I am trying to formulate a factor, m, that explains a person or population's evolutionary pressures across time. It will be an accumulative factor where -m is stressors and a +m is pleasures.
A value of 0 implies you have about equal amount of stressors and pleasures.
A high enough factor m, implies you're so covered in pleasures that you might end up not bothering reproducing anyways.
A low enough factor implies you're so stressed you don't want to reproduce, can lead to suicide.
The point of no return for negative and positive m values differs across species and populations, and maybe across time if the genome of the population changes. Even among people since our values and genes differ.
Is there something that already calculates that?
The reason I got to this is after watching a video about Calhoun's rat paradise experiment. It struck me that the population reached a level of self-extinction. Usually, you hear about the other end of extinction where populations go extinct due to habitat damage, mass extinction events, general environmental changes, or just over hunted by humans or predators. However, Calhoun's experiment sheds the light on another factor; comfort.
Providing species with all their needs might lead them to negligence of their basic needs of reproduction and focus more on selfish or social activities.
This intersects with a concept I revisited today which is AI, and automation. What will happen when humans are not needed to work? And all our needs are covered by AI? This will be the closest we get to Calhoun's paradise, and we might find our species m ceiling at that point, or evolve a need to continue space exploration and building bigger and better structures.
It can be a Great Filter as well for civilizations that end up with all their needs met, so just end up indulging in selfish hedonistic endeavors into self-extinction.
Anyways, I am digressing right now. How can this factor be measured and what do you think humanity's future be?
A value of 0 implies you have about equal amount of stressors and pleasures.
A high enough factor m, implies you're so covered in pleasures that you might end up not bothering reproducing anyways.
A low enough factor implies you're so stressed you don't want to reproduce, can lead to suicide.
The point of no return for negative and positive m values differs across species and populations, and maybe across time if the genome of the population changes. Even among people since our values and genes differ.
Is there something that already calculates that?
The reason I got to this is after watching a video about Calhoun's rat paradise experiment. It struck me that the population reached a level of self-extinction. Usually, you hear about the other end of extinction where populations go extinct due to habitat damage, mass extinction events, general environmental changes, or just over hunted by humans or predators. However, Calhoun's experiment sheds the light on another factor; comfort.
Providing species with all their needs might lead them to negligence of their basic needs of reproduction and focus more on selfish or social activities.
This intersects with a concept I revisited today which is AI, and automation. What will happen when humans are not needed to work? And all our needs are covered by AI? This will be the closest we get to Calhoun's paradise, and we might find our species m ceiling at that point, or evolve a need to continue space exploration and building bigger and better structures.
It can be a Great Filter as well for civilizations that end up with all their needs met, so just end up indulging in selfish hedonistic endeavors into self-extinction.
Anyways, I am digressing right now. How can this factor be measured and what do you think humanity's future be?
