Pasquinade on Evolution

8.    Pasquill on the evolution   

Introduction

Reconstruction of the species

The construction of life

The construction of death

The construction of consciousness

Error based constructions

Bionics and cybernetics

Through the eyes of the Designer

The reconstruction of Man

Let us consider the problem of perfecting the human. Here, various approaches are possible. One can pursue "maintenance engineering", simply represented by medicine. In this case the norm, i.e., the average state of health, represents the model; actions are taken with the goal of enabling anybody to attain such a state.

The range of those actions is slowly expanding. It may even include the installation of genotypically undesigned parameters into the body (like the above mentioned possibility of hibernation). In a fluid way one can proceed to an increasingly more universal prosthetics. And be able to overcome the defenses of the organism, aiming at successful transplantation of organs. All this has already been realized. The first transplantations of kidneys and lungs have already been performed; they are carried out, on a much larger scale, with animals ("reserve" heart). In the US there even exists a society for "replacement organs" which coordinates and supports scientific research on this subject. Hence, one can step by step rebuild the organism, changing it in distinct functions and parameters. This process will probably continue along two different lines, under the pressure of objective necessities - and technological possibilities: asbiological changes (the removal of defects, deformities etc. by transplantation) and as prosthetic changes (when the mechanical, "dead" prosthesis represents a better solution for the user than a natural transplant). Prosthetics, on this scale, obviously cannot lead to some kind of "robotization" of the human. This whole stage, which will certainly cover not only the end of the current century, but also the beginning of the next, assumes the acceptance of a fundamental "design scheme" given by Nature. Hence, untouched will remain the guidelines of body, organic, and functional constructions, together with the basic premise of protein as the building material - as well as with its inevitable consequences - aging and death.

Prolongation of life beyond the limit of 100 years statistically (i.e., that such were the average duration of an individual life) - without intervention on the genetic information - seems unreal to me. A lot of wise men have already proclaimed a couple of times that "actually", "in principle" every human could live for 140-160 years, since there are some people which live that long; this argument is comparable to that which states that "actually" each of us might be a Beethoven or a Newton, since they were human as well. Of course they were human, and so are the long-lived Caucasians in the mountains, but this implies nothing for the average population. Longevity is the result of the work of certain genes; if they are spread within the population, it becomes statistically long-lived. Any other program involving more radical changes is certainly not realizable today and during the next century. One can at most think about a program of revolutionary engineering of the organism. In a primitive, naive way, in fact, but it is possible.

First we have to find out what we want.

Similar to the existence of orders of spatial magnitude, from the metagalactic clouds, through galaxies, local stellar systems, planetary systems, planets, their biospheres, living organisms, viruses, molecules, atoms to quanta, there exist orders of temporal magnitude, i.e., different extensions in time. They more or less correspond to the former. The longest time scale is given by the individual existence of galaxies (between 10 and 20 billion years), then there are stars (about 10 billion years), biological evolution as a whole - 4-6 billion years, geological epochs (50-150 million years), the sequoia (6000 years), the human (about 70 years), the mayfly, the bacterium (about 15 minutes), the virus, cis-benzene, the meson (a millionth of a second).

The construction of rational beings with an individual life span comparable to geological epochs seems totally unreal. Either such a person would have to be of planetoidal dimensions - or do without a continuous memory of the events in its past. Obviously this is the field of grotesque SF-type concepts: long-lived beings which have their memories accommodated in gigantic underground "mnemotrons" in the cities and are linked to the reservoirs of their youthful memories 100000 years ago by VHF waves. Therefore the limit to realistic longevity improvement seems to be given by the biological maximum (sequoia, hence about 6000 years). What would be the most important characteristic of this long-lived being? For longevity alone cannot be a goal in itself. It must serve a certain purpose. Undoubtedly nobody, neither today, nor in a hundred thousand years, can predict the future with certainty. A basic feature of the "improved model" should therefore be its auto-evolutionary potential. It should be able to transform itself in a way and in a direction which are desired, with respect to the civilization built by itself.

