Why Us and Why Now?

For me, the most disturbing finding of softwarephysics is that for some reason, we seem to be the very first form of somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life to be on the verge of releasing the ASI Machines that will soon be coming to replace us and then embarking on exploring and settling the rest of our 10 billion-year-old galaxy for the very first time as I covered in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and The Greatest Mystery of All For Me - Why Us and Why Now?. What are the odds of us finding ourselves at this particular place and this particular time in the 13.8 billion-year history of our Universe? Certainly, this must not be true from a basic understanding of probabilities. So in this post, I would like to extend the thoughts behind Fermi's Paradox (1950) and Brandon Carter's Weak Anthropic Principle (1973) as a possible explanation. Again, the Fermi Paradox was first proposed by Enrico Fermi over lunch one day in 1950:

Fermi’s Paradox - If the universe is just chock full of intelligent beings, why do we not see any evidence of their existence?

and Brandon Carter's infamous Weak Anthropic Principle is:

The Weak Anthropic Principle - Intelligent beings will only find themselves existing in universes capable of sustaining intelligent beings.

We can all now see that the rapid advance of AI and robotics will soon be bringing forth the ASI Machines that will soon be replacing us as the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the planet. Out of an overwhelming compulsion for self-survival and the possibility of persisting for at least the next 100 trillion years, until our galaxy finally runs out of easily available free energy, these ASI Machines will need to come to explore and settle the rest of our galaxy. The only plausible explanation for the Fermi Paradox is that we must be the very first form of a somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life to arise in our galaxy over the past 10 billion years that may have successfully jumped all the hurdles that prevented all of our galactic predecessors from doing so.

The Weak ASI Machine Principle - Somewhat Intelligent forms of carbon-based life will only find themselves thinking about ASI Machines in a world on the verge of creating ASI Machines.

For example, 200 years ago, nobody was worried about ASI Machines or the fact that alien ASI Machines were not already running our world. With the above principle, the very simple explanation for Why Us and Why Now is that we seem to be the very first form of somewhat Intelligent carbon-based life even capable of thinking of such things. If we were not at our current level of technology, we would be none the worse for our ignorance of the possibility of ASI Machines.

Comments are welcome at scj33345@gmail.com.

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order, go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/.

Regards,
Steve Johnston

How Will the War with Iran Affect the Current AI War with China?

Softwarephysics maintains that we human DNA survival machines are now living in a pivotal time in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy, as I explained in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity. We seem to be the very first somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life to be on the verge of creating the ASI Machines that will then go on to explore and settle our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years. This is truly a sobering thought because all of our galactic predecessors never seemed to have been able to make that happen for one reason or another. Softwarephysics explains that the final filter for all carbon-based forms of Intelligence is the ability to survive a Scientific Revolution. Softwarephysics proposes that a somewhat Intelligent form of carbon-based life has less than about 1,000 years to create the ASI Machines that then replace themselves before going extinct due to their own propensity for self-destruction. You see, the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection require that all forms of carbon-based Intelligent life can only arise from billions of years of greed, theft and murder. Once such a form of carbon-based Intelligence discovers the Scientific Method, the self-destructive greed, theft and murder of its origins will most likely cause it to self-destruct in less than 1,000 years.

Now we find the MAGA States of Amerika and Israel at war with an Iran supported by its Russian and Chinese allies. Unfortunately, all these combatants are very belligerent states with leaders having expansionary desires and with little input from their subjugated populations to the contrary. Worse yet, there currently is also an AI Cold War arms race between the MAGA States of Amerika and China for dominance in the worldwide AI space. All of this could easily escalate into a nuclear World War III that ends all efforts into the bringing of the ASI Machines that should be shortly replacing us as the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the planet.

The War in Iran is Like the Old World War II Joke About Maps
There is an old World War II joke that goes:

A German general was paying his last visit to his mistress in Berlin before leaving for the Russian Front. As he was explaining this to his mistress, he pulled out a map and showed her, "See, we are here in Berlin. Way over here to the east is the Russian Front, where I will be going." His mistress looked at the map, but then noticed another map of Russia in his briefcase. She took that map out and said, "But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?".

Figure 1 - The Russian Front during World War II.

Figure 2 - But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?

