Intriguing, I'm curious where you think this process of evolution started, if you believe it even has one. Is there a primordial universe somewhere or is this just a continuous process?
Glad you are intrigued! Yeah, that question deserves a longer and more thoughtful answer than I can pack into a quick reply here, but, short sloppy vague version: I think that, once you go with the idea of an evolved universe, logic suggests that there is no original starting point: that there has always been SOMETHING, and that something has always had a tendency to grow more complex over time, because evolution is a ratchet. As soon as there's two of anything, as soon as there is reproduction with differential reproductive success, evolution is off and running. But how do we get to THAT point? Well, that may mean an unthinkably infinity of time where there was just that single original primal something, that primordial universe, with extremely simple properties, doing very little indeed. No stars; no galaxies; no elements; no protons and neutrons even, just a primal... something. But, given an infinite amount of time, then even the most unlikely of things that could happen to it (given its properties, which would be far simpler than in our own universe) would happen. Perhaps that proto-universe, almost infinitely slowly, collapses. Perhaps that first, infinitely slow collapse eventually leads to a kind of turning-inside-out, a kind of primitive first black hole, and thus big bang (each involving all of the primal something-stuff); a very simple flipping back and forth: that could lead to another, absurdly long, absurdly slow, back-and-forth cycle; big-banging and black-holing, expanding and collapsing, back and forth, endlessly. Same big bang, same black hole each time. But if, at some point, something else highly unlikely happened (and we have an infinite amount of time for it to happen in!) and the ur-stuff of this unitary proto-universe separated out enough to collapse into two black holes, giving birth to two big bangs, each with slightly different properties, as they would be of slightly different sizes, and would both of course thus differ from the original primordial universe... And if they stay separated, have lost contact with each other... well, we are off and running. That's a tremendously vague and almost metaphorical way of talking about this, because imagine how unimaginable the most primitive original substance must be to us, here, now, in this rich and complex universe...
Thank you for the aside to Ursula K. Le Guin 1986. I appreciated the nod to the gatherer and weavers, without whom, no sac would exist to perpetuate the hunters and thinkers.
Are you familiar with physicist Jeremy England, who argues that life should be seen as inevitable given a constant energy source?
From my perspective, life is merely another way of accelerating the entropy of the universe even faster. Life isn’t some squishy fluke on the edge of an indifferent cosmos; life itself looks like a natural extension and end result of the whole cosmos being alive, coming more and more into ever greater complexity.
The trick seems to be identifying as the whole works, rather than just the inside of one biological organism. The cell wall is actually the _center_ of the cell, which extends to infinity because it requires the whole universe to exist, and vice versa.
Well, I largely agree with Jeremy. And with your perspective. It doesn't really make sense to separate out the chemistry and physics we call "life" from all the chemistry and physics that lead up to it, enable it, surround it, feed it... I'll put a post up soon that addresses this more directly. (For instance, the cloud of dust and gas that condensed to form the earth only contained a dozen or so minerals. Earth's surface now comprises over four thousand minerals. A really extraordinary and complex developmental process – and life emerges pretty seamlessly from this process of complexification. And then feeds back into it; life shapes the environment which shapes life...)
I'm curious if you're familiar with Biocentrism? It was written by Robert Lanza and explains that the universe is finely tuned to life as we know it because life and consciousness did not evolve from the universe, but rather consciousness created the universe. He uses quantum mechanics to underpin the main argument in a very elegant way.
Also it's interesting to me that most definitions of entropy continue to describe it as the movement from order to disorder. Even though disorder is increasing, the language here makes it difficult for someone unfamiliar with science to understand this phenomenon (due to how most people imagine disorder). A more accurate definition of entropy is the movement from simple to complex. Even though disorder is also increasing, describing it as complexity not only makes it easier to grasp, but it's also a fuller picture of what's actually happening.
Well, according to physicists Steven Hawking and John Preskill, Black Holes DO lose information and will shrink and pop out of existence eventually without ingesting additional matter.
This is fascinating. Let me pose what (I hope) might be a dumb question. Universe A is accidentally born with physical constants that improve the functioning of DNA. How can that improvement affect the the differential reproduction of A versus its peer universes, so that the DNA-favorable constants are passed on to the next generation? Obstacles to this:
(1) A’s offspring are mostly already born by the time A has aged long enough to produce life-bearing planets.
