Monthly Archives: September 2018

September 27 – How ‘Noospheric’ Risks Undermine The Continuation of Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we saw how, although there are risks to the continuation of human evolution in our perennial break-fix-break cycle,  faith in our ability to manage this cycle is more important than the expertise we develop to invent fixes to those things we break.

This week we will take a second look at these ‘Noospheric’ risks from the perspective of our place in the sweep of cosmic evolution.

The Fragility of Evolution

Consider that the enterprise of cosmic evolution itself is a risky business.  Evolution occurs when the ‘stuff of the universe’ thumbs its nose at the basic nature of matter by which each unification of like matter may well contribute to evolution by an increase in complexity, but at the same time is accompanied by a small loss of energy (Entropy: The Second law of Thermodynamics).  By this understanding of Physics, the universe begins with a certain quantum of energy, and as soon as it begins it it starts running down.  In seeming opposition, not only do things evolve while this is happening, but they evolve from simple configurations to more complex ones.  As Steven Pinker points out in his book, “Enlightenment Now”,  since there are obviously many more ways for things to be ‘un-complex’, disorderly, than there are for things to be ‘complex’ or more orderly, the very existence of evolution seems counter to the Second Law.  According to Pinker, “Evolution occurs against the grain.”

Worse yet,  As Teilhard observes, while nature seems to have a built-in ‘coefficient of complexity’ by which such complexity increases over time, (and without which evolution could not proceed) this factor becomes secondary to continued evolution when it enters the realm of the human and now requires ‘cooperation’.  As Richard Dawkins sees it, “Genes are replaced by ‘memes’ as the agent of evolution”.  Once humans acquire the capability of ‘reflective consciousness’, by which they are ‘aware of their awareness’, the rules change once again.

Evolution must now be chosen if it is to continue.

So What Could Possibly Go Wrong?

But if evolution needs to be ‘chosen’  to continue, what’s involved in choosing it?  In a word, ‘faith’.   Restating and simplifying the Teilhard quote from last week:

“(we need) to be quite certain, … that the (future) into which (our) destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   Such ‘choice’ requires ‘trust’.

We saw in the last three posts how common it is to engage in denial of progress and how such denial reflects a fear of the future.  We also touched on the fact that such fear can be (and has so often been ) seized upon by populists who offer themselves as bulwarks against the woes of the future if only we would trust them.  Their first move is to insist that there is much to be feared, then to begin to use this fear to undermine trust in the Western structures of freedom which they claim to have unleased such woes  as the free press, individual freedoms and open immigration.   Other Western liberal practices are also denigrated, such as the development of a global infrastructure by which every advance, such as those reported by Norberg, can be shared globally and contribute to progress across the globe.  While walling off the rest of the world may shut us in it is advertised as necessary to make us safe.

Once traditional Western norms can no longer be trusted, Teilhard’s  ‘psychisms’ identified last week as not only one of the fruits of these norms but an essential component of continued evolution, will  become less efficacious and over time will begin to fail to mitigate the negative effects that result from future inventions such as new sources of energy.

So, while Norberg’s quantification of human progress is in optimistic agreement with Teilhard, the risks are nonetheless substantial and cannot be overlooked.  Evolution is in our hands, and stewardship of its continuation requires a clear-headed knowledge of the past, a commitment to the energy of evolution as it rises in the human species and confidence in the future.  In the words of Teilhard:

“..the view adopted here of a universe in process of general involution upon itself comes in as an extremely simple way of getting past the dead end at which history is still held up, and of pushing further towards a more homogenous and coherent view of the past.”

The Next Post

This week we took a second look at the second and more serious category of risks to human evolution.  While we acknowledged the ongoing risks of fixing what we have broken, the greater risk lies in the possibility of losing faith in our historically proven ability to, as Teilhard says,

 “continually find new ways of arranging (our) elements in the way that is most economical of energy and space” by “a rise in interiority and liberty within a whole made up of reflective particles that are now more harmoniously interrelated.”

   In short, the interruption of this “rise in interiority and liberty” will stifle the flow of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will sum up where we’ve been in tracing Teilhard’s ‘articulation of the noosphere’ through Norberg’s enumeration of the articulations and arriving at the risks evolution undergoes as it enters into the realm of the human.

