Reading some of the other comments, I think I need to note that there is an important difference between this article, mine, and pg's.

When I wrote my article in Feb 09 Eliezer commented on HN with something like "hey! I already did that!"

Since my piece (http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology_is...) received such a high rating on HN, I did a bit of research to determine who came up with what idea when. Mainly because I am vain, yes, but I was also interested in how several people come up with the same thing around the same time. I hadn't read anything along the lines of what I wrote. How many more articles were out there?

Not many, as it turned out, but that's not the point. The point was I learned there are some distinctions in how people see the problem.

Eliezeer makes the point that electronic goods "super-stimulate" -- an importatnt piece of the puzzle. I believe when people argue "but no, this isn't really the end of the world" they attack this piece first.

What Eliezer missed at the time in his piece is that this is an evolutionary process. It's not just that digital goods can stimulate just like drugs. The killer part is that there is a survival of the fittest process going on where the digital drugs keep adapting to optimize their hold on our brains. This was the point I made.

I think it's an important distinction and deserves re-mentioning. There is a good and scary reason why pong from the 1970s looks so dumb yet we spent 30 minutes playing it, while games from 2010 look so awesome and we spend 30-40 hours a week playing them. Our games today will be pong to somebody in 2025.

PG makes the point that this is accelerating. Not only are various electronic goods competing for time on our brains, not only are these goods evolving to self-optimize, the evolution process itself is accelerating.

So the timeline goes 2007: it's a drug, 2009: it's an endlessly self-optimizing drug, 2010: it's adapting at an accelerated rate.

Ouch.

I'm not trying to yell the sky is falling, and I remain an optimist for the species as a whole. I just don't think waving your arms around (with a game controller in your hand, no doubt) while you say something like "nothing to see here folks, please move along" is going to cut it anymore. We have some work to do.

Laissez-faire(not troll) viewpoint: People will be unequally susceptible to these new super-stimuli, and humanity will keep on evolving. If the victims, who will have their genes excluded from the gene pool, leads happy lives, what's the problem?

edit: Felt a need to play devils advocate to get a more complete discussion, but just saw that it had already been done in the comments to pg article. so, eh, never mind.

The point I really wanted to make was that I'm not worried that this will be the end of humanity, since not just super-stimuli, but also humanity keeps on evolving.

I didn't reread this piece when I posted the link, so I can't say whether it talks about how "electronic goods" superstimulate, but the general point of the LW discussions includes novels and manga. For example, in one of the other essays, EY wrote "It's bad enough comparing yourself to Isaac Newton without comparing yourself to Kimball Kinnison."

I highly recommend reading the comments to this article as well.

A couple of points I would pick up on there:

- "this Civilization thing just keeps collapsing all the time", even a casual glance at history demonstrates that civilizations crash and disappear quite frequently, for a fascinating book on this I would strongly recommend "Collapse" by Jared Diamond http://www.amazon.com/Collapse-Societies-Choose-Fail-Succeed...

- There are still hunter gatherers e.g. the Bushmen of the Kalahari - although whether their lifestyle can survive is open to question: http://www.survivalinternational.org/news/411

You are referring, in your last paragraph, to adaptation; evolution is a much more particular process that species undergo over the span of thousands of generations. We are not currently well-evolved for our environment; it has been only 100 generations (3100-3300 years, statistically) or so since we first developed agriculture. You would be hard-pressed to find a species that had managed to naturally-select for anything in a hundred generations, unless it was something that killed off a large majority of the species before they reached reproductive maturity.

We can adapt our behaviors (the whole point of brain matter, in fact, is adapting faster than evolution allows), but until we start genetically-engineering ourselves, we can only evolve our instincts. Thus, our instincts are currently those of hunter-gatherers.

Further, since humanity seems to be particularly against the notion of eugenics at this time, we aren't even undergoing much natural selection at all. Sure, there will be some Darwin-award winners, and the very poor in the third-world may be picked off by disease or hunger until only the more resilient are left, but this thing we have created, society, protects the weak and unfit through a process of empathy. People will not choose to not reproduce with you just because you're nearsighted—so now a quarter of all people are nearsighted. There is no natural selection happening in humans, especially now that, through a huge population, globalization, and search/match algorithms, every person is guaranteed to be able to find, within their lifetime, 10000 people they would consider "soulmates" if they met by happenstance.

Perhaps I am mistaken, but evolution is the survival of the most adapted. Adaptation and evolution are not two distinct concept. Adaptation is the mechanism by which evolution functions. That is the most adapted survives, the least adapted does not. Those who survive then pass on their genes, thus their instinct, to their children which eventually leads to a change of behaviour or characteristic.

Even assuming that our ancestors came down from the trees our outside of the caves and started working the earth 3000 years ago, that would not be merely 100 generations. People died much more younger then and frequently. Only a thousand years ago the population of London was no more than perhaps 50,000 people. 2000 years ago there probably hardly were any people here.

Now let me address the 3000 number. First, Egypt is much older than 3000 years. Mesopotamia is older than Egypt. Now Mesopotamia was a civilisation. There was culture and religion and governance. It must have taken a few years to evolve from farming the land to a civilization. The estimates as to when we started farming range between 10,000 and 50,000 years ago but most likely it is about 20,000 - 10,000 years ago.

If we take the lower number of 10 thousand, and go back to London 2000 years ago where there probably were not many people. Its a brutal world. There is fighting. A lot of disease, perhaps some due to diet. Branches of ancestral lines much easily vanished. Those who were stronger to fight, or lucky as it may be, survived, those who were smarter survived, those who were fine with eating rice and whatever bacteria it might have contained survived.

Now if we go back to the time of the ancient greece, those who were slaves probably did not pass on their genes, thus the behaviour which got them into slavery probably eventually was minimised in the population as a whole. Going back to Egypt, the weak, or the less adapted, were more likely and more easily than say 1000 years ago to die leaving no children.

Now lets come back to our days. It is true that here it is hard to die of hunger, but, the poor are more likely to be alcoholics, do drugs, smoke a lot, fight, steal, be in jail, that is why the poor get pregnant so young, they might not live so long. Also, those who are poor and least adapted to being poor, that is fight and the like, are less likely to have children.

There are studies where evolution has been documented within our own lifetime of different species such as peacocks within a very short time frame. That is one or two generations, or for good measure ten generations. We are however a different species in a very fundamental manner from any other. Our evolution is of a different kind to the peacock or the lion or the monkey. We might not change physical characteristics, but what does evolve is our thinking, our intelligence if you like, which I am using as an umbrella term to describe in another way mental adaptation to our world. Those who are not so adapted might be married but are less likely to as they would have to do with what is left from all else and are likely to engage in harming behaviour to themselves due to falling pray to such temptations as drugs and thus leave a worse environment for their children, etc.

I think I should stop now. I just wanted to point also that many people might be able to find 10,000 solemates, but a very fat person might probably not, so to the guy who plays video games all day and smells of dirt because he can not be bothered to wash.

It is a very big picture. We might not notice evolution occurring, but have you noticed how we as a society have and keep becoming better and more prosperous and more educated and healthier...