No, People Are Not Stardust. We Are So Much More
Our greatest thinkers say we are small. They couldn't be more wrong.
It is important to remember who we are. I mean that in the cosmic sense; in the mind-bending, reality-shifting, Carl Sagan documentary sense. In the black hole sense. The quantum physics sense. In whatever sense it is that goes all sideways when we attempt to fathom the foundations of time, space, or the reaches of a universe larger than ourselves. When the ground falls from under us and the vision starts to blur; when the details and the day-to-days seem not only comically small, but unfathomably remote: far-distant memories, fading on the horizon.
The difference is, in most such cases of existential vertigo, the intended effect is to make us feel small, insignificant—even afraid. Sagan himself, often so poetic in his defence of humanity, famously said:
“Our posturings, our imagined self-importance, the delusion that we have some privileged position in the Universe, are challenged by this point of pale light. Our planet is a lonely speck in the great enveloping cosmic dark. In our obscurity, in all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.”
— Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space, 1994
His sentiment is clear enough: humanity is both foolish and arrogant, blinded by hubris and deaf to all warnings. We are children, he would have us remember, huddled on a delicate life raft floating upon a tumultuous sea, poking holes in the rubber as we quarrel for rations. And ultimately? We are on our own. There is no one coming to the rescue as we begin to capsize.
Such arguments are all too common amongst leading intellectuals. The late Stephen Hawking, physicist-turned-celebrity and preeminent expert in all matters cosmic, went on record with similar, diminishing statements:
"The human race is just a chemical scum on a moderate-sized planet, orbiting around a very average star in the outer suburb of one among a hundred billion galaxies. We are so insignificant that I can't believe the whole universe exists for our benefit.”
— Reality on the Rocks: Beyond Our Ken, 1995
Both Sagan and Hawking’s statements are applications of the “The Principle of Mediocrity”, an argument dating back to Copernicus and typically referred to when discussing extraterrestrial life. Hawking cuts to the heart of the logic: rocky planets, main sequence stars, spiral galaxies and their clusters are all too common in the macroscale picture of the observable universe. And the very matter that makes up human beings (the “chemical scum” he so charmingly refers to) is more ordinary still. We are “moderate”, “average”, “insignificant”; just one such world in the company of over one million million million others. A grain of sand in an ever-expanding desert.
But, as fellow physicist David Deutsch points out, arguments from mediocrity, when applied to people, are radically false for a variety of reasons.
Firstly, the immediate spatial claim that planets, stars, and galaxies are typical throughout the universe is wrong. Much in the same way that, when feeling spontaneous and booking a flight, someone might throw a dart at a map and rush to its landing place, a universal tourist might fire an arrow across all of creation. Both travellers will be disappointed to discover, however, that where they eventually arrive is far from exotic.
Here on Earth, the most likely destination would be somewhere in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. Or perhaps the Atlantic. Or the Arctic for that matter. In all likelihood, our impetuous sightseer would find themselves bobbing up and down, entirely helpless, surrounded by water in all known directions. Let alone on land. And let alone somewhere interesting. The same holds true on a universal scale: despite Hawking’s lacklustre portrait of our own rocky planet, the truly typical location in all the known universe is intergalactic space, the areas between galaxies. Cold, sterile, and dark-beyond-dark, our alien tourists would likely seek a refund… though they might take a while to reach it.
In truth, planet Earth and others like it are remarkably unusual objects. Even matter itself—that which makes up all of particle physics, chemistry, biology and beyond—constitutes a minor fraction of all the known material universe (less than 5 percent, in fact, with the majority being composed of dark energy (68 percent) and dark matter (27 percent), respectively). And even more remarkable is the fact that certain types of particle physics, chemistry, biology and beyond, are only found on planet Earth. We are the only known place to harbour life, bacteria, animals and plants; insects and amphibians; Bengal tigers and buck-toothed billfish. And, entirely more to the point, we are the only place to harbour human beings. We are the only place in the entire universe with people.
