On Deep Time... SETI... the Neolithic... immortality... and science!

Next week, in San Jose, California, commences the greatest general scientific conference in the world, the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, bringing together sages from every field. What better place for me to come on-stage and debate the issue of "Messaging Extraterrestrials" with the small coterie of radio dish mavens who want to shout into the cosmos, on our behalf.  

To be clear, those of us who oppose charging into this arrogant activity, based on unexamined assumptions, aren't aiming to "stifle humanity forever." What we want is something that all of you would enjoy! A worldwide discussion of all aspects of this matter, televised and webbed so that all of us can look over the full range of fascinating concepts and evidence -- before giving the nod to yelling "yooho, aliens! Lookit us!"

On February 14 there will be - in parallel - an open to the public session at the SETI Institute. Come on by, if you can. 

Oh, at one AAAS I got to watch the epic keynote given by author Michael Crichton, who spent a whole hour repeating "I DON'T hate science!" I had to... just had to... make him a character in EXISTENCE.

== Related matters? ==

Okay, some of these will be along the "edge".  But then, I just came back from Cape Canaveral and a meeting of NASA's Innovative and Advanced Concepts group. (I'm on the external council of advisors.) We are a wise people if we keep paying a small but steady and eager glance at the edge.

Will we detect life on other worlds through their vibrations? It is suggested that all living cells emit a variety of sonic vibrations — potentially a valuable aspect for future instruments aiming to detect life elsewhere in the Solar System. Not just bacterial flagella create vibrations. “or more complicated eukaryotic cells, there's lots of internal movement, as cellular components are shifted along tracks called actin filaments and microtubules. We have drugs that disassemble these tracks, and the authors used these and showed that again, the resulting vibrations changed. In fact, they changed in stereotypical ways: "Large fluctuations of the sensor can be associated with movements inside the actin network whereas less intense but more frequent fluctuations can be attributed to the tubulin network.””

How to Find Faster-Than-Light Particles: Actually, this article about the (very) slim possibility of FTL neutrinos is cogently written.  “A new paper claims to demonstrate that neutrinos not only travel faster than the speed of light, but have the brain-twisting characteristic of “imaginary mass”, a property that means they actually speed up as they lose energy.  -- The phrase “extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof” has seldom been more appropriate, but Professor Robert Ehrlich, recently retired from George Mason University, believes he has that, with six different measurements from different areas of physics. All of these, Ehrlich claims in Astroparticle Physics, provide matching results that not only indicate that neutrinos have imaginary mass, but point towards the same value, making it less likely the readings are in error.” 

 == Were we “nicer” before the Neolithic? ==

I am fascinated by the Neolithic - after we developed farming and stratified specialization and towns... but before writing and empires.

When We Were Nicer: Stephen Mithen's review of On Deep History and the Brain by Daniel Lord Smail exposes some interesting ideas... e.g. that the feudal lords, kings and priests began manipulating the body chemistry of their subjects (without knowing it) by inducing and relieving stress through religion, alcohol, ritualized sports and so on....

...and that the western enlightenment started taking off when large middle classes gained access to the tools to regulate their own chemistry -- with coffee and tea (which let them stay hydrated healthily, unlike purifying water with gin, switching in one generation from shambling lushes to caffeine-propelled merchants and organizers. These may have been as important as the opening of "frontiers" of trade and of colonization.

Sure, these are good insights.  Still, one commenter, below this piece, offered a good observation about something that has always irked me... the romantic notion that pre-agrarian hunter gatherer tribes were "egalitarian."


