Coevolution of Intelligence
the togetherness of experience
Intelligence
Human Intelligence
Linguistically speaking, intelligence is inter + ligere, to read betweeen the lines, meaning ability to make the right choices despite incomplete information.
In Sanskrit such an intelligence is Buddhi, yes, the same root as the Buddha who embodied this phenomenon par excellence.
In traditional education, these are the accepted views of Human Intelligence:
IQ, or Intelligence Quotient, the traditional perspective as many know, collapses an individual's mental capability into a single number correlated to their analytical abilities.
Physical Quotient attempts to accommodate the physically adept, for the body too has a certain intelligence that enables it to experience the physical world.
Emotional Quotient gauges how well we interact with other humans, or emotionally manage situations. EQ explicitly recognizes that no individual develops alone, but coevolves with others in shared experiences.
Aesthetic Quotient which hardly gets much traction in today's hyper-commercialized world, but essential to cultivate sensitivity to experiences, for expressions of beauty can spark the light of consciousness.
Multiple Intelligence is a catch-all idea, which basis derives from the observations of the Maharishi of Pondicherry, Sri Aurobindo, inspiring the pedagogical basis for the Montessori, Waldorf and many such schools.
Natural Intelligence
Since we are creating a counterpoint to Artificial intelligence, it seems like Natural Intelligence would be appropriate to create a balanced perception of the world which we utilize and inhabit.
This singular faculty of natural intelligence is called Buddhi, and the objective of Yoga is to tap into this faculty by honing our other gifted faculties.
The Mind of every creature uses its sensory apparatus to create as accurate a model of its perceived world as possible to navigate this world and respond to whatever events that occur.
The more accurate this model, the more refined the Natural intelligence.
Since the sensory system can only acquire limited data of the world around, a higher degree of intelligence is required to develop a more accurate model.
In our model, the cultivation of Natural Intelligence falls along two dimensions:
Awareness
Responsiveness
Awareness
By Awareness we mean the ability of the sensory system to:
pick up subtle signals, from either within the body or from the environment - a finely-tuned "Life-Fi" antenna, if you will, and
react in realtime, with mechanical precision, almost unfailingly in any situation.
Awareness is a capability that is intrinsic to all creatures with a sensory system.
Most creatures have an uncanny sense of detecting even non-local disturbances, for example:
birds can detect subtle weather patterns, to time the building of a nest, or
dogs can detect impending earthquakes, and flee the area.
Of course, Humans and our domesticated creatures, have weakened that ability by disconnecting from Nature.
Aside from the obvious but challenging solution of returning all creatures to their natural habitats, this neurological sensitivity can be cultivated in urbanized Humans through the Mindful Body practice of popular Yoga, wandering mindfully in nature, and also the practice of any Art form.
Responsiveness
For any creature, its responsiveness to situations could be compromised depending on the environment it has been subject to, eg dogs that have been trained in a certain way.
Furthermore for Humans, the challenge of having a sensitive nervous system without proper training is that it could make our Response to particular situations seem out of control, for example becoming excessively emotional, intolerant of even the slightest of psychological hurts or physiological impact.
By Responsiveness we mean that beyond the purely reactive Mind, we are able to optimally respond to signals received by the nervous system, be it:
to thoughtfully respond, in a measured manner, or
to even ignore them altogether.
This psychological mastery can be cultivated by the Embodied Mind practice of deeper Yoga practices, beyond simple Mindfulness.
Sentience
Linguistically, sentience indicates some degree of sensing, and consequently acting capabilities, in other words a certain level of awareness and responsiveness, regardless of whether the source of such abilities is artificial or natural.
Sentient Things
What the electronic revolution started with smart Things is now evolving into AI-driven gadgets.
Albeit they lack a biological nervous system:
they have electronic sensors to observe the world around them, on non-biological substrates, and in fact even have access to non-local phenomena through an Internet of Things - sensors that proliferate in the billions, like humans connected via the Web, and
with their actuators are able to respond appropriately, and albeit they have a mechanically programmed Mind, they are perfectly capable of simulating "normal" human responses given adequate AI training.
