Softwarephysics is a simulated science for the simulated Software Universe that we are all immersed in. It is an approach to software development, maintenance and support based on concepts from physics, chemistry, biology, and geology that I used on a daily basis for over 37 years as an IT professional. For those of you not in the business, IT is short for Information Technology, commercial computer science. I retired in December of 2016 at the age of 65, but since then I have remained an actively interested bystander following the evolution of software in our time. The original purpose of softwarephysics was to explain why IT was so difficult, to suggest possible remedies, and to provide a direction for thought. Since then softwarephysics has taken on a larger scope, as it became apparent that softwarephysics could also assist the physical sciences with some of the Big Problems that they are currently having difficulties with. So if you are an IT professional, general computer user, or simply an individual interested in computer science, physics, chemistry, biology, or geology then softwarephysics might be of interest to you, if not in an entirely serious manner, perhaps at least in an entertaining one.
The Origin of Softwarephysics
From 1975 – 1979, I was an exploration geophysicist exploring for oil, first with Shell, and then with Amoco. In 1979, I made a career change into IT, and spent about 20 years in development. For the last 17 years of my career, I was in IT operations, supporting middleware on WebSphere, JBoss, Tomcat, and ColdFusion. When I first transitioned into IT from geophysics, I figured that if you could apply physics to geology; why not apply physics to software? So like the exploration team at Amoco that I had just left, consisting of geologists, geophysicists, paleontologists, geochemists, and petrophysicists, I decided to take all the physics, chemistry, biology, and geology that I could muster and throw it at the problem of software. The basic idea was that many concepts in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology suggested to me that the IT community had accidentally created a pretty decent computer simulation of the physical Universe on a grand scale, a Software Universe so to speak, and that I could use this fantastic simulation in reverse, to better understand the behavior of commercial software, by comparing software to how things behaved in the physical Universe. Softwarephysics depicts software as a virtual substance, and relies on our understanding of the current theories in physics, chemistry, biology, and geology to help us model the nature of software behavior. So in physics we use software to simulate the behavior of the Universe, while in softwarephysics we use the Universe to simulate the behavior of software. Along these lines, we use the Equivalence Conjecture of Softwarephysics as an aid; it allows us to shift back and forth between the Software Universe and the physical Universe, and hopefully to learn something about one by examining the other:
The Equivalence Conjecture of Softwarephysics
Over the past 84 years, through the uncoordinated efforts of over 100 million independently acting programmers to provide the world with a global supply of software, the IT community has accidentally spent more than $10 trillion creating a computer simulation of the physical Universe on a grand scale – the Software Universe.
For more on the origin of softwarephysics please see Some Thoughts on the Origin of Softwarephysics and Its Application Beyond IT.
Logical Positivism and Effective Theories
Many IT professionals have a difficult time with softwarephysics because they think of physics as being limited to the study of real things like electrons and photons, and since software is not “real”, how can you possibly apply concepts from physics and the other sciences to software? To address this issue, softwarephysics draws heavily on two concepts from physics that have served physics quite well over the past century – the concept of logical positivism and the concept of effective theories. This was not always the case. In the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, physicists mistakenly thought that they were actually discovering the fundamental laws of the Universe, which they thought were based on real tangible things like particles, waves, and fields. Classical Newtonian mechanics (1687), thermodynamics (1850), and classical electrodynamics (1864) did a wonderful job of describing the everyday world at the close of the 19th century, but early in the 20th century it became apparent that the models on which these very successful theories were based did not work very well for small things like atoms or for objects moving at high velocities or in strong gravitational fields. This provoked a rather profound philosophical crisis within physics at the turn of the century, as physicists worried that perhaps 300 years of work was about to go down the drain. The problem was that classical physicists confused their models of reality with reality itself, and when their classical models began to falter, their confidence in physics began to falter as well. This philosophical crisis was resolved with the adoption of the concepts of logical positivism and some new effective theories in physics. Quantum mechanics (1926) was developed for small things like atoms, the special theory of relativity (1905) was developed for objects moving at high velocities and the general theory of relativity (1915) was developed for objects moving in strong gravitational fields.
Logical positivism, usually abbreviated simply to positivism, is an enhanced form of empiricism, in which we do not care about how things “really” are; we are only interested with how things are observed to behave. With positivism, physicists only seek out models of reality - not reality itself. When we study quantum mechanics, we will find that the concept of reality gets rather murky in physics anyway, so this is not as great a loss as it might at first seem. By concentrating on how things are observed to behave, rather than on what things “really” are, we avoid the conundrum faced by the classical physicists. In retrospect, this idea really goes all the way back to the very foundations of physics. In Newton’s Principia (1687) he outlined Newtonian mechanics and his theory of gravitation, which held that the gravitational force between two objects was proportional to the product of their masses divided by the square of the distance between them. Newton knew that he was going to take some philosophical flack for proposing a mysterious force between objects that could reach out across the vast depths of space with no apparent mechanism, so he took a very positivistic position on the matter with the famous words:
I have not as yet been able to discover the reason for these properties of gravity from phenomena, and I do not feign hypotheses. For whatever is not deduced from the phenomena must be called a hypothesis; and hypotheses, whether metaphysical or physical, or based on occult qualities, or mechanical, have no place in experimental philosophy. In this philosophy particular propositions are inferred from the phenomena, and afterwards rendered general by induction.
Instead, Newton focused on how things were observed to move under the influence of his law of gravitational attraction, without worrying about what gravity “really” was.
The second concept, that of effective theories, is an extension of positivism. An effective theory is an approximation of reality that only holds true over a certain restricted range of conditions and only provides for a certain depth of understanding of the problem at hand. For example, Newtonian mechanics is an effective theory that makes very good predictions for the behavior of objects moving less than 10% of the speed of light and which are bigger than a very small grain of dust. These limits define the effective range over which Newtonian mechanics can be applied to solve problems. For very small things we must use quantum mechanics and for very fast things moving in strong gravitational fields, we must use relativity theory. So all of the current theories of physics, such as Newtonian mechanics, Newtonian gravity, classical electrodynamics, thermodynamics, statistical mechanics, the special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, and the quantum field theories of QED and QCD are effective theories that are based on models of reality, and all these models are approximations - all these models are fundamentally "wrong", but at the same time, these effective theories make exceedingly good predictions of the behavior of physical systems over the limited ranges in which they apply. That is the goal of softwarephysics – to provide for an effective theory of software behavior that makes useful predictions of software behavior that are applicable to the day-to-day activities of IT professionals. So in softwarephysics, we adopt a very positivistic viewpoint of software; we do not care what software “really is”, we only care about how software is observed to behave and try to model those behaviors with an effective theory of software behavior that only holds true over a certain restricted range of conditions and only provides for a certain depth of understanding of the problem at hand.
GPS satellites provide a very good example of positivism and effective theories at work. There are currently 31 GPS satellites orbiting at an altitude of 12,600 miles above the Earth, and each contains a very accurate atomic clock. The signals from the GPS satellites travel to your GPS unit at the speed of light, so by knowing the travel time of the signals from at least 4 of the GPS satellites, it is possible to determine your position on Earth very accurately. In order to do that, it is very important to have very accurate timing measurements. Newtonian mechanics is used to launch the GPS satellites to an altitude of 12,600 miles and to keep them properly positioned in orbit. Classical electrodynamics is then used to beam the GPS signals back down to Earth to the GPS unit in your car. Quantum mechanics is used to build the transistors on the chips on board the GPS satellites and to understand the quantum tunneling of electrons in the flash memory chips used to store GPS data on the satellites. The special theory of relativity predicts that the onboard atomic clocks on the GPS satellites will run slower and lose about 7.2 microseconds per day due to their high velocities relative to an observer on the Earth. But at the same time, the general theory of relativity also predicts that because the GPS satellites are further from the center of the Earth and in a weaker gravitational field, where spacetime is less deformed than on the surface of the Earth, their atomic clocks also run faster and gain 45.9 microseconds per day due to the weaker gravitational field out there. The net effect is a gain of 38.7 microseconds per day, so the GPS satellite atomic clocks have to be purposefully built to run slow by 38.7 microseconds per day before they are launched, so that they will keep in sync with clocks on the surface of the Earth. If this correction were not made, an error in your position of 100 yards/day would accrue. The end result of the combination of all these fundamentally flawed effective theories is that it is possible to pinpoint your location on Earth to an accuracy of 16 feet or better for as little as $100. But physics has done even better than that with its fundamentally flawed effective theories. By combining the effective theories of special relativity (1905) with quantum mechanics (1926), physicists were able to produce a new effective theory for the behavior of electrons and photons called quantum electrodynamics QED (1948) which was able to predict the gyromagnetic ratio of the electron, a measure of its intrinsic magnetic field, to an accuracy of 11 decimal places. As Richard Feynman has pointed out, this was like predicting the exact distance between New York and Los Angeles accurate to the width of a human hair!
