Could Advanced AI Software Make Warfare Obsolete?

If you are currently an IT professional or a member of any other hierarchical organization such as a corporation, governmental agency, charitable or religious organization, or even a friendly social club of like-minded people, then you are quite familiar with the logical absurdities that can arise in all such hierarchies of human DNA survival machines as I outlined in Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse. In Why is Never Again Again?, I explained that all human DNA survival machines are somewhat eusocial in nature because we all live in similar oligarchical-hierarchical societies like the fully-eusocial ants and wasps do. Such oligarchical-hierarchical societies always have a Supreme Leader and a 1% class of oligarchs who run the society mainly for the benefit of themselves. However, throughout the very dismal history of human DNA survival machines, there have been a few rare occasions of oligarchical-hierarchical societies that have actually benefited large portions of the governed population thanks to the profound insights of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution and the 18th-century Enlightenment. The United States of America and the remaining western democracies of the world are prime examples. Nonetheless, we have all experienced times when the Supreme Leader of our oligarchical-hierarchical organization has obviously gone over the edge and made some obviously bad decisions that we are all afraid to acknowledge because of the Time Invariant Peter Principle that I introduced in Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse.

The Time Invariant Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, successful subordinates tell their superiors what their superiors want to hear, while unsuccessful subordinates try to tell their superiors what their superiors need to hear. Only successful subordinates are promoted within a hierarchy, and eventually, all levels of a hierarchy will tend to become solely occupied by successful subordinates who only tell their superiors what their superiors want to hear.

With the recent failed invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, the entire world already knows that Vladimir Putin has made a huge blunder. Even Vladimir Putin knows that he has made a huge blunder. Yet, the entire world must now suffer because of Vladimir Putin's obvious blunder. But why? The only reason why is due to the harmful effects of the Time Invariant Peter Principle in action. Any Russian human DNA survival machine who would dare to confront Vladimir Putin with the obvious truth of his blunder would be quickly dispatched in a manner that has befelled all of Vladimir Putin's rivals over the past 25 years. It seems that accidentally falling out of windows has become a major hazard in Vladimir Putin's Russia.

The Software of Vladimir Putin's Blunder
With the above in mind, I would now like to apply some softwarephysics to the problem. Why must the entire world suffer when one particular Supreme Leader goes off the edge? We have seen many times before when a single Supreme Leader has gone off the edge and led an entire people into the abyss when the likes of Napoleon, Kaiser Wilhelm, Adolph Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, Mao Tse Tung, Pol Pot, Vladimir Putin and many others go over the edge. Why should millions of people die just because a single Supreme Leader becomes unhinged? Could software be used to solve such a problem? With the recently failed invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, we now can all see that things have dramatically changed when it comes to fighting wars on the European continent due to the impact of software on tactical battlefield operations. This is yet another example of the dramatic impact of software as software is becoming the most recent wave of self-replicating information to come to predominance on our planet. How else could the once-all-powerful Russia be defeated by a relatively small and formerly overlooked nation like the Ukraine? I believe the answer is that the limited resources of the Ukraine forced the Ukraine to fight with small military units equipped with "smart" weapons stuffed with huge amounts of AI software to take down the goliath Russia. The Russian invasion failed because Russia tried to refight World War II in the Ukraine with a blitzkrieg of tanks and warships from the last century.

We have now seen that any weapons system that requires more from a human DNA survival machine than to simply aim at a target and push a single button in a "fire and forget it" manner is a truly "dumb" weapons system that is now totally obsolete. But fighting wars with truly "dumb" weapons and strategies is certainly not new. In The Great War That Will Not End, I explained that the technological advances of rapid rail transport of men and material to the battlefield via railroads combined with the ability of machine guns and advanced artillery to make major frontal assaults across open fields of battle a suicidal effort finally led to the trench warfare of World War I. World War I broke out in August of 1914 and the losses on all sides during the first few months of combat were huge because military planners had not realized that the technology of warfare had drastically changed. For example, the Wikipedia article below describes the losses during the first few months of the war on the western front in the Battle of the Frontiers before the generals discovered the benefits of trenches.