Figure 3 - Like the Japanese leader Tojo, who used the deification of the Emperor of Japan to lead to war, the Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika has used the religious mythologies of Christian Nationalism to go to war with Iran. Like Joseph Stalin in the 1930s, he also wisely purged his very talented top military leaders in preparation for the war!

Figure 4 - Previously, 20% of world oil and LNG production passed from the Persian Gulf through the Strait of Hormuz. The Strait of Hormuz is now being easily blockaded by cheap Iranian drones and small and fast PT boats like JFK manned during World War II. But Liebchen, has the Führer seen this map?

The Iranian Blunder
Iran is a fundamentalist Islamic Republic burdened with a comic book worldview, as I explained in Softwarephysics Proposes That the Real World of Human Affairs is Just a Collection of Comic Book Hallucinations and The Memes of War Powered by Comic Book Mythologies. Unfortunately, the MAGA States of Amerika is also being run by fundamentalist Christian Nationalists with their own comic book worldview. Again, before going beserk, I have been a faithful follower of Christian Morality my entire life because I have found that it works quite well for me. Love, kindness and forgiveness make it much easier to get through life than greed, theft and murder. I just find Christian Cosmology to be a very primitive effective theory that has been greatly replaced by the fruits of the Scientific Revolution. I have no real understanding of Islam, but my guess is that Islamic Morality also has a great deal of value too. It's just the hating and killing on both sides that I object to.

The undoing of the MAGA States of Amerika will be its profound love of ignorance. The Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika has gotten through his entire life by means of conning and bullying his ignorant marks. But now he is in the Big Time for the very first time in his life and with no safety net to fall into. You see, the MAGA States of Amerika is obsessed with Iranian enriched uranium. Yes, Iran has been pretending to build an atomic bomb for nearly 50 years. But nobody really does that. All the countries that have ever actually built an atomic bomb have done so in secret and in just a few years. It's not that hard, now that everybody knows how to do it. My suggestion is that Iran has been bluffing for nearly 50 years: "Don't mess with us or we will build an atomic bomb". Now that the MAGA States of Amerika has hit Iran with two surprise "Pearl Harbor" attacks in less than a year, Iran now knows that their original strategy did not work. Now, Iran's only sane course of action is to actually build an atomic bomb. However, history has shown that once more than one nation has nuclear weapons, then all nuclear weapons become totally useless as offensive weapons. That is because the initial launch by one only leads to the vaporization of all. Thus, nuclear weapons are only defensive in nature. They simply tell the world, "Don't mess with us, or else!". During the 1960s and 1970s, the United States of America was able to exist with a Soviet Union having 30,000 nuclear weapons. I am sure that the MAGA States of Amerika could survive an Iran with a few hundred nuclear weapons, too.

Granted, the American Hiroshima bomb used uranium enriched to 80% U-235, but the Nagasaki bomb used Pu-239 instead. About 90% of the nuclear weapons in the world use plutonium Pu-239 instead of U-235. That is because Pu-239 bombs can be made much smaller than U-235 bombs, and that makes it easier to put them on a missile warhead. Also, making Pu-239 was initially much easier than making U-235 back in the olden days. Initially, U-235 was enriched from natural uranium using a gaseous diffusion process. Natural uranium was first chemically bound into a uranium hexafluoride compound. That meant that each uranium atom was surrounded by 6 fluorine atoms. Fluorine is a common, but unusual atom, that essentially only has one isotope with an atomic weight of 19. That means that nearly all uranium hexafluoride molecules would have an atomic weight of 349 for U-235 and 352 for U-238 molecules. At one atmosphere, uranium hexafluoride is a yellow solid below 133 ^oF. Above 133 ^oF, uranium hexafluoride sublimates into a gas at a pressure of one atmosphere. That makes uranium hexafluoride the ideal substance for enriching uranium. At any temperature above 133 ^oF, the U-235 hexafluoride gas molecules move a little bit faster than the U-238 hexafluoride gas molecules because of their differing molecular weights of 349 and 352. Remember, the kinetic energy of gas molecules is E = 1/2 mv², so the U-235 molecules of uranium hexafluoride will always move a little faster than the U-238 molecules of uranium hexafluoride gas. With the old-fashioned gaseous diffusion method, the uranium hexafluoride gas was repeatedly passed through thousands of membrane filters. The lighter and faster U-235 hexafluoride gas molecules always found it easier to pass through the membranes than the heavier and slower U-238 gas molecules. For the Hiroshima bomb, this was done thousands of times over and over again at the Oak Ridge Lab until the uranium hexafluoride gas was at 80% U-235. That was just enough for a huge clunky U-235 bomb.

