Essay Abstract

Many imposing challenges face humanity. Some grow relentlessly in seriousness and complexity: declining quantities and quality of freshwater, topsoil, and energy; climate change and increasingly unpredictable weather patterns; environmental and habitat decline; the growing geographical spread and antibiotic resistance of pathogens; increasing burdens of disease and health care expenditures; and so on. Some of the most serious problems remain intractable, irrespective of national wealth and achievement. Even developed nations suffer from stubbornly stable levels of mental illness, poverty, and homelessness, in otherwise increasingly wealthy economies. A known root cause of such broken lives is broken minds. What isn't widely recognized is that all other extremely serious problems are similarly and equally intertwined with the intrinsic incapacities of human minds--minds evolved to cope with a slower and simpler time - emergent from within a paradigm that favored the relative short-term. Yet minds are simultaneously the most essential resource worth saving, and the only resource capable of planning and executing initial steps of necessary solutions. There is hope for overcoming all serious challenges currently facing us, and on the horizon, and there is only one most-efficient strategy that applies to them all. This strategy focuses not on these individual and disparate challenges - which ultimately are only symptoms - but on fixing and improving minds.

Author Bio

Preston Estep III, PhD, and Alexander Hoekstra are directors of the Personal Genome Project at Harvard University - the world's first "open source" genome project, and aggregator & repository for human Genomic, Environmental & Trait (GET) data. Estep and Hoekstra are also founders of the nonprofit Mind First Foundation, which seeks to expand the understanding and the capacity of the mind, to enhance the human condition.

Download Essay PDF File

The statement that "all other extremely serious problems are similarly and equally intertwined with the intrinsic incapacities of human minds" is a typical anthropocentric view. The technological systems of civilization irreversibly use up limited natural resources, produce immutable material waste and devastate the environment. That is the stark reality. It is an extremely serious problem that human minds seem unable to grasp!

The statement that "Yet minds are simultaneously the most essential resource worth saving, and the only resource capable of planning and executing initial steps of necessary solutions." That view has no foundation in reality. Society is totally dependent on irreversibly using natural material resources. Human minds have little impact on that as it is the stark reality.

    "It is an extremely serious problem that human minds seem unable to grasp!"

    It seems we are in agreement, then, that the mind as is, is insufficiently capable of grasping - let alone solving - the problems at hand (and the threats around the corner).

    "Human minds have little impact on [society {being} totally dependent on irreversibly using natural material resources] as it is the stark reality."

    Minds, we argue, are at the foundation of the overconsumption, pollution, waste, destruction, and otherwise unsustainable depletion that has so far fueled civilization. Minds, we argue, are at the root of society; society manifests from the working of minds.

    Minds with inbuilt conventionalism, shortsightedness, irrational self-interest, and self-delusion (not to mention a propensity for aggression), have yielded and will - if left unchecked and unaided - continue to yield societies and civilizations rife with waste, pollution, poverty, corruption, separatism, inequality, violence, and the many branches from which suffering blooms.

    Mr. Frith, please do not overlook our fundamental position: That resolving the insufficiency of our thinking machines must made a highest priority if it is our intention to protect the survival of our species (and the myriad species we impact) over the long-term.

    In my own research the best way to make our brains work better is to focus on serving our basic needs (as first introduced by Maslow), with the highest quality inputs and outputs possible. Everything else just wastes resources, as far as I've seen. Our brains are biological systems that need certain things to work properly, but I've yet to meet a human being who's even getting their first two levels of physical needs met well enough, though most folks aren't even aware of the deficiencies and toxicities that they're suffering from (which only exacerbates the problem...).

    So, health care is indeed the core solution, IF we include all the basic needs for human health, unconditionally, in our universal health care! That means high quality food, water, air, warmth (including shelter), light, information, and outlets for freely expressing our body's excess solids, liquids, gases, and energy. Only then will we have well functioning human beings, mentally and physically, so that we're operating at peak capacity as a planet.

      Hi Preston,

      You eloquently describe in detail how the broad ability of the human mind is the underlying driver behind our ability to deal with virtually all modern problems. In particular I found very interesting the part where you mentioned how we may tend to defer direct access to information and rely on social information when confronted with certain resource constraints.

      I think you're writing is very good, but I feel in a way you are simply saying that 'if we were smarter we would be better at solving our problems'. You're discussion of how that might occur hinted at something interesting, but I feel it didn't really explore the HOW as it might have. Two issues occur to me (1) mental health is sometimes focused around achieving normality rather than improving cognitive functions - how would you change its approach? (2) How would we separate intervening to make someone 'smarter' with intervening to alter a person to agree with a particular social or political agenda?

