Meta-informational theory of evolution

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Meta-informational theory of evolution
by S. Lem
(part of a book titled "Megabit bomb", ISBN 83-08-02956-6)

Right from the beginning I would like to warn you, that I will speak here about matters both difficult as well as totally unverifiable nowadays empirically. I will speak about it, what could become for informatics evolutionism a domain of empirical checking, domain however of such a sophisticated complexity, how the most modern computer compares to the simplest finite automata - to Turing machine. Sincerely speaking the difference in these analogies I consider to be yet bigger, but some trace of similarity takes place.

In order to increase at least a little bit an idea of this, about what I would like to speak, I will refer to example of a field, which is known to everybody, who was going to school, namely to geography. In old Romer atlas, which was one of my handy books in collage, there were placed the same "pieces" of Earth's surface, however represented in various scale. It was a time when people already new that Earth is round, but also a time, when people yet were not able to observe this fact by looking at photographs made by satellites circulating around the globe. In principle the same "pieces" of the planet appeared once in small scale, another time in bigger scale, and once in the biggest one, because whole-planetary scale. Of course, one could observe in Romer atlas whole halves of the sphere in different projections on the plane, together with Merkator projection, which was always thoughtful for me. But I can here already leave comparisons. I would like to say simply, that the same thing - the Earth - we can observe in different scale, and this what seems to somebody standing in the beginning of mountain chains so huge as Himalayas, from space located perspective is only a carved in small pattern, miniature rocky "island" of Earth's surface, covered on the top by snow.

Not until now I could start telling about the subject mentioned by title of this text. The point is, that in some sense Darvin has defeated Lamarck, because of the fact that currently, in reality, biologists who claim, that characteristics gained in lifetime are not being inherited, does not exist: on the contrary, principles of selection (natural selection that is) and mutability are everywhere and permanently embedded in way of thinking in biological sciences, here: in the field of discovering methods how created on Earth life have been evoluating for almost four billions of years, till the point that the life created us, humans. But nowadays in (or around) Darwinism and neo-Darwinism various quarrels take place, because alone term of "natural evolution" (through selection, also sexual, thanks to genes, "extended phenotypes" etc.) is in fact a big sack, to which different evolutionists, like Gould or Dawkins, put not synonymous, and partially contradictory, hypotheses. It is not original effect of my contemplation, the thesis, that "total" reductionism, which tries to "push" all driving factors of evolutional processes to some one and only "engine" is a major simplification.

Our collection of knowledge about evolution, coming in biggest part out of paleontology, however not only from it, still does not allow us to find single understanding for four billion years long process of changes of life (not to mention the fact that sheer fact of life creation still remains a riddle, however many hypotheses, which should clear this riddle, has been stated in big multiplicity: but NOBODY SUCCEEDED TO CREATE LIFE IN ANY FORM OUT OF DEAD MATTER). However one could by very long time count reciprocal contradictory theories, like "pointillism", "saltism", like "catastrophism" (in the sense presented not only by me in German book Das kreative Vernichtungsprinzip in Weltall - or "Creational destructivism operating in Cosmos" ), I am not going to participate in these disputes here what so ever. At most I can mention what are they about. Richard Dawkins (and several years earlier author of this text) had articulated "selfish gene" hypothesis, which conveys a meaning, that evolution principally is running on the level of a "set of genetic instructions", and the effect of "genetic instructions" are mortal organisms, which serve for this "set of instructions" purpose of VEHICLES, which should carry this "set of instructions" further, to next generations. With bigger aphoristic simplification I called it once "mistaking of error", because mistakes being made in transfers from one generation to another, constitute a source of variety, from which natural selection can take "new instructions": in this simple way, that this what cannot transfer dyes, and among these organisms, that are better constructed a competition starts, wrongly called fight for survival, because it is not literally a fight. I have introduced on purpose the term of "instruction" or "set of instructions", because essentially that, what I speak here about is i n f o r m a t i o n, "how to produce organisms able to live?". This we know, but we don't know why for four fifths of time of life's existence on planet Earth life was limiting itself to replicating of prokaryotes, i.e. microscopically small organisms of bacteria and alga type. We also don't know why, not until several hundred millions of years ago, in camber, "evolutional explosion" started, as creation, at the beginning in oceans, multi-cell organisms; and out of them fishes; then amphibians, which went to dry land; then reptiles; then in the end mammals, to which also we humans belong. Currently it is practically certain, that after cataclysm which happened 65 millions ago in Creda era, almost all reptiles died out, which were ruling for some 150-160 millions of years. Previous catastrophe of life from Perm era, has killed about 90 percent of whole life: it is difficult to find out how many such disasters life experienced yet, but looking at it statistically it seems that "informational carriers of life" are being attacked either out of Cosmos, or out of inner part of Earth, approximately each 100-200 millions of years. Nevertheless it appeared how "hard existence" such information is carrying, so that no cataclysms were able to destroy it totally: in other words: as we know it, life never "was forced" to begin genetic birth again out of dead matter. But in reality everything what I have noticed till now is only a prelude to self-righteous statements, which I would like to tell now.