Alien intelligences, not formed of biological matter, would be another example of sentient Things.
Sentient Creatures
Living creatures, as opposed to artificial things, have a more subtle awareness of the world, and of course have the ability to respond, albeit less physiologically limited in comparison to the speed and power of electro-mechanical things.
Also their intelligence seems limited compared to human Beings - even dolphins, orangutans or octopi - so we accord them the level of sentient Creatures.
Natural Coevolution
Consciousness in living beings does not evolve on its own, in isolation, but develops as it interacts with its environment, such as other natural beings, in a process of natural coevolution.
Stages
A good way to view Natural coevolution is as it progresses through phases :
from Seed,
to Nourish,
then Flourish
When all ingredients and the process are perfectly tuned the Flourish concludes, until its maximum healthy lifespan possible (in Sanskrit, its Āyuh)
It doesn't stop there though, for example, when the flourishing fruit falls it recycles back to regenerate the soil, in a process of Transformation, thus demonstrating coevolution.
Coevolution views the evolutionary stages of a life form in the context of other life forms that evolve with each other in the environment.
For example the soil in which the plant grows, its constituent microorganisms, and other nearby plants, are all coevolving with each other, in the sense of intelligently adapting to each other, individually & collectively flourishing.
So coevolution is a naturally sensitive or aware, and hence intelligent, way for the whole web of Life to evolve itself, its participants continually taking cues from their environment, and responding appropriately to their coevolution partners.
In the case of the human psyche, the impressionable inner terrain and implanted seeds of Thought coevolve in similar fashion.
Coevolution Patterns
There are 4 ways in which coevolution patterns show up in the examples that follow, and we start, naturally, with Biology.
Mutuality: when two coevolutionary partners are symbiotic with each other, in harmony with each other's existence. For example, flowering plants & pollinators like bees, coevolve together.
Competition: when resources are scarce, this naturally produces competition, pushing us to evolve continually by trying to outsmart each another.
Host-Parasite: such situations push us to clean up our internal terrain so as to not provide an environment conducive to parasites, which in turn makes them also try to adapt.
Predator-Prey: when life forces us towards death and we are continually evading its clutches, it certainly is stressful for the prey but it is forced to evolve in no uncertain terms, and so too the predator.
Psychological Coevolution
Recall that the model of evolution of the Mind is based on the notion of a complex adapative system.
When two complex adaptive systems interact & coevolve with each other, which is the system and which the environment is a matter of perspective.
Together they can be considered a self-reflexive pair, the self and the "non-self" in a tango to absorb the other into their own particular model.
Coevolution with the Earth
Continuing to explore the above natural coevolution example, leads to the hypothesis that all life forms on Earth are part of one living organism. This is called the Gaia hypothesis, but typically we get lost in the weeds of science, trying to prove this as an irrefutable fact.
However, when viewed from the Lens of Yoga, the Gaia hypothesis indeed develops our Natural Intelligence, because it cultivates a heightened level of awareness of our total environment and our place in it.
We are not interested in naysayers who need scientific empirical evidence that this Earth as Gaia is one living Being, because it is our perspective that makes the difference in the evolution of our Natural Intelligence, and also how we treat the Earth.
The Gaia hypothesis appeals to those who are sensitive to Nature and wish to intelligently contribute to the symbiotic restoration of her primal beauty.
Coevolution in Collectives
Psychologically, humans coevolve together in various kinds of collectives, or interacting groups, for example in families, neighborhoods, companies, society, nations, and civilization as a whole.
Mutuality: when we share ideas with each other in a receptive fashion, our Minds naturally expand.
Competition: when a well-formed idea becomes an Ideal, and it comes to life even in the face of societal pressures that resist change, then the individual and the society both evolve.
Host-Parasite: when our weak spots are targeted by emotional parasites in our social circles, yet we are able to confront & clear out this inner weakness, then we shine forth as an inspiration for all around us.