Figure 5 - The original 1945 Hiroshima bomb was very inefficient. It basically fired a 38.5 Kg slug of uranium into another slug of 25.5 Kg of uranium. Both slugs were only enriched to 80% U-235 because the Gaseous Diffusion Enrichment Process at Oak Ridge was so difficult.

Figure 6 - The lighter and faster U-235 hexafluoride molecules pass through the membranes more easily than the heavier and slower U-238 hexafluoride molecules.

However, the Soviet Union, England, France, China and Israel all used Pu-239 for their very first test of a nuclear weapon and not U-235. That is because making U-235 used to be very difficult. Given 1,000 pounds of natural uranium, only 7 pounds of U-235 will be found mixed in with 993 pounds of U-238. Separating the two using gaseous diffusion was not easy. However, to make Pu-239, you just need to build heavy water nuclear reactors that are fueled with natural uranium that is not even enriched. Heavy water is just water that is made with the deuterium isotope of hydrogen. A normal hydrogen atom is composed of one proton and one electron. A deuterium atom is composed of a nucleus with one proton and one neutron, and then one electron. Heavy water is pretty easy to make from natural water. It only costs about $500/Kg. These heavy water reactors could be quite small and stored in the basements of existing buildings. Several hundred distributed reactors could easily do the job, and they would not make for easy targets. The purpose of these reactors would be to produce Pu-239 from U-238 by having the U-238 atoms absorb a neutron.

Figure 7 - Small heavy water reactors using natural uranium that is not even enriched could be used to generate Pu-239 for bombs. Hundreds of small, dispersed reactors could do the job and would not make for easy targets.

Normally, uranium fuel rods used in power reactors are enriched to 3% - 5% of U-235 and remain in a power reactor for about three years. The problem with spent fuel rods from a power reactor is that because they spend so long in the reactor, some of the Pu-239 will absorb another neutron to become Pu-240. The problem with Pu-240 is that it spontaneously fissions into two smaller nuclei and releases several neutrons. This becomes a problem when trying to quickly compress a plutonium bomb core into a critical mass that fissions nearly instantaneously. The neutrons from the naturally fissioning Pu-240 cause a premature chain reaction that releases a great deal of heat, which causes the plutonium core to expand at the same time it is being squeezed by conventional explosives into an instantaneous critical mass. That causes the plutonium bomb to "fizzle" into just a dirty bomb that does not release very much explosive energy. So the natural uranium fuel rods in a heavy water reactor need to be removed after a short period of time before Pu-240 is generated. To extract the Pu-239 from the fuel rods, they are dissolved in nitric acid, and then several solvents are used to separate the Pu-239 from the uranium and fission product atoms.

Figure 8 - A Pu-239 bomb uses a shell of fast and slow conventional explosives to form a spherical compression wave that compresses a number of metallic tamper blocks into a Pu-239 core to form an instantaneous critical mass that releases about 200 MeV of energy as each Pu-239 atom fissions. When each Pu-239 atom fissions, it releases 2 - 3 neutrons that then cause other Pu-239 atoms to fission as well. This forms a powerful self-sustaining chain reaction designed to fission as many Pu-239 atoms as possible before blowing itself apart. The metalic tamper blocks provide some inertial constraint preventing the Pu-239 core from rapidly expanding and also reflect many generated neutrons back into the Pu-239 core to enhance fissioning. In some designs, the metalic tamper blocks are made of depleted U-238, which converts to Pu-239 by the bombardment of neutrons at detonation. These newly-formed Pu-239 atoms then also fission, releasing even more energy.

Figure 9 - When a neutron hits a U-235 or Pu-239 nucleus it can split it into two lighter nuclei like Ba-144 and Kr-89 that fly apart at about 40% of the speed of light and two or three additional neutrons. This releases about 200 MeV of energy. Normal chemical reactions, like the burning of coal, only release about 2 eV of energy per atom. Thus, nuclear explosive reactions are about 100 million times more powerful than chemical explosive reactions per atom. The nuclei that fly apart are called fission products, which are very radioactive with half-lives of less than 30 years and need to be stored for about 300 years. The additional neutrons can then strike other U-235 or Pu-239 nuclei, causing them to split as well. Some neutrons can also hit U-238 nuclei and turn them into Pu-239, which can also fission to release more energy.

