Atlantis Dispatch 013:
in which ATLANTIS contemplates human ingenuity…
December 3rd, 2021
…begin transmission…
It’s a wild time for sailing, reader. And in the wake of our swirl in the great Charybdis of artificial intelligence, we decided to seek calmer waters so that we might reflect once again on human things, like that wrinkly old Socrates on his second sailing.
As with all endeavors that explore human endeavors, we quickly found ourselves pulled, magnetically perhaps, to the action. We sailed back to Glasgow, where world leaders were assembling for the United Nations Climate Conference, COP26, which adjourned on November 12th after two weeks of negotiations.
Now we know what you might be thinking: why did this seem like a good idea, Atlantis? Wasn’t this a tangle of confusion and despair: of protests, conflict, sadness, elation, hope, impossible impasses, and distinctly human flailing? Such an event doesn’t seem like the place to dock for reflection. But fear not, reader, we had a thought. We were going there to contemplate this question that we are bound to pursue: is there anything of value in supposed human intelligence? Or have humans already lost their minds — and their planet?
Since our little jaunt in the Bay area hadn’t exactly provided us with much to work with, we figured anchoring at the place where humans were taking on one of the thorniest problems humans have ever faced (or caused), we might just gain some insight.
We cruised the River Clyde, docked beside John Kerry’s ship and hoped that we might be able to gab and gam, but he was off negotiating, and his assistants looked at us like we must be severely lacking in brainpower because we were not already helping out in the persuasive efforts. Atlantis is only a ship, as you know – seafaring, not stumping – and we wanted to figure out where we might best align our energies before we planted a soapbox.
When we waded into the meetings, we noticed a few things. There were a great variety of participants, a veritable carnival of humanity: politicians, protesters, scientists, documentarians, artists, business leaders, negotiators, citizen envoys. We wondered if the place might be a kind of Delphi for an alternate universe. But the most numerous of all of the delegates, more than those of any other country, were affiliates of oil and gas companies around the globe. Intelligence? Atlantis wondered how their presence might grease up the negotiations. Would there be an emergent kind of collective insight? Or would things slip and slide apart?
We listened carefully. In the background of the conference, we knew the world was experiencing this collective action problem. All of the people in the room were enmeshed in global systems that were causing rapid climate rise, but individually, for all of our dutiful recycling and stainless-steel straw scrubbing, we still ended up in an ocean of plastic. Could we think our way into a new system?
Atlantis is not particularly expert at political negotiations, and we felt a bit pessimistic about the prospects for any success at all, so we went out to the pub to see if this would help matters. It usually does. As we sat there feeling somewhat sloshy and disheartened, we overheard a discussion up at the bar about the current state of human intelligence. There was not much to do but lean in. One red-faced sailor argued that all the other living creatures in the world, all the whales, dolphins, opctopi, spiders, birds, and bees — all the swimming, and crawling, and prowling, and flying things, all! — were far more intelligent than any human. His tipsy mate said, “No! We have the greatest minds of them all! What other beast has created space ships and skyscrapers, poems and presses, gins and whiskies, dogs of all shapes and sizes!?”
It was quite a dispute indeed, and we noticed that many were lining up on both sides, including, to our surprise, ourselves.
Portside cheered on the sailor who reminded us that animals tend to cooperate and coalesce across species in ways that create stable ecosystems, and that humans tend to organize in ways that destroy themselves — the height of, not intelligence, but stupidity.
Starboard doubled down, and said,
“We are the only species that can self-consciously reorganize ourselves and everything in our wake — toward great cultural achievements instead of extinction!”
Arguments such as these take place frequently at Old Atlantis’s home port in the high-desert mountains of Santa Fe, where intelligence has long been an issue of interest for the Institute.
Portside reminded Starboard that David Krakauer, (P)resident expert on stupidity, has for years attempted to show the world the great diversity of forms that intelligence takes. He says that if we are to trample the brain grapes completely, we must de-anthropomorphize the conventional ways we talk about intelligence. Portside went on,
“Furthermore,” she said, “SFI professor Jessica Flack, with a team including David Krakauer, Eddie Lee and others have long looked at how collectives at all levels of biological organization (cells, markets, animal societies) compute within their specific milieu to optimize their work in their world.”
