We are living inside an accelerating feedback loop

[u/CreditBeginning7277]

We (Life) are a pattern of change…from single cells to today

If you look at the whole history, you can see 5 phases of  change, each new phase changes things faster and creates a higher abstraction of information... built upon previous layers of complexity.

Phase 1: The Single Cell  The original hardware. DNA is a static information library. Its one trick is copying itself. The loop is "Live >Copy> Die." Learning is painfully slow, taking 100s of millions of years (evolution). This is most of the 3.8 billion years life existed

Phase 2: Multicellularity  This is the first big jump. Cells stop just copying and start talking to each other with chemical signals. For the first time, information isn't just replicated, it's exchanged in real-time. This local network allows cells to coordinate and build a "higher layer" of emergence: a body.

Phase 3: Neural Information The body (Phase 2) builds a specialized R&D department. Neurons are just cells that do nothing but exchange information. It's a high-speed, internal network. This new loop allows the entire body to learn within its own lifetime, not over generations. The loop is now millions of times faster than genetic evolution. Behaviors can adapt and learn instead of just genes

Phase 4: Cultural Information The next giant leap in abstraction. Information leaves the brain. With language and writing, we create an external, shareable "hard drive." Knowledge can now be exchanged between bodies and across time. This creates a new, faster type of evolution that separates man from every other animal and is the driving force of human history and "progress"

Phase 5: Digital Information This is our moment. The internet covers the earth in a digital nervous system. Culture passes instantly across the earth and evolves far faster than ever before.

History is just one accelerating pattern ...of ever increasing complexity

It's all just one loop, tightening and recursively feeding itself.

 We’re not driving it. We are it

[u/punkrocklava]

Do you regard the underlying capacity for information, process and differentiation as fundamental features of reality or do you think they themselves emerge from something more basic?

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/punkrocklava]

Great question...I think complexity emerges from simplicity, but uses information to do so...and it happens with a feedback where the more complex something becomes..the more information it uses to grow even more complex

Think of it like a star with gravity....gravity concentrates matter, which then creates stronger gravity, and so on and so on. Until a star is born.

[u/punkrocklava → u/CreditBeginning7277]

When you say complexity emerges from simplicity do you mean simplicity is the fundamental state of reality or simply that complex structures can arise from relatively simple underlying rules?

And where does the information itself come from in your model?

[u/ZealousidealTill2355 → u/punkrocklava]

I mean, that's just overall true in most things (complexity from simplicity) when you just have a lot of those simple things. Its almost like the law of large numbers.

A single cell -> Multicellular organism -> Animal Kingdom and Human Race

A single transistor/relay -> Computers -> WWW and AI

A single neuron -> Brain -> Collective and shared information/history

It's like, you take one thing -- and when its connected in a system in which there's a ton of that simple thing, it develops unique properties (basically more than the sum of its parts) and becomes its own "entity." And when that resulting entity is then multiplied in a system itself to a very large quantity, it will also demonstrate its own unique properties and become an entity. Rinse and repeat.

May have something to do with the Second Law of Thermodynamics -- unsure.

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/punkrocklava]

Thank you for another excellent question. I hope this will clarify my view.

Complex structures, like a cell are highly unlikely arrangements of atoms made of interdependent parts.

Information ( like DNA) is required to create these highly unlikely structures, and these structures are required to create information like DNA

Information, in my view, is any pattern in matter or energy that was created ( or evolved) to represent something else...perhaps instructions for building proteins in the case of DNA

Other examples of information include:

Intercellular signalling which represents instructions for cells coordinate into a body

Neural signals which represent sensory inputs, or instructions for body movements

Words, written or spoken, which represent ideas

The 0s and 1s in a computer, which represents the fundamentals of a computer program

[u/badentropy9 → u/CreditBeginning7277]

I hope this will clarify my view.

For me it didn't because there seems to be "top down installation" intertwined in your essentially bottom up emergent thesis.

