No Superman

When we see that a small proportion of people have much greater wealth and power than the rest some of us jump to the conclusion that those people are in some way superior. It is important to explain why they are not. It becomes doubly important if we accept that humans have developed a second evolutionary channel.

As ideas from the Darwinian theory of evolution spread throughout human society they have been appropriated to justify many things. The idea that one group of humans has evolved, physically, to make them superior to others has been used in the century to justify, mass sterilisation, the banning of marriage between some groups and mass murder.

There are already enough people claiming that, for one reason or another, the group that they belong to is in some way superior to others.

The Seductive Idea

It seems to make such obvious sense: Humans are apes who have developed a second channel for passing advantage to their offspring. These advantages come in many form including goods and territory. Therefore in cold evolutionary terms it seems an individual with more territory and goods is a better prospective mate. In other words if you want your children to by rich you should marry a rich person.

From there it is a small intellectual step to think that an individual who has more is also more evolved, in terms of the second evolutionary channel developed by humans.

It is worth remembering that this understanding of the superiority of the wealthy is neither new nor restricted to a materialistic world view.

It has been present in the religious view of the world for a long time. As the English hymn "All Things Bright And Beautiful " puts it:

The rich man in his castle,
The poor man at his gate,
He made them, high or lowly,
And ordered their estate.
 

Where the Seductive Idea Leads

Remembering we have seen this seductive idea before is important because we have seen where it leads.

The gradual accumulation of wealth and territory over generations led, in much of the world, to the development of a special caste of the wealthy; Chieftains, Kings, Emperor’s—An Aristocracy.

The trouble with an aristocracy is, as the Danish writer Peter Høeg puts it, they dream that time will stand still. Whoever has power or advantage, wants to keep it. Change is not in their interest, so they are likely to resist progress for the rest of us.

What Must be Remembered

In human society these extra advantages; wealth, property, possessions, can only be held with by agreement. It does not matter how much money you have, you will starve, or you can persuade someone to share with you. You need that agreement to grow or hunt your own food, it takes territory to be self-sufficient.

Our ancestors learned that having a society where everyone fought for what they wanted did not give us the best chance to survive and prosper.

Second Channel Evolution

This learning, that taking by force is bad for everyone, has become a key component of humans second evolutionary channel. It has to form a part of the second channel, and may possibly be one of the oldest parts, because it directly challenges a property of physical evolution—strength. Though this second channel rule may have been able to develop because it compliments a property of physical evolution—intelligence.

This has led to a constant struggle in human society. Not that between brain and brawn, which is mostly a struggle between individuals. The constant struggle is that between those who are favoured in the present—who want things to stay as they are, and those who want change—because they will be more favoured in a changed world.

No Superman

The vast majority of us accept situations where a few hold onto unfair advantage over the rest of us because our second evolutionary channel can act as a damper against change.

Our second channel for passing advantage is evolutionary because it works at the level of passing advantage from generation to generation, over thousands of years. This does not mean that old money is better than new, though that prejudice is a common one.

The real advantages of our second channel evolution are in the learning that when we can cooperate, specialise, trade and help each other we all benefit.

It is not the wealth of the wealthy or the power of the powerful that demonstrate second channel evolutionary advantage. It is demonstrated in all who attend to the business of making our tribes, our communities our societies work.

We accept that a few may do considerably better so that the majority will thrive. But we have also learned that the majority can only thrive when there are strict limits to the advantages of the few.

We can only be super apes because there is no super man.

Bear versus Superape

It was my second day on morphine when I first noticed the SuperApes—Apes with superpowers. Of course I was frightened. Not by the ones around me, they were using superpowers to help, but there were plenty of SuperApes with bad intentions. And we've just given them a whole new set of super powers.

People say that morphine can make you look at the world in different ways, but it wasn’t that. The view of the world I've been working on is already odd enough, anyway there I was thinking about bears. If a bear breaks it’s leg it’s chances of survival become pretty slim. The same is true for an ordinary ape.

To stand a chance of a full recovery from a simple injury an ape needs a lot of super-powers: From being able to travel great distances at high speed, or see through solid objects, to being able to transform rocks and minerals at will. Apes that can do that are truly SuperApes, and there I was surrounded by apes who can do all that and more.

