It's Only Human

“So much has been done, exclaimed the soul of Frankenstein – more, far more, will I achieve; treading in the steps already marked, I will pioneer a new way, explore unknown powers, and unfold to the worlds the deepest mysteries of creation.”   -- Mary Shelly, Frankenstein, 1818

So I’m back in the bar, still reeling from my conversation last week with The Earth. And who walks but Dr. Victor Frankenstein! (No, not the Boris Karloff Frankenstein – that was the monster. Victor is the guy who created him; he looks kinda like Gene Wilder.

“Wow,” I say, “Dr. Frankenstein – what a surprise! There’s been something I’ve always wanted to ask you. Can I buy you a beer?”

“Well young man, that’s very kind, but if you don’t mind, I’d prefer a nice Claret.” 

“Um, Claret? That's like wine, right? OK. Johnny,” I say to the bartender, “can I get another beer here, and do you have a red wine for my friend?”

“Now Doc,” I say, “my question, what exactly does it mean to be "human? I mean, we like to think that being human is to be kind, thoughtful, unselfish. That our intellect and compassion separate us from the animals. Make us, you know, the superior beings that we are. But I figure you’d know, since, well, you know what I mean – you ‘made’ a human – sort of?”  

Frankenstein pauses, looking thoughtfully into his wine.  “That is a very difficult question, young man, but if you have time, I’ll start with your brain. You see, while we understand that the brain is not just a blob of slimy gray stuff – that is has parts like the occipital lobe, the frontal lobe, the Cerebral Cortex and more – we really don’t understand how it works.”

“What? How could that be?” Me, incredulous. “I mean, Elon Musk says we’re already building machines that are smarter than us! How can that be if we don’t even understand how our brains work?”

“We can talk about Elon Musk another time, but we really don’t understand much about anything. As far as the brain goes, Dr. Jeff Lichtman of Harvard, a leader in neurology, at the start of each semester asks his student this question:  ‘If everything you need to know about the brain is a mile, how far have we walked in this mile?’”

“I don’t know – but since we’re building technology right now that connects the brain and thought waves and that kind-a stuff to computers, we must-a passed that mile a long time ago!”

Frankenstein scoffs. “Well, according to Dr. Lichtman, the answer is about 3 inches. You ask me ‘what is human,’ but all we really know is that everything we think we know is wrong.”

“But how can that be? I mean, we’ve built rocket ships! We’ve been to the moon! We’ve invented The Magic Eight Ball – and socks-with-toes!”

“My point is that the conventional wisdom is always wrong. Given enough time, all things that we believe as fact and truth today are proven to be wrong.  We don’t even understand time – though the majority of physicists today acknowledge that time is not linear; that the past and the future are concepts adopted by humans…Well, anyway, that’s a topic for another blog. You get my point – we really don’t know much, about anything. Back to being human – and the brain. There is a part of the brain – call it primitive, or reptilian – it’s in the brainstem and cerebellum. And since you’re a Silicon Valley guy, think of it as the software that helps you survive – programed for sleep, pain, hunger, conserving energy, ‘fight or flight’ – all the basic functions required to live – and to propagate the species. Which is the bottom line for any species, right? Procreation.”

“OK, sure. I’ve heard about the ‘reptilian brain’ – but that brain’s bad, right? If we only had a reptilian brain, we’d be like, well, you know – reptiles. And we couldn’t even “like” on Facebook! So what’s the rest of the story?”

“Funny you should ask. Charles Darwin and I were discussing that a couple of decades ago. He was telling me about how the human brain has evolved – how those other parts of the brain started to ‘think’ and to ‘reason.’ But that wasn’t very long ago – a few million years ago – give or take.”

“Millions-of-years? That’s forever!”

“Ha! Not at all," shaking his head. "You need to read your other blog. The Earth is almost 5 billion years old. A million years is a blink of the eye in Earth time. And in fact we homo sapiens were just one of a whole bunch of new experimental of candidates for a new model for the species. The others died out – extinct - hit the big evolutionary dead end." 

“Wow, good thing we made it!”

