Coffee and the consciousness of the noosphere. Column in ComputerreOnline #20

Dmytro Shabanov Coffee and the Third Nature Coffee and the co‑knowledge of the noosphere Orientation and disorientation Column in KompyuttereOnline #19 Column in KompyuttereOnline #20 Column in KompyuttereOnline #21 That’s it, it’s time to end the “coffee” columns. This is the last one. We have seen which sources replenish the energy in a cup of coffee and which energetic flows organize its acquisition; how the elements that fall into coffee move, how coffee is woven into the web of resource transmission spun by global humanity, and how it is linked to the functioning of the “third nature” – the technosphere. We discussed several unique features of modern humanity: reliance on non‑renewable resources, use of nuclear energy, directed movement of biogens into artificial biogeocenoses and from them, the globality of resource transfer (developed from the capacity for exchange), the creation of the technosphere (grown from the use of fire), emissions of xenobiotics… The list is full? No. The most important thing is missing – the roots from which these features grew. In all five previous columns we spoke about traits of our species that are reflected in the behavior (and, more broadly, the way of life) of its representatives. Nobel laureate Conrad Lorenz claimed that behavioral traits are, in essence, no different in principle from morphological and physiological ones. These traits arise during organism development, influenced by both the hereditary program and the environment. Richard Dawkins was the first to grasp the significance of the “long hand of the gene”: that the hereditary program of organisms exerts its influence far beyond the individual bodies. The influence of a spider’s genes “extends” to the edges of its web. The influence of a male frog’s genes, which produce a mating trill, reaches the female slowly approaching its call. But is our behavior determined only by genes? Very simplistically, four “levels” of behavioral control can be distinguished. Simple reflexes. Strictly programmed reactions to specific stimuli (e.g., the knee‑jerk reflex or pulling a hand away from pain). Determined by the construction of neural networks, which are genetically set, and can be realized by a very simple nervous system. Instincts. Innate programs triggered by certain signals. They can be more or less rigid; in animals with complex behavior they first manifest as changes in motivation. Genetically determined; the more flexible their implementation, the more complex nervous system is required. The instinctive compass reaction of a night‑flying moth: it flies while maintaining a constant angle to the light rays from a bright source—whether stars or candles. This instinct is far more rigid than, for example, the maternal instinct of a modern woman, which manifests in changing motivations. Individual experience (including conditioned reflexes). The result of establishing associations between different signals. Requires a genetically programmed nervous system of a certain complexity; depending on its sophistication it can more or less flexibly adjust instinctively conditioned behavior to specific conditions. A hydra that learns not to react to regular wave fluctuations accumulates far less experience than an elderly elephantess retaining in memory a “map” of a vast territory, yet their learning capacities share much in common. Cultural inheritance (transmission of behavioral traits from individual to individual). Requires a genetically specified development of a highly complex nervous system, adapted to acquiring new behavioral schemes from other individuals through social interactions. You probably see it all now. Step by step, both the “cost” of controlling mechanisms and the speed of generating new behavioral adaptations increase. All these mechanisms of behavioral control require a certain genetic basis and depend on environmental influences. In the case of simple reflexes the environment merely triggers a reaction; in cultural inheritance a new trait comes from the environment—through other individuals. One of the problems of theoretical biology, which has broken countless copies, is the problem of inheritance of acquired traits. Why did Stalin support Lysenko and not Nikolai Ivanovich Vavilov? It was not only Lysenko’s “social proximity”: when needed, the Soviet authorities easily used people from exploiter classes as well. Lysenko (based on Diamat demagogy) claimed that acquired traits are inherited and that this inheritance would ensure rapid artificial evolution (selection). The existence of a mechanism for inheriting acquired traits eliminates the need for prolonged selection of genetic predispositions for developing those traits! Cultural inheritance arose as a way to transmit local behavioral settings, but, fortunately, it became the most powerful mechanism of inheriting acquired traits found in the