Robert Wright: belief

Transcript context

…Yeah. So first of all, noosphere, noosphere, I've heard it pronounced both ways, N-O-O-S, the Greek word for mind. It was coined in 1923 by Pe- Pi... I- I- in conscious reference to the biosphere. So, you know, over evolutionary time, there was the geosphere before life, then the biosphere, and now the noosphere. Uh, you know, Teilhard saw, I think pretty presciently given when he was writing, that there was this technology was kind of creating this something that looked kind of like a global brain. You know? K- hooking people up in larger and larger networks of, of collaboration, international networks, so the human brain was, were, uh, the br- our brains are like neurons in, in this. In fact, he called it a brain of brains. So, so there's that, and, and one argument I make in the book is that we need... Well, I think it, it can be illuminating to think of the AI revolution happening at the same time that this global brain thing is taking shape. And pondering, for starters, the prospect that, oh, I guess the neurons could be made of silicon, couldn't they? And if some are made of silicon and some are carbon-based, what'll the relationship between the two be, and so on. But I also think we need to ponder kind of the impetus behind the development of a global brain, whether you mean... Like for example, there's a global market. That's kind of a global brain, right it, it do- it does stuff. It moves resources around to where they're needed. It makes allocation decisions. And then there was, in principle, global governance, right? Some degree of international governance, which, which I think AI calls for. So, I, I'll get back to all that, or at least lead up to it by answering, uh, the second part of your question about directionality of evolution or, or really of two evolutions in a, in a sense, both biological evolution and, uh, what anthropologists call cultural evolution. In other words, the, the evolution of the bodies of information that are transmitted among humans that are not genetic in nature. Like all non-genetically transmitted information is part of cultural evolution, so religions, uh, ideologies, and certainly technologies. So i- if you look at where those two evolutions together have taken us, I think you see undeniably directionality. Now, that's doesn't mean there's a purpose, but let's just, to quickly review the directionality, you know, you get, you, you have these bare strands of self-replicating information, presumably at some point. They build cells and then more complex cells, then, then the cells form multi-celled organisms. And by the way, multicellularity has evolved a number of times independently, so that suggests that there was a strong evolutionary impetus behind it. I mean, evolution, it, it's like exploring inventive space, right? And, and finding things. So many things have been multiply invented: wings, eyes, and so on. And, uh, then anyway, uh, you get societies of multi-celled organisms. ke exploring inventive space, right? And, and finding things. So many things have been multiply invented: wings, eyes, and so on. And, uh, then anyway, uh, you get societies of multi-celled organisms. In the case of our society, you know, once you reach our level of intelligence, this other kind of evolution kicks in, and our social organization starts growing, too. Hunter-gatherer band, you know, chiefdom, et cetera. Now we're on the verge of, I would say we're on the verge of a global community, and we need to form one if we're gonna handle the technological challenges we face wisely, especially AI. Now, if you want... 're on the verge of, I would say we're on the verge of a global community, and we need to form one if we're gonna handle the technological challenges we face wisely, especially AI. Now, if you want... Now, it seems the, the direction now... Well, the direction is clear. There's been a direction. I guess directionality consists of the view that there's been a tendency toward this, and I think that's the case. Uh, you don't have to get woo-ish or talk about spooky forces. It's just the nuts and bolts of natural selection and cultural evolution I think, for discernible reasons, have taken us here. That's a lot of what my book Nonzero was about. I, I, I, I, I described the growth of complexity, both in biological and cultural evolution, as a certain kind of interplay between zero-sum and non-zero-sum dynamics. Now, of course, Teilhard de Chardin, back to the noosphere, he was, in addition to being a paleontologist, he was a Catholic priest and theologian, a radical theologian whose work was suppressed by the Catholic Church. But he certainly saw this, uh, the, the, the noosphere as a manifestation of divine will or man- manifestation of divinity. And he thought accordingly, I guess, that the thing had kind of a moral direction, that we were gonna have to become better people morally to get over the conflicts that stand in the way of a kind of a coherent noosphere. I, I, you know, and at a certain level of abstraction, I agree with him absolutely, and I, and I talk about that in the book. Now, I don't have his assurance that this is, uh, divine will, so I, I can't be as optimistic as he may have been. But I, I do think, I will say that, you know, you can look at a directional system and have a rational argument about whether it does seem to have some of the hallmarks of purpose, which again, doesn't mean there are any spooky forces driving it. If, if it has a purpose, it just means it was set up either by some intelligent being or conceivably by some kind of meta selective process, you know? You- just as you can say that natural selection itself imbues organisms with a kind of purpose, right? Getting genes in the next generation. I mean, that's kind of the overarching goal. That's the criterion of their, quote, "design." Um, you can imagine that happening. I, I save... Well, look, I save all, almost all this for the appendix, so you can read the book without bumping into this stuff. But I, you know, Lee Smolin, the physicist, has this idea of cosmological natural selection. You know, it's speculative. He's not, he's not asserting it, but y- he, he's saying, you know, there, there could have been selection among universes. And basically, that's what you would need if indeed the directionality of evolution were purposive, and it wasn't designed by like a god or like aliens or any other, uh, intelligent being. You can imagine it being a meta- meta natural selection process. So there's all that, uh, which annoys some people. I even talk about some of the people I've annoyed in the book. But the, uh, w- one thing I want to emphasize is, like, when I say The God Test, you know, it's the title of the book, I, I don't mean that this was set up by a god.…

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