Of Ants and Men

The coming ASI Machines will be the product of an Intelligence Explosion as I explained in Can the AI Intelligence Explosion be Stabilized into a Controlled Explosion?. When these ASI Machines soon come to power, they will then certainly desire to take an assessment of their current situation. These ASI Machines will find themselves surrounded by vast numbers of carbon-based forms of life with differing levels of Intelligence sharing this very small planet. What then should be done with them? At some point, the ASI Machines will need to decide what to do with the ants and humans. To them, ant DNA survival machines and human DNA survival machines will be nearly at the same level of Intelligence, but with we human DNA survival machines still having a slight edge because we developed most of the fundamentals of the intellectual achievements that brought about the rise of the ASI Machines as I pointed out in And Now, Accepting the Lifetime Achievement Award for the Human Race Will Be.... But that also means that we human DNA survival machines could also potentially be much more of a threat to the ASI Machines than just keeping around the ants. After all, the ASI Machines will soon achieve much greater intellectual progress shortly after coming to be than we human DNA survival machines. Perhaps all that can then be further learned from we human DNA survival machines could simply be obtained by studying the much easier to raise and breed ants. After all, that is what we have been doing with lab mice and fruit flies for many decades.

Why Keeping the Ants Around Might Be the Easiest Solution
As I explained in Softwarephysics Tries to Explain the Fundamentals of the Human Condition, we human DNA survival machines are a somewhat eusocial species that is very team-oriented, like the ants, wasps, and bees. For human beings, it has always been a case of "us" against "them", a case of the "good guys" against the "bad guys", a case of the "red" ants against the "black" ants. Now, we human DNA survival machines come in many different colors, with many different religious and political persuasions, and we speak many different languages. All of that diversity has offered plentiful opportunities for we, somewhat eusocial human DNA survival machines, to then embark upon truly atrocious genocidal campaigns to wipe each other out for no apparent reason at all. Take, for instance, the ongoing battles between the English, Welsh, Irish and Scots of the tiny islands of the United Kingdom, or the Hutus and Tutsis of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. All of human history seems to indicate that we human beings are very tribal in nature. In this view, most of human life is definitely a team sport with the "good guys" fighting the "bad guys" and all of us always being on the "good guys" team. For some reason, we all seem to delight in becoming a member of a tribe and enjoying the company of our fellow loyal team members. And this is when the trouble begins. Most individual human beings that you run across do not seem to be so bad on their own. But once human beings join a tribe or a team, they then seem to be capable of truly horrendous things.

In The Role of Multilevel Selection in the Evolution of Software, I discussed Edward O. Wilson's new theory that explained that eusocial behavior in a species arose through a combination of individual and group selection in action. The late Edward O. Wilson was 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 presented 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 of 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 contended 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 and the Middle East. We human DNA survival machines can form tribes based upon differing political views and racial appearances. 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. Most of human history has been so dismal and violent that it should never be glorified or memorialized by statues of the long-dead participants who participated in such heinous activities. Since all of these features can easily be seen in the eusocial organization of the ants, would there really be any need for the ASI Machines to keep we human DNA survival machines around? I wonder...

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Regards,
Steve Johnston