Tl;Dr – starting a new book called What is Intelligence. It’s pretty great.
A friend of mine suggested I read the new book by Blaise Agüera y Arcas called What is Intelligence. The basic premise of the book is that Intelligence is intrinsic to what we call Life, but is also present in things we would not consider to be alive (like: computers). I don’t know the punch line yet, but given what I know so far, I suspect the author will be suggesting that Artifical Intelligence started a long, long time ago (like: hundereds of years with the first computing machines, such as weaving machines or census tabularors).
I’m part way through the first chapter. A lot of it is familiar territory: Alan Turing, Von Neuman, game of life, laws of thermodynamics, and Darwinian Evolution. I figured as much, chapter 1 has some stage setting to do.
What I did not count on was how much was new: Symbiosis and Symbiotics as part of the story of evolution, and Dynamic Stability are two main concepts. They are probably well understood by others but they were news to me.
Symbiosis is not a new concept: two organisms cooperate. For example: the bacteria in your gut make you healthier, the mitochondria of your cells provide power (and the cells provide a safe environment for the mitochondria). What’s new to me is Symbiosis in evolution. Short version: evolution proceeds in leaps and bounds when organizisms acquire new capabilities through symbiosis.
Strict Darwinian Evolution holds that life evolves through random mutation. For example: in Generation 1 finger nails are weak. Mutation occurs (cosmic rays) and in Generation 2 finger nails are stronger. Mutation occurs again and in Gen 3, finger nails go back to being weak. They key here is that this is a random walk, with selection applied through environmental fitness (Gen 3 may not reproduce as well as gen 2). Life evolves very, very slowly – often in a 2 steps forward 1 step back (or the converse).
In this kind of world, it’s difficult to understand how complex life (or any life at all really) evolved, especially given the 2nd law of thermodynamics which says that entropy increases – things fall apart. How can life build complexity (evolve) when things fall apart?
One answer is Symbiosis. An organism can make a great leap forward by acquiring new capabilities (or dna, or information) from other organisms. By the way: this happen all the time with bacteria and viruses. We no longer have to depend solely on random chance to make an organism more fit. To me, this is a huge shift in how I think about evolution.
A second new concept to me is Dynamic (Kinetic) Stability. A quick explanation is in order: A soap bubble and a statue are both stable, but essentially static. They will both degrade over time, and lack any ability to repair themselves. The statue may last longer, but only in the short term. Over the long run, they both evaporate. Some structures have Dynamic Stability: the ability to avoid degredation by replicating or repairing themselves. For example: a strand of DNA may degrade over time, but during that time it (and it’s related cellular machinery) can make copies of the original, allowing it to persist. It’s stable over time because it’s dynamics allow replication.
The concept of Dynamic Stability helps us understand why life can persist in a universe where entropy rules, Symbiosis provides a mechanism for live to evolve more quickly by evolving capabilities in parallel then combining to a new symbiotic organism.
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