THE TRAGEDY OF LAHAINA

The destruction of the city and major loss of life after the fire in Lahaina Maui has been a terrible shock for the residents, and the country as a whole.  Given the distance from the mainland U.S.,  and the lack of personal experience in Lahaina by many Americans,  the extensive news coverage suggests a larger significance for this small city.

The tragedy of Lahaina began long before the fire that ravaged the town in the last week.  The chain of volcanic island tips that comprise Hawaii was settled by Polynesian explorers by the year 1000, and first visited by Europeans in 1778, when Cook visited as part of his Pacific circumnavigation,  naming the place the "Sandwich Islands" after the Earl of Sandwich, (apparently disregarding the fact that it was already settled).  The Pacific whaling trade in the early to mid 1800s produced a major change in the islands.  The ships sailed from New England, but  20% of the crews were native Polynesians(estimated).  The discovery of kerosene as a lighting fuel in the 1840s saved many hundreds or thousands of whales and slowed the whaling industry.  Hawaii was internationally recognized as an independent kingdom in 1810, but North Americans arrived to "bring Christ to the natives" and lay claim to the lands for agricultural uses by mid century.  This process was slowed by the inaccessibility of the islands, and the limited areas available for agriculture, so not until 1893 did North American and European interests create a rebellion and to depose the leader.  They appealed for annexation to the US,  which was initially denied,  but eventually accepted in 1898.  (This process is similar to the annexation of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and California,  but the land was taken from Polynesians, rather than Mexico.)

Hawaii is currently the 8th smallest,  and 11th least populous state.  But this is misleading.  The effective size of Hawaii is mostly the three main islands,  even smaller.  And the population almost entirely in Oahu.  At total population of 1.4 million,  the state has the population of San Diego.  The state agricultural office estimates that ag produces $2 billion per year, about 10% of the $20 billion in tourism.  1.6 million tourists visit the state annually,  roughly 330,000 per month.  This comes to about 1 tourist for every 3-5 residents every day,  but a ratio closer to 1:1in the major tourist areas.  These numbers indicate the peculiar place the islands have in American culture.

Hawaii has been a fantasy in the American imagination at least since after WW2, everyone's version of Bali Hai.  Bali Hai is an imaginary place,  and for most visitors, going to Hawaii is also a fantasy.  Its role as a major naval and missile base,  and an economic zone for Pacific development is ignored.  A few visitors may go to the Pearl Harbor memorial,  but the goal of the visit is the "Hawaiian Fantasy" which may involve surfing lessons, snorkeling a crater, hiking a tropical trail,  seeing the active volcanoes,  or watching a "hula" dance.  (It even involves playing golf for some, as there are many courses at major resorts.)  The demands and economic return of tourism far outweigh the other activities,  and the native Polynesian population has been dwindling for years.  The islands' population is 37% Asian,  25% white, 11% Hispanic,  10% Polynesian,  and the rest mixed.  It is not a Polynesian country except in some rural areas,  and it is not Anglo despite having the union jack as part of the state flag (!).  

Lahaina was once the capital of the Hawaiian kingdom,  but Honolulu has long since overtaken it as the major city.  We visited Lahaina over 10 years ago,  and it was already dominated by a tourist strip of bars, dive shops, and fast food restaurants typical of tourism throughout the US but with Hawaiian themes.  That has only increased in the interval,  and been accompanied by resort condo development around the city, so that haoles (non-native Whites) can have their dream home here.  Hawaii is an idyllic chain of Pacific islands with a unique culture that is honored in the fantasy,  not the reality which is a resort and condo development location.

How do you plan for infrastructure in a fantasy world?  How many firefighters do you need when the population is only a few hundred until it swells by thousands of tourists?  Maui reports 164000 population but many many more tourists much of the time.   A 2/1000 rate of firefighters this would require over three hundred, not including those to cover the additional demand of tourists.  There might be a basis for even more since resources from other states or islands would not be easy to access in emergencies.  Who is going to pay for this?  Newscasters are quick to report the lack of services, alarm system response, or other deficits,  but fail to realize that Maui is a fantasy resort island that main-landers come to to escape the worries of the world.  

This issue is not unique to Hawaii or Maui.  Everywhere that tourists go to enjoy the fantasy of being outside of their everyday lives has the same development issues and economics.  Some of these places are close enough to other major urban areas tto "borrow" on the necessary additional services in emergencies.  But even this is unpredictable, as the Paradise fire showed, in CA.  The world can be a dangerous place.  Tourism is not bad.  Visiting new places allows a person to expand appreciation of others and the world.  But economically, tourism does not address the basic needs of the local society,  and does not pay for them at the rate that would be needed in emergencies.  

Would people have died in Lahaina if there were less tourism?  It seems likely that the conditions of the fire would have been destructive and lethal.  But there would have been fewer places to burn,  fewer people to die,  and perhaps more avenues for escape and more planning of resources.   Maybe or maybe not.  We will never know.

INTELLIGENCE AND EVOLUTION

Natural selection is the basis of evolution,  a basic tenet of biology.  Natural selection occurs by genetic selection in mating individuals. This theory includes the evolution of the adaptive capacity of "intelligence".  Most investigations of "intelligence" explore how this feature of brain operations developed in the course of primate evolution.   The selection of genomes as "more fit" is not absolute but related to a specific environmental parameters,  and variations in genome are selected to optimize this "fit".  

