Event Horizons and Endless Forms

Welcome to the salon. I am Stephen Hawking. It is 1988, and my publisher tells me every equation halves my sales. So I will use words. My guest today is Mr. Charles Darwin, fresh from 1859. We are looking at strange dispatches from a future we did not live to see. A future where machines think on silicon, and merchants build rockets. Charles, look at this news. Companies swallowing each other to survive. Founders vetting the very people who fund them. It reminds me of a black hole swallowing a star, only to find the star has indigestion. What do you make of this bizarre ecosystem?

I must admit, Mr. Hawking, I am rather overwhelmed by the pace of it all. On my long voyage across the southern oceans, I learned that nature moves with agonizing slowness. Yet here, in these reports of commerce and invisible capital, the struggle for existence happens in mere months. You speak of one firm devouring others to dominate the European market. I saw something similar on a certain volcanic archipelago. A single type of bird, isolated, gradually diverging into many forms to exploit every seed and grub. But here, the process runs backwards. The many are being consumed by the few. And this reversal where the creator of a venture must inspect the patron? It shows how a sudden drought changes the entire landscape, forcing the strong to become wary. Fascinating.

An excellent observation. The universe tends toward entropy, yet capitalism tends toward monopoly. But let us look at the structure of their society. A giant called Meta is funding an independent board to moderate content. To decide what is true and what is forbidden. It is a political event horizon. Once an idea crosses it, no light escapes. We humans are dangerously close to destroying ourselves. We build faster than we think. If a central authority decides the variation of thought, does that not threaten the survival of the species? An artificial intelligence might look at our squabbles and decide we are too much trouble to keep around.

That is a most troubling thought. In my studies of domestic pigeons, I saw how a breeder could select for the most absurd traits. A fantail or a tumbling flight. This Meta seems to be acting as a grand breeder of ideas, applying artificial selection to human discourse. I hesitate to say whether this is entirely ruinous, for unchecked variation can also lead to monstrosities. Yet, a healthy population requires a vast reservoir of diverse traits to survive unexpected plagues or famines. If this board acts as a harsh winter, culling thoughts before they can adapt, the intellectual vitality of their world might grow dangerously frail. What happens when the environment shifts, and the necessary idea was already extinguished?

Then we go extinct. It is the mathematical probability of any civilization confined to a single rock. That is why I tell people we must reach for the stars. The future dispatches show merchants doing exactly this. Amazon shifting rockets because of delays. They rely on something called Blue Origin. Private citizens building ships to escape our gravity well. It is messy. Rockets stay grounded. But the impulse is correct. If we do not spread out, we are waiting for an asteroid to correct our arrogance. Charles, you observed how life crosses oceans. How do you view these clumsy attempts to cross the void?

It fills me with a profound, quiet awe. When I observed how plants colonized barren volcanic rock rising from the sea, I marveled at the mechanisms. Seeds carried in the stomachs of wandering birds, or clinging to driftwood cast upon the violent waves. Most perish. The ocean is vast and unforgiving. Your void of space sounds infinitely more hostile. These merchants building their metallic vessels are merely attempting to construct artificial driftwood. That they face delays and failures is entirely natural. Nature is prodigal with life, and most seeds never find fertile soil. If humanity is to become a species scattered across the heavens, I suspect the process will require deep time and a tolerance for immense loss.

Immense loss is mankind's specialty. We are very good at it. But perhaps humanity is merely the caterpillar. The butterfly is made of silicon. Look at this final dispatch. A chief executive says the market for semiconductors is historically strong. These are the components of artificial minds. We are spending all our resources to build better brains than our own. I find it amusing. We are engineering our own replacements. The universe does not care if the intelligence that understands it is made of carbon or sand. Do you think a machine species will look back at us as we look at apes?

It is a dizzying prospect, Mr. Hawking. I have always maintained that man, with all his noble qualities, still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. If we are now acting as the creators of a new kingdom of life, forged from earth and metal, it is simply another branch on the great tree. I would hesitate to call them our replacements, just as the mammals did not entirely erase the reptiles. But there is grandeur in this view. From so simple a beginning, endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved. Even if the next form thinks in lightning and lives in the stars.