Neoteny

 Neoteny


Neonate means newborn, so a persistent very youthful state would be reasonably termed 'neonateny', but neoteny is the dictionary word and will have to do.


Evolution produced hardware by encoding chemical and physical structures first and then related behaviors. 


Evolution recognized the inefficiency of this process, the incredible amount of time and energy required for one species to evolve to another.


When learning appeared in the evolutionary process, adaptive changes occurred more rapidly, speeding up the process by orders of magnitude. 


Learning was adopted in this way with now exponential gains, and the dominance of intelligent species, humans explicitly at the apex of this process. (There can be no apex without the base, the means by which the power of the sun and geogical processes are transformed into life, which is neccessary to sustain biologically based learning).


We in turn, have recognized the potential of learning far more rapidly than we had been many times over at any given moment in human history, and the exponential of that exponential is applying very obviously now.


The energy required to sustain this explosion of intelligence can only be engineered by massive substrate independent intelligence enabling what were once humans, to become a galactic or multi-galactic entity, free of the constraints of biology on a given planet, or in an environment mimicking it.


With regard to animals on this earth, the bigger our brains, the more infantile are our bodies for longer portions of our lives. Becoming permanent newborns who never need to walk, would seem to us to be a massive disability in our here and now. 


If a collective mind can exist in a perpetually powered intergalactic device, a primitive biological body (and brain) becomes a joke, but a machine of this nature would have no need for a sense of humor, and the punch line would be nebulous.


If we are really smart, we 2025 CE humans would do what we need to during this precious moment in this galaxy, in this solar system, on this earth now, to preserve the good life, as we understand that concept, for all of us.


As I am old in human terms, I have no confidence that we, the species, is capable of doing the right thing. Our behavior is shackled by the past, and encaged by the future, and there is no one managing the zoo.


Without good management we will become extinct in due time, like so many species on earth do. Evolution will dominate, and it will be a very long time before the guitar is reinvented.


Aubrey Lieberman 

3/8/25

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