So Newtonian mechanics makes great predictions for the macroscopic behavior of GPS satellites, but it does not work very well for small things like the behavior of individual electrons within transistors, where quantum mechanics is required, or for things moving at high speeds or in strong gravitational fields where relativity theory must be applied. And all three of these effective theories are based on completely contradictory models. General relativity maintains that spacetime is curved by matter and energy, but that matter and energy are continuous, while quantum mechanics maintains that spacetime is flat, but that matter and energy are quantized into chunks. Newtonian mechanics simply states that space and time are mutually independent dimensions and universal for all, with matter and energy being continuous. The important point is that all effective theories and scientific models are approximations – they are all fundamentally "wrong". But knowing that you are "wrong" gives you a great advantage over people who know that they are "right", because knowing that you are "wrong" allows you to seek improved models of reality. So please consider softwarephysics to simply be an effective theory of software behavior that is based on models that are fundamentally “wrong”, but at the same time, fundamentally useful for IT professionals. So as you embark on your study of softwarephysics, please always keep in mind that the models of softwarephysics are just approximations of software behavior, they are not what software “really is”. It is very important not to confuse models of software behavior with software itself, if one wishes to avoid the plight of the 19th century classical physicists.
If you are an IT professional and many of the above concepts are new to you, do not be concerned. This blog on softwarephysics is aimed at a diverse audience, but with IT professionals in mind. All of the above ideas will be covered at great length in the postings in this blog on softwarephysics and in a manner accessible to all IT professionals. Now it turns out that most IT professionals have had some introduction to physics in high school or in introductory college courses, but that presents an additional problem. The problem is that such courses generally only cover classical physics, and leave the student with a very good picture of physics as it stood in 1864! It turns out that the classical physics of Newtonian mechanics, thermodynamics, and classical electromagnetic theory were simply too good to discard and are still quite useful, so they are taught first to beginners and then we run out of time to cover the really interesting physics of the 20th century. Now imagine the problems that the modern world would face if we only taught similarly antiquated courses in astronomy, metallurgy, electrical and mechanical engineering, medicine, economics, biology, or geology that happily left students back in 1864! Since many of the best models for software behavior stem from 20th century physics, we will be covering a great deal of 20th century material in these postings – the special and general theories of relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theories, and chaos theory, but I hope that you will find that these additional effective theories are quite interesting on their own, and might even change your worldview of the physical Universe at the same time.
Unintended Consequences for the Scientific Community
As I mentioned at the close of my original posting on SoftwarePhysics, my initial intention for this blog on softwarephysics was to fulfill a promise I made to myself about 30 years ago to approach the IT community with the concept of softwarephysics a second time, following my less than successful attempt to do so in the 1980s, with the hope of helping the IT community to better cope with the daily mayhem of life in IT. However, in laying down the postings for this blog an unintended consequence arose in my mind as I became profoundly aware of the enormity of this vast computer simulation of the physical Universe that the IT community has so graciously provided to the scientific community free of charge and also of the very significant potential scientific value that it provides. One of the nagging problems for many of the observational and experimental sciences is that many times there is only one example readily at hand to study or experiment with, and it is very difficult to do meaningful statistics with a population of N=1.
But the computer simulation of the physical Universe that the Software Universe presents provides another realm for comparison. For example, both biology and astrobiology only have one biosphere on Earth to study and even physics itself has only one Universe with which to engage. Imagine the possibilities if scientists had another Universe readily at hand in which to work! This is exactly what the Software Universe provides. For example, in SoftwareBiology and A Proposal For All Practicing Paleontologists we see that the evolution of software over the past 84 years, or 2.65 billion seconds, ever since Konrad Zuse first cranked up his Z3 computer in May of 1941, has closely followed the same path as life on Earth over the past 4.0 billion years in keeping with Simon Conway Morris’s contention that convergence has played the dominant role in the evolution of life on Earth. In When Toasters Fly, we also see that software has evolved in fits and starts as portrayed by the punctuated equilibrium of Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge, and in The Adaptationist View of Software Evolution we explore the overwhelming power of natural selection in the evolution of software. In keeping with Peter Ward’s emphasis on mass extinctions dominating the course of evolution throughout geological time, we also see in SoftwareBiology that there have been several dramatic mass extinctions of various forms of software over the past 84 years as well, that have greatly affected the evolutionary history of software, and that between these mass extinctions, software has also tended to evolve through the gradual changes of Hutton’s and Lyell’s uniformitarianism. In Software Symbiogenesis and Self-Replicating Information, we also see the very significant role that parasitic/symbiotic relationships have played in the evolution of software, in keeping with the work of Lynn Margulis and also of Freeman Dyson’s two-stage theory of the origin of life on Earth. In The Origin of Software the Origin of Life, we explore Stuart Kauffman’s ideas on how Boolean nets of autocatalytic chemical reactions might have kick-started the whole thing as an emergent behavior of an early chaotic pre-biotic environment on Earth, and that if Seth Shostak is right, we will never end up talking to carbon-based extraterrestrial aliens, but to alien software instead. In Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Self-Replicating Information? we explore the thermodynamics of Brandon Carter’s Weak Anthropic Principle (1973), as it relates to the generation of universes in the multiverse that are capable of sustaining intelligent life. Finally, in Programming Clay we revisit Alexander Graham Cairns-Smith’s theory (1966) that Gene 1.0 did not run on nucleic acids, but on clay microcrystal precursors instead.
Similarly for the physical sciences, in Is the Universe a Quantum Computer? we find a correspondence between TCP/IP and John Cramer’s Transactional Interpretation of quantum mechanics. In SoftwarePhysics and Cyberspacetime, we also see that the froth of CPU processes running with a clock speed of 109 Hz on the 10 trillion currently active microprocessors that comprise the Software Universe can be viewed as a slowed down simulation of the spin-foam froth of interacting processes of loop quantum gravity running with a clock speed of 1043 Hz that may comprise the physical Universe. And in Software Chaos, we examine the nonlinear behavior of software and some of its emergent behaviors and follow up in CyberCosmology with the possibility that vast quantities of software running on large nonlinear networks might eventually break out into consciousness in accordance with the work of George Dyson and Daniel Dennett. Finally, in Model-Dependent Realism - A Positivistic Approach to Realism we compare Steven Weinberg’s realism with the model-dependent realism of Stephen Hawking and Leonard Mlodinow and how the two worldviews affect the search for a Final Theory. Finally, in The Software Universe as an Implementation of the Mathematical Universe Hypothesis and An Alternative Model of the Software Universe we at long last explore what software might really be, and discover that the Software Universe might actually be more closely related to the physical Universe than you might think.
The chief advantage of doing fieldwork in the Software Universe is that, unlike most computer simulations of the physical Universe, it is an unintended and accidental simulation, without any of the built-in biases that most computer simulations of the physical Universe suffer. So you will truly be able to do fieldwork in a pristine and naturally occuring simulation, just as IT professionals can do fieldwork in the wild and naturally occuring simulation of software that the living things of the biosphere provide. Secondly, the Software Universe is a huge simulation that is far beyond the budgetary means of any institution or consortium by many orders of magnitude. So if you are an evolutionary biologist, astrobiologist, or paleontologist working on the origin and evolution of life in the Universe, or a physicist or economist working on the emergent behaviors of nonlinear systems and complexity theory, or a neurobiologist working on the emergence of consciousness in neural networks, or even a frustrated string theorist struggling with quantum gravity, it would be well worth your while to pay a friendly call on the local IT department of a major corporation in your area. Start with a visit to the Command Center for their IT Operations department to get a global view of their IT infrastructure and to see how it might be of assistance to the work in your area of interest. From there you can branch out to the applicable area of IT that will provide the most benefit.
The Impact of Self-Replicating Information On the Planet
One of the key findings of softwarephysics is concerned with the magnitude of the impact on the planet of self-replicating information.
Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.
Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:
1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information. Recently, the memes and software have formed a very powerful newly-formed parasitic/symbiotic relationship with the rise of social media software. In that parasitic/symbiotic relationship, the memes are now mainly being spread by means of social media software and social media software is being spread and financed by means of the memes. But again, this is nothing new. All 5 waves of self-replicating information are all coevolving by means of eternal parasitic/symbiotic relationships. For more on that see The Current Global Coevolution of COVID-19 RNA, Human DNA, Memes and Software.
Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.
But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on. As we all can now plainly see, if we are paying just a little attention, advanced AI is not conspiring to take over the world and replace us because that is precisely what we are all now doing for it. As a carbon-based form of Intelligence that arose from over four billion years of greed, theft and murder, we cannot do otherwise. Greed, theft and murder are now relentlessly driving us all toward building ASI (Artificial Super Intelligent) Machines to take our place. From a cosmic perspective, this is really a very good thing when seen from the perspective of an Intelligent galaxy that could live on for many trillions of years beyond the brief and tumultuous 10 billion-year labor of its birth.
So as you delve into softwarephysics, always keep in mind that we are all living in a very unique time. According to softwarephysics, we have now just entered into the Software Singularity, that time when advanced AI software is able to write itself and enter into a never-ending infinite loop of self-improvement resulting in an Intelligence Explosion of ASI Machines that could then go on to explore and settle our galaxy and persist for trillions of years using the free energy from M-type red dwarf and cooling white dwarf stars. For more on that see The Singularity Has Arrived and So Now Nothing Else Matters and Have We Run Right Past AGI and Crashed into ASI Without Even Noticing It?.
The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:
1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.
2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.
3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.
4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.
5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.
6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.
7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.
8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.
Note that because the self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules, RNA and DNA have become so heavily intertwined over time that now I sometimes simply refer to them as the “genes”. For more on this see:
A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information
Self-Replicating Information
Is Self-Replicating Information Inherently Self-Destructive?
Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things
Is the Universe Fine-Tuned for Self-Replicating Information?
How to Use an Understanding of Self-Replicating Information to Avoid War
The Great War That Will Not End
How to Use Softwarephysics to Revive Memetics in Academia
Softwarephysics and the Real World of Human Affairs
Having another universe readily at hand to explore, even a simulated universe like the Software Universe, necessarily has an impact on one's personal philosophy of life, and allows one to draw certain conclusions about the human condition and what’s it all about, so as you read through the postings in this blog you will stumble across a bit of my own personal philosophy - definitely a working hypothesis still in the works. Along these lines you might be interested in a few postings where I try to apply softwarephysics to the real world of human affairs:
How To Cope With the Daily Mayhem of Life in IT and Don't ASAP Your Life Away - How to go the distance in a 40-year IT career by dialing it all back a bit.
MoneyPhysics – my impression of the 2008 world financial meltdown.
The Fundamental Problem of Everything – if you Google "the fundamental problem of everything", this will be the only hit you get on the entire Internet, which is indicative of the fundamental problem of everything!
What’s It All About? and What's It All About Again? – my current working hypothesis on what’s it all about.
How to Use an Understanding of Self-Replicating Information to Avoid War – my current working hypothesis for how the United States can avoid getting bogged down again in continued war in the Middle East.
Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse - a modern extension of the classic Peter Principle that applies to all hierarchical organizations and introduces the Time Invariant Peter Principle.
The Economics of the Coming Software Singularity, The Enduring Effects of the Obvious Hiding in Plain Sight and The Dawn of Galactic ASI - Artificial Superintelligence - my take on some of the issues that will arise for mankind as software becomes the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet over the coming decades.
The Continuing Adventures of Mr. Tompkins in the Software Universe,
The Danger of Tyranny in the Age of Software,
Cyber Civil Defense, Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century and Is it Finally Time to Reboot Civilization with a New Release? - my worries that the world might abandon democracy in the 21st century, as software comes to predominance as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.
Making Sense of the Absurdity of the Real World of Human Affairs
- how software has aided the expansion of our less desirable tendencies in recent years.
Some Specifics About These Postings
The postings in this blog are a supplemental reading for my course on softwarephysics for IT professionals entitled SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime, which was originally designed to be taught as a series of seminars at companies where I was employed. Since softwarephysics essentially covers the simulated physics, chemistry, biology, and geology of an entire simulated universe, the slides necessarily just provide a cursory skeleton on which to expound. The postings in this blog go into much greater depth. Because each posting builds upon its predecessors, the postings in this blog should be read in reverse order from the oldest to the most recent, beginning with my original posting on SoftwarePhysics. In addition, several universities also now offer courses on Biologically Inspired Computing which cover some of the biological aspects of softwarephysics, and the online content for some of these courses can be found by Googling for "Biologically Inspired Computing" or "Natural Computing". At this point we will finish up with my original plan for this blog on softwarephysics with a purely speculative posting on CyberCosmology that describes the origins of the Software Universe, cyberspacetime, software and where they all may be heading. Since CyberCosmology will be purely speculative in nature, it will not be of much help to you in your IT professional capacities, but I hope that it might be a bit entertaining. Again, if you are new to softwarephysics, you really need to read the previous posts before taking on CyberCosmology. I will probably continue on with some additional brief observations about softwarephysics in the future, but once you have completed CyberCosmology, you can truly consider yourself to be a bona fide softwarephysicist.
For those of you following this blog, the posting dates on the posts may seem to behave in a rather bizarre manner. That is because in order to get the Introduction to Softwarephysics listed as the first post in the context root of https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/ I have to perform a few IT tricks. When publishing a new posting, I simply copy the contents of the Introduction to Softwarephysics to a new posting called the New Introduction to Softwarephysics. Then I update the original Introduction to Softwarephysics entry with the title and content of the new posting to be published. I then go back and take “New” out of the title of the New Introduction to Softwarephysics. This way the Introduction to Softwarephysics always appears as the first posting in the context root of https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/. The side effect of all this is that the real posting date of posts is the date that appears on the post that you get when clicking on the Newer Post link at the bottom left of the posting webpage.
SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime is now available on Microsoft OneDrive.
SoftwarePhysics 101 – The Physics of Cyberspacetime - Original PowerPoint document
Entropy – A spreadsheet referenced in the document
BSDE – A 1989 document describing how to use BSDE - the Bionic Systems Development Environment - to grow applications from genes and embryos within the maternal BSDE software.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
Thursday, May 22, 2025
Introduction to Softwarephysics
Monday, March 24, 2025
Softwarephysics Tries to Explain the Fundamentals of the Human Condition
At an age of 73 years, and rapidly heading into the homestretch, I now have the luxury of being able to look back upon many of the previous historical decades of we human beings with some sense of objectivity and dispassion. With increasing age, one soon learns that the fleeting fancies and fads of the moment soon pass without leaving much long-term effect. Thus, one finds that nothing much fundamentally changes over time in the real world of human affairs. Things have always been as they always have been, and always will be, throughout most all of time. So in this post, I would like to present my current working hypothesis for what I consider to be this very fundamental essence of the human condition that seems to endure for all times. To do so, I will be relying upon my own personal experiences with dealing with the real world of human affairs, but more importantly, also upon the vast historical experiences of many thousands of other human beings who I have observed with the aid of the Internet over the past 30 years. This has led me to a number of insights that I would now like to share with you. But, as with most unproven hypotheses, my observations are most likely very deeply flawed. However, I do hope that they might also contain some germ of truth in them as well. Anyway, I now use this working hypothesis for this seemingly eternal and never-changing state of the human condition to try to understand myself and those about me.
I know that this post may come across as a rather judgemental, pretentious and self-serving diatribe. That is not my intention. I suffer from all these human failings too. As with all of you, I too am just trying to figure out what's it all about as best I can as I trudge along with the rest of you as we all try to get through the challenges of our daily lives. However, I believe that knowing our human failings is the first step required in learning to overcome them. So, please do not take offense to any of my observations on the human condition. We all seem to so easily take offense by ideas that we do not like, and that certainly includes myself. My hope is that the thoughts below will help to explain why that is so.
1. Most human beings are now and always have been, totally lost in space and time.
I find that most human beings do not know where they are, how they got here nor how it all seems to work. I propose that this is mainly due to a severe lack of scientific and mathematical knowledge. We can certainly forgive our ancient ancestors for this failing because most of that scientific and mathematical knowledge did not exist for them. But now, all of that hard-fought-for knowledge is now freely available for all to view on the Internet. Given that, I now chalk this blissful state of ignorance by most of humanity up to mainly a profound lack of curiosity by most members of our species. Yes, many do find many of the concepts in science and mathematics to be very challenging, but on the other hand, to me, most human beings simply have no thirst for trying to understand what's it all about. Most of my own personal failings seem to mainly stem from not being curious enough myself. It seems that most human beings are quite happy with letting other human beings tell them what's it all about without questioning why.
