Specifically, when the number of active components exceeds some threshold, the communications and interactions become burdens on the components and the system's overall organization and function is compromised. Complexity solves certain problems, but it also creates new problems. Yet, at some point, the complexity threatens to overcome whatever benefits have accrued from gaining it. As these systems age they gain more structure and function as well as more knowledge. This has been true for life on Earth, it is true for human organizations, and it is true for human minds. Simple systems have a way of developing into complex ones. Is this some kind of universal fitness test? Are we facing such a test? If so, will we prove worthy of continuation into the future of our planet? These are very likely questions that we cannot ignore.Įvolution and Hierarchical Cybernetic Systems What if the answer were ‘most’? Is this the possible fate of humanity on this planet? Put very simply, what if we are too clever for our own good? Indeed, Drake's equation includes an estimate of how many civilizations might actually succumb to their own cleverness. But another, scarrier solution to Fermi's paradox is that intelligent life reaches a point at which it cannot sustain itself because it has created an overly complex society without adequate sapience to guide further development. One very obvious answer to Fermi's paradox is that extraterrestrials are hiding from us! Another is that Drake's approach was misleading and that there really isn't much if any life out there in the universe. Fermi asked, if this were the case, why haven't we seen evidence of this? Our Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence ( SETI) has yet to uncover any indications that there are other sentient beings with advanced communications or travel technologies out there in the galaxy. Alan Drake proposed a theoretical model, the Drake equation, which indicated that, given certain not-unreasonable assumptions, intelligent life should be more abundant in the galaxy. He was puzzled by the accumulating evidence, from evolution theory, that life would actually be a common phenomenon in the Universe. Enrico Fermi asked a very relevant question, now called the Fermi Paradox. We have reached a fundamental threshold for testing sentience on our planet. As sapient as we are, it just isn't enough to allow the development of global-scale wisdom in a sufficient number of people that are in positions of authority so as to effect the needed changes. As I asked at the very beginning, why haven't we developed a more perfect world? Indeed why is our world undergoing degradation as a result of our foibles? The answer should now be clear. I often wonder if we have the courage to face up to our weaknesses as implied - that we are not currently sufficiently sapient in light of the problems we need to solve. In this final installment I want to consider that story in terms of the evolution of sapience in our genus, Homo, its current status with respect to the degree to which it is expressed in modern populations, and its future potential as the next stage in human evolution. I suspect the story of our species' evolution has more chapters to open. The capacity of the brain to build wisdom over ones life is newly emergent and underdeveloped. As a species, on average, we appear to be only somewhat sapient. But we are not fully mature sapient adults, on average. We have emerged from ape-hood as beings with superior future-thinking, mental models of both ourselves and others, and the language facility to share abstractions among ourselves. However, humanity finds itself in an awkward adolescence of consciousness. It is the emergence of elaborated strategic management of the self, coordination management (tactical and logistical) in the social group, and the beginning of strategic management for the group in which we see the nature of wisdom and its relevance to human success in evolutionary terms. The story of sapience and its conjoined twin, 2½-order consciousness (awareness of being aware), is told in the evolution of hierarchical cybernetics, both within the individual human brain and in the societal matrix in which humans operate. Overview “Do not go gentle into that good night.”ĭylan Thomas The Emergence and Development of Sapience The Relationships Between Sapience, Cleverness, and Affect Sapience George Mobus The University of Washington Tacoma,

Sentience vs sapience vs consciousness