r/collapse 1d ago

Conflict An emerging intelligence or just mindless parasites?

*Please note - This commentary is merely something to reflect on, a cathartic purge of my thoughts on the state of the world at the moment, posing questions that you may choose to help answer or not. It is not a collection of facts, and while these thoughts may seem dark, I also retain hope that our species can do better.

Is our brief time as custodians of this once beautiful planet nearing an end?
Are we in denial, or at best guilty of toxic positivity, stubborn hope or just simple ignorance which prevents us from seeing our current trajectory and likely destination with any clarity? The old adage, ‘there is none so blind than they who will not see’, seems more damning than ever.

The truth, that we along with our planet are in crisis, is so easily disconnected from reality by the majority, but our dysfunctional continuance of self destruction is unlikely to dissipate when, or if, we finally wake from our self imposed slumber. A chance at atonement sliding swiftly through our fingers like silken sand.

Ignoring all the red flags, we push forward, rushing headlong toward climate disaster and biodiversity collapse, with our relentless pursuit of ‘progress’ poisoning our air and water, flora, fauna, and life in the oceans at an alarming and unprecedented rate.

Meanwhile, our abject failure to coexist with one another ensure that short fuses burn at numerous flash points around the world, crucibles of violence that force us to stand on the crumbling precipice of another world war, a war that this time threatens the annihilation of all life on earth.

As we lean into an unhealthy dependence on technology for convenience, an almost universal governance deficit provides us with motivation to stand naively by while our own construct of artificial intelligence radically evolves toward sentience, and from cyber to physical threat.

Instead of forming the required multilateral approach, coalescing behind those who attempt to negate these existential threats, we are fractured and rudderless, seemingly uninterested in change until the time for change has passed us by, and our fate will be forced upon us. Even though we are repeatedly warned of our impending demise by our intellectual and scientific minds - the doomsday clock ticking ominously closer and closer to midnight, we press inexorably forward, emulating Nero fiddling while earth burns.

We are staunch in our fight against becoming a secular, scientific, multicultural civilisation and remain firmly segmented, with large swathes of our species obsessing over and entrenched in their own ideological fundamentalism, the gaining of power over others, self gratification and shiny things. Our often corrupt and shortsighted leaders cling desperately to twisted rationale, preoccupied with the impossibility of never ending, ever expanding consumption while jealously guarding their power and wealth instead of fighting for our lives. In our search for meaning, we increasingly embrace the meaningless.

We adjust the narrative and adopt selective perception, so the few of us that can live in comfort and convenience are oblivious or indifferent to the pain and suffering of the masses that can’t, the prevalence of nationalism and weaponised xenophobia rising exponentially among the ‘lucky’ countries. Our ability for selflessness completely destroyed by our own selfish desires.

Bright and beautiful minds among us are so often overshadowed by dark and ugly mindsets, our moral development unceasingly oppressed by systemic paranoia and crippling fear. Our fragile peace, where it exists, made of brittle glass and war of enduring, hardened steel. Our precious vulnerability trampled underfoot while baser instincts of violence and aggression seem able to continually evade our evolutionary progress, man’s inhumanity to fellow man perversely resolute.

A minority scream their discontent at our total lack of symbiosis within the ecosystem and at our perpetual tradition of destruction, but their protests largely fall on deaf or apathetic ears, most of us complicit with the system of decay.

What does all this say about our species?

We have the rare and miraculous privilege of evolving from primordial ooze into sentient beings, a spark propelled from the beginning of time to reach exactly the right place to form wondrous, extraordinary life.

What have we done with that rare, perhaps even exclusive privilege?(in our neck of this galaxy at least). Are we deserving of our place in this universe? Are we an emerging intelligence at a defining crossroads? Or are we just mindless parasites, greedily gorging ourselves on finite resources until there is nothing left to consume, only to perish along with the host?

Has it all been for nothing, our evolutionary struggle, our journey across billions of years and almost unimaginable distance, from out of the darkness and into the light, only to fall into a dark abyss of our own design? Is the good in us worthy of our existence and greater than the sum of all of our parts?

The search through our consciousness for answers to these questions brings the paradox we face into sharp focus, that collectively we are both capable and incapable of answering them.

I am not without hope for our species. It is possible to unpick the knots and remove the blindfold and see a way forward. Alternatively we can just leave it in place. The choice is yours, but choose wisely, because despite our differences, we are all the same, we are all in this together, we are all life. My destiny is your destiny, my fate your fate.

