Edward O. Wilson Seminar Media

The Long Now Foundation 07/05/2012 18:45

This lecture was presented as part of The Long Now Foundation’s monthly Seminars About Long-term Thinking.

The Social Conquest of Earth

Friday April 20, 02012 – San Francisco

Video is up on the Wilson Seminar page.

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The Real Creation Story - a summary by Stewart Brand

History makes no sense without prehistory, Wilson declared, and prehistory makes no sense without biology. He began by noting that every religion has a different creation story, all of them necessarily based on ignorance of what really happened in the past. Religions thus cant give valid answers on the meaning of life—Gauguins questions: Where do we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Philosophy gave up on the questions long ago. The task was left to science, and from science a valid, shareable creation story is now emerging.

For the last 65 million years Earth has been dominated by eusocial animals. Ants, termites, and bees in some areas make up half of all biomass. Yet only a few of the million known insect species made the jump to eusociality. One variety of mammal, a tiny set of primates, made a similar jump. Once they began to use their eusocial skills to fan out from Africa 60 thousand years ago, they gradually became far more dominant even than the social insects. The term eusocial, Wilson said, means a society based in part on a division of labor, in which individuals act altruistically, that covers two or more generations, and that cares for young cooperatively.

That eusociality is so rare suggests how difficult it is for altruistic traits to evolve. The powerful evolutionary force to make individuals that successfully reproduce has to be overcome by some form of selective pressure which generates altruistic individuals who yield their interests to the interests of the group. How does that occur? Examining near-eusocial species like African wild dogs and snapping shrimp along with primitively eusocial species like sweat bees shows that a crucial step appears to be made when multiple generations linger to defend a constructed nest with valuable access to food. That step can be made with a simple change to a single behavioral gene, silencing the trait for normal dispersal of young to carry out their own independent reproduction. When the young linger to defend the nest and begin to provide for the next generation of young, eusociality begins.

All eusocial species appear to have arisen from multi-generational nest defense. Two million years ago our ancestors began using fire for campsites and cooking. At the same time hominid brain size began expanding dramatically. Social traits emerged that have characterized humanity ever since. We love joining groups, and we became geniuses at reading the intentions of each other, a skill we fine-tune incessantly with our enjoyment of gossip. In another distinctively human trait, like ants, we became highly adept at collaborative warfare.

Wilson had long been a proponent of William Hamiltons theory of kin selection as an explanation for how altruistic traits could evolve. But as a naturalist he found it did not explain phenomena that he and others were discovering in eusocial species, and he began to favor group selection instead—a process where the target of evolution was sacrificially collaborative traits, because highly cooperative groups beat poorly cooperative groups, and the units of evolution (genes) adjusted accordingly. It is successful groups, more than successful families, that are being selected for. In 2010 Wilson, along with mathematician Martin Nowak and Corina Tarnita formally challenged kin selection with a peer-reviewed paper in Nature. There was, as Wilson put it, considerable blowback from kin selection theorists and supporters.

Wilsons alternative he calls multi-level selection, where individual selection and group selection proceed together (with kin selection a continuing bit player). In our eusocial species, that mix of traits makes us permanently unstable, permanently conflicted between selfish impulses and cooperative impulses. We negotiate these conflicts endlessly within ourselves and with each other. Wilson sees inherent adaptive value in that constant negotiation. Our vibrant cultural life may be driven in part by it.

In response to a question about what the next stages of human eusociality might be, Wilson said he hoped for a fading of interest in end-state ideologies and end-time religious creation stories because they so fervently deny negotiation.

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Astrobiology and Drowned Nations

BLDGBLOG 07/05/2012 18:41

There's a lot going on again this week at Studio-X NYC. Two quick things to put on your radar, in case you're near New York:

[Image: NASA astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild measures solar radiation, via NASA].

1) Tonight at 6:30pm, we've got NASA astrobiologist Lynn Rothschild coming in to discuss her work, from extreme environments here on Earth, where scientists test for the limits of life, to the irradiated landscapes of Mars. We'll look at the nature of biology, the possibilities for synthetic life, unexpected alternatives to DNA, and other mind-bending experiments that ask, in Rothschild's words, "Where do we come from? Where are we going? and Are we alone?" Architect Ed Keller will be co-moderating this live interview.

