19 KiB
[BST] Most animals suddenly achieve human-level intelligence
-
Author: u/callmebrotherg now posting as /u/callmesalticidae*
-
URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/2xx1r7/bst_most_animals_suddenly_achieve_humanlevel/
-
Score: 15
-
Created: 2015-03-04T16:04:59
Post:
I'm writing a story for a friend, who requested a world where most of the world's animal population was suddenly uplifted. We settled at bilaterians as an arbitrary cutting off point, since neither of us wanted intelligent bacteria.
The setting is going to focus on the horrible ethical problems that arise almost immediately from this, but before I can get into that I think that the biggest question I need to ask is, "How?"
I'm alright with saying "A Wizard Did It," but I'd like to figure out how the wizard did it. If there's something else responsible for doing the thinking now, whether it's that a wizard attached true souls to everyone and the brain is just an interface now, or that they're in a simulation and the programmers one level above are just having a bit of fun, there are going to be ramifications. I doubt that I can find a cause whose only effect is that all of the bilaterians are intelligent now.
Thanks in advance.
Comments:
u/Nepene [+17] (2 hours later)
The black monolith floated above the rocks, surveying all beneath it. Computers more powerful than the entire computing power of the sentient race on the planet made calculations, comparisons, plans, critiques. Senors and probes swept across the surface of this third planet from the son analyzing every lifefrom from the birds that flew up high to the bacteria that swam the rocky tunnels miles beneath the surface.
It had been ordered to uplift all lifeforms to an appropriate intelligence. However, it had also been ordered to respect any local civilizations in an appropriate and polite manner. The local intelligent lifeforms, bilateral bipidel furless milk bearing animals, were heavily dependent on a number of lifeforms for their survival. Even their own cells were filled with defanged bacteria which handled their respiration.
Eventually it settled on a compromise. It would only uplift bilateria animals, allowing those that remained to feast on plants and fungi and bacterial products as much as they needed.
It's femtotech probes started to twist and rearrange the atoms of every non intelligent bilateral organism on the planet simultaneously. Thin strands of computronium, super dense computing power made from constantly produced and evaporated black holes, were interlaced and interwoven into every organism's brain or nervous system. Where necessary compromises were made to respect the biological imperatives of each, deviations chosen to maximize variety. For some that lacked appropriate ways to indicate their intelligence speaking organs were given, light sensors, auditory sensors as well as enhanced muscles to allow body language communication from organism to organism and emotional intelligence. They would be able to communicate with and interact with their fellow intelligent beings now. As appropriate it improved the agility of some organism's tool manipulation organs so that they could better interact with technology.
Then, its task complete, it waited. This would serve as a good first modification. It would wait and see the consequences before continuing.
u/callmebrotherg [+10] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
You can't hear it, but I'm clapping. I'm impressed by and greatly enjoy how impromptu fic is so common here.
I would totally read this.
u/Nepene [+1] (2 hours later)
Glad to have entertained you.
u/Farmerbob1 [+7] Level 1 author (5 hours later)
On June 27th, 2019, dolphin-kind attempted a desperate experiment. Humans were clearly intelligent, but they didn't appear to care about their marine cousins. The humans were killing the krill with industrial poisons and starving the fish eaters by depleting fish stocks. Even the orcas were finding hunting to be less than what they needed. Mercury poisoning was taking it's toll on every oceanic race. Within another few years, it would not be possible to generate a sufficiently potent gestalt to create the connection. The great whales and orcas were finally convinced to assist, despite their doubts.
The experiment was a success! Humans could now understand marine mammals, but the success was more expansive than expected. The shared intelligence had gone beyond humankind. All mammals and even some highly developed birds and reptiles were caught in the merger.
Humankind now knew, without a doubt, that they were not the only intelligences on the planet. Unfortunately, there was a serious flaw. The great whales and orcas who had provided so much of the mental potential for the experiment were horrified when they could not break free of the mental connection. They were now apparently the basis of a worldwide gestalt intelligence.
Humanity wasn't the basis of the gestalt, but their mental presence was huge. Every animal race connected into the network began a mental transformation, becoming more human in their intelligence profile. For some animals this wasn't a great shift. The marine mammals, elephants, swine, and some primates were quite intelligent, thank you very much, but after nearly a hundred years, most mammals larger than three kilos in mass had human-level intelligence. Mammals smaller than that had intelligence based on their brain mass. Crows, ravens, parrots, crocodiles, alligators, and geckos were far smarter than they had ever been before, idiot-savant intelligences, brilliant in some ways but sadly lacking in others.
The dolphins were ostracized by the great whales, orcas, elephants and other highly intelligent species, including humans. The once-less-intelligent races, however, were very appreciative of their new intelligence, for the most part.
Despite their differences, nearly all animals except cats and dogs opposed humanity's rulership of Earth. A vast, uneasy alliance of the nonhuman races formed.
u/None [+3] (6 hours later)
On June 27th, 2019, dolphin-kind attempted a desperate experiment. Humans were clearly intelligent, but they didn't appear to care about their marine cousins. The humans were killing the krill with industrial poisons and starving the fish eaters by depleting fish stocks. Even the orcas were finding hunting to be less than what they needed.