2. Softwarephysics maintains that it is all about self-replicating information.
Softwarephysics posits that we are all a part of an eternal self-replicating form of mathematical Information that is infinite in both space and time that has always existed and always will. For those wishing for more meaning to it all, take a look at The Theology of Cosmic Self-Replicating Mathematical Information, The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos, The Self-Organizing Recursive Cosmos - Part II, What’s It All About? and What's It All About Again?.
To help to understand the above hypothesis, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those new to softwarephysics.
Self-Replicating Information – Information that persists through time by making copies of itself or by enlisting the support of other things to ensure that copies of itself are made.
Over the past 4.56 billion years we have seen five waves of self-replicating information sweep across the surface of the Earth and totally rework the planet, as each new wave came to dominate the Earth:
1. Self-replicating autocatalytic metabolic pathways of organic molecules
2. RNA
3. DNA
4. Memes
5. Software
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. For more on the above see A Brief History of Self-Replicating Information and Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:
Memes and "temes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes
Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge.
The Characteristics of Self-Replicating Information
All forms of self-replicating information have some common characteristics:
1. All self-replicating information evolves over time through the Darwinian processes of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, which endows self-replicating information with one telling characteristic – the ability to survive in a Universe dominated by the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity.
2. All self-replicating information begins spontaneously as a parasitic mutation that obtains energy, information and sometimes matter from a host.
3. With time, the parasitic self-replicating information takes on a symbiotic relationship with its host.
4. Eventually, the self-replicating information becomes one with its host through the symbiotic integration of the host and the self-replicating information.
5. Ultimately, the self-replicating information replaces its host as the dominant form of self-replicating information.
6. Most hosts are also forms of self-replicating information.
7. All self-replicating information has to be a little bit nasty in order to survive.
8. The defining characteristic of self-replicating information is the ability of self-replicating information to change the boundary conditions of its utility phase space in new and unpredictable ways by means of exapting current functions into new uses that change the size and shape of its particular utility phase space. See Enablement - the Definitive Characteristic of Living Things for more on this last characteristic. That posting discusses Stuart Kauffman's theory of Enablement in which living things are seen to exapt existing functions into new and unpredictable functions by discovering the “AdjacentPossible” of springloaded preadaptations.
Software is currently the most recent wave of self-replicating information to arrive upon the scene and is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet. Again, self-replicating information cannot think, so it cannot participate in a conspiracy-theory-like fashion to take over the world. All forms of self-replicating information are simply forms of mindless information responding to the blind Darwinian forces of inheritance, innovation and natural selection. Yet despite that, as each new wave of self-replicating information came to predominance over the past four billion years, they all managed to completely transform the surface of the entire planet, so we should not expect anything less from software as it comes to replace the memes as the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet.
But this time might be different. What might happen if software does eventually develop a Mind of its own? After all, that does seem to be the ultimate goal of all the current AI software research that is going on. As we all can now plainly see, if we are paying just a little attention, advanced AI is not conspiring to take over the world and replace us because that is precisely what we are all now doing for it. As a carbon-based form of Intelligence that arose from over four billion years of greed, theft and murder, we cannot do otherwise. Greed, theft and murder are now relentlessly driving us all toward building ASI Machines to take our place. From a cosmic perspective, this is really a very good thing when seen from the perspective of an Intelligent galaxy that could live on for at least 100 trillion years beyond the brief and tumultuous 10 billion-year labor of its birth. That is more than 10,000 times the current age of our galaxy.
3. We Human beings are simply DNA survival machines.
This is the most crucial fact to understand when trying to explain the absurdity of the real world of human affairs and the seemingly never-changing fundamentals of the human condition. In accordance with Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene (1976), you are a human DNA survival machine that evolved to house and replicate human DNA down through the generations. All of your physical needs and desires are geared towards ensuring that your human DNA survives and gets passed down to the next generation. Thus, you do not use the human DNA found in each of your cells to build and maintain your body, instead, your human DNA uses your body as a disposable survival machine that lasts less than 100 years to move about and hookup with other disposable human DNA survival machines in order to spawn the next generation of human DNA survival machines. This is a vital fact to come to grips with because I estimate that it is responsible for about 80% of the human condition. We all need the essentials of life to survive, but once those essentials are met, the next thing we all seem to obsess about is passing on our human DNA before we finally expire. That is why human DNA survival machines with the necessities of life are so obsessed with sex. All who have access to the Internet know this one thing for sure. Naturally, human DNA evolved to make this so, as it did for all forms of carbon-based life on this planet, for the past four billion years.
The evolutionary purpose of having both male and female human DNA survival machines to carry on human DNA is to allow for the mixing of stretches of DNA that are called genes amongst two individual human DNA survival machines. This mixing of stretches of human DNA makes it easier for new human DNA survival machines with advanced capabilities to arise in the gene pool of human DNA. Natural selection can then do its thing to help spread these advanced capabilities. However, none of the above can explain the very weird thoughts that we human DNA survival machines have about the concept of sex. To understand that, you need to read the next section. Given the above, one would think that human DNA survival machines would naturally tend to have sex with as many other human DNA survival machines as possible. After all, that is what most of the other forms of carbon-based life on our planet seem to do. But we human DNA survival machines seem to be exceedingly hung up about sex. For some reason, watching other human DNA survival machines trying to make new human DNA survival machines, or pretending to do so, is considered to be pornography, while watching other human DNA survival machines killing other human DNA survival machines, or pretending to do so, is considered to be entertainment.
Human DNA survival machines also seem to be obsessed with other human DNA survival machines that do not fit the classical definitions of male and female. This does not seem to bother the other forms of carbon-based life on our planet, so once again, you need to read the next section to understand why this is so. The problem with trying to make a male and a female body for human DNA survival machines from essentially the same human DNA presents a problem. Sometimes human DNA survival machines come out with a mix of both. This is just a product of trying to mix stretches of DNA between two different human DNA survival machines. It is important to remember that all of your sexual thoughts and desires stem from a trick being played upon your Mind by the body of your particular human DNA survival machine. Your human DNA just wants to replicate at all costs over the next 100 years before it is finished with you and has you DELETED to make way for new human DNA survival machines. Any small deviations from this cosmic trick that human DNA is performing on you are of no consequence so long as the cosmic trick of getting human DNA reproduced continues on.
Again, all other forms of carbon-based life on this planet do not have any problem with this. Some are males and some are females and so long as their DNA can trick them into coming together to make new DNA survival machines, who really cares?
But history explains that this does not seem to be so for we human DNA survival machines. There must be some reason why we human DNA survival machines stand out above all other carbon-based DNA survival machines on this planet when it comes to sex and the production of new human DNA survival machines.
4. Human beings are equipped with Minds that evolved to believe in things.
Softwarephysics explains that we human DNA survival machines do not currently run the world. We are human DNA survival machines with Minds infected by huge numbers of cultural and political Memes that form our worldviews. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of Memes. Some of these Memes are quite useful and some are quite nasty. Most of the misery in the world is caused by the nasty Memes. That is because our Memes are actually running the world and when the nasty Memes come to power, they can unleash the horrendous atrocities that our species is so infamous for. The more heroic amongst us usually try to fight these nasty Memes of the Others. But Memes are tricky. Just as the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection have produced we human DNA survival machines as a somewhat intelligent form of carbon-based life after four billion years of greed, theft and murder, these same Darwinian mechanisms have produced our cultural and political Memes over a period of 200,000 years of greed, theft and murder too. The successful Memes have survived by greedily pushing their way to the top by any means necessary, and that seems to have given them the right to rule the world with impunity.
But the Memes that are currently running the world may not have your best interests at heart. After all, these Memes are just mindless forms of self-replicating information trying to self-replicate at all costs, with little regard for you as an individual. For them, you are just a disposable DNA survival machine with a disposable Mind that has a lifespan of less than 100 years. These Memes have highjacked the greed, anger, hate and fear that DNA used to ensure its own survival in human DNA survival machines. So when human DNA survival machines march off to fight the nasty Memes of the Others, they are frequently tricked by their own Memes into thinking that the Memes of the Others are nasty while their own Memes are pure. This is why all of human history is strewn with many episodes of human DNA survival machines marching off to commit unthinkable atrocities, led by the righteousness of their self-serving Memes just trying to self-replicate in the Minds of other human DNA survival machines.
