Simple Miracles
...or... it's been under our noses all along...
One of my main reasons for rejecting the ‘religious’ interpretation of our experience of life , is that’s it too easy. It’s a cop-out. At best it’s a panacea against the physical and emotional pitfalls of existence, at worst, it’s how you absolve yourself of any responsibility for your actions. Although it’s far more uncomfortable to face a featureless, anonymous void, and the ultimate darkness of dissolution; I’ve grown up thinking it’s more honest. There are those who would say that alongside the many evils that religious dogma has caused in the world - on a local, social level - frequently a lot of comfort is afforded to simple communities (and individuals) by its presence. Of course that’s the case. There’s hardly a comparison between the heavily armed ‘soldier of freedom’, crusading against the antithesis of his own religious ideology, and a gaggle of geriatric pensioners taking communion in a rural church at Christmas time… One must separate these things out. I respect my atheist friends, but I caution reflection since, considering our experiences are predominantly conceptual, I can’t honestly say to myself that in the mind (and consequently the universe) of a devotee, there is no entity fulfilling the role of father/mother creator. They just aren’t in mine.
However…….
But here’s where I start to falter in my acceptance of Evolutionary absolutism. Not that I reject it at all, but just that there’s one aspect of human beings that suggests that there may be something outside of the results of natural selection, and it’s this that I can’t get out of my mind: When you consider the vast cornucopaeia of biologic life on Earth, the enormous tapestry drawn by DNA, I just can’t evade this question: Why of all of the biologically advanced life-forms on Earth, did only one species develop the ability to perceive amazingly complex interdependencies, both physical and intellectual, and then develop the ability to abstract, articulate, and communicate those perceptions amongst its own members? Surely if it were a natural process, there would be evidence of less (or more) sophisticated versions of the same thing amongst the creatures we share the planet with? You could say Ah! well, Eagles have superior visual perception, Canines have superior olfactory perception, all animals communicate within their species… and I’d agree - but abstract thought? Why no close approach to human ability amongst animal species? The biology isn’t too different…
The accepted view is that the ‘developmental bandwidth’ of humans, giving rise to our ability to communicate abstracts to our neighbours, and the skills to make tools which make other tools, is the reason our species started on the ‘ratchet’ of civilisation. No one single thing, but the combination of these factors, and the steady moving forward and building of revelation on epiphany, on practical revelation as time passes, furnished the cumulative functional culture that we have developed. Actually not such great differences, but just different enough; and composed of millennia of tiny connections an low levels that gradually combined to draw us away from the herd, as it were…. I still find it a real puzzle that no other species even came close… There is of course a new player in the game… an entirely new species that can already communicate with us articulately and productively…. I refer of course to A.I.
his morning, I read an article that speculated on the development of AGI (artificial GENERAL intelligence), something that has yet to be realised - the question that wasn’t addressed, and is probably pertinent to why animals are unable to communicate even marginally, i: What exactly is the reflective self? Do animals possess one, and will AGI possess or acquire one? To me that’s the central question. I’ve spent most of my life idly speculating on that, and reading books on the subject. I’ve yet to reach a conclusion. It may be that AGI will finally be able to tell us…