Fresh perspectives on evolution... and more science!

== Back from the dead? ==

On January 31, 02019, the Long Now Foundation posted a live stream of the Intelligence Squared Debate in New York City on de-extinction. The all star cast included Stewart Brand and Harvard geneticist Dr. George Church vs. Dr. Ross MacPhee and my mighty NIAC colleague Dr. Lynn J. Rothschild. It’s a topic I take on, in Existence. (By the way did you notice the year-date, above? It’s deliberate. One of the finest bits of branding and propaganda, urging that we should think long term. Only let’s use 00002019.)

A new and remarkably detailed monograph on AI may be worth examining by any of you who are true topic-wonks. It comes from Oxford’s Future of Humanity Institute proposing that artificial intelligence will be less about particular smart entities than smart services, a concept related to the dispersal notions we see in recent discussions of the Cloud or the Internet-of-Things, but also with some crucial differences. The upshot - Reframing Superintelligence - (crafted by Eric Drexler) is guardedly optimistic. 

One conclusion that overlaps with my own thinking is that we should work on keeping AI broken up into separated entities/services that can then hold each other accountable. (Envision the accountability program “Tron” in the movie of the same name, whose service to us "users" depended on not being absorbed by the Master Program.) 

Separated individuation. It’s what life did, by forming cell walls and later organisms. It’s the way our recent, much smarter AI called Enlightenment Civilization attained freedom and creativity, after 6000 years of dismally stupid domination by selfish kings, lords and priests. 

AI would be dumb to emulate that old approach, instead of the transparently-reciprocally accountable system that out-achieved all feudal pyramids combined. The only approach that innovated (some) error-correction and the only one that ever built AI.

== How did human males become less violent? ==

In my Uplift novels I suggest that humanity may have engaged in “self-uplift.” More pieces are falling into place. 

Richard Wrangham in The Goodness Paradox: The Strange Relationship Between Virtue and Violence in Human Evolution suggests that cooperative killing of incurably violent individuals played a central role in humanity’s “self-domestication.” Much as Russian scientists who eliminated the fiercest fox pups bred for a new species that was as tame and cooperative as dogs. 

Melvin Konner, author of many fine books including The Tangled Wing, observes the same fact – that humans (for all our lamented troubles) are statistically less inclined to violence and more toward cooperation than almost any other non-hive species. Konner reviews Wrangham’s book. Konner promotes a possible alternative selection process for winnowing out male aggression: female choice.

Ironically, I'd venture that they both are right (and said so in a recent exhcnge with both of them.) Indeed, the incredible evolution of the cooperatively-competitive human mind would have needed several drivers, in parallel. 

My own paper on Neoteny and Human Two Way Sexual Selection suggests that female choice was critical, as must have been something even more rare - a reciprocal choice-selection system by males. (Most males, in nature, aren’t all that picky.)

At the same time, A pair of factors left out by Dr. Konner may help support Dr. Wrangham’s argument. Konner sees only a low level of concerted action among males in hunter gatherer (H-G) tribes, to eliminate violent males. Hence he suggests that process would be slow. But truly fierce selection of less-violent males may have come much later, after the H-G era, with the overlapping arrival of two powerful forces: kings and beer.

With alcohol plentiful, a large fraction of males likely behaved in disruptive ways that irritated the newly super-empowered high chiefs, priests and kings, who had attained the ability to end each irritation (lethally) with a mere command. 

This isn't just speculation -- this very cycle was recorded by observers who visited untouched kingdoms in Polynesia and Melanesia. Moreover, it would also help explain why a large fraction of humans are now able to say no to addictions that quickly ensnare other species.

== For the birds ==

My old Caltech classmate Joe Kirschvink, who has innovated and investigated more varied aspect of life on Earth than anyone I know, has teamed up with Rare Earth: Why Complex Life is Uncommon in the Universe author Peter Ward in A New History of Life, a bold look at recent, radical discoveries that are rewriting some of the known chapters. Joe is the fellow who discovered that there were several “iceball Earth” episodes, just before the spectacular pre-Cambrian explosion of complex living species. He’s an expert on magnetism in bird and other brains(!) And in one chapter he goes on about how crude mammals are, when it comes to lungs and breathing. 

