Climbing the Darwinian Ladder

When Mankind Evolves

Next step in mankind’s evolution may take place when the information, capital, genetic and energetic potential for all individuals is unleashed. Imagine the ideas generated by a species consisting of 8 billion capitally, informationally, genetically and energetically enhanced people working together as a team to solve future existential threats.

Executing these perhaps unimaginable ideas will lead to an optionlike and exponentially growing world extending beyond the confines of dear Gaia and perhaps instead moving mankind into a virtual and interplanetary future. The combined evolution of the internet, blockchain, biotechnology and renewable energy networks is now the driving force behind our coming information, capital, genetic and energy revolution.

There is no doubt in my mind that the intersection of internet, blockchain, biotech and renewable energy will unleash unimaginable amounts of untapped potential hidden in nature, our DNA and less developed countries leading first to Metcalf law type of economic network effects and end with a human singularity event.

I define a singularity event as a moment for which humanity evolves into the next form of our Darwinian ladder, which has happened a handful of times spanning earth's multi-billion year history.

Humanity in current form was built bottom up from space dust evolving from single cell bacteria to become complex sentient biochemical structures with consciousness. Mankind’s next step in evolution is leveraging technology to prepare both intellectually and physically for becoming a digital and interplanetary species.

To unleash human potential, incentives across all individuals in our human network must be aligned to prevent powerful centralized rent seekers and corrupt politicians from achieving personal gain by division.

Our political system must balance centralization with decentralization to be both nimble and agnostic. Sometimes quick decisions without a democratic process is needed, but a majority of time a system benefits from relying on predetermined equal weight principles democratically and transparently agreed upon in advance including free access to information and meritocratic access to capital as well as equal access to both genetic enhancement and renewable energy.

Founders of the internet Bob Kahn and Vint Cerf

Step 1 – Internet – free access to information

The world wide web distributes information across borders in a fashion that circumvents traditional gatekeepers like newspapers and other large institutions.

Although internet began forming in late 1990s, many marginal improvements within information distribution, electric engineering and hardware were needed to create the internet we all love today.

If internet creates effective information distribution, the most fundamental invention to internet success is development of full-writing systems, which seem to have first appeared in Mesopotamia around 3400 BC[1]. Writing systems allow humanity to store and share information so that smart individuals can build on top of previous smart person inventions.

That is why Johannes Gutenberg printing press invention was an accelerator and precursor for today’s internet as the printing press was 10x the speed at which information could be copied and spread around the world[2].

The internet became a printing press on steroids. With the printing press, only institutions could afford to distribute information at scale. For the entire 20th century, large news outlets, book companies and academic institutions were therefore almost entirely responsible for global information consumption.

If inventors, academics or authors shared unpopular ideas not shared by gatekeeping institutions those ideas were not distributed widely to the public. Also, physical books and newspapers are expensive so they are not distributed to poor areas in the world, which are parts with untapped potential.

However, with internet bloggers, content creators and financial analysts may share their views peer to peer over the world wide web, which means information that can be accessed anywhere in the world by anyone holding access to a smart phone or computer.

Basically, the internet is a platform used to share and distribute information for educational purposes so that anyone with smart ideas may raise capital and build a new cool company to help humanity move forward.

Visual representation of a modular blockchain future meaning many different networks working together to secure and transactions around the world.

Step 2 – Blockchain – meritocratic access to capital

Although the world wide web distributes information globally circumventing traditional gatekeepers like newspapers, corporations, governments and universities, the internet needs a method to efficiently provide capital to those individuals that can use acquired information to start businesses.

Even with the internet, capital allocation remains centralized with a few key players basically holding monopoly power over the ideas being executed by entrepreneurs and startups, which means our society has yet to unleash our true human potential. However, in a blockchain based economy, capital access is democratized like internet democratized access to information.

Although technology has vastly improved our societies financial capabilities over the past 30 years including transaction speed and lowering costs, our financial institutions remain centralized and there is lots of friction when transacting between different jurisdictions.

In a world where millions of transactions occur daily these financial institutions therefore accumulate wealth through transaction fees, which creates outsized profit and power compared to value created for a few key institutions in our society.

These financial institutions then use the money that they accumulate to increase salaries, distribute to shareholders or to invest in startups so that they can generate even more money in the future.

Blockchain and cryptography can create the same level of security for financial transactions as a bank without paying a salary to anyone to monitor that transaction. Instead the blockchain itself is responsible for keeping a record on who buys what from who.

First bitcoin block - the big bang of blockchain

Step 3 – Equal Access to Genetic Enhancement

The Internet and blockchain are networks that efficiently distribute knowledge and capital to untapped areas of the world, while biotechnology enhances the untapped potential of every individual.

Access to untapped genetic potential must be distributed on an equal basis as all people being equal is a core tenant of mankind. Pursuing biotech research that widens both wealth and genetic inequality is extremely dangerous even if that research may eradicate disease, remove undesired traits and increase IQ.