This is the primary reason that principles of mediocrity fail, and why they were always doomed to fail: people are not small, obscure, or insignificant. We are neither moderate nor average. People are cosmic entities, entirely unique throughout the universe, and of a potential influence rivalling the most fundamental forces of nature. And as the title of Deutsch’s TED Talk suggests (“Chemical scum that dream of distant quasars”), while we are indeed comprised of the very same matter as that other 5 percent, we are, in the truly meaningful sense of the word, separated from it by the miraculous feats that we are able to perform: to dream, to think, to reason, and to explain; to model even the most violent features of the universe in ever-increasing fidelity. As Deutsch himself has proven, we are universal computers—Turing complete—capable of performing any performable function. We are also universal explainers: general purpose software running on that computer (the ever-elusive “G” in “AGI”), capable of solving any soluble problem and simulating any possible system. This was a reality anticipated by Emily Dickinson, no less, in 1801 (no less!), in the opening stanza of her poem “The Brain”.
“The Brain—is wider than the Sky—
For—put them side by side—
The one the other will contain
With ease—and you—beside—"
Dickinson’s and Deutsch’s points are the same: the universe exists not only in the far-flung reaches of deep outer space, alien and impassive, but also within our minds, in the very details and day-to-days that once seemed so unimportant. Nor is it impossibly vast beyond our ken, as so many scientists love to remind us. There is nothing we cannot understand, in principle, with human-level (universal) rationality. This is perhaps the most mind-bending reality of them all: the ground never really falls from under us. The vision only becomes clearer. Black hole and quantum physics—time, space, and the reaches of a universe larger than ourselves—constitute some of the best explanations in all of modern thought. The universe is, as yet, largely unknown. But it is entirely knowable. “With ease—and you—beside—”
The sad irony is: much of this is, itself, already known. Sagan certainly knew, to a degree, and said as much himself.
“The cosmos is within us. We are made of star-stuff. We are a way for the universe to know itself.”
—Cosmos: A Personal Voyage, 1980
I qualify “to a degree” here because it is the first and last sentences, not the second, that cut to the heart of the meaning of personhood. We are as much “star-stuff” (or “stardust” as Neil deGrasse Tyson later echoed) as we are “chemical scum”. People are emergent entities. Emergent in the sense that we are best explained without reference to our lower-level components. Without reference to genes, cells, chemicals, or atoms. But rather: creativity and rationality; thoughts, feelings, hopes, dreams; strength and tenderness; love and friendship. An entire world of abstract ideas and concepts, made into matter through physical computation, expanding progressively into the environment. It is as much the things that we do, the things that we transform and build in the physical world, that define us as people. The extent of our singular influence does not remain in our minds, but shapes the land around us. As the great Jacob Bronowski said:
“Man is a singular creature. He has a set of gifts which make him unique among the animals, so that unlike them, he is not a figure in the landscape, he is the shaper of the landscape.”
— The Ascent of Man, 1973
Today, still firmly in our infancy, the boundaries of our physical influence remain confined to the Earth and its immediate atmosphere. To minor headlines such as: “Human-made objects to outweigh living things”, “Scientists declare dawn of human-influenced age”, and, my personal favourite, “The earth moves most for man”. In the near future that might expand to Mars and beyond, with similar headlines reading: “Orbital space elevator nears completion”, “Humanity to reach Type 2 Kardashev scale”, and, my personal favourite, “The stars move most for man.” Beyond that anything is possible (limited only by the laws of nature); researchers Anders Sandberg and David Manheim have gone so far as to calculate that a bog standard two percent economic growth, sustained over as little as 100,000 years, would lead to a Gross World Product (GWP) equal to 10⁸⁷⁴ USD²⁰²⁰. That number is stupendous to the point of absurdity, entirely meaningless to you and me. But in the words of the authors:
“[I]f the claim that exponential economic growth at a rate materially above zero can continue indefinitely is true, it would indeed need to be the most powerful force in the universe…”
Now, many people would argue that a sustained economic growth on Earth, let alone across the entire universe, is impossible, much less desired. But this is the same mistake as before, born from a misunderstanding of what people are. People are not animals, competing for existing resources; people are builders and innovators, creating new resources. People are not bandits, stealing from their neighbours; people are partners and tradesmen, dealing with their neighbours. People are not damsels, waiting to be rescued; people are heroes and champions, coming to their own rescue. People are not children, lost on rough seas; people are shipwrights and captains, taming the seas. People are not insignificant, chemical scum; people are significance. The universe knowing itself.
People are not stardust.
We are so much more than that.
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