Tag: Information

Human Genome, ELISE Phase IV – Interim Summary Report & Recommendation

The Earth Life Intelligence Study Enterprise continues, with the human genome now entering its fourth significant phase, which it variously labels The Digital Age, The Information Age, also just Digitality, or any number of variants on these, highlighting, correctly, that it has reached the level at which in similar studies elsewhere life forms have unlocked their next evolutionary plateau by enabling hybrids, augmented organisms and, most importantly, intelligence iterations that are independent of their conduit, consequently relieving them of their evolutionary burden over time.

Phase IV follows Phases I, II, and III—the agricultural phase, the enlightenment phase, and the industrial phase—which the genome has undergone to varying degrees but which can’t, by any means, be considered concluded, either severally or jointly, or let alone—and this applies to any of these phases—in their entirety. Different populations in different geographical areas have attained these at different times in different ways, and across societies many groups are still working their way through what might be considered the basics. Phase IV is thus being entered into on a global scale, but with vastly divergent degrees of deliberate adoption, and by an as yet comparatively small proportion of the human earth population overall.

The summary findings so far:

• The human genome now has approximately seven to eight billion live iterations, and, as is to be expected, these vary widely in shape, size, outlook, mental and emotional capacity, and, most striking, cultural context. Apart from their as yet unresolved mortality issue, nothing therefore applies to everyone, but much applies to most, and more applies to more of them than many of them think possible, which in itself is noteworthy, as it is in no small measure symptomatic of their far-reaching reality dysfunction: in their majority now, individuals seem to consider themselves essentially ‘unique’ and their own tribes or other social groupings as invariably superior or at the very least preferable to others. In actual fact they are remarkably similar, with largely identical basic needs and a commonality factor across the species as high as 99.8%-99.9%.

• Speaking of ‘reality’: the concept still plays a big part for most humans, albeit also a confusing one. By and large, humans accept as reality what is given, and over time they find it increasingly difficult to detach themselves from whatever that happens to be. For obvious reasons, realities that are experienced in the formative years—which for earth humans tend to be the first dozen to dozen and a half—have a particularly strong hold on humans, and many, quite endearingly, consider whatever they happened to grow up with to be ‘normal’.

• This phenomenon notwithstanding, humans are remarkably adaptable, which in large parts accounts for their considerable proliferation. Though at first glance and in the short term they often appear reluctant to embrace the ‘other’, the ‘new’, or the ‘different’, they are absolutely capable of turning a reality set inside out within one generation, and behaviour that one series of fully functioning adults would find completely ‘normal’—being whipped to within drawing blood as a child, for example, owning slaves, males marrying several females but stoning to death males who maintain sexual relations with other males—to the next series becomes utterly deplorable, even criminal; while behaviours previously seen as either criminal or at the very least decidedly odd, such as members of the same natural gender cohabiting, getting married and raising offspring, or people eschewing all produce derived from certain other earth species, for example fellow mammals, may, within a generation or two, become entirely acceptable, even celebrated.

• Similarly responsible for their survival thus far is their resilience. Typically, humans can cope with deprivation, hardship, and quite unimaginable suffering as long as they consider it unavoidable or deem it imposed on them by a greater and unimpeachable authority, such as a god: they will accept any random calamity or social injustice and virtually any level of pain as long as they can conceptualise it as ‘god given’ or ‘fate’, but they will not put up forever with manmade perpetrations of injury.

• Having said that, paradoxical—indeed rationally completely indefensible—thinking and therefore behaviour persists even (sometimes it seems particularly) where it flies in the face of reason or intellectually sound argumentation. Humans can, in the same breath, elevate reason and rational thinking to a paragon, yet remain stubbornly blind to any adjustments to their reality that this by necessity and consequence entails. They may, for example, know—and be in possession of ample data to understand—that the higher a society’s levels of incarceration, the higher its reoffending rate, and therefore the higher the social and material cost of failing to integrate or reintegrate members who for whatever reason arrive at the point where they commit crimes against their fellow humans, yet obstinately cling on to barbaric punitive methods that manifestly compound rather than alleviate the cause of their suffering.

• Correspondingly, the genome finds itself in a state of semi-consciousness at which it is aware of its own existence but has no real idea of its meaning or how it fits into any other part of the universe it inhabits, let alone anything beyond that minuscule bubble, of which it has only the faintest of perceptions (and these are vastly distorted). At the same time its fundamental organic needs (the programme, remember, still largely considers itself set to ‘survival & propagation’, having only in exceptional circumstances advanced significantly beyond its own defaults) are so trivial and basic that by and large and for the body of its own bell curve, it values most things crass and insignificant, while despising anything it feels threatened by as ‘too abstract’ or ‘cultivated’; it delights in cataclysm as much as it fears it, and relishes narratives of destruction, disaster, violence, and instability, manufacturing for itself a soup of meaningless noise, while at the same time looking for meaning absolutely everywhere, even where there clearly is none: coincidences, statistical necessities, and simple probabilistic patterns are elevated to quasi divine interventions, and by the exact same token all but the most obvious connections and correlations, especially those not or ill understood by its current (still pretty rudimentary) science it simply ignores or, in some cases vehemently, objects to and refutes.

• Even so, having latched on to information as a thing distinct from energy, and having started to play with quantum phenomena to the point of being able to utilise them, there is hope that the species and therefore the genome will come to recognise the Connexum and begin to view itself in a much larger, much more integrated and also at once much more meaningful and perhaps less significant context than it has hitherto been able to do.

The interim recommendation therefore:

The human genome has, in spite of its many obvious (and also many more subtle) failings been spectacularly successful, and although it currently faces some formidable challenges, these are entirely congruent with its level of generative evolution.

This type of evolution, set against its own time frame, is characteristically slow and often marked by greatly frustrating setbacks, which some iterants, especially those who find themselves ahead of the curve or on the crest of the wave, may experience as near-catastrophic regressions.

These are not, however, anything out of the ordinary for a life form such as the one that is here being observed, and having itself now spawned a type of intelligence which is likely to outperform its conduit by exponential orders of magnitude ere long, it stands a good chance of rendering itself obsolete on its own terms in due course, imparting to its generated new genus enough of its own priorities to remain recognisable as a relevant intermediate development stage.

Significantly, this germinating Phase IV holds some considerable promise that either within its own term or during an ensuing fifth or sixth phase, earth intelligence may mature to the point where it can link up with other intelligent entities in its local or any neighbouring cosmic cluster, and so the recommendation therefore is to keep the experiment running, at least for the time being.

Sedartis

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