Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts
Showing posts with label survival. Show all posts

Wednesday, September 10, 2025

A Review of The Wild Robot – An Evolutionary Perspective:

 

One day, machines may join the ancient dance of adaptation — not as tools, but as kin.


After a cargo shipwreck scatters a shipment of service robots, only one — ROZZUM Unit 7134, “Roz” — washes ashore on a wild, uninhabited island. At first a clumsy intruder in a wary ecosystem, Roz slowly learns the language and rhythms of the animals, earning trust through small acts of care. Her life changes when she rescues an orphaned gosling, Brightbill, and carries him in her metal arms through a mist‑draped marsh at dawn — a moment that crystallises her transformation from machine to guardian. As seasons turn, Roz must navigate storms, predators, and the pull of her own mysterious origins, discovering what it means to belong in a world where nature and technology are not enemies, but uneasy companions.


Harmony vs. the Laws of Nature

The film’s central vision — that all animals might one day live peacefully together — is emotionally stirring, but ecologically implausible. In real ecosystems, predation isn’t cruelty; it’s a stabilising force. Energy flows through the food cycle, not a simple “chain,” and every predator–prey interaction feeds biodiversity. Remove predation, and you risk starvation cascades and collapse. Roz’s gentle diplomacy with predators is moving, but in evolutionary terms, it’s a fantasy.

In reality, predators keep the world alive; stories teach us why we wish they didn’t.


Hibernation Interrupted

One subplot sees animals roused from hibernation — a detail that might pass unnoticed to most viewers, but in reality, it’s a life‑threatening disruption. Hibernation is a finely tuned survival strategy, lowering metabolic rates to endure scarce winter resources. Disturbing it can mean death. Here, the film’s warmth brushes aside the cold precision of seasonal adaptation.


Sentimental Machines

Roz’s gradual emotional awakening is one of the film’s most touching arcs. From a technological standpoint, however, programming genuine emotions into AI is far from solved. Current systems can simulate empathy, but they don’t feel. The leap from simulation to authentic sentiment would require breakthroughs in consciousness modelling — or, as some speculate, in bio‑robotics and protein engineering.


 

Bio‑Robotics: Where Fiction Brushes Reality

The film’s dream of machines forming deep bonds with living beings finds a faint echo in real research. The UNSW’s F3DB flexible robot can 3D‑print organic material directly onto internal organs, hinting at a future where machines and biology merge. DNA‑based robotics, neuro‑hybrid systems, and insect‑inspired navigation are already pushing boundaries. Yet even these advances can’t rewrite the evolutionary imperatives that govern life in the wild.


Beyond the Island: Where Science Might Catch Up to Story

While The Wild Robot asks us to imagine a world where machines and animals share trust and tenderness, science is quietly sketching the first outlines of that dream. Bio‑robotics is already blurring the line between the mechanical and the living: the UNSW’s F3DB robot can 3D‑print organic material directly onto internal organs, DNA‑encoded machines are being designed to store and process information like cells, and neuro‑hybrid robots are borrowing the instincts of insects to navigate complex terrain.

These aren’t sentimental machines yet — they don’t feel joy at a gosling’s first flight or grief at a winter’s loss — but they hint at a future where technology might one day participate in the same cycles of adaptation and interdependence that shape all life. If that happens, our relationship with machines will no longer be about control or utility alone. It will be about coexistence, trade‑offs, and shared survival — the same evolutionary bargains that have bound species together for billions of years.

 



Thursday, July 9, 2015

Justice between humans and animals




Nature [1] has been said to work for the best of each "creature" (using Darwin's words). “She” (naturally) destroys the maladaptive traits and preserves the adaptive ones, leading to the continuation and amazing complexification of life. Individual organisms (including micro-organisms) often produce costly common goods and are preferential on whom would benefit from such common goods. Most organisms would help relatives because that is likely to perpetuate the kindness traits, otherwise, the common good would get plundered by “cheats” and “free-riders” who would not (by definition) contribute to the perpetuation of the genome/kind/species of the donor. This discrimination in itself ensures a sort of "justice" which often benefit the whole community/species/kind*.




The success of any species is tied up, surprisingly, to such discriminatory kindness. West et al (2006), explains an interesting experiment conducted on microorganisms communicating for the purpose of cooperation - necessary to perform several essential multicellular processes such as nutrient acquisition and dispersal. Some individuals in this bacteria groups namely Pseudomonas aeruginoshe produce a common good for the benefit of the group (sidrophores scavenging iron in this example), however, such production might be open to plunder by cheats within the same group, who do not produce such organic product and who would use the plundered sidrophores to out-number the altruistic productive individuals. When selfish individuals (cheats/mutants) out-number the altruistic one beyond the capacity of the patch/colony to provide nutrition and other essential organic products, the group inevitably perishes. West et al (2006), then explain how the altruistic bacteria uses two mechanisms to insure the sidrophores will be utilised exclusively by relatives (who according to the Kin selection theory, must be carrying the same altruistic traits and are thus likely to keep producing beneficial products for the survival of the colony), which may in turn, result in a potential inclusive fitness for the whole group. Those two mechanisms are the limited dispersal", and kin discrimination (the repression of competition). Kin recognition and kin discrimination in this example occur beyond the perception of the individuals while in higher organisms occur consciously, through the sensory system (based on physical characteristics such as the smell, features or location, as relatives tend to live in the same vicinity) (West et al, 2006).