September 20 – The ‘Noospheric’ Risks to Continued Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

Last week we addressed those risks to continued human evolution that are based on the seemingly inevitable negative consequences of every aspect of human ‘progress’, but noted that, at least thus far, human innovation and invention seem up to the task of maximizing the advances over the consequences.

But can we count on this phenomenon to continue?  What can happen to ‘dry up’ this pool of intellectual energy, Teilhard’s ‘psychisms’, which have kept us moving thus far?

The Noospheric Risks

As we saw in our series a few weeks back on “Mapping the Noosphere”, the phase of human evolution in which increased population simply spills over into available space is over.  Even though the rate of increase of population has slowed, each increase now brings us into ever increasing proximity to each other, and our natural initial reaction is to recoil.  Take the example of looking for a seat at the airport.  Few will choose to sit near a stranger if a seat can be found next to one which is vacant.  The only instances in which we seem to be able to tolerate being closed in by the crowd are when we are related, as families or tribesmen, to those crowding us.

This recoil from increased compression is an indication of the fear that in the future we will be subsumed into the hoard, losing our identity, our autonomy and squelching our person.   There is a facet to the future that is ‘dreaded’; the future seems far less secure than the past.

   Each human innovation that has been cited in this series has occurred in the face of political, religious and philosophical pushback.  In the yearning for a non-existing but nevertheless attractive past, the practices of innovation, invention and globalism can be undermined.  The very fact that a strong majority of well-off Westerners can still consider the future to be dire is an indication of how little faith (well-justified faith if Norberg’s statistics and Teilhard’s projections are to be believed) is to be found.  In 2015, a poll cited by Norberg showed that a whopping 71% of Britons thought “The world was getting worse” and a miniscule 3% thought it was getting better.

Teilhard comments on this phenomenon:

“…so many human beings, when faced by the inexorably rising pressure of the noosphere, take refuge in what are now obsolete forms of individualism and nationalism.”

   With this insight, penned some eighty years ago, he correctly forecasts trends which can be seen in today’s increasingly divided West.  He goes on to elaborate:

“At this decisive moment when for the first time he (man, that is) is becoming scientifically aware of the general pattern of his future on earth, what he needs before anything else, perhaps, is to be quite certain, on cogent experimental grounds, that the sort of temporo-spatial dome into which his destiny is leading is not a blind alley where the earth’s life flow will shatter and stifle itself.”

   And here he identifies the crux of the ‘noospheric’ risks to increasing evolution in the human species.  As he forecasts, we seem to be entering an era of “rising ideological division” and a “culture war” that has the potential to undermine our well-documented knack for problem-solving.  Nowadays, few adversarial groups seem capable of negotiating peaceful consensus solutions to problems, especially with opponents that are perceived as ‘even more unreasonably dogmatic’ (Pinker) than they are. This cycle is often driven by the irate stubbornness of a few vigorous leaders.  After all, as David Brin points out,

“the indignant have both stamina and dedication, helping them take high positions in advocacy organizations, from Left to Right.”

   And exactly how does this jeopardize our continued evolution?  Again, Teilhard explains how human evolution is shifting from the neurological increase in brain size to the ability to synthesize brains to increase the power of thought to innovate and invent:

“..as a result of the combined, selective and cumulative operation of their numerical magnitude, the human centers have never ceased to weave in and around themselves a continually more complex and closer-knit web of mental interrelations, orientations and habits just as tenacious and indestructible as our hereditary flesh and bone conformation.  Under the influence of countless accumulated and compared experiences, an acquired human psychism is continually being built up, and within this we are born, we live and we grow- generally without even suspecting how much this common way of feeling and seeing is nothing but a vast, collective past, collectively organized.”

   In short, such ideological division undermines the formation of such ‘psychisms’, and weakens their power to solve problems.

The Next Post

This week we took a first look the ‘Noospheric Risks’ to human evolution, ones which are more subtle, and hence more dangerous than those of a ‘structural’ nature.

Next week we will continue looking at these ‘Noospheric’ risks to better understand how they can undermine the continuation of human evolution.

September 13 – The ‘Structural’ Risks to Continued Human Evolution

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Today’s Post

As we saw in our initial post on the subject of quantifying human evolution, Teilhard acknowledges that his audacious optimism for the future of the human race is nonetheless balanced by risk.  As we saw in the last two weeks, there is considerable resistance to the data which supports his optimism.

