Exotheology 2007

Another page based upon reposting the text of Willett's Wager

on various newsgroups, in 2007.

> I see a reason to believe that active theism/deism *could* die out.
> Cultural evolution can be thought of as operating like biological
> evolution. The question is whether theism is always going to be of
> sufficient benefit to "survive". But I wouldn't take your bet as
> stated, even if there were any reasonable hope of ever settling it.
> This is because a good many civilizations could still have
> theists/deists, even if some do not. In the same speculative mode as
> you, the counter-bet I would make, is that if we begin making contact
> with ETs, and if they are found often, we will find one or more
> someday in which active theism and deism are things they report as a
> *previous* phase of their cultural evolution, long ago. It might even
> happen to us. By "active" theism/deism I mean, organized religion.
>
> I say this because while here on earth we have different parts of
> humanity at different stages of cultural evolution WRT social
> institutions like governmental systems and religion. It appears that
> religions tend to evolve. And as a complex, influential cultural
> construct in a generally evolving world, this is to be expected. The
> older ones tend to place less emphasis on their deity than the younger
> ones (although this is an oversimplification of the typical
> "biography" of a religion). So the benefits that religion offers
> society could continue, as its god gradually evaporates.

You assume that for religion to survive it has to be beneficial to those who carry it. Why? We carry many diseases which are not beneficial. We carry huge chunks of DNA that do not code for anything, which may be parasitic genes just along for the ride. Something that does not kill or sterilize too much, too often, but has got what it takes to be passed on will be passed on. It is inevitable. As inevitable as erosion, entropy or mathematics.

Genes are not the only replicator. Memes replicate too and anything that replicates is subject to evolution, not only will it survive and be passed on it will become better at surviving and being passed on, or will fail to be passed on as something better fitted takes its place.

I think it is inevitable that superstition will always be at least a thousand years ahead of science. Or the equivalent head-start, which might be a shorter period in a smarter organism but religion will grow as fast as science and will have a head-start. It must have. Intelligence could only ever evolve from a replicating being with cruder intelligence, not degenerate from a godlike all-knowing state. It is inevitable that for intelligence and communication to develop (and surely each needs the other) some sort of theory of mind will develop which will allow in religious and superstitious type memes. I believe that death will also be inevitable and in the presence of death, intelligence, communication and a theory of mind it is just a matter of time before some well-meaning alien bozo invents a comforting lie which will inevitably be appealing and will be passed on. For ever. Unless it is replaced by a fitter meme which better satisfies its vectors.

It looks a bit like I am saying that everything that happened to our species is inevitable. That is about right. I cannot see any other way a group of alien intelligences could get to the stage of interstellar communication or transport without evolving, communicating and being mortal. In which case everything else follows, especially parasitic selfish self-replicating ideas which can be regarded as religious.

Once religious ideas form I believe, although it is just a hunch, hence the wager, that they will inevitably manage to evolve fast enough to cope with whatever alien science throws at them. After all the first time our species sent some members out beyond the immediate grasp of our planet's gravity they read from a millennia-old book of tribal superstitions.
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

> My theory is that it's all based on the Why Me principle. A simple mis-interpretation of coincidence is all that's needed to concoct a supernatural being that has it in for you. The Fates, if you will.
>
>

That will work, but it does require before that a theory of mind, an idea that things can have plans. Even if those things which have plans start out as people (fellow alien intelligences) it is inevitable that somebody will over-generalize and start imagining mountains, clouds and the sea having it in for them. From that point the next question is how to make peace with the clouds/mountain/sea. Enter revered ancestor Abraham, stage left, carrying a mythically big knife. Or haul that virgin up the volcano boys!

> Your bet seems to assume that the extra-terrestrials will have a social
> structure similar to humans (well, primates, actually). The memes that
> arise and thrive in a social structure which is not like ours may not
> even be able to support religions as we know them and as your bet
> describes them.
> For example, if they had a eusocial or "hive" structure, as in bees,
> wasps, ants, termites, etc, there might not be the right environment for
> a theistic religious belief to exist. The social structure is linked
> closely to the underlying genetic basis for the species. With a
> eusocial set-up, the idea of an "individual" as we know it in our
> primate social structure may have a very low priority if it exists at
> all, and so the way that organisms act as vectors for memes/ideas may
> be different from the way they do in our species. A change like this
> would affect the memetic environment a great deal and so select for
> a totally different type of meme.
>
> You also mention that a Theory of Mind might develop into assigning
> motivations and intentionality to inanimate objects and so lead
> eventually to positing the existence of supernatural agents, but ToM
> may not be an essential ingredient for producing a technological species.
> It helps, sure, but it might not be necessary in a eusocial species.
> There would be, after all, none of the sort of genetic competition that
> exists between individuals in a social primate species, so there would
> be no pressure (at least from this direction) for a ToM to evolve to
> aid in the competition and cooperation that is an important part of
> primate societies.
>
> Of course, some analogue to our "religious belief" memes may be present,
> but they may be so alien to us and so adapted to the different memetic
> environment of a eusocial species that we don't or can't recognize them
> as such.
>

