I’m new to your pieces. Enjoyed this, and will take time to digest. Just wanted to flag that the inevitability and irreversibility of the Neolithic revolution has been strongly challenged by Graeber and Wengrow. Also have you come across Julian Jaynes on the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Some relevance to the phase transition. Old now, and comprehensively dismissed, but interesting. I’m interested in “reading reason back” as an explanation of emergent consciousness cf Hofstadter. Looking forward to exploring your thoughts.
I'm familiar with their book but haven't read it. I'm dubious of Graeber's scholarship in general, but value his writing as a source of ideas. His work tends to suffer from having an ideological axe to grind. In the case of The Dawn of Forever, for example, he seems on a mission to refute the idea that early civilization had to be so inegalitarian. I'd never claim that the agricultural revolution "had to happen" or happen in the particular way it did. Though I would argue that some degree of hierarchy was strongly favored for transaction costs reasons, and that once the transitioned happen, it was irreversible short of ecosystem collapse. Such collapses of course happened many times, but even then, it seems more common for collapsed civilizations to either restart the cycle or go extinct; not to return to hunter-gather modes of life.
I like the theme of the piece, of AI in the context of deep history, but I also immediately compared and contrasted with Dawn of Everything, and strongly recommend you give that a read as the historical backing in the piece put my nose out of joint. The themes in their book, basically a counterargument to "progress", is one of my hot topics so excuse me, but large sections of the piece read like progress porn ("lucky", "divine intervention") and I'd urge you to at least reflect on whether sedentary farming, debt/money, metallurgy, static written history, tyrannical hierarchies, large scale war and monotheism through to the modern day with all our ills and permission to comply society do actually constitute progress, or a cancerous deviation that threatens the existence of life on Earth 😉
I like reading history on Wikipedia on my smart phone just fine, but society and the planet are fubared. So our continued existence after 250,000 years implies to me that an oral history that can be recalled but reinterpreted for future generations has served us far better than stone tablets or papyrus that must be adhered to for eternity is a culture that's born to die.
So my counterargument to the piece would be that if we want to develop AI with sustainable motivations that won't try to take over, strip the solar system for paperclips or genocide the human race for our own good, then we should reflect on what "rogue" really means. Humans survived "far outside their evolutionary niche" sustainably (e.g. canoe based socities living in Patagonia for +10k years) for very long periods - I'd suggest they were not rogue. Perhaps what rogue constitues is conflict driven socities oriented around powerful individuals, imposed by the rule of law over the complex individual freedoms that Graeber and Wengrow uncover in (some) North American tribal societies.
Not sure where to go with that beyond "our notion of progress is apocryphal, western thought is problematic and a poor basis for generally intelligent AI", but give the Dawn of Everything a go, and reflect on "the indigenous critique of European society"!
I would count myself among the skeptics of history as "progress." I even note that agricultural society was in some ways a regression for the typical person. But the idea that history is "progressive" is a much weaker claim. It's not saying that "things inevitably get better"; just that historical developments are connected, intelligible and ongoing.
Nice start. Do you later plan on writing about the "dark side" of language/reason seen in Taylor's critique of "giving logos a life of its own" or Habermas's critique of the system taking over the life-world? Seems like this is the right grounds for seeing the dark side of AI too.
Great article. We can trace the origins of human progress across important phase shifts:
1) The Big Bang and the emergence of atoms/laws of physics/chemical evolution
2) Biological evolution with the emergence of life from carbon-based molecules.
3) Cultural evolution which allowed information to be passed within generations.
Each step along this process results in a sum that is greater than the constituent parts. Molecules take on new characteristics that differ from constituent atoms. Life has capabilities that molecules never could…etc
The agricultural revolution enabled us to create just enough surplus energy (calories) such that some of us could move into cities and specialize beyond gathering calories. As these cities became bigger, power scaling laws kicked into gear; per capita, wealth generation, and new ideas greatly increased. This would later be supercharged by the harnessing of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution.
Thanks for this. Stimulating. May I take issue with this: “Darwinian selection is gradual, and even theories of punctuated equilibria don’t operate on such short time scales”?
In “The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner we learn how quickly selection can occur under stressful circumstances.
It would be interesting to think about how quickly selection might change society if falsehoods become accepted.