"I assume that it was an editorial decision rather than the reviewer’s to title Steven Mithen’s review of Daniel Lord Smail’s On Deep History and the Brain ‘When We Were Nicer’ (LRB, 24 January). There are good reasons to suppose that our hunting and foraging ancestors were ‘egalitarian’ in the sense that would-be dominant self-aggrandisers were held in check by joking, teasing, enforced sharing, vigilant monitoring, counter-dominant coalitions, and occasional assassinations. But that didn’t mean they were ‘nice’. Presumably some were and some weren’t, then as now. The difference is that sedentism and a sustainable sufficiency of food (fish will do as well as grain) made possible, as Mithen says, a return to primate-like social structures in which the nasty could get away with self-aggrandisement by means that the environment of hunting and foraging lifeways precludes." -- writes WG Runciman, Trinity, Cambridge.



Indeed, the number of injury scars that we see in pre-neolithic bones, from weapon-related injuries, suggests a very violent era. Only a small fraction of tribal folk, at any time, were buried with rich grave goods and we see other skeletons - contemporaneous - whose bones reveal life-long privation and (in some cases) clear signs of subservience.  

No one on the planet opposes a return to brutal feudalism more intensely than I do -- or expresses a stronger determination to keep our Enlightenment Experiment moving forward.  

But I hold no truck with those romantics who claim to see feudalism's solution to be a "return to wise, primeval ways."  Such folk see a just-so story that they want desperately to believe, without any substantial evidence.  Their (typically "leftist") romantic RENUNCIATION ethos is almost as troglodytic and crazy as today's far-larger and even-more-insane Right.

Science will show us how to regulate our own chemistries and get the best out of ourselves... and how to hold accountable all elites who want to regulate those things "for" us.

==A creepy way to fight aging ==

Parabiosisis a 150-year-old surgical technique that unites the vasculature of two living animals.  Experiments with parabiotic rodent pairs have led to breakthroughs in endocrinology, tumour biology and immunology. By joining the circulatory system of an old mouse to that of a young mouse, scientists have produced some remarkable results.  The blood of young mice seems to bring new life to ageing organs, making old mice stronger, smarter and healthier.

If that were all there was to it… then the darkest sci fi would be for young people to be well-paid to donate blood, or even drafted to donate monthly.  Big deal. I just completed my 80th donation, earning me my 10 gallon hat from the blood bank(!)  I’d have doubled that rate, when young, in order to revivify old folks.  

No, that’s not the scary part.

What’s scary (and not at all mentioned in this article) is that the strongest effects appear not to come from just receiving younger blood, but from sharing the younger animal’s circulatory system, meaning the older creature is also using the younger one’s kidneys, liver and other organs.  And the younger one pays a price for this parabiosis, with apparent ageing of those organs.

NOW there comes to mind a much more horrific sci fi scenario — of rich struldbrugs kidnapping and using up young people in order to extend their own overdue lives.  Yipe!

Perhaps science will speed ahead and make the benefits non-parasitic and cheap for all!  But meanwhile only one thing can prevent this horror from playing out....

...Transparency.

  

== miscellany ==

Wave energy, a coastal resource of prodigious potential, and possibly much less disruptive then wind (which can becalm) or solar. A new analysis of its costs/benefits indicates that wind energy will be competitive with other energy sources.

Illegal fishermen, the value of whose catch is estimated at up to $23.5 billion annually, operate with near impunity in some areas where they think themselves safe from tracking. But a new satellite tracking system launched on Wednesday aims to crack down on the industrial-scale theft known as "pirate fishing." 

Might Dark Matter contribute to the existence of stable wormholes in our galaxy? In the galactic halo region, dark matter may supply the fuel for constructing and sustaining a wormhole. Hence, wormholes could (maybe) be found in nature. 

Femto-second laser pulses make some surfaces super hydrophobic, repelling water and keeping clean and rust-free… valuable for solar arrays and many ther uses.  

Ancient palindrome!  An ancient, two-sided amulet uncovered in Cyprus contains a 59-letter inscription that reads the same backward as it does forward.

“CicretBracelet".  This device was invented in Israel and is not yet available on the open market. In fact, I doubt it will be for a while yet.  Still, its patents are probably worth billions. And I want it as my first smart phone. 

Are we "evolving" toward becoming "marching morons"?

