Distributed computing is a fairly recent “innovation” of humankind. Yet everything
that we see around us would not have been possible without it. Not only is it the most important, it is also the most common thing in nature really.
Many times, one is saddled with unenviable jobs. For example, one might be forced on to complete an extremely complicated project, and all the project members are complete morons. What to do….?
Nature faced exactly this problem, only worse. Its morons were single-cellular organisms and it’s project was (is) far too complicated to even describe here. A lesser being might have buckled under the pressure, but not our sprighty Nature. The gritty thing came up with the only solution it could.
Distributed Computing.
Each moron project-member was given only a very simple set of responses/actions. But combine millions and billions of such interacting project-members, and the set of possible actions became combinatorially explosive.
Evolution. The ultimate distributed computing network.
Now, when we code a distributed network of agents, we obviously have to also code in the “goal” function in each of the agents. But as said above, the final goal function is far too complicated to describe, so obviously it cannot be coded/explained to the moron project-members.
Poor Nature. Not many cards in its hand really. So it did the only thing it could. Which is to NOT code in the goal at all. Another way to think about it is that even the question of WHAT the goal is, is “computed” by the distributed computing network.
Somewhere along the way, a species called humans sprang up as a part of this network, and in a fit of recursive code-looping, decided to look upon this giant organic computer they were a part of. And tried to decode the implicit goal function.
Whatever else this humans species suffered from, it wasn’t a lack of imagination. So the guesses careened sprightly from Pleasing the Big Angry Man in the Sky, to Being Happy, to Who Cares Man Do You Want A Smoke of This.
A few enterprising souls got closer to solving the conundrum, by conjecturing the final answer,
albeit not the goal question itself.
Though as a part of mirthy fiction, Adams had the right idea. Don’t try to deduce the final goal, it hasn’t been “computed” after all. We cannot comprehend it. Look instead at the distributed computing process – evolution. What does evolution “do”?
The points that shall follow are subtle.
Evolution – the distributed computing network – is racing inexorably towards some goal. It has achieved this by using millions of interacting “agents” with limited functions. But these functions get increasingly refined. An equivalent way to describe this functional scenario is to imagine the agents having short term goals, which get increasingly refined.
For protein compounds – the short term goal was to replicate.
For single cellular organisms – the short term goal was to survive.
For animals (creatures with a central nervous system) – it was to be happy.
For Humans – it is to create/control/know.
Each of these “goals” are
a. short term goals (in evolutionary terms)
b. supercede the previous short-term goals in primacy. An animal with a nervous system would prefer to die and not survive rather than be acutely unhappy (e.g. to be in excruciating pain).
The same thing holds for humans. We are more than animals. It is not enough for us to remain like a buffalo in a field contentedly chewing cud. We have to “improve” our lot. That is, we have to acquire more control over our environments by gaining more knowledge about it [right from quantum mechanical terms to galactic terms]. We do this by using our creative capacity – something which does not exist in any other species, and which is distinct from mere cognitive faculties.
That is why I find it dangerous that people delude themselves into thinking
their (short term) goal is to be happy, which is regressing back. This is also the answer to the age-old conundrum of instinctual “unfulfillment” inspite
of hankering after happiness. That is coz we are supposed to create. In superceded importance to being happy. Humanity’s “goal” is creative progress.
Update: The scenario described here, of an intelligent being called Nature which designs a goal-driven evolution, is merely a literary device. It is just an equivalent way of viewing the exact schematics which are described in later posts. I apologize to those who did not see this and were confused – very probably, these posts are not for you.
seven_times_six, all the great modern thinkers on evolution, including Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, who otherwise disagreed on so many matters, agreed that evolution does not have a goal, and that it is erronous to assume it does. If at all you can speak of a goal of evolution, it is as a metaphor, just as “the selfish gene” was a metaphor. Just as the metaphorical selfishness of a gene does not imply that humans themselves are selfish (in fact that metaphorical selfishness can even lead to altruism, as William Hamilton and Robert Trivers demonstrated so brilliantly), the metaphorical drive towards progress (if it exists, and no modern thinker on evolution will accept it does) has no relation to the goals of individuals. Thus, if individual X desires to be live in a farm and be happy, I’ll take that desire at face value – and I do know plenty of people who have made a similar choice towards a simpler life.
