Jame5

As touched upon earlier genetic evolution is complexity bound. To be exact to about 25 megabytes because roughly speaking, genetic evolution isn’t going to support more than 10^8 meaningful bases with 1 bit of selection pressure and a 10^-8 error rate.

Reflecting on this complexity boundary in genetic evolution I was wondering what cognitive evolution’s complexity boundary might be in humans. As basis I will assume that:

1) cognitive evolution in humans is taking place on the level of beliefs (a brief summary can be found in my paper on friendly AI theory)

2) beliefs are stored in the neural structure of the brain

3) the informational complexity of the neural structure of the brain that stores beliefs is equal to cognitive evolution’s complexity boundary in humans

Being a friend of Google I quickly came across this interesting estimate of the informational storage capacity of the human brain:

“The human brain contains about 50 billion to 200 billion neurons (nobody knows how many for sure), each of which interfaces with 1,000 to 100,000 other neurons through 100 trillion (10 14) to 10 quadrillion (10 16) synaptic junctions. Each synapse possesses a variable firing threshold which is reduced as the neuron is repeatedly activated. If we assume that the firing threshold at each synapse can assume 256 distinguishable levels, and if we suppose that there are 20,000 shared synapses per neuron (10,000 per neuron), then the total information storage capacity of the synapses in the cortex would be of the order of 500 to 1,000 terabytes.”

Staying on the safe side I will assume that this estimate is off by two orders of magnitude and that only one percent of the human brain is actually involved in storing beliefs. As a result I estimate that human cognitive evolution on the level of beliefs is bound by a complexity of no less than 100 gigabytes or at least 4’096 times higher than that of genetic evolution.

I recently read Nick Bostrom‘s paper on the future of human evolution. The paper was published in 2004/5 and his views correlate with mine quite well. I am pleased to note that I am only about two to three years behind the times in having formulated my thoughts on the issue at hand. Ha! Not bad for an amateur. Moving forward…

Reading Bostrom’s paper was fascinating. In essence he makes the point that continuing to increase fitness will result in a dystopian world when measured with present human values and I agree. From the perspective of a present day human the evolution towards non-eudaemonic agents as Bostrom puts it seems like a scenario one has evolved to dislike. Since we have evolved to regard as good what has increased fitness in our ancestors we would have to fail to see anything unrecognizable human as a desirable future state. But is the deep desire to improve oneself not just as well part of human nature? Where but to something posthuman shall such self improvement lead if we for ever regard what is desirable from our current perspective?

Self improvement can be seen as a series of gradual changes. Consider the following scenario. A person approaches the matter of self improvement in a way to ensure that every improved following version of his self will be desirable from the unimproved version’s point of view. How desirable will the 100th improvement look from the point of view of the original? How about the 1 millionth? No matter at what improvement step the original will draw the line – at some point the improved version will turn into something that is unrecognizable, incomprehensible yes even scary to the original.

How do you picture the encounter between an early rodent – one of our direct ancestors a few 10 million years ago – and a modern day human. The rodent would probably flee in panic and some humans likely as well. But would the rodent lament over the sad abandonment of gnawing on stones? After all it is enjoyable and keeps ones teeth in shape. Or would it – having the full understanding of a human being – appreciate that other concepts, worries and habits are what a human holds dear in modern times? Which perspective take priority? “Of cause the human one!” is what one would expect from the anthropic chauvinists’ camp . But would the one millionth improved version as discussed earlier not argue the same for its manifestation?

Reconciling the desire to satisfy the ever changing current representation of an individual with the desire for self improvement and the implications for the future of human evolution becomes the challenge that needs to be addressed. Bostrom does so by suggesting what he calls a Singleton – an entity policing continued human evolution to maintain the status quo.

In the context of my friendly AI theory I suggest a similar approach to Bostrom’s Singleton however honoring Ben Goertzel‘s ‘voluntary, joyous, growth’ concept and thus allowing for the possibility of continuous self improvement.

Specifically I argue for a friendly AI to

A) change the environment(s) humans are in to increase an individual’s fitness as opposed to changing the genetic/memetic makeup of and individual to adopt it better to it’s environment.

B) reconcile our desire for self improvement with the problematic results discussed above by making growth optional as well as rewarding.

