John Earls:
>The idea is attracting attention because of the accelerating loss of faith
>in the models of the traditional paradigm for establishing a viable
>planetary system. Some go to UFO's (both goodies and badies), others to
>religions, to asteroidal apocalypses, and others like PCP to put things to
>gether and see where science is leading us, or better said, how we can draw
>from the overall scientific consensus to lead it to where we want (or think)
>this viability might be found -- i.e. the "super-brain".
All this is part of a quest to develop a new world view that would replace
the Newtonian one. PCP's world view is evolutionary-cybernetic, emphasizing
the fundamental role of organization (system, intelligence, structure...)
and of the irreversible processes that spontaneously produce this
organization. The "super-brain/super-being" idea is a likely, but not a
necessary, outcome of our view that on-going evolution produces higher
levels of organization.
>But part of our
>scientific and cultural tradition is to hold to a basic scepticism. Some
>intelligent people espouce scepticism as a philosophy. We applaud them when
>they put down the UFOists and others of that ilk, in fact we do it
>ourselves. But since we are putting forth a "way out" we must expect to be
>targets of the professional sceptics, and maybe they are healthy.
Of course, this is healthy. I am not so sure about the super-being idea
myself yet, and I would appreciate it if sceptics would either convince me
that there is a better alternative, or help me to strenghten the case that
there is a super-being by stimulating me to find good counterarguments to
their criticisms. The "fungus" metaphor is not so bad. In a PRNCYB
discussion a few years ago I spoke about a "sponge" being myself ;-)
>My big worry is all concerned with rates of change. Can the metasystemic
>transition take place fast enough for the Super brain to effect those
>actions necessary for the conservation of its biological base? Is the
>current hegenomic politico-economic paradigm driving such a rapid
>polarisation of accessable economic and political control -- between rich
>and poor countries, and within all countries between rich people and poor
>people (as was stressed in Istanbul), that the poor in their ever more
>difficult efforts to survive will voluntarily and/or involuntarily destroy
>the whole process. In the case that poverty and degradation of life proceeds
>more rapidly than the internet, and access to it, grows then Super brain
>will end up like Mars -- a burned-out would-be Gaia.
Even without a metasystem transition, I believe the evolution of the world
is much more positive than most people think. According to all objective,
generally available measures, the world is making steady, average process:
per capita wealth, life expectancy, level of education and even IQ are
increasing for the world as a whole and for all major regions (for IQ, I
believe the data available don't include the Third World, but for Europe
and America they do). There is continuous, unrelenting growth when averaged
over different years and different regions. Of course there are countries
where things are going for the worse for a number of years (e.g
Afghanistan, the former Soviet Union). But that is more than compensated
for by the steady progress in other nations.
The book "Metaman" which is listed in my "super-brain" PCP node
(http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/suporgli.html) in fact speaks less about the
concrete organization or evolution of the super-being, and more about the
fact that the problems facing the world are likely to be overcome much
more easily than people tend to imagine. The overall outlook it proposes,
based on a host of facts and statistics, is quite optimistic. I tend to
agree with that. The presently fashionable pessimism can be explained by
the general stress and lack of control caused by accelerating evolution,
and by the fact that catastrophes, crime, conflicts, threats and other bad
news tend to be magnified by minds and media, while steady, boring
statistical improvements tend to be ignored.
I do agree that the increasing gap between rich and poor is a major danger,
because present evolution tends to strenghen it. Complexity and fast
innnovation engender large differences in individual productivity which
lead to large gaps in income. The danger is real that in the developed
nations a subclass will be created which is as poor and undereducated as
the poor in the developing countries, and this will create major tensions.
This danger is particularly clear in the USA. (the European welfare system,
although under pressure, is likely to retain at least its fundamental
tradition of providing everybody with basic access to education, health
care and food).
Whatever the benefits of the market, I do believe state intervention is
needed to actively push up the poor out of their misery. Otherwise they
will be caught in a vicious circle of poor education and poor health
leading to low productivity, leading to low income, leading to poor
education and health. The great increases in productivity brought about by
technology are large enough to pay for the basic support needed. But
transferring the gains to the poor means that we will have to pay more
taxes...
