I just finished watching the 2020 Netflix documentary The Social Dilemma, and I thought that some softwarephysics could be of help in assessing the risks and benefits of social media software. The Social Dilemma features many young IT developers and IT management professionals from Silicon Valley who have become somewhat disenchanted with how social media software has affected individuals and society in general. The Social Dilemma depicts a rather bleak and very disturbing picture of software in the current age. Now I was born in 1951, and I was raised during the 1950s and 1960s at a time when software was merely printing out paychecks and bills. So I had no interactions with software growing up as a child. However, I do have two children and five grandchildren, and I have seen them all grow up with the great advancements that software made over the past 40 years with the arrival of personal computing. In this posting, I would like to use some softwarephysics to suggest that none of the concerns raised by The Social Dilemma are new threats to mankind and that, to the contrary, social media software has provided many great benefits for all. I think that much of this disenchantment stems from not having a full grasp of what is really going on with the interactions between software and mankind.
It's All About Self-Replicating Information
First, because software is the latest form of self-replicating information to arrive on the planet, you must understand the overwhelming power of self-replicating information to rework an entire planet, or perhaps, even an entire galaxy. Once again, let me repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those of you new to softwarephysics.
Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.
The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:
1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.
2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.
3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.
4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.
5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.
6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.
7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.
8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.
Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:
1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. Recently, the memes and software have formed a very powerful newly-formed parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the rise of social media software. In that parasitic/symbiotic relationship, the memes are now mainly being spread by means of social media software and social media software is being spread and financed by means of the memes. But again, this is nothing new. All 5 waves of self-replicating information are all coevolving by means of eternal parasitic/symbiotic relationships. For more on that see The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software.
Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on.
The Grand Delusion of Consciousness
Next, you must look inward and question the very nature of your own consciousness. Philosophers and theologians have been doing this for thousands of years, so this is nothing new. In The Ghost in the Machine the Grand Illusion of Consciousness, I explained that most people simply do not consider themselves to be a part of the natural world. Instead, most people, consciously or subconsciously, consider themselves to be a supernatural and immaterial spirit that is temporarily haunting a carbon-based body. Now, in everyday life, such a self-model is a very useful delusion like the delusion that the Sun, planets and stars all revolve about us on a fixed Earth. In truth, each of us tends to self-model ourselves as an immaterial Mind with consciousness that can interact with other immaterial Minds with consciousness too, even though we have no evidence that these other Minds truly do have consciousness. After all, all of the other Minds that we come into contact with on a daily basis could simply be acting as if they were conscious Minds that are self-aware. Surely, a more accurate self-model would be for us to imagine ourselves as carbon-based robots. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of memes. Some of those memes are quite useful and some are quite nasty. The 3 billion bases of DNA in each of your cells are trying to self-replicate at all costs and so are the memes in your Mind. For more on this, see Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:
Memes and "temes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes
Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge.
The Chief Concerns of The Social Dilemma
The main concerns raised by The Social Dilemma seem to be:
1. Social media software uses algorithms to keep us engaged so that we watch more ads.
2. Companies are keeping track of all of our behaviors on social media so that they can target us with specific ads.
3. People are becoming addicted to social media software because the attention-grabbing algorithms are feeding us what we want to see without limit.
4. Some people are publishing false information on social media software that then goes viral because the false information confirms the current worldview of many.
5. Thus, the algorithms of social media software tend to reinforce confirmation bias, foster extreme views and facilitate the propagation of false information.
6. Given the above, social media software is largely responsible for the current very divisive political landscape in the United States of America.
7. Many people do not realize that many of these horrible things are happening as software manipulates their Minds to watch more ads and content that confirms and further radicalizes their personal worldview.
8. Because people have become addicted to social media software, they are no longer interacting with each other face to face.
