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From: moritz@well.sf.ca.us (Elan Moritz)
Newsgroups: comp.ai,sci.bio,sci.psychology,alt.cyberpunk
Subject: Re: The Bandwidth of the Brain
Message-ID: <22398@well.sf.ca.us>
Date: 3 Jan 91 03:13:50 GMT
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                        TRANS_SAPIENS and TRANS_CULTURE
                                      ***
                              REQUEST FOR COMMENTS
                     -------------------------------------


          In an earlier paper [Memetic Science: I - General
          Introduction; Journal of Ideas, Vol. 1, #1, 3-22, 1990] I
          postulated the emergence of a descendent of homo sapiens.
          This descendent will be primarily differentiated from h.
          sapiens by having * substantially  greater cognitive
          abilities *.

           [the relevant section of the paper is included below].


          >>>>> I plan to write a more substantive paper on the topic
          and would appreciate comments, speculation, arguments for &
          against this hypothesis. Relevant comments / arguments will
          be addressed in the paper and be properly
          acknowledged/referenced <<<<<.

          Elan Moritz <<<<


          -- text of h. trans sapiens section follows --

               We also introduce here the concepts of trans-culture
          and Homo trans-sapiens (or simply trans-sapiens). While
          being topics of a future paper, trans-culture can be
          described as the next step of culture dominated by deep
          connections, interactions, and relationships between
          objects created by large human/machine teams. A manifest
          property of trans-culture is the extreme and transcendent
          complexity of interactions and relations between humans and
          the cultural objects involved, with the additional property
          of being non-accessible to Homo sapiens. Examples of
          trans-cultural objects already exist; for example, there is
          no individual who (at any given temporal instance) is an
          expert in all aspects of medicine, or who is familiar with
          all biological species and their relationships, or is an
          expert in all aspects of physics, or who is totally
          familiar with all aspects of even a single cultural
          artifact (e.g. Hubble space telescope, Space Shuttle
          design, or the total design of a  nuclear power plant). In
          fact, we are approaching the point that certain proofs of
          mathematical theorems are becoming too long and difficult
          for any one individual to  keep in conscious awareness. In
          a way, these transcendent and extended complexity
          relationships are examples of more complicated
          'meta-memes', which is one of the reasons it is interesting
          to study the evolution of ideas.



               Homo trans-sapiens is the [postulated] next step in
          evolution of homo sapiens.  There is no reason to expect or
          require that Homo sapiens will not undergo further
          evolution. The bio-historical trend indicates that the
          major evolutionary development in Homo is in the
          cortico-neural arena (i.e. increasingly more complex
          organization of the nervous system and the brain).
          Specifically it is the higher level cognitive - Knowledge
          Information Processing functions that set H. Sapiens apart.
          It is asserted here (and to be discussed in a future paper)
          that H. trans-sapiens is a logical consequence of
          evolution, and that the milieu and adaptive epigenetic
          landscape for H. trans-sapiens is already present in the
          form of trans-culture. It is indeed possible that the basic
          mutations  are in place and trans-sapiens already exists or
          will appear in the biologically-near time frame.



          [ Please pass to other relevant news groups/ e-lists]


          Elan Moritz,

          snail mail:
          Elan Moritz
          The Institute for Memetic Research
          PO Box 16327, Panama City, Florida 32406

          e mail:
          moritz@well.sf.ca.us  [internet]



>>>>>>>>>>> this is a follow up to discussions on Bandwidth of the Brain.
I am curious to know folks' reaction to the channel capacity as a function
of evolutionary time.

[By the way, to save space, folks already commented on physiological
difficulties  of "larger heads". I am not talking about larger heads, but
alternative wiring/circuitry, components, density, etc. and possibly but
not necesarily larger brain volumes.]