Starboard was not totally convinced, termite palaces, color-changing cuttlefish, and starling swarms aside. She was just as entertained by tales of human folly, and she recognized humans’ distinct (and in this climate case, detrimental) impact on the planet from which they emerged.
“But,” Starboard challenged, “human intelligence came to be in just the same way that ant-acumen and cephalopod-smarts did — a twisting, turning trajectory of evolution on Earth, right?”
Starboard blew on,
“Why are researchers in the intelligence community so determined to charge us separately from the rest? Because we recognize our effect on our environment? Yes, human invention has no doubt resulted in unprecedented energetic emission. And yes, our existence on Earth is more above it, than with it. But our unique capacity to build technologies that eliminate our vulnerabilities to the environment might be the very thing that gets us out of this mess we’ve created. The fact that we’re docked at not the first, not the second, but the 26th gathering of human individuals attempting to reverse the effects of our evolutionary expression simply emboldens and underlines our unique super power: reflection.”
Starboard had still more to say.
“While the bee-lovers and dolphin-talkers continue to belabor their opinion that humanity has evolved into some kind of planetary malignancy that must needs be eradicated, Starboard says ‘NAY!’ Consider how unfathomably unlikely it is for any living thing to advance beyond the desperation of mere survival. Consider how often human intervention has saved some other vulnerable living thing at risk of eradication. Consider our seemingly singular interest in what lies beyond the contours of this, albeit burning, planet. How were we to know our actions would have these consequences in advance? A lack of a priori access to truth is something all intelligent lifeforms across the globe share. But, an a posteriori passion and capacity to look within and self-correct for the sake of ourselves and everything else. . .what a booty, indeed!”
Portside went speechless, and, in a secret rope-a-dope plan, ordered another round.
Now we won’t lie, reader, things got heated, and in the middle of the argument, the bartender clinked a glass and started to say, “Behold ye sailors! Let us not forget that the most intelligent thing of all may be a collaboration between different kinds of intelligence!” But in the midst of this a brawl broke out and Atlantis was nearly trampled beneath the fray. We escaped, reader, only because that lovely bartender grabbed us by the scruff of our ponytails and lifted us like a crane back to the ship where we furled ourselves in our sails and passed out.
It was with a more than a mild hangover from these events, then, that we witnessed the closing remarks of the conference, where we learned, along with the world, that India led a compromise in the agreement’s language, so that we do not phase out, but rather phase down, coal as a fuel source pumping carbon into our midst. As you likely know, this left the President of COP26, Alok Sharma, near tears, Portside, too, since it meant that what all of these negotiators had hoped for had been watered down, just like all that melting ice.
To be sure, as Sharma said so well, despite the change, it was essential that the agreement be preserved for what it did achieve—including significant cuts to methane production and deforestation. But the whole thing left everyone feeling a bit uncertain. Were the successes a cause for hope? Starboard will admit that her headache worsened reader, since she felt that, just as our ingenuity started to show through, the stupider side cropped up in tandem, and it looked as though we would never get anywhere.
So, we decided to go to the movies. Perhaps we’d find some respite. And it turned out that there, we discovered a hopeful project called Solutions, a documentary interested in figuring out the kinds of frameworks that might just allow humans to organize in ways that would help us tap our own intelligence, and the intelligence of the living world, while ferreting out the stupidity.
There are such things, Atlantis began to see, as positive feedback loops; though as SFI external professor Mary I O’Connor reminds us, we have some work to do to incorporate them into our policy thinking. In general, O’Connor tells us that if we understand our roles as parts of biofeedback loops, we can start to see more clearly the kinds of regenerative feedbacks we need to keep ecosystems flourishing.
Atlantis had to agree that feedback-oriented thinking, where we learn to reinforce the ways we impact biological cycles, seems to be key to getting us on the right track. Perhaps in this loopy way, there is some promise for the old human brain. Though it got ourselves into this mess in the first place, it might be the only kind of mind to help us organize our way out of it. Then again, we could also spin ourselves out, and disintegrate as a species into the debris of our own lives, if we get on (stay on?) the wrong loop.