Accidentally building a planetary brain ⊗ The death of critical thinking ⊗ On AI and its existential risks

You might have noticed that not that long ago I added a “link block” titled Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs, making it four such blocks. This week, strangely enough, I have no “off topic” stuff for the classic Asides section. Instead of digging in the newsletter unreads, I thought I’d use the occasion to ask about those sections. Do you read them? Are there too many? Which one(s) do you prefer or find useless? I’ve sometimes considered including just two and alternating, perhaps publishing all four just for members. Thoughts? I used to look at my stats quite a bit more and the most clicked link was often way down in the Asides but I’m not sure what’s going on now. Any feedback appreciated, just reply to this email!

Second, I’m not sure if I still have that micro-blogging reflex/muscle in me, but I’m growing tired of LinkedIn and the “new blue” seems to be having a moment, so I might try … skying(?) on Bluesky. You can follow me there just in case.

Are we accidentally building a planetary brain?

There have been quite a few planetarity articles on Noema, interconnected as they are with the Berggruen Institute and Antikythera. This one by Thomas Moynihan both fits right along, but is also a different animal. I first happened on his writing with What the ‘future histories’ of the 1920s can teach us about hope, while working on some retrofutures research. This piece is quite in line with it, as he explores the notion that humanity may be unintentionally creating a collective intelligence that resembles a global brain, going all the way back to 1864, the idea of a “Psychozoic Age,” or a bit later the concept of the “Noosphere.” Moynihan looks at over 150 years of fiction, scientific, and pseudo-scientific visions and theories of the human species becoming a planet-scale sentience. The topic itself is fascinating, but it’s worth the read just as much for the breadth of time over which all of these ideas by various people interconnect and influence each other, many of them with relatively unknown characters who collaborated or bumped up agains better known historical figures like Darwin, Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Bertrand Russel or Arthur C. Clarke.

Dana had noticed “carcinization”: the fact that several different crustacean lineages have converged, multiple times, on a crab-like shape, with their characteristic feature being an enlarged head. Over and above their ancestors, crab anatomy is marked by the attenuation of abdominal appendages, which tuck themselves away — like origami — underneath the engorging crown of the headcase. […]

Accordingly, having acknowledged the theories of “cephalization” and “the Psychozoic” as inspirations, Vernadsky announced the inauguration of a new “layer” to the Earth system, one dictated by the actions of thinking life. He called this the “Noosphere”: a planetary shell of thought. […]

Geoengineering is deployed to smooth out aberrant weather. Eventually, around 10,000 AD, oceans are eradicated planetwide. With Earth completely drained, the world’s entire surface can be leveled and cultivated. The human population reaches 280 billion; nations and languages merge, wars cease. Planetary communism flourishes. […]

The mere fact that we are aware of our planetary footprint is a colossal achievement, the proportions of which are only put into relief by retracing the mountain of errors from which the current consensus was necessarily forged.

The death of critical thinking

In this piece by Joan Westenberg, you might initially think that it’s rehashing critiques we’ve read before (they would still be worth a revisit) about tech v attention, but she also looks at inequality in literacy and critical thinking, the cultural view on deep reading or even just reading books, as well as the broader societal context.

Her argument is that the decline in critical reading and comprehension skills threatens the foundations of democracy, as individuals increasingly rely on gut reactions and fragmented information rather than thoughtful analysis. This shift results in a society where emotional discourse replaces precise communication, leading to widening partisan divides and a lack of shared understanding. While technology facilitates the rapid spread of information, it often leads media to prioritise sensationalism, leaving us overwhelmed and under-informed. Reviving our capacity for deep reading is essential for fostering empathy, informed decision-making, and a healthier public discourse.

In one phrase: just as complexity rises, we as a society are losing the capacity to make sense of it.

Reading is more than a utilitarian skill. It exposes us to new ideas, cultures, and experiences. Books allow us to imagine other lives, expanding our worldviews. Deep, thoughtful reading exercises our mental capacities. It develops focus, analytical skills, and abstract thinking. Reading builds empathy and compassion. Through stories, we gain emotional insights into the human condition. An erosion of critical reading hinders cognitive growth and emotional intelligence. […]

No algorithm can replace human wisdom and analysis. But no algorithm will need to if we have abandoned — wholesale — a millennium of critical reading and thinking skills. […]

Across fields, we lose shared bases to communicate ideas precisely. Without reading complex literature, vocabularies shrink, discourse gets emotion-driven, and analogies replace facts. We lose touch with history, arts, and culture. Anti-intellectualism rises as reading gets dismissed as elitist and irrelevant instead of empowering.

