Great Hites Prompt #7

Great Hites Prompt Number 7
This weeks prompt comes from: Exotic Civilizations: A Possible Answer To Fermi's Paradox
at http://blissful.co.nz





Download Prompt 7 Audio

This is a very long prompt, but it is the idea that we are looking for.

Then there is something altogether more exotic to consider, which also has significant historical precedent - evolutionary ontological transcendence. What do I mean by this? Amoeba are our distant biological ancestors. They are still around this planet in absolute abundance. They are in your house, plants, trees, even in your car, yet they have no awareness of any of it. Their entire reality is composed of basic chemical functions and nutrient intake. Even something as simple as an insect like an ant is beyond their comprehension. Ants are much further along the evolutionary chain, with a great deal more complexity than an amoeba. For one thing, ants have a nervous system and brain that gives them some rudimentary sensory experience and cognitive abilities. An ant's tiny brain and its chemical sensing and processing are radically advanced emergent phenomena completely outside of the very limited ontological space of an amoeba. If nothing else, an ant’s brain is programmed to serve the hive mind, which it is a part. In any case, the amoeba doesn’t have a clue.

Ants in turn are not aware of human civilization. They have no concept of humanity, language, buildings, cars, airplanes, the ocean, the moon, earth, stars, mathematics, space travel. Almost everything we take for granted is completely outside of the limited ontological space that composes an ant's existence.

Now we come to us, to humanity with all of our culture and technological achievements, at the dawn of the cybernetic and space age. We are in the midst of the greatest acceleration of change in all of earth’s history. At some point soon, we will be crossing a critical threshold when all change up to this point will be nothing compared to what’s coming next. We are at the dawn of ushering in greater-than-human intelligence. Whether this exponentiating intelligence is achieved exclusively through artificial intelligence or as I believe a symbiosis between the biological and technological worlds, doesn’t matter. What matters is that greater-than-human intelligence is coming in our lifetimes. And since it was our limited intelligence that created this greater intelligence, then it only makes sense that this greater intelligence will be even more effective in creating even greater intelligence still. There is no reason to believe that this intelligence will not bootstrap itself beyond our current comprehension very, very fast. This is what is called a Singularity, an event horizon, beyond which we can’t understand.


All Stories for this prompt are due by Midnight Sunday September 21st. Email the text of the story and a recording if you would like me to include it in the podcast to jeffrey dot hite at gmail dot com.

good luck.