      Thanks for writing a good quality paper I will be giving it an above average rating once I finish reading!

        Also I'm interested if you have any thoughts on my paper, particularly in regard to the part on VR. Thanks again!

        Dear Alexander Hoekstra and Preston Estep,

        I read your essay with great interest, because it concerns fundamental questions linked with the development and survival of the human race, forced to deal with increasingly more difficult challenges. It is without doubt that the improving the qualities and the independents of the mind is a good suggests a better future.

        And although in a relatively short essay a major issue, such as this, cannot be examined in its full complexity and depth, you managed in the smartest way to provoke the minds of the intelligent to think.

        Petio Hristov

          Hi,

          it occurred to me that in several observations your very interesting essay overlaps, or tightly relates with the essay by Sabine Hossenfelder. For example, you write:

          "Here is a key question: why should we try to cope with modern, complex civilization, using brains provided by nature for use in a simpler time; brains that have been shaped and constrained by forces that are either already or quickly becoming irrelevant?"

          This resonates with her concept (at p. 1):

          "The root of the problems that humanity faces today is that our adaptation as a species has fallen behind the changes we have induced ourselves."

          However, your proposed solution is:

          The most efficient and generalizable solution to all human problems is to enhance our fundamental abilities to solve problems.

          Her conclusions are rather different, and perhaps more surprising. To know how . . . take a look at her essay! (Sabine, you now owe me a rating :-)

          A small question. You seem to prefer the term `mind` over `brain`. Are you implying some important difference between the two?

          Best regards

          Tommaso

            • [deleted]

            • Post #11

            Hi Alex,

            You framed well the need to change the mind to better address identifying and addressing perceived global needs.

            I tend to agree with you that certain mental processes that are common to being human can better serve humanity, but I think a more important consideration is the "collective mind" of people, the social interactions that we can control. We need a diversity of brain structures to support a diversity of tasking needed by society.

            The diversity of environments in which a person lives fundamentally influences the building blocks of the brain. For whatever reason, there is a city in Florida where I encountered a much larger percentage of people with mental disabilities than I have encountered anywhere else. I'm not mentioning the city's name for ethical reasons related to economics and perception, and the potential for my perception being from other influences I am unaware of.

            Selenium trace elements are beneficial for the growth of the brain. But selenium is completely devoid in certain areas, so those living in those regions without taking supplements, or eating foods containing selenium from other areas, will have certain differences in their brain as a result.

            However, evolutionary genetic changes coupled with integration between persons from different environmental influences, creates a mutation in the form of the molecules that support and bind genes; i.e. environmentally influenced gene splicing.

            Because we do not understand how to make a better mind, we do not even know how the mind produces intelligence, we cannot engineer a brain that will be the best in which everyone will have their brain manipulated to meet that specification.

            I am not sure of the significance of potential tertiary developments of brains that have ADHD, Autism, nutritional deficiencies, ... as contributors to building brains that have certain advanced capabilities to support certain needs of society. That over many generations produce a better mind for some specific tasked need of humanity.

            For example, I loath repetition. I absolutely abhor any repeated tasks. But to work on an assembly line, be a clerk, operate a nuclear reactor... all requires a mind with capabilities to endure repetition, and perhaps even enjoy it.

            So I don't believe having one model of brain best fits the needs of society.

            However, I believe as you stated, that society currently has dominant unmet needs related to critical thinking, and predicting consequences. I would NOT go so far to say that persons unable to significantly acquire these abilities are without useful purpose to humanity. They and their offspring will likely provide support for certain social system developments that would otherwise be difficult to support, and that drive humanities moral compass. Our social processes are quite complex. Each social group has dominant mental requirements for inclusion, yet social system tasking depends in-part upon a large diversity of social groups and differing categories of mental capacities.

            If you want to increase the dominance of critical thinking and predicting consequences, start teaching them in graduated detail in public schools. Beginning in pre-school and advancing complexity and detail through all classes until high school graduation.

            Hmmm, I just realized that High School is an outdated term that is currently misleading.

            If you have the desire to apply your related interest, see UA-KiTS.com

            Dear Mr. Hoekstra and Dr. Estep,

            I regret that your inaccurate abstractions filled essay depressed me more than any other essay that has been published at this site.

            Real women are only capable of giving birth to real babies that have real brains. Each real baby's brain is unique, once. Here you are pretending that you "know" what minds are made of and how they ought to work.

            James Watson was only partially correct, it is not a case of "most scientists being stupid" all scientists are stupid because they only believe in abstractions. Abstractions are not unique. Abstractions have nothing to do with reality.

