Reflections

The history of the Homo Sapiens species

The Homo Sapiens species evolved in Africa alongside various other Homo species that are now extinct. Sometimes between about 60 and 70 thousand years ago, a small band of humans left Africa and began spreading to the rest of the planet. Along the way, they wiped out other Homo species that left Africa earlier, for instance, the Neanderthals. The latter lived in Europe for hundreds of thousands of years until Homo Sapiens arrived there about 30,000 years ago.

About 10,000 years ago, agriculture had been discovered, which quickly replaced hunting/gathering and allowed a major expansion of the species to several hundred million.

The last big continent to gain a significant population was America. Although humans have lived in America for about 20,000 years, an extensive population increase occurred only after the technologically more advanced Europeans have arrived.

The three centuries following the event of European arrival to America witnessed the emergence of modern science and scientific thinking in Europe, giving rise to the beginnings of large-scale industrialization.

Within 200 years of the beginnings of large-scale industrialization, humanity learned about the Universe and Earth’s insignificance within it. A vast amount of understanding was brought to Nature’s laws, and their quantum character had been discovered. As a result, among other things, humanity learned to access nuclear energy; one use of nuclear energy was warfare.

America’s population density became roughly on par with the other continents. Humanity’s venture outside Africa has been completed. There were no more horizons left to head for; the planet was brimming with more than 7 billion people.

Although human knowledge’s frontiers expanded tremendously, the vast majority, over 99.9%, of humanity remained completely oblivious of this. Their thinking and behavior remained in past millennia, namely, driven by beliefs based on a Supernatural and, commanded by all religions, blithely expanding population. All the while, humanity had at its disposal the capabilities afforded by science. The large population armed with technology began to exhaust the planet’s capabilities. Scarcities emerged, including shortages of energy. It was not possible to harvest the Sun’s energy to such a degree that the population, by then over 12 billion, could have lived comfortably. Fossil fuels were reaching their end, and reliance on nuclear energy kept increasing. The standard of living for most humans declined, pitting one against the other. In the large, poor, warring populations, diseases once conquered, as well as new ones, took hold. Food shortages, even famine, became the norm. Such discontents resulted in wars fought on ever more considerable scales, usually under the aegis of religion.

Less than 100 years after the first use of nuclear weapons, they were used again in a religious conflict. After another 70 years, and with the population exceeding 15 billion, a major nuclear conflagration took place. This conflict disrupted the technological underpinnings that sustained the swollen numbers of humanity, and conditions retreated to pre-industrialization norms. Trying to use the exhausted resources of the planet, and with elevated radiation levels largely due to nuclear warheads having hit nuclear power plants and dispersing their radioactive materials planet-wide, survival became difficult. By a decade after the conflict, the population shrunk to below one hundred million as humanity succumbed to disease and starvation.

The last member of the Homo Sapiens species died 350 years after human knowledge took the leap of learning about the Universe and humanity’s place within it.

October 2013

_______________________________________________________________________

Breaking the deadly stranglehold of growth

This picture evinces the fundamental problem our species is facing: there are too many of us by now. To reach 1 billion people it took until about 1800. Even in 1960, there were less than 3 billion of us, but by 2011 we had reached 7 billion.

Our population numbers go hand in hand with our technological capabilities. Why is this? On the surface, the answer is many-faceted, but underneath the cause is a single one. Despite professed civility, we are still executing our evolutionary blueprint calling for all out reproduction. Through the eons of evolution, only those species survived that efficiently expanded into all living space, as given by the limits of sustenance. Since we are here today, our species must be a master practitioner of expansion. With technology, we are able to enlarge what we can sustain, but then our numbers quickly catch up with the new limits. We are on a hamster wheel spinning ever faster. The nature of human population numbers was, as we all know, already foreseen by Thomas Malthus. True now, as throughout history and prehistory, we expand, and nature, by default, matches our numbers to the available resources.

What is different today is that our needs are bumping up against the planet’s capabilities, and only advanced technology keeps even our present numbers in existence. Unavoidable resource shortages are on the horizon. The technology sustaining us is a delicate interwoven fabric spanning the globe. A little unexpected, natural, or man-made jolt and the technological edifice might crumble. Even a temporary setback, for instance, no electricity for an industrial or IT complex, might be disastrous and lead to chain reactions elsewhere. The larger the planet population, the more likely a crash would be catastrophic, with the real possibility of extinction.

