Feb 26, 2022 11:46 PM
(This post was last modified: Feb 27, 2022 12:26 AM by C C.)
https://www.universetoday.com/154579/doe...f-its-own/
EXCERPTS: What is humanity? Do our minds set us apart from the rest of nature and from the rest of Earth? Or does Earth have a collective mind of its own, and we’re simply part of that mind? On the literal face of it, that last question might sound ridiculous.
But a new thought experiment explores it more deeply, and while there’s no firm conclusion about humanity and a planetary mind, just thinking about it invites minds to reconsider their relationship with nature. Overcoming our challenges requires a better understanding of ourselves and nature, and the same is true for any other civilizations that make it past the Great Filter.
Humanity is pretty proud of itself sometimes. [...] But that’s just one perspective. Another perspective says that we’re still primitive. ... That we’re not wise enough to manage our own technological advancement. Both perspectives are equally valid. All that can really be said is that we’re not as primitive as we used to be, but we’re nowhere near as mature as we need to be if we hope to persist beyond the Great Filter.
Can we come up with a way to explain what stage we’re at in our development? The authors of a new article think they can. And they think we can only do that if we take into account Earth’s planetary history, the collective mind, and the state of our technology.
This trio of scientists wrote the new article in the International Journal of Astrobiology. It’s titled “Intelligence as a planetary scale process.” The authors are Adam Frank from the University of Rochester, David Grinspoon from the Planetary Science Institute, and Sara Walker from Arizona State University. The article is a thought experiment based on our scientific understanding of Earth alongside questions about how life has altered and continues to alter the planet.
Humans tend to think of intelligence as a property belonging to individuals. But it’s also a property belonging to collectives. Social insects use their collective intelligence to make decisions. The authors take the idea of intelligence even further: from individual intelligence to collective intelligence, to planetary intelligence.
“Here, we broaden the idea of intelligence as a collective property and extend it to the planetary scale,” the authors write. “We consider the ways in which the appearance of technological intelligence may represent a kind of planetary-scale transition, and thus might be seen not as something which happens on a planet but to a planet, much as some models propose the origin of life itself was a planetary phenomenon.”
[...] It’s worthwhile to recall the work of Vladimir Vernadsky. Vernadsky was an important founder of biogeochemistry...
[...] Vernadsky wrote: “Activated by radiation, the matter of the biosphere collects and redistributes solar energy and converts it ultimately into free energy capable of doing work on Earth. A new character is imparted to the planet by this powerful cosmic force. The radiations that pour upon the Earth cause the biosphere to take on properties unknown to lifeless planetary surfaces, and thus transform the face of the Earth.”
In their article, the authors point out how organisms changed Earth’s biosphere. When the ability to photosynthesize appeared in lifeforms, individual lifeforms used it to great benefit. But collectively, they oxygenated Earth’s atmosphere in the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE). The photosynthesizers opened a pathway for their own continuation and for more complex life to develop. It not only changed the course of evolution, but it also changed the very geology and geochemistry of the planet. The authors liken the collective activity of photosynthetic organisms to collective intelligence.
“Making sense of how a planet’s intelligence might be defined and understood helps shine a little light on humanity’s future on this planet—or lack thereof,” they write. “If we ever hope to survive as a species, we must use our intelligence for the greater good of the planet,” said Adam Frank.
[...] The authors point out how collective activity changes the planet. They base their experiment partly on the Gaia hypothesis, which says that the Earth’s non-biological systems—geochemistry, plate tectonics, the atmosphere, the oceans—interact with living systems to maintain the entire planet in a habitable state. Without the “collective intelligence” of the biological world, the Earth wouldn’t be habitable.
[...] The third stage is where we’re at now, according to the authors. We live in an immature technosphere of our own creation. Our communication, transportation, electrical, and governmental networks are increasingly linked into a technosphere. ... Because our technosphere is not linked with natural systems. Our immature technosphere largely ignores its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and the biosphere in general. ... The immature technosphere is working against itself and the biosphere that supports it.
The fourth stage represents a workable future. It’s the mature technosphere, and in a mature technosphere, our technological intelligence benefits the Earth. For example, renewable energy sources like solar energy will displace fossil fuels and help the climate regulate itself and maintain its habitability. Technological agriculture will strengthen the Earth’s soil systems rather than degrade them. We’ll use our technology to build cities that co-exist with natural systems rather than dominating them. But there are a lot of unknowns.
"Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet,” Frank says in a press release. “The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don’t know how to move to a mature technosphere yet.”
[...] Are the development of planetary intelligence and a mature technosphere hallmarks of civilizations that make it past a “Great Filter?” Maybe. That idea dovetails with Frank’s other work in the search for alien technosignatures on distant exoplanets.
“We’re saying the only technological civilizations we may ever see—the ones we should expect to see—are the ones that didn’t kill themselves, meaning they must have reached the stage of a true planetary intelligence,” he says. “That’s the power of this line of inquiry: it unites what we need to know to survive the climate crisis with what might happen on any planet where life and intelligence evolve.” (MORE - missing details)
EXCERPTS: What is humanity? Do our minds set us apart from the rest of nature and from the rest of Earth? Or does Earth have a collective mind of its own, and we’re simply part of that mind? On the literal face of it, that last question might sound ridiculous.
