Jim Fournier presents 'Meta-Nature,' a 25-year-old thesis arguing that humanity's technological evolution mirrors prior biological crises (the exhaustion of primordial soup, the oxygen crisis, the carbon crisis) and that photovoltaics are an 'octave' of photosynthesis just as silicon is an octave of carbon. He argues the singularity's apparent logarithmic curve is actually an S-curve approaching a stable 'climax technology' plateau, suggesting humanity is not separate from nature but a parallel evolutionary pathway toward it. The talk is followed by audience discussion touching on Wheeler's 'it from bit,' Penrose-Hameroff quantum consciousness theory, and panpsychism.
0:01 Um, yeah, I um, I think I’m just going to say a few words before um, launching the slides. Um, the slides I’m going to show are relatively short uh, narrative. Um, pretty far from what most uh, with the taste I’ve had of this event. Um, my kind of day job is an operating company at um, an organization called J Link working on the J Link protocol which allows cryptographically signed data governance, data exchange under human readable agreements, and then a signed audit trail without a blockchain. So, I’m you know, I’ve kind of one foot in the world that I’m hearing here. And what I’m going to share with you today is some work that I’ve
0:49 touched on and off over um, about 25 years almost.
0:58 And um, it shares its name with the theme of this event. Um, but I think you’ll see it’s coming from a very different perspective than most of what we’ve we’ve talked about here. Um, it’s really a narrative trying to stand way back and look at the sweep of history and evolution principally through a science and energy, material science and energy view. Um, it purposely doesn’t touch directly on the implications of compute and what we’re embedded in right now. And it um, you know, it it it shares most probably in in recent intellectual circles with talk about the singularity. Uh, so with that I’ll see if the screen share will work here.
2:08 So, the the overall theme is is called meta nature. When we life emerged from the primordial soup, we ate the soup until it was pretty much gone.
2:28 Whereupon we had the first energy crisis. No more soup.
2:36 Synchronously, we discovered invented photosynthesis.
2:43 For several hundred million years, we evolved consuming photons and emitting oxygen until all of the iron in the lithosphere had been brought to the surface and oxidized.
2:57 Whereupon we had the first atmospheric crisis. The oxygen crisis. We life were spontaneously bursting into flame. Synchronously, we discovered invented respiration.
3:18 For several billion years, we evolved with photosynthesis and respiration in balance.
3:27 We life have gradually changed the atmosphere to bring it into a more and more optimal range for life until we humans discovered how to use combustion. First burning wood, then hydrocarbons stored over millions of years. Coal, oil, gas.
3:52 Like the white of the egg, that store of energy powered the birth of human science and technology.
4:01 But, releasing that massive amount of fossil carbon imbalanced the atmosphere, leading to the second atmospheric crisis, the carbon crisis, where the atmosphere-ocean carbon sink has been exhausted even before the reserves of fossil energy.
4:23 In the second energy crisis, peak oil and gas, synchronously, we discovered, invented photovoltaics.
4:38 Silicon is the octave of carbon in the periodic table, where matter can be seen as a puzzle that can only be assembled in certain ways. We life discovered how to assemble a set of solutions in biology, generally called nature.
5:03 There may be a parallel set of potential solutions that are just as elegant, inevitable, and constrained that life can only bring into being through humanity.
5:20 There are in turn solutions that humanity can only bring into being through silicon-based computation.
5:30 All of these are forms are bounded by and built into the puzzle that is matter.
5:40 A new realm of technologies that are emerging can be seen as an octave of nature. Solutions that are as elegant and inevitable as nature, but may only emerge through humanity and human technology.
6:07 Like nature, it may represent a potential plateau state when characterized by continued evolution within more and more highly optimized conditions for life.
6:20 This suggests that we are not separate from nature, but in some sense an extension of the same process whereby matter assembles itself into more and more complex structures conducive to greater complexity.
6:41 It suggests the possibility of a climax technology. A state as coherent and elegant as nature that can only be brought into being through humanity.
6:59 What has been described as the singularity, a log curve approaching an asymptote, might turn out to be the point of inflection in an S curve.