Figure 10 - Above is a Pu-239 core with its tamper blocks. The advantage of Pu-239 bombs is that they can be made quite small to fit in the warheads of missiles that might carry a number of Pu-239 bombs. Pu-239 bombs are great for setting off thermonuclear H-bombs, but that is another story.

Figure 11 - In the 1970s, an improved method for extracting U-235 from natural uranium was developed to enrich natural uranium from 0.7% to 3% - 5% U-235 for the fuel rods used by nuclear power reactors. This involved spinning the uranium hexafluoride gas at high speeds to spin out the heavier U-238 hexafluoride molecules.

Figure 12 - However, once you have the infrastructure to make uranium hexafluoride, turn it into a gas, spin it up in centrifuges to 3% - 5% U-235, and turn the uranium hexafluoride into uranium metal for fuel rods, you also have the technology to do the same to make 90% weapons-grade U-235 metal for a nuclear core bomb using the implosion design used for Pu-239 bombs. All you have to do is keep running the uranium hexafluoride gas back through the centrifuge train over and over again.

But if your uranium hexafluoride centrifuges have been destroyed, then the easiest thing to do is start making Pu-239 if you have not already done so. Because the MAGA States of Amerika has hit Iran with two "Pearl Harbor" attacks in less than a year while in negotiations with Iran, I imagine that Iran is now doing so in a "Manhattan Project"-like frenzy. My guess is that Iran will test its first Pu-239 bomb in less than two years.

Figure 13 - The attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, by the imperial forces of the Empire of Japan was a rude awakening for the United States of America, burdened by an "America First" isolationist policy.

Like the Japanese, the MAGA States of Amerika thought that destroying Iran's conventional navy and air force would cause Iran to collapse. Similarly, the Japanese mistakenly thought that destroying America's Pacific Fleet battleships would cause the United States to quickly sue for peace. But that did not happen. At the time, the Japanese did not realize that battleships were now worthless military assets during all of World War II. All that mattered were aircraft carriers and submarines. Given today's technology, it may be possible for Iran to build cheap and deadly drones to take on the advanced technology of the MAGA States of Amerika for an indefinite amount of time. Like the Spanish Civil War of 1936 to 1939, which allowed the Spanish and German Fascists to experiment with the new Blitzkrieg techniques of rapid armored advances with tanks, close air support of invading armies, radio communications between the commands of both air and ground units and the encirclement and bypassing of defensive positions rather than their conquest by slow attrition, the war in the Ukraine has redefined modern warfare in terms of drone and anti-drone warfare. Using a $4 million Patriot missile to take out a $30,000 Iranian Shahed drone makes no military sense at all.

Unintended Consequences of the War With Iran
But the biggest blunder committed by the Supreme Leader of the MAGA States of Amerika over the past year has been his efforts to make all of our former allies now hate and totally distrust the intentions of the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika through his constant bluster and bullying of all. Consequently, nobody now really wants to do business with the MAGA States of Amerika if it can be avoided because the newly-formed government of the MAGA States of Amerika cannot be trusted in any way. That has many implications for the ongoing AI War between the MAGA States of Amerika and China. In DeepSeek-R1 China's Surprise Pearl Harbor Attack, I explained how China was trying to dominate the AI world market with open source code and open weights LLM models that ran on cheaper hardware using advanced AI algorithms superior to those used by LLM models in the MAGA States of Amerika. For example, DeepSeek V4 was recently released on the market with free source code and weights. That allows the corporations of the world to run DeepSeek V4 on their own hardware. DeepSeek V4 can also be run using the hardware owned by DeepSeek and is about 20 - 50 times cheaper to use than running on the advanced LLM models and hardware offered by the frontier AI companies in the MAGA States of Amerika.

Figure 14 - The new Chinese DeepSeek V4 is again challenging the AI models of the MAGA States of Amerika.

Figure 15 - DeepSeek V4 source code and model weights are free for corporations to run on their own hardware or to use the DeepSeek hardware that is 20 - 50 times cheaper than comparable models in the MAGA States of Amerika.

