People are algorithms. That means that they are like mathematical equations, because they behave in predictable ways. Some might find such a description offensive, but if they read about science, they will realise that this is true in every way. Artificial intelligence and computers can navigate similar problems that human beings face, which is a subject covered by Yuval Noah Harari in his book Homo Deus.
The biggest growth in current scientific development is in cognitive neuroscience - the science of the brain, and how it works. The clearest books explaining this are those of Harvard professor Steven Pinker. In essence, the brain is the result of millions of years of evolution, and it is something that adapts to its environment. In order to do this, people have to make assumptions, and they have to put specific things into general categories. Their brains have to make snap decisions about whether someone they meet is a friend or foe, because this was necessary in the harshness of the jungle in pre-historic times. As a result, people often suffer illusions about the world, and have to battle to see things as they are in a specific form by looking at the details. From there, they must observe the different options and test their ideas against each possible outcome, to find evidence of which one is true. That is called The Scientific Method, and is one of the most important developments in modern civilisation.
It is important not to blame people. They are not at fault. The brain works automatically, without them thinking, even when they are not aware of it. Consider this: your heart beats, but you do not think “my heart is beating” and “I need to make my heart beat”. You breathe air into your lungs automatically, but you do not think “I am breathing air into my lungs” or “I must breathe air into my lungs”. Just like that, your brain is working automatically. And you are not even aware of it. You have impulses to eat, drink and have sex, and you simply follow them. You have so many other impulses and preferences, goals and behaviours that you are simply not aware of. When you sleep, and when you dream, your brain re-arranges your memories, stores them and creates space for new memories and associations to be formed, and you do not even have to consciously do a thing.
What is consciousness? What is it that makes you human? Scientists and philosophers have long asked this question. It is the qualia, the awareness that you are you. But it does not matter where it came from, whether it is necessary to give you options to act in different types of ways to overcome challenges in your environment, or if it is something that sprang out as a by-product when people evolved through history and was kept and developed because it had advantages. The key point is - it is not important.
It just is. Someone who is more conscious, or more intelligent is no “better” than another person who does not meet those subjective criteria. It is no different to saying that someone who has black hair is not “better” than another person who has blonde hair. They are simply different. So, consciousness is not special, and people are not special, any more than animals, plants or other physical things in this world. It is just that people are powerful and adaptable to their environment by way of force.
Often, people resort to explanations about the world, because they “feel” that everything happens for a reason. But they feel this because they have evolved to feel in a way that fulfills goals for a purpose. Rather than what you feel, which is usually wrong, you could look at the evidence, and whether that thing actually exists in the real world. And therefore, you cannot see god or observe any evidence of such a thing existing on this planet, apart from what you feel, in your mind. But you are not to blame. And many think this way. Still less do people have free will, in their own minds and in the organised structure of their societies.
The modern world is often a brutal place, where organisms, such as a minority of powerful human beings set up systems of dominance and control over others, so that the genes of the powerful are more likely to exist and copy mathematically, without them being aware of their ruthless exercise of their power. One of these is the present world system of capitalistic employment, where people voluntarily give their time for a monetary reward, because they have no alternative in the current system and they become used to the state of affairs in the world and fall into their place.
People who fall into this system are not “worse” or inferior than the business owners and politicians who control their time. But they are not aware. And if they are not aware, they are not free. This is the subject of the seminal book Creating Freedom by Raul Martinez. The central theme is that freedom is the most important thing. By fighting to get your freedom and by fighting to get your time, you will then have the ability to develop your potential and fulfill your capacity in any field you choose, and develop power in any area you like. You will be free, and live a full life.
The primary goal of capitalism is value, in which the individual tries to make as much money as possible, usually to the harm of the wider environment and other people. But what is money? It is just digits in a bank account, which means that money is a symbol of the value and trust people place in each other’s services and goods that others create. But what is really being traded between people since the beginning of history? It is the relationship between people, and what they are trading is services that they are performing for each other. That is the subject of the book Post-Capitalism by Paul Mason.
The ideas of Karl Marx are today unfashionable because they sought to go against the prevailing individualism of the modern world and the way the systems of America and Britain were set up. Marxism did not work, and I myself have seen in my travels around the world that it resulted in many unhappy lives. But it did not work because political regimes tried to impose it on millions of people, that were not ready yet to co-operate and did not have the scientific development to do so. Now they can do so. Artificial intelligence has grown and peer-to-peer networks and the exchange of information over the internet has allowed people to exchange their ideas and exchange their services directly around the world, and to work together as a large world community, rather than compete and exclude each other. If people became aware that science can actually provide a “utopian” world where everything is more equitable, it will only be a matter of time before the many will understand that they can end their exploitation by the few, and end it easily. All they have to do is work together. Artificial intelligence will take the place of menial work, and rather than going hungry because your job has disappeared, you will be given time, and freedom, which will give you options to develop your capacity, and you will get the communal support to do so, with everyone in the same boat.
