said for developments in the 20th century. Admiral Jellicoe's Grand Fleet, the foundation of British Imperial might in 1914, and the victor at the Battle of Jutland in 1916, was irrelevant by the time the Second World War ended in 1945. Blockades and great naval battles between surface fleets were meaningless when compared with first with air power, as demonstrated by the sinking of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse in 1941, much less the development of atomic weapons by the end of the war - all of which came to the fore within less than a decade.

For centuries - indeed, in many respects, for millennia - human development remained relatively stagnant. Change, when it came, was generally slow and fitful.

Contrast that with my home computer. When I founded Redstar Films, just twelve years ago, I bought desktop computers for the office for my home that were near the top of the line, and which were specifically assembled by a local company. They each had 20 GB of hard drive space. The mass produced computer I'm using as I type this has 300 GB of hard drive space, and is hooked up to a separate drive that contains 500 GB of space. On the shelf nearby is another drive with a TB of space. I can edit an entire film on this computer, and post it immediately to various places on the Internet, or send it via FTP to someone in Asia, or Europe.

I could go on, but the point should be clear. Human progress has been accelerating exponentially since the beginning of the 20th century, and in particular since the end of the Second World War, at a rate that makes all of human history before then look like the slow crawl of an infant. And we haven't even really gotten started yet.

So, on the one hand, when I hear someone like Michio Kaku say that travel to the stars is far beyond our capabilities right now, and that any civilization which would have figured out how to do it must be much more advanced than us, I have to agree. It's common sense. The problem, however, comes with the timeline that he (and others) then impose for the development of that technology - not just decades, or even centuries, but millennia.

The problem is that Kaku et al assume a rate of progress for any civilization similar to human progress prior to the Twentieth Century - that is to say, slow and in fits and starts. They assume that, like Belisarius compared to Caesar, astronauts in six hundred years will more or less be using the same technology that astronauts today are using. But that doesn't seem to be the way that our development is trending. The predictive models of the past are no longer relevant.

It's possible that they're right, of course. It might even be likely. But given the way that things have gone, and are going, it cannot be said that they are certainly correct. The technological developments necessary to get us to the stars may not be thousands of years away - they may only be hundreds of years away, or perhaps even less. We just don't know anymore.

Predicting the future is a tricky thing, made trickier with each passing year.

Accordingly, it's not unreasonable to speculate that a civilization in our nearby "galactic neighborhood" could have developed these abilities before us, and made their way here at some point, without having to imagine them as god-like beings so far in advance of us that we would not be able to recognize them, or communicate with them.

That may well be the case, but it's worth remembering that it may not.

Paul Kimball

The Ishmael Imperative

When considering how an advanced non-human intelligence (ANHI) might view life on this planet, we humans almost always assume that it would be interested in interacting with us, because we are the dominant life form. This assumption, however, is more the product of our egotistical view of our own importance, and less about actual reality.

A few quick points to consider:

1. Relative to an ANHI, there might not be any real difference between we humans and other inhabitants of this planet - dolphins, for example, or elephants, or chimpanzees. In much the same way as we tend to lump most animals in together under the category of "animals", perhaps the ANHI would see Earth species in much the same way.

2. We have absolutely no idea how an ANHI would communicate, or what it might be interested in. It stands to reason, looking at things objectively, that it would be just as likely to be interested in a dolphin as it would be a human being. Indeed, perhaps certain animals are more receptive to ANHI communication than we humans are, being less cluttered in their thoughts. Or perhaps they are "smarter" than us, but in different ways?

3. Finally, perhaps a truly advanced NHI would be much more interested in communicating with / interacting with the oppressed and downtrodden, given that they may have evolved into a truly empathic consciousness. Within human society, that would include the poor, the homeless, the mentally ill / challenged, and those who for one reason or another have become social outcasts. It would also include all third world cultures in relation to the developed, Western world. But even those divisions might ring untrue to a truly empathic ANHI when compared with what is arguably the greater divide - how we humans, regardless of class, religion, or any of the other things that divide us from each other, as a species treat all the other inhabitants of this planet.

Is the life of a human being worth more than the life of any other inhabitant of this planet - like this chimpanzee that I saw at the Los Angeles Zoo the other day? We would say yes; an ANHI might not make that distinction. As I wrote on my Facebook status after coming back from the Zoo by way of a stop in Beverley Hills, I saw more "humanity" staring into the eyes of this sad little chimp than I did on all of Rodeo Drive.

I recommend that everyone read the wonderful and thought-provoking book Ishmael, by Daniel Quinn.  The novel is a philosophical examination of the captivity of mankind under a distorted, imprisoning and damaging "civilization". In the end, Ishmael, a gorilla which can communicate telepathically, tells the narrator:

The story of Genesis must be undone. First, Cain must stop murdering Abel. This is essential if you're to survive. The Leavers* are the endangered species most critical to the world - not because they're humans but because they alone can show the destroyers of the world that there is more than one right way to live. And then, of course, you must spit out the fruit of the forbidden tree. You must absolutely and forever relinquish the idea that you know who should live and who should die on this planet.
 * All "primitive" cultures

I think any truly advanced non-human intelligence would agree.

I believe that we will be judged by how we treat the other inhabitants with whom we share this planet. As things stand now, we would be found sorely wanting. Change is imperative -  and not just "at the margins" change which would still have us at the top of the "planetary pyramid", but rather radical and revolutionary change that replaces that pyramid model of order with a different view - a circle, where everyone and everything is interconnected. 

We must become neither "takers" nor "leavers" as envisioned in Ishmael - we must become sharers. Our future depends on it.

This might all sound very "new age" to many readers. To those who would see it that way, I ask one simple question - isn't it about time for a "new age" given how the "old age" has worked out for us, and our fellow inhabitants of this fragile world?

As I wrote in 1992:



In other words, who are we, and more important - who do we want to become?

Paul Kimball

Evolving Consciousness, Empathy and Advanced Hon-Human Intelligence

Fascinating video, which raises an intriguing question - how might it apply to a more advanced, non-human intelligence (NHI) that may have gone through the same development?

What if, for example, an NHI is actually us, from the future (making it an advanced human intelligence, of some sort), where we have moved much further along in terms of empathic development, and where our "sense of identity" really has broadened to a communal outlook? Could "we" be trying to help our less developed selves along the way, to lay the groundwork for a truly empathic civilization.

Or perhaps the NHI, if it isn't a future "us", has developed itself into a truly empathic consciousness, and feels obliged to help less developed species to the same destination, without directly interfering in their society?

Possibilities worth considering...

Paul Kimball