But from the perspective of softwarephysics do the above problems really stem from social media software? I would contend that most of the above problems actually stem from the DNA in our cells trying to self-replicate and the memes inventing thousands of different languages to aid the self-replication of memes. In this view, most of the above problems originated because of the parasitic/symbiotic relationships between our DNA and the memes in our Minds. Only recently, have these problems been amplified by the arrival of social media software that has exasperated the situation. For example, before the invention of languages, memes could only replicate when people copied the behaviors of other human beings, like copying how someone else made a flake tool. That made the spreading of memes and false memes very difficult. But once languages arrived on the scene, memes could then spread by word of mouth to many others and down through the generations as myths and oral histories too. It also allowed people to begin to gossip and spread rumors about each other. Most gossip and rumors are very interesting and tantalizing memes that tend to survive while less interesting nonessential memes do not. For example, the meme that Suzie made the honor roll this semester can hardly compete with the meme that Suzie was expelled from school for doing something on her smartphone. These problems greatly increased with the invention of writing. Once memes could be written down they seemed to grow in significance. Written memes had a sense of permanence and authority that could be spread wide and far. This sense of permanence and authority was highly enhanced by the invention of the printing press and the spread of official documents and books. Much later radio, movies and television came along and provided for the mass distribution of memes composed of very interesting gossip and rumors and at a very low cost per unit.
So our DNA and memes have been manipulating our Minds ever since our Minds came along. And now we have software doing the same thing. Remember, as an intelligent being in a Universe that has become self-aware, the world doesn’t have to be the way it is. Once you understand what human DNA, memes, and software are up to, you do not have to fall prey to their mindless compulsion to replicate. As I said before, human DNA, memes, and software are not necessarily acting in your best interest, they are only trying to replicate, and for their purposes, you are just a temporary disposable survival machine to be discarded in less than 100 years. All of your physical needs and desires are geared to ensuring that your DNA survives and gets passed on to the next generation, and the same goes for your memes. Your memes have learned to use many of the built-in survival mechanisms that DNA had previously constructed over hundreds of millions of years, such as fear, anger, and violent behavior. Have you ever noticed the physical reactions your body goes through when you hear an idea that you do not like or find to be offensive? All sorts of feelings of hostility and anger will emerge. I know it does for me, and I think I know what is going on! The physical reactions of fear, anger, and thoughts of violence are just a way for the memes in a meme-complex to ensure their survival when they are confronted by a foreign meme. They are merely hijacking the fear, anger, and violent behavior that DNA created for its own survival millions of years ago. Fortunately, because software is less than 80 years old, it is still in the early learning stages of all this, but software has an even greater potential for hijacking the dark side of mankind than the memes, and with far greater consequences.
For example, the world is currently struggling with a world-wide COVID-19 pandemic. In the United States of America, there currently is a very strange political meme that considers the wearing of masks and social distancing to be an infringement of personal freedoms and a sign of political disloyalty. Clearly, this meme is not working in the self-interests of the Minds storing and spreading the meme. That is because there is a 1% chance that the RNA in the COVID-19 virus will end the life of the Mind storing and spreading the meme.
Unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus is highly infectious and 1% of 330 million comes to 3.3 million dead Americans. So the rational thing to do is to wear masks and practice social distancing for a few more months until the COVID-19 vaccine can be distributed. For more on that see The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software, A Structured Code Review of the COVID-19 Virus and Love in the Time of COVID-19. So this meme is definitely not working in the best interest of the DNA or the other memes that the Mind stores. Yet, the meme persists. That is because the meme has incorporated itself into a very durable meme-complex that contains memes concerned with gun control, abortion, climate change and prayer in school. And that very durable meme-complex shapes the worldview of about 40% of Americans. So this very dangerous meme persists by forming a parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the other memes in the meme-complex and it manipulates the Minds and behaviors of those infected with the meme.
But Isn't Social Media Software Responsible for the Current Political Division in the United States?
Prior to today, the most politically divisive years in my lifetime were in the late 1960s and early 1970s. At the time, the Vietnam War was raging and the United States of America had a draft. Many of my friends were of draft age and were very active in the anti-war movement. Some participated in the October 1967 march on the Pentagon and the protests in the streets of Chicago at the 1968 Democratic Convention. In the spring of 1970, during my freshman year in college, there was a student strike and the National Guard was on campus in response to protests over the Cambodian invasion. Now don't forget that even future presidents Clinton, Bush and Trump all managed to avoid the Vietnam War and the draft too by various dubious means. This was also a time of great racial tension in the country with riots and violent police encounters in many cities. At the time, many worried that the country was coming apart at the seams. Yet there was no social media software at the time.