Why is it then that people should work together and not against each other? There is no should. They simply will. People are made of energy, which is found in atoms, which are found in genes, which are found in the cells of every person’s body.
The book The Selfish Gene by Richard Dawkins is one of the most important books to have ever been produced in the course of science. It outlines that just stated above. Human beings evolve, so that those organisms that copy exist, because mathematically, they are more commonly found than those that are more complex and rare and have not copied and have died out. He takes it down to the specific level of genes, which are found in organisms. You are not a whole, he is saying - you are genes, you are cells, you are atoms, you are energy. Everything that you do, and every way of interacting with others by you is your own genes trying to copy themselves. Consider that while you do nothing, your genes in your cells are copying and reproducing rapidly all day, every day. The skin cells in a mere part of you such as those in your arm are copying themselves constantly.
Earlier in this book I talked about particle physics, and sooner or later, science must confront the questions posed at the quantum level, the smallest, most detailed level of physics of the world. Science tells us that everything in this universe is made of energy, including our genes in our cells and in our conscious minds. Yet when energy has been attempted to be observed, it cannot be observed directly, rather what can be observed is the probability of a certain form of energy arising, which is the implication of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle.
At the quantum level, energy appears to flit in and out of existence, with energy appearing to take the form of both a wave and a particle, depending on the way it is observed. It is only when that energy forms larger, more stable structures, that anything can be observed within mathematical laws, such as Einstein’s expression of the law of relativity, governing gravity and time and the interaction of large bodies within space. Yet energy is behind all things, and energy that never created a stable form comes in and out of existence in infinite numbers and varieties of ways that cannot be grasped by the human mind - because the human mind is designed only to deal with immediate problems within its environment by the process of evolution.
This universe came from nothing. The energy that arises and is not in a stable form is thought to comprise massive amounts of “dark energy” that cannot be observed and is thought by scientists to be driving exponentially the expansion of the universe. As the universe expands, it will disperse again into nothing. And in the pockets of space time, multiple universes may form again from nothing.
And when energy builds into stable forms, it builds complex structures, like human beings, or atoms that copy themselves and as such are more likely to exist mathematically and therefore are more commonly found. Rarer, more unusual forms of energy are less likely to copy and exist and are selected against in evolutionary processes. The greatest copying elements of all? Carbon, Oxygen, Hydrogen, Nitrogen, found everywhere. They are the simplest, and they exist more, because they were simpler to form from basic energy. Why should a human being’s chemical structure be of any importance, just because it dominates the world with its complexity and power for flexible problem solving through consciousness? The human being dominates nothing. It is made of Carbon and depends on Oxygen. The human being is a complex form that has no special place in the universe.
The subject is covered in many ways by Harvard professor Lawrence Krauss in his brilliant book “A Universe From Nothing”. Read about particle physics in any depth, and you will understand - that you do not understand anything at all. And neither does anyone else. Science fiction? Reality is stranger than fiction. Nothing is as it seems. The human brain makes assumptions and cannot observe things directly, because it was formed by evolution to adapt to immediate problems in its environment. Potential forms of energy and their variety of existences are not relevant and cannot be observed or understood currently. Any physicist will tell you that, but people think that it is somehow strange that things cannot currently be explained by logic and reason. Physicists like Carlo Rovelli explain such ideas as clearly as they can in more popular books on particle physics. But why should we assume anything, or even understand it?
How energy is formed from nothing and what happens to that energy before it is formed into atoms and structures of complex organisms is not known - as the laws of mathematics and physics in terms of for example relativity, only affect large structures. But the things that could have been, all these potential, incomplete forms of energy, no-one knows the alternative realities that could have arisen but did not. This quantum energy and quantum physics is in conflict with the law of relativity. But in the end, it does not matter how the universe was formed, or why and how it is expanding - why is it important? This is just physical matter, just energy, just organic structures. They have no meaning, and reality does not owe human beings any favours. There is no meaning or purpose. It just is. And if you accept that, you will be at one with the chaos and peace of the universe.