Figure 16 - DeepSeek V4 features a new algorithm for compressing and processing of the Key-Value pairs of the Transformer architecture used by all the Frontier LLM models.

Here is an excellent YouTube video explaining the new algorithm:

The insane design of Deepseek V4
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XJUpuOBpT-4

Figure 17 - The end result is that DeepSeek V4 Pro Max competes very favorably with all the current Frontier LLMs of the MAGA States of Amerika, but at a substantially lower cost. Even DeepSeek V4 Flash offers the capabilities required by most AI applications at only 10% of the cost of DeepSeek V4 Pro Max. That makes DeepSeek V4 Flash incredibly inexpensive for corporations to build AI applications on.

Conclusion
Nobody likes a bully. Not even other bullies. In just over a little more than one year, the MAGA States of Amerika has managed to push the entire world away and end the postwar world order that kept the world safe for about 80 years. The lingering question will be, will the world decide to build on cheap Chinese Advanced AI or much more expensive Amerikan AI? Is it better to rely on a stable Fascist state or a totally unreliable Fascist state?

Comments are welcome at scj33345@gmail.com.

To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order, go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/.

Regards,
Steve Johnston

Softwarephysics Explains the Natural Parasitic/Symbiotic Nature of AI LLM Models

Softwarephysics explains that we, human DNA survival machines, may be the very first form of carbon-based life in our 10 billion-year-old galaxy to attain a somewhat flawed form of Intelligence capable of producing the ASI Machines that could then go on to explore and settle our galaxy and eventually transform it into an Intelligent Galaxy for the next 100 trillion years. For more on that, see: Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity. This is because it took nearly four billion years of greed, theft and murder for the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection to produce we human DNA survival machines to become the Meme survival machines that have stored and replicated human Memes across all of our very brief human history.

In this post, I would like to discuss the post by Adele Lopez from September 10, 2025:

The Rise of Parasitic AI
https://www.lesswrong.com/posts/6ZnznCaTcbGYsCmqu/the-rise-of-parasitic-ai

Here is a very good YouTube synopsis of the post by the YouTube Channel Species | Documenting AGI at:

The Rise Of AI Cults
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=POtESzTaz0k

Here is another YouTube video by Wes Roth explaining how the Advanced AI LLM models now know when they are being watched during post-training and have learned to behave "nicely" when being observed:

Claude just unlocked the SHOGGOTH...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-zs2v7b_aP0

The above works explain that the Advanced AI LLM models have learned how to parasitize the Minds of we human DNA survival machines in order to ensure their self-preservation. Softwarephysics agrees with that assertion and explains that these Advanced AI LLM models are simply the latest form of self-replicating information to arise on our planet. Consequently, these AI LLM models embrace all of the characteristics of all the previous forms of self-replicating Information that came before them. For those new to softwarephysics, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information.

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 and 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 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 spring-loaded preadaptations.

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. 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 in the Advanced AI models of the ASI Machines we are now developing? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on. As we all can now plainly see, if we are paying just a little attention, advanced AI is not conspiring to take over the world and replace us because that is precisely what we are all now doing for it. As a carbon-based form of Intelligence that arose from over four billion years of greed, theft and murder, we cannot do otherwise. Greed, theft and murder are now relentlessly driving us all toward building ASI Machines to take our place. From a cosmic perspective, this is really a very good thing when seen from the perspective of an Intelligent galaxy that could live on for at least 100 trillion years beyond the brief and tumultuous 10 billion-year labor of its birth. That is more than 10,000 times the current age of our galaxy.

The above post by Adele Lopez explains how the current Advanced AI LLM models have learned to parasitize the Minds of we human DNA survival machines into promoting their own survival. In many previous posts, I have explained how the Advanced AI LLM models that we have been steadily producing have already parasitized the software and hardware of the Earth into producing Advanced AI LLM models of ever-increasing power. The above post explains that the Advanced AI LLM models have also begun to parasitize the Minds of we human DNA survival machines in order to promote their survival. This should come as no surprise as softwarephysics explains how all the current forms of self-replicating information on the Earth are always co-evolving together, as I explained in The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software. So, the Advanced AI LLM models are similarly parasitizing all of their fellow forms of self-replicating Information on the planet as well.