(2) The actions of DNA and the life-forms that it engenders can’t affect the probability of new universe offspring being born or what mutations to physical constants that those offspring have.
Could you address this question? I don’t understand either what would drive universes to evolve the parameters needed for DNA evolution. The universe evolution should only optimise for black hole creation right?
That is an answer, but I wish Gough would answer in more detail too. Life forms might indeed make black holes since the matter to energy conversion efficiency is so high. However, evolution is a matter of timing in more than one way. I wonder whether artificial black holes really answer my first question about how early life has to appear. And there is a bootstrapping question. How do you evolve from a universe where life remains too primitive to control black holes *and thus can not affect parameters of new universes* to a universe where life controls black holes? There is no selection pressure for a gradual shift. A life form with limited intelligence simply has no way at all to affect universe evolution. Right?
You can always try to posit that there was enough space for random mutation to find its way up to intelligent technological life, but I agree that it’s not at all self-evident how to handle this.
These ideas seem to be predicated on a sort of multiversal time progression, or at least a chain of causation. I'm not sure this sort of linear narrative isn't just an inherent human bias meant to digest information into comprehensible patterns, but that's an idea that I can't support well yet. In other words, I'm not too confident that every effect needs a cause, or that our understanding of that process of cause and effect is anything more than a convenient simplification.
I’m sitting in the barber’s chair as a young man, a wall of mirrors in front and in back of me…as the barber removes the perpetual growth my DNA facilitates, I gaze into the infinitely regressive images of myself and start counting the individual depths where-in my image appears. I am reminded of watching my dog vigorously chasing its tail. This is very entertaining. I start imagining that I am dividing the distance between any two images exactly in half. I suddenly realize my hair is actually growing at the same time the barber is cutting it off. I enrolled in barbers college.
Excellent piece. Systems thinking, rooted in our understanding of evolutionary biology, is the breakthrough we need across all sciences. Your piece brought to mind an article I remembered reading in the Guardian about Stephen Hawking’s conversion to a biological theory of the universe. You don’t mention him here but I assume you are aware of his conversion? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/19/stephen-hawking-told-me-ive-changed-my-mind-my-book-is-wrong. Thanks also for the Stewart Brand piece. I am really looking forward to reading this. I assume that you have read Michael Levin’s ‘multi scale competence architecture’ papers? And Stuart Kauffman’s mind bendingly brillliant books from the 90s? We can’t understand the world without understanding systems & we can’t understand systems without understanding evolution (& vice versa).
The real question is whether we can attribute comprehension to the self-organising parts of the universe? Or to put it another way, where does the distinction between inert & living matter lie? Daniel Dennett talks about competence without comprehension in evolution. He is referring to ‘living’ parts which evolve into more complex wholes at different time / space scales (animals, neurons, eukaryotes). If we look at a big enough scale, is everything - even planetary matter - ‘living’ & evolving with competence but no comprehension? Dennett’s other useful thinking tool is to ask “how come” not just “what for”. He talks about ‘affordances’ and the ontology of evolved creatures. I think this may be a fruitful line of inquiry for you in your work. Instead of asking ‘for what’ did universes evolve as they have, it is useful to ask ‘how come’, given their ‘local’ affordances. Anyway, bravo! A very interesting piece and I look forward to reading more. All intellectual paths lead to this place if you search deeply enough so it is always joyous to spy fellow travellers on the road.
I consider Smolin’s CNS theory, that universes evolve to maximize black hole production one of the most brilliant ideas ever, true or not.
Your post is an excellent primer on the concept. Not sure yet how much is new here but I will eagerly await follow ups including your predictions.
IMHO Smolin has saddled CNS with the unnecessary prediction that our universe should be at a local maximum for black hole production. This is designed to insulate CNS from charges of unfalsifiability. If a slight tweak in our particle configurations would increase black hole creation then, according to his formulation, CNS would be falsified.
But, and this is where I borrow my science epistemology from Popper and Deutsch, Smolin’s theory is even better than he realizes. If it is the only hard-to-vary theory that explains all our relevant observations then it should be our preferred explanation even *before* we can test it. Being hard-to-vary is sufficient to tentatively prefer an explanation if it has no hard-to-vary rivals.
Also definitely like your point that evolution speeds up at new scales.