Evolutionary biologist Mark Pagel recently spun a fable for The Edge about selection and drift in the human attribute of innovative creativity.  His assertion in Infinite Stupidity is that the very same civilization we built through innovation becomes a driving selective force, one that winds up sapping innovative genius from the gene pool.

Now at one level, Professor Pagel's argument is just a reiteration of the old "marching morons" notion - once popular in 1950s science fiction, as well as the earlier Eugenics Movement - that the long term effect of complex civilization must be to reward mediocrity and propel a decline in net human intelligence.

Pagel starts with a reasonable premise: that as humans created ever-larger societies, featuring rapid communication among greater populations, more people would benefit from copying the innovations produced by a few truly creative individuals.

So far, that seems pretty obvious. Cultural dissemination of new techniques started really burgeoning about thirty to forty thousand years ago, around the same time that trade networks clearly developed, with seashells adorning necklaces in the Alps, for example.

The late Paleolithic  Renaissance, at the dawn of the Aurignacian, erupted with astonishing abruptness after a hundred millennia of static technology. Within a few score generations - an eyeblink -- our ancestral tool kit expanded prodigiously to include fish hooks and sewing needles made of glistening bone, finely-shaped scrapers, axes, burins, nets, ropes and specialized knives that required many complex stages to create.

Art also erupted on the scene. People adorned themselves with pendants, bracelets and beads. They painted magnificent cave murals, performed burial rituals and carved provocative Venus figurines. Innovation accelerated. So did other deeply human traits - for there appeared clear signs of social stratification. Religion. Kingship. Slavery. War.

And -- for the poor Neanderthals -- possibly genocide.

==What changed?==

The cause of this rather rapid shift is hard to confirm, but Pagel seems to be implying (by my interpretation) that it was triggered by something as simple as an expansion of clan size - augmented by increased inter-clan trade.

So far so good.

Only then Professor Pagel does something I find wholly unjustified, even rather weird. He proposes that - amid this flurry of trade-enhanced innovation - the need for the trait of innovativeness would decline, on a per-capita basis, because the average person or small group would benefit by copying whatever came along.

"As our societies get larger and larger, there's no need, in fact, there's even less of a need for any one of us to be an innovator, whereas there is a great advantage for most of us to be copiers, or followers."  In other words, what need to maintain the expensive capacity to create new ideas when you can simply borrow them from a small coterie of idea-guys, scattered across the continent?

Alas, Professor Pagel spins a just-so story that is conveniently and charmingly free of reference to historical or archaeological evidence. For example, he ignores the fact that innovation sped up, intensely and supra-linearly, as the number of individuals connected in a society increased.

According to Pagel's premise, that rate should not rise appreciably with increased communication! Rather, if the amount of innovation were simply satisfying a Darwinian need, then with an expanded community the per capita creativity resource supplying that need would atrophy until the need was barely met. With the minimally needed level now acquired and satisfied by trade. people would simply become more dull and parasitical - that's his theory.  Only logically it would hold actual-total innovation at the same, pre-trade level.

==Toynbee, Marx and Wills==

I mentioned that this notion has a long history. Dour folk have long held that civilized life must have negative effects upon the gene pool, leading some, a century ago, to push eugenics legislation. But there are other glimmers from the past that merit mention.

For example, Karl Marx actually praised the cleverness and acumen of the bourgeois capitalist class, deeming them absolutely necessary for economic development. Their competitive creativity (and theft of labor-value from proletarians) would drive capital formation. Cyclically, the actual number of capitalists would see a secular decline with time as their trade networks expanded. In the end, Marx foresaw this brilliant class extinguished, after all the capital was "formed" and when their competitive cleverness was no longer needed. You can see how this eerily mirrors or foreshadows Pagel's teleology.

