Evolution of Freedom
Part IV: Collective intelligence - Chapter 48
Connectome
Systems thinking tells us that how a system’s parts are connected is often more important than the parts themselves. The way the internet connects the world’s brains and how people use it is still random and arbitrary, and much of the information it relays qualifies as mere noise. Lacking the ability to transmit clear and relevant signals, humanity is still incapable of accessing its latent potential for collective intelligence.
Unlike the internet, the way our brain processes information is anything but random. It is able to process a flood of sensory stimuli and draw upon a wealth of past experience to produce an appropriate response in the blink of an eye. What makes this possible is the sophisticated wiring of our connectome, which consists of 100 billion neurons that are connected by up to 1000 trillion synapses. By relaying all the relevant signals to exactly where they are needed, the connectome gives rise to human consciousness and a wide range of spectacular cognitive abilities.
For an online service to optimize humanity’s potential for collective intelligence, it must emulate the sophistication with which the connectome relays and processes its various signals. The way each signal travels in the system and how they interact with each other must be consciously designed. This process must yield new insights into the way the world really works, since only then can we respond more intelligently to our environment. The complex interaction of all these criss-crossing signals should be distilled into clear incentives and disincentives that guide us towards optimum performance and outcomes.
The way the information is wired can be approached as an optimization challenge, since the outcomes we achieve will ultimately determine the level of collective intelligence we have attained. To qualify as genuine intelligence, the change in our behavior should result in elevating the minimum level of well-being we can create for everybody. The internet’s existing infrastructure is perfectly capable of creating a globe-spanning connectome as long as we learn to wire our information correctly.
We should not underestimate the problem. By aspiring to emulate the human connectome, we aspire to do something that has taken biological evolution billions of years to perfect. Every generation of the human brain is shaped by trillions of intelligent responses our ancestors have made to the changes they have observed in their environments. By managing to stay alive long enough to procreate, every one of our ancestors has demonstrated a capacity to adapt to their specific environment. This ability is embodied in the structure of every human connectome and passed on to the next generation through DNA.
Our connectome is so complex that science has thus far been unable to map all its connections. In fact, the only connectomes science has been able to map so far belong to the ringworm and the fruit fly. The fruit fly’s brain contains 250,000 neurons and 20 million synaptic connections. The US National Institutes of Health is funding the Human Connectome Project, which aims to eventually map the whole human connectome. This research will hopefully help guide the way we wire our online connectome. We should remain realistic, however. It will take a long time before we can hope to match or outdo evolution’s greatest achievement, the human brain.
In forming collective human intelligence, the first challenge is to maximize the number of neurons the system contains. Ideally all humans would be enlisted to serve as an individual neuron in this globe-spanning connectome. The advantages of participating in such a system should far outweigh the effort it requires or the benefits of opting out of the system entirely.
The more people that enlist, the more sensory data we can collect from the world and the more accurately our collective mental image will correspond to the underlying reality. This collective understanding enables every one of us to react more intelligently to the changes that are occurring all around us.
When a large population has been enlisted, we have to ensure that each individual neuron is equipped to send a wide range of machine-readable signals that clearly communicate what is happening in their environment and what their individual reactions to it are. The more uniform each neuron’s ability to signal is, the more coherently the entire network can communicate. The UBI, the votes and the evaluations are the cornerstones of this signaling system.
A well-functioning marketplace doesn’t only impart valuable information–it can create the conditions for mutual prosperity that distribute physical well-being much further and wider than any other system. While its supply and demand signals impart vital signals about our physical reality, the connectome needs to be able to communicate many higher cognitive functions that are unique to humans.
Human well-being is dependent on our ability to incorporate our ethical principles and our value system into the way we make our decisions. The pro-social market with its machine-readable reputation system has been specifically crafted to provide these important signals.
Through public evaluations our UBI allows us to project our value system onto the resources and actors that our life depends on. Together these evaluations form public reputations that help us make better decisions and enable us to live according to our values.
Our value system is defined directly by the choices we make, not the opinions we hold or espouse. Universal basic power allows us to articulate our individual value system and the wiring in the connectome should provide us with unambiguous feedback signals that allow us to live out those values in practice.
The task of the connectome is to provide each individual and community with all the correct signals and feedback loops that help us steer our planet towards the optimum form of existence. The long list of positive features that together create conditions of mutual prosperity and collective intelligence emerges as a result of how we process specific information. To ensure that we indeed attain these positive outcomes, we need to hard wire them into the way our online connectome processes our information.
