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Evolution's Arrow: the direction of evolution and the future of humanity
Evolution's Arrow argues that evolution is directional and progressive, and that this has major consequences for humanity. Without resort to teleology, the book demonstrates that evolution moves in the direction of producing cooperative organisations of greater scale and evolvability - evolution has organised molecular processes into cells, cells into organisms, and organisms into societies. The book founds this position on a new theory of the evolution of cooperation. It shows that self-interest at the level of the genes does not prevent cooperation from increasing as evolution unfolds. Evolution progresses by discovering ways to build cooperative organisations out of self-interested individuals. The book also shows that evolution itself has evolved. Evolution has progressively improved the ability of evolutionary mechanisms to discover effective adaptations. And it has produced new and better mechanisms. Evolution's Arrow uses this understanding of the direction of evolution to identify the next great steps in the evolution of life on earth - the steps that humanity must take if we are to continue to be successful in evolutionary terms. A key step for humanity is to increase the scale and evolvability of our societies, eventually forming a unified and cooperative society on the scale of the planet. We must also transform ourselves psychologically to become self-evolving organisms - organisms that are able to escape their biological and cultural past by adapting in whatever directions are necessary to achieve future evolutionary success.
360 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2000
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February 20, 2023
Long story short:
Cooperative collectives with the ability to exclude free-riders outcompete selfish, independent populations, due to beneficial (positive-sum) interactions among cooperators. Such cooperation requires (cybernetic control) management, either arising from constraints within the individuals or imposed externally, to constrain destructive individual behavior and reign-in free-riders. Once such a controlled system is developed, it becomes an (emergent) level of organization also subject to (substrate independent) evolutionary forces and for which cooperative forms will confer a survival benefit. The upper bound of such an evolutionary process of emergent cooperation is limited only by the scope of the universe. Any organization that does not align itself with this arrow of evolution will not survive to play a continuing role in its unfolding. An adaptive individual with the capacity to evolve over its lifetime has the potential to adapt to changing environmental circumstances and therefore does not need to die in the face of the continued evolution.
Highlights from the text:
“The potential benefits of cooperation will not be exhausted until all living processes in the universe are united in a single organisation of the largest possible scale. All the matter, energy and living processes of the universe will be managed into a single cooperative organisation.”
“An organism whose motivations and objectives fail to take into account the evolutionary effects of its actions will not value objectives that do. Instead, the organism will use the immense adaptive capacity unleashed by mental modelling to get better and better at serving the goals of its existing internal reward systems.”
“An organism will fail to be relevant to future evolution if it remains unorganised on a single planet, serving objectives and motivations established by flawed and shortsighted evolutionary mechanisms.”
“We are an organism in which the capacity for mental modelling has not yet realised its full potential to take over and improve our evolvability.”
“With appropriate management controls, economic markets are extraordinarily good at enabling the benefits of cooperation to be fully explored and exploited in some circumstances. This is because in these circumstances markets enable individuals to fully capture the benefit to others of their cooperative acts. How do markets achieve this? If an individual in an economic market can produce anything that benefits others, he will be able to exchange it for money. If the money exceeds the cost of production, both the producer and the consumer can end up in front from the exchange.”
“Markets include the seeds of their own destruction. They tend to produce individuals and corporations with the power to undermine the effective operation of the market.”
“Mentally we can abstract individuals out of this on-going process and consider them as separate and independent beings. If we do this and then ask what purpose or meaning there can be in their temporary lives, we must conclude that there can be none. From the point of view of an isolated individual, the inevitability of death makes anything he does during his life irrelevant and meaningless. If there is no afterlife, whatever he does during his short life can make no difference to himself in the long run. He still ends up dead. It is impossible to find meaning in a temporary and isolated life that is not part of some ongoing process.”
“We can live our lives as if we are separate from the on-going evolutionary process, and make no conscious contribution to it. But individuals with evolutionary awareness will not find meaning or purpose in such a life. They will find no meaning in a life spent vigorously and energetically seeking the satisfaction of their pre-existing material and emotional urges.”