However, gene-editing technology is here to stay and if only autocratic countries pursue gene-editing technology, then democracies are in danger. Besides staying ahead of potential enemy threats, genetics plays a huge part in determining the pursuits of a person.

Pursuits are generally motivated by some sort of gratification like glory, money, love or passion. Upbringing in combination with genetic ability are the two most significant influencers to our pursuits.

For example, if you are over 215 cm tall, the likelihood of you playing in the NBA is almost 20%. If you also have an IQ crossing a certain threshold, however, that might decrease the basketball pursuit in favor of pursuing theoretical physics because that is what may motivate people with higher intelligence to enjoy doing all else equal. Although IQ and height are not pure functions of genetics as poor training or nutrition may impact both of these qualities, IQ and height remains an important determinant for a person’s future pursuits.

For all of us short basketball players adding 10 cm so that we can be taller than our peers and therefore more likely to become NBA players makes sense, but if everyone becomes 10cm taller than the genetic increase doesn’t really matter. Unlike height, IQ is not relative. If all people become more intelligent, then the world is likely a better place all else equal.

With smarter people, new ideas are developed which in turn grows the economy and improves life for everyone. With synthetic biology and genetic research, a world where everyone is smarter and disease free is a possible future. Unlocking the genetic potential of future generations will most likely help our world move one step closer to the singularity.

Crispr - a gene editing process invented by Jennifer Doudna and others!

Step 4 – Unlimited Energy

Energy on earth is abundant, but our method to extract that energy is unsustainably impacting the environment and therefore an existential threat to humanity.

Currently, our economy is powered by oil, which is a highly polluting approach to harvest energy. Changing from oil to renewable energies like wind and solar or dangerous but efficient nuclear power can decrease humanity’s carbon footprint and perhaps save the world.

Leading scientists worry that climate change is behind increases in both temperatures and natural disasters making earth uninhabitable in the future. However, humanity has shown time and again throughout history that collective human imagination and teamwork can develop tools to prevent man-made disasters.

Eighteenth century economist Thomas Malthus believed that providing food for a geometrically growing population was impossible in the 21st century, but thanks to farming technology improvements, Malthus' end of the world theory was proven wrong!

Like food production, humanity must invent new technology to more efficiently harvest energy to create a sustainable future. I believe that with further advancements in web3, blockchain technology and genetic research, entrepreneurs and scientists will invent humanity out of a climate catastrophe.

For example, blockchain technology like bitcoin provides a foundation for developing meritocratic allocation of resources so that top entrepreneurs’ may be invariant to location and who they know to instead receive capital based purely on creating companies necessary for executing on humanity’s greatest ideas.

In addition to creating a network that democratically allocates resources, mining bitcoins is less expensive using solar than oil power. Potentially increasing mining profitability therefore incentives firms to build solar farms in otherwise unproductive areas of earth to mine bitcoin.

For example, Block and Tesla led by Musk and Dorsey have already developed a prototype for mining bitcoin using solar power in Texas. Blockchain will therefore expand energy extraction using renewable energy sources.

At the moment, solar and wind power in combination with nuclear fission is by far the lowest hanging fruit to solve current energy dependencies and marginal advancements are guaranteed. Although improving sustainable energy technology is the easiest path forward to prevent climate change, further advancements in energy harvesting like fusion power may save earth and make both humanity interplanetary and digital.

Applied methods for harvesting fusion energy are currently under development. Unlike fusion’s distant nuclear fission cousin, which releases energy by splitting atoms, fusion generates energy to power tools by smacking atoms together like two cars colliding.

What makes fusion preferable to fission is that after energy has been created there is no polluting radioactive material that needs secure storage for hundreds of years. Creating fusion reactions by crashing cars is relatively easy, but manipulating energy generated by a car collision is difficult.

In an interview with the All in Podcast lead by Jason, Chamath, David , Elon stated that the sun is a great example of a fusion reactor and that using solar power is most likely the efficient approach to harvest energy in future. However, although Elon believes in Solar, he is in the spaceship building business and spaceship fueled by fusion is a dream for any science fiction nerd. Not surprisingly, Elon has therefore created the world’s first AI powered tokamak fusion reactor to generate fusion energy. Like me, Elon imagines a world where humanity may be manipulating the power of the sun. With fusion power, humanity would be able to create high tech spaceships for interplanetary travel.

Tokamak Fusion Reactor - renewable energy on steoroids!

Conclusion

By leveraging untapped genetic and energetic potential in combination with meritocratic and free access to capital and information, humanity is on a path to climb the Darwinian ladder.

- Internet distributes information and expands knowledge

- Blockchains are global immutable decentralized power structures for accessing capital

- Biotechnology provides humanity with access untapped genetic potential

- Renewable energy allows movement at a friction of current costs

#Internet: Information

#Blockchain: Capital

#Biotech: Genetics

#Renewable Energy: Movement

Big shout out to Doudna, Gates, Satoshi and Musk Fusion/Dark Matter/Plasma/Solar scientists for making this happen!