Are We Getting Dumb & Dumber - Or Is New Human Genius Beginning To Flower??

Are Humans Actually Dumb - Or Is This A Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

GENIUS IS WHAT HUMANS ARE - OUR CULTURE WORKS AGAINST GENIUS

We as humans “should” be thinking of every new human - at conception - as a genius - and thus shaping our own cultural and civilizational architecture to facilitate this.

The fact is we accept the current average intelligence - with plentiful evidence that humans are not intelligent - to utterly limit ourselves, our culture - and our evolution.

A more accurate assessment is that all humans have the potential to become geniuses - and that our accepted cultural expectations of humans are incorrect.

Not only incorrect - but they favor the outcome of lesser intelligence by seeing geniuses as the exception - and not the rule.

Our educational systems are designed to accentuate the boring and plodding attainment of knowledge - in stark contrast to the curious and energized - and creative minds - of our young children.

Our cultural architecture selects for lack of intelligence - and selects for those rare geniuses capable of surviving our cultural suppression of genius.

Our cultures regard geniuses as purely genetic aberrations which represent the rare exception - and not the rule.

This means, as if superior intelligence were not burden enough - that genius must overcome the terrible consequences of being considered “different”.

Our culture selects for mediocrity - and marginalizes those who exhibit meritorious talent.

We either place the extremely talented on a pedestal - or essentially exclude such individuals as weird and strange.

Both place the whole concept of genius - at odds with the remainder of society.

A culture which regards every child conceived as a potential genius would develop strategies for enabling this outcome.

The real singularity will become an evolutionary convergence of both human culture and our technological tools.

All of humanity - thru rapid cultural evolutionary shifts - will become far more likely to become a genius.

Our cultural evolution will once again become capable of supporting evolution of our human intelligence, consciousness - and creative insight.

Divergent Evolution Versus Convergent Evolution

Those who simply “Google” these terms will find - predictably - that our understanding of evolutionary science is restricted to culturally acceptable definitions.

This essay supports an emerging scientific paradigm which rejects the accepted science - real science being the art of never trusting the settled science/

Settled science is simply the latest accepted paradigm - a paradigm which fights against any information which criticizes it .

Real science is ever changing - and ever evolving - always morphing into something which is never ever truly “settled science”.

We seem to be experiencing an evolutionary divergence so strong it will force the opposite to happen - an evolutionary convergence - or what might be called - a singularity.

The divergence comes before the convergence - and triggers it into being.

This singularity will function to bring humans into a convergent evolution with the tools they have created - forcing fundamental cultural evolutionary changes which will potentiate favorable biological evolution.

Convergent evolution may occur in the same species - when diverse populations face the same opportunities - thus favoring convergence.

I observe convergent evolution taking place all around us - culturally - as politics, spirituality and philosophy reflect these massive changes.

This essay describes the current evolutionary pressures favoring convergence in human beings - convergence toward the positive incorporation of new opportunities brought by technology.

Convergence - to counteract the divergence - occurring because technology has taken such a harmful turn toward Dark Triad manipulation.

Here, these two opposing terms refer to the concept of both convergence and divergence among a single species - us.

The viewpoint that the “singularity” may simply occur in technology alone - leaves out the fact that this technology is being paid for by human resources - which belong to all of us.

In reality, a singularity affecting one of our own tools - is far more likely to be a part of the process of human coevolution with our tools.

In an healthy balanced society - one supporting true evolution - a tool will not be adapted and used unless it is of benefit.

One glance at my essay from yesterday - sees that our AI and quantum computing tools are being used for the benefit of only the top 1% of our civilized hierarchy.

This represents and extreme anti-evolutionary situation which is simply not sustainable.

Human tool creation is driven by human interaction with the physical and social environment - and by whether or not the tool serves to increase the intelligence and complexity of our species over time.

Thus our tools become entwined into our evolutionary processes thru the synergy between both evolutionary trends and environmental and social pressures.

The trend of human evolution has progressed in fits and starts toward both increasing intellectual capacity and toward more sophisticated biology and culture.

Relatively recently, humans invented a set of digital tools which follow exponential growth - doubling in processing power over time - such as doubling every 2 years, then 1 year, six months, three months, 1.5 months - and onward to shorter and shorter time spans.

The evolutionary exponential growth of our digital and quantum tools is way out of synch with our human cultural and biological evolution.

