Thinking Out Loud - The Link Between Discovering Fire and Inventing Computers

Civilization as we know it today, with cities and all that stuff, isn't as old as we think it is.

As I was sitting here waiting for the second cup to kick in, I was alternating between idly cruising through some random stuff I had in my Thinking Out Loud File and flicking through Facebook videos trying to decide which were real and which weren’t. In some, especially the clear epoxy floors, I couldn’t tell. Then, I ran across the below. It is an answer to an e-mail on the Bearhawk chat group that became a thread a mile long and got much more serious and philosophical than you’d expect between a bunch of airplane bums, which is thoroughly typical for that group.

The thread was kicked off by Dr. Ben Carson’s response to an Atheist who questioned his view of creation. He said, “I believe I came from God, and you believe you came from a monkey. And you’ve convinced me you’re right.”

This kicked off an in-depth discussion on the chat group about how man has evolved/progressed/etc. and the question was asked of why man appears to have gotten so much smarter in the last couple hundred years or so. The below was my answer.

If you’re not up for numbers and theories, it would be a good idea for you immediately hit the delete button and go on with your morning. I got off on a tangent (surprised right?). Even though I wrote it, re-reading it made my head hurt!

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Your question is “What caused what appears to be a sudden expansion in fairly recent times of our ability to comprehend?” What caused the sudden, exponential explosion of technology in the last 20 or so years? Are we so much smarter than those who came before? (Remember, this was originally written 20 or so, years ago). Was there a sudden, change in our ability to think? Of course not. The answer to the question of increased comprehension is super complex, however, much of it, in my feeble mind anyway, is rooted in numbers, percentages and shared experience.

From the minute that man stood upright, discovered fire (apparently this happened with the first humanoids a million years ago and could purposely start fire about 400,000 years ago) and the concept of tools popped up, he has been in a technology race not unlike what we’ve seen in the last couple of decades. The reason earlier technology phases (stone age, etc.) appear to have taken so long is partially explained by the small numbers of people involved. This means the way in which they gained experience in a given technology was slowed by the small amount of interaction between people doing the same thing. They were inventing in a vacuum and the individuals involved were part of an evolutionary change that saw us starting as near-apes and slowly (super slowly) developing into something else.

With a small, slow moving population, they didn’t have a lot of people watching what a lot of other people were doing so they weren’t feeding off of others’ experience. We learn a lot from others’ experience, a process which, in effect, makes us not only smarter, but able to think better in terms of solving problems and coming up with ideas.

Oh yeah, in those days, survival didn’t hinge on anything except the daily push to find the next meal. This, in turn, meant there wasn’t much spare time to be spent on expanding knowledge. There were those few weirdos two caves over who liked to paint on the walls while the rest of us were looking for the next mammoth or cricket to eat.

It could be said this entire conversation is numbers driven. It’s a given that within any population, regardless of how primitive, there will always be those individuals who are more intellectually gifted than the rest. Let’s say 1 in 1000 is smarter than the rest (a number I just pulled out of my butt). It is generally assumed that man began to develop into humanoids 1-1.6 million years ago (yes, I verified all of this, although I wasn’t there at the time). It is also estimated that the worldwide population at that time was only about 18,500 individuals ranging from Africa to China. So, applying the 1:1000 ratio, there were only 18 people spread all over the populated part of the planet with a higher than normal intellect. That was not enough to invent television, Hollywood or Starbucks.

Early populations didn’t grow at the rate that we think of populations growing. It grew much slower than we’re used to. In fact, from the time of Christ, when the world’s population was around 250-300 million (45 million in the Roman empire), to the mid 1700s, the population was pretty stable. Then, when “civilization” became more advanced (Industrial Revolution was 1750) and food supplies more were both available and easier to share, the population started skyrocketing. We hit 1 billion in 1804. The world population today is around 8 billion with 60% of that being in Asia and nearly 20% in China. The net result is that, although the percentage of smart people has probably stayed the same (1:1000), the sheer numbers of them has literally exploded. This is why China will eat our lunch in a lot of areas at some point in the future if we don’t get our “stuff” together. Their population is four times bigger than ours, so they have four times the brainiacs to work with. Plus, their communal experience is being shared by so many in so many different disciplines that their national intellect will grow at an ever-increasing rate. They are no smarter than we are but there are many, many more of them. And, of course, they steal a lot of good stuff from others, which accelerates the trend.

A question has been asked when we were speaking about evolution, were we talking about physical, mental or spiritual evolution

In my mind, the brain developed right along with the body but got a major injection of the smarts when Cro-Magnon/Homosapien man replaced Neanderthal about 40,000 years ago, which was mostly an accident of evolution. His brain was apparently wired slightly differently. That’s when “modern man” man took the stage.

The spiritual aspect happened long, long before man, as we know him, came on the scene. It’s only logical that the creature that was become man always had a difficult time coping with death. For that reason, virtually every phase of man’s development, from humanoids on, has had some form of spiritual development attached to it. However, the very early humanoids left little physical evidence of it. In other words, in my opinion, man wasn’t far from the discovery of fire when he invented religion because he couldn’t cope with the idea of being dead. He wanted more, so he invented beliefs around death, as did every civilization from that point on, the Egyptians carrying it to the extreme.

So, has our brain suddenly gotten smarter? No, but we’re just using more of it and being more efficient in learning from others.

When I originally wrote this, AI had existed for some years, but not nearly as we see it today. AI was a novelty concept often used as a springboard for science fiction films, iRobot being the best known. That was in 2004. 22 years ago (seems like yesterday, doesn’t it?)! The status and open implementation of AI today is such we can’t avoid it. In varying degrees, it is central to just about everything we do. It does no good to complain about it. We’ll just have to live with it, as we do our allergies, being short, colorblind, etc.. 22 years ago, we saw it as science fiction. 22 years from now our grand kids are not going to believe AI had never existed. I’ll bet money that in the ten years or so folks in my age bracket will see the world change so radically we’ll be happy to leave it behind.

I didn’t mean this to ramble on so long. Too much caffeine too early. Sorry. Not sure any of this makes any sense.

And you thought we just talked about airplanes, didn’t you? :-) bd

A question

Just for grins: Have any of you seen anything like the following actually done. If real, it’s very cool! I find it hard to believe epoxy can be poured and polished and it won’t scratch from wear.

Floor

Tree