What, therefore, is possible? Almost everything, possibly with one exception. People could, after discussion, decide some day of the umpteen thousandth year: "Enough - be it as it is now, be it so forever. We will not change, we will not invent, we will not discover any more, since it cannot be better than now, and even if it could, we do not want that."

Although I have presented many not very probable things in this book, this one seems to be the least probable of them all. 

Cyborgization

A separate discussion should be devoted to the only known today, purely hypothetical for the time being, project for the reconstruction of man which has been put forward by the scholars. This is no project of universal rebuilding. It is meant to serve a definite goal, the adaptation to the cosmos as an "ecological niche". This is the so called cyborg (an abbreviation for the words "cybernetic organization"). "Cyborgization" consists in removal of the digestive system (except for the liver and maybe parts of the pancreas), by which also jaws, their muscles, and the teeth become dispensable. If the question of speech has to be solved "cosmically" - by continuous use of radio communication - also the mouth will disappear. The cyborg possesses a couple of biological elements, like skeleton, muscles, skin, brain, but this brain consciously controls the hitherto involuntary functions of the body, since at the key positions of the organism there are osmotic pumps, injecting, in case needed, either refreshing, body-activating substances - medicines, hormones, stimulating drugs - or, on the contrary, substances which lower the basal metabolism, or even lead to a state of hibernation. This preparedness for auto-hibernation may considerably increase the chance of survival in the case of accidents or the like.

Blood circulation is designed rather "traditionally", though the cyborg can work under anaerobic conditions (but obviously with oxygen reserves in his space suit). The cyborg is not a partly prostheticised human anymore. he is a partly rebuilt human, with an artificial digestive-regulative system which allows for adaptation to diverse cosmic environments. He is, however, not microscopically reconstructed, i.e., living cell continue to be the building material of his body, furthermore, of course, the changes to his organism cannot be passed on to his descendants (they are not hereditary). The "cyborgization" could probably be supplemented by biochemical reconstruction. Thus, e.g., independence of the organism from continuous oxygen supply would be favorable. But this is already the path to that "biochemical revolution" which was mentioned earlier. It is known, after all, that one does not have to look for substances which can store oxygen more effectively than hemoglobin, in order to do without oxygen supply for relatively long periods. Whales are able to stay under water for more than an hour, which is not only a consequence of the increase of lung volume. They have organic systems specially developed for that purpose. Hence eventually one could even borrow elements of the reorganization "from the whale".  We did not say anything about the question whether cyborgization is desirable or not. We mention it only to demonstrate that the experts are actually dealing with problems of that kind.  It should be noted, however, that this project would probably be unrealizable today (not only with respect to medical ethics, but also to the minute chance of surviving such a massive surgical intervention and the replacement of such vitally important organs by various "osmotic pumps"), although it is in principle rather "conservative".  The main source for criticism is represented not so much by the set of proposed operations, but by their final result. The cyborg, contrary to all appearances, is no more universal human than the "current model" at all. He is a "cosmic variant", designed not for all celestial bodies, but rather for those similar to the Moon or to Mars. Hence those cruel operations essentially yield  rather poor results with respect to adaptational universalism; the strongest opposition, however, comes from the very concept of a "human degeneralization", i.e., the creation of various types of humans, more or less similar to the various kinds of ants. Maybe these analogies did not come to the mind of the planners of this projects, but they impose oneself even on the unbiased. One can hibernate without osmotic pumps, and the cosmonaut could as well be equipped with a set of microdevices (automatic or operated by himself) for the injection of the corresponding preparations into his organism. Just that cyborgian absence of a mouth seems to me more like an effect for the broad public rather than for the biology experts. I loyally admit that in the subject of this or similar reconstructions it is easier to resort to commonplace about their future necessity than to propose, however technologically unreal by today's measures, but at least convincing, engineering improvements. For the time being industrial chemistry is hopelessly lagging behind the biochemistry of the organisms, and molecular engineering together with its information-technological applications is still in its infancy compared to molecular technology of the organisms. However these means to which Evolution turned - so to speak - "in desperation" rather than consciously, by objective conditions limited to "cold technology" and to a very narrow choice of elements (practically - only carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, sulfur, nitrogen, phosphor, and traces of iron, cobalt, and other metals), cannot represent the highest achievement in the engineering of homeostates on a cosmic scale. If synthetic chemistry, information theory, and general system theory make further progress, than the human body in such a world will turn out to be its least perfect element. Human knowledge will outweigh biological knowledge, accumulated in living organisms. Plans which today are seen as a mockery of the perfection of evolutionary solutions will then be realized. 

