Is war considered a part of the human condition?

Is war considered a part of the human condition?

[ 1/February/24 – posted ANZAC day 25/4/24 – with some modification]

We like simple answers to questions. We look for them, and tend to believe them, even when strong evidence exists to the contrary.

This is one of that sort of question.

Any realistic answer is going to be more complex than most are comfortable dealing with, and will bring into question many ideas that most are unwilling to question.

So most people will go for a simple answer that confirms the biases that they already hold.

This tendency, while understandable in a sense, is one of the drivers of conflict.

Human beings are the most complex species known, and that, by definition, means we are the most cooperative species known, because when one looks deeply at evolution, then contrary to popular dogma, it is cooperation (not competition), that allows for the emergence and survival of complexity.

Does that mean that all humans cooperate with all others?

No. Not necessarily, or even often, at present.

Does it mean that we need to learn how to cooperate at scale if we are to survive long term?

Now that we have the technological capacities that we do, then yes, it definitely means that.

Have we always cooperated at scale in the past?

No, most certainly not.

Why is that?

This is where it starts to get quite complex.

The hardest thing in maintaining complexity is preventing cheating on the cooperative.

In our bodies, cheating cells, cells that stop cooperating and start selfishly hoarding resources for growth, is the definition of cancer. It all seems to work quite well for those cancerous cells, right up to the point that everything dies. That is a big part of why we have our very complex immune systems, to detect and mitigate such cheating.

At the social level, our ethical and legal systems are, at their best, similarly effective mechanisms to detect and remove cheating strategies and to maintain cooperation.

At there worst, such mechanisms become invaded by various levels of cheating strategies and agents.

We are deeply complex organisms. A human being in a modern social context has at least 15 levels of complex cooperative systems, most of them subconscious, and cheating can happen at any of them. Thus it doesn’t have to be a conscious agent deliberately cheating (though those can and do occur), but it can simply be some level of system that was a useful approximation to optimal in the past, that is no longer appropriate to our ever changing present.

Our economic system now falls into this category.

When most things were genuinely scarce, then using market values (value in exchange, essentially a scarcity based value) was a reasonable proxy for value generally.

However, as we have developed ever greater tools to automate ever greater levels of production, then we have developed the ability to go beyond scarcity, but the value metric that we use in our economic systems is based in scarcity. This cannot end well. In the face of increasing automation, then existing market systems deliver increasing value to ever fewer; rather than meeting the reasonable needs of all.

This is a deeply complex problem space, as liberty is a fundamental property of life, yet liberty without responsibility is necessarily destructive. When dealing with multiple levels and classes of diverse agents, having systems that support appropriate levels of freedom and responsibility for all agents is a deeply complex and fundamentally uncertain problem space.

Understanding that cooperation in diversity is fundamental to security is a necessary first step – this notion is contrary to simple dogmas accepted by many.

Human nature is complex.

How we react is very much a function of the context we find ourselves in; and context has many aspects to it; threat, abundance, understanding, social support, culture, current stories, etc.

We always have the ability to cooperate, and it isn’t always the first strategy to occur to us.

Part of what is needed to make cooperation work is a willingness and ability to identify and mitigate cheating (any and all levels). The many levels of such systems can themselves tend to interfere with cooperation, and this requires a yet higher level of cooperation, which starts a recursive loop that one can repeat many times in some contexts.

And when resources get too scarce, then we all have a tendency to compete to secure enough to survive, but that can lead itself to destruction of the resources required for survival; and it actually turns out that even in this context, cooperation within trusted groups gives the greatest probability of long term survival.

The trick we need to master is trusting all the diverse groups of humans, and that requires a trust and verify approach (all levels); and that demands a responsibility (all levels) to limit growth, to stay within the actual capacity of the environment. Here on Earth, we are rapidly approaching such limits (if one considers bringing all living humans up to what one considers a reasonable standard of living, which includes a great deal of diversity in how individuals define that).

So war is not an inevitable part of human nature, and it has been an all to common (overly simplistic) aspect of our past. We learn to go beyond it, or we perish. And part of going beyond it is having the capacity for self defense, but using it only in the most dire of circumstances.