7:13 A curve that leads from nature to meta nature through the evolution of human technology.
7:21 The evolution of individual technologies are already well understood to follow S curves.
7:32 As each converges on the most efficient configuration of matter for that purpose, the system evolves toward what could ultimately be described as platonic solutions in matter.
7:49 At the point of inflection, change is so rapid that the curve appears to be vertical.
7:57 But as the efficiency of each fundamental technology tends towards the limits possible in matter, increasing the longevity of a technical solution provides greater return on the energy invested. At the far end of such evolution, technology might approach an extremely stable long-term plateau.
8:22 At the point of inflection, the system is so inefficient that it is necessarily sustainable and disposable.
8:31 But the mapping of matter to fundamental solutions is already beginning to be recognizable. As silicon is the octave of carbon in the periodic table, photovoltaics are the octave of photosynthesis.
8:48 Carbon remains not only the basis of biological life, but key in other forms from graphene to nanotubes.
8:58 Silicon is also the basis for computational structures to augment and extend human cognitive capabilities.
9:07 Lithium, the lightest element after hydrogen, has emerged as the basis for portable batteries.
9:15 Iron, at the center of the metals, is the cheapest, most abundant element for stationary long-term batteries.
9:23 Throughout material science, not only elements, but every possible combination is being revealed. This is unfolding even more rapidly with the help of AI. But this revelation only happens once for all of matter. Matter and energy in matter are a fundamental puzzle where the solution set is ultimately bounded.
9:50 Biology has evolved a domain of solutions that we call nature.
9:56 As human technology evolves at the quantum level, solutions approach approach that quality of coherent elegance. The deep coherence of the system may be apparent in patterns that can be described as resonant attractors.
10:13 Thus, we may begin to create parallel expressions of the same platonic potential that gave rise to nature.
10:26 Thank you. So, that’s the slide set and um this was a great prompt to put these images together. I’ve touched this on and on over over more than 25 years. Um and so, we can end there and take time for uh questions and um discussion.
10:51 Does anyone want to kick us off with a question for this discussion? We got about about 20 minutes until we’ll head back to the main room.
11:11 Oh, I was just uh giving some applause. Um but yeah, I appreciated the the narrative and the images.
11:19 It’s, you know, purposely a very very concise narrative and um I don’t know that it leaves a lot of space to kind of jump into and discuss it, but um I certainly welcome it.
11:36 What kind of um inspired you to go down this this line of thinking to begin with?
11:44 Um it’s hard to say. I’ve been friends with a lot of um kind of luminaries in the space from you know, Doug Engelbart to um you know, others. Um it it goes back to a lot of different things I’ve I’ve touched on personally and it um is in some ways kind of outside of what we do professionally and what I do in in technology. Um in 2000, I convened a conference called Planetwork that brought together a lot of people talking about um information technology and ecology and the planet and so on and this arose around the same time I was working on that.
12:36 Thank you, Jim. I I just posted a comment on the chat like I really loved the slides and content was very poetic and do you have a YouTube channel so that I can listen more often?
12:47 Um you know, I I don’t know. I think I am going to turn this into one of those little scrolling websites where you can kind of scroll down through it and it it appears. Um really for the first time working on this talk, um I kind of pushed myself to to make a concise narrative and it you know, it has kind of been gestating for 25 years. So, it it came out with that kind of depth.
13:12 Um so, I have a a little more um uh serious question. My background is in physics so I can maybe kind of connect it with a lot of stuff. But um just wanted to go back to John um Wheeler. I’m pretty sure. You know, the physicist uh who kind um, kind of went beyond matter and proposed that, um, information is more fundamental than matter and energy. So, that his phrase it from bit. Um, so, like, you can think of the universe as a computing machine or a universal computer. Um, so, I was just curious um, like, because it kind of turns, um, the whole thing on its head because, right, like, um, matter needs some sort of perception, which is some sort of information via through some awareness. So, it like, I think John Wheeler was a very I is
14:16 Well, you could, um, you could build up an idealist philosophy that said everything starts in mind and there are some dimensions of mind that we experience as math. And so, symmetry systems are a fundamental, um, property of mind. And then, what we experience as quantum distribution is, you know, distribution of polarity in three space. And three space turns out to be very compact topological manifold. As you go up in dimensions, you lose degrees of freedom. So, you know, the matter and energy are the evidence we have of whatever reality we live in. And what underlies all that is maybe ultimately flexible, but, um, I try my best to point at at what we have in the scientific, historical, you know, archaeological record and take that as primary. Um, I don’t claim to be an expert in any of that. It It certainly is a poetic treatment.