It’s intriguing, but feels a little too grand. I don’t get how evolved life is earlier universe is supposed to have had any affect on ours (even an anthropic shadow, since you could just posit that the evolution that matters is the universe level optimization for black holes and anthropic principle across astronomical numbers explains our evolved observant complex life)
I lack time to read all of this today, much less slowly, to consider it, but I do enjoy the style and tone and it makes it worth returning for, at minimum, the entertainment.
Oh, thank you Brian! Can I ask, what led you to this particular post? I’ve noticed (from my stats) quite a large number of people reading it over the past week, and I can’t quite work out where they’re coming from. (They are all very welcome, though! Hi!)
For me, someone in my feed quote re-stacked that it was “the most important post they had ever read” or something like that. So I had to see what that was.
Feel free to disregard my comment, because I don't have the attention span at this time of night to thoroughly read the article. But, ideas that sound nice still need solid backing.
Most of the below references came out after your article, but they are what comes to my memory for disputing revolutionary ideas that the mainstream science doesn't take into account.
This I think is talking about the same topic https://youtu.be/rFgpKlcpzNM?si=lBkP61yYx90NPVZp and the channel has more content that goes into the math of the singularity and interpretations of the little data we have.
Now, the next video will be rude, but it explains why doing the math is important, and that the stories that science communicators put forward to the public is not the most accurate description https://youtu.be/11lPhMSulSU?si=jasQtgRR9GqHFi9E
I am putting this here because I like the attitude of challenging what doesn't make sense, but science is designed to add up. I'd say revolutionizing science is like hacking a system the more times it is done the harder it becomes to do it again.
Very interesting, I am very much appreciating this line of inquiry and this approach to science in general.
One piece of feedback. It wasn't clear to me how the "three nested levels of evolution" map to the hierarchy of sciences. This reader would benefit from it being spelled out a little more.
Intriguing, I'm curious where you think this process of evolution started, if you believe it even has one. Is there a primordial universe somewhere or is this just a continuous process?
Glad you are intrigued! Yeah, that question deserves a longer and more thoughtful answer than I can pack into a quick reply here, but, short sloppy vague version: I think that, once you go with the idea of an evolved universe, logic suggests that there is no original starting point: that there has always been SOMETHING, and that something has always had a tendency to grow more complex over time, because evolution is a ratchet. As soon as there's two of anything, as soon as there is reproduction with differential reproductive success, evolution is off and running. But how do we get to THAT point? Well, that may mean an unthinkably infinity of time where there was just that single original primal something, that primordial universe, with extremely simple properties, doing very little indeed. No stars; no galaxies; no elements; no protons and neutrons even, just a primal... something. But, given an infinite amount of time, then even the most unlikely of things that could happen to it (given its properties, which would be far simpler than in our own universe) would happen. Perhaps that proto-universe, almost infinitely slowly, collapses. Perhaps that first, infinitely slow collapse eventually leads to a kind of turning-inside-out, a kind of primitive first black hole, and thus big bang (each involving all of the primal something-stuff); a very simple flipping back and forth: that could lead to another, absurdly long, absurdly slow, back-and-forth cycle; big-banging and black-holing, expanding and collapsing, back and forth, endlessly. Same big bang, same black hole each time. But if, at some point, something else highly unlikely happened (and we have an infinite amount of time for it to happen in!) and the ur-stuff of this unitary proto-universe separated out enough to collapse into two black holes, giving birth to two big bangs, each with slightly different properties, as they would be of slightly different sizes, and would both of course thus differ from the original primordial universe... And if they stay separated, have lost contact with each other... well, we are off and running. That's a tremendously vague and almost metaphorical way of talking about this, because imagine how unimaginable the most primitive original substance must be to us, here, now, in this rich and complex universe...
Thanks for the reply, it's good food for thought. :D
Thank you for the aside to Ursula K. Le Guin 1986. I appreciated the nod to the gatherer and weavers, without whom, no sac would exist to perpetuate the hunters and thinkers.
Yes, she provides an excellent corrective to the spears-and-beers view of the past...
Are you familiar with physicist Jeremy England, who argues that life should be seen as inevitable given a constant energy source?
From my perspective, life is merely another way of accelerating the entropy of the universe even faster. Life isn’t some squishy fluke on the edge of an indifferent cosmos; life itself looks like a natural extension and end result of the whole cosmos being alive, coming more and more into ever greater complexity.
The trick seems to be identifying as the whole works, rather than just the inside of one biological organism. The cell wall is actually the _center_ of the cell, which extends to infinity because it requires the whole universe to exist, and vice versa.