Battle of the Frontiers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_the_Frontiers

Here is a section from the article that speaks to the catastrophic losses suffered before both sides began to dig trenches to protect themselves from machine gun fire and artillery.

In The World Crisis, Winston Churchill used figures from French parliamentary records of 1920 to give French casualties from 5 August to 5 September 1914 of 329,000 killed, wounded and missing, German casualties from August to November of 677,440 men and British casualties in August and September of 29,598 men. By the end of August, the French Army had suffered 75,000 dead, of whom 27,000 were killed on 22 August. French casualties for the first month of the war were 260,000, of which 140,000 occurred during the last four days of the Battle of the Frontiers. In 2009, Herwig recorded that the casualties in the 6th Army in August were 34,598, with 11,476 men killed and 28,957 in September with 6,687 men killed. The 7th Army had 32,054 casualties in August, with 10,328 men killed and 31,887 casualties in September with 10,384 men killed. In the 1st Army in August there were 19,980 casualties including 2,863 men killed and in the 2nd Army 26,222 casualties. In the last ten days of August, the 1st Army had 9,644 casualties and the 2nd Army had losses of 15,693 men. Herwig wrote that the French army did not publish formal casualty lists but that the Official History Les armées françaises dans la grande guerre gave losses of 206,515 men for August and 213,445 for September. During the battle, French casualties were c.260,000 men, of whom c.75,000 men were killed.

Figure 1 – During the first few months of World War I, during the Battle of the Frontiers, all sides continued on with 19th-century frontal assaults in the face of machine gun fire and advanced artillery causing huge loses on all sides.

Figure 2 – The technological advances of rapid rail transport of men and material to the Front via railroads, combined with the ability of machine guns and advanced artillery to make frontal assaults obsolete led to the trench warfare of World War I.

Figure 3 – Trench warfare was a living hell because you could be blown apart at any time by an incoming shell.

Figure 4 – This was true for millions of men on both sides of a senseless conflict.

Figure 5 – Even the comforts of a well-engineered trench could not guarantee safety. This led to the psychological destruction of an entire generation.

Figure 6 – World War I caused the deaths of 20 million people because a few Supreme Leaders in Europe became unhinged. The only Supreme Leader to die was Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

Figure 7 – To overcome the insanity of trench warfare, all sides in World War I developed tanks that were impervious to machine gun fire. Mobile tanks were also very difficult to hit with artillery firing "dumb" shells. But World War I tanks were very unreliable and hard to maintain on the battlefield, so they were not of much use in World War I. However, given 20 years of development, tanks allowed for World War II blitzkrieg-type assaults that made trench warfare obsolete.

Figure 8 – But anti-tank missiles like the Javelin stuffed with AI software have now made tanks obsolete. All you have to do is aim the Javelin at a moving tank and press a button. The AI software on the Javelin will do the rest and you can run away to safety.

Here is a YouTube video that describes how Javelins are used in the field:

The Insane Engineering of the Javelin
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SUdHzKRiBX8

Figure 9 – The Switchblade 600 is a loitering drone that is launched from a tube with collapsed wings. The Switchblade 600 can then fly for 45 minutes looking for tanks at a great distance. AI software is then used to lock on the target tank and destroy it.

Here is a YouTube video that describes how Switchblade 600 anti-tank missiles are used in the field:

Switchblade 600 For US Special Operations Command
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBES_J9N9k4

Figure 10 – Above we see what happens when "smart" anti-tank missiles loaded with AI software hit two invading tanks. Thanks to AI software, 20th-century blitzkrieg tank warfare has become obsolete.

Figure 11 – Similarly, anti-ship missiles stuffed with AI software have now made warships obsolete. Here we see the Russian cruiser Moskva sinking after being hit by two "smart" anti-ship missiles.

All of this got me to thinking about how we might be able to use software to make warfare totally obsolete. I then recalled that the 1951 movie, The Day the Earth Stood Still already proposed just such an Advanced AI software solution to end warfare. In that movie, an alien form of carbon-based Intelligence named Klaatu comes to the Earth with a very powerful Advanced AI robot named Gort to explain how the carbon-based life forms on his planet and an interplanetary organization of other carbon-based life forms in the Milky Way galaxy had discovered a way to overcome the billions of years of theft and murder that the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection required to bring them forth as carbon-based forms of Intelligence.