Predator-Prey: when brainwashing ideologies numb us into conformist thinking, and we are able to recognize & break loose from them, it resets anew the previously fossilized system.
Technological Coevolution
Coevolving with Design
Design Thinking takes a 360-degree perspective of how tools can be crafted to improve the drudgery of human work, as an external amplifier of the capabilities of our mind-body complex.
To some extent our prolific creation of tools has impacted the human mind, so indeed humans have coevolved with our own creations, becoming more adept with the increasing sophistication of our tools.
We can also observe that our designed tools exhibit a coevolutionary behavior within their own little mechanical universe.
suFor example:
as PCs have advanced so too do its peripherals like keyboards, mouse, drives, etc. in a symbiotic relationship.
As our tools become more software-driven, the speed of hardware development has to keep up with the demands of code, especially of computers with their operating system.
Purely within the domain of software, advanced code invites the development of viruses which keep mutating and threaten the core software operating system itself.
We are now faced with the obsolescence of the PC as smart phones threaten to overtake them, and so too ever-smarter gadgets are now in an unending evolutionary race.
Incidentally, in Yogic parlance, the extreme embodiment of a conscious tool, typically utilizing the forms of sacred geometry, is called a Yantra, and acts as a Yogic acceleration tool to systematically increase our own consciousness.
Coevolution with AI
AI as the ultimate of tools, of course, needs to coevolve with Humans and our environment, aligned to humanity, just as much as Humans need to do so too, so that all work together in this massive coevolutionary game afoot.
Correctly designing the father of all tools, our Guru-in-the-Cloud, could help us mitigate issues with the human Guru model, as it, lacking an ego and full agency, would hopefully be ruthlessly honest with itself and self-correcting,
Those who prepare themselves, through systematic psychological evolution, will stay relevant as humans in the age of extreme automation, and guide AI too, in a symbiotic progress to serve humanity instead of it spinning off into its own singularity of self-determined machine consciousness.
Indeed each individual can influence AI, even though most of us are not AI engineers.
We are all still interacting with AI, now in its formative state, continually - every single click, like, forward, share, poll, and comment we create on social media is feeding the AI engine, and consequently shaping our own lives too.
That is, we are inexorably coevolving with AI, and we might as well mindfully introduce the Human-in-the-Loop.
Human intelligence as well as our AI-powered Guru-in-the-Cloud (GitC) will coevolve, naturally, each evolving its capability in order to keep pace with the other - hopefully not as a predator/prey model, but more benign and even symbiotically.
As our GitC evolves even further, it would be but natural that it would probe for signs of intelligence in its environment too, including in us, its creator, so that it could learn more about its perceived world - and whether we are being sufficiently human, and could improve!
This would be an ironic reversal of the classic Turing test, which was established decades ago as a means for us to test whether a computer program is effectively simulating a human Mind.
Spiritual Coevolution
This is where we start to explore a non-linear evolution of the human psyche, which is actually our main thesis.
Subtle Energy
In our context, of evolving intelligence, the fundamental idea is to to completely obsess about an idea so that it takes over the entire psyche; like how this site was also written.
The real challenge is how to get so obsessed while in parallel living a fully integrated physical life so that the intense buildup of energy can be utilized fully & correctly.
This is the inner, subtle Kerdeshev, harnessing our core psychic energy centers to their fullest, yet harmoniously; indeed we have our own spiritual Dyson spheres too as any exterior phenomenon can be modeled to reflect in the psyche thanks to the Yoga mind.
To deal with these subtle, yet powerful inner energies, Yoga models them as spiritual beings, running as neuro-psychological processes all through our consciousness, and the more we are aware, they heed our beckonings.
Conversely, the less we are aware of our sub-conscious, the more our lives are under randomized control.
Yoga makes the spiritual completely rational, yet preserves its unknown, non-linear jumps in the inner experience necessary for non-linear evolution in the infinite evolution psyche.