Some orcas tend to eat dolphins, so presumably the dolphins weren't too moved by their plight.
u/Farmerbob1 [+2] Level 1 author (7 hours later)
Indeed. Plenty of room for conflict of all sorts :)
u/None [+3] (13 hours later)
So long, and thanks for all the fish?
u/WorkingMouse [+5] (an hour later)
So, what you're wondering is given that the "Wizard" is doing something to allow all these things uplifted thought, how it could possibly be restricted to your bilaterian cutoff?
A simple solution comes to mind: it's the brain.
All bilaterians have something of a brain, even if it's only a slightly-larger ganglion of neurons at the front-end of the creature's nerve cord. Thus, it's possible that whatever-does-the-uplifting either sought out or was only able to affect things with that trait; this could be intentional, or it could be a case where the "wizard" simply told his spell/optimizing AI/simulator program/plot-relavent McGuffin to "work on anything with a brain" without thinking over the consequence, or defining "brain" more specifically.
Of course, the question of whether a brain is needed somehow or whether the "spell" could have been set to go off on "anything with a heart" or "anything containing DNA" is interesting.
u/ArmokGoB [+3] (10 hours later)
I'd guess something in-between, with brain being referenced for various interface tasks like where to get sensory data to feed the soul, where to put it's motor output, from where to retrieve the seed memories and personality, and how to not add multiple souls to the same organism. Conceivably, you could have made it work on any neuron, or on anything with DNA, but to get results actually continue the existing "individuals" of higher animals would have been a LOT more programming work.
u/diraniola [+5] (20 hours later)
Maybe it was a project, designed to make the human race smarter. The wizard miscalculated, because (arbitrary rule) you can't make anything smarter than yourself alone. There was also a targeting issue, where the wizard targeted the brain, and to ensure he got the entire population, made it target all brains sufficiently similar to his own. This spell/device/process found that all Bilateral brains were sufficiently similar to upgrade, and continued working until the soft cap (the wizards own intelligence) was reached.
u/Kishoto [+3] (2 hours later)
It all depends on how removed from real-world science you want to be, as well.
In the real world, this is simply not possible in many animals, without other, significant changes to their physiology. Sentience simply isn't possible in some lower level animals, from a physical point of view. Things like high level cognition take up lots of space, even when optimized. So that scenario is impossible, from a real world point of view. So we're going to need to depart from it a bit.
Magical means? As far as magic goes, as Vulcan said, a mechanism through which souls are linked to animals can be a viable explanation. I'd prefer a fridge-horror type scenario though, where he uses actual human embryos, held in stasis, but their minds, through temporal manipulation, are accelerated to use. And you can accelerate it to whatever point in life you need. So the wizard could pick and choose how developed he wants different animals to be.
From a scientific perspective, as I said, the physiology of most animals isn't right for sentience. You can probably bioengineer most apes and monkeys with slightly larger brains and some reconfigured neural pathways and gift them with human level intelligence. But doing this all remotely, through some form of pathogen or nanotechnology, isn't feasible, to say the least. Even with advanced technology, that seems a stretch. You still need material for all that reworking, and mass is still mass. Can't pull it out of thin air. So I'd propose, from a scientific angle, microprocessors. Powerful supercomputers, at the nanite scale. Geared towards human neural pathing, and configured to feed off of the organism for its power. They'll replicate in the organism(s), interface with its brain, and essentially emulate sentience. That would be my suggestion from the technology aspect.
TL;DR: You can try doing it in 2 ways. Magic or Science. Magic = Bind human embryo's who've been mentally accelerated temporally to animals through some ritual and spell. It would probably have to be self propagating and/or affect a very large area.
Tech = Make self replicating nanobot supercomputers that travel like a pathogen "infecting" animals, and emulating sentience.
u/None [+3] (12 hours later)
An alien intelligence has solved arbitrarily strong AI (which requires arbitrarily high resources to run (and they aren't keen on making anything smarter than themselves due to the friendliness problem)), and these aliens know the minimum brain size and optimal arrangement to produce various types of AI. It turns out that humanlike AIs can be reduced and optimized significantly compared to the bullshit trial and error of evolution.
These aliens are eco-activists, and have a desire to uplift compatible lifeforms to the level of the dominant species, whenever the dominant species becomes intelligent enough, dominant enough, and technologically advanced enough to end up wiping out all other species through accident or malice. In this way, the other inhabitants might express their own informed consent. All animals, including below-average humans, whose brains meet the minimum size requirements, have been restructured and optimized, resulting in human-level intelligences. It turns out this prevents very small animals who lack the size, or very simple animals who lack the brains, from being eligible.
Soon, tardigrades will control the Earth.
u/sir_pirriplin [+5] (13 minutes later)
Maybe the wizard, or the mad scientist, was researching a magical virus that lives in people's brains and makes them a little smarter. Naturally he tried on animals first, but then the virus escaped and randomly mutated to make their hosts a lot smarter.