This represents such a state of imbalance that it will simply be unsustainable.

Currently some evolutionary experts posit that human brain evolution has not continued as we might expect - but was replaced by cultural evolution which has not selected for increasing intelligence.

Interjecting the possibility - that cultural evolution has overridden biological evolution - and has worked against increasing intellectual capacity.

Most theorists posit that cultural evolution favors increased intelligence - but it seems our current realities contradict these suppositions.

How might this be explained?

About 12,000 years ago, marking the end of the last ice age, humans lived in an environment where problem solving was required at nearly every moment in life.

It was necessary to innovate - and to recognize patterns - and to create solutions to complex problems - in order to remain alive.

12,000 years ago rapid cultural changes were taking place as the world warmed, as agriculture was developed - and as humans began living in enormous city states or civilizations.

This is a complex subject cannot be contended with in this essay - leading the writer - and hopefully the reader - to make some large leaps going forward.

Suffice to say, that current advances in linguistics, genetics, evolution and anthropology indicate these dramatic changes did occur about 12,000 years ago.

Living conditions began to dictate that social and economic pressures determined survival rather than pressures favoring physical and mental strength and agility.

In other words humans began living in large populations which selected for conformity - favoring a lower common denominator - a lower bar of intelligence and achievement - over a higher one.

Valuing obedient, docile and civilized workers who fit in and produced the maximum amount of work in a minimum amount of time.

Knowledge was fractured into specialized systems where a single individual would benefit from becoming a highly qualified expert in a circumscribed area.

Thus the kind of polymath achievement we observe in a true genius - becomes discouraged by favoring specialization.

CULTURE MAY EITHER SUPPORT OR DISCOURAGE EVOLUTION

OR, CULTURE ALWAYS SUPPORTS EVOLUTION- BUT OF WHAT KIND?

Where in many cases we might expect that culture serves as a positive factor of evolutionary change - we must accept that the reverse may also be true.

It may well have been that the cultural changes of 12,000 years ago served to limit and to slow positive evolutionary brain growth.

Perhaps forcing evolution to the lowest common denominator.

Brains grow when cultural and biological environmental pressures dictate they must.

The human nervous system grows by leaps and bounds when adequate nutrients are present - and when a human is stressed by circumstances to have to interpret patterns and to innovate and create - or die.

Keeping the human mind and evolutionary processes under wraps culturally or otherwise has serious unintended consequences - consequences we are living thru currently.

Many of our tools have been designed to facilitate our ability to evolve, grow and change culturally - favoring survival and coevolution with the tools.

Currently our technological tools outpace our cultural evolution’s ability to cope with them.

Our tools have become increasingly weaponized against our continued evolution - as our civilization has become increasingly weaponized against the 99% majority.

“Life will find a way.”

―Michael Crichton,Jurassic Park

It would be an extreme understatement to say this weaponization is forcing a wrenching change in human social behavior and interaction - throwing a massive monkey wrench into the works.

The development of AI and quantum computing - developing cancer-like - at exponential warp speed - exists in contrast to our own plodding attempts to keep up.

Human intelligence presently seems to have an overall inverse relationship with technological growth - antievolutionary at best.

This is a hotly debated area - and is a highly complex thing to measure - urging caution in our assumptions.

We may observe that few humans are becoming more well adapted in either cultural or biological evolutionary terms - through the use of technology.

We can be certain that life will indeed find a way - although it may be at the expense of more poorly adapted individuals.

HUMAN INTELLIGENCE MEASURED AGAINST TECHNOLOGICAL PROGRESS

Humans, limited to the advantages of what we currently call “civilized” - simply cannot compete - limited as we all are by the negative psychosocial baggage we carry.

This brings the plodding workhorse aspects of Albert Camus’ Sisyphus into sharp focus.

The potentially brilliant brain of humankind - reduced to performing hard labor under the worst circumstances - hardly favors increasing intelligence.

Thus a possible metaphor for the large disconnect between biological and cultural evolution.

TECHNOCRATIC HUMANS VERSUS WORKER BEE HUMANS

This great divide between humans who are evolving as technocrats - versus those who are ordinary worker bee humans - is readily apparent - and growing wider.

This is an untenable and unsustainable situation - dividing humans into two separate diverging tracks.

Divergent evolution if there ever was one.

With a small elite vanguard of technocrats - most of humanity is forced to be in opposition to what they cannot understand - which forces further divergence.