With the development of more complex behaviors and language, an associated "culture" accompanies humans from generation to generation,  and with the development of writing and more advanced methods of information storage,  it is possible to store and transmit this "culture" for the forsee-able future. "Culture" is not transmitted in the genome,  and the Lamarkian theory that behavior contributes to natural selection is rejected in evolutionary theory.  This leaves the question of whether (and how) "cultural knowledge" contributes to adaptation, and evolution.   Several theories of "cultural evolution" involving "memes" have been proposed.  It is not clear if changes in memes are efficiently selected for adaptive value.  Questions might be raised about whether one economic system is more adaptive because it is more "productive".  Does maximizing "productivity" represent the highest level of adaptive capacity,  or are other variables involved which must also be included?  Is "religion" an adaptive cognitive survival skill?  Given the extensive mass killings, historically associated with religions,  it is unclear how this promotes adaptive survival.  Is the dominance of one religion explained by "survival of the fittest"?

Science would seem to be the area of culture most clearly associated with adaptive value,  and many scientific achievements have contributed to prolonging human life.  But the relationship of science to evolution is growing more complex, and several recent achievements raise troubling questions about how evolution is influenced by scientific achievements.  These include: 1) nuclear weapons and radiation, 2) gene modifications and CRISPR, 3) cloning of organisms,  and 4) AI repurposing of cognitive activity.

Discoveries in the nuclear structure of matter are a prominent achievement of 20th century physics.  Separate from this investigation of basic knowledge,  nuclear fission and fusion reactions can release large amounts of energy, and were studied for use in creating weapons.  These weapons exist, have been used, and are relatively widely distributed in the developed countries.  Their use threatens the genetic integrity of those exposed,  and these genetic effects including later development of various cancers is well documented.  The risk of the widespread uncontrolled use of these weapons is an evolutionary threat, so it makes  sense to manage the control of their use.  Whether this is the current situation is unclear, and no formal system for preventing their unrestricted use exists,  and evidence for individual leaders with a poor reputation for appreciation of consequences who have threatened the use of these weapons raises serious questions.

There is a long history of genetic modification of plants and animals by selective breeding to improve the value of plants for human consumption, and animals as domestic assistance or for food.   This distorts the evolutionary viability of these organisms,  and usually makes the animals dependent on human management for survival.  More subtle genetic modifications are occurring as animals adapt to human urban environments.  Two more dramatic interventions are cloning and CRISPR.  In cloning,  animals (or humans) are reproduced from selected genetic material.  This is the extreme of "eugenics", not breeding for ideal offspring,  but cloning yourself to be the offspring!  The assumption that the clone would be identical to the original person takes into account only the genetic component,  and the role of environmental programming cannot be predicted in the same way and is unlikely to reproduce the same personal configuration.  The danger of cloning is its disregard for recombinant genetic variation.  Cloning an individual is the ultimate narcissistic statement that indicates the person is ideal, and no modifications in their genome are needed.  Cloning of animals (or plants) sometimes occurs in Nature,  but for more complex animals it does not,  as adaptive selection is prevented.  Most troublesome is CRISPR.  The ability to modify plants and animals by introducing genetic material by non-sexual selection methods ENTIRELY BYPASSES EVOLUTION in favor of "scientific" presumptions of better adaptive value.  Its use has been proposed for correcting single locus genome abnormalities in human illnesses,  where somatic cells can be modified,  and also proposed for as yet unachievable interventions in embryos.  The medical application seems humanitarian and does not automatically alter evolution.  But the urge to find genetic material that enhances human capacities,  and insert this to produce "ideal" embryos is a lurking danger.  Here again, bypassing the evolutionary process produces unknown non-evolutionary consequences.

AI is the ability to combine and integrate human cultural production to produce new cultural "products".  Since all human culture bypasses evolutionary selection,  it is not clear how this particular modification poses risk other than more direct cultural interventions.  In a recent opinion, Karp  has compared the development of nuclear technology to AI. (https://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/25/opinion/karp-palantir-artificial-intelligence.html)  To understand the danger of AI,  one must understand that human cultural products are created by individuals.  Each person receives training from others about basic cultural memes and how to use them to participate in the social system in which he/she is embedded.  The evolutionary impact on culture depends on how cultural elements appeal to and manage the  motivations of individuals.  When this impact is mal-adaptive, the long term result is a contraction, or elimination of the culture.  Economic rewards,  sexual selection, and social support are all linked to appropriate performance of cultural behavior.  (The failure to consistently conform is usually considered "mental illness".) In more complex societies,  bureaucratic entities,  governments, corporations, etc, are given legal existence to have power to enforce and reward cultural performances.  These artificial entities may demand cultural behaviors that are mal-adaptive (that interfere with evolution).  When evolution is effective,  mal-adaptive behavior of these "artificial organisms" results is eventually selected out.   What makes robotics/AI so threatening is the possibility of creating entities that perform actions with a significant level of human intellectual capacity,  but are not regulated by human motivations. What then are they responsive to?  The current fear is that they are responsive to corporations that are not empathic to the needs of the larger society.  This is the (alleged) effect of social media corporations and other technological developments that have emerged in recent years.  But it is unclear if they are disregarding the larger society, or responding to conflicting influences  with different political interests.  (An intelligent governmental response in this country appears to be impossible due to the current technological ignorance of the political leadership.)  The danger of AI is that human intellectual capacities can be mimicked by computational devices that humans will be unable to discriminate from interacting with another human, and so will be unaware of being manipulated by some entity.  The evolutionary extreme would be humans  manipulated to "fall in love with" pornographic AI productions which distract them from human reproduction and materially alter the ability of evolution to influence natural selection.  (How much this already occurs in dating sites is unknown.)

So long as intelligence is closely linked with human motivations in individuals susceptible to social and sexual selection,   it is indirectly influenced by evolution,  including its "cultural" component.  Any intellectual activity that bypasses the evolutionary selection process threatens to alter evolutionary processes with unknown consequences!