Eliza Stein's List: Slime mold, humans, and emergence

• Given that emergence is often the result of many interactions occurring simultaneously in time and space, an ability to intuitively grasp it would require the ability to consciously think in parallel. A simple exercise is used to demonstrate that we do not possess this ability
• complex systems are irreducible and emergence occurs when a whole is more than the sum of its parts and their interactions
• it is the result of a particular process such as symmetry breaking (Anderson 1972) or self-organization (Turing 1952; Prigogine 1980; Nicolis and Prigogine 1989; Camazine et al. 2001).
• situations where we possess a complete knowledge of the simple rules governing the behaviour of a number of interactants and, nevertheless, our intuition is still baffled by the sudden onset of pattern from disorder
• emergence is surprising and unpredictable because many interactions occurring simultaneously in space and time are the basis for rapid transitions between order and disorder. Further, the fact that we cannot consciously think in parallel explains our bewilderment when pondering the outcome of such processes.

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• • Seeming randomness of evolution; progress - what are we progressing to? Does being more evolved mean being a more efficient organism? No - slime mold is has survived millions of years because it's such an efficient organism.
• • convergent evolution
• Stephen Jay Gould
• Life produces abundant variations; most fail. The few that survive we call the most advanced, but that is a profound error which conflates "latest" with "best".
• when there is nowhere to go but up, some species will go up (Nature, vol 409, p 1102).
• "driven" processes that bias evolution toward increasing complexity
• • energy rate density increases with time organism first appeared in universe
• when he plots the energy rate density of such ordered systems against the time they first appear in the history of the universe, the line goes unequivocally upwards, indicating a general increase in complexity over time (see diagram, below).
• More nuanced readings, however, have been used to argue that local increases in complexity are not merely permitted by the law, but required by it, and order can and does emerge spontaneously from chaos.
• • convergent evolution: things are not an accident

• Perhaps the best-known example is the camera eye, which has evolved independently at least six times. The implication, Kelly writes, is that many outcomes of evolution are not accidental but inevitable. These outcomes include not just organs but brains, minds, societies, and technologies.

    

  Intelligence may be another convergent property.

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• • complex patterns come into being by following simple rules

• • page 2: "living things are more likely to present situations in which a half-dozen, or even several dozen quantities are all varying simultaneously, and in subtly interconnected ways."
• • page 2: "a most complexly organized whole"
• • page 5: organized complexity = problems which involve dealing simultaneously with a sizable number of factors which are interrelated into an organic whole.
• • page 5: "with a given total of national resources that can be brought to bear, what tactics and strategy will most promptly win a war, or better: what sacrifices of present selfish interest will most effectively con-tribute to a stable, decent, and peaceful world?"
• • page 8: "The essence of science is not to be found in its outward appearance, in its physical manifestations; it is to be found in its inner spirit...The poet has these virtues also, and often turns them to higher uses."
• • page 10: "There are rich and essential parts of human life which are alogical, which are immaterial and non-quantitative in character, and which cannot be seen under the microscope, weighed with the balance, nor caught by the most sensitive microphone."

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• Our DNA demands survival.
• every animal wants power over its environment and does its level best to gain it.
• Fear, rage, and appetites that cry for instant gratification are still very much with us.
• Those old primal drives and appetites we struggle so mightily to ignore
• A creature more capable of keeping up with the change it generates.
• Cyber sapiens
• We have long been coevolving with our tools
• primal luggage.
• Given evolution’s trajectory, short of another asteroid collision or global cataclysm, we will almost certainly become augmented versions of our current selves. That has been the trend for seven million years. Apes increasingly endowed with more intelligence, and more tools, becoming simultaneously wiser and more lethal. The question now is, can we survive... ourselves? Can we even manage to become the next human? It’s a close question.
• It is the impractical, flexible part we can’t afford to lose in the transition because it makes us free in ways that no other animal can be--fallible and supple and inventive

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• Here were intelligent social beings with an increasing capacity for cooperation.

    

  It may be this that made possible another great achievement, the exodus from Africa.
• It probably wasn't like any historical migration, this dispersal of humans out of Africa.
• You could imagine a group of Homo erectus moving their range a kilometer a year in one direction. And doing that continually over a long enough period of time, you can get the distance from Africa to Indonesia covered in say, 15,000 years.

• By a million years ago our ancestors had populated Asia from the Caucasus to Indonesia. And they were in Europe too, as a recent discovery in Spain has shown.

    

  Homo erectus had conquered the Old World.
• For an elder to have survived that long without teeth must mean that others in the group were feeding him, perhaps even chewing his food for him.
• I love this story. This was a remarkable testimony from the past about the quality of emotional life that may have characterized Homo erectus.
• • emotional bonds with others give humans an advantage
• the instinct to look after each other.

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• Homo erectus appeared on the African plains almost 2,000,000 years ago. They were the first ancestors who had bodies like ours. They were hunter-gatherers and toolmakers, beings who lived in social groups and cared for each other.
• • homo erectus: first social beings

• Although P. polycephalum often acts like a colony of cooperative individuals foraging together, it in fact spends most of its life as a single cell containing millions of nuclei, small sacs of DNA, enzymes and proteins. This one cell is a master shape-shifter. P. polycephalum takes on different appearances depending on where and how it is growing:
• Researchers have also simulated real-world geographic constraints like volcanoes and bodies of water by confronting the slime mold with deterrents that it must circumvent, such as bits of salt or beams of light.
• Another set of experiments suggests that slime molds navigate time as well as space, using a rudimentary internal clock to anticipate and prepare for future changes in their environments.
• healthy eater
• they first evolved at least 600 million years ago and perhaps as long as one billion years ago.
• They do not accept whatever circumstances they find themselves in, but rather choose conditions most amenable to their survival. They remember, anticipate and decide. By doing so much with so little, slime molds represent a successful and admirable alternative to convoluted brain-based intelligence.

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• • graphs on page 8