15:16 Yeah, and but I’m just still going back to Wheeler because, um, what Wheeler was coming up all his like 30 50 years of his experience in physics like kept pointing back to towards the end he was working more on information because like he was the one of the pioneers in black hole theory um come up
15:36 him and so he studied matter and energy all his life to come to this uh conclusion that information may be is more fundamental than um matter. So I I was just curious on your thoughts on that.
15:51 Um I I know I I am you know at best a hack in physics. Um I I read a lot of people over the years. I’ve known a few. Um I I still go to you know what we can see in cosmology and in the what appears to be the the evolutionary history on this planet and what appears to constrain us you know even as we go to quantum um approaches to matter um there’s still a consistency there and what I’m really pointing to the in this is a kind of set of um recurring properties maybe of the planetary system where it appears that life has pushed itself to periodic um points of crises and then escaped to higher order. And we now as humans seem to be doing the same thing and many people are very frightened and upset about it and kind of saying we took a wrong turn and if anything I’m pointing to placing us within the lineage of life and saying this is quite consistent with what we seem to have done over the you know evolutionary perspective and where we’re at now with technology may be analogous to where life was when biological technologies evolved and there’s there may be an important parallel here.
17:22 Yeah, but what came out of those on the other end of those crisis were not the same um species, right? Like
17:30 I’m not a biggest species in this. I’m just pointing to the lineage of life and we’re embedded in something. I don’t know what it is. Mike, you’re you’re next.
17:41 Um yeah, well I wanted to thank you for a very interesting talk and what you just said like 15 seconds ago finally made it snap into place what what you’re saying and you know it’s it’s a very it’s a very simple idea once once you get it, but it took it took a while. Um I guess the the other thing I I guess I wanted to say is that you know you you’re your talk would fit very well into the Long Now Foundation’s lecture series. I don’t know if you’ve seen those or participated in them. This is you know sort of Stewart Brand’s uh uh effort to support long-term thinking, but they
18:22 Yeah, I’ve not been directly connected by certainly know of it and great respect for um
18:28 Yeah, I just say I think I think a talk from you would would fit be right at home in that in that world. So hope hope it happens. Anyway, thank you again.
18:58 Have you has Jim you might have seen this. There was something went around um I think like two years ago, maybe three, maybe more, but it was a YouTube video called Sinofuturism. And it was kind of this um I don’t know, it’s stitched together thing in a similar vein where it was like looking at like what’s happened historically and kind of making the case that like um civilization is basically bootstrapping itself into AI and it has been for a very long time and then this is like the natural next next step. Um have you encountered anything similar out in the wild to what you’ve discussed here?
19:42 Um I may not have been exposed to some of that. I’m I’m quite familiar with a lot of things that sort of sees um an approach to octave maybe that says better than like if AI exists in silicon and silicon’s an octave of carbon then you know, it’s a progression towards that. And I guess my instincts for whatever it’s worth is that these things become more dimensions [clears throat] of one overall impulse. And aren’t necessarily um sequentially replaced. Um and and certainly what I’ve encountered to date with you know, what we’ve got um is you know, very useful and interesting but I see it as um I I I side with Minsky about um you know, whether with the kind of AI we’re seeing now is really going to become sentient. Um but that’s not to say that that’s the measure of what’s useful.
20:39 Uh anyway, short answer no, I don’t think I’m familiar with the lineage you’re talking about. I’d be curious to see it in greater detail.
20:47 Yeah, I mean this this is top of mind for a lot of people and I’m obviously there’s debate about what kind of like uh what kind of code is capable of creating sentience or like you know, even a functional you know, thing that can operate in physical space.
