One of the fun things about having eclectic interests is that books or research topics that led me to learn random things eventually resurface to connect with other things later. About 20 years ago, on a ski trip with my family, I visited a used book store at the ski village and found a book to read during the trip. The book that I picked was “The Lives of a Cell : Notes of a Biology Watcher” by Lewis Thomas.
As I read through the short 148 pages, I became fascinated by observations of biologists about behavior of colonies and individuals in the insect world. What emerged for me as a theme was the idea of observable collective consciousness and possibly the phenomenon of quantum entanglement among organisms that seemed to communicate through no observable physical means.
“The most intensely social animals can only adapt to group behavior. Bees and ants have no option when isolated, except to die. There is really no such creature as a single individual; he has no more life of his own than a cast-off cell marooned from the surface of your skin.”
Lewis Thomas; The Lives of a Cell, pg. 54.
So, that was an interesting little jaunt into imagining the possibilities of collective consciousness, mysterious non-physical communication and quantum entanglement. Within a few months, the topic faded for me, as I moved on to other interests.
Backtrack to Quantum Entanglement
In the ’80’s, I randomly picked out books from the library on various sciences. One such book that struck me hard was “QED – The Strange Theory of Light and Matter” by Richard Feynman. His famous lecture series transcribed into book format brought the arcane post-graduate concepts of Quantum Electro Dynamics down to earth for mere mortals like me. Ever since, I’ve occasionally dabbled in following advancements in quantum theory (as a non-scientist). Years later, I read a book about relationships called “Quantum Love” by Laura Burman. The author references concepts from quantum physics to draw insights into improving primary relationship dynamics. Her simple summarization of quantum entanglement re-awoke my interest in quantum theory.
Here’s a short quote from Wikipedia that attempts to simplify the concept of quantum entanglement:
Quantum entanglement is a physical phenomenon that occurs when a group of particles are generated, interact, or share spatial proximity in a way such that the quantum state of each particle of the group cannot be described independently of the state of the others, including when the particles are separated by a large distance.
Wikipedia – Quantum Entanglement
So, a particle in California, USA that is entangled with a particle in Sydney Australia will instantaneously respond to stimulus applied to either particle. It’s like they are the same particle living in two identical but separately placed bodies.
Okay, so let’s put a pin in this thought and connect it to collective consciousness a bit later.
Enter Memetics
Fast forward to 2017-2018, and I find myself researching and contemplating the possibilities of Artificial Generalized Intelligence (AGI). I started making mental connections with the idea of memetics and the Richard Dawkins’ scientific theories on a concept of memes. In my understanding of memes, I saw that ideas and beliefs traverse a collection of individual human minds and either survive or evolve to take root and to spread to various levels of virality. In this concept, information forms a symbiotic relationship (reward / threat / motivation to propagate) with the host (a collection of human minds).
This observable phenomenon seems to suggest a type of evidence of a collective consciousness at work; a sort of hive mind among the human race. However, it does not suggest anything as mysterious or meta-physical as simultaneous transmission of information among separated organisms; unlike the observations of insect colonies in The Lives of a Cell.
Hierarchical Containers of Intelligence
What these two concepts (memetics and insect colony hive mind) led me to consider was that any collection of neurons can form a capacity to host information and conscious capability; and that any collection of organisms hosting their own cluster of neurons can form a physically disconnected but observably connected container for information and conscious capability. This led to the idea that the foundational building blocks of consciousness (cells, neurons, organisms, colonies, collectives, species, biomes) all form a hierarchy of interrelated and intertwined consciousness.
This deserves to be unpacked a bit. Working top down, this would mean that the following could be true:
- single cell organisms demonstrate skill and knowledge (albeit simplistic and survival based)
- neuron cells seem to be specifically designed to contain knowledge (or more accurately, opinions)
- organisms / animals demonstrate skills and knowledge
- colonies like ant colonies, bee hives and locust groups demonstrate group-think, group coordination and could be said to demonstrate knowledge and skills as a colony collective. (similarly, isolated villages of humans or primates demonstrate as colonies)
- collectives like forest prey (birds, rodents, herd animals) alert one another of predator threats and demonstrate a kind of symbiotic coordination as a collective of “prey”. (Similarly, human cohorts like Gen-X, Millennials or ethnic minority/majority groups operate as collectives).
- species evolve and pass on ancestral skills and knowledge at the instinctual level (“a priori knowledge”), whether by DNA or some other unknown phenomenon.
Following this example of a hierarchical structure of clusters of intelligence containers from single-cell all the way to planet-wide levels allows us to contemplate consciousness beyond individual human consciousness. The old “I think, therefore I am” level of contemplation of consciousness pales in comparison. For millennia, human kind has contemplated our own brilliance and compared other individual animal species with our own individual computational power. We are superior, just ask one of us. What if we are just a minor link in a chain of intelligence of ever expanding structures. Similar to the idea that a self-aware skin cell becomes engrossed in considering it’s own superior intelligence to that of a red blood cell, without realizing that the human organism to which they both belong is truly an unfathomable super-intelligence by contrast. Could mankind be a collection of self-absorbed skin cells contemplating our own genius, while missing the point that we are but components in a greater and unfathomable super-intelligence?
This is not (yet) an article exploring the nature of God or spirit of the universe. But that’s a fun exploration for another day. It is a foundational idea to hold onto as we contemplate the nature of an AGI that is of super-intelligent capability, and how consciousness works in the observable world. We shall stay focussed on AGI (despite my strong urge to fork off into 5 other fun directions).
What’s Next?
If I believe that a phenomenon of collective consciousness is observable, I must wonder what the benefits and effects might be. The obvious topics to explore next include intuition, inspiration, sleeping dreams, trance visions, and the role of the subconscious in each of these. Perhaps I will explore these in upcoming posts.