To take this back now to human beings and human beings’ relationships towards each other, you will have to understand that between the people who are common, i.e. have more of common types of energy than people who are unusual and have complex or different structures of energy, that the common people are always preferred. They are preferred by evolution and history, because the energy in the atoms, genes and cells within such people has been proven to exist as mathematically more numerous than the complex forms in rarer people. This is because there was less expenditure of energy from its original basic and incomplete forms in the common types of human organisms. The rarer types had to have more numerous interactions of energy, with complex processes that did not copy the basics of their energy simply and easily.
Steven Pinker has written a brilliant book about the course of human progress. It is called The Better Angels of Our Nature. In this book, which is backed up by 800 pages of pure, verified evidence, he explains. Violence has declined throughout history in the most extreme way. To summarise in the briefest way, warfare and dangerous hunter-gathering lifestyles, gave way to wider communities of people with wider communal interests. People became more democratic and are more peaceful and more co-operative. And he shows that this trend is continuing. I personally believe that it is continuing exponentially, because of the prevalence of common energy found within people, and I believe that it will eventually lead to a communal prevalence of all energy in the world, where people are as one with the elements of their whole environment, the most common forms of which are the great survivors who copied, such as carbon, oxygen and nitrogen.
The book is essentially a work of science, and therefore explains objectively what is happening, rather than what should happen. And it is clear from this, that if you do ascribe value, that there is every reason to be optimistic.
It is just happening. History makes itself, no matter what extreme events have occurred, the greedy emperors that sparked revolutions gave way to innovation, but eventually settled into stable communal nation-states, and eventually, common ways of living.
Some who are raised on one-dimensional cynicism may believe that I am talking about a utopia, that is somehow unrealistic. But it is reality. In the same way that Newton did not invent gravity and Einstein did not invent relativity, they just saw that it was there and they explained it clearly.
In my book I have sought to synthesise all of my reading and life experience and explain in a broad and general way the currents that can be observed by scientists and thinkers about the world, the way it is formed and the way it will be going.
I make no comment to say that it is “better” that people should live co-operatively and equally. I am just saying that they will. But for me it is better, which is also my own bias, and the bias of most educated scientists.
Still, I do not like Pinker’s stance in Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism and Progress. The clue is in the title - it is a case, an argument that science and co-operation should be followed to “progress” humanity. That the ideals of the 18th Century Enlightenment that arose in the French Revolution “should” be followed if we are to live “better” lives. This is no better than philosophers such as Nietzsche exclaiming that the Ubermensch (Superman) who lives as an individual apart from others is a “superior” being through the will to power or otherwise.
I preferred Pinker when he was objective and acted like a pure scientist - In the Better Angels of Our Nature, when he shows that A is happening, because of the evidence 1, 2, 3, etc, and this is the evidence. No comment is necessary.
Scientists often agree that there is no “purpose” or “meaning” to the strange laws of the universe. That they are just interactions of energy in physical processes. I believe that we should not worry about how we “ought” to advance the case of human beings. I believe that is simply happening, and borne out clearly by the way history has unfolded and is continuing to unfold.
There is no meaning. It just is.
Still, if people wish to advance their case, they may take on board Pinker’s motives that “can orient [humans] away from violence and towards cooperation and altruism." (from wikipedia):
Empathy: which "prompts us to feel the pain of others and to align their interests with our own."
Self-Control: which "allows us to anticipate the consequences of acting on our impulses and to inhibit them accordingly."
The Moral Sense: which "sanctifies a set of norms and taboos that govern the interactions among people in a culture." These sometimes decrease violence but can also increase it "when the norms are tribal, authoritarian, or puritanical."
Reason: which "allows us to extract ourselves from our parochial vantage points."
I believe in humanity, and I believe that this is simply happening through organic, natural processes, the way that an individual’s heart beats so that it can sustain and copy the genes of that organism. Like that, altruistic and communal interests will sustain the whole of the common interests of humanity. And then they will sustain the wider communal interests of the whole environment, ending global warming, deforestation and over-population. Perhaps this is what was meant by James Lovelock about the concept of Gaia in A Rough Ride to the Future, that in the end, the whole earth finds a way to sustain itself.
In this book, in the chapter on my travels in Cambodia, I sought to make people aware of Buddhist practice, which has been around since time immemorial. Buddhist monks, just like scientists, meditate on reality and seek to be aware of the reality of what is actually there. And by following these principles, they are able to reach awareness, liberation, joy that wants eternity, and the ultimate awareness - freedom.
(c) Sead Seferovic