Evolution and adaption

How did Earth become a suitable environment for humans? Why are humans uniquely adapted to live on this planet compared to other places in the universe?

[ 1/February/24 ]

Wrong question.

We evolved in this place, and it is the process of evolution that shapes us to fit the earth, not the other way around.

The big issue is, that we are now using our language and technology to change things at scales and rates never before achieved by any living organism, and this means we are now our own greatest threat.

Our adherence to old beliefs, patterns and stories tends to blind us to the changes we are producing, and the ways in which many of our older and once reliable stories are now failing, and actually threaten us.

This is now the case at multiple levels. Our entire economic and political systems now need fundamental reform if we are to survive them.

In the presence of advanced automation, the idea that markets deliver a useful approximation of value generally starts to fail in ways that introduce existential level risk.

We need the advanced automation to solve a lot of known risks, it is the entire idea of value that needs to be reworked, the ways in which we produce and distribute money need to change – and quickly.

We live on a finite planet, and we need to respect those finite boundaries, and at the same time we need to acknowledge that a fundamental part of being human is our creativity, our ability to search beyond the known. This demands both freedom and responsibility, in ways that no set of rules can ever capture.

So we definitely live in “interesting times”.

The footprint of humanity

Continuing a 2 year old Quora question on population

[ 29/January/24 ]

Not true.
I know those numbers.

And yes, there is a lot more land required to generate all the food and energy and technology that people need, than is required to house them – that is very true.

It is true that current open loop technologies are not sustainable long term.

We do need fundamental change to systems to make them sustainable – Kate Raworth has that side of the systems fairly well characterised. But in the wider systems it is deeply more complex.

Lots of people really don’t get the numbers.

We are very close to the maximum limit of people at the sort of lifestyle most western people would think reasonable.

There is actually only about 1.8Ha per person of land area, but quite a bit of that is covered in ice or desert.

We don’t need 2Ha, but we do need close to 0.5Ha, depending on technologies used – it is complex.

[followed by]

Yes, the average American currently uses a lot of land.

The average human does not.

Across the entire planet, there are 4 acres per person, right now, and as you say, most of that is not arable.

Most people are living off significantly less than one acre.

I live in New Zealand, and I have been vegan for 14 years. My wife and I can live off our half acre section, growing wood for our very efficient fire, all our food, and solar power off our roof. We could be self sufficient in an emergency, and we are not most of the time.

Sure, we do currently use a lot of energy and technologies from elsewhere that use a lot of land elsewhere, and that will change as AI seriously impacts technology, which will happen far faster than most think possible.

[followed by]

No.

I would live with all the comforts and services I have now.

Yes – some manufacturing places are large.

An example – NZ Steel, which produces about half the steel used in this country, has an area of almost 2 million meters squared, but services the needs of over 2 million people, so is about 1m2 each.
If you add all of the different manufacturing systems up, for most people they come to about 50m2 per person.

In terms of arable land, we have less than an acre each now. Fortunately, if you are vegan, then it only takes about 200m2 to support a varied diet. This climate grows about 3kg of dry matter per m2 per year. Plenty of surplus for food security.

I agree, that we cannot have everyone on the planet living the lifestyles that many in the USA do now, but when you take the advertising away, not many actually want to. In this country, the vast majority are happy with a great deal less stuff, but with better medical care and basic services.

In terms of hospitals, the ground area of all the hospitals in my region add up to about 150,000m2, and service some 600,000 people – way less than 1m2 per person. By the time you add in the various manufacturing systems that support the hospitals, it probably comes to about 1m2 per person in total. A lot of land in total, but not a lot per person.

Stopping the economy from sinking

Leaking boat

[ 28 /January/24 John posted an image of 4 people in a boat, 2 at one end bailing furiously, two sitting at the other end and one says “Sure glad the whole isn’t at our end”]

Or everyone goes to the same end and the hole comes out of the water (have actually had to do that one day over 50 years ago, when I drove my boat into a submerged pole and punched a hole in the bow, had to move people to the back, extreme bow high position, to get the hole out of the water).

