Hubris Busters
-
-
slice.mit.edu
- 3
Filed Under
Recommended
Prof. Patrick Henry Winston ’65, SM ’67, PhD ’70Just about every summer, I spend some time in San Diego working with the Naval Research Advisory Committee. Of course, sunny San Diego is the center of a vacationer's paradise, so over the years, on weekends, I've enjoyed everything from jai alai in Tijuana to the Hale telescope at Mount Palomar.
I always include a visit to the zoo in my schedule, even though I am not especially attracted to elephants, giraffes, and such. I go exclusively to watch the orangutans.
50,000 years ago, I expect we humans were pretty much on the same level as the orangutans and our even closer relatives, the chimpanzees, from which we differ only slightly in our DNA. We had been around for quite a while, looking pretty much as we do today, but we didn't amount to much. But then, something mysterious happened. We started leaving artifacts behind, we emerged from Africa, and we populated the world, killing off a lot of unlucky species that got in the way. Before long, we conquered fire, built pyramids, split atoms, and invented computers.
We argue endlessly about what exactly happened. Some of us in the field of Artificial Intelligence believe it was the ability to form symbolic descriptions that set us apart, especially the ability to combine symbolic descriptions into ever larger and more abstract concepts.
Whatever it was, it wasn't much. This year, I arrived at the zoo early on Sunday morning, and I saw one of the orangutans use a stick to extract bugs from a hole. Arguably, she was using a tool. I noted that her arms looked so long and her legs so short, she seemed like she was almost standing upright when she walked on all fours.
It occurs to me that if the orangutans had just learned to work their tools a little more, and pitched back a few degrees, maybe MIT would be full of creatures with long orange hair, and we would be in the zoo.
Comments
Leon Fattal
Thu, 08/06/2009 10:35pm
Prof Winston's article has some inaccuracies and ambiguities.
First, homo sapiens emerged from Africa about 100,000 years ago according to the latest archealogical research. However, Neanderthal Man (a closer relative to us than chimpanzees) was in Europe many hundreds of thousands of years before that.
Second, we did not diverge from Orangutans in the biological sense only 50,000 years ago and I'm sure Prof Winston is aware of that. Our common ancestor would have been alive many millions of years ago.
Finally, both homo sapiens and Neanderthal Man (along with another homo whose name escapes me) were making tools much before 50,000 years ago. Tools of many hundreds of thousands of years in age have been found. And therein lies the difference between the orangutan's stick and the tools made by homo x - i.e. homo worked to MAKE the tools (e.g. flint knives, flint spears, wood spears, etc) not just by finding a useful implement such as a stick nearby. However, note that some animals have been found that actually fashion tools to some extent - but not to the same extent as the various homo species have been shown to do.
Panayotis Skordos
Sat, 07/25/2009 9:34am
I'd like to communicate some thoughts that the story of orangutans
leads me to: Mostly-stupid self-centered repeating intelligence.
Between the brain of humans and orangutans there is a small difference
if we look at them on a large scale and their basic mechanism, and if
we do not focus on particular details such as language, mathematics,
common sense knowledge, size and complexity of memory, etc.
Yes, this is a big statement but follow it a little more.
On a large scale our intelligence is quite stupid, nothing very
impressive. Our intelligence is based on repetition, repeating
behaviors, repeating thoughts, repeating songs, repeating knowledge,
repeating everything that we see around. And rarely there is a small
leap into a new understanding. Most of the time, most of the human
brains are just repeating something not very interesting.
The brains of humans and all creatures on earth are probably based on
the mechanism of repetition, starting from the basis of how life is
constructed and organized, eating, absorbing, repeating. If this
vague idea is true, then a major improvement in human intelligence
will not come easily. The only approach we have to arrive at higher
intelligence is to try and be aware all the time of our own repeating,
and to question with logic if each repeating action and thought is
good and desirable or whether it can be relaxed and stop, in order to
allow the brain to leap to some other new understanding.
And then there is another major drawback of current intelligence.
Life on earth is based on competition and survival between creatures,
and this leads easily to the creation of ego, of self-centered
thinking. Self-centered thinking helps a creature to survive, but in
the human brain it also leads to suffering and unhappiness ---
personal and global unhappiness, and often global misery and
destruction. Such achievement by the human brain is not intelligent
action but great stupidity.
Thus, there are two things to try in order to avoid stupidity. First
the human brain must try to be aware constantly of its own repetition
and to question each repeating thought and action. Second the human
brain must try to keep in control the self-centered thinking, while
abandoning it completely would not be good for survival. These two
approaches can help our mostly-stupid self-centered repeating
intelligence to achieve higher levels of understanding and general
good for all creatures.
And finally, a third approach which is being followed by human society
anyways is the development of electronic or artificial
brains. It is possible that such brains may help someday to make a
bigger leap forward in intelligence than humans. Ironically the
pursuit of such electronic or artificial brains comes mostly from
self-centered thinking which can easily degenerate into stupidity. But
this is similar to the development of life on earth being based on
self-centered competition.
Rick Sizemore
Wed, 07/08/2009 4:57am
Just look at how little time we have been on the face of this earth.
The orangutan using a stick to harvest insects is interesting, but I wonder how long it took us to get to that level?
What struck me was your comment about our migration and the destruction we left in our wake. Like a virus in some ways. I only wish I could see where are 50K years from now.