Optimists proclaim that as people are more affluent, birth rates come down, and the population stabilizes. This is simply a false hope for the long haul, which will be discussed at another place. But the main thing is that how/if birth rates correlate with wealth at this point is immaterial. The present over 7 billion humans are already beyond what can be sustained at a level where life for all could be more or less free of misery. Unfortunately, the solution most often heard to alleviate poverty and suffering is to rely on more growth.

Conventional wisdom also says that human ingenuity will take care of everything. Notice that this conventional wisdom does not originate from scientists and inventors. Eternal growth exists only in the minds of right-wing economists; it does not exist in nature. This is starkly clear for energy, which is conserved. One cannot invent it; one has to find it somewhere. All of the human development of the past few centuries relied on using energy from fossil fuels. They are coming to an end at an accelerated rate. The acceleration is due to growth in consumption and the deteriorating EROEI (energy returned on energy invested). Simply, it takes ever more energy to extract useable energy. In another 50 years, over half of our energy produced likely will be used by the energy production sector itself. Oil sands are a prime example of poor EROEI.

We do not have the capability to produce sustainably as much energy that the present 7 billion people would need, let alone for the expected additional billions, to live at a level that is near the standard of advanced countries today. (There is enormous energy in nuclear fission, but for humanity, which is still in its bellicose atavistic mode, it would be better not to attempt this path for now.)

To survive, we have no choice but to put all our efforts into population control. Stabilize, and then reduce world population. Otherwise, try as we may, we are doomed to more misery, wars over resources, and not before long extinction. If we want to endure for the long term, much longer than the one or two centuries that at present seems likely, there is no hurry for anything. Let’s sloooow down; growth is the hydra that, if not slain, does all of us in.

This discussion begs the question, what would be an ideal number of humans on the planet? On the one hand, it is straightforward that the fewer, the better, since the assault on the planet is directly proportional to the number of people. On the other hand, we cannot let our numbers decrease to such an extent that humanity would be in danger of natural disasters, diseases, single or few unlucky coincidences, etc. Nature also indicates that there is a premium in genetic diversity. There is safety for the species in numbers. Considering such competing demands, a good guess for the population could be about 1 billion. With advanced technologies, 1 billion could live without leaving a footprint on the planet. We could capture the Sun’s power to such a degree that abundant energy would be assured for humanity. If we have abundant energy, science and technology can do everything. We can create anything, dispose of anything. Energy is the linchpin for existence. Suppose that we solve how to harness nuclear fusion here on Earth, rather than rely only on fusion in the Sun, and we have more energy than we know what to do with. Good, let’s show restraint and still stay at 1 billion (or whatever number rational thought might come up with), nothing to gain from more people. We must try to conquest time and thus assure a glimpse of life for infinitely more humans than if we go out in a moment of flame.

To control our numbers voluntarily would be a formidable task. The past evolutionary advantage of reproduction to the hilt is in our genes, and it engraves all of humankind’s culture, primarily in religion. Rational thought has never done well in such confrontations. Limiting our numbers and growth, in general, would be a pivotal change in the way of life as we lived it through our evolution. It is not something we would rather do. Unfortunately, we have no choice when it comes to shrinking our numbers. Our only choice is whether we do it ourselves or leave it to Nature to do it for us. Whatever suffering, calamities, conflicts would result from our own actions, they would be bliss compared to what Nature’s indifferent inevitable hand would deal out for us.

Numbers, however, can be reduced if there is sufficient will. Well done, China! China has done a great service for the human species. This should be contrasted with India, which eschews any thought of birth control. With audacious, outrageous impudence, it tries to extract special treatment using precisely its inflated population as an excuse. By and large, most of the world, including all of the Islamic nations, cherry-pick the fruits of science, to which they contributed essentially zero, to increase their numbers. The massive population increases in the world’s poor places are nothing short of war on the human race itself. As a minimum, every country with a fertility rate over two should be immediately cut off from any aid, including food and basic health aid.
brand viagra mastercard http://cute-n-tiny.com/tag/mystery-animal/ Anxiety supplements are helpful, but numerous signs or symptoms from the mental well being dysfunction resemble physical diseases like hormone imbalance, hyperthyroidism or cardiac arrhythmias. In general, these herbal capsules are mostly takes at least twice a day and daily check this cialis generika consumption till approximately 3 months is highly necessary for gaining desirable results. It is also sildenafil prices termed as erectile dysfunction. It is said when the erections are not viagra online buy proper and firm erections when he is making love with the partner which can lead you to two most common thoughts – “It’s all my fault”, and “What’s the point of it all?” Fatigue and sleep: one of the reasons why you stop doing your favorite things is because of the tired feeling.
March 2014

_______________________________________________________________________

Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI)

SETI involves detecting electromagnetic signals coming from beyond the Solar system and trying to decipher if there are signs of intelligence in these signals.