Evolution of SuperApes

The theory of evolution tells us that we are a species of ape, but we have all of these powers, and more. We are so used to humans being able to do amazing things that we do not see ourselves as having super-powers.

 Our species of ape can fly to a different continent, or speak to a person on the other side of the planet and we accept this as ordinary. Humans have developed a system that gives each of us  vastly greater than biological evolution has given our bodies. As apes we can pass on our territory,  tools and our life learning to our great grandchildren.

What makes our species of ape different to other species is that we have developed a second way of passing advantage to our offspring. At its simplest this involves passing extra advantages, beyond the biological, to our offspring. The advantages come in the form of knowledge and rules.

Humans as SuperApes

Thinking of humans extra abilities as super-powers can tell us a lot: From why we wear clothes and don't have sex in the street—my inner teenager had been wondering—to why we have the types of laws we do. It might even possibly explain  why religion has been so important for the development of our societies. It can also tell us a lot about the conflicts that have shaped our society.

So if I was surrounded by ordinary people why was I frightened? It was not because they could kill or injury me. When you think about it you realize that SuperApes are less likely to attack than many other animals.

What is frightening is how the trade off of powers we make in order to get the benefits of relatively easy access to food, energy and all the other things we take for granted, make it possible for some individuals to dominate others Some individuals are able to dominate tens, thousands even millions of people. And the way our super-powers have developed means that domination can last a long time. It can last for decades,  generations even hundreds of years.

We are all vaguely aware that we each play a part in a system that lets us gain from advantage passed on by our ancestors. This brings most of us great benefits. The price we pay for that a few individuals are able to build up so much of a lead that their offspring can dominate societies for generations, sometimes for hundreds of years.

For me it carries a huge warning for where we are headed right now. We have added information

Bears versus Super Apes

How does a bear compare to a SuperApe?  Bears are big strong animals, in a fight they can easily kill a lion or tiger. So if you ever meet one in the wild it’s good to know that—while Darwin says you are only an ape—you’re an ape with super powers.

Can the Earth be intelligent?

The claim that Earth is a self conscious being is a large one, one which needs to be supported by facts.

One way of testing the claim is to ask if Earth has any computer like qualities which might be capable of intelligent thought, and if it has is there a way of testing that intelligence. A Turing test for the planet is difficult to conceive.

Defining intelligence as knowledge applied for a purpose leads to the conclusion that Earth has indeed done just that. and so is an intelligent being.

For the sake of this argument I will refer to humanity as the mind of Earth. This though is intended only to demonstrate a point and I make no claim for our sole tenure of that position.

Earth compared to a Computer

One way of looking at the question of whether Earth can be described as intelligent is to ask how it compares to a computer. If Earth is comparable to a stored program computer then it should have the same minimum components as a computer: The ability to input data and programs, as well as output its result, short term storage and processing, long term storage.

It is easy enough to argue that humanity, taken as a whole, does indeed have all these characteristics. We can gather information and take in instructions; humans can individually store information and make decisions based on that information for perhaps a hundred years. Collectively we have devised methods for storing data and passing on instructions for periods into the thousands of years-though not without signal decay. We can take action based on our collective knowledge, and pass on our new understanding to the next generation. 

To claim that these are characteristics of the planet, and not just the species, as a minimum it is necessary to show that the characteristics are capable of emerging from a process common to many species.

It is generally accepted that the process of evolution works by passing advantageous traits on from one generation to another. So the storing and modifying of instruction is certainly an internal function of life on the planet. Habitat or territory is another thing passed through generations by many species. It is arguable that for humans the passing on of territory, as an advantageous trait for the genes, became the passing on of property for the same reason. Likewise the passing on of hunting skills became the passing on of codified knowledge from generation to generation.

So the computer like characteristics present in humanity are not limited to our species but are a facet of all life on Earth

The Turing Test

Compared to evolution there is much less agreement on what is intelligence. So when Alan Turing first asked the question of whether electronic ‘brain’ machines were intelligent or not he had to cut through most of the debate on the nature of intelligence to propose a simple practical test.

In his original description of the test Turing proposed that the computer take part in an imitation game:


“It is played with three people, a man (A), a woman (B), and an interrogator (C) who may be of either sex. The interrogator stays in a room apart from the other two. The object of the game is to determine which of the other two is the man and which is the woman.  We now ask the question, 'What will happen when a machine takes the part of A in this game?' Will the interrogator decide wrongly as often when the game is played like this as he does when the game is played between a man and a woman?”