[followed by John replied “Pow!yeah….. love this story…. and the metaphor it paints”]

Yeah – that too – AI gives us the ability to make everyone rich, and does away with the need for consumerism – so we can meet the actual reasonable needs of everyone with fully automated systems. No more advertising, no need to sell anything.
Quite a different way to live!

[followed by 29/Jan – John replied “O if only”]

Since 1974 I have been searching strategic spaces for ways for humanity to survive long term.

This is essentially the only one I have found.

All the business as usual options seem to self terminate – necessarily. Deeply complex, but beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt in my mind.

Recognising the necessary fundamental role of cooperation in the survival of complexity is contrary to the dogma underlying existing economic and political systems, but does in fact seem to be the strategic reality of our existence, and of evolutionary systems generally.

AI means that we do not need to have sapient slaves. It means we can have a level of abundance that most only dream of. But it is complex, and there are real planetary and ecological boundaries that must be acknowledged and respected. So we are in a poly-crisis, far deeper than most have ever considered, and there are real temporal dimensions to this crisis.

So I still see real solutions, but the real dangers are almost equally probable right now – in my estimation.

Cooperation has to win, or we all lose – in a very real sense, it is that simple.

That seems to be unlikely to come from the top, it seems to have to be a bottom up process.

[followed by]

I never met Bucky, but I was friends with a guy who spent 3 years with Bucky and A C Clarke in India, so have that influence, but it came later.

I have no problem with self interest, just with the term and scope that most people use – too short, too overly simplistic.

For me, the easiest way to make people care is to give them a realistic chance of living a very long time. I have no reasonable doubt that it is possible.

I do have real issues with the idea of markets and money as a proxy for value more generally. Markets are places to measure exchange value, places to trade something you have an abundance of for something that is scarce. That can be very useful, but isn’t good measure of value generally. We can all get all the oxygen we need from the air simply by breathing, so the market value of air is zero, but that doesn’t mean that air has no value to us, it is arguably the single most valuable commodity available to us.

Advanced automation has the potential to break market value completely. To automate the production of everything, and thus make most things as available as air is now. Still some time away, but not as far as many people think.

[followed by John replied “empathy is key — y’gotta care beyond market value — and so many don’t”]

Hi John,

Kind of.

Sure, many people are just trying to survive, and getting enough money to feed and house and care for the family dominates their lives. That is true for many people.

And in my experience, when you give people security, and give them an experience of nature, most start to appreciate and value it.

So yes, some difficult transitions, and yes there will likely be some small percentage that are actually sociopathic most of the time; but it seems possible to me to bring most people over to genuinely caring, and it does demand a change of context.

Sharks

Shark story

[ 29/January/24 In response to @Riceball01]

Like others here, I had an encounter with a large great white about 50 years ago, in the Hauraki Gulf in New Zealand. I was commercial fishing for flounder, and had my nets set shallow, about 1.5m of water, and had gone out to talk to a friend on his launch, when we noticed a lot of splashing at my nets. I got into my little 4m aluminium boat with a 30hp outboard, and went in for a close look. There was a very big shark at my gear. It was longer than my boat between the fins, about 5m dorsal fin to tail fin. That estimate from about 5m. That was as close as I was prepared to get. When I picked the nets up an hour later, all the mesh (with all the fish) had been stripped from 2 nets (160m). It got a good free feed of flounder at my expense. In 17 years of fishing for flounder in those waters it was the only great white I saw.

But in support of the general thesis of this video, I did once while rod fishing for snapper catch a small shark (a school shark pup barely 30cm long). As I reeled it in it was taken by a larger shark (about 1.5m smallish bronze whaler), and that was a lot more active, and swam away at speed, so I played it for a bit, and after about 3 minutes had it coming close to the boat when it too was taken by a large shark, just over 4m in length bronze whaler. That one took a long time, over half an hour, to get alongside the boat, and a while to kill. I had to parbuckle it into the boat, and had to dip the gunwales under to get it in, then bail a lot of water out of the boat. I got the sharks home, but about 1.5m of the tail was hanging over the transom. So yes, sharks definitely eat each other under some circumstances.

Randomness

[ 27/January/24 Walter Smith asked “Randomness and causality:
How can randomness in the quantum world lead to causality (like physical laws)?”]