>The Superbrain is growing and
>attracting more attention, including that of the sceptics. And the base of
>it all is political, because of the loss of credability of the current world
>polity. The Super brain's emergence and self conservation is itself a
>political act, and in this world situation needs the supportive political
>action of those who see it as the way out that most coherently follows from
>the course of science (incl. social science) itself. The sceptics can only
>be answered in terms of the bases of their scepticism.
I agree that in the end the emergence of the Super-Brain will be a
political problem. As I said, solving the present problems and creating a
more integrated super-organism implies a stronger suppression of individual
and group selfishness, and more solidarity between classes, countries and
groups. But I would prefer at this stage not to discuss the super-brain
idea in the political arena, since it is likely to stir misunderstandings
and emotional reactions, based on entrenched but obsolete ideologies and
values, rather than on healthy scepticism.
I have recently participated in discussions on the "Memesis" forum on
social implications of the network revolution, and have noticed how
fanatically some people reject new ideas such as meme evolution or
super-human transitions, interpreting them as new versions of old horrors
such as Social Darwinism and Stalinism. The "Human Super-organism as
Fungus" parody was just the opposite of their attitude: a relaxed,
tongue-in-cheek discusion of the subject, based on a real understanding of
the underlying scientific concepts.
Gary Boyd:
>THE superbrain notion is a bit odd.
>We have each of us about 100 billion neurons richly interconnected.
>The world has only about 6 billion people and most are not on-line,
>so in one sense the cyberspace community is far less than even one brain;
>no superbrain.
Yes, but the traditional means of exchanging communication, spoken and
written language, provide just the same media for collective intelligence
as the Internet, they just function several orders of magnitude more
slowly. On the other hand the speed with which people are getting on-line
is so tremendous (I don't think any other new technology has spread over
the globe so quickly), that it won't take long before the last villages in
the African savannah will get their Internet connection.
>Ofcourse nodes like you and I are each far richer than a single neuron,
>but can we effectively collaborate in deploying our knowledge and
>wisdom?
>How can we do this, how get a good signal to noise ratio?
>Where signal is say whatever conduces to eco-co-cultural symbiotic
>viability.
These are good questions. It's not sufficient to have efficient
transmission of information, you also need to support and stimulate
collective action. But techniques like those from Computer-Supported
Cooperative Work (see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/CSCW.html) may help.
Dan Parker:
>A scarcity mentality seems to create perceptions based on non-love, where
>self interest
> becomes necessary for physical survival. [...]
>
>I think the driving force of friendly competition could still occur without
> killing love in the higher levels of Maslows hierarchy of needs. As for
>the lower
> needs, it is now physically possible to create an abundance mentality in
>the developed
> world, even if far less material goods were actually consumed. I am
>working on a
> project that is attempting to sythesize various lines of thought on such
>a system.
I do believe there is a correlation between degree of "selfishness"
(absence of love or altruism) and the perception of scarcity. If people
would become more aware of the abundance that is really there, they would
be less inclined to always want to get more and more. In Maslow's terms,
they would move up in the need hierarchy: if they are aware that their
basic subsistence and security needs are satisfied, they would start to put
more energy in trying to fulfill higher needs such as love or
self-actualization.
However, I have the impression that at present the general level of need
satisfaction is rather going down because of the increasing stress and
insecurity caused by rapid change. This may explain why people seem to have
become much more selfish since the 1960's and their "summer of love". It is
difficult to control actual uncertainty and loss of control, but one thing
we can do is to change the perception of the situation. As argued in my
reinterpretation of Maslow's theory
(file://ftp.vub.ac.be/pub/projects/Principia_Cybernetica/Papers_Heylighen/Co
gn.Syst._Self-Actualization.txt), the essential variable is not the
*actual*, but the *perceived* level of need satisfaction. If people could
be convinced that the present state of the world (see above) is much better
than they think it is, they would start to feel more secure and optimistic.
That would diminish their preoccupation with short-term, selfish concerns.
This is turn would make it easier to convince them that they should make
short term sacrifices, such as using less fuel, or pay more taxes to help
the poor and the Third World.
Mike Lash:
> I appreciate Francis' sense of humor!
Thanks for the appreciation. PCP does not always need to be dead serious.
________________________________________________________________________
Dr. Francis Heylighen, Systems Researcher fheyligh@vnet3.vub.ac.be
PESP, Free University of Brussels, Pleinlaan 2, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium
Tel +32-2-6292525; Fax +32-2-6292489; http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/HEYL.html