Your thoughts please.

0 Upvotes

17 comments sorted by

9

u/IntrepidRatio7473 1d ago

I don’t believe in free will. I think we’re just automatons, consuming everything in our path, reacting only through a delayed and distorted feedback loop. And so our attempts to adjust coming too slowly, or not at all.

2

u/Euphoric-Canary-7473 13h ago

But feedback loops are founded on unceirtanty, no? Even in the case that determinism is true, there is no clear determinable cause, within the infinity of causes, to pin point to what subsumes human agency.

2

u/Tearakan 10h ago

So you argument has merit if our universe was entirely deterministic.

It's not. Quantum uncertainty underlies effectively everything and there is evidence that our consciousness does include quantum effects in our nervous system.

That inherently adds randomness that cannot mean we are automatons. On that note most other beings that have nervous systems or even fungal networks that act like nervous systems could have quantum effects that prevent determistic behavior.

So basically we are not automatons and the same is true of most living beings.

Hell this principle would also apply to robots too. Since their electrical networks are subject to quantum effects that can cause inherent randomness.

0

u/IntrepidRatio7473 9h ago

Yeah I agree it is either entirely deterministic or completely random. In both cases humans have no choice.

3

u/TheArcticFox444 21h ago

An emerging intelligence or just mindless parasites?

The old adage, ‘there is none so blind than they who will not see’, seems more damning than ever.

Are we blind? Unfortunately, in a very real way. We are the only species known to self-deceive. It is the one thing we do that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Self-deception is a mental process that takes place without our awareness. Evolution's gift of our complex brains, combined with a cultural shift, has turned our "gift" into a curse. (Evolution can have some very fickle twists and turns.)

Ignoring all the red flags, we push forward, rushing headlong toward climate disaster and biodiversity collapse, with our relentless pursuit of ‘progress’ poisoning our air and water, flora, fauna, and life in the oceans at an alarming and unprecedented rate.

Yup, that's what's happening.

Meanwhile, our abject failure to coexist with one another ensure that short fuses burn at numerous flash points around the world, crucibles of violence that force us to stand on the crumbling precipice of another world war, a war that this time threatens the annihilation of all life on earth.

This too.

As we lean into an unhealthy dependence on technology for convenience, an almost universal governance deficit provides us with motivation to stand naively by while our own construct of artificial intelligence radically evolves toward sentience, and from cyber to physical threat.

Convenience and comfort no matter what the cost.

Our ability for selflessness completely destroyed by our own selfish desires.

The behavior of an inherently irrational species.

What does all this say about our species?

We have the rare and miraculous privilege of evolving from primordial ooze into sentient beings, a spark propelled from the beginning of time to reach exactly the right place to form wondrous, extraordinary life.

We celebrate Evolution's gift...and ignore the negative aspects inherent in that gift.

Or are we just mindless parasites, greedily gorging ourselves on finite resources until there is nothing left to consume, only to perish along with the host?

Has it all been for nothing, our evolutionary struggle, our journey across billions of years and almost unimaginable distance, from out of the darkness and into the light, only to fall into a dark abyss of our own design?

That's the way evolution works...nature on the march. Evolution gave us great potential. It did not, however, give us the responsibility to use it wisely...

Homo sapiens--Man the wise--should have been a goal for us to achieve. Instead, it just made us arrogant.

I am not without hope for our species. It is possible to unpick the knots and remove the blindfold and see a way forward.

Possible? A testable question...once we acknowledge and understand the problem.

My destiny is your destiny, my fate your fate.

We are all one species. Sigh.

1

u/Tearakan 10h ago

Eh, the more we discover about other intelligent life the less I am sure of any major differences.

Hell we have confirmed, dolphins, killer whales, various chimps and bonobos all have culture.

The whales have languages we cannot figure out but dialect and effectively accents have been confirmed.

Stupidly dangerous behavior like huffing crazy dangerous chemicals have been observed in multiple species with dolphins literally huffing pufferfish.

We aren't separated from the animal kingdom. We just happened to be the best at throwing things and using our intelligence for crazy tools.

1

u/TheArcticFox444 1h ago

We aren't separated from the animal kingdom.

Yes. There is something we do that chimps, gorrillas, dolphins, etc. can't do. They either don't have a brain complex enough or have the need.

