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Hi everyone.. I would like to discuss an idea/concept I came up with a few months ago, and it seems that this would be the ideal forum to post something like this. I have been wondering about how to approach this subject and ideas between writing a novel, or just a regular book about it crossed my mind, however the time involved is not what I have available now. But who knows what results out of this post here.. maybe there are some other ones who'd be interested in exploring this further in one way or another.
First my background, I have studied economics, got a masters in computer sciences, and in the past I have been doing a lot of work with artificial intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, computer simulations etc.
The theory
Over the last decade, observing terrorism I couldnt help noticing similarities between the development of terrorism (but also generally philosophies and super powers) and generally evolution. However I have never seen that the connection is made of looking at all this from an evolutionary point of view. Allow me to elaborate.
Lets assume that terrorism, or for that case certain ideologies, are like life forms in an environment that compete for life, energy, resources. Life forms that breed new generations, depending on the surrounding climate they adapt through new generations of people who have made new experiences.
Looking at terrorism, before 9-11 I'd say looking at the number of people killed in terrorism related incidents was rather small. The groups were less organized less powerfull and simply were less on the top of minds of people.
Over time they've developed better organizations, entirely new & more effective tactics, different players have entered the arena to support these philosophies. The means have changed... they got more proficient by using highly specialized Improv. explosive devices (penetrators) that require quite a bit of science research to make them happen (with the help of Iran)... now I dont work in this field but I am sure someone who does could see many more changes that would support this... so overall what I believe can be observed is a massive improvements of that organism lets call it terrorism.
Now if we look at all this from an evolutionary point of view, how could this have happened despite having spent so much more money preventing exactly that.
Well lets look at earths history, generally every time you try to wipe out an organism, think of the meteorite impact that killed most of the dinosaurs, what ends up happening is that you open up room, where a species can evolve much more rapidly and make tremendous steps forward. As a result of the dinosaus being gone, eventually humans were able to evolve.
To get back to terrorism, going in an killing as many of the bad guys as possible in the past decade created room for this organism to spread in every conceivable way. After 9-11 US sympathy in the muslim world was the highest, right now it's the lowest. Terrorism, or the number of people with this ideology has exploded, even though we can keep things under wraps with troops for now, what will happen if you continue the evolutionary example, you end up with an organism that will be much stronger, much more powerful, then if we would have done less.
Conclusion
Lets assume that evolution is a reality how these things develop, why don't we use measures that are more effective blocking/slowing down this evolutionary process, rather then doing short term measures that speed up evolution in the long run.
How to fight back
Some examples, evolution consists of 3 mechanisms... SELECTION which means the strongest most successful individuals survive, CROSS-OVER... those strongest individual cross and "replicate" and MUTATION a slight element of randomness that allows to bring in new attempts, then this cycle repeats with extremely powerful results. Successful campaigns can now target each of these 3 mechanisms. For example if you go and get rid of a large number of individuals of a species, you power-charge selection, since the top survivors can replicate much faster (kind of what the recent policies have done). On the contrary if you leave the gene pool saturated with rather ineffective not very good individuals, even though having a few top performers they won't be able to pass on their knowledge as fast.
Targeting Cross-Over is another option that can be achieved in different ways. Obviously getting rid of communication networks, infrastructures etc, however that will just foster and evolution in this area, so much better would be to introduce wrong messages, noise, in these communication networks, in a way where no one knows anymore what works what is good and what doesnt. Think of it as a massive effort to spread ineffective tactics.... best example of that would be the recent encryption program launched for terrorists encryption program my guess is that US intelligence services are behind it, however the way it has been done is blatently obvious. Think the same thing, but done right. Other ways of interrupting communication is simply by spreading wrong information etc. The result would be that evolution would be massively slowed down. I don't think you can stop evolution of something like that so you gotta focus on having it evolve slower then you can evolve yourself.
Another method targeting the 3rd mechanism Mutation would be by not giving them access to new technologies. Meaning make sure no nation supports them - that would have prevented the introduction of EEPs (explosively formed penetrators) in Iraq.... of course many more ideas how to do that.
Then of course one can do a variety of measures that harm current species, introducing parasites (or the terrorist version of it), interspecies fighting, slightly change the environmental climate (global warming... maybe not warming but maybe a slight change in the environment could have a dramatic impact on that species - one would have to take a closer look)... Or the introduction of predator species, elimination of the food of the species, and hundreds of other options, however all done in a way to slow down its evolution rather then focus on its extinction which will simply speed things up.
Now obviously the same evolutionary approach can be applied to us as a superpower one can speed up evolution by doing the right measures and steps or one can slow evolution down.
To summarize it this approach would guarantee a better long term outcome then current approaches that simply make things worse.
Sorry for this long post, but let me know your thoughts on this and I hope this makes sense.
A novel?