The success of kin discrimination would naturally lead to the growth in number of the connected group and a gradual advancement of the organisation (Darwin, 1854; 1999), leading in turn to more growth in population (inclusive fitness). Now! In case of humans, this happen the other way round. Humans tend to think of the purpose of their actions and are capable of weighing possibilities against contextual and situational factors, relating this to past experience. This is called the faculty of "steermanship" (Weiner, 1948) or Cybernetics.



So while we are doing the same thing - in principle, the results are pretty much different. Humans' contribution to the welfare of their community do not always take the form of economic activities or biological production. How often we exchange materialistic/economic possession (represented in money) for recreational, spiritual, humanistic or artistic values. How often we feel estranged to some family members and close to strangers. Due to the faculty of observation, education and the use of cognitive artifacts, the human behaviour - as Darwin affirmed, is no longer governed by instincts but is rather a blend of natural dispositions ("social instincts"), social learning ("imitation and reinforcement") and values (morals), resulting in the evolution of morals, religions, education, cultures, social contracts, game theories, etc.



Great lawgivers, the founders of beneficent religions **, great philosophers and discoverers in science, aid the progress of mankind in a far higher degree by their works than by leaving a numerous progeny
                                                                                                                              (Darwin, 1854-99)From this argument we can see that species tend to work, consciously or unconsciously for the benefit of their kind, as part of their struggle to survive. In this context, justice (defined in light of collective-survival values) can replace kin discrimination, and as man advance in civilisation….

 

As man advances in civilization, and small tribes are united into larger communities, the simplest reason would tell each individual that he ought to extend his social instincts and sympathies to all the members of the same nation, though personally unknown to him. This point being once reached, there is only an artificial barrier to prevent his sympathies extending to the men of all nations and races.
                                                                                                                            (Darwin, 1854-99)






[1]

Nature in a Darwinian sense is the aggregate of natural laws and process
addressed as a singularity (Darwin, 1849-1871;1999)
*
This does not imply pre determinism ( see Park, 2007)
Park, J.H.(2007) Persistent Misunderstandings of Inclusive Fitness and Kin Selection: Their Ubiquitous Appearance in Social Psychology textbooks. Evolutionary Psychology – ISSN 1474-7049 – Volume 5(4). 2007-861
**
Caution must be practiced as we address the meaning of "beneficial religion". Evolutionary-wise, any moral system (or religion) that imposes a fixed code of conduct rather than a set of values, is maladaptive and pathogenic on the long run. 


West et al (2006) Altruism, Institute of Evolutionary Biology, School of Biological Sciences,
University of Edinburgh Current Biology, Vol 16 No 13 R482


Read more in the Conservation of the Homo sapiens; the survival of the Wise
All copyrights reserved.





Tuesday, June 9, 2015

Between the "Conservation of the Homo sapiens" 2014 & BBC 2015's best seller: Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind

Review:

Although the general framework, findings and the titles of the two books appear to be amazingly close; The prize-winner, in his TV interview with the BBC  oversimplifies the issue of abstraction (what he calls "imagination"), and presents a couple of slightly distorted facts, such as that the difference between our species and the previous human species is not in the "brain"; stating that the most-recent previous human species (Neanderthals) had bigger brains, without any reference to areas of growth, shrinking or development. In all cases, it conflicts with his own findings: If the difference lies only in the faculty of "imagination", as he argues, or in "abstraction, conceptualization and strategic planning" (among other factors) as I argued, then it has - one way or another, to relate to the brain. Here is a quick comparison between the two arguments in six points, listed neatly in one table.

Everything should be made as simple as possible, but no simpler.

~ Albert Einstein



Conservation of the Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise; on the Cybernetics of education;

By

Gihan Sami Soliman

Published April 2014

 (284678811©1/3/2014 UK Copyright Registration Service)
 
&

BBC bestseller

Sapiens: A Brief History of Mankind

 
By

Yuval Noah Harari

Published 4 Sep 2014

 Based on a BBC interview with the author of the latter on what makes us human.


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For those interested in interdisciplinary perspectives. 

My argument on what makes us human.



#~#~#~# New Concepts #~#~#~#:

* The Real-living-system Theory.* The sociophysiobiological kingom.* The Cybernetic Phylogeny.

More Cybernetics designs and  illustrations on MY Own Education.

Copyrights 2011-2015.


Wednesday, January 7, 2015

Conservation of the Homo sapiens: The survival of the Wise; on the Cybernetics of education


ON THE SURVIVAL OF HUMAN SPECIES BY MEANS OF CYBERNETIC SELECTION


This book harnesses natural sciences to humanities vigorously through cybernetics, to construct a holistic expression of the Real-living-systems which would work for educators and environmental ethicists




Do NOTcopy from this blog without a prior written permission from the author
First published on 4/42014

هوموسيبيان هو الإسم العلمي للبشر كسلالة من ضمن سلالات الكائنات الحية على الأرض. كتاب "الحفاظ على البشرية" يبين أن الإنسان، وإن تشابه عضوياً مع باقي الكائنات، إلا أنه يتميز بالقدرة على السيبرنطيكا. الكتاب يشرح دور هذه القدرة في بناء الهوية البشرية وإعادة صياغة البيئة. وهو يشرح بشكل علمي دور التعليم في صياغة الضمير الإنساني وإعادة صياغة الأشياء. هذا الكتاب في تكامل العلوم والفلسفات.