Quarrels of biologists-evolutionists come mainly from this, that neither "total adaptationism", nor "saltism", nor "lotteryness", nor "genetic selfishness" singly taken, one apart from other, cannot in our understanding explain neither "progresses" of evolution, nor extraordinary v a r i e t y of species being created within this evolution, kinds, types, rows, nor we can swear, that principle of p r o g r e s s is in reality permanently present in evolution. Principle of progress has now several opponents: one of them, like Stephen Jay Gould, say, that what takes place is increase of c o m p l e x i t y (caused for example by "race of offense and defense" of predators and their victims, and balance which is being created - first modeled by Volterra - showed that phases of numbers on each side are being created), but there is no real "universal progress", because life forms called "primitive" ones, are such only from anthropomorphic subjective point of view! There is almost million of species of insects, and this that they don't have "human intellect", is a simplification of our selfishness, because we are these ones who called themselves "most primate creatures out of primates". Namely indeed genes of these beings win, which multiply themselves more effectively, they win over genes of beings which has worse birth factor, but it yet does not explain why in subsequent geological epochs "primitive" forms were vegetating repetitive millions and millions of years, or why "progress in evolution" de facto was as much as stagnant eons. It look like this, that "recombinant DNA", which is creating genes, as introns and extrons, as structural genes and operons, is able to assemble itself in more and more complicated bio-instruction-sets. We don't know why reptiles of Jura epoch (even those land based) were achieving a weight of even 100 tones, and today only whales thanks to living in a water can approach to similar weight, but heaviest elephants (proboscidea) are not exceeding weight of 7 tones. We don't know, why particularly apes moved optimally to development into pre-humans, and why our brains were applicable for reasoning, for speech, for writing, for mathematics, because about explanation of reasons of this hypotheses compete, which are principally not verifiable empirically. Therefore the question which I want to ask is the following one: will it be possible simulation based meta-informational evolution, which would imitate in non-biological material sequences of self-organization which posses "creationist auto-potential", which would show us, how complexity is being created, and how it can branch out in simulated environments?

Particularly from the point of time when people started to talk (for a while just talk) about perspectives of QUANTUM COMPUTERS, which in operation are based on superpositional game of quanta, this what imaginary, already established, limit of performance o digital machines, appeared to be relative. It is clear, that to construct a system, which would be able to launch "meta-informational self-made evolution", which should be this what chess are in comparison to checkers (and maybe the difference to achieve is yet much bigger), that such system construct is as if to form a "virtual planet", together with its "virtual seas and continents", and with "virtual particles", which would themselves combine in "virtual biochemistry" till they will create "virtual life" and its "virtual evolution". Then it will be possible to prove what potentials are located in purely informational materials, throughout which this creature would start to operate. At this time simultaneously it would appear, that this, what now a biologist is stating as HYPOTHESIS: that "evoluating genes are packages of information, and not physical objects" (G.C. Williams, in "The Third Culture", 1995) is simply a fact. Each particle in the genome is only a carrier of information, and the fact that biogenesis in its beginnings billions years ago has "chosen" nucleic acids, resulted simply from crossing of "chemical presence" with "replicating reactivity" of these substances: it would appear then that life is "carbon based", because it was a substance particularly useful on Earth (and maybe also elsewhere). Yet digital processes, but nonlinear, which will appear in "meta-informationally" working super-hyper-computer, maybe will manage to show us in accelerated way (which will not exceed too much beyond limits of human life) exactly this, what creative or creationist possibilities are being hidden in cosmic matter: I say "META" because in this view takes place independence from substances that are now only useful in laboratories, with which now people try now to "repeat biogenesis". Bioreactors which are working now for example in Max-Planck institutes, which are virtualizing creation of "artificial viruses" and their "phase transients" (in the sense of those "hyper cycles" which brought fame to Manfred Eigen), can nowadays not much. In good gigabyte computer one can nowadays simulate "pseudo-evoluating" virtual beta phages, which has at most 50 genes. This is still much too less: we need billions of them for simulation of which I speak. Of course genetic algorithms, already being introduced in practice, is still too little. Our informational thirst is yet bigger - neither in this century, nor in XXI century, computer science engineering will not satisfy this thirst. Much bigger, without comparison, much bigger computational powers will be needed.

Slowly I come to, in reality trivial, observation: above all market commercialization is driving development of computers, and not possible scientific gains of these technologies drive it. (...) Neither simulation of creation of galaxies, nor imitation of cyclones or designing of super-weapons seem to be these purposes to which should third millennium go. Potential powers which keeps secret in itself the information, called "meta-information", is abstracted from iterative and linear character, self-organization, which is then no more dependant on its carrier, as life in nature is, or as simulation written by programmers in computer is. Life has constructed itself its own programs, and this sovereign, this complex virtualization should our descendants achieve in this way their "meta-informational machines", their "COMPUTER-LANDS", will appear to be only initial forms, only "act of creation directed at countless sequences of self-combination" - only this will show, that bioevolution was only one of particular, specific ways, that there are other, that other can be created, based neither on carbon nor on proteins, nor on this or that metal, but here I stay at the edge of imagination, because for this what then can be created I lack names now. "Meta-information-ness" means forgetting about programs written by our programmers, in favor of programs-SPAWNERS, programs which are only STARTERS of development, just edge conditions in some way, but not necessarily this what will be awaited from "freed development" of information, freed from slavery of its information carriers. (...) in these multiple possibilities are hidden chances, freed from commercializing diagnosis: how, maybe, life on Earth had been created, why the life had to go from one catastrophe to another one, are increases in complexity "immanent coefficients of processes, which have character of SURVIVAL GAMES, etc. From such top level, freed, evolutions, we will see this, what no necessity leads us. This is only a chance, a guarantor of which should be our mind.

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