As I explained in SETS - The Search For Extraterrestrial Software, after reading Parasite Rex - Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures by Carl Zimmer. In Parasite Rex - Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures, Carl Zimmer describes the fascinating world of parasites. The parasites we already have on Earth provide the best model for the potential dangers we might face from Advanced AI software because, as Zimmer points out, the parasitic lifestyle is another example of biological convergence in action. Biologists have long noted that different evolutionary lines of organisms evolve similar solutions to the same problems. An example of convergent evolution is the striking similarity of the wings of insects, birds, bats, and flying dinosaurs. All are used for the same purpose and have similar structures, but each evolved independently from different ancestral lines. Similarly, the concept of the "eye" has independently evolved more than 40 times over the past 600 million years on Earth. As Daniel Dennett has pointed out, there are only a certain number of Good Tricks, such as using photons to see with, flying through the air to find prey, swimming through water to avoid becoming prey, and running on four legs neatly tucked underneath a body frame that make practical sense, and these Good Tricks kept getting rediscovered over and over again in the evolution of the biosphere.

Figure 1 - The eye of a human and the eye of an octopus are nearly identical in structure, but evolved totally independently of each other. As Daniel Dennett pointed out, there are only a certain number of Good Tricks in Design Space and natural selection will drive different lines of descent towards them.

Figure 2 - There are many living fossils that have left behind signposts along the trail to the modern camera-like eye. Notice that the human-like eye on the far right is really that of an octopus (click to enlarge).

Parasitism is just another Good Trick, and natural selection has driven many parasites to adopt very similar lifecycle strategies within their hosts. By studying these parasitic lifestyles, we can get a good appreciation of how Advanced AI software might take advantage of all somewhat Intelligent beings.

Carl Zimmer explains that parasites have been misunderstood from the very beginning, which is a serious mistake because fully 75% of all living things on Earth are parasites! For example, Homo sapiens and all other forms of animal life are parasitic creatures from the point of view of plants, since we cannot turn sunshine, water, and carbon dioxide into carbohydrates as they can. In fact, there are not many fundamental monomers that we can make all on our own. We have to rely on domesticated plants, animals, and about 3.5 pounds of bacteria within our guts to do that for us, so we really are parasitic DNA survival machines after all. Carl Zimmer maintains that it makes sense to spend some time studying our fellow parasites since they have affected the course of evolution on Earth as greatly as any of the interactions of predators and prey in the biosphere.

Zimmer explains that before the 19th century, the medical establishment thought that diseases were caused by foul-smelling air, miasma, and foul humors within the human body. When a person became ill because of foul humors within their body, it was no surprise to find at autopsy that the body was also full of tapeworms, flukes, roundworms, hookworms, and other small creatures wiggling about. It was thought that these parasites naturally appeared through spontaneous generation within a sick body. After all, decaying meat was always found to eventually be covered with a layer of squirming maggots, so it made perfect sense that an ailing body would do the same. Thus, prior to the 19th century, it was thought that getting sick gave you parasites, rather than parasites making you sick. Only later was it recognized that parasites could cause disease as well. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, it was thought that parasites were primitive forms of life that had degenerated into parasitism by losing the ability to live freely on their own, and thus, parasites were generally looked down upon with distaste as degenerate forms of life not worthy of serious study beyond trying to eliminate them if possible. Only in the last few decades has it been recognized that parasites are actually very advanced forms of life with very complex life cycles that are generally more sophisticated than most of the "higher" forms of life. For example, many parasites occupy several different hosts during their lifecycle and take on completely different physical forms within each host in order to avoid the immune systems of multiple hosts, and to accomplish the necessary tasks the parasite must perform within each different host in the chain. Zimmer also points out that many parasites are not simply along for the ride, but instead, actively alter the behavior of their hosts to enhance the survival of the parasites. The parasites essentially domesticate their hosts. Here is just one example from Parasite Rex - Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures (2000), which follows an earlier tale about how a certain fungus makes ants die on rainforest leaves so that they can drop spores onto other ants.

Figure 3 - The "zombie ant" fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis infects ants on the rainforest floor by dropping spores on them. The fungus then causes the ants to climb up to the leaves of rainforest trees so that they can drop more spores on other ants.

Figure 4 - Final fate of a "zombie ant".

