bulletin on planet earth

Bulletin 34452-669#745-3

[…statistical information and collected data has been omitted, what follows is the individual log entry of Commander Fritiu Limgu of the vessel Explorer^* 34452 (given name LASHIAAL)…]

This is the tenth planet in this sector that carries carbohydrates-based lifeforms. Evolution has been running for about 4 billion local orbits (3’127’566 standard periods) with a number of externally induced setbacks due to the planetary system’s age. Please review the usual chapters for an outline of local evolution. Generally speaking, there is a tendency towards multi-cellular lifeforms that interact through food chain networks and other means of communication. There are also numerous traces of cultural evolution. No traces have been found of global conscious lifeforms or at least mega-cellular lifeforms, even though a number of species possess the facilities. The number of swarm-based species is surprisingly low, however the deviation is not statistically significant.

Visiting this planet has been an extraordinary experience. The currently predominant species (very heterogeneous but mostly class B-C civilizations) is using preliminary stages in higher elements-based intelligence (HEbI) to store most of their knowledge, ongoing and past activities. The existing infrastructure is a global network whose nodes however are dumbed down to serve the current targets of the most technologically advanced civilizations. This peculiar situation means that those nodes have been unable to defend our most basic strategies of infiltrating and extracting stored data. Therefore we have access to statistical data about the biological and geological history of the planet as well as local solar activity. Additionally, we have obtained data on everyday activities and common thoughts of the past 10-15 local orbits as well as summarized accounts of the achievements of past civilizations. That in itself will be a stupendous future source of knowledge on history in local environments of low entropy.

Personally, the preliminary analysis of this data with regard to the B civilizations is what engages me the most. It shows an extremely heterogeneous picture of the current local situation. Advanced ideas like providing a common ground to all members of the civilization coexist with aggressive forms of exploitation like slavery or rapid depletion of valuable resources. Almost paradoxical is for example the participation of individual members in the global network who are barely capable of using their greatest biological asset. Another example is that while a basic understanding of interactions on the atomic scale have been known for more than 100 local orbits, most people still use antiquated and clumsy models of interaction, logic, cause and effect. A common idea, though, is an almost delusional misconception with regard to their own intelligence. While their own designs of HEbI show that hardware and software can and must take different paths of progress, they fail to see the implications with regard to their own cultural evolution. In major areas of everyday life, cultural evolution seems to be stagnating.

As an example, even though there is some advance in understanding their own biological assets, they do not use the aquired knowledge to improve the teaching of their offspring. New ideas or even ideas from other cultures are often tabooed and actively supressed, regardless of their potential merits. Dogmatism is often favored to pragmatism. Because of that, the biological heritage of this species is more often than not overemphasized, as sufficiently advanced forms of culture to counteract their enormous detrimental effect on local life-supporting networks are difficult to emanate. Please review the chapters regarding the biological layout of the species to understand the implications of this. To summarize, the biological heritage is one of a predator favoring a hunting territory with normally strong bonds between genetic relatives. Reproduction is hermaphroditic^* with a strong imbalance in that one male can mate many females at a given time. That alone is a fundamental source of cultural turmoil.

Another example is the implemented system to support a global economy. While the advantages of a global economy are undeniably showing, there is a fundamental impedance mismatch between the representation of goods and the goods themselves. While the goods are obviously a result of a low entropy environment with near-constant energy influx, the representational system is based on exponential equations. This leads to regular impedance discharges that hampers progress for numerous local orbits.

The origins of this lack in actively progressing cultural evolution to reach a sustainable level of existence is a source of hot debates on this ship. In my personal opinion, it seems that many members of this species lack the ability to transpose themselves to a metastage that would allow them to put their personal viewpoint into perspective. However, this is just pushing the answer one step away, and I will gladly leave the answer to this fundamental question to our experts in the field.

Recommendation

Seldom I have had such a level of available information paired with a complete lack of decisiveness on how to proceed. Interestingly, this may also be one of the current problems of planet 745-3. If we decide to interfere to strengthen the development of area 669 I know that it will take many local orbits before help arrives. By that time it may be too late and in any case, the end result would be a false alarm. Also, there are many local accounts that help is often not welcomed in the predominant species, hence it is far from clear whether interference would yield positive results.

On the other hand, if a civilization manages to rise to level A with this kind of biological and cultural heritage, a deep understanding of low entropy environments may arise that could in turn help us in finding our way through the vast dark.

Currently I favour the support of planet 563-2, as the predominant species appears to be far more forgiving in general and hence should react well to any help we can offer. I currently doubt that said species will mean significant progress overall, but it may strengthen us in knowing what to do in comparable situations in the future.