Musings Report #2 01-013-13 Will Machines Become a New Species?
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For those who are new to the Musings reports: they are basically a glimpse into my notebook, the unfiltered swamp where I organize future themes, sort through the dozens of stories and links submitted by readers, refine my own research and start connecting dots which appear later in the blog or in my books. As always, I hope the Musings spark new appraisals and insights. Thank you for supporting the site and for inviting me into your circle of correspondents.
A Quick Note On Email
The busy holiday season precluded me keeping up on email. Pleaese bear with me while I catch up in responding to those who emailed me over the past few weeks. Dividing my time between two states (physical states, not the two mental states I toggle back and forth) has a number of trade-offs, and one downside is preparing to travel and the travel itself is a time-sink.
Will Machines Become a New Species?
Frequent contributor Bart D. recently sent me an intriguing thought experiment about machines being selected for traits much like pets and domesticated animals. This raises the semi-science-fiction question of whether machines could become a new species, not necessarily in the self-replicating DNA model but in a new model. Here is Bart's commentary:
"I learnt at university that the most successful organisms on the planet today are plants and animals that appealed to human interest in some way (or parasitized us). Wheat, rice, potatoes etc. People found them 'useful' in some way and proceeded to develop them and dramatically expand their distribution and abundance in a way they would never have achieved without us. In turn, we are utterly dependent on them for our survival, as they are on us. We are effectively symbiotic with our food crops.
So ... what if machines are part of Darwinian 'development' in the same way? Are humans going to develop machines to the point they are capable of self-replicating and taking over the mantle of the 'fittest' way to survive and carry gene code through time?
Documentarian Adam Curtis touches on this topic in an oblique manner in his discussion of humans as nothing more than carriers of DNA coding. Basically we (and every organism) is just a means to pass on gene coding through time. We do other stuff along the way ... but our real purpose is brutally simple. Organisms are really just carriers of DNA coding.
So ... if machines can do it better ... will Darwinism dupe humans into putting DNA into a microchip (or some such) and creating a new 'non organic' way for gene coding to travel through time?
As far out as this seems ... I think it probable as a goal from the perspective of our DNA. Whether its possible is a different matter. But cavemen never thought of space travel as possible ... so its not really a big stretch.
Is the full process of evolution to go from inorganic molecules to organic molecules to simple organisms (virus and bacteria) to complex organisms to simple cyborgs (nano robotics) to complex cyborgs to ... probably virus and bacteria again?"
Thank you, Bart, for sharing these provocative thoughts. It is interesting to combine this line of inquiry with speculations on future "industrial revolutions." I recently posted links to essays that suggested the low-hanging fruit of technological transformation have already been picked, and we have thus entered an era of diminishing returns on our investments in technology.
It also seems self-evident that computers, software and the Web are eliminating entire swaths of human labor while creating far fewer jobs. There is a yin/yang aspect to the current technological revolution: this appears to be the first such transformative revolution that radically reduces the need for human labor without creating a new labor-intensive industry to provide work for the tens of millions of displaced workers.
It seems likely that there is a cost and consequence to the wide dispersal of software and high-tech skills: the gap between those corporations which are far enough ahead of the commodity pack to charge a premium and those which are chasing that market is diminishing. To keep profits up, those who are ahead must constantly slash labor costs and boost productivity per employee. Those chasing the tiny profits left for commodity producers (memory chips, TVs, etc.) also must trim labor costs to even eke out a tiny profit.
If machines are adapting to fill our needs, we should have more leisure but less earned income.
We will soon need a new model for the distribution not just of food/energy/technology but for work and meaning. The State and the market have failed and so it will fall to the distributed, decentralized community to produce the new model.
Market Musings
Many excellent technicians are describing multiple vulnerabilities in the stock market: low volume, low put/call ratio, rising wedges, negative divergences, and so on. These are powerful indicators that the market is increasingly vulnerable to a reversal or "negative surprise."
Nonetheless I have a funny feeling that the market has one more surge in it to crush the remaining Bears. The widespread doubts about the market's resilience could be taken as a "wall of worry" that the market is climbing. As always, sentiment is self-contradictory: bears see plentiful evidence of excessive bullish sentiment, a clearly bearish factor; yet the bears' persuasive highlighting of this excessive sentiment creates a bearish meme that is bullish.
In other words, once everyone is looking at the same sentiment readings, they lose their predictive powers: those going short based on bullish sentiment provide the fuel for the next bullish rally. It's only when the bears have vanished and short positions have plummeted can the market truly reverse. Are we there yet? It seems to me there are still too many bears predicting reversal. Perhaps SPX will retrace to 1440 and then climb to 1500, or perhaps it will spike to 1500+ before wavering.
The ideal reversal point is when those predicting reversal have been quieted by one rally after another. It doesn't seem we're quite there yet, but of course I could be wrong and the market will plummet like a rock here. Neither side looks like a low-risk play here.
From Left Field
The Minimum Viable Kitchen (via Maoxian) "the tools needed to create over 75% of the recipes that are in what I consider to be the best cookbooks for home chefs."
In case you haven't memorized the reasons behind our poor decision-making and irrationality: The 12 cognitive biases that prevent you from being rational
Rubles For Minutes, Not Mochas, At Russian Cafe Chain (via Katharine K.) This model has promise IMO as the economy reduces incomes; cafes can't afford to give tables to those nursing one coffee for hours on end....
Hyundai Heavy Unveils the HD12000 Drillship (via Joel M. who adds: "The day-rate they'd have to charge just to break even with this thing, let alone turn a profit, would be absolutely staggering. $150+ per barrel anyone?")
Almost half of the world's food thrown away, report finds: Figures from the Institution of Mechanical Engineers show as much as 2bn tonnes of food never makes it on to a plate (via Katharine K.)
During the 1950s, the military, like much of the nation, became more “corporate”—less tolerant of the maverick and more likely to favor conformist “organization men.” As a large, bureaucratized national-security establishment developed to wage the Cold War, the nation’s generals also began acting less like stewards of a profession, responsible to the public at large, and more like members of a guild, looking out primarily for their own interests.
"Being human always points, and is directed, to something or someone, other than oneself -- be it a meaning to fulfill or another human being to encounter. The more one forgets himself -- by giving himself to a cause to serve or another person to love -- the more human he is." Viktor Frankl
Thanks for reading--
charles
