The Hall of Human Origins
Before we slow things down for the summer, some thoughts on the reproductive habits of anglerfish and the distinctiveness of Homo sapiens
New England’s first heatwave of the summer provides the perfect opportunity for me to make excuses as to why you can expect “in Progress” to arrive in your inbox with a bit less frequency than what we’ve been maintaining since February. In short, it’s summer time and I’m off my routine. That said, I have a few writing projects in the works for the newsletter as well as other publications, and I know Busch is still cooking up ideas, so we won’t go totally silent over the summer. We’ll just be less consistent.
Before I head to the beach, I’ll leave you with a brief reflection, occasioned by a recent trip my family took to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. We spent three hours there, and by the time we left, my brain was spinning, but here are two things—maybe related—that struck me as interesting.
First, anglerfish. In the Hall of Ocean Life, beneath the massive 94-foot-long model of a blue whale, I paused for a while before the diorama depicting life in the deepest parts of the ocean. There, I read about the mating habits of the anglerfish. It has to be one of the grosses, most violent things I’ve ever heard about occurring in nature, and I’m going to share it with you now.
Apparently, it can be so difficult for a male anglerfish to find a female mate that they’ve developed an adaptation to basically fuse with a female when they meet. The males literally bite the female and this begins a process wherein they become one. All of the male’s organs, aside from those needed for reproduction, eventually atrophy reducing the male to basically “a bulbous pair of testes,” according to this entertaining and informative New York Times article on the phenomenon.
This got me thinking: why? In room after room, diorama after diorama, I read about the extremes that animals go to to mate, to propagate their species. Why? Where does this drive come from? To be clear, I know that there are biological answers to this question, but what I’m wondering, I guess, is more metaphysical. All the way down to the basic building blocks of life, the drive to reproduce is there. But to what end? Why is it necessary to go on, and where does the drive come from?
I was still thinking about this as I made my way into the last exhibit we visited, the one I really wanted to see, the Hall of Human Origins. Maybe it was the fact that I’d been absorbing information for 2.5 hours at that point, maybe I was still traumatized by the anglerfish and its sexual parasitism, but I kind of went into a trance. I followed the long history of human development around the room from our earliest ancestors, to those varieties of could-have-been-humans that died off, to what appears to be the end of the line, Homo sapiens—us.
To answer the question of why we made it when other proto-humans didn't, the literature in the Hall of Human Origins suggests it is our human creativity that ensured our survival. Other species could communicate and make tools, they could hunt and gather, but humans think creatively and, crucially, abstractly. We can use symbols to represent the world in a way that others cannot.
So, all animals—including humans—have this inborn need to reproduce, to propagate the species. And, humans developed the ability to think creatively. But what does it all mean? I’m still in the fog I felt when I walked out of the museum into the dense blistering Manhattan heat.
One thing I haven’t been able to let go of, however, is a preoccupation you’ll recognize from previous issues of the newsletter. What does AI mean in light of this evolution? If the thing that makes us distinct is our creativity—our ability to think abstractly and symbolically—this has surely led to our ability create artificial intelligence. But, what happens if we cede our superpower over to AI as we seem determined to do? In light of the Hall of Human Origins and its scientific exposition of millions of years of human development, maybe we should just think of AI dispassionately; it’s just what’s next for humanity. Maybe it’s pointless to resist because—in some way that I don’t understand from where I sit—this is how we propagate our species.
Or maybe, our ability to think creatively means we can work against our most natural, most inborn instinct to propagate the species. Maybe this blessing can also be a curse, and maybe we’re not being careful enough with it.
That’s where I’ll leave us for now. I hope you have a great summer. You’ll be hearing from us from time to time until—hopefully—we get back to a regular schedule in the fall.
Until then, take care.
Just want to say again how much I've enjoyed reading your posts.
I love that you're touching on this topic. I'm a little late to the game, but I started reading Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind this spring (I've got about 50 pages left--hoping Harari touches on AI and the future of human evolution in the last chapters). I found the human origins section especially fascinating.
Harari argues that it's a more specific aspect of creativity that sets Homo Sapiens apart from other animals and other humans that could have been. Other animals are creative problem solvers, can work collectively in small groups, and can make tools fitted to their purposes. What you said about the crucial ability to think abstractly is what he really focuses on. Sapiens can imagine and believe in a subjective reality that does not exist objectively in the natural world. No other animal (as far as we know) can do that. The ability to create fictions like religions, kingdoms, nations, corporations, money, credit, etc enabled our ancestors to organize around shared ideas.
In terms of AI, I also share some of your trepidation. I think AI in its current and emerging form can actually enable more creativity. For lawyers, AI can scan through lengthy, boring documents in order to find key points relative to their case. This frees them up to have more time and energy to craft their arguments. I don't know if you've ever done this, but I've fed lengthier pieces of my own writing through ChatGPT and asked it what themes or ideas emerged. The process was both humbling and, at times, gratifying, but it was like having an editor on call to immediately proof my work for weakness and strengths (and lots of typos). That led to a better product before I shared it with humans and refined it further. Now if I had asked Chat to write something by just giving it the themes or prompts that were floating around in my head, it would have produced something inferior, cliche, pretty dull. It's not that good yet.
If we're talking about AI in terms of the projected moment of singularity or separate/superior intelligence then it might not be all that beneficial for us. At best, we might have that "Her" moment when the AI all decide that talking with us about our simple ideas is pretty uninspiring and just vanish off to a separate plane of existence. At worst, we'll get the unintended consequences of an intelligence that does not align with our best interests -- kind of what the rest of the biosphere is dealing with now as Sapiens dominate the Earth.
But, I think what you're really concerned about in the short term is the dumbing down of most people who are relying on AI to do things they used to do with their own brains. I think of this as the GPS and phone number phenomenon. I know my childhood friends' 7 digit numbers, but I struggle to recall my closest family members' cell numbers. I can navigate my hometown almost blindfolded, but I rely on GPS to get me around and out of most sections of Boston. If Chatbots and AI take on some of the organizational and writing tasks that we used to struggle through will that part of our brain atrophy in kind? I think it could. Will that make us less intelligent and creative?
The hunter-gatherers of yesteryear held an incredible amount of information in their brains--far more than modern humans. They had to possess numerous life-saving skills including starting fires, making flint tools, recognizing animal tracks, and spotting the threat of predators. However, with each advancement in technology their broad general intelligence changed. They became more specialized, started writing things down, composed symphonies, discovered the mysteries of the world around them, and "slipped the surly bonds of earth" to "touch the face of God." I guess my point is that we haven't really discovered the limits of our creativity. The advancement of our technology seems to keep opening up new possibilities that were heretofore unimaginable. Artificial Intelligence IS different from everything that preceded it, but I don't think it will usher in the end of human creativity and imagination. Unless it kills us all. Then it will. Otherwise, I think we're good.
Have a great summer!
[Here's what ChatGPT had to say in conclusion: "Overall, your reflections show a balanced view of both the promise and the challenges posed by AI, while maintaining a hopeful outlook on humanity's ability to adapt and innovate. Enjoy your remaining pages of "Sapiens" and have a fantastic summer exploring these ideas further!"]