How becoming better problem solvers could lead to our extinction!

Sitting by a brook and looking at a near-by tree, I momentarily forget that I have things to do and problems to solve.

The tree helps me forget. It sways with the wind, completely in tune with the present — for it, there is no past or future.

When I was a child, I was obsessed with the concept of Nirvana — a state of self-realization, often achieved as a result of years of meditation. Meditation’s core raison seemed to be to shake your consciousness to become more aware of the present. To forcibly cut the threads that connect “you” to either the past or the future. The present is all that exists.

Was this tree self-realized? Are all trees at the pinnacle of the spiritual journey proposed by Eastern religions?

The question above is only one of the unanswerable questions that made me reconsider my obsession with Nirvana.

And here I am, all these years later — still learning from trees.

Of death & deadlines

I am worried. I’ve quit my job to work on something on my own — the quitting part was easy enough, building a company is much harder. Now, my start-up needs to show traction or risk running out of money. I should do something rather than enjoy the present — even if I’m not sure what it is that I should do.

These are serious problems for a start-up — but as I look at this 60 odd-year old tree, I’m curiously reassured.

This tree has seen countless humans come and go. People with bigger problems than mine have stared at it and cursed their luck, their enemies, themselves.

The tree has seen it all — and it is still here. Still living life in the present.

I start thinking what the difference between this tree and me is — why is it so hard for me to live in the present?

Pretty soon, I realize that the tree is not too different from a cat or a dog or any other animal; and I’m not that different from other humans.

I think for a while, and come up with something. It’s not perfect, but it explains a lot.

Among other uniquely human traits, one in particular stands out to explain this mystery. Humans are consciously aware of their impending death. We’re kind of the only ones.

Don’t get me wrong — I’m not saying that we are constantly thinking about our deaths. But we have invented concepts that don’t let us forget about death. We even call them ‘dead’lines.

In today’s day and age, where basic survival itself is taken care of, most human stress can be attributable to having to do certain things before a specific negative outcome.

Raise money before we run out of funds. Finish an exam before time’s up. Get that final sale before the quarter end. Save the patient before the cancer spreads. The list is endless.

Deadlines rule us — gently (yet constantly) reminding us of our deaths.

Nature* by contrast doesn’t follow deadlines. It didn’t have to come up with the perfect turkey by 1500 BC. It has all the time in the world.

Human problem solving: deadlines & efficiency

But what does it all mean?

To understand meaning, we need context. The purpose of nature, of humans, of life itself seems like a good place to start.

From a purely physical (an admittedly unsatisfactory) angle, it can be said that life’s purpose seems to be to delay entropy and chaos from taking over.

This vast definition encapsulates everything — from purely physical processes such as photosynthesis, to more complex behaviors associated with passing on of genes and survival.

Digging deeper leads to more questions that can’t be solved (why does entropy need to be fought? Is there a spiritual reason for life? What does it all REALLY mean?). Let’s park these for now.

At the very least we know that this “anti-entropy” surface-level answer is technically correct. So why not start here.

Every problem solving effort is essentially one in delaying entropy — namely, to continue or improve the status quo, while minimizing the risk/side-effects of chaos.

But the conscious awareness of death (and deadlines) force nature and humans to solve the same problems** very differently.

For humans, there is ALWAYS an element of time to any problem. When we look for solutions, we seem like we are optimizing for the best answer to a problem. BUT we have unspoken constraints –our awareness of our own impermanence.

The first obvious constraint is that we don’t live forever. Most of us live between 60–80 years of age. So any risk/side-effect that could come into play longer than this time-frame is generally brushed aside (hello global warming!).

But our deadlines aren’t just anchored to the time of our deaths alone. Because we have such a short time, we tend to break up our lives into mini-milestones : these could be based on calendar events (month-end, quarter-end, year-end, a 5 year presidential term etc.) or important life events (graduation, marriage, becoming 30, becoming a father, job promotions, retirement).

Whether we know it or not, we humans always seem to be optimizing for solving problems within a deadline. This means that unproductive paths to a solution & wastage prove to be very costly — we may never solve the problem in the short period of time if we’re generating waste or being unproductive.

But alongside that, risk/chaos minimization takes a back-seat. Why worry about testing whether your solution works if encountering long-tail freak events? No one you know will be around to witness such freak occurrences anyway (or at least so we think).

Nature’s method & the differences in approach

In contrast, nature tackles problems differently. It doesn’t really care about unproductive paths or waste or deadlines. A million years spent moving a big rock by a mere 10 cms so that a river can take another path is not time wasted. It just is.

However, due to the nature of timescales involved in nature’s “solution finding”, each potential solution can be subject to a huge number of long-tail risk events. Nature’s (emergent) focus while problem solving, therefore, is not the most elegant solution which minimizes waste & maximizes productivity. Rather it is one that will succeed under any freak condition the universe could throw at it.

So…again…what does it mean?

Given the same problem statement, humans will solve for a great solution that will not stand the test of time. Nature will have another solution, one that may not work as well but can withstand any shock to the system.

As we move into the 22nd century, we’re exploring a bunch of technology that could significantly impact us — Artificial intelligence & Gene therapy come to mind.

We are essentially taking what we observe nature has created & trying to do even better. This is not a bad idea in itself, but we MUST remember that the solutions nature has created (carbon-based intelligence & genetic information relay) are shock-proof systems.

We should be careful (and be vigilant) to not put all our faith on an improved design that has not undergone the same rigorous testing as natural solutions.

After all knowing our limitations is the first step in overcoming them.

* Two things to clarify about the use of the word “Nature”: 1. I don’t think of Nature as some physically conscious entity. Rather it is an abstract concept & rules that guides life on Earth 2. Humans are part of nature too — we evolved from it. But for the purposes of this piece, I make a slight artificial distinction.

** I am again anthropomorphising “nature”. Nature isn’t “aware” of any problems as such. It simply does things and has mechanisms to selectively promote those few things that are particularly good at delaying entropy.