Homo sapiens and the iPhone

Mieke Mosmuller

22-06-2016 5 comments Print!

The philosophical reflections of this blog started with thoughts about the human being. If we want to follow the ideas of the evolution theories, we find a human being that can know about his world and himself. In so far as he is a knowing human being, we can call him Homo sapiens; in so far as he also has the possibility to know himself, he can be called Homo sapiens sapiens.

So even if we forget all spiritual thoughts and reflections, we find the human being as a being with the faculty of acquiring knowledge about the world and about himself. This knowing faculty has reached a kind of 'potentiating' in our modern times, by developing 'artificial intelligence'. Human intelligence has come so far that it can reproduce itself technically - and now has a highly technical intelligence alongside it. This artificial technical intelligence takes over a lot of intelligent functions that the human mind itself had to fulfill in earlier times.

I remember the nineties, not so long ago. I was giving lectures in several Dutch and Belgian cities, at various unknown addresses. Before we started, we always checked our maps – on paper, to be sure to find our way not only to the town, but also within the town... It was a bit stressful, it often went wrong, of course, and we had to search around and orientate ourselves. But we got there, every time! One could feel a kind of sense of direction becoming more and more developed. Nowadays we have a navigation system or Google maps on the iPhone. We use it gratefully; it saves time and makes travelling much less stressful. Thanks to our developed sense of direction we can still orient ourselves well, even when the navigation aid goes awry. I always know where I am. But in the younger generation it is clear that they travel without knowing where they are. Probably is this a generalisation and are there still many young people who do know where they are, but mostly they don't. Their sense of orientation is not being used any more and, of course, it will atrophy, as all physical and psychic functions atrophy if they are not used regularly.

This is only one example; I could give many more. The iPhone provides us with all the intelligent functions we need. All we have to do ourselves is to know how to handle all the functions - but that easily becomes a thoughtless routine. 'Intuitive' it is called.... Today I heard on the radio that pupils at school are irritated by how slow their teachers are in handling IT. The pupils are much quicker in handling it themselves, and don't have the patience to wait till the old chaps and ladies finally find the right way to open a program or whatever.
Apart from all the substantive consequences - for instance, what can be known by whom about the individual human being - there is a more functional consequence of the artificial intelligence in our hands. At the moment this can only be seen in its early implications. But it will become clearer over the next few decades.

My text of last week, about balance in everyday life, contains a firm preventative measure against the illnesses of the human being that will arise and become manifest in future years. A worrying symptom of illnesses generally is, however, that precisely the prevention and healing methods of any particular disease are strongly resisted. The danger of a loss of human intelligence is hanging as a danger over us. Prevention is better than cure: Preserving human intelligence means cultivating it - more than ever!

Homo sapiens and the iPhone by Mieke Mosmuller

Comments

From Siep @ 22-06-2016 00:00:00

Dag Mieke, dit is me uit het hart gegrepen. Ik vind het heel ernstig en verontrustend om te zien dat zovelen zich met zoveel naïviteit aan deze externe intelligentie overgeven en langzamerhand hun eigen intelligente vermogens gaan verliezen. Op zoveel vlakken van het aanleren van vaardigheden aan kinderen zien we dit atrofiëren terug. Er wordt vaak geen structurele inspanning meer gedaan om zwakkere vaardigheden toch te gaan trainen of op redelijk niveau beheersbaar te houden. Het is een pedagogische misvatting om alles wat weerstand oproept bij kinderen deze vaardigheden dan maar verder te laten atrofiëren. Het is een toenemend verlies van de mogelijkheden van ons menselijk neurologisch-cognitief vermogen om ons te ontwikkelen en mens te laten worden.

From Michiel Suurmond @ 22-06-2016 00:00:00

'Naast alle inhoudelijke zaken – bijvoorbeeld wat geweten kan worden, door wie over welk individu dan ook – is er een meer functionele consequentie van de kunstmatige intelligentie, die als het ware in onze handen ligt.' Consequentie ... die als het ware in onze handen ligt. Een betreurde vriend maakte zich enorm zorgen over de vingertjes van kinderen die niet meer tekenen en schilderen, maar swipen en schermen aantikken. Wat betekent dit voor een volgend leven, voor de omvorming van het ledematensysteem? - vroeg hij zich af.
Maar er moet toch een oplossing zijn...