It has long been the criticism of Darwinian evolution that it lacks something that religions are viewed as being superior in: spiritual depth. Well – I happen to disagree. Let me tell you why.

Evolution works by chance mutation and non chance retention by natural selection thus moving towards ever higher levels of fitness. At the end of that process are you and me looking out of our skulls at our environment trying to make sense of it all. But evolution did not give us a large book with things that we should or should not do. However, evolution nevertheless kept close tabs on what has happened to our ancestors. Or rather what caused them to increase or decrease the chances of their gene’s survival and these chances are today encoded in our genes and it is our ancestors that are indirectly guiding our every action.

No – I do not mean that figuratively speaking. Think about it: imagine you cutting your finger. The pain experienced by you as a result is equivalent to the decrease in your ancestors likelihood of ensuring the survival of their genes. The pain is the averaged out equivalent of all your forebearers sharing their individual stories with you in that moment of pain. Think of distant relative Ungh who through your pain is whispering his story to you from the beyond how after having cut his finger contracted an infection, lost his finger and due to his reduced dexterity wasn’t an as effective hunter anymore. Or the sad story of the nameless rodent who after happening to cut its finger died not long after the incident from blood poisoning.

The same is true of cause with positive sensations. Imagine how many of your ancestors must have survived the winter because they happened to eat that sugary piece of fruit the previous autumn. Or how, held together by the loving closeness of a tenderly caressing partner, caused them to master the difficulties of life.

Next time you feel hurt or happy spend a minute reflecting on this causal link to your past. For you will be sharing the moment with thousands of your well wishing ancestors.

Evolution – meaning the process of chance mutation and non-chance retention by natural selection – is a slow, tedious and complexity bound process on the genetic level as pointed out brilliantly by Eliezer on the overcomming biases blog. Genetic evolution as an optimization process is full of flaws, drawbacks and dead ends. Genetic evolution is blind and if genetic evolution has a goal it can only be seen in the implicit goal of increasing fitness.

Human cognition is a far better optimization process, yet by far not as well understood as genetic evolution. The crucial point of genetic evolution however is, that it is the only naturally occurring optimization process. Having taken 3.5 billion years to evolve the superior optimization process of human cognition one might argue that genetic evolution has done its duty and can retire and leave increasing fitness further to its successor: human cognition.

George Price was a theoretical biologist who committed suicide after haven given all his possessions to the poor. Why you ask? Because he could not deal with the fact that:

One wonders what might have been so terrible about this formula that the man who through his work provided a general way in which to measure the direction and speed of any selection process would felt compelled to kill himself.

Examining the background one uncovers a truly tragic story. For the reason Price started dabbling in the field of theoretical biology in the first place lies in the circumstance that after stumbling over a set of equations that were discovered ten years earlier by William Hamilton he was so disturbed by them that he attempted to disprove them. Yet instead of disproving them he ended up reworking them into a more elegant form and for wider application.

Price had reformulated a set of mathematical equations that show that altruism can prosper in a world where it seems that only selfishness is rewarded. While he showed that true self sacrificing behavior can exist among animals and humans he also proved that there was nothing noble about it – altruism merely is an evolutionary stable strategy. When his work was completed he went mad.

I can empathize with the longing for goodness in the absence of a reason for doing good. How selfless is it to give something only to expect something in return? Are we not touched by stories of self sacrifice and bravery – gallantry and noblesse? Sure we are – exactly because of said equation we evolved to feel that way.

We have evolved to feel warm and fuzzy when we give something without expecting something in return because it increased our fitness. We are fitter because of it. Proving that mathematically would have filled me with great joy. Knowing that one has to do good to others in order to avoid going extinct. By knowing and understanding the altruism equation one can free oneself from having to belief in a fuzzy difficult to grasp concept of goodness without justification and can embrace the mathematical inevitability.

People are not punished for their sins but by their sins in the absence of everything except the mathematical proof. How great is that? It is not only good to do good but it is advantageous – don’t do it and go extinct. Who wants to argue with that?

Follow up 2007/11/12: Having reflected more on Price’s equations it turns out that the implications of the Price equation are further reaching then I initially understood them.  For not only is it beneficial to cooperate and be what is conventionally called ‘altruistic’ but egoism is just as viable a strategy and depending on the pay-offs will result in an evolutionary equilibrium of altruists as well as egoists. More here.