Greater Israel—Jewish Genius and Technological Accelerationism (Part 2)

Part 2 of 3

The accelerationist concept of a cultural or civilizational ‘speed up’ is typically or frequently combined with the idea of events moving rapidly towards what is called a ‘singularity’ or a ‘technological singularity.’ This is the idea that machines, robotics and machine learning or Artificial Intelligence will reach a point of superhuman capacity and intelligence. This is the point at which such systems and machines can self-recursively improve themselves at rates that might seem unfathomable to us. This ‘accelerated’ rate of growth could give rise, speculation has it, to a new form of artificial life (or consciousness)–a form of life (or machinery) that we cannot control or even grasp the  future evolutionary path of, benign or malignant though it may be. 

These accelerationist scenarios have been put forward by various intellectuals, writers and technologists. One of the principal proponents of the singularity ‘concept’ is the brilliant inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil, who expanded on this view in his 2005 book The Singularity is Near, predicting that it would occur on or before 2045. Vernon Vinge, the recently deceased computer scientist and science fiction author is often credited with widely popularizing the concept of a singularity. Many other writers and technologists have spoken imaginatively and intelligently on this subject. These include such intellectual luminaries as Roger Penrose, Stephen Hawking,  Jaron Lanier, Steven Pinker, Eric Drexler,  Gordon Moore, John Henry Holland and many others.  

The first person to use the expression “singularity”, in the modern sense that we use it now, was the preeminent and intellectual colossus, John von Neumann–who could be called the architect of our epoch (or coming epoch if you will). Von Neumann’s close friend and collaborator Stanislaw Ulam, himself a savant and genius, reported that von Neumann expressed a serious clear-eyed view that computers, following a natural growth curve, would reach a point of evolution when their abilities would surpass humans and he referred to this point as a “singularity”. He felt the fate of humankind would be unknown and uncertain after this point. 

The accelerationist paradigm is not by any means obvious and much of this perspective defies commonplace logic and observation. 

We forget, for instance, how slowly life itself has evolved, and what a late offspring it is in the history of the Earth and the local cosmos of which we are but a small part. 

The process of biological evolution has, in fact, been glacially slow. It took about 750 million years for the first primitive cells to evolve on Earth, and then at least another 1.5 billion subsequent years for the first multicellular organisms to arise. It took yet another full 2 billion years before the first primates evolved about 85 million years ago. These timespans are almost beyond our short-life limited grasp. And it was only about 6 million years ago when our genetic line and that of chimpanzees first diverged. We, Homo sapiens (i.e. modern humans) only emerged a short 300,000 years ago, which is a mere blink on the geological and evolutionary stop clock. 

Advancement and refinements of our consciousness, intelligence, cognitive capacity and culture have seemingly occurred in short, sudden, catastrophe-driven, life-and-death induced bursts. These sudden bursts include a cognitive-neural leap forward perhaps as recently as 50,000 years ago, likely a consequence of some near extinction bottleneck where a life-and-death exigency made symbolic communication necessary and resulted in the rapid growth of the cerebellum or a rewiring of our brain architecture. (or more likely both)

One of the most important sets of cognitive, genetic and neurological changes may have occurred as recently as 15-20 thousand years ago with a broad climate-induced mini Ice Age; an extinction scale event known as the Younger Dryas that coincided or was coincident with the Neolithic Agricultural Revolution. 

One could surmise another far-reaching catastrophic event triggered by a climatic disaster or a volcanic eruption leading to the Bronze Age social collapse; an event coterminous with the emergence of Judaic monotheism and the invention of the Hebraic alphabet around 3000 years ago. 

