A new study reveals that humanity is at risk of falling into 14 evolutionary dead ends, called “evolutionary traps”, ranging from climate change to artificial intelligence. This Anthropocene-focused research highlights the need for global cooperation and active societal transformation to avoid this pitfall.
Aberrant AI isn’t the thing you need to worry about the most (yet).
For the first time, scientists applied the concept of evolutionary traps to human society as a whole. They found that humanity is at risk of falling into 14 evolutionary dead ends, from global climate tipping points to unbalanced artificial intelligence, chemical pollution and rising infectious diseases.
The Anthropocene: Successes and Challenges
The evolution of humanity is a remarkable success story. But the Anthropocene – a geological epoch thought to be shaped by humans – is showing more and more cracks. Various global crises, for example the COVID-19 pandemic, climate change, food insecurity, financial crisis and conflict are starting to occur simultaneously and scientists call this a double crisis.
(a) System dynamics associated with the three main sets of Anthropocene traps, global traps, technological traps, and
Structural traps (including time traps and communication traps). Two amplified feedback loops are shown using R and interactions between dynamics between tapping sequences are shown with colored superscripts (color of causal nodes) and dashed arrows.
(b) Heatmap of interactions between outcomes of the 14 proposed Anthropocene traps.
Credit: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b
Human creativity and unintended consequences
“Humans are extraordinarily creative. Classify. We are able to innovate and adapt to various circumstances and can collaborate on a very broad scale. However, this ability turns out to have undesirable consequences. “Simply put, you could say the human species is too successful and, in some ways, too smart for its own good,” said Peter Søgård Jørgensen, a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Royal Swedish Academy of Science. Global Economic Dynamics Science Program and Biosphere and Anthropocene Laboratory.
Peter Søgaard Jørgensen is the lead author of the study. He is a researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Global Economic Dynamics, Biosphere Program and Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
Source: Stockholm Resilience Center
A historical study of the pitfalls of evolution
He is the lead author of an important new study published today as part of a larger evaluation in the journal Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b. This assessment brings together insights from multiple disciplines in the natural and social sciences and humanities, to understand how the Anthropocene has evolved and how global sustainability may continue to develop in the future.
Identify and understand evolutionary pitfalls
This new study shows how humanity can stumble into “evolutionary traps” – dead ends that occur as a result of initially successful innovations. In their first exploratory effort, they identified 14 such factors, including agricultural simplification, economic growth that brings no benefits to humans or the environment, instability of global cooperation, climate tipping points, and artificial intelligence (for a complete list of such factors) pitfalls see bottom table).
Evolutionary pitfalls in the animal kingdom and human society
“Evolutionary trapping is a well-known concept in the animal world. “Just as many insects are attracted to light, an evolutionary reaction that could kill them in the modern world, humanity also risks responding to new phenomena in dangerous ways,” he explained. Peter Sogaard Jorgensen.
Simplification of farming systems is one example of this pitfall. Reliance on a few high-yielding crops such as wheat, rice, corn and soybeans has meant that calories produced have increased dramatically over the past century. But this also means that food systems become highly vulnerable to environmental changes, such as extreme weather events, or new diseases.
Danger and connectedness of traps
Of the 14 evolutionary traps, 12 are in an advanced state, meaning humanity will be trapped at a point where it will be very difficult to get out. Moreover, society continues to move in the wrong direction in 10 of the 14 communities. Worryingly, these evolutionary traps tend to reinforce each other. If people are stuck in a dead end, they will likely be stuck in other ways as well. Two dead ends that are currently underdeveloped are technological independence – artificial intelligence and robotics – and the loss of social capital through digital transformation.
Lan Wang Erlandsson is a co-author and researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center at Stockholm University and the Anthropocene Laboratory at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences. Source: Stockholm Resilience Center
This new assessment also looks at why communities are fighting so hard to get out of this trap.
Global challenges and the need for cooperation
“The evolutionary forces that created the Anthropocene are not working well at the global level. “In today’s global system, social and environmental problems develop in places seemingly far from the communities that could prevent them from happening,” said Lan, one of the study’s authors. Wang Erlandsson, researcher at the Stockholm Resilience Center and the Anthropocene, Stockholm University, at the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences: “Overcoming these challenges often requires global cooperation on a scale that many evolutionary forces cannot match.” Lab.
A call to action for humanity
Researchers say this doesn’t mean humanity is doomed to failure. But we must start actively changing our society. Until now, the Anthropocene has been largely an unnoticed byproduct of other evolutionary processes.
“It’s time for humans to recognize the new reality and collectively move to where we want to be as a species. We have the power to do so and are already seeing signs of such movement. Creativity, the ability to innovate, and collaborate give us the perfect tools to effectively design our future. “We can get out of the dead end. “This is business as usual, but to achieve this, we must strengthen the capacity of collective human institutions and design the environment so that it can thrive,” explains Peter Søgaard Jørgensen.
He continued: “One simple thing anyone can do is become more involved in nature and society while recognizing the positive and negative global impacts of our local actions. There is nothing better than exposing yourself to things that need to be protected.”
Reference: “The Evolution of Multiple Crises: The Anthropocene Challenges Global Sustainability” by Peter Søgaard Jørgensen, Rafe EV Janssen, Daniel Avila Ortega, Lan Wang Erlandsson, Jonathan F. Donges, Henrik Österblom, Per Olsson, Magnus Nyström, Steven J. Leyde, Thomas Hahn , Karl Falk, Gary D. Peterson and Anne-Sophie Crippen, 1 January 2024, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society b.
two: 10.1098/rstb.2022.0261
2023-11-19 07:01:28
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