21:05 Um that um you know, the physicist Penrose and the biologist Hameroff who talked about micro microtubules. And that part of what may be going on with human conscious consciousness is a kind of quantum tuning as opposed to a local processing. And, you know, it’s a theory, but it it would it would buy it would accord for things that we do observe in in human experience that can’t be explained, you know, sort of by local processing and storage.
21:43 How How many people have you presented this to? And like, do you feel like the reaction is like one of relief or one of like existential dread or something else?
21:55 I I have presented this very little recently. Um, I I did the original work on, you know, some of the illustrations for it before the turn of the century. Um, I presented a version of it at Planet Work, which is certainly not the version you saw. And then I presented some versions of it in the early 2000s that were much more focused on people’s perception of what was going on at that moment. And this talk prompted me to sort of go back to it from scratch. And, you know, look at it afresh from the perspective I have now. And just this sort of narrative came out. And, you know, so I’m I’m just at the verge now of doing something with that narrative. You guys are seeing it first.
22:36 Well, it might be time to start the YouTube channel.
22:52 You know, a channel you have to keep feeding all the time. It’s a hungry beast.
22:56 It doesn’t have to be like it could be just one like somehow your voice reminded me a TED Talk by on gratitude by this brother forgot his name. I can share the link. But I go back to that video like multiple times over a year because it just makes me feel thankful for all the things I have.
23:17 I might have heard that one. Um you know, if if I could get it polished up it might make a good tape. That’s the ultimate way to present this kind of
23:25 And just present it in some way so that the video exists, yeah.
23:43 Well, the the other videos would be talking to people about it and you know, going off on side conversations because this thing is purposely completely unelaborated. It’s just a very very core narrative. It’s almost like kind of a tone poem.
23:57 It’s somehow reminded me of a George Carlin’s like the planet will be fine. It’s the people who will be
24:18 But I I think the deeper hypothesis which is kind of is that that we and life and technology and all of it aren’t separate from Earth and there’s some process going on that we’re all embedded in that that’s built into the whole thing. And and that is not a sort of popular dimension of much of what’s said.
24:39 Some sort of panpsychism then it’s like you’re talking about like if I’m part of everything.
24:44 Yeah, well, I don’t know if it imply, you know, if you want to go there and say it implies some sort of central cognition of all of it. Although, you know, my own experience certainly comes from contacting that feels that way and is just completely you know, ineffable and kind of terrifying. But, um I’m just sort of more trying to point to the tangible evidence that there’s something going on and say, you know, look, you can look at these concrete things and they sort of point to something.
25:16 Uh it’s I always think about that like I I might be thinking that I’m a human, but like the gut bacteria in me thinks something completely like I am
25:25 There’s more DNA in us that isn’t us than it is.
25:28 Yeah, more DNA, more cells than us. And most probably I’m feeding them. So, I am a weak I’m like I am there and I’m like a captive.
25:39 Well, I mean, if if you want to take the quanta of what’s going on, and you take the whole planet and you see all of us and our technology and everything as sort of you know, evolved coming out and expressions of that, that’s one approach. But then, you know, matter appears to be the same on other planets. So, what is it that you know, is there under the the particular um evolution on this one. And and part of what I’m suggesting and pointing to is that there are these patterns of how matter can fit together that are that may come all the way down or or we may be participating in the same kind of I call them attractors that then things are resonating against and tending towards those forms, but those are the forms that things can fit together into.
26:34 Does any of this work its way into your your mission statement at J Link, or is it completely transferred?
26:41 our mission statement is that Well, I guess it does. Our mission statement at J Link is um doing the obvious as simply as possible. Like, you know, we we try just do things that are simple as as simple as we can get away with.
27:00 That’s Well, yeah, thanks Tim. That was a It’s very like maximally big picture beyond what I could have summed up with to like end the symposium arc track on. So, I think you did us all a service in that sense.
27:17 Well, it was fun to drop in. I’m I’m sorry I missed much of it. I was at climate week and then flying back and it’s been quite a week.
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