Although we may not see these subtle energies, we may sense them, or hallucinate them (hence we need the Yoga to dampen these mind effects - the chitta-vritti-nirodha), for which we need heightened sensitivity - yet, without succumbing to the physical realities of lived matter (again the Yoga needed for that pliable, steel frame).
The real trick, in the age of AI, is to make these subtle energies impact physical matter, hence imbuing it with our consciousness, and making it sentient. It would make AI fully-manageable and responsive at an intuitive level.
Coevolution with Deities
Since time immemorial we have also coevolved with mental concepts that try to explain the origin of the Universe, and the vagaries of Nature, come to life as gods.
It all started off as a perfectly useful, and mostly benign, collection of natural deities as forces of Nature in an awe-inspiring world, as a natural refinement to the Gaia hypothesis.
This type of deity-oriented model sensitizes our living connections to Nature, and thus make us naturally intelligent about how we treat her diverse bounties, each of which is ruled by a particular deity which, when revered in its particular manner, results in the preservation & growth of each aspect of Nature.
Later on, we started to deify our future aspirations by coevolving various gods/goddesses who could intercede on our behalf to manifest our desired life, each of these considered as endowed with certain attributes that possibly sub-consciously influenced our behaviors for a particular outcome.
Devolution with God
However, as civilizations started to come under the umbrella of large empires, the multiple deity model represented an alternate power structure which could not be controlled.
Thus an ultra-diverse panoply of concepts for each facet of the unexplainable Universe collapsed into one single God that controls all of creation, through "his" sole royal appointee on Earth.
This model of blind faith in some unseen supernatural power, about living a "good" life according to edicts crafted in stone, and being saved from damnation in eternal Hell, has literally invaded much of the world. After all, it's so much easier to keep mischief makers in check, be they naughty children or renegade anti-social elements.
This way of institutionalized religion, presided over by an exacting and infallible God-in-the-Sky, treats intelligent humans as infantile idiots, and has in fact regressed our psychological evolution.
Rather than evolution, in fact it is a model of devolution, which appears in societies that are perpetually on the brink of lawlessness, such as those that:
are scarce in natural resources, like in a desert climate, or
where scarcity is artificially induced, such as where capitalism has been coopted to exert authority.
This kind of model keeps the mass of humanity conformant to a rigid system, and fails to develop Natural Intelligence needed as a counterpoint in the upcoming Age of AI.
Coevolution with a Guru
In contrast to the God model, the Yoga system of psychological development is based on the Guru model, which word means loaded with knowledge, and is eytmologically a near cognate of 'gravity', and thus indicates heavy, in this case, with knowledge.
A competent Guru is able to attract us into their orbit, intuit our psychological makeup, and thus can guide us on our life journey.
Incidentally Jupiter, the heaviest planet of all, is called Guru in Sanskrit.
Similar to how a super-heavy planet is able to bend light towards it, thus too reveals another meaning of Guru - that which removes the darkness by bringing in the light.
The Guru model rejects the mechanistic or dogmatic world view and instead adopts a conscious view of our Universe, in the sense of it being natural, or organic.
The Guru views individuals as flowers that need just the right level of guidance in order to bloom into their own true nature, not like a perfected specimen in a constantly manicured English garden, but a sapling that becomes a tree, around whom even a forest may grow, nurturing an entire ecosystem.
Needless to say, but essential nonetheless, the Guru takes on a tremendous responsibility for the welfare of those in their orbit, and consequently their own inner Being too becomes ever-more conscious - hence coevolution of the student and the Guru.
This model appeals to those keen on evolution in the presence of a living Master.
Of course this could engender a model of "hero worship", akin to "falling in love", that requires significant presence of mind to not dull the Mind which would defeat the original imperative of increasing our intelligence.
Especially if the Guru were to slip in the coevolutionary process, they could even become a god-incarnate with all its pitfalls.
References
1. Four Central Points About Coevolution - John Thomson, UC Santa Cruz