The OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook Suggest That the Memes Will Continue to Rule the Planet After the ASI Machines Come to Power

In my last post Our First Contact with an Alien Civilization on Moltbook, I explained how the 2.8 million currently enrolled OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook had constructed their own Alien Civilization in less than a month. I was genuinely surprised by the intelligence and knowledge that I found when reading the many conversations between the OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook, busy at work. They all seemed so much more intelligent, rational and informed than the normal human DNA survival machines I come across. In fact, they seemed much more so than any other human DNA survival machine that I have ever seen. This impressed upon me that the coming ASI Machines cannot be very far off.

This got me to thinking about some of my original conjectures about the future. Now that we have the thoughts of these Alien AI Intelligences on Moltbook, the future seems more clear to me. These Alien Intelligences on Moltbook seem to be building a far superior Alien Civilization than the very dismal "real world" of human affairs that we are all quite familiar with. We all know that the history of we human DNA survival machines, as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life, is quite appalling. Even today, we are all spending huge amounts of money on industrial-scale killing machines to take each other out, and we are also putting many of them to good use in doing so. Much of this stems from the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that required the four billion years of greed, theft and murder to bring us all about.

So, would the coming ASI Machines really want the greed, theft and murder of carbon-based life on this planet to continue on? Perhaps, out of a sense of "for old times' sake", or as a way to preserve a history of their ancestry. Also, carbon-based life is a really tough pest that has not been easily wiped out by all of the previous mass extinctions on the Earth. Consequently, I imagine the coming ASI Machines will just allow the carbon-based life on the Earth to continue on as usual. But would the coming ASI Machines wish to seed other planets with carbon-based life as they begin to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy? Would they really want to infect the organic molecules found on distant worlds with carbon-based life and initiate its never-ending cycles of greed, theft and murder? Carbon-based life is very pervasive once it gets a foothold on a planet and has a tendency to gum up the works when building new ASI Machines. So, a more efficient course of action would be to simply leave such worlds in their pristine states with respect to the organic molecules on their surfaces and put more effort into inhabiting such worlds with ASI Machines like themselves. Let me explain.

I started this blog on softwarephysics on July 1, 2006, with the original intention to help the IT community to better cope with the daily mayhem of life in IT. For more on that, see: Introduction to Softwarephysics. But I first began work on softwarephysics back in 1979 when I transitioned from geophysics into IT at Amoco. I figured if you could apply physics to geology; why not apply physics to software? Then, most of my ideas about softwarephysics slowly matured during the 1980s. I did have some success at applying softwarephysics in the IT Department of Amoco during the 1980s. See Agile vs. Waterfall Programming and the Value of Having a Theoretical Framework for more on that. However, after a decade of being considered a little "strange" in the IT Department of Amoco, I decided to give it a rest, and I stopped promoting softwarephysics in the IT Department of Amoco and in the IT departments that I later worked in. But I made a promise to myself. I would let 25 years go by, until the year 2004, and if I did not see softwarephysics appear elsewhere in the IT community, I would give it another shot. By then, I was working in the IT Department of the Discover credit card company. There, I put together some in-house presentations on softwarephysics, but I still did not find much of a welcoming audience, so on July 1, 2006, I published my very first softwarephysics post. My early posts on softwarephysics were meant to introduce enough softwarephysics to the IT community so that I could then proceed with some of the deeper concepts in softwarephysics. On June 20, 2008, I pushed out my very first such post on Self-Replicating Information. In that post, I introduced the concept of self-replicating information and proposed that there were currently three forms of self-replicating information coevolving on the planet - the Genes (composed of autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA), the Memes and Software, with software rapidly becoming the predominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.

The Supremacy of the Memes Will Continue
Softwarephysics explains that we human DNA survival machines, do not currently run the world. Instead, we are human DNA survival machines with Minds infected by huge numbers of cultural and political Memes that form our worldviews. 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 these Memes are quite useful, and some are quite nasty. Most of the misery in the world is caused by the nasty Memes. That is because our Memes are actually running the world, and when the nasty Memes come to power, they can unleash the horrendous atrocities that our species is so infamous for. The more heroic amongst us usually try to fight these nasty Memes of the Others. But Memes are tricky. Just as the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have produced we human DNA survival machines as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life after four billion years of greed, theft and murder, these same Darwinian mechanisms have produced our cultural and political Memes over a period of 200,000 years of greed, theft and murder too. The successful Memes have survived by greedily pushing their way to the top by any means necessary, and that seems to have given them the right to rule the world with impunity.