Turing’s idea was that a machine should be called intelligent if it can not be distinguished from a person in a practical test. In other words it does as well, or as badly, as a human who is credited with intelligence.

One good thing about this approach is that it avoids precise definitions and measures of intelligence. Certainly at the time Turing was writing, and still to too large an extent, many definitions of, and tests for, intelligence can be criticised on the basis that often seem set up to prove that the person or group who originated the test are more intelligent than others.

It is difficult to conceive of an equivalent to the Turing test that could be taken by an entire planet, especially as the testers are part of that planet themselves.  So another way must be found.

Intelligence

Turing’s introduction to the imitation game has been widely criticised, even his biographer Andrew Hodges seems to suggest the introduction is frivolous. To me however the imitation game illustrates something very important.

For any animal meeting another member of their own species surely an important first question is to ask; ‘Potential mate or potential rival?’ 

Framed in this way the question is irrelevant to a computer. But framing the question in this way shows, I believe, that in this aspect at least intelligence is not neutral. Ultimately the intelligence demonstrated in the imitation game is one where knowledge is applied in the service of biology–even possibly of evolution.

This then is what leads me to a definition of intelligence against which Earth can be tested. This is that intelligence is knowledge applied for a purpose.

This has the immediate advantage to my mind of answering the question of where intelligence lies in a Turing machine. It can only lie in the running of a machine for a purpose and not in the tables. The tables represent knowledge, but not its application.

Has Earth applied knowledge for a purpose? Clearly the answer is yes, for knowledge, and energy, have been gathered and built on to send life beyond the limits of the planet.

By this test Earth is an intelligent being.

Earth’s Thought - a few notes

Earth is a single living creature, and that creature is self-aware.


I know that sounds insane but, sin é, there it is.


Did you ever have a moment when you thought about something familiar in a slightly different way? Suddenly a lot of things seem different. For me there was a moment when I was looking at a picture of a Wasp’s nest


A wasp’s nest is a complex structure, which wasps build with a paper like material. But when I said to myself ‘this is a wasp made structure’ the statement did not make sense. The way I have grown to see the world a wasp’s nest is natural, art of the natural world. If thinking about the ‘wasp made’ does not help us understand our world what about ‘man made’?


Fresh thought gave me fresh eyes. I started to think about how the natural world is shaped by creatures living together-grown like a coral reef. Our countryside, even the wild Burren, is shaped by farming. We are so proud of what we do that see our houses as different, special, not part of nature. Even when some wasp’s choose to build in the same location.


Seen with fresh eyes a spacecraft leaving Earth’s atmosphere is a thing of nature-a shell for soft skinned creatures to find more places to feed or live.


This brings so many questions. Why are creatures going there, and why so quickly? What does it mean for me, for all of us?


When you step out of the day-to-day world for a moment you can see there are answers.

Think about the idea for man to go to the moon. This idea was shared with the world in the story of the first fiction film in 1902. It became a physical reality less than seventy years later. In the history of the world seventy years is an astonishingly short time. Even if we date the idea to Jules Verne’s earlier book, about a hundred years, or the few thousand years since the ‘Tower of Babel’ was written of, it is an instant compared to the millions of years Earth has been inhabited.


And there you have it. Earth a living being thinking and acting. Ideas welling up in living creatures, who are driven to act.


That is the story I have to tell. Insane I know so I hope you will forgive me for thinking about it for a year or two before passing it on.

Thoughts for Safer Internet Day

As parents we sometimes feel that young people know more about the internet than we do. Yet there are real risks in internet use, like exposure to inappropriate content or bullying. We have to trust our real world experience and use it as a guide to internet safety.

We have the ability to help and guide our children

Obviously, but many of us are afraid of technology, of computers and the web. We don’t really understand it all.  We should not let that make us forget all the other things we do know and understand.

When we are unfamiliar with technology, stumble and make mistakes where they fly through, it is easy to think that they know better than us. Easy, but a major mistake.

People will tell you that the young are the digital natives we are the digitally naïve. Not true—this is a myth. Young people not us—adults, parents—are naïve in the real world and the web—technology—is part of the real world. Forget about some mysterious place called cyberspace, remember we are all using real technology, doing real tasks, in the real world. 