2) Tomorrow, beginning at 6pm, we've got a massive line-up, including, I'm thrilled to say, an interview with Michael Gerrard, Andrew Sabin Professor of Professional Practice at Columbia Law School, discussing "drowning nations and climate change law. The list of whole countries at risk from sea-level rise is both extraordinary and growing, from the Marshall Islands to the Maldives, posing a series of unanswered questions about migration, citizenship, geopolitical power, and even the very definition of a state. As a 2010 article on ClimateWire asks, citing Gerrard's work, "If a Country Sinks Beneath the Sea, Is It Still a Country?"

[Image: Male, capital of the Maldives, via Wikipedia].

Gerrard was instrumental in organizing a conference last year called "Threatened Island Nations: Legal Implications of Rising Seas and a Changing Climate," inspired by the "unique legal questions posed by rising oceans." Central to our conversation tomorrow night will be what that last link calls "the sovereignty of submerged nations":

Would the countries continue to have legal recognition like the Order of Malta, which ceded its island territory long ago but continues to be treated like a sovereign for some purposes? Would they retain their seats in the United Nations and other international bodies?

Here, it's interesting to note recent suggestions that the "entire nation of Kiribati" mightor might notmove en masse to Fiji, to escape rising sea levels.

We will be interviewing Michael Gerrard only from 6-6:45pm, so don't be late.

Immediately following that live interview, we will kick off a roundtable discussion on the future of sovereignty, governance, citizenship, and the nation-state, looking at a range of unique geographic and spatial scenarios, from the Arctic to the Internet. Joining usmany via Skypewill be: Benjamin Bratton, director of the Center for Design and Geopolitics at UC-San Diego; architect Ed Keller; Tom Cohen and Claire Colebrook, co-editors of the Critical Climate Change series from Open Humanities Press; science fiction novelist Peter Watts; architect and urbanist Adrian Lahoud, editor of Post-Traumatic Urbanism; and Dylan Trigg, author of, among other things, The Aesthetics of Decay.

Studio-X NYC is at 180 Varick Street, Suite 1610, 16th floor; here is a map. These events are free and open to the public, and no RSVP is required.

VVORK

VVORK 07/05/2012 17:25

»GIGANTIC MOVEMENTS COSTUME IDEA«, 2008 by Michele Di Menna.

VVORK

VVORK 07/05/2012 17:23

»Cape for Michele Di Menna«, 2011 by Sol Calero.

Performing Mars

BLDGBLOG 07/05/2012 16:48

[Image: Image via Karst Worlds].

An ice cave in Austria was recently used as a test landscape for experimental spacesuits and instrumentation systemsincluding 3D camerasthat might someday be used by humans on Mars.

The Dachstein ice cave was chosen, Stuff explains, "because ice caves would be a natural refuge for any microbes on Mars seeking steady temperatures and protection from damaging cosmic rays."

[Images: (top and bottom) Photos by Katja Zanella-Kux; middle photos via Karst Worlds].

Many images available at the Dachstein Mars Simulation Liveblogincluding this series of 25 images courtesy of the Austrian Space Forumdocument the testing process, which ranged from the beautifully surreal, as a fully space-suited man rolls strange devices down slopes of ice inside the planet, to the nearly postmodern, as crowds of normally dressed tourist onlookers are revealed at the edges of the show cave, watching this odd performance unfold.

And all this is in addition to the "obstacle course" developed for wearers of the spacesuitreverse-engineering terrain from a particular type of clothing, or landscape design as an outgrowth from fashionin the parking lot and nearby paved spaces of a research center in Austria. "The course included four snow-mountain passages, almost 40 meters of rock climbing and more than 60 meters of slushy snow terrain amongst others"including "drawing bright 'rocks' to make the simulation happen" accurately.

Walking amidst painted representations of geology, wearing a suit designed for the atmosphere of another planet, and temporarily moving below the surface of the earth to throw pieces of specialty equipment down ice slopes, attached to ropes, the team was able to, by means of props and in William L. Fox's words, "perform Mars on Earth."

(Spotted via Karst Worlds).