The Social Supercomputer
How human brains came together
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Having traversed a brief history of human progress, it is time to step back and examine “how” it works. We conduct this examination by looking at the three necessary components of progress 1) matter 2) energy, 3) and knowledge. Matter is the clay from which we sculpt the physical world, energy is required to do the sculpting, and knowledge informs us how. Unlike matter and energy, which are finite, knowledge is limitless. Therefore, human wealth and progress are limited only by our ability to learn and discover.
A recent study published by David H. Wolpert and Kyle Harper examines human advancement from the perspective that both society and our biotic environments are “computers” that process inputs and produce outputs. Humans were the first species to develop culture, whereby we can pass advantageous information easily from one individual to the next, complementing the comparatively slow process of evolution, which passes information stored only in DNA.
A computational/knowledge approach to progress helps explain the emergence of modern civilization. It explains why early humans, stretching back 300,000 years, shared the same cognitive hardware we do, yet they lived comparatively primitive lives. Wolpert and Harper take the view, as do I, that we owe progress to our use of language, initially verbal and later written, to accelerate the accumulation of our stock of knowledge. It is this knowledge, combined with the harvesting of more free energy, that enabled us to mold the clay of the modern world.
Of course, proving such a theory is difficult because there is no clear means of directly measuring the total computation power of human societies. Instead, they use a rough proxy for measurement: occupational specialization. Every occupation requires an “algorithm” to execute, therefore the total number of unique occupations is a reasonable proxy for total social “compute.” As we saw in our examination of chemical and biological evolution, with each step up the rung of the ladder, we saw an increase in specialization where the total becomes greater than the sum of constituent parts. This computation-centered view of progress neatly merges physics and biology with economics. They write:
“The computation-centered view of biology helps to explain what is, from a physics perspective, the central conundrum of life: how, in a universe dominated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, living systems reduce local entropy, creating order and organization… evolution is a kind of “Maxwell’s demon” that sieves for information that can exploit free energy to reproduce itself. The information stored in living systems is information about the external environment. It is “how-to” information, ensembles of algorithms for how to self-assemble, how to observe the external environment, how to harvest free energy, how to act in and modify the environment, how to interact with other agents (conspecifics, predators, prey, etc.), and how to reproduce.”
For generations, economists have understood that a division of labor is key to economic growth, now we understand why. Our ability to specialize, Wolpert and Kyle Harper found, is limited by the total stock of human knowledge. For people to specialize, they need to know how to do things. In other words, the more knowledge we accumulate, the greater the specialization of human skills, the more economic growth we will have, and the wealthier we will become. As expected, occupational specialization is strongly correlated with per capita wealth.
Specialization breeds wealth because it makes us more productive. “Productivity” is simply a measure of economic output per human laborer. What ultimately determines how much wealth a worker can produce? You guessed it, knowledge. Knowledge informs us how we can do more with less. It tells us how to combine molecules to make disease-curing medicines. It tells us how to melt sand into silicon to make machines that can “think.” It tells us how to grow more with less land, how to light the darkness, and control explosions to break free of Earth’s gravity. The more powerful the “social supercomputer” becomes, the faster the stock of knowledge grows, the more opportunities and possibilities we create, and the wealthier we become.
It's important to remember, however, that all of this is underpinned by energy. Our brains require significant amounts of energy to process information. The more humans there are the more energy we must produce to maintain that computational capability. This is why the agricultural revolution was so important; it provided more energy to increase the total social compute and accelerate the accumulation of knowledge. It’s the reason why the discovery of the steam engine was also so profound. It’s also a potential bottleneck to future human advancement.
The agricultural revolution might be thought of as the first energy revolution. It freed some of us from rural isolation, ignited urbanization, and brought people and ideas closer together. These new cities became social “reactors,” nodes of a social supercomputer. This is because human cities scale favorably. As its population grows, inputs per capita fall while outputs rise. Infrastructure, the length of roads, piping, electric lines, fiber optic cables,…etc, scale sublinearly with population size to the exponent of 0.85. This means the population grows faster than the total infrastructure required to support it. On the other hand, socioeconomic outputs, such as the number of patents produced, GDP, and even average incomes for its inhabitants, scale superlinearly to the exponent of 1.15. That is, the higher the population, the more innovative and wealthier the city will be.
This is profound. Compare a small city of 100,000 inhabitants with a city of 1 million. Certeris paribus, the latter will be about 17 times more innovative than the former. A city of 5 million will be 130 times more innovative, with only 50 times the population. Cities became idea factories, furnaces of innovation, and nodes of a global supercomputer, where we could rapidly add to the stock of accumulated knowledge. It should be no surprise then that, viewed from above, modern cities bear an uncanny resemblance to the complex circuitry found in our microelectronics.
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Good compilation.