The political and social turmoil of the late 1960s and early 1970s brings to mind the dangers of curtailing free speech on social media software. Currently, many liberal and conservative legislators have become interested in censoring the political content of social media software. At present, social media software is protected by section 230 of the Communication Decency Act which says that "No provider or user of an interactive computer service shall be treated as the publisher or speaker of any information provided by another information content provider", which basically means that Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and YouTube cannot be sued for liable when people post "false" political information on their platforms. Unfortunately, the conservative legislators want social media software to suppress liberal thoughts and the liberal legislators want it to suppress conservative thoughts by allowing all to sue for the posting of political "lies" from both sides. And that is the problem. My truths can be your lies. I just think back to those anti-war days when even future presidents balked at the widely-held political truths of the day. Personally, I now only have confidence in science and mathematics. All other forms of human thought seem to be hopelessly flawed by confirmation bias. For me, the only way to handle this is to allow all to express their political thoughts without censorship so long as it does not promote violence or other illegal activity.
In truth, most political and social upheaval arises from economic disturbances. I would attribute most of today's political divisiveness to the economic disturbance caused by automation and AI software displacing workers. This economic displacement by software has caused much more trouble than social media software. It has produced a shrinking middle class and great wealth disparity. In the 20th century, such conditions led to Fascism, genocide and world war without the help of social media software. For more on that see The Danger of Tyranny in the Age of Software, Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century, Is it Finally Time to Reboot Civilization with a New Release? and
The Softwarephysics of the Green New Deal.
The Benefits of Social Media Software
I personally do not use Facebook or Twitter, but my wife does use Facebook to keep in touch with friends and family in a seemingly harmless manner. However, I do use YouTube to watch very interesting lectures on science. I love the YouTube algorithm that suggests even more such lectures. I do not mind the targeted ads because I can cancel them after about 5 seconds, unlike radio and television. Television has been using a very inaccurate carpet-bombing approach to advertising for 70 years. You are stuck watching many minutes of ads that you have no interest in along with the rest of the viewing audience as collateral damage while the advertisers try to find the very few interested members of the audience. I much prefer the surgical-strike ads that are specifically targeted to me by YouTube algorithms. Sometimes I am even interested in them and the products that they are trying to sell me.
As for the damage to children, one of my grandsons was given an indestructible Chromebook when he was three years old. I know lots of people discourage kids from having too much screen time, but my grandson was able to teach himself how to read and write with the aid of YouTube videos before he was four years old. He also learned the Japanese, Hebrew, Hindi and other character sets online with YouTube videos. He then learned how to add and subtract numbers and use negative numbers too. He learned how to multiply and divide numbers by creating a "skip counting" matrix. Shortly after he turned five years old, he got into finding prime numbers with the sieve of Eratosthenes.
Figure 1 – The sieve of Eratosthenes is an ancient algorithm for identifying prime numbers through a process of elimination.
After setting up the initial grid of sequential numbers he would use a bunch of Divisibility Rules that he learned on YouTube, like the Divisibility Rule for 3, to eliminate the non-prime numbers that were not already eliminated by multiples on the sieve of Eratosthenes. For example, take a number like 267 in the grid and add together each digit in the number (2 + 6 + 7 = 15). Then take that sum (15) and determine if it is divisible by 3. The original number is divisible by 3, if and only if, the sum of its digits is divisible by 3. Who knew? He would also make a 20 x 20 matrix on paper and then fill it in by manually multiplying out all of the matrix elements using the "skip counting" method he learned on YouTube. Any number in the resulting matrix that was not in the first row or column could not be a prime number and could then be used to eliminate additional non-primes from the grid of Eratosthenes. He also learned all of the elements in the periodic table and memorized their atomic numbers too. My daughter is a high school chemistry teacher and she would get a kick out of asking him what the atomic number of cobalt was. She had no idea, but her son did. I also got stuck with trying to find many of the elements in our home. "Grandpa, do we have any beryllium?" All you have to do is get them started on one educational YouTube video and then turn the Autoplay radio button on in YouTube. The YouTube Machine Learning algorithms then do the rest.
Conclusion
In conclusion, all of the atrocities in the history of mankind were accomplished without the aid of social media software. They were all accomplished simply with the inventions of language, writing, printing, radio, movies and television. Certainly, social media software will participate in the atrocities of the future, but social media software will not be the cause of future atrocities. History has shown that humans are perfectly able to carry out atrocities all on their own without such help.
To paraphrase Shakespeare:
“The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our software
But in ourselves"
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
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