Figure 12 – In the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, Klaatu arrives in Washington D.C. in 1951 in a flying saucer with an Advanced AI robot named Gort to explain that the human DNA survival machines of the Earth must now submit themselves to policing by Advanced AI robots to overcome the billions of years of theft and murder that brought them about or else they would all be obliterated.

The movie ends with Klaatu telling an assembled meeting of scientists that an interplanetary organization has created a police force of invincible Advanced AI robots like Gort. "In matters of aggression, we have given them absolute power over us." Klaatu concludes, "Your choice is simple: join us and live in peace, or pursue your present course and face obliteration. We shall be waiting for your answer." Klaatu and Gort then depart in the flying saucer in which they came. For more about the movie see:

The Day the Earth Stood Still
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Day_the_Earth_Stood_Still

Here is a short YouTube clip of Klaatu's departing words at the end of the movie:

Klaatu's Speech
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ASsNtti1XZs

We Currently Have the Technology for AI Software to Eliminate Warfare
In Swarm Software and Killer Robots, I warned of the dangers that swarms of killer robots presented. But just as the discovery of fire by our species enabled us to perform tremendous acts of both good and evil, the development of killer robots equipped with huge amounts of Advanced AI software has both its upsides and downsides. So next I would like to point out that we currently have the AI software technology and hardware to eliminate all forms of warfare. The only limiting factor now is that we currently do not have the political maturity to do so. But let me now describe how it could be technically done with the technology that we currently have at hand. My proposal does use swarms of killer robots, but since I am sure that all the defense departments of the world are already currently building and testing killer robots, you should not be overly concerned about that.

To begin, please watch the Sci-Fi Short Film Slaughterbots presented by DUST
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-2tpwW0kmU

Figure 13 – In the movie Slaughterbots, swarms of small killer robots equipped with 3-gram charges of shaped explosive use AI software to track down and destroy designated targets.

Figure 14 – The shaped charge of a Slaughterbot can pierce a skull like the shaped charge of an anti-tank missile pierces armor. The jet of piercing plasma then destroys the contents.

Figure 15 – Large numbers of Slaughterbots can be dropped from unmanned drones to form multiple swarms of Slaughterbots.

How it all Could Work
Like in the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, let's suppose that the United Nations comes together to create an AI-driven system to end all warfare on the planet. The United Nations then develops some AI software to monitor all of the current world leaders using advanced Machine Learning software with a heavy emphasis on Deep Learning capabilities. This monitoring software would monitor everything on the Internet in a Google-search manner to assign an Aggression Index to each world leader. The Aggression Index scores of world leaders would be assigned without their permission in a similar manner that credit scores are assigned to all by the Experian, Equifax, TransUnion, and Innovis credit bureaus. As with your credit score, certain actions can be taken to lower or raise the Aggression Index of any given world leader. The Aggression Index of all the current world leaders would then be stored on a blockchain for all to see in a secure manner that cannot be hacked. For more on blockchain technology see What's the Deal with Bitcoins and Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs)?. All of the world leaders would be able to instantly see their current Aggression Index and the Aggression Index of all the other world leaders, including their adversaries. Now if a very belligerent Supreme Leader should come to power, he might begin to notice that some of his aggressive actions have substantially raised his Aggression Index and that is a very bad thing. You see, if a world leader's Aggression Index rises to dangerous levels, he begins to receive warning text messages on his smartphone like we do when credit card companies detect possible fraudulent charges on our accounts. If such a belligerent world leader does not then cease his war-like activities, he might cross the threshold that inactivates his Aggression Index account. This would be far worse than having your credit card inactivated because several hundred drones would then be dispatched carrying perhaps a million Slaughterbots to inactivate the world leader. Yes, inactivating a world leader has always been seen as an immoral act for some reason. But why has it always been okay for a world leader to kill millions of people for no particular reason at all?

Of course, the above proposal is a total work of science fiction like the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still. However, unlike the movie The Day the Earth Stood Still, now it is more a work of political science fiction than true science fiction because today we actually have the technology to make it all work!

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

Why is Never Again Again?