Well, I largely agree with Jeremy. And with your perspective. It doesn't really make sense to separate out the chemistry and physics we call "life" from all the chemistry and physics that lead up to it, enable it, surround it, feed it... I'll put a post up soon that addresses this more directly. (For instance, the cloud of dust and gas that condensed to form the earth only contained a dozen or so minerals. Earth's surface now comprises over four thousand minerals. A really extraordinary and complex developmental process – and life emerges pretty seamlessly from this process of complexification. And then feeds back into it; life shapes the environment which shapes life...)
Hi Julian,
I'm curious if you're familiar with Biocentrism? It was written by Robert Lanza and explains that the universe is finely tuned to life as we know it because life and consciousness did not evolve from the universe, but rather consciousness created the universe. He uses quantum mechanics to underpin the main argument in a very elegant way.
Also it's interesting to me that most definitions of entropy continue to describe it as the movement from order to disorder. Even though disorder is increasing, the language here makes it difficult for someone unfamiliar with science to understand this phenomenon (due to how most people imagine disorder). A more accurate definition of entropy is the movement from simple to complex. Even though disorder is also increasing, describing it as complexity not only makes it easier to grasp, but it's also a fuller picture of what's actually happening.
I'm absolutely gobsmacked at the power of this idea, the beauty of it, and the delightful rendering you've made of it in this post.
I've found a new rabbit hole. Good lord.
Well, according to physicists Steven Hawking and John Preskill, Black Holes DO lose information and will shrink and pop out of existence eventually without ingesting additional matter.
This is fascinating. Let me pose what (I hope) might be a dumb question. Universe A is accidentally born with physical constants that improve the functioning of DNA. How can that improvement affect the the differential reproduction of A versus its peer universes, so that the DNA-favorable constants are passed on to the next generation? Obstacles to this:
(1) A’s offspring are mostly already born by the time A has aged long enough to produce life-bearing planets.
(2) The actions of DNA and the life-forms that it engenders can’t affect the probability of new universe offspring being born or what mutations to physical constants that those offspring have.
Could you address this question? I don’t understand either what would drive universes to evolve the parameters needed for DNA evolution. The universe evolution should only optimise for black hole creation right?
Because smart life-forms will eventually make their own black holes as power plants.
That is an answer, but I wish Gough would answer in more detail too. Life forms might indeed make black holes since the matter to energy conversion efficiency is so high. However, evolution is a matter of timing in more than one way. I wonder whether artificial black holes really answer my first question about how early life has to appear. And there is a bootstrapping question. How do you evolve from a universe where life remains too primitive to control black holes *and thus can not affect parameters of new universes* to a universe where life controls black holes? There is no selection pressure for a gradual shift. A life form with limited intelligence simply has no way at all to affect universe evolution. Right?
You can always try to posit that there was enough space for random mutation to find its way up to intelligent technological life, but I agree that it’s not at all self-evident how to handle this.
These ideas seem to be predicated on a sort of multiversal time progression, or at least a chain of causation. I'm not sure this sort of linear narrative isn't just an inherent human bias meant to digest information into comprehensible patterns, but that's an idea that I can't support well yet. In other words, I'm not too confident that every effect needs a cause, or that our understanding of that process of cause and effect is anything more than a convenient simplification.
I’m sitting in the barber’s chair as a young man, a wall of mirrors in front and in back of me…as the barber removes the perpetual growth my DNA facilitates, I gaze into the infinitely regressive images of myself and start counting the individual depths where-in my image appears. I am reminded of watching my dog vigorously chasing its tail. This is very entertaining. I start imagining that I am dividing the distance between any two images exactly in half. I suddenly realize my hair is actually growing at the same time the barber is cutting it off. I enrolled in barbers college.
Excellent piece. Systems thinking, rooted in our understanding of evolutionary biology, is the breakthrough we need across all sciences. Your piece brought to mind an article I remembered reading in the Guardian about Stephen Hawking’s conversion to a biological theory of the universe. You don’t mention him here but I assume you are aware of his conversion? https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/mar/19/stephen-hawking-told-me-ive-changed-my-mind-my-book-is-wrong. Thanks also for the Stewart Brand piece. I am really looking forward to reading this. I assume that you have read Michael Levin’s ‘multi scale competence architecture’ papers? And Stuart Kauffman’s mind bendingly brillliant books from the 90s? We can’t understand the world without understanding systems & we can’t understand systems without understanding evolution (& vice versa).
