Keeping up with AI, Red Queen and the Illusion of progress
The faster you run, the more the world moves with you and the less you make progress.
This is an increasingly influential idea in evolution, one that recurs across this book Red Queen : Sex and the evolution of Human Nature
And I have been reflecting on this book a lot ever since there is an overwhelm of content on Generative AI.
One of the peculiar features of history, is that time always erodes advantage.
Every invention sooner or later leads to a counter-invention. Every success contains the seeds of its own overthrow.
Every hegemony comes to an end. Cars move through the congested streets of London no faster than horse drawn carriages did a century ago. We do not move cross Silk board in Bangalore any faster in a car than by foot.
“Evolving is not a goal but a means of solving a problem”
Humans therefore will survive not because they are intelligent, but because their intelligence attracts a mate through whom they can successfully reproduce.
The concept that all progress is relative, has come to be known in biology by the name ‘Red Queen’, after a chess piece that Alice meets in ‘Through the Looking Glass’ who perpetually runs without getting very far because the landscape moves with her.
It isnt much different from the Sisphyean Struggle to stay in the same relative place by getting even better at things.
Most folks would agree that in spite of the technological developments of time-saving devices we seem to constantly have less and less free time.
He also talks about another recurring theme – balance between co-operation and conflict. The relationship between a mother and a child is pretty straightforward – both are seeking roughly the same goal – the welfare of themselves as well as each other.
The relationship between a man and a rival for a promotion is also fairly straightforward – both want the worst for the other.
It is one of the oldest themes in the history of life, for it is repeated right down to the level of the gene itself.
Increasingly, this seems to complete a circle – one that reminds us to pause and being mindful of the present.
Of ‘just being’.
Maybe getting to the goal isn’t the necessarily the purpose of life – maybe the journey is
Do we need to go slow to go fast?
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