In the last few posts, I have been talking a lot about goals. Goals for humans, for humanity, for nature, for evolution. All and sundry seem to be brimming with goals.
\n
\nI guess I should point out that I mean “goal” in a purely ontological sense, similar to people like Richard Dawkins et al. For example: when I say that the goal<\/i> of a protein compound is to replicate, I only mean that protein compounds that replicate, are the ones that end up existing. And hence, one can imagine<\/i> as if the existing protein compounds had a goal of replicating.<\/p>\n
One does not presuppose free-will, consciousness, intelligence or anything for the above concept of a goal.<\/p>\n
This answers one question that some people had – that evolution was supposed
\nto be a random spontaneous process, wherefrom does a “goal” come from?
\nIn the above ontological sense, the “goal” of evolution, of the organic players
\nin evolution, can be said to be survival. <\/p>\n
But in the previous post, I’ve said that the goal of Nature is too complex to describe. If it can be summed up in one word – survival – how come it is too complex to describe?<\/p>\n
Well, imagine you are giving a math exam, and you have to find the integral of a complicated looking function. It is clearly insufficient to say that the answer is some<\/i> function. Saying that the goal of evolution is survival is almost that bad. “Survival” has finer and finer nuances. As the previous post pointed out, for protein compounds, it was mere replication. But for animals, it was being happy. Being in a happy state is a finer nuance of surviving. Similarly, for humans, to remain in a vegetative\/bovine state of idle happiness is ground finer – we have to create, to control and to know. To achieve creative progress.
\nThis is a finer nuance of survival than merely remaining happy. In a sense, we survive “better”.<\/p>\n
We do not know how far this would go. That is, we do not know the “ultimate” nuance of survival.<\/p>\n
Addendum to Addendum: Given that the goal is merely ontological, why should the agents in the present follow that goal? If individual human agents have a goal to be happy and go live a simple life in a farm, then that has more face value than some non-existent metaphorical construct of a goal eh?<\/p>\n
You see, evolution finds finer and finer nuances of survival (of all the agents). In other words, the functions that have “evolved” enable the agents to survive “better”. In that sense, it should be the goal of the agents to use<\/i> those functions. The continuation of the increase in survival complexity depends on it.
\nThe concept of free-will confuses people here. An agent can choose<\/i> to do what it wants right? Isn’t this need more real? People don’t understand that these needs – to be happy, to achieve creative progress – are all tools at the hand of evolution. Or rather at the hands of the agents in the evolutionary pool.<\/p>\n
These needs\/functions are evolutionarily hardwired into us. So, when I say we “should” work towards creative progress, it’s required both from an evolutionary standpoint, but also from a fulfillment standpoint.<\/p>\n
Another doubt people have is how does it make sense to talk about working towards the goals of humanity. “Humanity” as a superstructure does not exist, does it even make sense to work towards its goals? That is why I was talking about distributed computing. Each agent is next to useless. But together they describe a complicated goal function. <\/p>\n
The set of interacting species, with their individual goals, by construction, define some global goal function of survival.
\nThe set of interacting humans, with their individual goals, by construction, define
\nsome global goal function – which is a finer nuance of survival. Creative Progress. This is purely a high level view. <\/p>\n
Individual humans have to create, to control, to know. This is at the level of an individual human. So long as he does that, as opposed to sit in a chair being day-dreamingly happy, the global thing is automatic.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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