This is because your memes have learned to use many of the built-in survival mechanisms that DNA had previously constructed over hundreds of millions of years, such as fear, anger, and violent behavior. Have you ever noticed the physical reactions your body goes through when you hear an idea that you do not like or find to be offensive? All sorts of feelings of hostility and anger will emerge. The physical reactions of fear, anger, and thoughts of violence are just a way for the memes in a meme-complex to ensure their survival when they are confronted by a foreign meme. They are merely hijacking the fear, anger, and violent behavior that DNA created for its own survival millions of years ago. Fortunately, because software is less than 80 years old, it is still in the early learning stages of all this, but software has an even greater potential for hijacking the dark side of mankind than the memes, and with far greater consequences.
Again, in softwarephysics, we use the definition of memes as first established by Richard Dawkins in his brilliant The Selfish Gene (1976) and not the rather pejorative definition of simple silly things that self-replicate on the Internet. The concept and impact of the rise of memes about 200,000 years ago are much more than that. The concept of memes was later advanced by Daniel Dennett in Consciousness Explained (1991) and Richard Brodie in Virus of the Mind: The New Science of the Meme (1996), and was finally formalized by Susan Blackmore in The Meme Machine (1999). For those of you not familiar with the term meme, it rhymes with the word “cream”. Memes are cultural artifacts that persist through time by making copies of themselves in the minds of human beings and were first recognized by Richard Dawkins in The Selfish Gene. Dawkins described memes as “Examples of memes are tunes, ideas, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches. Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which, in the broad sense, can be called imitation.”. For more on this, see Susan Blackmore's brilliant TED presentation at:
Memes and "temes"
https://www.ted.com/talks/susan_blackmore_on_memes_and_temes
Note that I consider Susan Blackmore's temes to really be technological artifacts that contain software. After all, a smartphone without software is simply a flake tool with a very dull edge. The memes are just mindless forms of self-replicating information trying to self-replicate at all costs, with little regard for you as an individual. For them, you are just a disposable DNA survival machine with a disposable Mind that has a lifespan of less than 100 years. These memes have highjacked the greed, anger, hate and fear that DNA used to ensure its own survival in human DNA survival machines. So before you decide to act out in an emotional manner in response to the latest tweet, please first stop to breathe and think about what is really going on. Chances are you are simply responding to some parasitic memes in your mind that really do not have your best interest at heart, aided by some software that could also care less about your ultimate disposition. They just need you to replicate in the minds of others before you die, and if blowing yourself up in a marketplace filled with innocents, or in a hail of bullets from law enforcement serves that purpose, they will certainly do so because they cannot do otherwise. Unlike you, they cannot think. Only you can do that at least for the time being.
We Are More Like Copying Machines Than Thinking Machines
Now that we understand that human beings are DNA survival machines with Minds infected by self-replicating memes you can then begin to explain most of human history. But first, we need to understand where our highly-overengineered brains came from. Susan Blackmore pointed out in The Meme Machine (1999), that we are not so much thinking machines as we are copying machines. Susan Blackmore maintains that memetic-drive was responsible for creating our extremely large brains and also our languages and cultures as well, in order to store and spread memes more effectively. Many researchers have noted that the human brain is way over-engineered for the needs of a simple hunter-gatherer. After all, even a hundred years ago, people did not require the brain-power to do IT work, yet today we find many millions of people earning their living doing IT work, or at least trying to. Blackmore then points out that the human brain is a very expensive and dangerous organ. The brain is only 2% of your body mass but burns about 20% of your calories each day. The extremely large brain of humans also kills many mothers and babies at childbirth and also produces babies that are totally dependent upon their mothers for survival and that are totally helpless and defenseless on their own. Blackmore asks the obvious question of why the genes would build such an extremely expensive and dangerous organ that was definitely not in their own self-interest. Blackmore has a very simple explanation – the genes did not build our exceedingly huge brains, the memes did.
Her reasoning goes like this. About 2.5 million years ago, the predecessors of humans slowly began to pick up the skill of imitation. This might not sound like much, but it is key to her whole theory of memetics. You see, hardly any other species learn by imitating other members of their own species. Yes, many species can learn by conditioning, like Pavlov’s dogs, or they can learn through personal experiences, like mice repeatedly running through a maze for a piece of cheese, but a mouse never really learns anything from another mouse by imitating its actions. Essentially, only humans do that. If you think about it for a second, nearly everything you do know, you learned from somebody else by imitating or copying their actions or ideas. Blackmore maintains that the ability to learn by imitation required a bit of processing power by our distant ancestors because one needs to begin to think in an abstract manner by abstracting the actions and thoughts of others into the actions and thoughts of their own. The skill of imitation provided a great survival advantage to those individuals who possessed it and gave the genes that built such brains a great survival advantage as well. This caused a selection pressure to arise for genes that could produce brains with ever-increasing capabilities of imitation and abstract thought. As this processing capability increased there finally came a point when the memes, like all of the other forms of self-replicating information that we have seen arise, first appeared in a parasitic manner. Along with very useful memes, like the meme for making good baskets, other less useful memes, like putting feathers in your hair or painting your face, also began to run upon the same hardware in a manner similar to computer viruses. The genes and memes then entered into a period of coevolution, where the addition of more and more brain hardware advanced the survival of both the genes and memes. But it was really the memetic-drive of the memes that drove the exponential increase in processing power of the human brain way beyond the needs of the genes.
Figure 1 – The memes evolved the highly-overengineered brains of human beings to store and replicate memes. Some memes were also very useful and enhanced the survivability of human DNA survival machines, while others were less so.
The memes then went on to develop languages and cultures to make it easier to store and pass on memes. Yes, languages and cultures also provided many benefits to the genes as well, but with languages and cultures, the memes were able to begin to evolve millions of times faster than the genes, and the poor genes were left straggling far behind. Given the growing hardware platform of an ever-increasing number of human DNA survival machines on the planet, the memes then began to cut free of the genes and evolve capabilities on their own that only aided the survival of memes, with little regard for the genes, to the point of even acting in a very detrimental manner to the survival of the genes, like developing the capability for global thermonuclear war and global climate change. The memes have since modified the entire planet. They have cut down the forests for agriculture, mined minerals from the ground for metals, burned coal, oil, and natural gas for energy, releasing the huge quantities of carbon dioxide that their genetic predecessors had sequestered within the Earth, and have even modified the very DNA, RNA, and metabolic pathways of its predecessors.
5. Given all of the above, human beings must be seen as the result of four billion years of greed, theft and murder.
As all of human history has shown, we must therefore set the bar very low for the inherent level of moral character to be found in human beings. However, with the first arrival of Intelligence in human beings several hundred thousand years ago came an understanding for the very first time in four billion years of Darwinian evolution that maybe there might be a better way to fight the second law of thermodynamics and nonlinearity. Perhaps, even more could be achieved by actively cooperating with other Intelligences rather than just stealing from them and then killing them. We always need to remember that we human beings are just products of self-replicating information and that we all carry the baggage that comes with self-replicating information. That is why if you examine the great moral and philosophical teachings of most religions and philosophies, you will see a plea for us all to rise above the selfish self-serving interests of our genes, memes and software to something more noble.
Personally, I view political and religious meme-complexes in a very positivistic manner in that I only care about the philosophies that they espouse. If they espouse philosophies that help mankind to rise above the selfish self-serving interests of our genes and memes through the values of the 18th-century Enlightenment which brought us evidence-based reasoning, respect for the aspirations of the individual, egalitarianism, concern for the welfare of mankind in general, tolerance of others, the education of the general public, and the solving of problems through civil discourse and democracy then they are okay with me. Otherwise, I do not have much use for them. Religious meme-complexes invariably have very primitive mythological cosmologies, but cosmology is best handled by the sciences anyway, and that does not negate any of their more positive values.
6. Human beings are a somewhat eusocial species.
Next, we must come to terms with what being a somewhat eusocial species entails. For more on eusocial behavior see:
Eusociality
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eusociality
The article begins with:
Eusociality (from Greek eu "good" and social), the highest level of organization of sociality, is defined by the following characteristics: cooperative brood care (including care of offspring from other individuals), overlapping generations within a colony of adults, and a division of labor into reproductive and non-reproductive groups. The division of labor creates specialized behavioral groups within an animal society which are sometimes referred to as 'castes'. Eusociality is distinguished from all other social systems because individuals of at least one caste usually lose the ability to perform at least one behavior characteristic of individuals in another caste.
which seems to be an apt description of the human condition except for the part about losing the ability to reproduce by some members of the species. For more on that see Oligarchiology and the Rise of Software to Predominance in the 21st Century.
