AI

This is an ongoing project. All Chapters can and will be edited during this project. Time permitting I hope to have it finished by August 08

Let us not deal in magic and sorcery, but science and art.

Abstract

Evolution has no intelligence of its own. It is a series of continuous generally small changes to an organism over time. The reason for the changes can be mixed, but if the change enhances the organism’s ability to reproduce, then said change becomes beneficial. Based on the best available scientific evidence, Human beings are one of the products of the hundreds of millions of years of these beneficial changes.

Without this knowledge it could appear that we are uniquely special, our minds uniquely complicated, and impossible to dissect or duplicate artificially. With this knowledge we can compare our ancestry and behaviour with all other living species, looking for commonalities. What is shocking, is how much of what we thought was only capable by humans, is in fact replicated by many other species, from social abilities like fear, jealousy, pain, mourning, families, and partners for life to self awareness, and our definition of consciousness.

The brain has evolved to be an effective tool at recognising patterns from the data it receives, labelling storing and retrieving that data. It remains reliant on making associations between different stimuli (sight, sound, touch, taste, etc), and the varying strengths of those associations are the consciousness of the individual. It is deceptively simple.

We will learn, consciousness isn’t unique to humans, individuals can be more or less conscious than one another, and education can improve an individual’s level of consciousness.

Introduction

We are so sure of our complex behaviour that we look for complicated explanations to understand ourselves. Yet if you compare our behaviour with other animals, and then understand that behaviour as a mechanism, like a mechanical wheel that turns each time a button is pressed, we become a collective of refined and not so refined mechanical components. Each one of those mechanical components then needs to be explained within the confines of evolution. How could this mechanism of come about? What benefit could have been derived from having this capability? How long ago did this mechanism evolve? To go any further requires some basic knowledge of evolution.

Evolution in the 21st Century

In the 21st century a minority of religious fundamentalists believe evolution either does not exist, or is being guided by the divine hand. We will understand why these minorities insist their faith is correct, and ironically how this faith provides proof of evolution in action.

Most of you will know evolution as small genetic changes over time to an animal or plant that give it an advantage over its fellow population, which leads to it reproduce more often, and copy that small change on to its offspring. But evolution can work the opposite way, where a small change is disadvantageous, which leads to less offspring. It’s also involved where small changes carry neither advantage nor disadvantage.

At its heart, evolution is the action of external forces on the genetic code inside your reproductive system. Those external forces include nutrients, and environmental changes, that affect the genetic code. Affects are as random, without purpose, but as with all things random, some changes have no affect, but sometimes some do.

Those who have trouble with evolution have problems imagining how such small changes can over eons of time lead to anything significantly different. Like a mountain being eroded by rain, we have to accept that not all humans have the same ability to conceive such enormous lengths of time.

People who disregard the overwhelming evidence for evolution in favour of faiths are constrained by the evolutionary nature of the human brain, and the direct physiological response they have when attempting to imagine the alternative reality they have for years understood as a forgone conclusion. Many will revert to faith because the process of accepting an alternative is too intensive a physiological change. Its like going through detox, except the drug isn’t heroin or alcohol, its data. A physiological change is felt, because data, from our senses affects the brain in the same way as a compound drug like heroin.

When data is stored in the brain, for example a passage from the Bible, it’s laid down chemically within the axons and neurons of the brain. Simply put the neuron is “painted” with the memory. If the same sensory data is repeated, again and again (like going to church every Sunday), then that memory is strengthened, like applying more and more coats of paint to the same wall.

The brain is very good at making associations between the data it has stored, producing physical changes in the brain which release endorphins, which acts as a reward encouraging the individual to repeat the actions that led to the reward, hence perpetuating the human evolutionary path of ever higher intelligence.

All these associations are based on conclusions made by the individual, and we know that humans are capable of coming to the wrong conclusions. If you conclude the stars revolve around the earth, then you are certain to make further conclusions based on the first. These interconnected conclusions build up as more related data is stored and strengthen with repetition. If new data leads to the existing conclusion being dismissed, all conclusions connected to the pre-existing one, need to be changed. The effect is a massive physiological response, and can be extremely emotionally taxing on the individual, to the extent that some consciously stop themselves accessing the new data (thinking about it) and therefore no new conclusion is created, and the old conclusion remains intact.

This whole processes evolved through tiny unconscious beneficial changes. For that reason the mechanisms involved in creating human consciousness can be produced artificially, because the entire process is physical. The physical data is stored by electro chemical means; biological connections are made between separately stored data due to the physical properties of the data itself. These connections are strengthened through the physical action of accessing and retrieving the data.

A brief history of human evolution


Geological evidence shows that a giant meteorite about six miles wide smashed into the Yucatan Peninsula close to the current Mexican town of Chicxulub 65 million years ago. Dinosaurs were the dominant species with the mammalian population consisting of small rodent-like animals which evolved thick coats of hair in the cold climates, and successfully spread. When the meteor struck, it super heated the surrounding air, instantly suffocating millions in the surrounding area. This was followed by the massive hot plume that was kicked into the high atmosphere returning to earth setting fire to the landscape, and blacking out the sun, causing the temperature to plummet.

The mammals who lived far enough from the impact survived and with their thick coats protecting them from the cold, and a massively reduced population of dinosaurs, they thrived. It took millions of years for the earth’s plant life to recover, but over the next 65 million years these rodents evolved into all the various mammals alive today, including us. We carry that history with us within our genes, as proof of our remarkable journey through time.

Over the course of those 65 million years, our ancestors were many different animals, each animal needed different behaviours and different physical attributes. As we evolved from one animal to the next, we carried with us behavioural and physical mechanisms which we may have needed previously, but now have little need for. A physical example is the Appendix; a behavioural example is our ‘ego’. These mechanisms don’t have to be entirely useless, but are generally un-necessary for successful survival and reproduction. They would have served a purpose at one time in our ancestral past, but are no longer required.

Humans today are not the end result, but the current result of an ongoing process, which started, we presume with single cells multiplying. Along the evolutionary path to Homo sapiens we acquired many mechanisms, including sight, hearing, arms and legs, and a very clever nervous system. Not everything we kept is useful, and we refer to these as “Junk” mechanisms. Some mechanisms could have taken millions of years to evolve, with billions of small successful changes after each reproduction, but what is fundamentally important to understand is that each mechanism is architecturally basic in design. A complicated jump is possible, but it would still be confined by the basic building blocks of evolutionary logic. Therefore the development of consciousness is an extension of one or multiple evolutionary steps, which we now begin to archeologically discover through a series of reverse engineering.

Conscious Thought

Let us postulate a theory to focus the scientific community into researching the mechanisms involved in producing conscious thought, by proposing the evolutionary unconscious steps involved.

The following assumptions are made;

a) All the senses input data into the brain via electro chemical means.

b) The brain is able to naturally filter and therefore identify data by electro chemical means.

c) The brain is able to forge conclusions by connecting like electro chemically stored data, and separate data accessed simultaneously.

d) The individual can consciously affect;

a. The data inputted

b. What data is recalled

e) The individual is not able to make conscious conclusions. All conclusions are unconscious and operate at the electro chemical level.

To understand point (e) we need a simple example. Let’s use the red ball tastes sweet example.

Sight – colour, shape, texture

Touch – texture, temperature

Taste – sweet