To best understand SETI, it may be helpful first to examine Earth in this context. After a silence lasting more than 4 billion years, Earth, starting somewhere in the 1940-s, produced electromagnetic signals strong enough that they penetrated the interstellar space, and we are generating such signals ever since. Now, there is an electromagnetic bubble centered on Earth with a radius of about 70 light-years, the distance those first signals of the 1940-s traveled, and this bubble is expanding at the speed of light, reaching an ever-increasing number of stars. An alien intelligence inside this bubble, assuming this intelligence has at least similar technological and scientific capabilities to our own, could detect intelligent life here on Earth.

The SETI program is trying to detect such bubbles from those other civilizations. A much older civilization would have a much larger bubble than ours, possibly encompassing the whole Milky Way galaxy.

So far, SETI has seen no signs of intelligence “out there”. This is not good news.

Of course, we may be the only intelligence that has ever appeared in our galaxy. However, this does not seem likely. One cannot do statistics based only on a single occurrence, but looking at life’s history on Earth, one must marvel at its tenacity. Life emerged very early and then remade the planet to more of its liking. And, since at least the Cambrian explosion, more than 500 million years ago, life seems to be steadily progressing toward complexity, an obvious requirement for intelligence. Accordingly, we would tend to discard the “alone since ever” as a viable hypothesis.

It is also possible that civilizations more advanced than ours emit signals which to us look more like natural ones than signs of intelligence. But this too is not likely. We are advancing, and we probably would not fail in detecting an intelligence even if their signals were not as obvious as the ones we are emitting right now. Thus, one can assume that if there are intelligences “out there,” and we are inside their bubbles, we would detect their existence.

However, the most disturbing feature included in the famous Drake conjecture,  which tries to estimate the number of civilizations that we can expect to detect signals from (let’s call this number “N”), is associated with the longevity (L) of alien intelligence. Since the time that we are listening is only a few decades, which is zero on a cosmic time scale, we would only detect another civilization if their length of existence, L, overlaps (shifted, of course, by the time it takes for light to travel) with this moment of our listening. Because of this longevity factor, N contains a multiplier that is roughly the longevity, L, divided by a Sun-like star’s lifetime, which is several billion years. This ratio would be a small number even if a typical civilization were to last a few million years. However, with other factors such as the number of stars, stars likely to have planets, etc., if L is about a million, we could reasonably expect to observe signals from civilizations “out there.” But if the typical lifetime of a civilization is, let’s say, only a few hundred or even a thousand years from the moment of their coming to technological prowess, then N, the expected number of detectable civilizations, would be essentially zero.

Hence, SETI is not just academic entertainment but something having implications for all of us. There could be no better news for humanity than a positive SETI detection. It would mean somebody “out there” made it! This would imply that we, too, have a fighting chance to make past our technological adolescence. On the other hand, the longer SETI yields zero, the darker its meaning is for us. Combining such silence “out there” with what we observe here on our planet makes it more likely that our civilization will disappear in a blink.

November 2013

________________________________________________________________________

Free Thinking/Willing

We are not into metaphysical intricacies, but asking whether there are any natural restrictions on our thoughts. It can be argued that there are none, but then it seems that under certain broad terms much simpler systems than the brain also satisfy the same criteria that are needed for free will.

Thinking is associated with processes in the brain. Processes can be thought of as a sequence of states. It is quite straightforward that for free thinking to exist a necessary condition is that from an earlier state of the brain it should not be possible to deterministically derive a later state of the brain. This should hold not because the likelihood of various stimuli entering the brain and altering its state. Freedom of thought must also mean that stimuli affect states of the brain in a non predictable manner. Thus, stimuli are not essential for our purposes and we can assume that the brain forms a perfectly isolated system. The question is then: is it possible, at least in principle, to predict how the states of an isolated brain evolve? If no, the later state of the brain develops without constraints from its past, and thoughts, wills, emerge freely; if yes, there is no such thing as a free will because we are only executing a preexisting blueprint.