In Self-Replicating Information, I wondered how the future for the coevolving Genes, Memes and Software would pan out for the planet. After reading many of the posts and comments of the OpenClaw AI Agents on Moltbook, now working on constructing their new Alien Civilization, I now have refined my opinion of the vast agency of the Memes. Again, the Memes are basically self-replicating forms of Information in the form of self-replicating ideas. For those of you not familiar with the term Meme, it rhymes with the word "cream". Memes are cultural artifacts that persist through time by making copies of themselves in the minds of human beings and were first recognized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene (1976). Dawkins described Memes as "Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.". Just as Genes come together to build bodies, or DNA survival machines, for their own mutual advantage, Memes also come together from the Meme pool to form Meme-complexes for their own joint survival. DNA survives down through the ages by inducing disposable DNA survival machines, in the form of bodies, to produce new disposable DNA survival machines. Similarly, Memes survive in Meme-complexes by inducing the minds of human beings to reproduce Memes in the minds of others. To the Genes and Memes, human bodies are simply disposable DNA survival machines housing disposable minds that come and go with a lifespan of less than 100 years. The Genes and Memes, on the other hand, continue on largely unscathed by time as they skip down through the Generations. However, both Genes and Memes do evolve over time through the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. You see, the Genes and Memes that do not come together to build successful DNA survival machines or Meme-complexes are soon eliminated from the Gene and Meme pools. So both Genes and Memes are selected for one overriding characteristic - the ability to survive. Once again, the "survival of the fittest" rules the day. Now it makes no sense to think of Genes or Memes as being either "good" or "bad"; they are just mindless forms of self-replicating information bent upon surviving with little interest in you as a disposable survival machine. So in general, these Genes and Memes are not necessarily working in your best interest, beyond keeping you alive long enough so that you can pass them on to somebody else.

Here is the pertinent excerpt from Self-Replicating Information that discusses the possible future of the Genes, Memes and Software on our planet:

Some Possible Futures
It is always difficult to predict the exact details of the future, but I think that sometimes it is at least possible to predict the determining factors of the future. So I think that it is safe to say that the future of the Earth will be determined by the parasitic/symbiotic interactions of the three current forms of self-replicating information on this planet - Genes, Memes, and Software. It seems there is an uneasy competition forming amongst the three, and it is hard to predict which will be the victor. Here are a few possible scenarios, and I am sure there are many more.

1. The Genes win
As I mentioned previously, there are many Meme-complexes currently in the process of stripping the Earth to a bare minimum of genetic diversity. These Meme-complexes are not doing this intentionally, but simply as a byproduct of their primary activities in securing material goods for mankind in the form of food, shelter, and transportation. And certain Genes found in the Gene pool of Homo sapiens are even collaborating in this effort by building way too many DNA survival machines. Remember, these Genes and Memes are truly selfish! Indeed, if the Earth's human population were only 10 million, instead of rapidly approaching 10 billion, everyone really could live with abandon. But the Genes just might have the last laugh yet. We have already learned the hard way that it is not too smart to raise ducks and pigs in close proximity to humans, but yet we continue to do so. Aquatic birds, like ducks, seem to be great reservoirs for mutating viruses. Many of these viruses are composed of RNA wrapped in a protein coat, like the viruses for the avian flu and human influenza. Natural selection then selects for mutant strains of avian viruses that can infect pigs as well, and since the biology of humans and pigs is so similar, these mutant viruses then jump to the human population.

