In quest of understanding what is common to motile bilateral animal life, we need to abandon presumption of human as measuring stick.

1. Where to for a science whose
practice embodies an assumption
that science fails to validate?
Tony Smith
Melbourne Emergence Meetup
10 March 2016

2. Colin Hales asked just that
about the science/technology of
Artificial General Intelligence
and found no sensible answers,
but this is unrelated …

3. ETHOLOGY

4. “the scientific and
objective study of animal
behaviour especially
under natural conditions”
Isn’t that at least a step
in the right direction?

5. Genesis 1-28: “Be fruitful and
multiply and fill the earth and
subdue it, and have dominion
over the fish of the sea and
over the birds of the heavens
and over every living thing
that moves on the earth.”

6. Descartes Meditation 4:
“I have a clear and distinct
idea of myself as a thinking,
non-extended thing, and a
clear and distinct idea of
body as an extended and
non-thinking thing.”

7. B. F. Skinner saw conditioning
he could demonstrate in animals
underpinning human learning,
adding that “a sequence of
verbal stimuli can evoke an
almost unlimited variety of
complex responses” in humans.
(quoting Wikipedia wording.)

8. So what is wrong?

9. Ethology, and related science, operates
on an assumption that individual
animal behaviour must be measured
against individual human behaviour.
This depends on a cultural assumption
of human/verbal superiority which
may be self-evident at the collective
level but consistently fails as a null
hypothesis at the level of individuals.

10. Tonight
• Isolating the problematic (done)
• Hopeful heresies that guide me
• How common is our deep heritage?
• Challenges flooding in
• Communicating with aliens right here
• Footnote about robots and businesses

11. Life’s Tracks
Converge

12. Late in 2008, motivated by Great
Cormorants nesting on ledge above
summer campsite, acquired HD
camera, chosen for its 14x telephoto
zoom more than its movie function.
Observing, photographing and
videoing bird behaviour grabbed
increasing time, initially including
backyard tree, accelerated late 2013
by sub-$500 50x telephoto zoom.

13. This investigation is motivated
in part by my horrified reaction
to loud proposals for imposing
momentarily fashionable human
ethics on the natural world,
confusing death and suffering.

14. Mature-age MSc
History and Philosophy of Science
Evolutionary Theory (John Collier)
‘Metaselection for Innovation’ &
‘Prosperity of the Sexiest’ (1993)
Variation is less and less Random.

15. Those Heresies
• Evidence trumps theory
• Death is not a kind of suffering
• Humans as means not ends
• Varela et al: Embodied Mind
• All power is in collective effects
• We only get one shot at this

16. While there remain uncertainties
and controversies, there is enough
consensus of the broad sweep of
evolutionary history to look further.
This investigation focuses between
the first mobile animals and homo
sapiens sapiens breaking out, but
remains informed by wider context.

17. Life ➔ Eukaryota ➔ Animalia
Feeding on biologicals, zygote reproduction
The bipolar neurons of Ctenophora may be ancestral
to the axon-dendrite neurons of other animals.
Us-them scale of “animal”
For way too many, animal infers other than human
Some cultures struggle to even count all mammals
Many comfortable extending to birds and even to fish
Bigger challenge to be inclusive of insects and snails
plus all their relatives
Conceptual barrier beyond those obviously mobile
Versus scientific boundary at sperm + egg ➔ zygote
Many are sessile, most of those & more filter feeders
This investigation focuses on those that are mobile
and at least somewhat familiar

18. The basic set of animal
developmental biology goes back at
least to an Ediacaran common
ancestor with a network of neurons.
Many ancestral capabilities are lost
in some lines as they find a niche
where they don’t use it so lose it,
leaving early trees contentious.

19. Tools for
making an
animal
Molecular shape fitting
Soft cell membranes
Fed by other life forms
Mid-blastula transition
Pluripotent stem cells
Homeobox genes
Structural plan integrity
Motile at least sometime
Sessile or spatially aware
Neural feedback
Reward mechanisms
Learned behaviour
Digestive tract et al

20. Tools for
making an
animal
Molecular shape fitting
Soft cell membranes
Fed by other life forms
Mid-blastula transition
Pluripotent stem cells
Homeobox genes
Structural plan integrity
Motile at least sometime
Sessile or spatially aware
Neural feedback
Reward mechanisms
Learned behaviour
Digestive tract et al

21. Reid sees
• Basic animal grounded very deep
• Structural integrity
• Phenotype plasticity
• Behavioural change preceding
• Historicity of saltations
• Selection acting against innovation