Some decades ago my grad school advisor's wife (an economist, or maybe she read it from elsewhere?) suggested that cities of about 200,000 were the optimum size, being big enough to have cultural and other amenities, but not so big as to have major issues of congestion, crime, etc.
Of course the internet and work-from-home modes can now expand that into a multi-million virtual city, constrained as you suggest by the energy resources needed to maintain it.
I may have missed some of your past postings about physics, chemistry, and biology, but if you haven't already found it, I would recommend to you the book How Life Works, by Philip Ball [2023]. He summarizes the last 20 years of advances in understanding genetics, epigenetics, and life at the levels of biochemistry, the cell, tissues, and bodies. The genetic story and contribution is more complex than earlier simpler narratives and each level of life contributes something to continued replication or reproduction. I have found the set of books by Michael Tomosello discussing agency, sociality, and related topics to be helpful as well.
There is that famous graph of time vs. human prosperity, with a nearly level path for 200,000 years and then a dramatic upturn around 1800. The knowledge contribution you mention would seem to be vital to that, and earlier advances, via writing (5000 BC?), universities (1200's), and then the printing press (1400's). Yet it still took another 300+ years for the European/Western civilization to break out. I wonder if either more/better energy in coal, oil, gas was the reason, and/or the social development of a constitutional monarchical governance scheme that liberated more people to maximize their talents, etc.??
Is "knowledge" limitless? Individual, human capacity for knowledge seems to be limited; but, too, just because I do not know something does not insist that what there is to be known is without limits. Socrates posited that prior to birth into human flesh, all answers were known; and that asking the right questions would reveal the knowledge once known prior to our human form. I'd argue that all Existence has a limit, but...
Succinctly...I had to review the definition of the term ("knowledge"), and then consider whether it and a few additional points in this article are a matter of semantics or unnecessary to analyze...for sake of taking away from Overall Point. For example, the notion of humans being the first species to develop culture that easily passes information to another ... observing Wild Life, such as lions, this seems an arguable point since "language" [languaging] comes in multiple, effective forms. The ability to document information to be passed to a disjointed Other...yes, that Culture Passing is accurate. However, is it of greater advantage to live with Knowledge, or to be limited by ignorance? Both have valid arguments, I posit.
[There are other points I might argue but, to the main point...]
The most important point to make is this: It is perfectly human to attempt perfect resolution of a Problem, after the Problem has already been created -- when the perfect solution is not to create the problem, to begin with. In this, I find that most of Society approaches resolution without addressing the root causes to a Problem: irresponsible procreation. [...] Without addressing the ecumenical value of educating Civility to avoid functioning as Wild Life, I contend We merely compound our own issues. And as such a thing is a difficult conversation that Most would be considered at fault of, the Typical Human Thing to do is disregard The Mirror (self-reflection) and - like wasted energy of Social Science - seek solutions in every possible place except where the direct answer lies.
The miscalculation of this article is located in the one-sided envisioning of Humanity. You've accounted for the Order (Civility) in Humanity, but disregarded Humanity's Disorder (Chaos). "Specialization" may breed wealth...when there is Order. If Humans do not resolve the Chaos in Humanity, however, efforts to Progress simply come with incessant Disorder to routinely develop a reactionary system of evolved security. What is the value of Energy Cost, when energy cannot be maximized towards Progress due to need for securing against Disorder/Chaos?
And so, the Social Supercomputer appears to identify a system within a system- the temporary order that occurs when entropy is addressed. But, as we know, Order/Civility requires constant energy to maintain- it is in constant contention with the greater existence of Disorder.
The grander picture (macro-micro-level) suggests that Order ("Specialization") within Order (Productivity) is an insignificant occurrence. It is significant in that it is unique to the whole of Existence, yes; but it is insignificant in that most of Existence is Disorder. As such, the value of pursuing Specialization for Human Progress is an interrupted (read: doomed) process without specializing in root-cause analysis that genuinely (read: honestly) addresses The Human Problem: irresponsible procreation.
Finally...
To address the article's reference to the Wolpert-Harper study - "the central conundrum of life: how, in a universe dominated by the Second Law of Thermodynamics, living systems reduce local entropy, creating order and organization…" - there is a simple resolution. 1). Either we must reconsider the accuracy/precision of entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics [that is: it is either incorrect or incomplete (as in, "something" is missing)]; or, 2). "Something" is missed by the supposed 'conundrum of life' proposition/query.
What 'The Conundrum' Misses
In all Things, regardless of any Suggested Data, I contend, it must match logic. That is the balance to Information, and the reconciliation of Science. This is a standard problem in "human progress": a micro perspective that fails to acknowledge the macro, or vise-versa. This, I propose, fuels the industry of Changing Science: little can be trusted outside of Natural Law- when Natural Law is properly applied. Failure to acknowledge The Whole of a system or condition - in terms of pursuing A Purpose - results in a waste of energy.