Another maven, who comes across better in light of real history, was Arnold Toynbee. His survey of the past led him to conclude that civilizations rise when they support and eagerly learn from their "creative minority" -- those who innovate useful solutions to rising problems. And societies fail when they don't. (In which case, does America's current war on science... and upon every other clade of mental accomplishment... forebode a coming fall?) In this light, Pagel's assertion seems dour, indeed.

A third, more recent voice is Christopher Wills, whose book Children of Prometheus contends that civilization, in fact, rapidly accelerates changes in the gene pool, propelling evolution ever-faster. I believe this case is very well-made, and wholly consistent with what really happened in the era discussed by Professor Pagel.

==The Great Acceleration==

In fact, after the Aurignacian and later Mesolithic phases, the pace of creativity only sped up, then exponentiated. Agrarian clans and then kingdoms allocated surplus food to specialists, rewarding them for talent and expertise, sometimes in accurate correlation to their effectiveness at innovation.  (Though skill at persuasiveness - lying - was always a higher correlate. That trait has almost certainly been an evolutionary rocket; but more on that another time.)


Key point: with agriculture, the collection and allocation of food surplus became a substantial human reproductive driver, as subsidized specialist roles became common. Competitively striving to attain that status, youths who became scribes, blacksmiths, tool-makers, engineers and priests must have achieved enhanced reproductive ability almost equal to the feudal lords who soon dominated every society.

Hence, a proclivity for nerdiness would increase... though, of course, not quite in pace with an ever-rising tendency toward oligarchy. I'll admit that the trait most avidly reinforced was the ability of some men to pick up metal implements and take away other men's women and wheat... a trait that required not only strength but some cleverness and yes, innovation.

Nevertheless, the brain-lackeys - the priests and tool-makers and monument builders - certainly did well. And they passed on the traits that made them successes. So much for the dismally grouchy "marching morons" hypothesis.

All of this is clear from the historical record. I find it disappointing that Professor Pagel seemed so willing to spin us a vague tale without confronting any of it. Indeed, for an evolutionary biologist to weave such a story without referring to reproductive advantage seems very strange, indeed.

==A Warning for the Future?==

But it isn't finished. Pagel extrapolates to the modern age: "As our societies get bigger, and rely more and more on the Internet, fewer and fewer of us have to be very good at these creative and imaginative processes. And so, humanity might be moving towards becoming more docile, more oriented towards following, copying others, prone to fads, prone to going down blind alleys, because part of our evolutionary history that we could have never anticipated was leading us towards making use of the small number of other innovations that people come up with, rather than having to produce them ourselves."

He continues, "What's happening is that we might, in fact, be at a time in our history where we're being domesticated by these great big societal things, such as Facebook and the Internet. We're being domesticated by them, because fewer and fewer and fewer of us have to be innovators to get by. And so, in the cold calculus of evolution by natural selection, at no greater time in history than ever before, copiers are probably doing better than innovators. Because innovation is extraordinarily hard. My worry is that we could be moving in that direction, towards becoming more and more sort of docile copiers."

"Domesticated?" One is tempted to demand that the professor speak for himself, not this wild spirit!

But ah, well.  So we come down to the couch-potato argument. The question posed by Nicholas Carr and other cyber grouches who contend that Google is making us Stoopid. As I have said before, any sensible person can look around and see plenty of signs that suggest the cynics may be right. Their criticisms may be more inherently useful than the giddy proclamations of cyber-transcendentalists, like Clay Shirky. Criticism is welcome... even if I find both sides romantically unrealistic.

Nevertheless, look, when you boil it down, this innovative decline thing is just an assertion, bereft of even correlative evidence, let alone proof. Sure, ninety percent of Internet activity is crap. But that could be said about everything, all the time, especially during all the eras leading up to this one. And while Pagel's lament may elicit voluptuous schadenfreude, it is hardly utilitarian or helpful.

If civilization relies upon Toynbee's creative minority, depending on the small percentage of creators more and more, then that minority had better buckle down and find ways to get more support from those marching (copycat) masses. Duh?

David Brin

http://www.davidbrin.com

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