self‑accelerating evolution. Cultural inheritance is an expensive adaptation. It is needed only by those species that must acquire new behavioral forms extremely quickly and switch from one mode of action to another. This is the situation faced by the descendants of African forest primates, who began to colonize savannas during climatic cataclysms. However, cultural inheritance is not limited to us. The details of song in passerine birds and hunting techniques in predatory mammals are culturally transmitted. Local cultures differing in food‑acquisition technologies have been described among raven populations in Europe and among chimpanzee populations in Africa. Cultural inheritance in humans has been continuously refined. Language is both a consequence of cultural inheritance and a powerful mechanism of its intensification. Initially, it involved the transmission of experience from each person’s immediate surroundings. Think: until recently, most people’s traits were determined by the narrow group to which they belonged—members of the same tribe, residents of the same village. The next step in the globalization of cultural trait transmission was writing. It allowed, at least partially, to overcome the temporal constraints on human interaction. We are influenced by those who left this world long ago… Perhaps the first personalities in human history—Akhenaten and Nefertiti—still live in our culture, and Nefertiti even remains a symbol of feminine beauty. Many of us still structure our annual cycle according to myths about a Jew who lived about two thousand years ago on the outskirts of the Roman Empire. Reading Augustine of Hippo’s “Confessions” I was struck by a sense of contact with a living person, even though it concerned a resident of a fundamentally different era, a bearer of a fundamentally different experience. Do you remember Carl Jung’s analogy comparing consciousness to the illuminated part of our psyche? Consciousness (“co‑knowledge”) is those mental processes that “see” each other; besides them, there is a vast set of other, unconscious processes, each invisible to an external observer. What boiled in the mind of the Blessed Augustine was fully accessible only to him. Some of it was accessible to parishioners listening to Bishop Hippon’s sermons. Would we have learned that this North‑African thinker of the 4th–5th centuries had formed an understanding of the psychological perception of time if not for writing? For centuries the manuscripts of Augustine’s “Confessions” were available only to a select few. Printing expanded immeasurably the audience he could influence directly. Around 1989–1990, for my birthday I was given Augustine’s “Confessions”… I was so proud to own that text! Dear readers, it is now available to any of you with just a few clicks of the mouse. In the sphere of cultural exchange an area of public accessibility emerged. Processes of our psyche visible from different sides form consciousness. Parts of the cultural‑interaction pool accessible from different sides form… how to call it… the consciousness of humanity? the noosphere? or still the co‑knowledge of the noosphere? It is strange, of course, to define the incomprehensible through the incomprehensible. The concept of the noosphere is vague and admits various interpretations. Yet a few points are probably undisputed: the basis of the noosphere is cultural inheritance; its unity is provided by a publicly accessible cultural fund; this fund develops according to its own laws (one could say it lives its own life); the information revolution has led to rapid expansion of this public fund. Each of us is not exhausted by our contribution to this co‑knowledge. What happens inside us is richer than the manifestations that appear in our interactions with others. What we pour into the publicly accessible cultural fund turns out to be even poorer. Yet this is the path of the “long hand of culture”. We reach out with it to all of humanity, not only the present humanity but also all its future stages that will be able to sustain the existence of co‑knowledge! Thus, the origin of humanity is a crucial transition in the evolution of life, linked to the emergence of a new type of information exchange. Through us something entered this world that had never existed before, and we are interwoven into a single whole by the edges of our individual cultures. Proud of this? Wary of the risks associated with this transition? Live while you can, supporting an information process that is already far broader than any of us! …One intelligent woman wrote in the comments on my site that she can no longer calmly drink coffee in the morning without recalling these columns. That is exactly what I was aiming for! Dmytro Shabanov Coffee and the Third Nature Coffee and the co‑knowledge of the noosphere Orientation and disorientation Column in KompyuttereOnline #19 Column in KompyuttereOnline #20 Column in KompyuttereOnline #21