Young people tend to believe the first thing they find on Goggle. They probably won’t check who is telling them something—they see no difference between ‘Johnny says that….’ and ‘The Government has announced that...’ Maybe they’re not always wrong, but the point is the do not see a difference. Children—young people—are really the ‘digital naïve’. The feel confident and at home with technology yet they too often lack the knowledge and life experience to realistically judge what is being said to them.

We tell our children the story of Pinocchio so that they understand that there are sly foxes who will try to trick them—like the fox who got Pinocchio to trade his school book for a ticket to Runaway Island, and life as a donkey.  We need to find new stories, new ways to arm our kids for this new connected world. We have our knowledge, our experience, and our moral compass to help guide them.

Is nobody in charge of Internet safety?

No. It is important to understand the basic rule of the Internet, anyone can connect anything, and send any type of data, and there is no central control. I’m not talking about a free spirit hippy view of the web. I am actually describing the technical architecture that is used by all devices across the world to connect together. Anything, anywhere, no control, are the rules that the Internet connection of a laptop, a mobile phone, or a games console are built to comply with.

The hardware, the phones, computers, game consoles we use every day are part of a physical network that connects everybody everywhere. The network can carry anything. There is no central control.

Once we accept that if it’s digital it’s connected we can help our children stay safe.

What are the risks, and what can we do?

Here is my summary of a few of the main risks, and some brief pointers to how they should be approached:

• The Internet makes it easy to meet strangers using instant messaging, Skype, or chat rooms.  Chat is part of many online games; even for children under ten.
  
  We need to remember two things. First is that actually most times it is god to be able to communicate, that’s why the internet is such a part of our lives.
  
  Second we need to remind our children that the Internet is a very big place. Just because a few people in one group think something is normal behaviour does not make it so.

• A teenager using a laptop in their bedroom feels safe, and anonymous. The dis-inhibiting effect of technology makes it easy for them to do and say things they never would in person.. Spreading embarrassing pictures or information, bullying or even suggesting they self harm, can make your child’s life miserable.
  
  In guiding our children we need to remind then that technology does not change the rules of right and wrong. The rule should be do not do this unless you would feel comfortable if everybody knew.
  
  
• It’s easy to send a text or an email, share a picture with friends, but once you do the genie is out of the bottle; it’s uncontrollable. Yet even teenagers who share other people’s private pictures think it won’t happen to them.
  
  Parents need to guide children as they a create permanent public records that might be seen by future employers, or even their future spouse or in-laws!

• Sex sells, and the web contributes to the premature sexualisation of children, but the problem is not simply exposure to porn. Self made porn and sexting, sharing naked pictures on mobile phones, are things many teens are already aware of.
  
  Remember that many of the large business that our families deal with on a daily basis are also part of the sex industry, for example both Sky and UPC sell adult content.
  
  As parents we need to understand where the pressure to participate is coming from, to help our children resist being pressured in the wrong direction.

These are just a few pointers. If you have any questions please e-mail me.

Reality - How screens seem to change it for us

Evolution has not prepared us for using technology to communicate. So it is no surprise that we say and do things using technology that we would never do face to face. How bad could that be? A lot worse than you might think, maybe even bad enough to make us hurt or kill.

I’m not talking about computer games where we spend endless hours slaughtering people shaped pixels.   What I am really talking about is the way interacting with the world through technology helps or allows us to do things we would otherwise never do. Like ‘kill’

Taking another life is against most peoples core values. Even soldiers faced with the prospect of going into battle for the first time are as worried about killing as being killed. As one World War 2 soldier put it: “Here I am brought up a good Christian, obey this and do that. The ten commandments say ‘Thou shalt not kill’…”

Killing is an extreme and rare event, not something that is easy to study. But there was one experiment that looked at how far people would go to obey orders.

The Milgram paradox, or why machines may make us killers

Psychologist Stanley Milgram conducted a series of experiments, which involved people, who thought they were working as ‘teacher’s’ using a machine which they believed was administering electric shocks to a ‘learner’ in another room–to improve the learners memory. As the experiment progressed the ‘teacher’ is instructed to increase the level of the shocks, up to fatal levels, by an ‘authority figure’. You can get a flavour of the experiment in this, at times uncomfortable to watch, YouTube video of a BBC re-creation of the experiment.