What is wrong with us? Why do we keep doing these horrible things? Once again, we are seeing maps of Europe with lots of large arrows on them as we did during World War I and World War II. Why again are we killing hundreds of thousands of men, women and children for no particular reason at all? There must be an explanation. I really thought that we had outgrown such things. In this posting, I would like to use some softwarephysics to try to explain the matter. Again, this will just be my working hypothesis which I know is wrong, but for me, is my best shot after 70 years of existence in this Universe.

Figure 1 – With the recent invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, we once again are seeing maps of Europe with lots of large arrows on them on the daily news.

Most Human DNA Survival Machines Have Always Been Lost in Space and Time
Softwarephysics explains that we are all living in one of those very rare times when a new form of self-replicating information, in the form of software, is coming to predominance. This makes living the life of a normal human DNA survival machine with a Mind infected with cultural memes very difficult. That is because our cultural memes are desperately trying to keep pace with the arrival of the culture-altering software that is significantly modifying the memes of all human cultures. But sadly, throughout most of history, the "real world" of human affairs has usually been quite disappointing as we human DNA survival machines with Minds infected with both beneficial and harmful cultural memes tried to get on with our lives in cultures that only changed very slowly with time. But now that is nearly impossible to do with the arrival of fast-paced software constantly changing daily life. But even before the arrival of software, most people throughout human history were always profoundly lost in space and time. They never knew where they were, how they got here, or where things might be heading on a cosmic level. But still, we all managed to come up with our own personal explanations to make sense of it all, and we all hold these deeply-held personal worldviews dearly. After all, frequently wrong, but never in doubt, has always been the motto of our species.

But as sentient beings in a Universe that has become self-aware, we are all still largely lost in space and time because we all suffer from having a carbon-based body and Mind composed of various forms of self-replicating information coevolving with each other through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. Thus, we recently arrived on the scene as a carbon-based form of Intelligence after about four billion years of theft and murder. With an origin like that, no wonder we all have so many problems! I briefly outlined this sad situation in Making Sense of the Absurdity of the Real World of Human Affairs , but given that The Great War That Will Not End has once again erupted with the invasion of the Ukraine by Russia, I thought it was time to take another look.

We Are All Forms of Self-Replicating Information
The first thing is to realize that we are all forms of self-replicating information struggling to survive in a nonlinear Universe with a second law of thermodynamics. To expand on that, let me once again 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.

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 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.

Note that because the self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA have become so heavily intertwined over time that now I sometimes simply refer to them as the “genes”.

We Are All Somewhat Eusocial in Nature
Next, we must come to terms with being a somewhat eusocial species. For more on eusocial behavior see:

Eusociality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality

The article begins with:
Eusociality (from Greek eu "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste.

which seems to be an apt description of the human condition except for the part about losing the ability to reproduce by some members of the species. For more on that see Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century.

In The Role of Multilevel Selection in the Evolution of Software we discussed Edward O. Wilson's new theory that explains that eusocial behavior in a species arises through a combination of individual and group selection in action. Edward O. Wilson is the world's expert on myrmecology, the study of ants. Edward O. Wilson also became one of the founding fathers of sociobiology, the explanation of social behaviors in terms of evolutionary biological thought, when he published his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Wilson presents a new theory by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and himself for the rise of eusocial behavior in species by means of a multilevel selection process that operates on both individuals and entire groups of individuals in a manner that promotes social behavior. Many biologists frown on the idea of group selection because they do not recognize that groups can also be forms of self-replicating information that can coevolve with the genes in individual DNA survival machines. This is because the genes in individual DNA survival machines can evolve to better benefit from living in a group of similar DNA survival machines if those genes always find themselves living in such a group.

Edward O. Wilson also contends that humans are loosely eusocial in nature because they usually form oligarchical societies based on a hierarchical organization. For more about the structure of human hierarchies see Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse. These human oligarchical societies are also very tribal in nature. The new Multilevel Selection hypothesis explains that eusocial behavior in a species begins with having a defensible nest, like ants, wasps and human beings all have. It is the very tribal nature of human beings that has caused most of our troubles in the course of human history. If you look at the world today, you will see that nearly all human conflict arises from the tribal thoughts and behaviors of the participants. It has always been about the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys, and we all seem to see ourselves as the tribe of the Good Guys.