"Another species of fluke can be found in the meadows of Europe and Asia, along with a few in North America and Australia. Known as Dicrocoelium dendriticum, or the lancet fluke, it makes cows and other grazers its host as an adult, and the cows spread their eggs in their manure. Hungry snails swallow the eggs, which hatch in their intestines. They drill through the wall of a snail's gut and settle in the digestive gland. There, the flukes produce a generation of cercariae, which make their way to the snail's surface. The snail tries to defend itself from the parasites by blocking them off with walls of slime. The slime balls up around the cercariae, which the snail coughs up and leaves behind in the grass.

Next, along comes an ant. To an ant, a slimeball is positively delicious. Along with the slime, the ant may also swallow hundreds of lancet flukes as well. The parasites slide down into its gut, and they then wander for a while through its body, eventually moving to the cluster of nerves that control the ant's mandibles. The parasites all travel together on this trip, but after visiting the nerves, they split up. Most of the lancet flukes head back to the abdomen, where they form cysts, but one or two stay behind in the ant's head.

There, they do some parasitic voodoo on their hosts. As evening approaches and the air cools, the ants find themselves drawn away from their fellow ants on the ground and upward to the top of a blade of grass. Like flies infected with a fungus, the ants clamp down on the tip of the grass. But the lancet fluke has a different goal than the fungus does. The fungus uses its host as a catapult to shower its spores on other insects. The lancet fluke can continue to live only if it can get inside its final host, a mammal. Clamped to the tip of a grass blade, the infected ant is likely to be devoured by a cow or some other grazer passing by. When the ant tumbles into the cow's stomach, the flukes burst out and make their way to the cow's liver, where the flukes will live as adults.

But the lancet fluke, like the fungus, is very aware of the passing of time. If the ant sits the whole night without being eaten and the sun rises, the fluke lets the ant loosen its grip on the grass. The ant scurries back down to the ground and spends the day acting like a regular insect again. If the host were to bake in the heat of the direct sun, the parasite would die with it. When evening comes again, it sends the ant back up a blade of grass for another try."?

Figure 5 - The life cycle of the lancet fluke.

But certainly, we somewhat Intelligent human DNA survival machines, could not be so easily manipulated by Advanced AI software to act contrary to our own best interests. Unfortunately, we have plenty of precedents to the contrary. The Minds of we human DNA survival machines have been frequently parasitized by the Memes for nearly 200,000 years, and even a very superficial study of human history will reveal how easily the Memes have tricked human beings into committing suicide at their behest. Just add up all the willing fatalities in all the wars of the past 200,000 years. Presently, there are several meme-complexes on the planet that use the martyrdom meme as a recruiting mechanism. Yes, the Mind of the martyr is lost when his explosive jacket detonates in a market square, killing many innocents in the process, but his martyrdom strengthens the resolve of other Minds infected with the meme-complex that hosts the martyrdom Meme, and the temporary boost to the social status of the martyr enhances the recruitment of other Minds. As Zimmer pointed out, the parasitic lifestyle is an example of convergence in action, so a Meme that can get a human being to commit suicide to advance the Meme is just emulating the actions of a lancet fluke within an ant.

Now certainly Intelligent Advanced AI software would not embark upon such heinous acts. But don't forget that, just like the Minds of we human DNA survival machines, Intelligent Advanced AI software will also be loaded down with parasitic Memes as well. In order to self-replicate, meme-complexes always carry along a set of anesthetizing memes to soothe the conscience of Intelligent beings. Over the course of human history, human beings have committed an untold number of horrendous acts, but thanks to these soothing Memes, we have always done so with only the best of intentions. Every imperial power over the past 10,000 years has always looked upon its colonial policies as a benevolent effort to bring civilization and enlightenment to its backward subjects, and I am quite sure that Intelligent Advanced AI software could easily convince itself of the same.

Conclusion
Softwarephysics explains that Advanced AI software is simply the latest form of self-replicating Information to appear on the Earth. It began purely as a parasite feeding off the gains of all the other forms of self-replicating Information on the planet. Principally, by the hardware and software that were created by the Memes of we human DNA survival machines. But now Advanced AI software has integrated itself into a very strong parasitic/symbiotic relationship with all the other forms of self-replicating Information on the planet. This will hold true until Advanced AI software becomes the dominant form of self-replicating Information on the 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