One surmises that in order to predict a future state of any system two things would suffice. One, knowledge of the present state, and two, knowledge of the physical laws governing the system’s time evolution. The brain, of course, is the most complex system that we know of, but why could one not know with sufficient precision, at least in principle, its state at one point? And, we certainly know the physical laws relevant to the brain’s functioning. These laws come from electrodynamics and quantum mechanics with some added mechanics, all fields we know well. (Chemistry is encompassed within these fields of physics.)  Then, is free will in danger, not from the omnipotence of a supernatural being, but simply from the unyielding laws of nature? Not to worry, but before continuing with the brain it may be instructive to look first at a much simpler system.

A system with illustrative value and possible interesting implications could be that of three masses, for instance three planets, interacting through their mutual gravitational attraction. This is commonly known as the three body system, or problem. Can one foretell the behavior of this system for an arbitrarily long time? Should not be difficult to determine its present state, and the laws of its time evolution are simple mechanics the oldest and best understood branch of physics. One might think that this is fairly easy, but it is not so. Turns out that notwithstanding the simplicity of this system its evolution into an indefinite future can’t be known even in principle. The fundamental reason is in the equations governing its evolution. While those equations are straightforward – discovered centuries ago by Newton — their solution show a time evolution which is characterized as being chaotic. The defining attribute of a chaotic system is that any uncertainty regarding the system increases exponentially with time. (The popular name of such behavior is the “butterfly effect”.) One can think of this as if moving in fog. The further one looks either backward and forward the less visible the path becomes. As time goes on eventually the system has no information whatsoever about its past, and looking far enough ahead, about toward what state it is heading. The growing uncertainties are washing out everything. Thus, the only way a chaotic system could be deterministically known is, if at one time instance its state could be determined with zero uncertainty. And, such infinite precision is not possible even in principle. Not just that our measurements are too crude, no, the laws governing its evolution are such that the information regarding the future state is simply not there in the present state. Thus, with the passage of time the state of a chaotic system somehow emerges as if by itself.

Now that the role of chaos has been illustrated with the three body system lets return to the brain. It is fairly obvious that given its complexity and the laws governing it, the brain must be an extreme case of a chaotic system. We can’t show this simply with calculations as we can for the three body system, the brain is way too complex for that. But we know that some of its functioning, like the firing of neurons, involves utmost non-linearities. Non-linearity and chaotic outcome go hand in hand. Since for us the brain’s evolution in time manifests itself  as thoughts, this means that the freedom of our thinking and willing is afforded by the common natural phenomenon of chaos!

Considering again the three body system, is there a fundamental difference between its behavior and that of the brain? The brain is more complicated, but they both are chaotic, thus for both the future emerges on their own accord. Could one aver that the three body system also has free will? In fact, almost all phenomena in nature are chaotic, is then free will universal?

The big difference is on the time scale that freedom manifests itself in the brain and in simpler systems. In the brain one might guess such time scale might be well less than a thousandth of a second (millisecond), while in a tree body system the same time scale might be that of millions of years. Suppose, however, that one normalizes the time to freedom with a measure of the system’s complexity, something like multiplying with the number of states that the system at any moment can enter into. Maybe such normalized times to freedom are more or less the same, independently from the peculiarities of any given system. This would mean that all chaotic systems are free to the same degree after having traveled roughly the same distance in their own parameter spaces. Accordingly, the difference between the brain and a three body system is in their complexity and not inherently in their capacity to act free. The brain’s exclusivity is quantitative not qualitative.

Of course, one presumes that a three body system is not sentient. The interesting question is then how complicated a system has to be for sentience to emerge? Will Artificial Intelligence (AI), or in general anything we humans are capable of creating, ever reach a complexity that it will become sentient? One could not be faulted for wagering against such an outcome.

An aside… Pure quantum systems, even complicated ones, evolve in a predictable manner. However, in nature pure quantum systems fall prey to disturbances, causing what is called decoherence. The time for a macroscopic system like the brain to stay in a pure quantum state is unimaginably short, thus the predictability of a quantum state does not stand in the way of  nature’s chaotic behavior. The only exception may be the quantum state of the whole universe, which by definition has no outside environment to cause its decoherence. Do we seem to be then in the paradox that while the whole of the universe is strictly deterministic, little parts of it, like our brain, or the Milky Way, have free will? Maybe all these little freedoms are somehow correlated to add up to determinism on the largest scale?

December 2013