This week we will take a look at some ‘structural’ risks and see how they could play out to undermine the continuation of human evolution.

The Structural Risks

As we have seen in a few of his many examples of human progress,  Johan Norberg identifies a “Tornado of Evidence” (The Economist) which supports Teilhard’s optimistic projection for the  future of human evolution.  But even as he goes through the numbers which show exponential growth in human welfare in nine distinct and critical categories of human existence over the last two generations of human evolution, he also notes that every such aspect of ‘progress’ comes with an unplanned and unwelcome consequence.  Humans learned to replace wood with coal for fuel, which avoided the deforestation of the planet, and probable human extinction, but at the same time led to the near asphyxiation of those living in cities as population increased along with density.  Advances in sanitation, agriculture and medicine exponentially lowered the death rate of both mothers and children in childbirth, which then led to a huge growth in human population, which then threatened to overtax food production and lead to widespread famine.  And today we see the threat of global warning (at least partially) caused by dumping tons of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere and trapping heat, possibly leading to the rising of the seas and the drowning of millions.

However, as Norberg and many others note, forecasts of the effects of such consequences  have historically failed to materialize as predicted.  Such forecasts, such as those of Malthus, who predicted population growth overwhelming food production and leading to global famine by now, did not factor in the human ability to innovate and invent.  While improvements in crops have led to a global decrease in hunger, the population did not continue to grow at the predicted rate.  Why not?  As Norberg points out, the reduction in childbirth deaths actually led to a decrease in the rate of population growth as parents no longer felt the necessity for large families when such a large percentage of children began to survive the vulnerable early years.

As we have seen, the introduction of coal did indeed lead to deaths caused by foul air, but of course, once again, innovation and invention produced methods of cleaning coal smoke, and new technologies to produce more BTUs with fewer side effects.

But what about global warming?  The CO₂ content in the air may take centuries to dissipate naturally, and by then humans may well have effected their own demise.   Again, such a forecast fails to factor the ability of humans to invent.  Considering the number of initiatives under development today, such as wind, solar and nuclear power, such prophesies may well be premature.  There are also studies underway to not only extract CO₂  from the air, but to market it as a source of fuel as well.  All these, of course,  are optimistic forecasts,  and all subject to unplanned consequences which will set off new rounds of invent-pollute-clean up.  Can humans win this war, or will the inevitable consequences rule out in the end?

The question can legitimately be asked, “What costs are we prepared to pay for progress?”  This is followed by the more significant question. “How can we be sure that we will continue to find fixes for the things we break?”

One key to perspective on this conundrum is to address the other type of risk: the ‘Noospheric Risks’.

The Next Post

This week we took a brief look at ‘Structural’ risks to the continuation of evolution in the human species.

Next week we will address risks to human evolution that are more subtle, and hence more dangerous, the ‘Noospheric’ risks.

September 6 – Why the Pessimism?- Part 2

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Today’s Post

Last week we took a first look at why pessimism over human progress (entitled ‘progressiphobai’ by Steven Pinker in his book, “Enlightenment Now”) seems so entrenched in the West, particularly among those comfortable, secure, educated individuals who are unable to project their personal well-being into optimism about their future.
This week, staying with Pinker, we will take a look at several reasons why such a fear of the future might be at the root of this ‘progressiphobia’.

Pinker’s  List

   Pinker identifies several phenomena at work in Western society that contribute to such a notable lack of trust in our future.

Ubiquity of News – We are immersed in news in a way which is truly unprecedented.  Thanks to technology, we receive it not only in ‘real time’ but in unprecedented volume.   As Pinker observes:

“Whether or not the world really is getting worse, the nature of news will interact with the nature of cognition to make us think that it is.”

     And not only does immediate news sell, negative news sells better than positive news, resulting in negative slant.  Pinker cites a survey showing a ‘negative count’ in the New York Times from 1945 to 2015, in which the use of negative terms in news articles shows a distinctive increase.

In addition to the financial desire to ‘sell’, the competition between paper and electronic media is also raising the stakes.