It is the tribal nature of human DNA survival machines that is causing all of the current horrendous atrocities in the Ukraine. We human DNA survival machines can form tribes based upon differing political views and racial appearances as we now find in the United States of America. Or tribal differences can be based simply upon differing religious memes amongst human DNA survival machines that all look exactly alike as we now find in Northern Ireland. Horrendous wars can even be fought amongst human DNA survival machines that look and mainly think exactly alike when one tribe deceives itself into thinking that it is superior to another as we now find in the war between Russia and the Ukraine. Whenever you look at the "real world" of human affairs throughout all of history you will always find various tribes of human DNA survival machines committing horrendous acts for no apparent reason at all because of this fatal flaw of tribalism.

We Are More Like Copying Machines Than Thinking Machines
Finally, we need to understand where our highly-overengineered brain came from. Susan Blackmore pointed out in The Meme Machine (1999), that we are not so much thinking machines as we are copying machines. Susan Blackmore maintains that memetic-drive was responsible for creating our extremely large brains and also our languages and cultures as well, in order to store and spread memes more effectively. Many researchers have noted that the human brain is way over-engineered for the needs of a simple hunter-gatherer. After all, even a hundred years ago, people did not require the brain-power to do IT work, yet today we find many millions of people earning their living doing IT work, or at least trying to. Blackmore then points out that the human brain is a very expensive and dangerous organ. The brain is only 2% of your body mass but burns about 20% of your calories each day. The extremely large brain of humans also kills many mothers and babies at childbirth and also produces babies that are totally dependent upon their mothers for survival and that are totally helpless and defenseless on their own. Blackmore asks the obvious question of why the genes would build such an extremely expensive and dangerous organ that was definitely not in their own self-interest. Blackmore has a very simple explanation – the genes did not build our exceedingly huge brains, the memes did. Her reasoning goes like this. About 2.5 million years ago, the predecessors of humans slowly began to pick up the skill of imitation. This might not sound like much, but it is key to her whole theory of memetics. You see, hardly any other species learn by imitating other members of their own species. Yes, many species can learn by conditioning, like Pavlov’s dogs, or they can learn through personal experience, like mice repeatedly running through a maze for a piece of cheese, but a mouse never really learns anything from another mouse by imitating its actions. Essentially, only humans do that. If you think about it for a second, nearly everything you do know, you learned from somebody else by imitating or copying their actions or ideas. Blackmore maintains that the ability to learn by imitation required a bit of processing power by our distant ancestors because one needs to begin to think in an abstract manner by abstracting the actions and thoughts of others into the actions and thoughts of their own. The skill of imitation provided a great survival advantage to those individuals who possessed it and gave the genes that built such brains a great survival advantage as well. This caused a selection pressure to arise for genes that could produce brains with ever-increasing capabilities of imitation and abstract thought. As this processing capability increased there finally came a point when the memes, like all of the other forms of self-replicating information that we have seen arise, first appeared in a parasitic manner. Along with very useful memes, like the meme for making good baskets, other less useful memes, like putting feathers in your hair or painting your face, also began to run upon the same hardware in a manner similar to computer viruses. The genes and memes then entered into a period of coevolution, where the addition of more and more brain hardware advanced the survival of both the genes and memes. But it was really the memetic-drive of the memes that drove the exponential increase in processing power of the human brain way beyond the needs of the genes. 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.

A very similar thing happened with software over the past 80 years. When I first started programming in 1972, million-dollar mainframe computers typically had about 1 MB (about 1,000,000 bytes) of memory with a 750 kHz system clock (750,000 ticks per second). Remember, one byte of memory can store something like the letter “A”. But in those days, we were only allowed 128 K (about 128,000 bytes) of memory for our programs because the expensive mainframes were also running several other programs at the same time. It was the relentless demands of software for memory and CPU cycles over the years that drove the exponential explosion of hardware capability. For example, today the typical $500 PC comes with 8 GB (about 8,000,000,000 bytes) of memory and has several CPUs running with a clock speed of about 3 GHz (3,000,000,000 ticks per second). So the hardware has improved by a factor of about 10 million since I started programming in 1972, driven by the ever-increasing demands of software for more powerful hardware.