Amit, I have posted an addendum that I think should place the last few posts in the proper light.
Reg. evolutionarists thinking that the drive to achieve creative progress doesn’t exist – centuries of indoctrination and delusion are difficult to shake off. That is why I posted the two gendanken before giving the evolutionary argument of finer nuances of survival.
And frankly, I’d give at least a few centuries before creative-progress gains its proper ascendancy in society.
We’re not talking centuries of indoctrination here, but lucid original arguments that have come up in the last 25 years from the likes of Dawkins and Gould. If you think they are wrong, why don’t you read them first, counter all their arguments for there being no “purpose” or goal in nature, and then proceed to rubbish them? I’d love to read that.
And sadly, I don’t intend to hang around for a few centuries.
Amit, I agree with evolutionarists that there is no there is no intelligent being called nature which has a conscious goal. Evolution is indeed spontaneous and random. But it results – due to sheer ontological logic – in finer nuances of survival. That is all I am saying and what even those guys were saying.
The point where I diverge is – that humans have a finer nuance of survival: Creative Progress. Being Happy is a bovine animal thing that we are past beyond. Of course, this drive has been evolutionarily created.
Evolutionarists missed this important point. There is nothing to counter in their arguments really.
Evolution is indeed spontaneous and random. But it results – due to sheer ontological logic – in finer nuances of survival. That is all I am saying and what even those guys were saying.
Really? Can you quote them please? I suspect you are winging it, because your above “ontological logic” is exactly what they have countered time and again. Read Gould’s Full House for an excellent demolition of that view,or any of Dawkins’s essays on that subject. You haven’t actually read any of them, have you?
“Evolutionarists” – Is that a word?
Evolution (natural selection) is NOT “random”. Go read some Dawkins.
Amit, you’re starting to sound ridiculous. And you are offering Gould as an authority on evolutionarism? A most pathetic figure who ridiculed everything from sociobiology to evolutionary psychology, and who has been debunked and put into place by quite many smart people.
He was a moron who worried that the notion of evolution as being progressive was responsible for Nazism and eugenics. He might have been right in some ethical respects, but his conclusions about the theory of evolution were so obviously flawed, that even the far left doesn’t quote him these days.
I am sorry but I was talking about more rational people like Richard Dawkins et al – the ontological argument of replicating protein compounds is from his book “The Selfish Gene”.
Madman, I plead poetic license for the evolutionarist word. And by random, I only meant random in the spontaneous sense. Random in cause, not in effect so to speak.
I mean, come on, in all these posts about interacting distributed agents and ontological survival goals, and in even my exchange with Amit, I’m obviously arguing that evolution results in progressing nuances of survival.
But thanks for the link – Amit do have a look at it if you still don’t believe in the ontological argument.
seven_times_six, fyi, I’m on Dawkins’s side in the Gould-Dawkins debate, but one of the things they both agreed on was that evolution cannot be said to have a goal, even ontologically. Dawkins, Gould, William Hamilton, George Williams, Robert Trivers all agreed on that fundamental point. And as I had assumed, you have still failed to cite any of them.
Btw, even Dawkins, despite all his arguments with Gould, never descended into calling him “a moron”. Read his excellent and respectful essay on Gould in A Devil’s Chaplain to understand their differences better, and their areas of agreement.
As for Madman’s link, just because there isn’t random chance (and you claimed there was, not me) in natural selection, it does not mean that there is a grand overarching plan. That’s a ridiculous non sequiteur.In any case, you’ve missed the point of the whole argument: even if there is “an ontological goal” of nature, and I challenge you to quote any of the great modern Darwinians saying there is, the rest of your argument still does not follow. At the basic level, you are committing the naturalistic fallacy, as I have pointed out in a comment to the next post.
I’m afraid you’re out of your depth here, seven_times_six, and do not have a basic grasp of either of the two subjects – philosophy and evolution – that you are prattling on about. I’m not interested in countering such sophistry, so I sign off here. Feel free to reply and have the last word – my “goals” are different from yours.
People, there is an update to this post.
Amit, for you especially.