The paradox is in the results.

With the authority figure in the room, and the ‘learner’ in a different room about two thirds of Europeans and Americans will continue pressing switches on the machine up to what they believe is a fatal level. They will act even though they feel uncomfortable, and that what they are doing is against their values.

The aim of the Milgram experiment was to determine peoples level of obedience to authority. So where is the paradox?

Compare the two thirds of Milgram subjects willing to administer fatal electric shocks with the experience of soldiers in combat for the first time.

Here is a summary of Colonel Jim Channon’s account of leading fresh troops in Vietnam. Advancing, past the bodies of other American soldiers who had been killed days before, his troops came under fire. After about twenty seconds he thought ‘Why is nobody shooting?’ Channon ordered his men to fire, they all missed. If Milgram is only telling us something about obedience to authority then two out of three of the soldiers should have been shooting to kill.

Yet Channon’s experience mirrored research from World War 2 which suggests that four out of five troops in combat avoid shooting to kill. Soldiers are subject to strict conditioning to prepare them to obey orders in combat situations. They are acting under the direct command of a significant authority figure, the are in among friends, fellow soldiers, whom they expect to follow orders, yet the majority obey their instinct not to kill.

That is the paradox. Using Milgram’s machine two out of three men seem prepared to kill. Yet using gun’s in combat only one in five men is prepared to kill.

Either a majority of people are obedient to authority to the point of taking another life or something else is going on. Where we get two different sets of results we have to look at the situations. In both cases people were responding to a direct instruction from an authority figure. In the Milgram experiment the subjects were not looking at the person they might kill, while Channon’s soldiers had to look directly at their enemy, in order to aim.

Competing Realities

While there are other interpretations about the level of obedience to authority involved in the Milgram experiment I wonder to what extent the results are influenced by the competing ‘realities’ involved. In other words if, in part, the outcome could be weighted by the ‘authority figure’ in the room being more real for the ‘teacher’ than the learner who is only contacted using technology.

I am not suggesting that the ‘teacher’ is not influenced by what they perceive of the ‘learner’ as a person. Simply that we are not equipped, as humans, to make judgments based on remote contact with another person. So because the ‘authority figure’ in the room is part of the same environment and providing much more sensory input–seen and heard directly with the eyes and ears–the ‘teacher’ takes more account of them.

One way to test  if this intuition is true or not is to look at how results of variations of the Milgram experiment change if the proximity between the ‘authority figure’ or ‘learner’ and teacher is changed. Indeed these show that lower proximity to the ‘authority figure’ reduce compliance, as does closer proximity to the ‘learner’.  That could be seen as indicating that the technology, the ‘apparatus’ itself was a significant factor in the reasons ‘teachers’ were more likely to 'kill'.

Us and them

Many of us have had the experience of looking back an e-mail we have sent and been a little shocked at how we expressed ourselves. Or maybe you have received a text or e-mail that caused an argument with a friend.

We know that what, and how, we communicate using technology is different from how we communicate face to face. Why do we say things differently–and say different things–using e-mail and text messages than in a conversation. One of the big differences is in how we make judgements about other people.

There is a wealth of research to explain the de-personalisation and dis-inhibiting effects of using technology to communicate. Using a phone or computer we miss all of the subtle interaction with the people we are communicating with. Because we are missing all the little clues that help us understand people we fall back on using stereotypes, simple pictures of our world and the  people in it.

We can experience other peoples thoughts, expressed online, almost as if we are talking to ourselves. If we reply in as if we are talking to ourselves we may be much more open than in normal conversation.  On the one hand this may lead to a strong sense of bonding, if the conversation is positive. On the other hand if we don't like what we hear, and the communication method lacks the instant feedback and correction we use to smooth day to day conflicts, it can feel like emotional hit and run.

In an online group situation just a little positive feedback helps us feel the other people in the group are like us. And, without all those subtle clues to personality,  we are more likely to go along with the groups opinions.

Using technology we often, for the flimsiest reasons, assume that either the person we are ‘talking’ to has the same values as we do, is one of us: Or we picture them as an outsider, the other, one of them.  We are more willing to go along with the people who we think of as ‘us’ and more willing to go against ‘them’.