I also think a novel wrapped up in this paradigm would be awesome to read... kind of a single actor slowly exposing the real mechanisms at work, or even better have opponents that focus on these mechanisms to gain an advantage... which is uncovered over time...
First my background, I have studied economics, got a masters in computer sciences, and in the past I have been doing a lot of work with artificial intelligence, evolutionary algorithms, computer simulations etc.
The theory
Over the last decade, observing terrorism I couldnt help noticing similarities between the development of terrorism (but also generally philosophies and super powers) and generally evolution. However I have never seen that the connection is made of looking at all this from an evolutionary point of view. Allow me to elaborate.
Lets assume that terrorism, or for that case certain ideologies, are like life forms in an environment that compete for life, energy, resources. Life forms that breed new generations, depending on the surrounding climate they adapt through new generations of people who have made new experiences.
Looking at terrorism, before 9-11 I'd say looking at the number of people killed in terrorism related incidents was rather small. The groups were less organized less powerfull and simply were less on the top of minds of people.
Over time they've developed better organizations, entirely new & more effective tactics, different players have entered the arena to support these philosophies. The means have changed... they got more proficient by using highly specialized Improv. explosive devices (penetrators) that require quite a bit of science research to make them happen (with the help of Iran)... now I dont work in this field but I am sure someone who does could see many more changes that would support this... so overall what I believe can be observed is a massive improvements of that organism lets call it terrorism.
Now if we look at all this from an evolutionary point of view, how could this have happened despite having spent so much more money preventing exactly that.
Well lets look at earths history, generally every time you try to wipe out an organism, think of the meteorite impact that killed most of the dinosaurs, what ends up happening is that you open up room, where a species can evolve much more rapidly and make tremendous steps forward. As a result of the dinosaus being gone, eventually humans were able to evolve.
To get back to terrorism, going in an killing as many of the bad guys as possible in the past decade created room for this organism to spread in every conceivable way. After 9-11 US sympathy in the muslim world was the highest, right now it's the lowest. Terrorism, or the number of people with this ideology has exploded, even though we can keep things under wraps with troops for now, what will happen if you continue the evolutionary example, you end up with an organism that will be much stronger, much more powerful, then if we would have done less.
Conclusion
Lets assume that evolution is a reality how these things develop, why don't we use measures that are more effective blocking/slowing down this evolutionary process, rather then doing short term measures that speed up evolution in the long run.
How to fight back
Some examples, evolution consists of 3 mechanisms... SELECTION which means the strongest most successful individuals survive, CROSS-OVER... those strongest individual cross and "replicate" and MUTATION a slight element of randomness that allows to bring in new attempts, then this cycle repeats with extremely powerful results. Successful campaigns can now target each of these 3 mechanisms. For example if you go and get rid of a large number of individuals of a species, you power-charge selection, since the top survivors can replicate much faster (kind of what the recent policies have done). On the contrary if you leave the gene pool saturated with rather ineffective not very good individuals, even though having a few top performers they won't be able to pass on their knowledge as fast.
Targeting Cross-Over is another option that can be achieved in different ways. Obviously getting rid of communication networks, infrastructures etc, however that will just foster and evolution in this area, so much better would be to introduce wrong messages, noise, in these communication networks, in a way where no one knows anymore what works what is good and what doesnt. Think of it as a massive effort to spread ineffective tactics.... best example of that would be the recent encryption program launched for terrorists encryption program my guess is that US intelligence services are behind it, however the way it has been done is blatently obvious. Think the same thing, but done right. Other ways of interrupting communication is simply by spreading wrong information etc. The result would be that evolution would be massively slowed down. I don't think you can stop evolution of something like that so you gotta focus on having it evolve slower then you can evolve yourself.
Another method targeting the 3rd mechanism Mutation would be by not giving them access to new technologies. Meaning make sure no nation supports them - that would have prevented the introduction of EEPs (explosively formed penetrators) in Iraq.... of course many more ideas how to do that.
Then of course one can do a variety of measures that harm current species, introducing parasites (or the terrorist version of it), interspecies fighting, slightly change the environmental climate (global warming... maybe not warming but maybe a slight change in the environment could have a dramatic impact on that species - one would have to take a closer look)... Or the introduction of predator species, elimination of the food of the species, and hundreds of other options, however all done in a way to slow down its evolution rather then focus on its extinction which will simply speed things up.
Now obviously the same evolutionary approach can be applied to us as a superpower one can speed up evolution by doing the right measures and steps or one can slow evolution down.
To summarize it this approach would guarantee a better long term outcome then current approaches that simply make things worse.
Sorry for this long post, but let me know your thoughts on this and I hope this makes sense.
A novel?
I also think a novel wrapped up in this paradigm would be awesome to read... kind of a single actor slowly exposing the real mechanisms at work, or even better have opponents that focus on these mechanisms to gain an advantage... which is uncovered over time...
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