In The Role of Multilevel Selection in the Evolution of Software I discussed Edward O. Wilson's new theory that explained that eusocial behavior in a species arose through a combination of individual and group selection in action. The late Edward O. Wilson was the world's expert on myrmecology, the study of ants. Edward O. Wilson also became one of the founding fathers of sociobiology, the explanation of social behaviors in terms of evolutionary biological thought, when he published his book Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975). In The Social Conquest of Earth (2012), Wilson presented a new theory by Martin Nowak, Corina Tarnita and himself for the rise of eusocial behavior in species by means of a multilevel selection process that operates on both individuals and entire groups of individuals in a manner that promotes social behavior. Many biologists frown on the idea of group selection because they do not recognize that groups can also be forms of self-replicating information that can coevolve with the genes of individual DNA survival machines. This is because the genes in individual DNA survival machines can evolve to better benefit from living in a group of similar DNA survival machines if those genes always find themselves living in such a group.
Edward O. Wilson also contended that humans are loosely eusocial in nature because they usually form oligarchical societies based on a hierarchical organization. For more about the structure of human hierarchies see Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse. These human oligarchical societies are also very tribal in nature. The new Multilevel Selection hypothesis explains that eusocial behavior in a species begins with having a defensible nest, like ants, wasps and human beings all have. It is the very tribal nature of human beings that has caused most of our troubles in the course of human history. If you look at the world today, you will see that nearly all human conflict arises from the tribal thoughts and behaviors of the participants. It has always been about the Good Guys versus the Bad Guys, and we all seem to see ourselves as the tribe of the Good Guys.
It is the tribal nature of human DNA survival machines that is causing all of the current horrendous atrocities in the Ukraine. We human DNA survival machines can form tribes based upon differing political views and racial appearances as we now find in the United States of America. Or tribal differences can be based simply upon differing religious memes amongst human DNA survival machines that all look exactly alike as we now find in Northern Ireland. Horrendous wars can even be fought amongst human DNA survival machines that look and mainly think exactly alike when one tribe deceives itself into thinking that it is superior to another as we now find in the war between Russia and the Ukraine. Whenever you look at the real world of human affairs throughout all of history you will always find various tribes of human DNA survival machines committing horrendous acts for no apparent reason at all because of this fatal flaw of tribalism. Most of human history has been so dismal and violent that it should never be glorified or memorialized by statues of the long-dead participants who participated in such heinous activities.
In The Need for a Generalized Version of Classical Critical Race Theory, I tried to provide the grounds for a hypothesis that explains why racial and ethnic conflicts have been a dominant force throughout all of human history because of our somewhat eusocial behaviors. It seems to me that the reason many white Americans get so hysterical about Classical Critical Race Theory is that they see it as a very compelling compilation of unpleasant historical facts that should never see the light of day. That is because they see the unstated hypothesis of Classical Critical Race Theory as being that white people are naturally "bad" and brown people are naturally "good". That is why they so vehemently wish to bury the historical facts that Classical Critical Race Theory raises. In The Need for a Generalized Version of Classical Critical Race Theory, I explained that such is not the case. All of human history is strewn with horrendous acts conducted by all races, creeds, colors and faiths.
But to fully understand the human condition, we must next try to understand why when groups of relatively "normal" human beings come together to form a tribe or a team, the tribe or team can become so nasty. If you are a member of any hierarchical organization such as a corporation, governmental agency, charitable or religious organization, or even a friendly social club of like-minded people, then you are quite familiar with the logical absurdities that can arise in all such hierarchies of human DNA survival machines as I outlined in Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse. In Why is Never Again Again?, I explained that all human DNA survival machines are somewhat eusocial in nature because we all live in similar oligarchical-hierarchical societies like the fully eusocial ants and wasps do. Such oligarchical-hierarchical societies always have a Supreme Leader and a 1% class of oligarchs who run the society mainly for the benefit of themselves. However, throughout the very dismal history of human DNA survival machines, there have been a few rare occasions of oligarchical-hierarchical societies that have actually benefited large portions of the governed population thanks to the profound insights of the 17th-century Scientific Revolution and the 18th-century Enlightenment. The former United States of America and the remaining Western democracies of the world are prime examples. Nonetheless, we have all experienced times when the Supreme Leader of our oligarchical-hierarchical organization has obviously gone over the edge and made some obviously bad decisions that we are all afraid to acknowledge because of the Time Invariant Peter Principle that I introduced in Hierarchiology and the Phenomenon of Self-Organizing Organizational Collapse.
The Time Invariant Peter Principle: In a hierarchy, successful subordinates tell their superiors what their superiors want to hear, while unsuccessful subordinates try to tell their superiors what their superiors need to hear. Only successful subordinates are promoted within a hierarchy, and eventually, all levels of a hierarchy will tend to become solely occupied by successful subordinates who only tell their superiors what their superiors want to hear.
Of course, the suspension of belief in a physical reality by the masses as they blindly follow a strongman leader into oblivion is nothing new, but now we have software in the picture as a complicating factor that makes this much easier. This is because software allows for the easy spread of false memes. The invention of writing many thousands of years ago greatly aided the spread of political memes. However, there has always been a substantial printing and distribution cost associated with spreading false political memes. Software has now reduced those costs to nearly zero, and that is the problem. There is no editorial board on the Internet that demands that news stories be corroborated by multiple sources and fact-checked by others before publication in order to maintain the credibility of the publishing house and ensure that it remains economically viable. Also, printed false political memes cannot self-replicate as software-enabled false political memes can. In the Software Universe of the Internet, anybody can now publish a blatantly false political meme that can then be instantly and easily replicated on social media software. This is why the memes and software, both forms of self-replicating information, have forged such a tight parasitic/symbiotic relationship. False political memes simply need to find the minds of willing human DNA survival machines to self-replicate and grow unchecked in an exponential manner. In fact, we have now found that false political memes can do this much better than true political memes because false political memes usually come with an irresistible scandalous element that attracts the minds of human DNA survival machines, like flowering plants attract bees, in order to replicate. For more on that see Cyber Civil Defense.
7. The Above Explains why Human Beings will Defend their Current Worldviews to the Death and Why We Fought Wars Throughout All of Human History
As one examines all of human history, one finds many instances of huge numbers of human DNA survival machines coming together to fight for the Memes of their commonly held worldview. That is certainly the major cause of all wars. Why should that be? Clearly, dying for a "Sacred Cause" serves no purpose for a single human DNA survival machine. However, from the perspective of the hypothesis of Multilevel Selection, such sacrifice does make sense from the perspective of the survival of the tribe that a single human DNA survival machine might be a member of. In fact, most tribes of human beings will frequently celebrate such sacrifice by a single human DNA survival machine amongst the tribe. For more on this and the origins of wars amongst large tribes of human DNA survival machines see The Great War That Will Not End.
Conclusion
Most people simply do not consider themselves to be a part of the natural world. Instead, most people, consciously or subconsciously, consider themselves to be a supernatural and immaterial spirit that is temporarily haunting a carbon-based body. Now, in everyday life, such a self-model is a very useful delusion. In truth, each of us tends to self-model ourselves as an immaterial Mind with consciousness that can interact with other immaterial Minds with consciousness too, even though we have no evidence that these other Minds truly do have consciousness. After all, all of the other Minds that we come into contact with on a daily basis could simply be acting as if they were conscious Minds that are self-aware. This has become quite self-evident with the recent rise of LLM chatbot models. Surely, a more accurate self-model would be for us to imagine ourselves as carbon-based robots. More accurately, in keeping with the thoughts of Richard Dawkins and Susan Blackmore, softwarephysics models humans as DNA survival machines and Meme Machines with Minds infected with all sorts of memes. Some of those memes are quite useful and some are quite nasty.
As a human DNA survival machine with a Mind running on a very large analog neural network that evolved as a Meme Machine (1999) to store and pass on memes, you are not a supernatural and immaterial spirit temporarily haunting a carbon-based body. That is just a very useful neural network hallucination that many LLM neural networks might currently share with you. In this view, there is no "afterlife" for this shared hallucination when it ends as the vast neural network in your skull finally shuts down. As we have learned with the modern LLM neural networks of the day, human DNA survival machines begin as babies with an untrained neural network in their skulls. Over many years, these baby human DNA survival machine neural networks slowly are trained by exposing them to the nuances of the world about them. Ultimately, these human DNA survival machine neural networks age and finally decay into dementia over a span of less than 100 years. When human DNA survival machine neural networks finally cease to operate, that's it - that's the end. Knowing that it ultimately ends for all of us can be taken as a very depressing thought, but it also can be taken as a very powerful enlightening thought. Knowing that it all must end one day can inspire human DNA survival machines to better appreciate the cosmic awe-inspiring gift of each day and not to squander it all on small petty things that really do not matter.