22. Porifera

23. Cnidaria

24. Life ➔ Eukaryota ➔ Animalia
Ctenophora (comb jellies)
Poriphera (sponges)
Cnidaria (jelly fish, corals, anemones)
Deuterostomia
Originally defined by anus-first development
but membership increasingly determined by DNA
Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchins, bilateral larvae)
Chordata (fish, birds, mammals)
Bilateria
Mouth-first development
Lophotrochozoa
Bryozoa (Adeona cellulosa)
Mollusca (snails, cephalopods: squid, octopus)
Ecdysozoa
Includes all that shed chitinous exoskeleton
Arthropoda (crustaceans, spiders, insects)
Protosomia

25. That was a gross oversimplification of the last
600 million years of evolutionary history
Adeona cellulosa and unknown sea spider
species on View Point reef face, Wye River

27. Echinodermata

28. Chordata

29. Curiosity

30. Network of
neurons
World
changes
Sensory
change
Muscle acts
on world
Basic Animal Mind
Common heritage of at least
Bilateria clade, lost by many in
transition from larval to sessile.

31. Network of
neurons
World
changes
Sensory
change
Muscle acts
on world
Reflective
curiosity
Builds
associations
Basic Animal Mind
Common heritage of at least
Bilateria clade, lost by many in
transition from larval to sessile.

32. • Life awakens with curiosity
• curiosity that often means quick death
• Sense of place, movement, territory
• Identification of own kind, others
• reproduction, nurture, fledging, grooming
• Active feeding involves learned skills
• Nest building, environmental manipulation
• Selective attention & learning
• sleep, dreams, (un)consciousness

33. Us and Them

34. Bulk Emergence

35. Basic Form & Function
Highly Conserved

36. Adaptability

37. East Gondwana

38. Territorial

40. Safina demolishes anthropocentric
framing of interspecies studies, the
Mirror Test and Theory of Mind.
Safina and Kaplan, like Reid before
them, observe academic restraint.
Kaplan justifies preferential interest
in Australian birds on recent origins
analysis, allowing local confirmation.

43. Fast Lane

44. Water Birds

46. Gisela Kaplan wrote an article that
appeared in The Conversation on
March 1 exploring the same subject.
The comments section quickly filled
with readers’ anecdotal observations.
While my camera and a technique it
elicited provide a rich window, often
it is better put aside to just observe.

48. Parenting

50. Life ➔ Eukaryota ➔ Animalia
Ctenophora (comb jellies)
Poriphera (sponges)
Cnidaria (jelly fish, corals, anemones)
Deuterostomia
Originally defined by anus-first development
but membership increasingly determined by DNA
Echinodermata (starfish, sea urchins, bilateral larvae)
Chordata (fish, birds, mammals)
Bilateria
Mouth-first development
Lophotrochozoa
Bryozoa (Adeona cellulosa)
Mollusca (snails, cephalopods: squid, octopus)
Ecdysozoa
Includes all that shed chitinous exoskeleton
Arthropoda (crustaceans, spiders, insects)
Protosomia

51. Mollusca

52. Snail Art

53. Fossilisation

54. Arthropoda

57. Insects provoke misassumptions that
behavioural possibility must be fully
specified in the DNA, with little room
for adaptability, nor clear parental
influence beyond eusocial chemistry.
“Random” mutation of DNA producing
viable behaviour change is absurd,
more so seeing web-weaving spiders’
spatial competence. Reid’s view of
selection as narrowing escapes this.

58. What to conclude &
do about Ethology’s
foundational error?
Prioritise
commonality
not difference!

59. Alien Minds
• Song & ritual performance c.f. conversation
• Magpie song record six hours straight
• Construction for living and for show
• Infrasound reveals earthquakes & elephants
• Dolphin sonar sees right through you
• Verbal blindness makes humans the aliens

60. We worry about the distant prospect of
Artificial General Intelligence and its
embodied form: Autonomous Robots,
as prospective aliens in our midst.
Yet we sanctify a more alien kind of
equally artificial creation: Business,
granting it privileges of personhood
without corresponding responsibility.

61. Where from here?
• Biomimicry inspires architecture, materials
• Time in bush & ocean with eyes wide open
• Educate in nature & systems, less confined
• 50%+ productive capacity to natural systems
• Pay The Rent (2) for ecosystem services
• Experimental animal interfaces to cyberspace

62. Questions?