The real question is whether we can attribute comprehension to the self-organising parts of the universe? Or to put it another way, where does the distinction between inert & living matter lie? Daniel Dennett talks about competence without comprehension in evolution. He is referring to ‘living’ parts which evolve into more complex wholes at different time / space scales (animals, neurons, eukaryotes). If we look at a big enough scale, is everything - even planetary matter - ‘living’ & evolving with competence but no comprehension? Dennett’s other useful thinking tool is to ask “how come” not just “what for”. He talks about ‘affordances’ and the ontology of evolved creatures. I think this may be a fruitful line of inquiry for you in your work. Instead of asking ‘for what’ did universes evolve as they have, it is useful to ask ‘how come’, given their ‘local’ affordances. Anyway, bravo! A very interesting piece and I look forward to reading more. All intellectual paths lead to this place if you search deeply enough so it is always joyous to spy fellow travellers on the road.
Love your post and look forward to the book!
I consider Smolin’s CNS theory, that universes evolve to maximize black hole production one of the most brilliant ideas ever, true or not.
Your post is an excellent primer on the concept. Not sure yet how much is new here but I will eagerly await follow ups including your predictions.
IMHO Smolin has saddled CNS with the unnecessary prediction that our universe should be at a local maximum for black hole production. This is designed to insulate CNS from charges of unfalsifiability. If a slight tweak in our particle configurations would increase black hole creation then, according to his formulation, CNS would be falsified.
But, and this is where I borrow my science epistemology from Popper and Deutsch, Smolin’s theory is even better than he realizes. If it is the only hard-to-vary theory that explains all our relevant observations then it should be our preferred explanation even *before* we can test it. Being hard-to-vary is sufficient to tentatively prefer an explanation if it has no hard-to-vary rivals.
Also definitely like your point that evolution speeds up at new scales.
It’s intriguing, but feels a little too grand. I don’t get how evolved life is earlier universe is supposed to have had any affect on ours (even an anthropic shadow, since you could just posit that the evolution that matters is the universe level optimization for black holes and anthropic principle across astronomical numbers explains our evolved observant complex life)
Life in previous universes could affect ours if they created the black hole that led to our universe
I lack time to read all of this today, much less slowly, to consider it, but I do enjoy the style and tone and it makes it worth returning for, at minimum, the entertainment.
Oh, thank you Brian! Can I ask, what led you to this particular post? I’ve noticed (from my stats) quite a large number of people reading it over the past week, and I can’t quite work out where they’re coming from. (They are all very welcome, though! Hi!)
Wish I could. On my feed somehow, clicked and scrolled about, tried the feed of a few suspects. No idea. Glad I found it though.
For me, someone in my feed quote re-stacked that it was “the most important post they had ever read” or something like that. So I had to see what that was.
Feel free to disregard my comment, because I don't have the attention span at this time of night to thoroughly read the article. But, ideas that sound nice still need solid backing.
Most of the below references came out after your article, but they are what comes to my memory for disputing revolutionary ideas that the mainstream science doesn't take into account.
This I think is talking about the same topic https://youtu.be/rFgpKlcpzNM?si=lBkP61yYx90NPVZp and the channel has more content that goes into the math of the singularity and interpretations of the little data we have.
This goes into the dark matter thing https://youtu.be/PbmJkMhmrVI?si=DvFNc0gpUrogxPh4 . What I recall is that dark matter is an observed phenomenon, like light transmitting energy, but a phenomenon we struggle to explain so we speculate with stuff like this https://youtu.be/sWNTsKX5H5M?si=htjbTeKnqL-3MyZK
Now, the next video will be rude, but it explains why doing the math is important, and that the stories that science communicators put forward to the public is not the most accurate description https://youtu.be/11lPhMSulSU?si=jasQtgRR9GqHFi9E
I am putting this here because I like the attitude of challenging what doesn't make sense, but science is designed to add up. I'd say revolutionizing science is like hacking a system the more times it is done the harder it becomes to do it again.
This is just a vibe https://youtu.be/kya_LXa_y1E?si=Kd6ZdJSFzi6vLs6s
Very interesting, I am very much appreciating this line of inquiry and this approach to science in general.
One piece of feedback. It wasn't clear to me how the "three nested levels of evolution" map to the hierarchy of sciences. This reader would benefit from it being spelled out a little more.