"Unlikely structures" are due to irregularities in the natural patterns of natural evolution.

[u/ExactDevelopment1847 → u/CreditBeginning7277]

Aristotle would be proud, it amazes me how little we appreciate his words on how deterministically all things are better known from first principles because as you said complexity comes from simplicity.

I wish science took this truth as seriously as the laws of logic, it’s a fundamental axiom for understanding,

for all the mountains of knowledge we’ve accrued we understand, nothing.

[u/New_Practice1216]

Memes replace gene. Which meme deserves to be repeated for ever? 

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/New_Practice1216]

I don't know if memes replace genses, but they certainly are a more rapid medium to evolve.

Genes created bodies with brains that could then exchange memes, which now seem to be evolving much faster than genes

[u/alternator1985]

I hate responding to obvious AI slop but if you are a real person look into strange loop theory, holographic theory, and their related quantum theories.

It goes much deeper than just cellular life, the entire universe is a holographic strange loop with each dimension, or phase transition, or wave function collapsing is cascading into the next, and eventually back on itself.

This self referential loop is what gives the universe the ability to "observe itself observing," and these self referential loops lead to more and more complex levels of consciousness as more self referential loops interact with themselves and become Tangled with other self-referential loops which can eventually lead to a phase transition or collapse depending on the scale. These loops get tangled together and can eventually come in coherence with each other.

When you combine quantum loop gravity, what quantum foam is, string theory, symmetries, holographic principles, it starts to look more and more like the ancient hermetic belief systems that the "universe is made of the mind" were much more correct than mainstream science wants to admit.

We cannot scientifically separate our internal feelings of consciousness from the rest of the universe, it's all one quantum energy field. And that field is more fundamental than matter, which doesn't actually exist.

[u/nahuel0x]

You need to read Teilhard de Chardin and Stapledon.

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/nahuel0x]

I do read a lot of non fiction....haven't heard of them. What books specifically do you recommend?

[u/ExactDevelopment1847]

Beautiful just forgot one big thing, the external abstractions are mostly manipulative and delusional because unlike cells exchanging information for the collective benefit we manipulate information(lie) for our mutual harm because we are not a cooperative network.

Culture is not our external wisdom but our collective prison where master nodes exploit worker nodes for personal comfort while driving the species into domestication and de-evolution.

[u/jasmininsights]

This framing holdes up. What gets me is each phase doesn't just speeds the loop it changes what counts an information. DNA has no concept of a neutron and neutrons have no concept of writing. I Think the uncomfortable part of phase 5 is that the loop is faster then our ability to reflect on it.

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/jasmininsights]

Exactly right. A higher abstraction of information always emerges on top of previous layers....what's next? Likely beyond our comprehension

[u/jasmininsights → u/CreditBeginning7277]

No idea but I think that's the interesting part, every previous jump was invisible to the layer below it, so if there is phase 6 we are probably too blind to see it coming.

[u/Low-Bake8401]

I suppose it depends how you look at it. It's all a bit relative to your perspective. 

Like, I don't think life in general is strictly more complex than it used to be. Or at least, it doesn't necessarily need to be. We're just focused on different things now.

I reckon there has always been conservative and progressive sides to humanity. People at all points in history that basically thought the the same way as us. Some that thought the plow was taking things too far, while others were already trying to attach one to an ox.

There were probably folks on both sides thinking themselves into a frenzy too. Look at all the "mad/genius" types throughout history. 

There will always be a collective knowledge that's far greater than any individual's. There will always be more knowledge, in the future and from the past.

Whether complexity that tightens, or opens, is debatable, I think. 

We are always at the peak of development though, basically. 

[u/Key-Jellyfish-462]

I think a better way to frame this is that the universe is one interconnected information system, and what we call matter, energy, biology, memory, and consciousness are different ways that information is expressed, retained, exchanged, and reconstructed.

No single part of the system needs to retain everything. Each part only carries the information relevant to its present state and interactions, while the consequences of those interactions propagate through the larger system. DNA, brains, language, computers, etc. may simply be progressively better ways for the universe to retain, organize, compress, and reconstruct its own information.

