What if we could see the planet Earth and its inhabitants as one giant global intelligence?
A trio of researchers recently tackled the question of intelligence as a planetary scale process.
Captain Planet is a theory that we like to call it here at Neural.
It's a bit of a doozy. The paper is intriguing, but I thought it was boring and optimistic.
Here is an excerpt from the abstract.
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.
Is anyone else getting Dune vibes?
You weren't expecting this to be about aliens? Neither were we. Thanks for PR.
The University of Rochester's press release implicates the research in the quest for extraterrestrial life.
“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,”[lead author Adam Frank] 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.”
This is about climate change. We'll meet aliens if we live long enough to solve climate change.
It's definitely, yeah. According to the researchers, observations on how Earth's climate adjusts to technological advancement will give us insight into what we should be looking for when we search for signs of advanced intelligence in the universe.
The ebb and flow between the unfettered world before the advent of technology, the destruction of the climate by the use of technology, and the ultimate saving of the planet is described by the researchers.
They said it in their words.
We believe the concept of planetary intelligence holds promise in providing a framework for understanding possible paths of long-term inhabited planetary evolution that is both broad and deep. Most important, it may ultimately help unite disparate perspectives into a single explanatory paradigm for the transitions in the Earth-system observed in the past, with what we are experiencing now and will experience in the future evolution of the Earth.
It seems like humans will grow up to save the planet from the harm we have caused. Climate change is our responsibility, but it is not our fault because the world is us.
It's nice to be off the hook, but we have to figure out how to fix the problems. The researchers say we should start thinking globally.
Per the paper:
Our explicit definition of planetary intelligence is the acquisition and application of collective knowledge, operating at a planetary scale, which is integrated into the function of coupled planetary systems.
Science people. We will grab ground-truth data from the whole planet and shove it in our planetary systems.
Is that grouchy? Sorry. I don't feel like a single blameless neuron in a planetary intelligence scheme.
The paper concludes:
An exploration of an exploration of planetary intelligence can draw together three domains of study: the evolution and function of Earth’s biosphere; the current emergence of the technosphere in the Anthropocene; and the astrobiology of worlds inhabited by technologically capable exo-civilizations.
It's a little different. When it comes to imagining the ramifications of human-caused climate shift, a thought experiment where we view intelligence from a planet-scale point of view is helpful.
It feels nice to think of the climate crisis as just teething troubles, as we eventually find our place as part of the Earth's self-preservation machine.
Humans aren't bystanders trying to overcome the hand we've been dealt.
We are the architects of our own nightmares. Every system built to protect itself is faltering under the strain of humanity, from the individual biospheres separated from savannah lions to the polar ice caps that were not used for millions of years until air conditioning was invented.
We are parasites. We take more from the planet than we give.
Our evolution towards planetary intelligence may be the reason for the climate shift. The planet is becoming uninhabitable because humans are greedy and dumb.
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