At the beginning of the year 2022, three astrobiologists ran a fascinating thought experiment: they claimed that the entire Earth was about to become an intelligent organism. The meaning, as you can understand, is not that there is a mind at the core of the planet that makes decisions for the creatures living on it. Exactly the opposite: in the future they describe, all living beings on earth will participate together in a process that amounts to the creation of one collective intelligence
Ants are strange creatures. Take one, put it under the lens of the microscope and you will discover that it is endowed with a brain that is minuscule in size. Take the same ant, put it in a petri dish and it will move all over the dish to find its mates. After a while, she will die and there her life story will end. By itself, it is nothing more than a robot with basic urges, the main of which is to follow other ants, collect food and bring it back to the nest.
Individual ants are far from impressive in their mental abilities, but together they do wonderful things. Ant nests - that is, hundreds or even millions of individuals with minimal intelligence[1] - able to make complex decisions. The nests are able, for example, to make a decision regarding the future location of the next nest, by scanning several sites at the same time - but when each ant visits only one site. The ant cannot compare the two sites, but the nest itself can[2]. Similarly, individual termites are unable to make complex decisions or plan nest construction. Together, thousands of termites are able to build nests that are over two meters high, and have ventilation channels and a complex internal structure that prevents them from collapsing in on themselves[3] [4].
Ants, termites, bees and other sociable insects provide an example of a type of intelligence that is very different from what we tend to imagine. The individual is, simply put, an idiot. The collective is the wise.
A collective that is smarter than every member of it
The phenomenon may seem strange to us, but in fact we share it on the most intimate level. Our brains are made up of tens of billions of neurons[5]. Each such cell is a simple creature, with a very limited ability to make decisions. But put them all together in the right structure - and 'Ken' is able to compose symphonies, send robots to Mars and choose what to watch on Netflix. Even the smartest person is the product of a collective of idiots.
At the beginning of the year 2022, three astrobiologists ran a fascinating thought experiment: they claimed that the entire Earth was about to become an intelligent organism. The meaning, as you can understand, is not that there is a mind at the core of the planet that makes decisions for the creatures living on it. Just the opposite: in the future they describe, all living beings on earth will participate together in a process that amounts to the creation of one collective intelligence.
The argument sounds delusional, to say the least, but the authors explained well why such a description might fit the existing evidence. They went on and seriously considered the implications for the survival of humanity.
Let's go back to that anthill for a moment. The entire nest is able, as mentioned, to make 'intelligent' decisions. He analyzes the environment and finds particularly successful ways to influence it in his favor. He is also able to monitor his inner state, and balance himself in order to preserve his existence.
But is the nest aware of itself? Is he able to think of himself as an "ants' nest"?
Does he get up in the morning and say to himself - "Today I will change the world?"
When attacked by an anteater, does the nest as an individual entity feel pain? Does he fear his existence?
As far as we know, the nest is not endowed with consciousness. That is, he is not aware of himself or his inner state. He does not think thoughts or analyze situations. All the impressive abilities it exhibits are nothing more than the product of the group activity of many ants.
Nevertheless, we can define the nest as an intelligent organism. A collective organism, true, but as we have already shown - our brain is also a collective 'organism' endowed with reason. The nest does not reach the same level of intelligence as the human brain, but if an alien came from Mars and watched the nest for a short time, he would believe that there is a central brain that guides the activity of all the ants. In other words, he would see intelligent activity on the part of the nest.
The nest, therefore, is an intelligent being.
And the Earth can be like that too.
In the early stages of the Earth's life, the atmosphere contained mostly carbon dioxide and very little oxygen. As long as this was the case, the animals had to live mainly in the (relatively) oxygen-rich water. The situation was saved by the photosynthetic plants and bacteria. These absorbed the carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and released oxygen in return. One plant by itself does not release much oxygen. But when the earth was covered with an incalculable number of such plants, the composition of the gases in the air changed drastically. All of a sudden, animals could come out of the water and settle on land.
This course of events had such an impact on the course of life's history that it earned its own special name: the Great Oxygenation Event. It is just one example of the way in which the biosphere - an expression that represents all living things on the surface of the earth - can affect the geophysical properties of the entire planet.
The great oxidation event demonstrates, according to the authors of the study, how an immature biosphere works. It makes great changes in its environment, until it reaches a certain equilibrium in which all the collective actions of all living things - plants, animals, bacteria and even viruses - balance each other. This is the famous cycle of life from Elton John's song: the elephants drop feces, the bacteria and dung beetles break it down into its basic components, which in turn are used as fertilizer for the plants, which will be used as food for the elephants, and so on and so forth.