I’m new to your pieces. Enjoyed this, and will take time to digest. Just wanted to flag that the inevitability and irreversibility of the Neolithic revolution has been strongly challenged by Graeber and Wengrow. Also have you come across Julian Jaynes on the breakdown of the bicameral mind. Some relevance to the phase transition. Old now, and comprehensively dismissed, but interesting. I’m interested in “reading reason back” as an explanation of emergent consciousness cf Hofstadter. Looking forward to exploring your thoughts.
I'm familiar with their book but haven't read it. I'm dubious of Graeber's scholarship in general, but value his writing as a source of ideas. His work tends to suffer from having an ideological axe to grind. In the case of The Dawn of Forever, for example, he seems on a mission to refute the idea that early civilization had to be so inegalitarian. I'd never claim that the agricultural revolution "had to happen" or happen in the particular way it did. Though I would argue that some degree of hierarchy was strongly favored for transaction costs reasons, and that once the transitioned happen, it was irreversible short of ecosystem collapse. Such collapses of course happened many times, but even then, it seems more common for collapsed civilizations to either restart the cycle or go extinct; not to return to hunter-gather modes of life.
I like the theme of the piece, of AI in the context of deep history, but I also immediately compared and contrasted with Dawn of Everything, and strongly recommend you give that a read as the historical backing in the piece put my nose out of joint. The themes in their book, basically a counterargument to "progress", is one of my hot topics so excuse me, but large sections of the piece read like progress porn ("lucky", "divine intervention") and I'd urge you to at least reflect on whether sedentary farming, debt/money, metallurgy, static written history, tyrannical hierarchies, large scale war and monotheism through to the modern day with all our ills and permission to comply society do actually constitute progress, or a cancerous deviation that threatens the existence of life on Earth 😉
I like reading history on Wikipedia on my smart phone just fine, but society and the planet are fubared. So our continued existence after 250,000 years implies to me that an oral history that can be recalled but reinterpreted for future generations has served us far better than stone tablets or papyrus that must be adhered to for eternity is a culture that's born to die.
So my counterargument to the piece would be that if we want to develop AI with sustainable motivations that won't try to take over, strip the solar system for paperclips or genocide the human race for our own good, then we should reflect on what "rogue" really means. Humans survived "far outside their evolutionary niche" sustainably (e.g. canoe based socities living in Patagonia for +10k years) for very long periods - I'd suggest they were not rogue. Perhaps what rogue constitues is conflict driven socities oriented around powerful individuals, imposed by the rule of law over the complex individual freedoms that Graeber and Wengrow uncover in (some) North American tribal societies.
Not sure where to go with that beyond "our notion of progress is apocryphal, western thought is problematic and a poor basis for generally intelligent AI", but give the Dawn of Everything a go, and reflect on "the indigenous critique of European society"!
I would count myself among the skeptics of history as "progress." I even note that agricultural society was in some ways a regression for the typical person. But the idea that history is "progressive" is a much weaker claim. It's not saying that "things inevitably get better"; just that historical developments are connected, intelligible and ongoing.
Nice start. Do you later plan on writing about the "dark side" of language/reason seen in Taylor's critique of "giving logos a life of its own" or Habermas's critique of the system taking over the life-world? Seems like this is the right grounds for seeing the dark side of AI too.
Already did! The piece got too long so I decided to break it up. More coming.
I love this connection of "permissable, prohibited or obligatory" to "possible, impossible, or necessary."
Great article. We can trace the origins of human progress across important phase shifts:
1) The Big Bang and the emergence of atoms/laws of physics/chemical evolution
2) Biological evolution with the emergence of life from carbon-based molecules.
3) Cultural evolution which allowed information to be passed within generations.
Each step along this process results in a sum that is greater than the constituent parts. Molecules take on new characteristics that differ from constituent atoms. Life has capabilities that molecules never could…etc
The agricultural revolution enabled us to create just enough surplus energy (calories) such that some of us could move into cities and specialize beyond gathering calories. As these cities became bigger, power scaling laws kicked into gear; per capita, wealth generation, and new ideas greatly increased. This would later be supercharged by the harnessing of fossil fuels in the industrial revolution.
Thanks for this. Stimulating. May I take issue with this: “Darwinian selection is gradual, and even theories of punctuated equilibria don’t operate on such short time scales”?
In “The Beak of the Finch” by Jonathan Weiner we learn how quickly selection can occur under stressful circumstances.
It would be interesting to think about how quickly selection might change society if falsehoods become accepted.