It seems clear to me from my investigations that it is only in a world where both order and randomness exist that we can have both complexity and freedom.

If things are entirely random, then no structure can survive.

If things are entirely ordered, then the system structure is determined from the first instant, and can only play out in one way.

If there is sufficient fundamental uncertainty, yet also sufficient asymmetries probable; then large collections can behave in very reliable fashion, and complexity can emerge over time in some very specific sets of contexts, but individual entities retain some degree of fundamental uncertainty that make behaviour of the system as a whole also fundamentally uncertain, however many regularities exist within it.

Quantum mechanics seems to be suggesting that we do in fact live in this third type of universe, one in which very complex multi leveled evolved agents such as ourselves can have both complexity and freedom, both creativity and responsibility. A universe that has laws that work at certain scales and contexts, but also degrees of fundamental uncertainty that guarantee the potential for eternal novelty.

Seem like we got really lucky !

History and constraints

History

[ 26/January/24 Dirk posted a Thomas Sowell quote “What is history but the story of how politicians have squandered the blood and treasure of the human race?”]

To me, history is a deeply dimensional set of stories, that are some level of approximation to what actually happened, but most are so deeply over simplified that they paint essentially wrong pictures.

As Churchill said in 1947 “Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”.

I think included in that notion would be the idea of no government.

The deep problem we face is that we have many different sets and levels of paradigms that need to coexist if we are to survive as a species, if the notion of freedom is to have any real meaning. Government, when not captured by some specific paradigm, seems to me to be our best attempt to allow freedom and complexity to survive. And, as Churchill noted, it is far from perfect, which is not to say that it is without value.

[followed by]

Hi Dirk,

How do you define “real democracy”?

Domination of minorities by majorities – which is what democracy often does in practice – doesn’t do it for me.

There must be some mechanism to reach consensus that includes all reasonable parties. And there will always be uncertainties about what constitutes reasonableness.

[followed by 27/1/24]

Hi Gary and Dirk,

There is a difference between degrees of control and obedience.

Driving on the road is safe if everyone obeys the same set of rules.

In my country, it is drive on the left hand side of the road.

If I stay within that set of constraints, then I can safely navigate anywhere I want to go in this country. I spent 12 days away recently and covered 2,500km without hitting anything.

Constraints make complexity and security possible.

The trick is always having just enough constraints to optimise security and not so many as to overly constrain freedom.

Creativity and wellbeing are optimised when individual agents have as much freedom and resources as they can responsibly use. This make optimal use of the computation and creativity available in human brains. Central control fails to make use of that computation – which is why command economies always fail against those with reasonable degrees of freedom.

It is always a very complex and fundamentally uncertain judgement call as to where to put constraints in any particular system.

One of the major issues with the institutions of government is that they have this mechanism of making laws and many believe that laws can solve all problems. That is not actually the case.

It is, actually, deeply more complex than that.

There is an optimal balance of constraints that delivers the greatest long term security and the greatest degrees of freedom to the agents within the system, but the systems are eternally evolving and the actual constraints present tend to lag the system state by a significant margin.

With the double exponential of computational systems that we currently exist in, traditional systems are starting to fail in multiple domains; the monetary and political systems most critically.

The solution is not to remove all constraints.

The solution is to be very clear about the fundamental need for constraints, and for responsibility, and then to allow multiple sets of “safe to fail” experiments to test out different classes and sets of constraints.

But – that only works if all classes of agents accept the strategic systemic reality that the long-term survival of complexity demands cooperation in diversity. Any class of agent cheating on that breaks the entire system – necessarily.

It is deeply complex.
I got fascinated by evolution 60 years ago, and have been exploring the depths of evolutionary strategies and systems for 50 years. I love complexity, and it make my brain hurt actually holding a stack of 15 levels of complex adaptive systems (that seems to be a minimum for a reasonable approximation of what it is to be a human being).

So yes, there are an infinite class of ways that governance can be captured by “bad” agents, or can fail for other reasons, and none of that detracts from the necessity for governance – multi agent complexity demands some set of constraints to survive; and we need mechanisms for very diverse classes of agents to reach some level of agreement about what such a set of constraints might be, and how rapidly they need to change.