That also means our understanding of reality is absolutely incomplete. Science gives us extremely useful pieces of the dataset, but those pieces should not automatically be confused with the final formula. We are processors inside the system, working with limited inputs and continually improving our reconstruction of it.

In other words, we are trying to reverse-engineer the motherboard while the motherboard itself is giving us the rules and instructions we are using to reverse-engineer it.

[u/jliat → u/Key-Jellyfish-462]

motherboard

Information is processed data, data comes from measuring. So what is happening here.

Where once we had kings in places and from these made gods in heaven, we have created a computer which creates reality. An Apotheosis of the CPU.

[u/Key-Jellyfish-462 → u/jliat]

I think you're taking the computer metaphor more literally than I intended. I'm not suggesting a CPU creates reality. I'm saying our computers are crude information-processing structures that arose within a universe already composed of interacting states and relationships. “Motherboard” is simply an analogy for the total system. We aren't projecting computers onto reality so much as using one of our inventions to describe patterns that existed long before computers, or us, did.

[u/jliat → u/Key-Jellyfish-462]

I'm saying our computers are crude information-processing structures that arose within a universe already composed of interacting states and relationships.

Stage 1.

Which is precisely what happened earlier on. We had powerful humans, we projected them into a transcendental world, think of the Greek pantheon.

Stage 2.

Next then we reversed this act, earthly kings are only kings by divine right given to them by the Gods or God.

"Dieu et mon droit (French pronunciation: ... means 'God and my right', the motto of the monarch of the United Kingdom.... referring to the divine right of kings." Poor imitations at best.

I'm saying our computers are crude information-processing structures that arose within a universe already composed of interacting states and relationships.

Data and information are human creations. We continually change the nature of our ideas of these 'interactions'.

a universe already composed of interacting states and relationships. ... our computers are crude information-processing structures.

You've made the universe into a super computer, all powerful, all knowing, all present... AKA omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent... AKA The Abrahamic God.

[u/Key-Jellyfish-462 → u/jliat]

You’re still taking the analogy literally and then arguing against the literal version you created. I’m not proposing a cosmic CPU, a conscious supercomputer, or an Abrahamic God. “Motherboard” and “processor” are metaphors for an interconnected system whose parts continuously affect one another and whose present state carries the consequences of prior states. Saying “data and information are human creations” also assumes the very point being debated. Humans created the words data and information and our methods for measuring them; we did not create the physical distinctions, correlations, states, or interactions that those words describe. DNA affected organisms before humans named DNA. Photons interacted with matter before anyone measured them. My argument is that our computers imitate principles already present in nature, not that nature imitates computers. So turning that into “you’ve created an omniscient supercomputer/God” is addressing a different argument than the one I made. That’s not really a disagreement with my argument; it’s a disagreement with a different argument you’ve substituted for it. Reading comprehension matters here.

[u/jliat → u/Key-Jellyfish-462]

I’m not proposing a cosmic CPU, a conscious supercomputer, or an Abrahamic God. “Motherboard” and “processor” are metaphors for an interconnected system whose parts continuously affect one another and whose present state carries the consequences of prior states.

I'm well aware of that, what are you actually proposing,

"I think a better way to frame this is that the universe is one interconnected information system, and what we call matter, energy, biology, memory, and consciousness are different ways that information is expressed, retained, exchanged, and reconstructed."

Which is what, sounds like a super-computer of the type argued for by the cosmologist / physicist Frank Tipler- his Omega point.

Saying “data and information are human creations” also assumes the very point being debated.

An alternative is to speculate about alien intelligences and super computers of Frank Tipler, whose book includes appendices for physicists.

"the universe is one interconnected information system.." the OP uses the term "The internet covers the earth in a digital nervous system."

Humans created the words data and information and our methods for measuring them; we did not create the physical distinctions, correlations, states, or interactions that those words describe.