            Joe Fisher

              6 days later

              Dear Tommy,

              Thank you for reading our essay; we're glad you're in agreement with the main premise. How to go about making better minds is such an enormously complex topic that we thought it best to simply begin by making the argument we did, i.e. that it is the most efficient way to approach humanity's many disparate problems. As your comment affirms, this would seem to be fairly obvious, but our essay appears to be the only one in this competition to explicitly advance this proposal (although a few others focus on better thinking).

              Dear Turil,

              We agree that many people are operating at low efficiencies on multiple levels. But we also believe that people functioning at their peak aren't either necessarily or sufficiently able to sustain humanity's current trajectory. People's brains (and general biology) have been selected for a slower and simpler time, and are maladapted to the complex world we have created. We simply don't have the rational foresight to manage this complexity. To survive and thrive we need to design and engineer minds specifically for this purpose.

              Hello Tommaso,

              Thanks for taking the time to read our essay carefully enough to detect similarities with Sabine Hossenfelder's essay. We agree that there are clear parallels in our summaries of current problems, although, as you point out, our proposed solutions are very different. We are in agreement that the root cause of human problems is the inabilities of what we call the "mind lost in time," but she believes it can be trained and tricked in various ways by diversions and rote adherence to individual and social constructs. We agree that this works to some degree, but we disagree that this will lead to sustained progress and to our best possible future, since some aspects of the mind are even more problematic than she realizes. We have commented on her essay. Take a look if you are interested.

              Good question about mind and brain. Only after we uploaded the essay did we realize we should have defined these critical terms. Try these: The mind is a conceptual construct embodied by the functions of the brain together with the nervous and endocrine systems. We also accept that other kinds of minds are possible, including those consisting of non-biological systems.

              Dear Ross,

              Thank you for reading our essay and thank you very much for your kind words. How to go about making better minds is such an enormously complex topic that we thought it best to simply begin by making the argument we did, i.e. that it is the most efficient way to approach humanity's many disparate problems. As your comment affirms, this seems somewhat obvious, but our essay appears to be the only one in this competition to explicitly propose this as a general solution (although a few others focus on better thinking).

              You raise two important and challenging issues. First, how to achieve levels of ability beyond normalcy is a key and difficult question. Nevertheless, there are some clues to how such things might be accomplished. For example, see this recent news article suggesting that reconfiguring the brain can release suppressed talents (http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/05/06/brain-injury-jason-padgett-math-genius_n_5273609.html). Your second point is potentially even more challenging. We can only say that such questions are best answered at the highest levels with great deliberation. We envision and advocate an open, civilian project that would dwarf the space race. We need an international collaborative effort to tackle these issues, rather than leave mental enhancement to individual secret and military organizations around the world.

              We'll take a look at your essay. Thanks again.

              Dear Petio,

              Thank you for taking time to read our essay and for understanding the limits of what we are able to address in the space available. Indeed, this is a major and complex issue. And thank you very much for your kind words.

              Dear Mr. Fisher,

              Thank you for your comments. We're sorry you are so displeased. Since you are already unhappy with our essay, we hope you don't mind much that we refer to your dismissal above and your own essay as Exhibit A and Exhibit B to support our case.

              P.S., I will use the following rating scale to rate the essays of authors who tell me that they have rated my essay:

              10 - the essay is perfection and I learned a tremendous amount

              9 - the essay was extremely good, and I learned a lot

              8 - the essay was very good, and I learned something

              7 - the essay was good, and it had some helpful suggestions

              6 - slightly favorable indifference

              5 - unfavorable indifference

              4 - the essay was pretty shoddy and boring

              3 - the essay was of poor quality and boring

              2 - the essay was of very poor quality and boring

              1 - the essay was of shockingly poor quality and extremely flawed

              After all, that is essentially what the numbers mean.

              The following is a general observation:

              Is it not ironic that so many authors who have written about how we should improve our future as a species, to a certain extent, appear to be motivated by self-interest in their rating practices? (As evidence, I offer the observation that no article under 3 deserves such a rating, and nearly every article above 4 deserves a higher rating.)

              Indeed, and I see that the way to design more effective minds is to focus on how to give them the resources they need to grow healthfully. We have yet to have healthy brain development because we've either been suffering from deficiencies or toxicities, or both, but once we look to supporting our biology in getting the food, water, air, warmth, light, information, and ways to express excess stuff, we'll start to see both individual and collective brains truly achieve greatness. And yes, some of that will involve technology, both adding to our biology internally, and connecting our ideas externally with some artificial intelligence sort of element, I imagine. But again, at the core of all this is supporting the biology, so that it no longer is held back by low quality crap mucking up the system, and getting in the way of our brains honestly functioning at their peak, and able to do all sorts of things that no one imagined humans might be able to do.