Adjacent books (that I’ve read):
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution is substrate-neutral and applies through multiple emergent levels
* The Phenomenon of Man: Cosmic evolution has a progressive arc which has generated multiple emergent levels (physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere) culminating in an Omega point of maximal cooperation
* The Phenomenon of Science: Evolution has a progressive arc of complexity, with new levels emerging as metasystem transitions in which cybernetic control systems constrain the behavior of lower-level constituents to create higher-level behavior
* Nonzero: The logos of the universe gives evolution a progressive arc generating increasing complexity through multiple emergent levels, fueled by the positive-sum gains enabled by cooperative behavior at each level.
* The Evolution of Cooperation: Cooperative with punishment of defectors/free riders (“tit for tat”) is an evolutionary stable strategy that outcompete all others.
* A Theory of Everything/Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: Evolution has a progressive arc generating at least 3 tiers and 8 levels of increasing complexity/greater depth of holarchical embrace, with each emergent level transcending but embracing the lower level upon which it is based.
* Lila: The static/dynamic play of quality gives evolution a progressive arc generating increasing complexity, giving rise to the Inorganic, Biological, Social, and Intellectual levels, with each emergent level dependent upon but constraining the lower level upon which it is based.
* Life 3.0: The rise of artificial intelligence will allow evolution to work much faster than biological or social evolution and allow for the conscious control of evolution.
What Evolution’s Arrow gets right:
* Change-and-test is the basic evolutionary algorithm.
* Evolution is substrate-independent.
* Cooperation outcompetes narrow self-interest if free-riders can be excluded.
* The problem of goal misalignment due to the unchanging instincts and emotions instilled by genetic evolution.
* The cybernetic superiority of markets over central planning for efficient distribution.
* The need for outside constraints for markets to work and not self-destruct.
* The need for a social safety net/guaranteed basic income.
* The need for world governance.
* The problem of capture of governments by the wealthy.
* The cybernetic superiority of democracy.
What it misses:
* Specific strategies for increasing the systemic modeling ability required for more cooperative human behavior to develop.
* A detailed enough description of how vertical markets in governance might work to really be convincing.
* A pithier name than “evolutionary warrior”.
* The possibility of meaning in an individual life not connected to a grand evolutionary epic.
* The promise of genetic engineering to reprogram our biological reward systems to align with our long-term evolutionary interests.
* The role of artificial intelligence and our evolutionary future.
Cooperative collectives with the ability to exclude free-riders outcompete selfish, independent populations, due to beneficial (positive-sum) interactions among cooperators. Such cooperation requires (cybernetic control) management, either arising from constraints within the individuals or imposed externally, to constrain destructive individual behavior and reign-in free-riders. Once such a controlled system is developed, it becomes an (emergent) level of organization also subject to (substrate independent) evolutionary forces and for which cooperative forms will confer a survival benefit. The upper bound of such an evolutionary process of emergent cooperation is limited only by the scope of the universe. Any organization that does not align itself with this arrow of evolution will not survive to play a continuing role in its unfolding. An adaptive individual with the capacity to evolve over its lifetime has the potential to adapt to changing environmental circumstances and therefore does not need to die in the face of the continued evolution.
Highlights from the text:
“The potential benefits of cooperation will not be exhausted until all living processes in the universe are united in a single organisation of the largest possible scale. All the matter, energy and living processes of the universe will be managed into a single cooperative organisation.”
“An organism whose motivations and objectives fail to take into account the evolutionary effects of its actions will not value objectives that do. Instead, the organism will use the immense adaptive capacity unleashed by mental modelling to get better and better at serving the goals of its existing internal reward systems.”
“An organism will fail to be relevant to future evolution if it remains unorganised on a single planet, serving objectives and motivations established by flawed and shortsighted evolutionary mechanisms.”