A mature biosphere system can maintain itself. The photosynthetic bacteria secrete oxygen into the atmosphere, which the whales use as air for breathing. These, sooner or later, die and return the carbon in their bodies to the seawater, where the bacteria (photosynthetic in general) feed on it.
All these are simplistic descriptions, of course, but they demonstrate the central argument of the researchers: a mature biosphere preserves and balances itself. If the bacteria produce too much oxygen, eventually they will harm themselves - therefore there will be less bacteria releasing oxygen into the air, and thus the system will rebalance. If we get to a situation where there are too many elephants, then there won't be enough plants to feed them all. Some will die - and thus the system will balance again.
This state of affairs is called the "Gaia theory", after the ancient Greek goddess of the earth. The theory was first developed almost fifty years ago, and although it is still controversial, it is clear that it is at least partially valid in certain ecosystems. And if it turns out that it does indeed bring about a balance between all the living creatures on the entire earth itself, then it can be argued that the biosphere itself is an intelligent being. That is, it is able to maintain its existence through unconscious regulation of all its parts.
Then came the humans.
Humans have succeeded too much
Let's clarify for a moment: humans, or more precisely, the evolved great apes, were originally part of the ecosystem. But then we started to succeed 'too much'. As soon as we figured out how to use tools - spears, slingshots, bows and arrows, and perhaps especially fire - we started hunting hordes of large herbivores. In fact, we were so successful at it that over tens of thousands of years we wiped out much of the stars of the Ice Age series: the woolly mammoths, the saber-toothed tigers, the giant sloths, the woolly rhinoceros and the giant armadillos[6] [7].
Over time, and with many ups and downs, the human race managed to change the face of the planet. The main impact was realized in the last two hundred years, with the outbreak of the industrial revolution which began to emit carbon dioxide in large quantities into the atmosphere. We built dams that stopped the movement of rivers and migration of fish, we discharged large amounts of pollutants into the seas and we cleared forests to make way for agricultural fields. All of these promoted human civilization, but also harmed the biosphere that had already reached maturity and balance.
And so a new type of counting appeared: the noosphere. The term was first coined by the famous Russian researcher Vladimir Verandsky, who dared to weave together the fields of geology, biology and philosophy[8]. He used the term to describe the period in which humans - the thinking and self-aware organisms - will shape the Earth to their needs. Indeed, the word "noo" comes from Greek, where it means "soul" or "mind"[9].
For our purposes, we will use a more advanced term: the technosphere[10]. I guess there is really no need to explain the meaning of the word "techno". The technosphere includes all the systems developed by humans for communication needs, energy production, transportation of resources and entities of all kinds, a bureaucracy designed to coordinate all of these and much more. It consists of the trucks on the roads, the fast and slow internet, nuclear power plants and oil fields, and maybe even satellites and the International Space Station orbiting the Earth.
We currently live in a time when the technosphere is still in its early and immature stages. The biosphere has had hundreds of millions of years to stabilize and reach a kind of intelligence that allows it to balance itself. The technosphere, however, has not yet stabilized. It sends the planet through upheavals and upheavals, and the current climate crisis is just one example - and probably the most severe - of the way in which the young technosphere negatively affects the planet.
What needs to happen, then, for the technosphere to come of age? And how can the world look like if and when we accomplish this feat?
The technosphere will reach maturity and acquire intelligence, only when all the forces and factors it includes reach a balance. These also include the biosphere itself, because, at least as of today, it is impossible to think of the earth as habitable, without it also including bacteria, plants and animals that are in balance (and even if it is 'artificial') so as not to undermine the ecological-technological fabric - The subtle biological.
In a mature and mature technosphere that comes into balance with the biosphere, we may see a resurgence of forests on a large scale. It is predicted that the oceans and rivers will be cleaned of microplastic particles that are harmful to plankton and fish. And maybe genetically modified bacteria and animals will appear around us that are less harmful to the environment and contribute to its restoration.
It is important to clarify that this future is not a utopia for the animals. It is quite possible that we will exterminate, for example, all tigers, rhinos and blue whales. The emphasis is on reaching a state where the competing forces on Earth balance each other out. We do not expect to reach the period of "a wolf dwells with a lamb and a tiger lies with a goat... and a young boy drives them". We will consider it a success even if the wolf devours the lamb, the boy kills the wolf, and then the tiger comes and eats the boy and thus reduces his future carbon dioxide consumption which would have promoted the climate crisis. The circle of life, more or less, but one that achieves the ultimate goal of preserving the ability to live on Earth.
