6. The unity of all knowledge

In a previous post, I introduced the concept of self-reference. I have also alluded to evolution in the context of cosmology. Here, I will briefly introduce the concept of evolution in general, and show how these two concepts - evolution by mutation and selection, and indirect self-reference - explain all the most fundamental aspects of the reality we inhabit, at many scales of existence and levels of abstraction.

Most people have a vague idea in their mind of what is meant by evolution in a biological context. Things change over time based on what works. We must be a bit more precise to see the true power and reach of this concept. 

Evolution comprises the interplay between two alternating processes: divergence and convergence. These are not the standard names, and that is an intentional choice. Since we will wish to apply this concept in many different contexts, I choose terminology that is not strongly affiliated with any one such. Assume we have some pattern of information that, when embedded in a suitable environment, tends to cause itself to remain so. Since, in most cases, no single instantiation of a pattern can remain inviolate for very long, those patterns with this property tend to maintain their existence by arranging pieces of their environment into copies of themselves. If the rate of copy generation matches or exceeds the rate of decay, we have what is called an  “autocatalytic set”, a pattern that catalyzes itself. 

Now you need only two additional conditions: 

1. The copying process is noisy, and occasionally produces a slightly modified pattern. 

2. Different patterns are differentially able to autocatalyze: their reproductive success depends on the pattern. Something - either the inert environment or other patterns - culls the disfavored according to some set of criteria, possibly changing over time.

Given these traits, an autocatalytic set will evolve over time: it will explore the space of possible patterns in its format, via rounds of divergent variation followed by rounds of convergent selection, seeking local optima. Since, generally, patterns form a large part of the selective environment of other patterns, the fitness landscape tends to change dynamically (which is to say self-referentially) which ensures an endless procession of new locally optimal forms are discovered, and then usually discarded. 

Now, recall as discussed in my first post that self-reference in the style of Gödel is an essential and defining trait of autocatalytic sets. We see that self-reference and evolution are intimately connected. And we are all relatively familiar with how they apply at the level of biology: DNA is autocatalytic, meaning a subset of its code implies indirectly a copy of the entire code; mutation occurs during DNA copying and selection occurs based on which organisms are best able to reproduce.

We also implicitly touched on this concept at the level of the cosmos: mutation occurs during the moment of black hole collapse and bounce, when the Calabi-Yau shape is violently changed (or whatever other quantum-gravitational model of the fundamental constants turns out to be true) and the new slightly different universe is born. Universes that result in this process happening a lot produce more child universes. And as we saw, these are exactly the universes that favor biological life. One evolutionary process optimizes for the environment that enables another. 

There is another layer at which we may recognize evolution that I have not yet discussed, and this is the level of knowledge. For a thorough treatment of the Popperian model of epistemology, see the fantastic book The Beginning of Infinity by David Deutsch. But briefly: patterns of thought that tend to reoccur in a person are called memes. These are autocatalytic patterns of neuron firings (though as we shall see, they are uniquely not bound to this or any other specific format). Since any one human only lives a short span of years, the most successful memes are those that are able to cause themselves to be copied into the brains of other humans. 

As an aside - why are humans able to host this new format of evolution in a way no other species seems to match? Because our minds are universal in a sense analogous to Turing-completeness, which necessarily implies (and is implied by) a capacity for self-reference. Round and round.

Memes may be successful at getting themselves copied for a variety of reasons. They may induce intense emotions in the host which they then feel compelled to explain to their tribemates. It may cause a subtribe of especially intense ingroup loyalty to develop inside the tribe and overwhelm it. But in the long run, the memes that tend to survive are those that give power to their hosts. Those hosts tend to reproduce more, and since they were apparently susceptible to meme their offspring are likely to be as well. Also, people generally admire and desire power and will seek to adopt the memes they perceive to be conducive to the generation of power. Genes that produce brains with a desire to acquire strong memes will be favored over genes that do not.

Now self-reference enters the picture again: what is science? Science is a memeplex (larger collection of mutually catalyzing memes, like a body made of many types of cells) with the property that it evaluates other memes. It is a collection of processes that enable hosts to sort memes which are fit because they provide power from memes which are fit for some other reason. The utility of this memeplex is obvious: it provides an immune system against parasitic infection while allowing a steady trickle of beneficial memes past the membrane. 

And the meme that is this very process is an epistemological meme, which is to say a meta-meta-meme. But it is also just a meme. Memes are general in this way. 

Biological organisms are constrained to the mechanical possibilities of the cellular format. Memes can take on many formats. A pattern of neuron firings may induce a host to make marks on paper, which have the property of inducing similar patterns of neuron firings in the minds of readers. But there is in principle a time when the meme exists only on the paper. Imagine an author writes a book and then dies before anyone else reads it. The meme will exist in human minds again when they read it. Before they do, however, it exists only in the paper, which is a format completely alien to that of connectivity patterns among the neurons of a human brain. Similarly: computer programs, photographs, movies, vinyl records, etc etc etc.

Unless one insists on being a completely obstinate reductionist to the point of near-disability, it must be acknowledged that memes are inherently beings that belong to the realm of forms (see post 4). They must have some physical instantiation in order to impact the world, but the fungibility of that instantiation is enough to make any but the Platonic description a masturbatory exercise in avoiding the obvious. 

Memes that produce power necessarily do so by mirroring some aspect of the structure of their environment in a way that allows the host to predict (and thus manipulate) that environment. They are therefore an instance of self-reference of the environment they inhabit. Round and round.

We see that the universe evolves to enable life, which evolves to enable knowledge, which evolves to maximize the number of child universes. 

Because of the central role of knowledge in the cosmic life hypothesis, we can now see that evolution is the explanation not only for why the constants of nature permit life, but also the answer to why the universe is comprehensible at all: universes that are not comprehensible - which is to say, universes that cannot have their properties mirrored inside autocatalytic subsets of themselves - cannot contain knowledge (tautologically) and will inevitably lose out to universes that do allow knowledge, because knowledge is the root of power. In the long run, knowledge is the dominant physical process in existence. 

Evolution and self-reference are thus, literally, the answer to life, the universe, and everything. And it is notable that they are themselves dual; like mutation and selection, like object level and meta-level. Thesis and antithesis.