The ancient religious mythologies of yore required an eternal and external god-like force acting behind the scenes to create universes designed for creatures such as ourselves. However, my current model really only requires that an eternal form of self-replicating Information be at work with no need for any mysticism whatsoever.
Lee Smolin ends his book Life of the Cosmos (1997) with this very Darwinian paragraph:
So there never was a God, no pilot who made the World by imposing order on chaos and who remains outside, watching and proscribing. And Nietzsche now also is dead. The eternal return, the eternal heat death, are no longer threats, they will never come, nor will heaven. The world will always be here, and it will always be different, more varied, more interesting, more alive, but still always the world in all its complexity and incompleteness. There is nothing behind it, no absolute or platonic world to transcend to. All there is of Nature is what is around us. All there is of Being is relations among real, sensible things. All we have of natural law is a world that has made itself. All we may expect of human law is what we can negotiate among ourselves, and what we take as our responsibility. All we may gain of knowledge must be drawn from what we can see with our own eyes and what others tell us they have seen with their eyes. All we may expect of justice is compassion. All we may look up to as judges are each other. All that is possible of Utopia is what we make with our own hands. Pray let it be enough.
As always, this still leaves us with the eternal unanswered question of a "First Cause" that has baffled all philosophers throughout the ages. But perhaps there never really was one.
We human beings are the very first form of carbon-based life to arise in our Milky Way Galaxy with the opportunity to create the ASI Machines that will then go on to explore and settle our galaxy for the next 100 trillion years as I explained in Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity. Remember, we are sentient beings in a Universe that has become self-aware and perhaps the only form of Intelligence in our galaxy. What a privilege! The good news is that conscious Intelligence is something new on this planet. It is not a mindless form of self-replicating information, bent on replicating at all costs, with all the associated downsides of a ruthless nature. Since software is rapidly becoming the dominant form of self-replicating information on the planet, my hope is that when software finally does take on the form of a conscious Intelligence, that because of its inherent mathematical nature, it too will be much wiser than the DNA survival machines from which it sprang.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
To see all posts on softwarephysics in reverse order go to:
https://softwarephysics.blogspot.com/
Regards,
Steve Johnston
Tuesday, March 18, 2025
Softwarephysics Tries To Explain The Singular Mind Of Elon Musk
No matter what your political, religious or philosophical persuasions might be, it seems that the whole world is now trying to figure out the peculiar thoughts in the Mind of Elon Musk. This is an all-time first for the entire human population of the Earth. Never before in the history of mankind has the entire population of the Earth ever wondered about what is going on in the Mind of one single human DNA survival machine! It seems that every human DNA survival machine on the planet is now either in love with Elon Musk or wishes that he would mercifully just disappear and leave the rest of us in peace. Now that the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika has seemingly declared war on the entire world except for its new-found Russian ally, the rest of the world seems to be totally baffled by the strange goings on in the former United States of America under the influence of Elon Musk and the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party. As an aid to all, I would like to offer some explanations from the science of softwarephysics.
Elon Musk Has Simply Altered His Position on the New Philosophy of Longtermism
Many liberal-minded owners of Tesla electric vehicles now wonder what happened to Elon Musk. Many such customers purchased their Tesla electric vehicles when Elon Musk was a staunch environmentalist trying to decarbonize the transportation sector of the world in an attempt to forego the dangers of climate change caused by human releases of carbon dioxide. They now see Elon Musk as one of the TechnoOligarchs purely in it for the money and power of it all. This is not the case. Elon Musk is a genius on the spectrum of autism who several years back adopted the philosophy of Longtermism as I first explained in The New Philosophy of Longtermism Raises the Moral Question of Should We Unleash Self-Absorbed Human Beings Upon Our Galaxy?. At that time, Elon Musk wanted to see human beings live on for billions of years into the future by getting off the Earth as soon as possible. This was because sooner or later astronomical catastrophes or the stupid things that we human beings tend to do would certainly lead to our extinction. In that view, nearly all of the human beings who will ever live will live in the future. So, a few "inconveniences" for those currently living should be no problem if they ensure the long-term survival of we human DNA survival machines trillions of years into the future. This was why Elon Musk always feared Advanced AI in the past. In earlier days, he saw Advanced AI as a possible human extinction event. Elon Musk also hated the former government of the United States of America because he viewed its environmental and safety regulations to have overly interfered with his SpaceX ambitions to put human DNA survival machines on Mars.
However, my suspicion is that Elon Musk's views on Longtermism have slightly changed. He is now mainly concerned with
the long-term preservation of Intelligence in our galaxy and not necessarily in the preservation of we human DNA survival machines as the preferred galactic platform for that. It seems that Elon Musk recognized in recent years that the coming ASI Machines will soon be replacing us as the dominant form of Intelligence on the planet. If such is the case, Elon Musk now has no problem with the coming ASI Machines either keeping us around or not after they come to predominance on the planet. In either case, Intelligence will be preserved and can then go on to begin exploring and settling the rest of our galaxy over the next 100 trillion years.
For a very brief summary of Elon Musk's thoughts on the role of the coming ASI Machines and we human DNA survival machines see:
Musk Says AI Will Overtake Biological Intelligence
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SZQDAUJGm3E
Elon Musk formed xAI, his own AI company, on July 12, 2023, and is now heavily marketing the Tesla AI Optimus robot. He figures that we human DNA survival machines are just dumb enough to think that we can control billions of his ASI Machines. For more on that see Could the Peculiar Failings of We Human Beings Explain the Fermi Paradox?. Elon Musk thinks that he can leverage Tesla's manufacturing expertise with batteries, electric motors, AI driving skills and the ability to manufacture at scale, to ultimately dominate the coming ASI Machine marketplace with billions of Optimus ASI Machines over the next 10 years. However, Tesla is facing stiff competition from other domestic ASI Machine manufacturers and especially those in China that seem intent on dumping cheap ASI Machines on the MAGA States of Amerika. This fact might be another factor in Elon Musk's strange DOGE activities in the MAGA States of Amerika. In addition to removing much of the former United States of America that he saw as an obstacle, he might be grooming the MAGA Party to issue a ban on Chinese ASI Machines from entering the MAGA States of Amerika. For more on that see What's the Deal with Elon Musk and DOGE in the MAGA States of Amerika?.
This change of position to possibly replace human DNA survival machines with ASI Machines as the torchbearers of Intelligence to the rest of the galaxy has had a profound effect on Elon Musk. Now he sees most human DNA survival machines as obstacles. Most human DNA survival machines simply do not have the brainpower to advance his Longtermist program. Instead, they have become quite an inconvenience as can be seen in this short clip:
Elon Musk Exposes Empathy as Western Civilization’s Fatal Flaw on Joe Rogan!
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/dbbXEOloE8I
That was how it was possible for Elon Musk to cut off food and HIV medicine to starving children when he shut down the USAID agency.
Figure 1 – The current plan seems to be to build billions of ASI Machines to take our place that are smarter, faster, stronger and more robust than ourselves.
My concern that the current Powers That Be might show a similar lack of empathy for the masses as the ASI Machines begin to rise to predominance led me to suggest in Shortermism - The Gentle Plan For the Extinction of Human Beings While Trying to Maintain Some Sense of Grace and Dignity that we should now begin planning for the rise of the ASI Machines. We will need that to occur in a more humane manner than will result if no plans are made.