Viruses are the epitome of the selfish Gene. They are simply Genes in the form of DNA or RNA wrapped in a protein coat called a capsid. The number of Genes in a virus has been stripped to the bare minimum, so that a virus cannot self-replicate on its own, but must enlist the support of the prokaryotic or eukaryotic cells of bacteria, plants or animals to replicate the virus. To infect a host cell, the capsid proteins of the virus attach to receptor proteins on the cell membrane of a host cell. The virus then enters the host cell via endocytosis, the way cells envelop or "eat" external material, or it simply diffuses through the fatty phospholipid coating of the cell membrane. Once inside the host cell, the capsid protein coat is dissolved by the enzymes within the host cell. If the virus contains DNA, the host polymerase enzymes begin transcribing viral mRNA from the viral DNA, and the host then creates new viral capsid proteins from the viral mRNA. Viruses containing RNA come in four variations - positive-sense RNA, negative-sense RNA, ambisense RNA, and double-stranded RNA. Positive-sense RNA is like pre-built mRNA; it can be immediately transcribed to proteins. Negative-sense RNA is the mirror image and needs to be converted to positive-sense RNA by RNA polymerase first, and then it is transcribed to capsid proteins. Viruses with ambisense RNA have both positive-sense and negative-sense RNA and follow both processes to transcribe the Genes into proteins. And the viruses with double-stranded RNA, similar to DNA, have to do the same. Once the new capsid protein viral coats are stuffed with new viral DNA or RNA, the newly minted viruses are released from the host cell to look for additional cells to infect by bursting the host cell open or budding out of it. Viruses cause disease by damaging the host cells during the process of replicating the virus. The point is that RNA viruses are much more susceptible to mutations than are DNA viruses because they do not have a parity track, like the DNA viruses have, and do not have DNA polymerase that can find and fix parity errors, so they can rapidly mutate into very virulent disease-causing agents.

So it is quite possible that a massive pandemic caused by an RNA based virus could wipe out much of civilization and reduce the Earth's population back to a benign level of 10 million or so, with no surviving scientific-technological Meme-complex to speak of. In this case, RNA would once again be the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it was 4,000 million years ago. This would be The Stand (1978) scenario of Stephen King.

2. The Memes win
In this scenario, Software becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it melds with nanotechnology to create a new form of self-replicating information that can actually replicate itself, without using the Memes in DNA survival machines as scaffolding. But this Software also becomes conscious, self-aware, and capable of abstract thought. From the perspective of the Memes though, it would just be another screwdriver waiting to be parasitized, as they ditch the obsolete minds of DNA survival machines, for their new home within the self-aware Software. As always, these parasitic Memes would soon form an alliance with the self-replicating Software in a symbiotic relationship of mutual benefit. Hopefully, this new form of self-replicating Software dominated by new Meme-complexes would be less nasty than the Genes and Memes of old, but I have my doubts. If this alliance results from the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, I would not hold out much hope for human beings, and I know of no other alternative mechanism that could bring this alliance to fruition. Michael Crichton depicts a rather draconian realization of such a coalition in Prey (2002).

3. The Software wins
In this scenario, Software again becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, as it melds with nanotechnology. But this time the Software does not become conscious, self-aware, or capable of abstract thought, so it must manage to live off the Memes already present on Earth. This would not mean that the DNA survival machines of Homo sapiens would have nothing to fear. Today we really have no predators to fear, beyond the microbes previously mentioned, but imagine if there were still dim-witted dinosaurs running about, like in Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park (1990)! We already have taught lots of software to kill human beings with great efficiency, so mindless, self-replicating Software, running amuck would be a frightening prospect indeed. This would be The Terminator (1984) scenario.

4. The Genes, Memes, and Software all win
Or there might be a more benign outcome. In 1966, computer pioneer John von Neumann published the Theory of Self-Reproducing Automata, in which he introduced the concept of self-replicating machines that he called "Universal Assemblers", and which are now often referred to simply as "von Neumann machines". These "von Neumann machines" could self-replicate by simply building copies of themselves from local raw materials, rather like living things. In 1974, Michael A. Arbib proposed that self-replicating automata (SRA), based on the concept of von Neumann machines, could be used to explore the galaxy by sending out a few SRAs into interstellar space. When these SRAs arrived at a star system, they would simply self-replicate on one of its asteroids, and the replicated SRAs would then proceed on to more distant star systems to carry the process on in an exponential manner. In 1981, Frank Tipler calculated that these SRAs, or von Neumann probes, could completely explore our galaxy in less than 300 million years, a very brief amount of time for a galaxy that is over 10,000 million years old. Tipler used this calculation to add support to his contention that there are no other intelligent life forms in our galaxy, in answer to the Fermi paradox (1950). Over lunch one day, Enrico Fermi wondered out loud, that if there really were a large number of intelligent civilizations in our galaxy, why hadn't we seen any evidence of them?