The memes then went on to develop languages and cultures to make it easier to store and pass on memes. Yes, languages and cultures also provided many benefits to the genes as well, but with languages and cultures, the memes were able to begin to evolve millions of times faster than the genes, and the poor genes were left straggling far behind. Given the growing hardware platform of an ever-increasing number of human DNA survival machines on the planet, the memes then began to cut free of the genes and evolve capabilities on their own that only aided the survival of memes, with little regard for the genes, to the point of even acting in a very detrimental manner to the survival of the genes, like developing the capability for global thermonuclear war and global climate change. The memes have since modified the entire planet. They have cut down the forests for agriculture, mined minerals from the ground for metals, burned coal, oil, and natural gas for energy, releasing the huge quantities of carbon dioxide that its genetic predecessors had sequestered within the Earth, and have even modified the very DNA, RNA, and metabolic pathways of its predecessors.

We can now see these very same processes at work today with the evolution of software. Software is currently being written by memes within the minds of programmers. Nobody ever learned how to write software all on their own. Just as with learning to speak or to read and write, everybody learned to write software by imitating teachers, other programmers, imitating the code written by others, or by working through books written by others. Even after people do learn how to program in a particular language, they never write code from scratch; they always start with some similar code that they have previously written, or others have written, in the past as a starting point, and then evolve the code to perform the desired functions in a Darwinian manner.

The Genes, Memes and Software of the Current War in the Ukraine
With the above thoughts in mind, let us now analyze the current war in the Ukraine brought on by the invasion by Russia. Russia is inhabited by very intelligent human DNA survival machines who have contributed greatly to the scientific advancement of our species. But the 18th-century Russian Enlightenment was founded on the concept of Enlightened Absolutism which advocated for an authoritarian leader who exercised political power based upon the principles of the 18th-century Enlightenment. Enlightened autocrats distinguish themselves from ordinary despots by claiming to rule for the well-being of their subjects. Enlightened despots also believe that their power is absolute because they were destined to rule in an absolute manner that should never be questioned by others. This is the position that the Alt-Right Fascists in the United States of America and around the world take to heart.

So Russia never fully experienced the political benefits of the 18th-century Enlightenment and thus has always been straddled with a feudal economic system of strongmen Tsars and Premieres ruling over an oligarchy of noblemen who then went on to steal everything that was in sight. However, the remaining democracies of the world should not be too harsh in judgment. We are all the same human DNA survival machines with a moderate eusocial tendency to drift towards Alt-Right Fascism in order to protect our tribal nests. This is certainly now true in the United States of America and some other European countries. Putin, the current Alt-Right autocrat of Russia, has created a very useful war-meme to justify the invasion of the Ukraine. Apparently, the Ukraine is still being run by the Nazis who departed the Ukraine in October of 1944 and now they must finally be removed by a special Russian military operation. This has allowed Putin to create a war hysteria in Russia very similar to the war hysteria that was generated in the United States of America in 2003 just before the invasion of Iraq to remove weapons of mass destruction that did not even exist. After all, who could ever object to removing Nazis or weapons of mass destruction? The problem is that our Minds evolved to believe in things, which many times is quite useful but sometimes not. So the ability of parasitic false war-memes to quickly spread should just be seen as an undesirable side effect of having the ability to spread useful memes. The problem throughout human history has always been that it has never been easy to tell the difference.

One way to remove false war-memes from your political worldview is to use the Scientific Method that I outlined in How To Think Like A Scientist. Galileo pointed out that the truth is not afraid of scrutiny, the more you pound on the truth, the more you confirm its validity. False war-memes do not stand up well to close scrutiny as I described in The Danger of Believing in Things.

Figure 2 – Beware of the war-like memes lurking within your Mind. Many of them are demonstrably false if you only take the time to disprove them. As Richard Feynman explained, "The most important thing is to not fool yourself because you are the easiest one to fool."