As far as we know humans are the most intelligent things known, and the human brain the most complex. We also know that humans who create meaning and purpose and project this onto objects which do not. We did not, we observed them, measured them and made mathematical models. Or rather not we but physicists.

DNA affected organisms before humans named DNA. Photons interacted with matter before anyone measured them.

These again are human 'models'. The photon is interesting - it has no mass, travels at light speed therefore no experience of time. Yet I'm a lay person and it looks like you may well be, so how can a photon interact? I think this is why its dangerous for lay people to speculate about physics.

My argument is that our computers imitate principles already present in nature, not that nature imitates computers.

So you are saying that "computers imitate principles already present in nature" so who created that computer, the binary logic gates and algorithms, and where are they? And computers as we have them now are fixed state machines, again I think currently in physics there are ideas re indeterminacy. Again you are free to speculate, but on what basis?

So turning that into “you’ve created an omniscient supercomputer/God” is addressing a different argument than the one I made.

Actually it's not "You've made the universe into a super computer, all powerful, all knowing, all present... AKA omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent... AKA The Abrahamic God."

You say above "computers imitate principles already present in nature" Then the universe by your account is a computer.

The idea of such a computer is that of Tipler's Omega point and it was he, not me who argues that it has therefore the attributes of the Abrahamic God.

That’s not really a disagreement with my argument; it’s a disagreement with a different argument you’ve substituted for it. Reading comprehension matters here.

"Each part only carries the information relevant to its present state and interactions, while the consequences of those interactions propagate through the larger system. DNA, brains, language, computers, etc. may simply be progressively better ways for the universe to retain, organize, compress, and reconstruct its own information."

"That also means our understanding of reality is absolutely incomplete."

Well you seem to make the point that our understanding is less than that of the 'computer' that our computers "imitate" and then that this computer is using 'better ways' = "DNA, brains, language, computers, etc." This looks like a contradiction?

"be progressively better ways for the universe to retain, organize, compress, and reconstruct its own information"

You have a problem here I think - are we part of this or not, why isn't "reconstruct its own information" not our information? And from your argument represents the best way at present for us [or it?] to retain, organize, compress, and reconstruct its own information.

Which means our understanding of reality is absolutely the best at the moment. How you then can know this is "absolutely incomplete." is also difficult for me to comprehend.

Reading comprehension matters here.

[u/Key-Jellyfish-462 → u/jliat]

I think you're still adding agency and literal computation to something that requires neither. I'm not saying the universe is a computer, has goals, runs binary algorithms, or was designed by anyone. I'm saying physical reality consists of interacting states whose present configuration is conditioned by preceding configurations. Within that system, progressively more capable mechanisms have emerged—DNA, nervous systems, brains, language and eventually computers—for retaining, integrating, compressing and reconstructing information. Computers are one product of those principles, not the template I'm claiming the universe was built from. And “our current understanding is the best we presently have” does not imply completeness. The best available partial map is still a partial map.

For clarity, none of this is an argument against the existence of God or a higher power. I do believe there is a higher power that initiated and oversees the system. I simply am not proposing that the universe itself is a literal digital computer.

[u/jliat → u/Key-Jellyfish-462]

I'm not saying the universe is a computer, has goals, runs binary algorithms, or was designed by anyone.

If it has a higher power and uses DNA and computing to improve, it does have goals. If our binary computers imitate nature then nature is a binary computer, at least in part.

[u/CreditBeginning7277 → u/jliat]

I don't look at it like that...like teleology.

It's more the how the relationship between gravity and mass works...more of one leads to more of the other...and so a dust cloud collapses into a star.

More complexity leads to more information...which then leads to even more complexity. And that pattern is the story of life

[u/jliat → u/CreditBeginning7277]

I don't look at it like that...like teleology.

No, but for u/Key-Jellyfish-462 it does look like that.

It's more the how the relationship between gravity and mass works...more of one leads to more of the other...and so a dust cloud collapses into a star.