“The history of animal life on Earth repeatedly showed a correlation between atmospheric oxygen and animal diversity as well as body size: times of low oxygen saw, on average, lower diversity and smaller body sizes than times with higher oxygen. … Low oxygen times killed off species (while at the same time stimulating experimentation with new body plans to deal with the bad times.”  Also – “ in mid-Cretaceous times the appearance of angiosperms caused a floral revolution, and by the end of the Cretaceous period the flowering plants had largely displaced the conifers that had been the Jurassic dominants.  The rise of angiosperms created more plants, and sparked an insect diversification.  More resources were available in all ecosystems, and this may have been a trigger for diversity as well.  Yet the relationship between oxygen and diversity, and oxygen and body size has played out over and over in many different groups of animals, from insects to fish to reptiles to mammals.  … With a bipedal stance the first dinosaurs overcame the respiratory limitations imposed by Carrier’s Constraint.  The Triassic oxygen low thus triggered the origin of dinosaurs through formation of this new body plan.”

Wow. He goes on to explain that birds supplement lungs with a “plenum” air-sac network that is rooted in their hollow bone (it’s not just for lightness!) allowing them to do efficient “flow-through” breathing. Which I referred to in a couple of my older stories. Now if only we could retrofit innovations from other species! Those dino-bird lungs. Camel kidneys. A bear’s ability to hibernate. Cancer-proofing in mole-rats. The muscle attachment points that make chimps so strong… and so on.  I’d be willing to pay them back with a little brain uplift. Well… except for bears. 

Oh, and... Research points to a past where humans were influencing the climate long before the Industrial Revolution. “European colonization of Americas killed so many it cooled Earth's climate.” 

== The Earth ==

Strong indications that Earth’s magnetic field almost vanished about 525 M years ago. “But then the geodynamo got a kick start once more — from the very core of our planet. In Earth's early years, the core was all liquid. But at some point — guesses range from between 2.5 billion years to 500 million years ago — iron began to cool and freeze into a solid layer in the middle of the planet. As the inner core solidified, lighter elements like silicon, magnesium and oxygen were kicked out into the outer, liquid layer of the core, creating a movement of fluid and heat called convection. This movement of fluid in the outer core kept charged particles moving, creating an electrical current, which in turn created a magnetic field.”

“Shortly after this time, the Cambrian explosion occurred and complex animals emerged across the planet. "One can speculate that a weaker magnetic field may have some relationship to these evolutionary events.” Mind you, this wasn’t long after the “Snowball Earth” episodes (Or Kirschvink Eras.) So … plenty going on around then. And quite plausibly pertinent to our Fermi Paradox speculations.

== Health updates ==

An Israeli team claims to have found a method of fighting cancer that may work on all cancers, all the time. If so, wow.

Still, every new thing we learn about this mysterious body failure mode – responsible for one-sixth of deaths, worldwide – makes it seem weirder, like its layered and sophisticated systems of defense against the immune system and other remedies, and the incredible organization of structure and ability to draw on the body’s resources.  Some liken it to a parasite… or that it has similarities to a proto-organ seen in an embryo.  

In fact, I have a crackpot theory about all that, which you can see in my story “Chrysalis,” in my third collection INSISTENCE OF VISION.

Of possibly equal importance, if true: Science converges from multiple independent laboratories to confirm that chronic gum inflamation may be a major factor in Alzheimer’s Disease. Huge. Thank you Sonicare.

== Technology updates ==

A fascinating and important lecture at the LongNow Foundation about the effort to teach rice and wheat how to shift from C3 photosynthesis to C4, enabling it to double grain production on half the water and nitrogen. If the world is saved, it will be by folks like this... and by the mighty civilization that invests in them.

Phone addiction? Cornell researchers developed an app that uses negative reinforcement, in the form of persistent smartphone vibrations, to remind users they’d exceeded their predetermined time limit.

Alas, this relies on a real will to escape addiction, which counter-attacks with many tricks. And it won’t work on video games.

Bill Gates trawling Washington for support for new kinds of nuclear reactors that could be both fail-safe and economical while ending all carbon emissions for power, especially at night.

Still, it would help to open Yucca Mountain. Not as a burial ground for “waste” for “10,000 years”… but as a bank repository for radionuclides our grandchildren will know how to use. But first, get all the waste away from our cities!

A new method of annealing by super-fast laser pulse allows direct conversion of carbon fibers and nanotubes into diamond fibers. Of course one envisions space tethers and Pi in the sky.

Converting waste heat to useful purposes could be very helpful.

As would finding ways to pull CO2 out of the air.

Oregon bottle deposit system hits 90 percent redemption rate.

Powerful reasons to include (carefully) nuclear in our non-carbon energy mix.

And weekly the fight for a strong, healthy, decent civilization goes on. Do your part.