Shannon Vallor’s philosophy on AI and its existential risks

Where Westenberg said that “the death of critical thinking will kill us long before AI” (I removed the second part above), here Shannon Vallor, a philosopher of technology, argues that the true existential risk of AI lies not in the algorithms themselves, but in the rhetoric surrounding them, which undermines human agency and confidence. She emphasises the importance of recognising our ability to shape our existence and moral growth, suggesting that surrendering our power to AI threatens our potential for artistic, political, and ethical development. Vallor also draws on the notion of “autofabrication,” according to which humans must continually create and redefine their identities and moral frameworks.

The rhetoric of AI today that is about gaslighting humans into surrendering their own power and their own confidence in their agency and freedom. That’s the existential threat, because that’s what will enable humans to feel like we can just take our hands off the wheel and let AI drive. […]

Wisdom is the intellectual virtue that allows you to recognize that and change your cultivated response to something better. […]

I think morality is rooted in a particular form of existence that you have. We exist as a particular kind of social, vulnerable, interdependent animal with a lot of excess cognitive energy. All those things factor into what it is to be moral as a human.

§ Intertextuality. Jon Evans with a worthy argument on AI v “robots reading books” v the minute scale of each book on a training set. Also this: “Although it seems worth noting that many of the same people irate about LLM training data being used by giant corporations were until fairly recently also irate that copyright law was absurdly extended in the 1990s at the behest of, you guessed it, giant corporations.” (And yes, I am probably loosely adjacent to that crowd.)

§ Low-carbon tech needs much fewer materials than it used to; this matters for resource extraction in the future. “Even if this super-circular model is too optimistic, improvements in material efficiency could, at the very least, offset the amount of material that’s lost in recycling processes that are below 100%. If recycling rates recover just 80% of the material, as long as the material efficiency has improved by 20%, there will be enough material in one panel, turbine, or battery to make another one. No extra minerals needed.” Her argument is very in line with Deb Chachra’s view on what a world with abundant energy might look like.

Futures, Fictions & Fabulations

• Future Council: How children are responding to our planetary crises. “In this Reality Roundtable, Nate [Hagens] sits down with documentarian Damon Gameau and three young activists featured in his documentary film The Future Council, to discuss their experiences grappling with the complex challenges of transforming a system that is actively harming our planet and what they think should be done to save humanity from itself.”
• Announcing Pace Layers. “Our inaugural issue is a 282-page compendium of ideas, art, and insights from the remarkable community that has formed around Long Now over the past quarter-century, as well as a glimpse into our plans for our second quarter-century.” (We actually used the expression “a compendium of ideas” on the back cover of The Alpine Review back in 2012.)
• Practices of Futurecasting. “Dedicated to the question of how tacit ideas about the future can be externalized and shared with others, ‘Practices of Future Casting: Ways of Sharing Imagined Tomorrows,’ edited edited by Michael Shamiyeh, explores diverse approaches to futurecasting through data, fiction, and matter.”

Algorithms, Automations & Augmentations

• You exist in the long context. “What you’ve just experienced is an interactive adventure based on the text of my latest history book, ‘The Infernal Machine.’ At its core, the game relies on three elements: the original text from my book; a large language model (in this case, Gemini Pro 1.5); and a 400-word prompt that I wrote giving the model instructions on how to host the game, based on the facts contained in the book itself.” (Via Jay Springett.)
• AI grandma fights back against scammers. More a publicity stunt than anything, but fun. “While Daisy may sound like a human, she is essentially an AI large language model with the character application of a grandma. She functions by listening to the scammers and translating their voice to text. The AI then searches its large database to find an appropriate response, based on the specific scam training it's received, and translates that text response to speech for Daisy to reply.”
• Buenos Aires courts adopt ChatGPT to draft rulings. What could possibly go wrong?! “Generative AI is replacing a successful AI project that drafted legal rulings. Experts worry about data privacy, ethical quandaries, and the need for specialized training.”

Built, Biosphere & Breakthroughs

• Plastic-eating insect discovered in Kenya. “They join the ranks of a small group of insects that have been found to be capable of breaking the polluting plastic down, though this is the first time that an insect species native to Africa has been found to do this.” (Via nothing here.)
• Tokyo’s scorching summers focus public anger against tree cutting. “A group of elderly residents who guard a row of ginkgo trees from being cut down are part of a wave of such activism in the Japanese capital.” Also, Paris to replace parking spaces with trees. “The city’s new climate plan promises to drop speed limits, repurpose traffic lanes, remove 60,000 parking spots and create urban ‘oases’ to combat extreme heat.”
• How a solar Minecraft server is changing the way we play video games. “In the Minecraft Bloc, we aren’t just interested in making games with a message about energy transition. We want to make energy transition part of our games. Our group has been thinking about ways to get video game players to consider the systems that power their game worlds. We are asking this question: What happens when we put players into direct contact with the nuts and volts of computing?”