“Made it?" Frankenstein laughs. “Like I said, we still know nothing. Home sapiens are most likely just another evolutionary dead end. Consider that single and simple goal for a species - survival - and every that species on the planet proceeds down a path in which it is constantly evolves and hopefully adapts through mutation to a changing environment in order to survive.  As I said, we humans are a relatively "new" species. Compared to dinosaurs, for example, we're still the new kids on the block. We haven't the evolutionary chops that support all of this ‘human’ arrogance and superiority we developed of the millennia.   Cockroaches, for example – they should swagger. Cockroaches have made it for 300M years so far, and appear to be in no danger of extinction. If we look at the enlightened vs the primitive man, our evolutionary case is even flimsier.  What we consider human civilization is a scant thousands-of-years old project. So for the first six millions of years or so humankind seemed to go pretty well.  Sure, life was tough, small tribes fought against other small tribes in the quest for survival (food, bigger caves…) and with the other animals on both sides of the food chain. But ‘man’ was simply a part of the environment, not a changer of the environment. Human population grew during those millions-of-years, but very gradually, and in concert with the rest of the species with which humans evolved. Homo sapiens survived, and all was good.  Then civilization happened, and caves grew to cities, and things started getting recorded and science happened and eventually the Kardashians were born. All the enlightened stuff we describe as being ‘human.’  Yet what if all of this is simply an aberration, an evolutionary dead end, that has a run for several millennium and then simply fades from the planet? Just another fad – like disco? Because the evolution of all the things we consider ‘human’ are in fact not consistent with the single and simple goal for a species: survival.  And I'm not referring to war and our success in creating better weapons to more effectively kill each other. No – think about all or our ‘great’ accomplishments - advancements in medicine, industrialization, and smart toilets.   Things that have greatly increased the span of life of humans.  But as a result, the human population, which grew only very moderately and sustainably for the first 6M years, exploded over the past couple of centuries. Human population growth (and it's curtailment) became and remains a topic of great social concern for the enlightened mind. And yet it is the advancement of all the things we call human that have caused humans to start thinking about our own extinction. The increasing life span, for example, and the prospect of curing all diseases, is certainly within reach of medical science within a century or two. Humans that can live for centuries? That would cause a massive threat to the continuation - the survival - of the species. And that's only one of the issues that we as enlightened humans and all of our progress have to face.”

“So, you’re telling me we’re killing ourselves – in the name of humanity?”

“Well, yes, of course we are – have you been to San Francisco recently? But that’s not my point.  I can see you’re a bit slow, so I’ll say it again: as humans, we really know nothing. We have no concept of where we are in the universe. We know and understand as much about the universe as an ant in an ant colony can understand its place in New York City. Yet we pretend to understand how the Earth warms and cools. And we try to build machines that think and reason – while we don’t even know how our own brains work.”

“So what’s the point, doc?”

“The point is, I happen to know something about fiddling with life, and you know how that turned out. Kids still have nightmares about my little project. So I’m telling you, knock it off with the machine-brain thing.”

“So progress is bad?”

“Dammit, kid, you are dense. No, progress isn’t bad, but aim it in the right direction. Here you are, trying to connect computers and brains, and you no more idea where you’re going than I did when I hooked my little monster up to an electrode and a lightning bolt. Look around, kid – have you noticed that in the past year, let alone the past 30 centuries, we still haven’t progressed all far from the cave? We’re still using our reptilian brain – we’re still afraid of anyone who isn’t just like us, who doesn’t believe what we believe, or doesn’t look just like us. Have you been to Minneapolis – or St. Louis?  How about we figure ourselves out before we try to create a new one from scratch.”

“Look, I could talk the next decade about human fear and being tribal and the fact that our DNA is wired basically the same it was six-million years ago – and that doesn’t mean it’s wired for compassion and understanding. But you can learn! Thanks for the wine – but I really have to run. I’ve left Igor with a couple of abnormal brains – reminding me that you guys should worry about finding a real leader rather than the two clowns in that abysmal presidential debate last week.”