This was such a great post! theadvancedapes, I like your brain. Atechnogenesis: an event in cultural evolution when cultural replication can independently occur within a substrate of its own design. Culture Code: carried in symbols (i.e, A, B, C, D, E, F, G / 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 / + – x % $ ) and structured within language. I pulled these two definitions because I feel like they are reliant on each other. Am I correct in my understanding of how the occurrence of atechnogensis would happen: Humanity would have to create a Culture Code, once humanity created a Culture Code, this Culture Code created by humanity then creates it's own Culture Code. One Culture Code then creates another Culture Code and this called Cultural Evolution. The product of this we would call Atechnogensis? With Culture Code, is there any human activity that falls outside the scope of culture code? Thanks, great post!
Thanks for the comment water. First, yes, culture code and atechnogenesis are the two key concepts relevant to this discussion. Well, humanity is a product of both a chemical and a cultural code. These codes are structured by the genome and by language. In this framework you can think of the genome as being composed of nucleotides (the constituents of the chemical code), where as language is composed of symbols (the constituents of the culture code). The difference between these two codes is that one (i.e., the genome/biology) can grow replicate independently. For example, even though you are a biocultural being you were brought into existence by biological reproduction, not cultural reproduction. What I am trying to say is that an analogous event to abiogenesis is likely to occur in the near-term future, and that this event is what futurists are trying to describe with the concept of singularity (but I believe the concept of singularity may be inadequate to describe the process). Atechnogenesis on the other hand may fit well. With atechnogenesis you have a process whereby a symbolic cultural code (encoded in language) will one day give rise to an entity that can grow and replicate on its own (i.e., a machine superintelligence). Once this occurs replication will occur culturally and not biologically. Hence, the cultural code will exist in a substrate of its own making and grow/replicate within its own independent form of evolution, finally breaking away from biological evolution. The human would be the "bridge" connecting the biological and cultural world. The whole of the human experiment - from the rise of the first hominids to the rise of a global cooperative - can be seen within the context of cultural evolution emerging and gaining its own independence. There is almost nothing the human does that is not in some way symbolic. I was going to try and make an argument for biological sex and athletics, but, although both are strongly biological, they are both massively influenced, regulated, and expressed by adaptive cultural activities.Humanity would have to create a Culture Code, once humanity created a Culture Code, this Culture Code created by humanity then creates it's own Culture Code. One Culture Code then creates another Culture Code and this called Cultural Evolution. The product of this we would call Atechnogensis?
With Culture Code, is there any human activity that falls outside the scope of culture code?
Thank you for responding theadvancedapes! I understand your proposed term much better now, atechnogensis. I really appreciate the effort to refine the idea behind a singularity. I wonder though, how we should understand the concept of an "event"? Both terms, singularity and atechnogensis describe an event. What if the "event" occurs over a period of time, something that is gradual rather than something that occurs in a clear moment? I also find interesting the idea of culture reproduction. How a moment, or process, or both a moment and a process, of cultural reproduction occurs, post the creation of a non-human, intelligent, culture code. Would there be a case where byproducts, like the waste and pollution of maintaing human population, could be outside of cultural code? Maybe if a portion of the waste and pollution was the result of biological processes(DNA code), another portion culture code, and maybe another portion of it being both. Anyway, I just really enjoyed what you wrote. Thanks again!There is almost nothing the human does that is not in some way symbolic. I was going to try and make an argument for biological sex and athletics, but, although both are strongly biological, they are both massively influenced, regulated, and expressed by adaptive cultural activities.