But a new thought experiment explores it more deeply, and while there’s no firm conclusion about humanity and a planetary mind, just thinking about it invites minds to reconsider their relationship with nature. Overcoming our challenges requires a better understanding of ourselves and nature, and the same is true for any other civilizations that make it past the Great Filter.
Humanity is pretty proud of itself sometimes. [...] But that’s just one perspective. Another perspective says that we’re still primitive. ... That we’re not wise enough to manage our own technological advancement. Both perspectives are equally valid. All that can really be said is that we’re not as primitive as we used to be, but we’re nowhere near as mature as we need to be if we hope to persist beyond the Great Filter.
Can we come up with a way to explain what stage we’re at in our development? The authors of a new article think they can. And they think we can only do that if we take into account Earth’s planetary history, the collective mind, and the state of our technology.
This trio of scientists wrote the new article in the International Journal of Astrobiology. It’s titled “Intelligence as a planetary scale process.” The authors are Adam Frank from the University of Rochester, David Grinspoon from the Planetary Science Institute, and Sara Walker from Arizona State University. The article is a thought experiment based on our scientific understanding of Earth alongside questions about how life has altered and continues to alter the planet.
Humans tend to think of intelligence as a property belonging to individuals. But it’s also a property belonging to collectives. Social insects use their collective intelligence to make decisions. The authors take the idea of intelligence even further: from individual intelligence to collective intelligence, to planetary intelligence.
“Here, we broaden the idea of intelligence as a collective property and extend it to the planetary scale,” the authors write. “We consider the ways in which the appearance of technological intelligence may represent a kind of planetary-scale transition, and thus might be seen not as something which happens on a planet but to a planet, much as some models propose the origin of life itself was a planetary phenomenon.”
[...] It’s worthwhile to recall the work of Vladimir Vernadsky. Vernadsky was an important founder of biogeochemistry...
[...] Vernadsky wrote: “Activated by radiation, the matter of the biosphere collects and redistributes solar energy and converts it ultimately into free energy capable of doing work on Earth. A new character is imparted to the planet by this powerful cosmic force. The radiations that pour upon the Earth cause the biosphere to take on properties unknown to lifeless planetary surfaces, and thus transform the face of the Earth.”
In their article, the authors point out how organisms changed Earth’s biosphere. When the ability to photosynthesize appeared in lifeforms, individual lifeforms used it to great benefit. But collectively, they oxygenated Earth’s atmosphere in the Great Oxygenation Event (GOE). The photosynthesizers opened a pathway for their own continuation and for more complex life to develop. It not only changed the course of evolution, but it also changed the very geology and geochemistry of the planet. The authors liken the collective activity of photosynthetic organisms to collective intelligence.
“Making sense of how a planet’s intelligence might be defined and understood helps shine a little light on humanity’s future on this planet—or lack thereof,” they write. “If we ever hope to survive as a species, we must use our intelligence for the greater good of the planet,” said Adam Frank.
[...] The authors point out how collective activity changes the planet. They base their experiment partly on the Gaia hypothesis, which says that the Earth’s non-biological systems—geochemistry, plate tectonics, the atmosphere, the oceans—interact with living systems to maintain the entire planet in a habitable state. Without the “collective intelligence” of the biological world, the Earth wouldn’t be habitable.
[...] The third stage is where we’re at now, according to the authors. We live in an immature technosphere of our own creation. Our communication, transportation, electrical, and governmental networks are increasingly linked into a technosphere. ... Because our technosphere is not linked with natural systems. Our immature technosphere largely ignores its impact on the Earth’s atmosphere, oceans, and the biosphere in general. ... The immature technosphere is working against itself and the biosphere that supports it.
The fourth stage represents a workable future. It’s the mature technosphere, and in a mature technosphere, our technological intelligence benefits the Earth. For example, renewable energy sources like solar energy will displace fossil fuels and help the climate regulate itself and maintain its habitability. Technological agriculture will strengthen the Earth’s soil systems rather than degrade them. We’ll use our technology to build cities that co-exist with natural systems rather than dominating them. But there are a lot of unknowns.
"Planets evolve through immature and mature stages, and planetary intelligence is indicative of when you get to a mature planet,” Frank says in a press release. “The million-dollar question is figuring out what planetary intelligence looks like and means for us in practice because we don’t know how to move to a mature technosphere yet.”
[...] Are the development of planetary intelligence and a mature technosphere hallmarks of civilizations that make it past a “Great Filter?” Maybe. That idea dovetails with Frank’s other work in the search for alien technosignatures on distant exoplanets.
“We’re saying the only technological civilizations we may ever see—the ones we should expect to see—are the ones that didn’t kill themselves, meaning they must have reached the stage of a true planetary intelligence,” he says. “That’s the power of this line of inquiry: it unites what we need to know to survive the climate crisis with what might happen on any planet where life and intelligence evolve.” (MORE - missing details)