AI is fundamentally changing the game space.
Elon appreciates that – listen to the interview he did with Ben Shapiro at the Jewish Association conference this week.

Truth – one more time

Truth

[ 26/January/24 Deb wrote “The truth will set you free.
But not until it has finished with you.”]

Believing we have the truth is comfortable, but the probability of any of our notions actually accurately capturing the complexity evidently present in reality seems to be vanishingly small.

The evident bias in human brains to prefer simple certainty rather than accepting complex uncertainty seems to bias most people to accepting some set simple truths, and rejecting everything that calls them into question.

To me, truth needs to be treated as sailors use stars, not as something they expect to get to, but as something to guide one’s journey.

Reality seems to demand greater humility from us, to require us to eternally be prepared to question the things we use as contextually useful approximations to whatever it is that objective reality actually is.

Unfortunately, our brains have multiple levels of subconscious processes that simplify our perceptions to create the model of reality that brain presents to consciousness as experience, and the more stressed we are, the greater the simplification present. Thus when highly stressed, we do actually get to experience reality as simple binaries like friend or foe, good or evil, etc; when an unstressed view of the same situation always shows great diversity present. Every human being is demonstrably more complex than any human being can possibly understand in detail. Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn in Gulag Archipelago captures part of this well with “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.” For me, it is deeply more dimensional still.

For me, I much prefer to say that something seems probable, rather than that something is true – it seems to be more accurate, and retain at least some degree of humility, and some ability to accept and respect real diversity.

[followed by …”intellectual humility is the willingness to admit that something you believe might be wrong.”]

Hi Deb,

I think we need to go further, and to challenge the simple notion of truth in all cases.

Only when we are each in the habit of doing that, can the big lies be seen for what they are.

Until then, the human tendency to prefer social agreement will tend to continue multiple dimensions of ‘Big Lies”.

For me, the biggest lie of all is that evolution is all about competition, and that competition can solve all problems. That over simplification seems to be at base of many levels of issues.

The more complex reality seems to be that cooperation is required for the emergence and survival of complex systems; and for cooperation to survive there must exist effective mechanisms to detect and mitigate cheating strategies. But that subject is deeply more complex than most are willing and able to consider.

[followed by]

Hi Deb,

To me, it seems clear, that any level of accepting Truth is a place for cheating strategies to emerge and thrive.

The only effective counter seems to be a necessity for everyone to challenge and test.

That is antithetical to most pedagogical and religious practice.

Uploading

Uploading

[ 24/January/24 ]

Why would you think that downloading consciousness was possible?

Much of what we are appears to be in the details of the chemistry within our neural networks. We seem to be deeply more complex than most appreciate at present.

[followed by 25 Jan]

I wrote in 1974 that indefinite life extension was possible. I had just completed undergrad biochemistry, and the logic of it was clear to me beyond any shadow of reasonable doubt.

I think a lot of things are very likely possible that few people think possible.

It is just that uploading is not one of them.

The idea that uploading is possible seems to be based on the notion that what we are is defined purely by the synaptic connections of the brain, and that should be mappable. But it seems clear to me that much of what we are is actually defined by molecular relationships, both within the synapses, and within all sorts of cells of the body (the work of Seth Grant and team makes this clear beyond reasonable doubt). The synaptome seems likely to give a sometimes useful approximation, but seems very probably to me to lack many of the aspects of being that I find most interesting. Vast amounts of computation happen at the molecular level, and mapping molecules at brain scale without disrupting them is really hard.

So I was actually interested in the deep detail of why you thought uploading was possible. What set of models of brain function were you using to come to such a conclusion?

Hope and good people

Is there any hope for humanity as a whole? Are there no good people left in the world?

[ 24/January/24 ]

Of course there is hope.

Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn captures it well in the Gulag Archipelago “The line between good and evil runs not through states, nor between classes, nor between political parties either — but right through every human heart.”

We can all be better or worse in any particular context, and for some of us the contexts we find ourselves in makes it easier to choose the better than for others in less favourable contexts.

In my experience, most people will display their better sides if you show them respect and understanding, and take the time to listen to their concerns, and help them if they need it.