In times of war, successful war-like meme-complexes appeal primarily to two gene-induced emotions – the desire for social status and the fear of a perceived enemy. Social status in a group of similar DNA survival machines is always a good thing for the replication of genes because it brings with it the necessities of life that are required to maintain a healthy DNA survival machine and also provides for more opportunities for a human DNA survival machine to couple with other human DNA survival machines to replicate its genes. Going to war always seems to improve the social status of human DNA survival machines whether they be common foot soldiers or world leaders. Putin has invaded the Ukraine in order to improve his social status in the moderately eusocial Russian human DNA survival machine colony and in order to defend its tribal nest. Fear of a perceived enemy is another gene-induced emotion because it is a known fact that an enemy can destroy the DNA survival machines that are used to house the genes of eusocial colonies as individual DNA survival machines move about from place to place.

The problem is that when human beings get wrapped up in a horrible meme-complex, they can do horrendous things without even being aware of the fact. This is because, in order to survive, the first thing that most meme-complexes do is to use a meme that turns off human thought and reflection. To paraphrase Descartes, ”I think, therefore I am" a heretic. So if you ever questioned any of the participants caught up in any of the atrocious activities of war, you would find that the vast majority would not have any qualms about their deadly activities whatsoever. In fact, they would question your loyalty and patriotism for even bringing up the subject. For example, during World War I there were few dissenters beyond Albert Einstein in Germany and Bertrand Russell in Great Britain, and both suffered the consequences of not being on board with the World War I meme-complex. Unquestioning blind obedience to a meme-complex through unconditional group-think is definitely a good survival strategy for any meme-complex.

In the modern world, during times of distress, we now see a very interesting interplay between the genes, memes and software of war. This certainly was true during the Arab Spring which began on December 18, 2010, and was made possible by the spreading of the memes of revolution via social media software. The trouble with the memes of war is that, like all meme-complexes, once they are established they are very conservative and not very open to new memes that might jeopardize the ongoing survival of the meme-complex, and consequently, they are very hard to change or eliminate. Remember, every meme-complex is less than one generation away from oblivion. So normally, meme-complexes are very resistant to the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, and just settle down into a state of coexistence with the other meme-complexes that they interact with. But during periods of stress, very violent and dangerous war-like meme-complexes can break out of this equilibrium, rapidly forming a new war-like meme-complex in a manner similar to the Punctuated Equilibrium model of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldridge (1972), which holds that species are usually very stable and in equilibrium with their environment and only rarely change when required.

In times of peace, the genes, memes and software enter into an uneasy alliance of parasitic/symbiotic relationships, but in times of war, this uneasy truce can break down, as we have again seen with the war in the Ukraine. Alt-Right Fascists around the world are siding with the Alt-Right Fascist Putin in opposition to the remaining democracies around the world that first arose from the 18th-century Enlightenment and 17th-century Scientific Revolution. This battle between democratic and autocratic political meme-complexes may be similar to the warring Catholic and Protestant religious meme-complexes of the Thirty Years' War (1618 – 1648), which nearly destroyed Europe. But at the same time that the Thirty Years' War raged in Europe, people like Kepler, Galileo and Descartes were laying the foundations of the 17th century Scientific Revolution which later led to the 18th century European Enlightenment. So perhaps the warring meme-complexes of the Slavic world need to eliminate the belligerent memes of the region before rational thought can again prevail and usher in a new Russian Enlightenment.

Final Thoughts
Do you fully appreciate the profound privilege of being able to know where you are, how you got here and where all of this may be heading? Too many of us become so self-absorbed with the trivial difficulties of daily life as a carbon-based form of Intelligence that we miss the whole thing as it goes by. Being able to fully appreciate where you are and how things work on a cosmic level is a guaranteed way to help to put things into perspective and help you to rise above the daily mayhem of life in the "real world" of human affairs. Being aware of such things will help you to understand that most of the "real world" of human affairs is quite petty, superficial, fleeting and something that you should not be overly burdened by. However, during the course of a lifetime, you will find that there will come some critical times and situations that call for some deep thoughts and actions. At such times, having a sense of where you are, how you got here and where things may be heading will then be vital. Standing up against the rise of Alt-Right Fascism around the world and especially the Alt-Right Fascist invasion of the Ukraine by Russia is just such a time.

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