Patri's Journal: Current
This is Patri's current journal. It is kept on LiveJournal as patrissimo, but you are reading the archived copy on patrifriedman.com.
Robot's Rebellion (comment on this entry at LiveJournal)
Entry Date: 2004-08-05 15:37:00
Logged: 2004-08-05 15:41:10
Current Mood: rebellious
Current Music: Kelly Llorenna-Tell It To My Heart (Ian Van Dahl Remix)
Just read this post by about a review of The Robot's Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin (excerpt). I found the book description fascinating, I'd been thinking about a robot's rebellion ever since I started reading EvBio, but not in those words. And its a good metaphor. To review: we are the robots, the genes are our blueprints. Evolution causes these blueprints to act as though they are designing themselves to spread. For a reason we aren't quite sure of, human-level intelligence recently became part of the design - the robots became conscious and intelligent.
Many of the goals of masters and robots are aligned, like health and survival. But others are not, like length of life (once we are done being parents and grandparents, our bodies wither), general happiness (non-suicidal unhappiness can be a useful whip for genes), reproduction (do women really want to ovulate and bleed every damn month? Should sex lead to babies?), and so one. Another common difference is that we have instincts hardwired for an environment very different than the current one, because the lightning pace of technological change has outstripped evolutions sluggish response. Hence rich nations tend to be overweight, since we have eating instincts designed for scarcity in an age of plenty. Part of why governments work poorly is that we apply instincts designed to run 100-person tribes when running 100-million person countries. Seeing lots of pictures of hot young horny females makes men less satisfied with their marraiges and women with their bodies, because our brain is fuzzy on the differences between pictures and reality.
Technology, knowledge and willpower are our allies in this battle. Condoms and the pill allow sex without breeding, and the pill can be used to skip every other period. Willpower and careful selection of macronutrients can keep us slim. In the future, I think manipulation of our genome will be the decisive force in our favor, allowing us to wrest control from the genes.
Of course, there are frightening potential consequences. Instead of being designed by selfish genes, people may be designed by their parents. *Shudder* Depending on the interests of the parent, this may be much worse. Some parents will simply want their kids to be strong, smart, and healthy. But others may want them to be feverishly religious or overly impressed by parental authority. Parents already try to use their children to accomplish their own goals, ie forcing them to take unwanted music lessons. They get mad enough now when their children aren't "grateful" - what happens when the ungrateful child has been custom-designed to be a great musician, but still doesn't enjoy music?
Despite these worries, I still think of it as a rebellion, with all humanity on one side. And the current birth rates in first-world countries represent a fabulous victory of individual happiness over our robotic programming.
(Or if you prefer humour to seriousness, check out the satirical You're Selfish, Gene, a modern fairy tale by Hans Dawkins Anderson)
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