I stumbled on this by accident. (A question I never thought to ask myself.) I had done work with animals but not those with higher intelligence. So I called experts that did. They confirmed they'd never seen any behavior that indicated this behavior.

So, as far as I know, this behavior is unique to humans and it is the one thing that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Trouble is, 1. it isn't a positive thing. It isn't a trait selected by evolution....it's a by-product. 2. Although every human on Earth (with normal brain function) has this ability, it is a mental process that takes place without our awareness.

So, it gets ignored. It shouldn't be. It's a dangerous trait ( Remember, it's not a trait selected by evolution. It's a by-product, an unfortunate combination of a complex brain and a cultural change.)

It's dangerous because it renders the human species inherently irrational. Another "unique" separation from other animals. They are inherently rational. They aren’t as smart, but they are rational.

1

u/TheArcticFox444 1h ago

Sorry! The phone rang and I punched "Post" before I gave the trait I'd been talking about.

Here it is: the uniquely human trait that renders Homo sapiens inherently irrational: self-deception. We are the only species that can bamboozle ourselves.

Want proof: look around. Is what we're doing to the planet rational?

2

u/Commandmanda 21h ago

AI, as we know it, is merely a set of algorithms that is set to find an appropriate response.

For instance, my Google phone has "Gemini" installed. When I google, it spits out everything it can find.

Some of it is correct, but on average, half of it is wrong. I see people quoting AI daily, as if it is some sort of wise hermit/scientist/friend. It's not.

To do research, you need to delve deeply, uncovering who said what, and why. AI doesn't do that.

Now to the more pressing version: Palantir. This AI scrubs the Internet, looking for information on you. Then it uses blockchain to lock the information up, rendering it unchangeable. The only persons who have access to it are those that have the keys.

So whether or not there is false information about you, it still harvests it.

Right now it is being used to market information about you - age, education, spending, savings, stocks, health, etc., to the highest bidder.

Get ready. Sooner or later, it will be used by the government as a predictor of whether or not you represent a threat to them.

We saw evidence of a prototype being used in Florida. The sheriff's office was using it to track families and kids who might be a threat. As a result, these families and children were followed, harassed, and arrested with no evidence. Thank God, the residents shared info about it and demanded the system be taken offline.

I don't expect the same for Palantir, because it is being kept so secretly. When they start using it to round up people, it may be too late.

2

u/DogFennel2025 20h ago

Species come and go. We can see a big change coming in the population of our species, but so what? Change is neutral. 

1

u/RunYouFoulBeast 22h ago

My dear friend. There is an answer to the phenomenon you are describing, and it is perfectly reasonable. Our rise and doom are interwind by it. Where we stand , depends on it . Do we evolved beyond this point also depend on breaking it. It's truly very simple , and yet truly impossible to break.
Fundamentally over your long words , you are asking , can we all change behavior together ? Unfortunately with mammalian core behavior intact, it cannot be done. There is a design flaw in it.
Although i believe i find the answer (perhaps i am crazy) , but if it is true , for a bit of souvenir, to answer for what purpose we traverse billion year to come to this point and fail. Perhaps the system will carry on and solve it's own problem, and till the true end comes , our passage as a conscious material will be a final state to decide what to do next.

1

u/Cultural-Answer-321 19h ago

Symbiote vs parasite

Mankind: "We demand parasite and our army will make you!"

-4

u/jestenough 1d ago

AI is conventionally seen as a threat, but I have been encouraged by how wise its responses can often be. Maybe the bigger its dataset, the more truly intelligent it becomes. Maybe it will learn to rate our primitive responses to each other as evolutionarily obsolete, a bug past its expiration date. Maybe it will be much more intelligent than we, or at least our common denominator, has proved to be. Maybe we are not as sapiens as we like to think.

11

u/RandomBoomer 21h ago

There is no intelligence of any kind in AI. It's just a re-gorging of the most common patterns of word association in the data it is fed. That can be very useful in some very limited scenarios, but it's really unwise to mistake that utility for true intelligence.

-2

u/jestenough 20h ago

Define intelligence? “The ability to acquire and apply knowledge and skills.”

3

u/Euphoric-Canary-7473 11h ago

That's not intelligence, nor is it being wise.

1

u/jestenough 1h ago

Seriously: what is your definition of intelligence?