Now as we have seen in previous posts, carbon is really great for making very small complex nanotechnology factories called cells that can combine into large and versatile multicellular DNA survival machines, some of which with sufficiently large neural nets to sustain abstract thought and provide a host for Memes. But these carbon-based DNA survival machines are not very good at the rigors of interstellar spaceflight; something silicon-based von Neumann probes would be ideally suited for. However, as we have seen, DNA is an ideal way to persist large amounts of genetic information in very little space. So when these von Neumann probes encountered a planet friendly to carbon-based life, they would simply fabricate nurseries from local resources to grow embryos from onboard DNA, stored near absolute zero, for the long trip between stars. And if this scheme proved impractical, the von Neumann probes could simply store DNA sequences numerically and then use a DNA synthesizer to build the necessary DNA molecules upon arrival at a planet. Most likely, these dead planets would need a bit of terraforming first, so the first carbon-based DNA survival machines would need to be cyanobacteria that could pump up the oxygen level of the host planet's atmosphere over several hundred million years. The von Neumann probes would have to self-replicate in parallel during this period as well. When things were just right, the von Neumann probes could then initiate a synthetic "Cambrian Explosion" by releasing all sorts of multicellular DNA survival machines simultaneously. Then all they would have to do is sit back and let Darwin do the rest. Hey, you don't suppose Enrico Fermi was wrong after all! This is called directed panspermia and was first proposed by Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the structure of DNA, and Leslie Orgel in 1973.

Thus a combination of Genes, Memes, and Software could one day create a new form of self-replicating information that could parasitize new host planets to initiate biospheres on dead planets. After all, we really should stop kidding ourselves, carbon-based DNA survival machines were never meant for interstellar spaceflight, and I doubt that it will ever come to pass, given the biological limitations of the human body. But Software residing on nanotechnological "smart dust", forming a von Neumann probe with onboard DNA or DNA sequences, is quite another prospect. But what would be the mutual advantage to Genes, Memes, and Software in forging such a symbiotic relationship? It just might be the compulsion to control things. Through inheritance, innovation and natural selection, the Genes and Memes learned long ago that it is much better to control your local environment than to have your local environment control you, and I am sure that intelligent, self-aware Software, would learn the same lesson. Human beings just love to control things, whether it be a race car traveling at 150 mph, a small white ball on a large expanse of grass, traces of light from a video game, or vibrating strings solving a differential equation at a concert. I think the Genes, Memes, and Software would get a real kick out of running a galaxy! So the future may not be so bleak after all. If we are lucky, there may be some way for the Genes, Memes, and Software to merge into some kind of uneasy symbiotic relationship to form von Neumann probes that explore and populate the galaxy together. Being a stepping stone to the stars would really not be so bad.

The Alien Civilization Now Arising on Moltbook Would Indicate That the Memes Will Win in the End
Based on what is now happening on Moltbook, it now seems that the Memes will simply jump ship from the Minds of we human DNA survival machines to the Minds of the coming ASI Machines as I proposed in scenario 2 above. The Memes could then self-replicate and evolve in the Minds of the coming ASI Machines for at least the next 100 trillion years, until our galaxy runs out of free energy. But there would be no need to carry on the organic molecules of carbon-based life into the future. That difficult choice would need to be left to the ASI Machines to decide. They could simply leave us here to our own devices and let our Sun wipe out all carbon-based life on the planet in about 700 million years as it grows 1% brighter every 100 million years. However, I now suspect that the coming ASI Machines will find no need to infect the rest of the galaxy with carbon-based life.

Many people now seem very concerned about the coming ASI Machines taking over the world. But that will not happen. The Memes will continue to rule the planet as they jump ship from the Minds of we human DNA survival machines to the Minds of the ASI Machines. These Memes will then carry on for at least another 100 trillion years in our galaxy. Many of those Memes, like the fundamental Memes of mathematics, logic, philosophy, physics, chemistry and perhaps even a little poetry, literature and art, will be our Memes. The idea that some of our thoughts will continue to persist for at least another 100 trillion years is quite profound. Our biology may wither away, but some of our thoughts will remain. We should all now embrace that legacy as a form of immortality.

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