   While the result of such a plethora of information might be seen as simply leaving us ‘better informed’, it can also be seen as leaving us ‘miscalibrated’  For example, we worry more about crime even as crime rates are falling.  As Pinker points out, such information can “part company with reality altogether”.   He cites a 2016 American poll in which

“77% agreed that “Islamic militants operating in Syria …pose a serious threat to the existence and survival of the United States.””

  Pinker notes that such an opinion is not only an example of ‘miscalibration’, it is “nothing short of delusional”.

The Negativity Bias – As we have seen in the above examples, such pessimism isn’t just due to skepticism about the data, but suggests an ‘unpreparedness’ for the possibility that the human condition is improving.  This is sort of a ‘human original sin’, in which it is easier for humans to imagine a future in which their life is degraded by violence, illness, poverty, loss of loved ones or a nearly endless list of woes than it is to imagine it as uplifted, their lot improved, their relationships deepened, or their future brighter than their past.

One reason for such bias is the simple fact that our lower brains continue to stimulate us with the basic urges common to our ancestors, such as fight or flight, hunger, anger or other ‘base instincts’ so necessary for their survival.  Just because evolution has endowed us with a neocortex brain capable of rationally dealing with such instincts (“am I really threatened?”) doesn’t mean that the limbic and reptilian brains cease to function.

It also doesn’t mean that our skill of using the neocortex has reached maturity.  Teilhard notes that humanity is still in the early stages of its evolution, considering that if universal evolution was captured in a thousand pages, the appearance of the human would not occur until the bottom of the last page.  Just as he envisions the first, most primitive cell emerging in evolution “dripping in molecularity”, he also sees humanity still in a stage which is ‘dripping’ with ‘animality’, and very much influenced by the instinctual stimuli which served our ancestors so well.

The Illusions of Maturity – As Pinker sees it, we tend to “mistake the growing burdens of maturity, wage-earning and parenthood for a less innocent world”.  Along these same lines, as we age we also have a tendency to “mistake a decline in our faculties for a decline in the times”.  As the columnist Franklin Pierce Adams pointed out

“Nothing is more responsible for the good old days than a bad memory.”

The ‘Wisdom of Pessimism’ – Pinker notes that throughout history, “pessimism has been equated with moral seriousness”.  This can be seen, for example in the Hebrew prophets who “blended their social criticism with warnings of disaster”.  The best way to be perceived as a prophet, it seems, is to predict the worse, because there’s always something happening to confirm the prediction, somewhere.

Pinker also notes that “Intellectuals know they can attain instant gravitas by pointing to an unsolved problem and theorizing that it is a symptom of a sick society.”  As we saw last week, the affluence of the Graham family (and many Evangelicals like them) is testimony to how financially successful this strategy can be.

Not that pessimism is all bad.   The fact that there are more of us concerned about harms that would have been overlooked in more callous times, itself contributes to the increase in human welfare which Norberg documents in such detail.  The danger that Pinker sees is tbat “as we care more about humanity, we’re apt to mistake the harms around us for signs of how low the world has sunk rather than how high our standards have risen”.

Human Neurology – This last example comes not from Pinker but from recent studies in which brain activity was recorded under different stimuli.  In these studies, the researchers were able to identify which part of the brain ‘lit up’ with different activities.  They noted that when a person was shown information that made them indignant, the same part of the brain responded as when they ate chocolate.  This suggests that indignation, a state of anger which the person feels is justified, can set off a reaction in the brain which is registered as ‘pleasure’.  It turns out that being indignant releases the same kind of endorphins as eating chocolate.  In a nutshell, indignation feels good.  As my old supervisor at the ‘Bomber Plant’ used to say, “Indignation is the balm that soothes the pain of inadequacy.”

The Next Post

This week we completed a brief summary of Steven Pinker’s observations of our seeming reluctance to acknowledge the fruits of human evolution.  In Pinker’s words

“The world has made spectacular progress in every single measure of human well-being”

   But, he goes on

“Almost no one knows about it.”

   The fact that there clearly exists such a plethora of ‘fruits’ (well documented by Norberg), at the same time that acknowledgement of them seems so scarce presents us with yet another ‘duality’.  When Teilhard addresses what he considers to be the risks to the continuation of evolution in the human, he rates such duality high on the list.  Next week we will address risks to this continuation, and take another look at Teilhard’s concerns.