The well-being we seek to create has also an immaterial dimension. What we need is the ability to live according to our values, in peace with our fellow citizens and in balance with our ecosystem.
Unlike the internet, the way our brain processes information is anything but random. It is able to process a flood of sensory stimuli and draw upon a wealth of past experience to produce an appropriate response in the blink of an eye. What makes this possible is the sophisticated wiring of our connectome, which consists of 100 billion neurons that are connected by up to 1000 trillion synapses. By relaying all the relevant signals to exactly where they are needed, the connectome gives rise to human consciousness and a wide range of spectacular cognitive abilities.
For an online service to optimize humanity’s potential for collective intelligence, it must emulate the sophistication with which the connectome relays and processes its various signals. The way each signal travels in the system and how they interact with each other must be consciously designed. This process must yield new insights into the way the world really works, since only then can we respond more intelligently to our environment. The complex interaction of all these criss-crossing signals should be distilled into clear incentives and disincentives that guide us towards optimum performance and outcomes.
The way the information is wired can be approached as an optimization challenge, since the outcomes we achieve will ultimately determine the level of collective intelligence we have attained. To qualify as genuine intelligence, the change in our behavior should result in elevating the minimum level of well-being we can create for everybody. The internet’s existing infrastructure is perfectly capable of creating a globe-spanning connectome as long as we learn to wire our information correctly.
We should not underestimate the problem. By aspiring to emulate the human connectome, we aspire to do something that has taken biological evolution billions of years to perfect. Every generation of the human brain is shaped by trillions of intelligent responses our ancestors have made to the changes they have observed in their environments. By managing to stay alive long enough to procreate, every one of our ancestors has demonstrated a capacity to adapt to their specific environment. This ability is embodied in the structure of every human connectome and passed on to the next generation through DNA.
Our connectome is so complex that science has thus far been unable to map all its connections. In fact, the only connectomes science has been able to map so far belong to the ringworm and the fruit fly. The fruit fly’s brain contains 250,000 neurons and 20 million synaptic connections. The US National Institutes of Health is funding the Human Connectome Project, which aims to eventually map the whole human connectome. This research will hopefully help guide the way we wire our online connectome. We should remain realistic, however. It will take a long time before we can hope to match or outdo evolution’s greatest achievement, the human brain.
In forming collective human intelligence, the first challenge is to maximize the number of neurons the system contains. Ideally all humans would be enlisted to serve as an individual neuron in this globe-spanning connectome. The advantages of participating in such a system should far outweigh the effort it requires or the benefits of opting out of the system entirely.
The more people that enlist, the more sensory data we can collect from the world and the more accurately our collective mental image will correspond to the underlying reality. This collective understanding enables every one of us to react more intelligently to the changes that are occurring all around us.
When a large population has been enlisted, we have to ensure that each individual neuron is equipped to send a wide range of machine-readable signals that clearly communicate what is happening in their environment and what their individual reactions to it are. The more uniform each neuron’s ability to signal is, the more coherently the entire network can communicate. The UBI, the votes and the evaluations are the cornerstones of this signaling system.
A well-functioning marketplace doesn’t only impart valuable information–it can create the conditions for mutual prosperity that distribute physical well-being much further and wider than any other system. While its supply and demand signals impart vital signals about our physical reality, the connectome needs to be able to communicate many higher cognitive functions that are unique to humans.
Human well-being is dependent on our ability to incorporate our ethical principles and our value system into the way we make our decisions. The pro-social market with its machine-readable reputation system has been specifically crafted to provide these important signals.
Through public evaluations our UBI allows us to project our value system onto the resources and actors that our life depends on. Together these evaluations form public reputations that help us make better decisions and enable us to live according to our values.
Our value system is defined directly by the choices we make, not the opinions we hold or espouse. Universal basic power allows us to articulate our individual value system and the wiring in the connectome should provide us with unambiguous feedback signals that allow us to live out those values in practice.
The task of the connectome is to provide each individual and community with all the correct signals and feedback loops that help us steer our planet towards the optimum form of existence. The long list of positive features that together create conditions of mutual prosperity and collective intelligence emerges as a result of how we process specific information. To ensure that we indeed attain these positive outcomes, we need to hard wire them into the way our online connectome processes our information.
The well-being we seek to create has also an immaterial dimension. What we need is the ability to live according to our values, in peace with our fellow citizens and in balance with our ecosystem.