I would cautiously posit without sufficient corroborating evidence perhaps another set of intellectual genetic-cognitive events occurring subsequent to the Black Plague in the 14th century (1346 to 1353) which may have differentially affected Ashkenazi Jewry and to a disproportionate degree, which resulted in various cognitive intellectual effects and trade-offs. The genetic base pair sequencing of tens of millions of human genomes over the next few decades will yield a treasure trove of data that will reveal answers to many questions vis-a-vis our recent evolutionary history. Anthropologists such as Harvard’s late Stephen Jay Gould have argued vociferously that human evolution has ended, but much evidence seems to suggest the exact opposite, with the brain as the principal target of sweeping genetic mutations, ongoing natural selection and vast, on-going, epigenetic adaptations. 

Human cultural and economic progress, at the same time, has also advanced in a very uneven and fitful fashion. Almost all progress in human history has been repeatedly undermined by inertia, habit, prejudice and the inherent human fear of change. As Vaclav Smil, one of the great expositors of human cultural and ecological history, and the foremost authority on the role of ‘energetics’ in various life systems and eco-cycles, states,  for “centuries after centuries, there is just endless repetition, of stagnation and the slow growth and the diffusion of long established [energy] conversions”. 

The vast majority of our human ancestors, and various unrelated humanoid cousin species, have merely died out, failing to make even minor concessions to their environment or to solve basic and elemental problems confronting their survival. Tiny fractions of our forebears made only minuscule and incremental improvements and even these improvements took thousands of years to disseminate. 

Vaclav Smil elaborates that it was only nine thousand years ago that “Homo sapiens first used extrasomatic energy” from a “source other than human muscles” by domesticating animals for “field work and for lifting water from wells”. And it is “only five thousand years ago that we first use inanimate prime movers by way of sails as prime movers” and it is only “two thousand years ago that we master the use of waterwheels” and it was just “one thousand years ago that we harness wind by way of windmills”. Even with a constant diffusion of cultural practices to neighbouring tribes and peoples, most of humankind remained mired in a pre-stone age cultural stasis, an evolutionary cul-de-sac that spelled ultimate long-term extinction. Smil reminds us that “prior to the arrival of the Europeans” in the Americas at the end of the 15th century, all work was “done by human muscles” in that these “societies and cultures had not succeeded in domesticating draft animals”. 

Even at the epicentre of cultural and economic advancement in Europe in the Middle Ages, progress was hampered at every step, and very little change occurred over the course of generations and centuries. Vaclav Smil “estimates” that even as recently as “five hundred years ago, 1500 AD”, ninety-percent of all useful “mechanical energy was provided by animate power, roughly split between people and animals”, while all “thermal energy came from the combustion of plant fuels, wood, charcoal, straw and dried dung”. 

More thought provoking is Vaclav Smil’s point that the world of 1850 in the heart of Europe looks more like the world of 1000 or 500 AD than the world of the year 2000. 

Tangential, and removed from our immediate purposes and subject, it is interesting nonetheless to note the tremendous emphasis that Vaclav Smil puts on the role of two specific prime ‘movers’ in the “globalization of the world”. Firstly, the technical development of the “high compression non-sparking internal compression engine” invented by Rudolf Diesel in the 1890s and secondly, the gas turbine designed by Frank Whittle and Hans Pabst von Ohain in the 1930s” ( I would refer readers to Vaclav Smil’s book “How the World Really Works: The Science behind how we got here and Where We are Going”).

The deeper question with respect to understanding the extraordinary events of the mid to late 19th and early 20th century is what happened socially or environmentally to allow for the extraordinary succession of rapid intellectual and technological breakthroughs in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Why did history suddenly change its pace, pattern and trajectory?  What is the nexus of cultural and cognitive capacities that enabled this transformation? What were the countervailing and destructive forces that sought to reverse this progress. These are the great questions.

*Dedicated to Matan “DJ Kido” Elmalem, 42 years of age, who was killed on October 7th, 2023, at the Supernova music festival while performing on the stage. As one of the world’s leading ‘trance’ DJs, he travelled the world playing in India, Europe, South America and Japan. May he not be forgotten and may his memory be a blessing.

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