From Gerheart Bandorf @ 22-06-2016 00:00:00

»Das Haupt unseres gegenwärtigen Lebenslaufes ist entstanden durch Metamorphose unserer übrigen Leibesorganisation im vorhergehenden Lebenslauf, und unseren Kopf vom vorigen Lebenslauf haben wir verloren. Natürlich verstehe ich da nicht die physische Organisation, sondern die Formkräfte, die die physische Organisation verwirklicht hat. Dasjenige, was wir außer der Hauptesorganisation, der Trägerin der Erkenntnisfähigkeiten für das Ich, jetzt an uns tragen als übrige Menschenorganisation, Rumpf mit Gliedmaßen, das wird Hauptesorganisation unseres künftigen Erdenlebens. Sie alle tragen schon die Kräfte in sich, welche im Haupte konzentriert sein werden in Ihrem nächsten Erdenleben. Was Sie heute mit Ihren Armen vollbringen, was Sie mit den Beinen vollbringen, das wird eingehen in die innere Organisation des Hauptes in Ihrem nächsten Erdenleben. Und was an Kräften von Ihrem Haupte im nächsten Erdenleben ausströmt, das wird Ihr Karma, Ihr Schicksal für das nächste Erdenleben sein. Das, was Ihr Schicksal im nächsten Erdenleben sein wird, das wandert auf dem Umwege durch Ihre übrige Organisation, durch die Sie sich hineinstellen ins Menschenleben heute, in Ihr künftiges Hauptesleben hinüber.« (GA 196, „Geistige und soziale Wandlungen in der Menschheitsentwickelung“)

Und dann wird sich das in die individuelle Handlungs-Befähigung hineinstellen als etwas, was von enormer Bedeutung sein wird für dasjenige, was das Wollen-Können betrifft – besser noch: was die Wahrnehmung ichhafter, bewußter Willensimpulse einerseits und das Unterscheiden-Können derer von Affekten, von animalischen Reiz-Reaktionen betrifft.

From Ted McGlone @ 22-06-2016 00:00:00

I taught economic geography in college by having students draw, color, illustrate, and label their own map books and then write one page comments on the region they drew. In my experience before I learned geography, the world was a misty beyond that I felt uncertain about and thus uneasy and disoriented if people referred to the areas outside my immediate knowledge. Once I learned most of the worlds locations and features, I felt I knew where I was on the planet in relation to other people. This made me more secure in my thinking and sense of self. I hope some of my students felt that way after making their maps and discussing them with the class. Artificial Intelligence is THE most significant topic to address in the age of the consciousness soul because AI copies some functions of the human activity of thinking. Beyond the copying of computational thinking their is now the process of copying the "selfing" process through which the I being creates itself in embodied form against the resistance of the environment. Orientation, the sense of where to go from here and now to attain my goal, is absorbed by the options available in the doppelganger of AI. The effect of AI is to reduce the free space for human creative development and pull people down into a system below the natural human world.....unless we develop our creative spiritual capacities to rise above the given situation. Etheric technology, may hold potentials for alternative, moral development of human power.
From Jan Boudolf @ 27-06-2016 00:00:00

Laat on toch ook niet vergeten dat actueel één of meerdere incarnatiegolven (miljarden mensen wereldwijd) met het probleem van artificiële intelligentie worden geconfronteerd en er al naar gelang het geval in mindere of meerdere mate doordacht mee omgaan. Ik veronderstel dat deze kwestie - ervaring opdoen met dit soort intelligentie - een niet onbelangrijk onderdeel is geweest van de voorgeboortelijke intenties van deze incarnatiegolven, m.a.w.een onderdeel van het menselijk bewustwordingsproces in onze tijd. Men kan daar zijn gerechtvaardigde bedenkingen bij hebben, maar het is uiteindelijk het na-doodse verwerkingsproces dat doorslaggevend zal zijn voor de toekomstige weg van de betrokken individuen. Daarover nu al uitspraken te doen, liikt me voorbarig.