Enter Local Control

Jakub Growiec

Chapter Chapter 2 in Accelerating Economic Growth, 2022, pp 17-29 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Looking back at all the impressive achievements of humankind begs the question: Why did we achieve it? What was the driving force behind these developments? This chapter looks for a factual answer to the question, what are the key goals pursued in human life? It invokes the instrumental convergence thesis, originating from the research on artificial intelligence, and argues that this thesis can also be applied broadly to biological life and specifically to humans. The thesis claims that for a variety of final goals, the same four instrumental goals will also be followed: self-preservation, efficiency, creativity and resource acquisition. The union of these four goals can be called local control maximization. It is argued that the development of human civilization has begun once humans, as the first species on Earth, crossed the threshold of net positive cumulative knowledge accumulation. This allowed our ancestors to conquer territory, improve technology and gradually improve their capacity to maximize local control.

Date: 2022
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:frochp:978-3-031-07195-9_2

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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-07195-9_2

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