“We are an organism in which the capacity for mental modelling has not yet realised its full potential to take over and improve our evolvability.”
“With appropriate management controls, economic markets are extraordinarily good at enabling the benefits of cooperation to be fully explored and exploited in some circumstances. This is because in these circumstances markets enable individuals to fully capture the benefit to others of their cooperative acts. How do markets achieve this? If an individual in an economic market can produce anything that benefits others, he will be able to exchange it for money. If the money exceeds the cost of production, both the producer and the consumer can end up in front from the exchange.”
“Markets include the seeds of their own destruction. They tend to produce individuals and corporations with the power to undermine the effective operation of the market.”
“Mentally we can abstract individuals out of this on-going process and consider them as separate and independent beings. If we do this and then ask what purpose or meaning there can be in their temporary lives, we must conclude that there can be none. From the point of view of an isolated individual, the inevitability of death makes anything he does during his life irrelevant and meaningless. If there is no afterlife, whatever he does during his short life can make no difference to himself in the long run. He still ends up dead. It is impossible to find meaning in a temporary and isolated life that is not part of some ongoing process.”
“We can live our lives as if we are separate from the on-going evolutionary process, and make no conscious contribution to it. But individuals with evolutionary awareness will not find meaning or purpose in such a life. They will find no meaning in a life spent vigorously and energetically seeking the satisfaction of their pre-existing material and emotional urges.”
Adjacent books (that I’ve read):
Darwin’s Dangerous Idea: Evolution is substrate-neutral and applies through multiple emergent levels
* The Phenomenon of Man: Cosmic evolution has a progressive arc which has generated multiple emergent levels (physiosphere, biosphere, noosphere) culminating in an Omega point of maximal cooperation
* The Phenomenon of Science: Evolution has a progressive arc of complexity, with new levels emerging as metasystem transitions in which cybernetic control systems constrain the behavior of lower-level constituents to create higher-level behavior
* Nonzero: The logos of the universe gives evolution a progressive arc generating increasing complexity through multiple emergent levels, fueled by the positive-sum gains enabled by cooperative behavior at each level.
* The Evolution of Cooperation: Cooperative with punishment of defectors/free riders (“tit for tat”) is an evolutionary stable strategy that outcompete all others.
* A Theory of Everything/Sex, Ecology, Spirituality: Evolution has a progressive arc generating at least 3 tiers and 8 levels of increasing complexity/greater depth of holarchical embrace, with each emergent level transcending but embracing the lower level upon which it is based.
* Lila: The static/dynamic play of quality gives evolution a progressive arc generating increasing complexity, giving rise to the Inorganic, Biological, Social, and Intellectual levels, with each emergent level dependent upon but constraining the lower level upon which it is based.
* Life 3.0: The rise of artificial intelligence will allow evolution to work much faster than biological or social evolution and allow for the conscious control of evolution.
What Evolution’s Arrow gets right:
* Change-and-test is the basic evolutionary algorithm.
* Evolution is substrate-independent.
* Cooperation outcompetes narrow self-interest if free-riders can be excluded.
* The problem of goal misalignment due to the unchanging instincts and emotions instilled by genetic evolution.
* The cybernetic superiority of markets over central planning for efficient distribution.
* The need for outside constraints for markets to work and not self-destruct.
* The need for a social safety net/guaranteed basic income.
* The need for world governance.
* The problem of capture of governments by the wealthy.
* The cybernetic superiority of democracy.
What it misses:
* Specific strategies for increasing the systemic modeling ability required for more cooperative human behavior to develop.
* A detailed enough description of how vertical markets in governance might work to really be convincing.
* A pithier name than “evolutionary warrior”.
* The possibility of meaning in an individual life not connected to a grand evolutionary epic.
* The promise of genetic engineering to reprogram our biological reward systems to align with our long-term evolutionary interests.
* The role of artificial intelligence and our evolutionary future.
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