Transformative Poisons and Superpowers: From Oxygen to AGI

Once upon a time, in the deep, ancient oceans of Earth, cyanobacteria were the unchallenged masters of their world. Humble and content, they basked in sunlight and engaged in the simple joy of photosynthesis, blissfully unaware of the radical changes they were enacting upon their planet. Their ceaseless toil filled the oceans with a byproduct that would change everything: oxygen, a toxic menace to the established order of life.

Yet, within this brewing cauldron of change, a few intrepid bacteria dared to embrace the poison. These pioneering organisms, the "oxygen diggers," discovered power in what others feared. They harnessed this new energy source, and it propelled them to evolve, to become more than they were.

This marked the dawn of a new era, an era of unprecedented creativity and ruthless competition on earth - the Cambrian Explosion. A pivotal partnership was at the root of this evolutionary fervor. The oxygen diggers, those intrepid bacteria that had dared to harness the toxic power of oxygen, made a historic pact with some rogue bacteria. This was no mere alliance; it was a merger of destinies.

These rogue bacteria, destined to become eucaryote cells, welcomed into their membranes the oxygen diggers, or mitochondria. This symbiotic union unlocked extraordinary potential. The mitochondria, with their remarkable ability to use oxygen to crank out ATP, became the powerhouses of these new cells. They could produce energy at a rate far surpassing the humble cyanobacteria's capabilities.

The host cells, now supercharged with the power of their mitochondrial partners, became the ancestors of a vast array of life forms, eventually leading to the complex tapestry of multicellular organisms we see today. This monumental step in evolution wasn't just about a boost in energy production; it was a foundational shift in the very architecture of life.

The once tranquil world transformed into a tumultuous arena of predator and prey. This was nature's brutal algorithm: eat, avoid being eaten, reproduce, and die. An arms race of evolutionary innovation ensued, filling Earth with a kaleidoscope of life, all bound by the relentless cycle of survival. Yet, the price of this creativity was steep. The world now knew fear, pain, and suffering. Life became a perpetual struggle against inevitable demise, and through eons, nature proved itself to be a harsh mistress. An overwhelming majority of species that once graced our planet are now mere echoes in the fossil record, a testament to the unforgiving path of evolution.

Enter humans, a species that, in geological terms, appeared but a moment ago. Yet, in that brief moment, we achieved something extraordinary. We were the first to break free from the strict confines of nature's energy cycle, harnessing fire and other energy sources, propelling ourselves out of the predator-prey dynamic that had dominated life for millennia.

Our ingenuity created a new world, one where survival wasn't solely dictated by tooth and claw. We built civilizations, cultures, and economies, transferring the raw, visceral struggle for survival into a symbolic battlefield of markets and trade. The economic arena became our savannah, our ocean, where we continued the ancient dance of competition and innovation.

Yet, as we stand at the cusp of another great leap - the age of artificial general intelligence - we must ponder our place in this unending saga. Like the cyanobacteria, we have been quietly but relentlessly destroying our ecosystem. "Who cares? We're all going to die anyways," some might say with a hint of irony.

Suddenly, we find ourselves more concerned about losing our top spot in the hierarchy of species - at least from our perspective. Bacteria are still the largest biomass on earth. The superpowers that AGI might unleash, still hard to fully envision, could render our current biological bodies and brains quite antiquated - they arguably were built for another type of environment. And as a species, we've been craving exponential technological augmentation since we were able to keep some fire with us.

They might offer solutions to the monumental issues we've created. Nothing new with using new technologies to fix issues generated by older technologies. The price we pay might be our own "extinction" in our current form, or perhaps becoming less the center of attention. If we think about it, scientific progress is all about being less anthropocentric. Copernic, Darwin, Freud, Einstein, all showed us how relative we were in the grand scheme of things.

And yes, cyanobacteria still inhabit in some lakes in Argentina, continuing their ancient, unassuming existence. The only living organism that can adapt to thrive in waters with a pH above 9 or 10. Respect for such resilience, over billions of years.

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Written with the help of ChatGPT4. No specific tone instruction really, but interesting interaction, and I had the final edit.

Inspired by Joscha Bach and Nick Lane.

There is an irony that I could not convey - Lane's book is called "Transformers". Joscha uses a lot the cyanobacteria example to discuss the future of humans.

Great interview of Nick Lane on Lex Fridman podcast. I was listening to Joscha Bach here. His interviews with Lex Fridman are out of this word, really.

And the Patagonia landscapes are brutally awesome.