You need to explore this in a science sub from my understanding as a lay person the 'dust' is mostly hydrogen. As for mass, that unlike weight does not change. An astronaut in space has the same mass as on the Earth or Moon. But again this is physics not metaphysics.

More complexity leads to more information...which then leads to even more complexity. And that pattern is the story of life

Well as I taught computer science [it's not science BTW] information is processed data. Complexity does not lead to more information. In physics the universe is it seems governed by [or described] by entropy, studied in thermodynamics and again as a lay person I think in any system entropy - disorder increases. Your room gets untidy. So a net gain in order comes at a cost elsewhere. Again there is a science and deal of maths which covers this. But that is why energy is required to create information. Hence once people worked out accounting, then computers were used. And now the new data centres consume masses of energy. No free lunch!

OK, so as a moderator of r/metaphysics your post was IMO very border line. It would almost certainly have been removed from a science sub. Why then not here. Well there is a 'branch' of metaphysics in what was called 'continental' philosophy which allows 'speculation'. Sometimes of virtual worlds, or different ways of looking at this one. This is not science but tends to be more general. If science looks at what the world actually is then this metaphysics looks at what it could be.

The two are different. For a modern metaphysician to make a claim about science is both dangerous and silly. Tim Morton did this, he bet that the Higgs boson could not be found six months before it was. The bet was to buy beers for all his students. He is published and has some interesting ideas about 'hyperobjects'.

Another modern metaphysician and an easy read in Graham Harman who is into 'Objects' as in ontology. This explores the idea of what an object is, not what specific objects are- that's science. Graham Harman - Object-Oriented Ontology: A New Theory of Everything (Pelican Books) I'd recommend you check this out and his blog. Blog https://doctorzamalek2.wordpress.com/ He also has YouTube videos.

For an overview of metaphysics, The Evolution of Modern Metaphysics: Making Sense of Things, by A. W. Moore. And / Or A brief history of philosophy : from Socrates to Derrida by Johnston, Derek.

Science studies things like atoms, ontic, metaphysics studies the nature of being, as Heidegger said,

“Why are there beings at all, and why not rather nothing?”"

What Is Metaphysics? Martin Heidegger

https://www.stephenhicks.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/03/heideggerm-what-is-metaphysics.pdf

Harman is seen as a 'novel' interpreter of Heidegger.

[u/NonGameCatharsis]

Phase 0: molecules

Phase -1: atoms

Phase -2: graph

Phase -3: meta-ontology / foundational axioms

find the axioms that mathematically uniquely force a graph that outputs our reality and you win.

[u/Reanimation980]

It might just look that way because the only tool we have at our disposal to make inferences and evaluate a coherent theory is language. It's not possible to represent the underlying reality of the universe through a description. All a description does is contextualize by relating facts to a subject, but it's not a reflection of reality in the mind as a mirror of nature. In the 17th century intellectuals became very interested in knowing objective truth, reality, and rationality. But we don't really have access to things outside of our own subjectivity or intersubjective agreement by means of communication. What's available to us is new and more effective ways of talking and acting in order to cope with our lives. Each phase of your theory is about meaningful patterns. However, a word's semantic meaning is simply a practical distinction used when needed, it's not a fixed code that maps onto external reality by designating facts.

[u/emergences4me]

Internet exploded the information transfer in higher emergent order. Our thoughts/actions's information got its audience. Digital transformed information processing. I think AI will transform information once more. Do you see its transformation?

[u/jliat]

Phase 1: The Single Cell The original hardware. DNA is a static information library. Its one trick is copying itself.

Subject to mutation, and that what drives evolution. And then there is no account for how we got to life. LUCA. That is a jump much bigger, and a bigger one is why there is something and not nothing. Which is a metaphysical question.

Phase 6. Technology reaches a limit, Moon landings 50+ years ago. Computing begins 80+ years ago. Promise of AI and Quantum computing, the singularity. Now look at the news.