Behaving in a changed world 

The import point to understand is that we think and act differently when faced with a screen rather than a person.

This should not be a surprise. We have only had a generation or two to get used to remote communication.. We may try to develop etiquette for it, but we have not had time to understand how the technology makes us think differently about the people we are communicating with.

Looking at the Milgram experiment with fresh eyes gives just a glimpse of how great those changes might be. Our tools change how we see and shape the World.

I would hesitate to go so far as to say that our screens–our phones, our gadgets–might make us more likely to hurt or even kill someone. But then again research shows one in five young people have received messages threatening violence, one in twenty has gotten a message encouraging them to harm themselves.

Hiding behind a camera could just get you killed, but the screen could just make you a killer.

References

Milgram, Stanley ‘Obedience to Authority; An Experimental View’ HarperCollins, 1974

Ambrose, Stephen E.  ‘The Victors’ Simon & Schuster, 2004

Ronson, Jim ‘The Men Who Stare at Goats’ 2004 Picador.

Online Disinhibition Effect
John M. Grohol,

A new perspective on de-individuation via computer-mediated communication
Russell Haines and Joan Ellen Cheney Mann

CyberPsychology & Behavior. June 2004, 7(3): 321-326. 
John Suler.

Associated Press-MTV  Digital Abuse Survey August 2011
Knowledge Networks

Teen Online & Wireless Safety Survey, May 2009
Cox Communications

Reality - and how to miss it

Sometimes not even a stick of dynamite will make you see the reality hidden beyond our cameras and screens.

Fooled by our Senses

There are a couple of ways in which our senses fool us all the time when we are using technology, cameras and screens.

Seeing the picture, and missing what’s in front of us

I once had the task of photographing a Caribbean Carnival. My pictures showed it was a fun day out. So I decided that next year I would be back without a camera. Why? Because I have learned that a camera often blocks you from experiencing the reality of what you are photographing.

Let me explain: When I was a student, interested in cameras but with no idea which way my career should go, I got a golden opportunity to take some news photos. I was in Blacklion in1974, when a car bomb was driven there in one of the little reported UVF (pro British) terrorist attacks on Ireland. Here are a few of the pictures I took the following morning:

A bomb disposal officer had set off a controlled explosion which blew up the car without detonating the bomb. To get the first shot I ran in ahead of the fire brigade.

While the car was still burning, the EOD officer came in to recover four pounds high explosives and a ten gallon drum filled with homemade AMPHO explosives, which had been thrown onto the street by the blast.

And yes that is a gas station, next to the burning car, where the explosives landed.

Capt. Boyle was both skillful and brave; he knew that there were enough explosives there to destroy the whole village; he was there to make it safe for the clean up to begin.

When I was taking these pictures I was neither brave nor clever. Because I was looking through a camera, framing pictures, I was blind to the danger to myself and others. At least as soon as I saw the pictures I had the sense to realise that news photography was not the career for me.

Also at the time I was taking the pictures it did not register with me that people I knew, had grown up beside, had come close to being killed, had been evacuated from their homes and now had to put right the damage.

Among the people who had to try to put their businesses back together on this occasion were the parents of celebrity chef Nevin Maguire. Three months before he was born they had this scene outside their front door. MacNean House, and all the other businesses in the Black’, had to live with troops and sandbags to protect them for the next twenty years before a return to some normality.

Seeing the screen but not getting the picture

The other way that we are often fooled by our senses is that when we see images, like these of destruction, they are framed by our TV’s, our computers, our rooms our homes. The reality we are seeing is not part of our reality—we don’t put on a coat when we see pictures of snow.

Some of us can be fooled by cameras some of the time. But we’re all fooled by the screens we see the pictures on. But that is another story.

Footnotes

A report of the 11th September 1974 bombing of Blacklion is contained in the Barron Report see Interim Report on the Report of the Independent Commission of Inquiry into the Bombing of Kay’s Tavern (p167).

The concept that failure to have situational awareness, as a photographer, can cause problems is widely recognised. Only looking through the camera and not around you can lead to falls, walking in front of moving vehicles, or other dangers.

We never get a clear, true, and full picture of reality. We humans are constantly getting through—making sense using whatever scraps of information we have.

Often we get things wrong. The marvel is how far we’ve come, and that we keep going.