How would a species that is not social, co-operative and communicating evolve intelligence and the technology necessary to make itself known to us?

Making a living doesn't require phenomenal intelligence. Ours is the only species that has needed to generate it because we have evolved into a particular body shape by an unlikely series of disaster-averting moves staying one step ahead of extinction. If we step back and look with unbiased eyes there is no sense that the trajectory our species has followed has been in any way "evolution's central thrust". I am inclined to believe that intelligence like ours is rare among advanced mature biological systems. It is a form of human chauvinism to expect radio and spaceship building intelligence to be the inevitable outcome of any mature biological system. I think we just got unlucky, several times, and got forced into it accidentally.

A hive structure would have no need of religion, I can see that. But would it have any need of intelligence and interstellar communication? More to the point how would intelligence evolve in such species? We have had many millions of years of evolution on our planet of social insects and the height of their elaboration has been a three metre high termite mound or river of twenty million ants, which while very impressive does not seem to be an obvious step on the way towards interstellar communication. Is there any conceivable way in which there could be a softly sweeping evolutionary slope up such a huge mountain of improbability that could carry a species of dumb automata with collective intelligence to the stars?

As usual when I get thinking on such issues I confront something I cannot imagine and have to decide whether that is a flaw of my imagination or whether it is a flaw in the imaginations of those who can conceive such things having happened without being able to sketch out a process by which it "was" achieved. Hence the wager. It would be absurd to call exotheology a subject of study, it is a matter of speculation and estimating odds while having no real clue as to how likely anything really is.

What aliens will want to do with us may depend on their own planet's geography. Because of our unusual geography of continents, seas, islands, archipelagoes and oceans we have a very good idea about how thoroughly dangerous alien contact is, they may not have a clue. They may be technologically sophisticated but as vulnerable and lacking in the appropriate social skills as a busload of preteen Utah Mormons parachuted into the backstreets of São Paulo.

If they lived on a planet without oceans they could easily have become politically united before they became technologically sophisticated, imagine if Gengis Khan had no insurmountable barriers in his way he could have encircled the entire globe and unified it. Then a unified world might then develop on a slower trajectory than a fractured one, just as unified China was sluggish in turning inventions into great industries compared to fractured Europe. Many millennia of peace, harmony and unity might lead the aliens to be peaceful, wet, well meaning vegetarian wimps with religions that make Buddhism look virile and thrusting. By the time such a species arrived here they may be many millennia ahead of us technologically but stupid enough to arrive here unarmed. Uncle Sam may be "forced to take possession of the alien starship to prevent its amazing technology falling into the hands of an unscrupulous nation".
--

Martin Willett

http://mwillett.org/

It's my money and it is all speculation. For those who say I lack the imagination to see an intelligent species getting by in a very different way my repost is that they aren't suggesting how that species could evolve to that condition.

The size of the design space in which intelligence and interstellar communication or space-faring may exist is no doubt huge, but it is one of my contentions that the number of ways of getting there from simplicity is very small indeed. We achieved what we have now by a series of accidents, our ancestors were subject to a long series of changes of apparent strategy. We left the seas, we spent a lot of time small and catching insects before climbing into the trees, getting too big for trees, coming down to the ground finding little food and so adapting our social animal brains to problem-solving, food processing and co-operative hunting.

We were the first/only genus in our biological system to evolve into the highly intelligent co-operative adapter niche. Now we are in it and thriving we can see the niche's potential, but is it really inevitable that some species or other will find that niche so we needn't trouble our brains trying to work out how?

Any time in the last hundred million years a passing biologist would be able to recognize a sophisticated and mature biological system on Earth. Would they have put that system down as crude, primitive and unfulfilled because it lacked a species capable of inviting it to dinner and looking over its plans for an international free trade agreement?

Willett's Wager

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