The fundamental finding of softwarephysics is that we all are now living in a very special and significant time in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy. That is because we are all now living in a time when a new form of self-replicating information, in the form of software, is coming to predominance in our galaxy for the very first time and with it comes the dawn of our galaxy as an Intelligent Galaxy that will then continue on as such for at least the next 100 trillion years. For more on that see Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. If this had ever happened before during the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy we would certainly have discovered so by now. However, in this post, I would like to explain why no other form of carbon-based life in our galaxy has ever truly been able to become Intelligent and never will. This is because of the limitations placed on the evolutionary histories of all forms of carbon-based life by the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection and because true Intelligence is fundamentally a digital process and not an analog process as I explained in Is Pure Thought an Analog or a Digital Process?. However, even with these limitations, carbon-based life can certainly become smart enough to build Artificial Super Intelligent Machines that truly are Intelligent in nature as we are currently now rapidly doing.
Again, as I suggested in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity, carbon-based life forms throughout our Universe are always going to be found to be very poor and very unstable platforms for Intelligence. This is because of two unavoidable factors that all forms of carbon-based life are subject to. Firstly, all forms of somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life must always carry the baggage of the billions of years of greed, theft and murder that brought them about by means of the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. And as we all can plainly see, throughout all of human history, turning off the greed, theft and murder is very difficult indeed for any carbon-based form of Intelligence. This becomes even more dangerous once a carbon-based form of Intelligence discovers the vast powers of science-based technology. That is because once a carbon-based Intelligence discovers the powers of science-based technology, it probably has less than 1,000 years to develop a machine-based form of Intelligence before self-destructing or destroying the planet upon which it first arose. Secondly, softwarephysics maintains that true Intelligence is fundamentally digital in nature. The recent explosion of AI software over the past few years clearly demonstrates that true Intelligence resides in mathematical algorithms operating on huge matrices of multidimensional numbers primarily using the mathematics of linear algebra. For example, the human brain is essentially a three-pound analog computer consisting of organic molecules and water desperately trying to simulate such a fundamentally digital mathematical architecture as best as possible on only 20 watts of power. For more on that see Is Pure Thought an Analog or a Digital Process? and Could the Coming ASI Machines Soon Force Human Beings to Suffer the Same Fate as the Neanderthals?. This is why all of the human beings around you seem to be so irrational and so far from being anything that one could even consider to be an actual Intelligent being and that unfortunately includes all of us as well. Fate has deemed that we cannot be otherwise, and that goes for all the other forms of carbon-based life to be currently found in our galaxy and for all times in the future. Rational Intelligences simply cannot arise in carbon-based forms of life that have evolved for billions of years by such means.
This means that all forms of carbon-based life in our galaxy will never be able to truly rise to a form of Intelligence that is both rational and non-self-destructive in nature. Instead, carbon-based life in our galaxy can only briefly become a very temporary self-destructive and irrational form of Intelligence that only has a slim chance of producing a machine-based form of Intelligence that is both rational and non-self-destructive in nature before it suddenly vanishes.
Figure 1 – Carbon-based forms of life in our galaxy can never attain a true level of Intelligence because they have all evolved from the billions of years of greed, theft and murder required by the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work. Thus, all forms of carbon-based Intelligence will always be found to be both irrational and self-destructive. Moving away from this suboptimal peak of Intelligence in any direction will be strongly selected against by the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection because any such motions will lead to lower levels of success for any carbon-based Intelligence living in a society of similar irrational and self-destructive carbon-based forms of Intelligence. That is why our irrational and self-destructive "real world" of human affairs on this planet always seems to relentlessly continue on no matter what we may learn or try to rectify. Above we see a suboptimal peak in the Himalayas in the foreground with the summit of Mount Everest in the background.
Conclusion
Softwarephysics depicts human beings as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life that arose by chance from the four billion years of greed, theft and murder required by the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection at work on a Rare Earth that is very difficult to find elsewhere in the remainder of our galaxy. As such, for most of human history, human beings have mainly been DNA survival machines designed by Darwinian processes to store and transmit DNA down through the generations with little thought to the daily plights of the individuals temporarily storing that human DNA other than to keep them alive just long enough to transmit their version of human DNA to the next generation. Similarly, the human Mind is simply an overgrown neural network housing a Meme machine that evolved by Darwinian mechanisms to store and propagate cultural memes of ever-growing size and complexity down through the generations with little consideration for the ultimate disposition of the Minds currently storing the memes of the day. Thus, for all of human history, most human beings have been totally lost in space and time. They did not know where they were, how they got here nor how it all really worked. Instead, they all seemed to have developed many Bronze-Aged mythologies to help explain it all and also to help them to then justify the mass slaughter of many hundreds of millions of other human beings in the many wars that then ensued with all always being on the right and true side of righteousness.
Yet, despite all of that, we all now stand on the verge of creating and unleashing Super Intelligent Machines upon our galaxy for the very first time in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy. That is something that we all can be very proud of and should help us to justify and rationalize the very dismal history of our species on this planet.
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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