Evolutionary pressures don’t cease to work just because humans have taken a different route via cultural evolution.

Evolutionary pressure now exists as the increasing gulf between technocrats and technophobes.

Evolutionary pressure will select for a convergence of these trajectories - while traditional cultural pressures will select for divergent trajectories.

Evolutionary pressure - the strong force - is winning out - and dictates that the weaker force - cultural evolution - will lose out to the dictates of evolution.

Evolution favors a change toward increasing human intelligence - and increasing psychosocial harmony - which favors a convergence of these two trajectories.

This means that the “way-out-in-left field” technocrats will find it necessary to adapt rapidly evolving digital intelligence to favor the evolutionary trajectory of human kind.

Used correctly, in line with overall favorable evolution - technology has been shown to demonstrate the ability - thru the positive effects on education - to support increased intelligence.

Thus the pressures of continuing exponential growth of technology will favor convergence of the quality and type of technological tools along with the expanding intellectual capacity these tools will favor.

We must remember that convergence can result from a profound level of divergence.

Those humans unable to adapt positively to the demands of technological change will tend to fall by the wayside - especially a the population becomes far smaller.

We have already seen a humanity fractured by the Covid-19 pandemic.

All around us are humans freaking out as they are not flexible enough to accept such rapid evolutionary change

Simultaneously there is a small group - one which will slowly - yet steadily, follow the more convergent demanding path evolutionary pressure presents.

Conclusions:

To answer the question - are humans actually dumb - or is this a self-fulfilling prophecy?

The latter - humans are hardly dumb - but on the contrary - very intelligent.

It is our culture - our civilization which is dumb.

The civilization which results from this current divergence - will reflexively experience convergence - as the same opportunities to excel become more and more available to the entire population.

AI will be an accepted tool for lifelong learning & creativity - which will become highly valued - and will eventually predominate.

Due to exponential acceleration - we cannot now even begin to fully visualize the evolutionary dynamics of the convergent civilization which will comprise the future.

The future is here, whether we like it or not - and it will be up to the market forces we support - which kind of technology we will be willing to buy:

• Dark Triad Demonic AI Technology for Psychopaths

• Lifelong Learning machine AI Technology for Light Bearers.

See Footnotes for further information on how a divergence may morph into a convergence.¹

1. “Divergence causing a reflexive convergence: an explanation

This intriguing phrase describes a dynamic where an initial divergence – a splitting or moving apart – ultimately triggers a reflexive convergence – a coming back together or increasing similarity driven by self-awareness and adaptation. Let's explore how this might unfold:

1. Initial divergence

• A society might experience a cultural divergence where a shared culture splits into multiple distinct cultures, each developing its own unique practices and norms.

• Alternatively, different cultural groups might become increasingly dissimilar over time due to various factors like geographical separation, social changes, or technological advancements.

• Divergence can also manifest within groups, with individuals or subgroups adopting different beliefs, values, or practices, according to The Personal MBA.

2. Reflexive awareness and adaptation

• As divergence unfolds, individuals or groups become aware of the differences and the implications of those differences.

• This awareness can lead to a reflexive process where individuals and groups examine their own biases, assumptions, and social positions, according to Number Analytics.

• This self-reflection and understanding of their own place within the diverging social landscape, can lead to adaptive responses.

3. Convergent responses

• The awareness of divergence can motivate individuals or groups to bridge the gaps and find common ground.

• This may involve consciously choosing to spend time with people they want to become more like, or joining groups that align with their goals, says The Personal MBA.

• It could also involve actively seeking to understand and appreciate different perspectives, leading to a convergence of ideas or practices.

4. The resulting reflexive convergence

• Ultimately, the initial divergence, by sparking self-awareness and adaptive responses, can lead to a reflexive convergence where individuals and groups, through a conscious process of engagement and adaptation, overcome their differences and forge new connections or renewed similarities.

• This convergence is "reflexive" because it is driven by a conscious reflection on the divergence itself and a desire to adapt and reconnect, rather than simply being a passive response to external forces.

In essence, divergence, by highlighting differences and prompting self-reflection, can trigger a process of conscious adaptation that eventually leads to a renewed sense of connection or similarity. This dynamic highlights the complex interplay between societal trends, individual agency, and the ongoing construction of social reality.”

(From A Google AI Overview)