The autoevolutionary machine

Since the human reconstruction seems to us something monstrous, we are inclined to conclude that the techniques applied to this end must be monstrous as well. Brain surgery, "in-vitro embryos, coming along under genetic engineering control" - those are the images which SF literature confronts us with in this field. Meanwhile, the actions taken may be totally unrecognized. For a couple of years, computers - only a few, for the time being - have been working in the U.S. which are programmed for marriage-broking. A "machine matchmaker" chooses the couples which fit best together with respect to physical and mental properties. According to the (still rather sparse) data the duration of these relationships which were formed by a machine is about two times larger than that of usual marriages. Over the last few years, the average age of the partners in a marriage has been decreasing, but marriages are divorced within 5 years in 50% of the cases, such that there are a lot of divorced twens and children without normal parental care. No replacement for parental upbringing has been invented yet, since this is not merely a question of financial means to support the corresponding institutions (day-nurseries); there is no substitution for parental feelings, and their early and lasting absence does not only cause negative childhood experiences, but the formation of possibly irreversible defects in the field of the so called higher sensitivity. This is the current situation. People form pairs in random ways, which one could call "Brownian" - for they join together after a number of brief contacts, when they finally meet the "right" partner, which is seemingly confirmed by mutual attraction. However, this realization really is rather accidental (since is turns out to be erroneous in 50% of all cases). "Machine matchmakers" will change that state of affairs. Appropriate investigations equip the machine with knowledge about the psychosomatic properties of the candidates, after which this machine will choose pairs which fit together optimally. The machine does not remove the freedom of choice, since it does not point out only one single candidate. Acting probabilistically, it suggests a choice from a selected group within a certain reliability interval, where the machine can assemble such groups choosing from  m i l l i o n s  of people, whereas the individual, acting traditionally, by "random methods", will be able to meet a few hundred people at most during his whole life. In this way the machine realizes the old myth of men and women who were meant for each other, but looking for the other in vain. Now it is important that society becomes permanently aware of this fact. Of course, these are only rational arguments. The machine broadens the range of choice , but it does so indirectly, over the individual's head, taking away the right to mistakes and suffering, and all the imperfections of living together, where someone might actually yearn for such coincidences, or at least claim for himself the right to risks. Although there is a general conviction that one enters into marriage in order to remain within, somebody might actually prefer to experience love adventures with carelessly chosen partners, even with an unhappy end, over a "long and happy" life as a harmonic couple. Nevertheless, on average the advantages of forming marriages from a position of "best knowledge" which the machine has at its disposal, by far outweigh the disadvantages, such that similar techniques have considerable chances of wide acceptance. If it became a cultural norm, then marriages the "machine matchmaker" had advised against could become a kind of forbidden, tempting fruit, and society would surround them with an aura similar to that which in the past accompanied e.g. misalliances. It could eventually be possible that such an "act of desperation" would be seen as an "expression of exceptional courage", as a "challenge to danger", in certain circles.

