📹 𝐒𝐞𝐞 𝐯𝐢𝐝𝐞𝐨: https://youtu.be/4tSNxAizKck?si=C3TlP1oV6dK2V5sY
The socio-technical evolution aims for continous development of intelligence. With a sophisticated system of stimuli, it drives people to constantly create new technological and social constructs and test them in reality.
What motivates us to get up in the morning, to educate our children, to develop more efficient engines, to create regulations for data protection in politics or to buy new clothes?
It is our needs that drive us. When our needs are met, we feel well; when our needs are violated, we suffer. Evolution controls us through positive and negative emotions.
The instinct for self-preservation, which we inherit in our genes, drives us to consume food, to conserve our energy and to ensure our health and safety. Our sexual drive and the desire for reproduction ensure the preservation of the species. We strive for technological and societal developments that help to preserve ourselves and our species. Those with superior societal and technological solutions prevail in evolution. Knowledge, capital, power, appearance and community determine our status and thus our self-esteem.
Let’s take a look at Eva’s behaviour, for example, as she expertly portrays herself on social media. She gets numerous likes and positive comments, which she takes delight in. Her appearance on social media increases her attractiveness and expands her choice of attractive partners for reproduction. Selection chooses the specimens with the greatest potential for continued development. The criteria for this are needs such as health, appearance and knowledge, which together determine the rank. Each woman chooses the most attractive man she can acquire with her own attractiveness, in turn each man chooses the most attractive woman he can attain.
The control loop of homeostasis teaches Eva that form-fitting clothing elicits positive feedback and therefore feelings of happiness. As a result, Eva will continue to look after her appearance. However, negative experiences, such as the loss of many followers, have a negative effect on the fulfilment of her needs. Needs such as self-esteem, sex, community and rank are violated, and Eva will improve her online presence in the future to avoid having her needs jeopardized.
Over thousands of years, humans have learned what fulfils the basic needs of self-preservation, species preservation and selection and what harms them. As a result, people have derived a wide range of needs such as income, clothing or a role in a club. We have summarized the findings of psychology, sociology, biology, neurology, philosophy and behavioural economics into 13 needs which explain human behavior to a large extent. They are a preliminary refinement of the three basic needs of self-preservation, species preservation and selection.
The need for food manifests itself in the form of hunger and thirst.
The need for energy stands for the conservation of energy, i.e. trying to minimize physical or mental effort. For reasons of convenience, people generously hand over their personal data to digital services, even if they run the risk of this data being used against their interests. Navigation apps are a prime example of this.
Safety stands for protection from harm, for example protection through clothing, housing, arms and security in communities.
Health means being pain-free, strong and productive and is a prerequisite for most needs.
Food, energy, safety and health are the basic needs of self-preservation.
Even without the need to reproduce, the need for sex is a hormonally induced need and strongly influences our actions.
The need to reproduce is the desire to pass on and develop one’s own genes in the form of family, tribe or humankind.
Safety, health, sex and reproduction fulfil the basic need to preserve the species.
A community is a group of people who share certain values and align themselves with them. Examples include sexual partners, family, friends, sports clubs and online communities. Aristotle already referred to humans as Zoon Politikon, as social beings who need community.
Appearance involves all symbols of a person’s attractiveness, from their skin, to their physique, clothing, car, home, music, literature, and visual arts. Intellectual genius cult helps humans benefit from the public image of recognized role models.
Power through political offices, professional position or access to a personal network contributes significantly to rank. Power is often a more powerful motivator than capital.
Humans strive for knowledge. Gossip, news, science and other types of information help people to satisfy their needs while expending as little energy as possible. Business news guide the stock trader in making effective investments. Gossip helps people to assess where they stand in the community. Knowledge about the art scene in New York or about the players of a football club can strengthen one’s reputation.
Capital is a prerequisite for satisfying many needs and has gained a very dominant position in our society, as performance is equated with capital gain in many places. Capital determines which digital services are developed and how they are financed.
Status results from the aforementioned needs and is decisive for selection.
Self-esteem can also be described as satisfaction with oneself and the meaning of one’s life. It plays a key role in determining a person’s long-term state of well-being, which is also referred to as eudaimonia.
These 13 needs are an attempt to break down the basic needs of self-preservation, species preservation and selection into sub-needs in order to better understand the driving motives behind human behaviour.
People continously learn from experiencies which actions satisfy which needs which in turn evoke positive or negative feelings. They refine the 13 needs presented into further sub-needs, for example the need for appearance into the sub-needs for form-fitting clothes and a fast car, or the need for power into the sub-needs for an occupational position and dependency on others.
Most actions have an impact not just on a single need, but on several. There are interactions between the needs; the most important relationships are indicated by the arrows in the network.
The long-term fulfilment of needs determines the quality of life. Where digitalization can aid in the satisfaction of needs and where it might hinder it is a challenge for science, especially life engineering.
Questions 🤔
If these assumptions are correct, they should give answers to questions like the following.
· Why do you use a weather app? ⛈️
· Why do you upload photos to WhatsApp? 🤳
· Why are we so afraid of the advancement of artificial intelligence? 🤖
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