Play Will Persist

We live in the third human era, industry, which followed the farming and foraging eras. Each era introduced innovations that we expect will persist into future eras. Yet some are skeptical. They foresee “post-apocalyptic” scenarios wherein civilization collapses, industrial machines are lost, and we revert to using animals like mules and horses for motive power. Where we lose cities and instead spread across the land. We might even lose organized law, and revert to each small band enforcing its own local law.

On the surface, the future scenario I describe in my book The Age of Em looks nothing like a civilization collapse. It has more better bigger tech, machines, cities, and organizations. Yet many worry that in it we would lose an even more ancient innovation: play. As in laughter, music, teasing, banter, stories, sports, hobbies, etc. Because the em era is a more competitive world where wages return to near subsistence levels, many fear the loss of play and related activities. All of life becomes nose-to-the-grindstone work, where souls grind into dust.

Yet the farming and foraging eras were full of play, even though they were also competitive eras with subsistence wages. Moreover, play is quite common among animals, pretty much all of whom have lived in competitive worlds near subsistence levels:

Play is .. found in a wide range of animals, including marsupials, birds, turtles, lizards, fish, and invertebrates. .. [It] is a diverse phenomenon that evolved independently and was even secondarily reduced or lost in many groups of animals. (more)

Here is where we’ve found play in the evolutionary tree:


We know roughly what kind of animals play:

Animals that play often share common traits, including active life styles, moderate to high metabolic rates, generalist ecological needs requiring behavioral flexibility or plasticity, and adequate to abundant food resources. Object play is most often found in species with carnivorous, omnivorous, or scavenging foraging modes. Locomotor play is prominent in species that navigate in three-dimensional (e.g., trees, water) or complex environments and rely on escape to avoid predation. Social play is not easily summarized, but play fighting, chasing, and wrestling are the major types recorded and occur in almost every major group of animals in which play is found. (more)

Not only are humans generalists with an active lifestyle, we have neoteny, which extends youthful features and behaviors, including play, throughout our lives. So humans have always played, a lot. Given this long robust history of play in humans and animals, why would anyone expect play to suddenly disappear with ems?

Part of the problem is that from the inside play feels like an activity without a “useful” purpose:

Playful activities can be characterized as being (1) incompletely functional in the context expressed; (2) voluntary, pleasurable, or self rewarding; (3) different structurally or temporally from related serious behavior systems; (4) expressed repeatedly during at least some part of an animal’s life span; and (5) initiated in relatively benign situations. (more)

While during serious behavior we are usually aware of some important functions our behaviors serve, in play we enter a “magic circle” wherein we feel safe, focus on pleasure, and act out a wider variety of apparently-safe behaviors. We stop play temporarily when something serious needs doing, and also for longer periods when we are very stressed, such as when depressed or starving. These help give us the impression that play is “extra”, serving no other purpose than “fun.”

But of course such a robust animal behavior must serve important functions. Many specific adaptive functions have been proposed, and while there isn’t strong agreement on their relative importance, we are pretty confident that since play has big costs, it must also give big gains:

Juveniles spend an estimated 2 to 15 percent of their daily calorie budget on play, using up calories the young animal could more profitably use for growing. Frisky playing can also be dangerous, making animals conspicuous and inattentive, more vulnerable to predators and more likely to hurt themselves as they romp and cavort. .. Harcourt witnessed 102 seal pups attacked by southern sea lions; 26 of them were killed. ‘‘Of these observed kills,’’ Harcourt reported in the British journal Animal Behaviour, ‘‘22 of the pups were playing in the shallow tidal pools immediately before the attack and appeared to be oblivious to the other animals fleeing nearby.’’ In other words, nearly 85 percent of the pups that were killed had been playing. (more)

Play can help to explore possibilities, both to learn and practice the usual ways of doing things, and also to discover new ways. In addition, play can be used to signal loyalty, develop trust and coordination, and establish relative status. And via play one can indirectly say things one doesn’t like to say directly. All of these functions should continue to be relevant for ems.

Given all this, I can’t see much doubt that ems would play, at least during the early em era, and play nearly as typical humans in history. Sure it is hard to offer much assurance that play will continue into the indefinite future. But this is mainly because it is hard to offer much assurance of anything in the indefinite future, not because we have good specific reasons to expect play to go away.

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