Also the mutated virus is now harmful to humans, otherwise everyone would be super-smart.
u/Sailor_Vulcan [+5] Champion of Justice and Reason (an hour later)
I'm not so sure that's all he's asking for. Saying "an intelligence increasing-virus did it [increasing the intelligence of bilaterian animals]" doesn't say what the intelligence-increasing mechanism is, it doesn't say how it works, only that the thing that triggers that process is a virus. Maybe something with symbiotic relationships would work? As the old saying goes, two brains [capable of communicating with each other] are better than one, and two million brains [all capable of communicating with each other] are also better than one. Although I think it would probably be REALLY difficult to make all bilateral animal species sentient with the exact same mechanism, since different animals have different nervous systems. Maybe something with semi/quasi-intelligent nanotechnology or something? Colonies of millions of artificial microbes that get carried in the water and on dust particles and each get inside a host specimen and figures out how to increase that specimen's intelligence from the inside as well as spread that intelligence to the specimen's offspring. The reason the artificial microbes don't just augment the animal's intelligence directly by becoming part of the organism permaently would be because there are a lot more bilaterian animals to smarten then the artificial microbes.
In fact, maybe the story could be about humanity on the verge of at least several extinction events and they need more collective intelligence (and maybe a different variety of mental skills from the minds of different species too) to solve all their problems. The reason this scientist decided to create his intelligence improving artificial nanotechnological life is because they can spread through ecoystems fairly quickly, faster than they approach the singularity/whatever other risk-of-extinction events they're trying to make it through. The intelligence-improving artificial microorganisms can only work with the material of the organisms themselves, and can only improve their intelligence for a certain amount of time before they die. The artificial microorganisms have no means of reproduction on their own, so they can only be created in the lab.
Of course, if you're going for the fantasy version, a magical researcher employs a druid, a necromancer and an Empath to figure out how the sentient mind/soul works and decides to reproduce the mechanism that makes them work on other forms of life that don't have sentience. To show off, and just because he can.
u/Chronophilia [+7] sci-fi ≠ futurology (an hour later)
Maybe the wizard did this accidentally? While recreating human souls, he mistakenly released a few hextillion into the wild, where they promtly attached themselves to any animal with the right hardware to support a soul.
The "we did this semi-deliberately to avoid an oncoming catastrophe" idea sounds good - it gives the story a driving conflict, and is less inherently contrived than the Scientific Accident plot device. Potential stumbling blocks: It risks the Oncoming Catastrophe eclipsing the fun moral quandaries. And you've got intelligence enhancement that can bring a tapeworm to the human level, so you should at least nod in the direction of the intelligence explosion and explain why it hasn't already happened. Otherwise, it sounds good.
u/ishaan123 [+2] Sidebar Contestant (2 hours later)
Maybe the "virus" isn't magical, but was designed by a mischievous highly advanced alien civilization. (Basically indistinguishable from magic, to us.)
The "virus" either itself is or contains genetic information that can implement an alien better-than-human general intelligence inside very tiny nano-machinery, equipped with certain versatile tools to modify physiology. The alien intelligence uses these tools to modify various factors and increase the intelligence of the being it resides in or of its offspring...modifying the genetic code of the creature's gametes, for example, permanently uplifting all descendants. It chooses to only do this for bilaterals.
The humans don't need to know about the aliens who dropped the virus. All they know is that all of a sudden animal behavior started changing, accompanied with sophisticated genetic and physiological changes at the cellular level not previously seen in nature and clearly not evolutionary in origin.
We can also say the intelligent alien nano machinery actively makes some effort to avoid human detection, so the humans in the story know that what's happening isn't natural but never really figure it out completely. The reader need not necessarily be told, but the author can write the story with a comfortably consistent world in mind.
u/callmebrotherg [+1] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
I'm liking this. I definitely prefer explanations which aren't human-caused.
u/None [+4] (2 hours later)
This story has already been written I'm afraid, look up Brain Wave. What you're describing is a subplot in that book.
u/E-o_o-3 [+2] (2 hours later)
The reason with fewest implications is no reason. No one in the story knows how it happened.
u/callmebrotherg [+2] now posting as /u/callmesalticidae (2 hours later)
I doubt that anyone will figure out the cause, at least for a very long time, but I like knowing why for my own purposes.
u/itaibn0 [+2] (23 hours later)
Aether current is a natural physical phenomenon that has the intrinsic tendency to create consciousness and intelligence in a form known as the soul. All higher animals possess souls, and souls are the source of their intelligence. They all possess a true brain, which houses the soul and passes the souls orders onto the body, which evolved in Bilateria from pseudo-brains, which coordinate simple movements.
For most of evolutionary history the strength of the aether on Earth was relatively low. As such, simple brains could only house simple souls, and animals evolved ever more sophisticated methods for guiding aether currents to make larger souls. Soon, however, the sun will pass all a region of very high aether. Then all these adaption will become unnecessary, and any animal with a true brain will also possess full consciousness.
u/Aquareon [+0] (15 hours later)
I think the biggest difference is that now they'd scream as I eat 'em