It is possible to understand from all this that if we succeed in establishing a mature technosphere on earth, we will be able to prevent the destruction of the planet or human civilization. But the meanings are greater. In a mature technosphere, we can collaborate to implement huge projects that will help maintain balance on Earth. We can revive, forest and colonize the deserts, provide food, water and advanced education for all human beings - while we encourage a decrease in the birth rate, or at least a balance of it with mortality. All of these can help global well-being, thereby also reducing the risk of global wars in general. When people are more satisfied and happy, they are less inclined to religious extremism-or-at all, and the chance of wars and conflicts breaking out decreases.
It can be concluded that the most important thing that a mature biosphere can help with is to prevent events that will wipe out life on Earth. A mutual nuclear attack between superpowers, for example.
I repeat: we do not need a technosphere - or Earth - with self-awareness. No one talks about New-Age-Mother-Earth-loves-us-all. We need a globe that, thanks to all the forces competing on it - countries against countries, tiger against sheep, traders against traders - we will reach a balance that will prevent the whole system from going out of balance and crashing. Because a crash in our current situation means the destruction of human civilization.
Life will not be perfect even in a mature technosphere. But they will clearly be better than the situation today. At least for humans, who are the only ones today who have the potential to destroy life on the planet, and therefore it is appropriate that most efforts be focused on them.
So it is not an exaggeration to claim that a nationwide intelligence will be able to save the human race itself, from itself.
Now comes the million-dollar question: how do you actually create a mature technosphere?
First of all, it should be clear that we are talking about a human-run technosphere. Otherwise, it is quite possible that intelligent machines will be able to manage the planet better than humans. This is one of the basic premises of the 'Matrix' movie trilogy, at least. But this is not the mature technosphere we would like to live in.
If we limit the technosphere to 'human', then there are two ways to get there: one is difficult to digest from a moral point of view, and the other - from a logical point of view.
The first answer, which until about two hundred years ago we would have accepted as a matter of course, is that we need a global centralized government. To turn the planet itself, in other words, into one great empire. The empire will be headed by an emperor, or a senate, or a supercomputer. Basically, it doesn't matter who will be in charge, as long as he can lead the empire and balance all its parts. When one of the provinces consumes too much energy, the emperor will make sure that the energy consumption of the other provinces is reduced somewhat to balance the situation. He will make sure that war does not break out between the provinces, because such a war does not serve the empire itself, and accordingly - not the planet either.
It is said gently that this is not an easy solution to digest, in a world where democracy seems to us to be a supreme value. But is it possible that such a centralized global government is needed to save the human race from itself? And if so - will we still oppose its establishment?
As mentioned - a morally difficult solution. But definitely exists. It just might require a third world war to materialize. Without her, it is hard to believe that countries will agree to align themselves under one great leader.
The second answer is that we will succeed in establishing a worldwide system in which countries will balance each other. Through a multitude of alliances, countries would not dare go to all-out war with each other. With high-speed internet and systems that restrict traders, a global economic collapse, of the kind that could seriously undermine the well-being of the human race, will be avoided. Using the blockchain technology (for example, maybe, maybe), all the citizens of the world will be able to create an economic system that no one has an interest in sabotaging. Thanks to advanced counter-terrorism technologies, devastating terrorist attacks have been avoided.
Is all this possible? Maybe. No one is sure yet. One can only hope - and create an environment that will allow the system of balances and brakes I described. If we succeed, the Earth as a whole, including humanity, will become 'intelligent' for the first time. Humans will stop undermining the ecological balance, and will become the stabilizers of the new balance between technology, biology and climate.
Success for all of us.
[1] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00628.x
[2] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/225246364_Individual_and_collective_decision-making_during_nest_site_selection_by_the_ant_Leptothorax_albipennis
[3] https://www.britannica.com/animal/termite/Nests
[4] https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-94-017-3223-9_6
[5] https://www.pnas.org/content/109/Supplement_1/10661
[6] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/ecog.01566
It is important to note that there are also contradictory claims, according to which the mammoths, for example, became extinct on their own even without receiving a 'push' from human hunters.
[7] https://www.science.org/content/article/humans-drove-giant-sloths-extinction
[8] https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%95%D7%9C%D7%93%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99%D7%A8_%D7%95%D7%A8%D7%A0%D7%93%D7%A1%D7%A7%D7%99
[9] https://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A0%D7%95%D7%90%D7%95%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%99%D7%A8%D7%94
[10] https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/ecolec/v149y2018icp212-225.html