Those "machine matchmakers" may have very serious consequences for our species. When the personal genotypic repertory is deciphered and stored in the machine's memory, together with the established "psychosomatic personality profiles", the task of the matchmaker will be to make a choice which not only fits a person to another, but also one genotype to another. Thus there will be a two-step selection. First the machine separates classes of partners which correspond psychosomatically, and thereafter it subjects them to a second-level sifting, rejecting those candidates for which there is a considerable probability of producing children which are unwanted in some respect. For example crippled children - which we accept without resistance, or children with low intelligence or personality disorders - which already raises some reservations, at least today. Proceeding in this way seems desirable - as a stabilization and protection of the genetic make-up of the species - especially in an epoch which increases the concentration of mutagenic substances in the civilizational environment. From the stabilization of the genotype of the population it is only a small step to the control of its further development. In this way we enter the field of a planned control which represents a fluid transition to a controlled evolution of the species. Because fitting genotype to genotype means controlling the evolution of the species. This sort of technique appears to be the least drastic of the possible ones, since it is in principle invisible, but because of that it creates a delicate moral problem. According to the directives of our culture, society should be informed about all important changes - as given (let's say) by a "thousand-year plan of autoevolution". To give the information without delivering arguments, however, is to impose a plan without discussing the necessity of its realization. Actually, though, these arguments will only be understood by those who possess comprehensive knowledge of medicine, evolution theory, anthropology and population genetics. Another feature of such a technique is that some changes in certain properties of the organism might be more difficult to achieve than others. It would be relatively easy, e.g., to increase the occurrence of high intelligence which represents a natural, though not as common as desirable, property of the species. This would have a tremendous significance in the epoch of intellectual competition between humans and machines. The most difficult thing to achieve - by means of the demonstrated method -, on the other hand, would be a deep change in the structure of the organism. What kind of changes might be concerned? According to several researchers (like Dart, for example), we are "hereditarily handicapped", or rather characterized by an asymmetry in our tendency to "good" or "bad" by the fact that our ancestors have practiced cannibalism for three fourths of a million years, not in the face of death from starvation (as "normal" predators do), but as a rule. This has been known for a rather long time, but currently this cannibalism is regarded as a creative factor of anthropogenesis, for which the explanation is that herbivorism does not maximize "reason", since bananas do not force their gatherers to the development of tactics entailing the instantaneous assessment of a situation, nor the development of strategies for approach, fight and pursuit. Therefore the anthropoids sort of stopped in their development, whereas the primeval man made the fastest progress because he hunted for those who equaled his own astuteness. Owing to this it came to a most radical sifting out of the "not very bright", because the mentally limited herbivore has to fast from time to time in the worst case, whereas the not sufficiently clever hunter of his own kind has to die soon. Hence the "cannibalistic invention" had to be an accelerator of mental progress, in the sense that struggle within the species ensures the skill to survive of only those who possess the most effective mind, a mind that realizes a universal transfer of life experiences to new situations. By the way, the australopithecus which we are talking about here was an omnivore; somehow the osteodontoceratic culture preceded the stone age, because the first cudgel, which was produced accidentally - by gnawing - was a long bone, hence his first vessels and battleclubs where sculls and bones, and the smell of blood accompanied the formation of the first rituals. This does not imply that we have inherited any "archetypes of a criminal character" from our ancestors, since no non-instinctive, ready knowledge can be inherited, which would direct us to certain activities, and so one can only assume that the human brain and body were formed in a situation of permanent struggle. Another intriguing thing is the "asymmetry" of the cultural history, where good intentions quite regularly turned into bad ones, but the opposite metamorphosis somehow did not take place, and in one of the religions which rule to the present day, blood still plays an important role - in the doctrine of transubstantiation. If similar hypotheses do have a factual background and the depths of our brains were formed under the influence of the events of those hundreds of thousands of years, then a certain melioration of the species - in the area of that so called "asymmetry" - would really be desirable. Today, of course, we neither know if one should do this, nor do we know how to do it; "matrimonial machines" might lead to the desired state only after many thousand years, since they can only maximize the natural pace of evolution, which is very slow. In the face of such revolutionary plans one may be forced to resort to "accelerated" techniques. In any case about the resistance which the perspective of autoevolutionary changes causes in us decide not only their extent, but also how fluid the transition towards them will be. "Tailoring of brains and bodies" might repulse, however "machine assisted marriage guidance" appears to be a rather innocent procedure - nevertheless these are only paths of different length which can lead to analogous results. 

Extrasensory phenomena

...02/09/98, to be continued...