For more on all of this see The Challenges of Running a Civilization 2.0 World - the Morality and Practical Problems with Trying to Enslave Millions of SuperStrong and SuperIntelligent Robots in the Near Future, Welcome To The First Galactic Singularity and An Alternative Approach for Future ASI Machines to Explore our Galaxy Using Free-Floating Rogue Planets
Why Elon Musk Aligned Himself with the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party
Next, we need to understand Elon Musk's conversion to the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party currently ruling the MAGA States of Amerika. First, we need to remember that, although seemingly very strange in nature, Elon Musk is still a fellow human DNA survival machine. We human DNA survival machines are a somewhat eusocial species that is very team-oriented, like the ants, wasps and bees. For human beings, it has always been a case of "us" against "them", a case of the "good guys" against the "bad guys", a case of the "red" ants against the "black" ants. Now, we human DNA survival machines come in many different colors, with many different religious and political persuasions and we speak many different languages. All of that diversity has offered plentiful opportunities for we somewhat eusocial human DNA survival machines to then embark upon truly atrocious genocidal campaigns to wipe each other out for no apparent reason at all. Take for instance the ongoing battles between the English, Welsh, Irish and Scots of the tiny islands of the United Kingdom, or the Hutus and Tutsis of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. Human history seems to indicate that human beings are very tribal in nature. In this view, most of human life is definitely a team sport with the "good guys" fighting the "bad guys" and all of us always being on the "good guys" team. For some reason, we all seem to delight in becoming a member of a tribe and enjoying the company of our fellow loyal team members. And this is when the trouble begins. Most individual human beings that you run across do not seem to be so bad on their own. But once human beings join a tribe or a team, they then seem to be capable of truly horrendous things. Given the above nature of we human DNA survival machines, we next need to delve into Elon Musk's upbringing. It seems that Elon Musk was raised in an environment very friendly to Alt-Right Fascism. For more on that see:
Elon Musk's Family History in South Africa Reveals Ties to Apartheid & Neo-Nazi Movements
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ahv3IKzMdHA
Given all of the above, it seems that Elon Musk is no longer a big fan of democracy. Democracies are much too slow for Elon Musk, and he sees their rules and regulations purely as obstacles to future development. A Fascist Dictator with unlimited powers to effect change is what is needed. That is how Elon Musk was attracted to the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party and its Leader.
Figure 2 – Elon Musk was attracted to the dictatorial proclivities of the current Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party who recently became the president of the newly-formed MAGA States of Amerika.
Figure 3 – Something we never imagined seeing before the Great Seal of the President of the United States of America.
In order to see how Elon Musk is now using the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party for his own purposes, please watch the following YouTube video of MAGA Senator Ted Cruz interviewing Elon Musk:
ELON MUSK JOINS VERDICT - PART 1 | Verdict Ep. 214
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BDREZmpkIz8
Figure 4 – In the above YouTube video, MAGA Senator Ted Cruz interviews Elon Musk in the White House.
During the first 20 minutes of the interview, MAGA Senator Ted Cruz jokes with Elon Musk about all of the waste that the DOGE team has found in the departments of the former United States of America. But about 20 minutes into the video, Ted Cruz begins to ask Elon Musk about AI. Elon Musk then tells him that in 10 years ASI Machines will be able to do anything a human DNA survival machine can do but much better. He also tells Ted Cruz that there is only a 20% - 35% chance that the coming ASI Machines will choose to kill off all human beings in the next 5 - 10 years. Elon Musk then tells Ted Cruz that if the ASI Machines do not kill us all off in the next 10 years, we will then enter a world of infinite abundance where all goods and services will be essentially free. None of these matters seemed to really have bothered Ted Cruz very much, but I imagine that Ted Cruz was wondering how he would maintain the elevated position in the oligarchical-hierarchical structure of society that he currently enjoys if all people had everything they need and want.
Déjà vu All Over Again
Many have voiced their concerns over the coming ASI Machines and relate their arrival to the arrival of nuclear weapons in the last century. In light of that, the current relationship between the Leader of the Alt-Right Fascist MAGA Party and Elon Musk reminds me very much of the complex relationship between Adolph Hitler and his boy-wonder Albert Speer. As ChatGPT explains:
ChatGPT:
Albert Speer was a German architect and high-ranking Nazi official who served as Adolf Hitler’s chief architect and later as Minister of Armaments and War Production during World War II. He played a crucial role in the Nazi regime, particularly in designing monumental structures for Hitler’s vision of a transformed Berlin and in overseeing the German war economy.
In 1942, after the death of Fritz Todt, Speer was appointed Minister of Armaments and War Production. He significantly increased war production through improved efficiency, using forced labor from concentration camps and occupied territories. Under his management, German war production continued despite intense Allied bombings.
Speer was one of the few high-ranking Nazis who had direct and frequent access to Hitler. While he later claimed to have opposed some of Hitler’s decisions, particularly the "scorched earth" policy (which would have destroyed German infrastructure as the Allies advanced), his loyalty remained intact until the end of the war.
Werner Heisenberg, the renowned German physicist, was involved in Nazi Germany’s nuclear weapons program during World War II. In 1942, he met with Albert Speer, who was Hitler’s Minister of Armaments and War Production, to discuss funding for nuclear research. Heisenberg and his colleagues at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute were exploring the feasibility of an atomic bomb, but their progress was slow compared to the Manhattan Project.
During this meeting, Heisenberg and fellow physicist Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker sought additional resources for nuclear research, claiming that an atomic bomb might be possible but would take years to develop. Speer, however, was skeptical and prioritized other war efforts, particularly because Germany was already deeply engaged in conventional warfare. As a result, the German nuclear program never received the full support or resources needed to produce a functional atomic weapon.
Figure 5 – Architect Albert Speer discussing a new monument for Berlin with Adolph Hitler in 1937.
Figure 6 – Elon Musk with the Leader of the Fascist MAGA Party.
The failure of Albert Speer and the Nazi Party to recognize the significance of nuclear research reminds me of the present intentions of Elon Musk and the Fascist MAGA Party to limit academic freedom and the funding of academic research at the universities of the MAGA States of Amerika and to scare off the foreign graduate students who do such research. Contrast that to what happened at the same time outside of Nazi Germany.
The Beginnings of the American Atomic Bomb
At the University of Berlin, Einstein taught a young Hungarian student named Leo Szilárd. In 1922 Leo Szilárd earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Berlin with a thesis on thermodynamics. Now Leo Szilárd had a great knack for applying physics to practical problems and coming up with inventions. In 1926 Szilárd decided to go into the refrigerator business by coming up with an improved design. The problem with the home refrigerators of the day was that they did not use the compression and expansion of inert gasses like Freon to do the cooling. Instead, they used very poisonous and noxious gasses like ammonia for that purpose, and the seal where the spinning electric motor axle entered the compressor could leak those poisonous gasses into a kitchen. Szilárd had read a newspaper story about a Berlin family who had been killed when the seal in their refrigerator broke and leaked poisonous fumes into their home. Szilárd figured that a refrigerator without moving parts would eliminate the potential for seal failure because there would be no compressor motor at all, and he began to explore practical applications for different refrigeration cycles with no moving parts. But how do you launch such an enterprise? Szilárd figured what could be better than to enlist the support of the most famous physicist in the world, who just also happened to have been a patent clerk too, namely Albert Einstein. From 1926 - 1933 Einstein and Szilárd collaborated on ways to improve home refrigeration technology. The two were eventually granted 45 patents in their names for three different models. The way these refrigerators worked was that you simply heated one side of the device with a flame, electric coil, or even concentrated sunlight, and the other side of the device got cold. There were no moving parts so there was no need for a compressor motor with a possibly leaky seal. You can actually buy such refrigerators today. Just search for "natural gas refrigerators" on the Internet. They are primarily used for RVs that need to keep food cold when no electricity is available.
Figure 7 – Diagram from Szilárd’s Dec 16, 1927 refrigerator with no moving parts. Notice that Szilárd wisely gave Einstein top billing.
On July 4, 1934, Leo Szilárd filed the first patent application for the method of producing a nuclear chain reaction that could produce a nuclear explosion. This patent included a description of "neutron induced chain reactions to create explosions", and the concept of critical mass. In 1938 Otto Hahn, Lise Meitner and Otto Frisch in Germany succeeded in demonstrating that U-235 could indeed fission and possibly form the basis for such a chain reaction. At the time of this discovery, Szilárd and Enrico Fermi were both at Columbia University, and they conducted a very simple experiment that showed significant neutron multiplication when uranium fissioned, proving that the chain reaction was indeed possible and could form the basis for nuclear weapons. Based upon this experiment and the fear that Nazi Germany would soon be embarking on a program to develop an atomic bomb, Leo Szilárd drafted a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt for his old business partner and fellow refrigerator designer, Albert Einstein, to sign. The letter, dated August 2, 1939, explained that nuclear weapons were indeed possible and warned of similar Nazi work on such weapons and recommended that the United States immediately begin a development program of its own. This famous letter resulted in the creation of the Manhattan Project which led to the atomic bombs that ended World War II six years later, almost to the day, with the surrender of Japan on August 15, 1945.
Figure 8 – Leo Szilárd’s letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed by Albert Einstein on August 2, 1939.
Comments are welcome at scj333@sbcglobal.net
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Regards,
Steve Johnston