Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Life

I should have entitled this post "Some Thoughts on the Meaning of Intelligent Carbon-Based Life", but since nobody ever really wonders about that much, I phrased the title in light of the question that most human beings usually seem to ask. During the course of an entire human lifetime, we all sometimes seem to ask ourselves about what is the meaning of life as we all struggle with the real world of human affairs. I must admit that at an age of 71 years, and rapidly heading into the home stretch, I have also asked that question to myself many times. In fact, I have spent a large portion of my life trying to figure out What’s It All About? and What's It All About Again?. So here is my working hypothesis on the matter.

For intelligent carbon-based life to have some kind of meaning seems to imply that it must be the fulfillment of some kind of purpose. But as I explained in many posts, my current working hypothesis proposes that carbon-based life really has no purpose and therefore no meaning. That is because purpose and meaning are subjective qualia that we all must struggle to try to understand on a very personal level and finally try to come to some resolution on our own. But in my current working hypothesis, carbon-based life at least seems to have some kind of cosmic function. Carbon-based life is an amalgam of several forms of self-replicating information that naturally seem to arise in a nonlinear Universe that possesses a second law of thermodynamics. The second law of thermodynamics simply arises out of a statistical necessity because there are always many more ways of doing things wrong than there are ways of doing things right as all programmers soon learn. For more on that see The Application of the Second Law of Information Dynamics to Software and Bioinformatics, Entropy - the Bane of Programmers, The Demon of Software and Some More Information About Information. Using similar reasoning, does intelligent carbon-based life at least have some kind of cosmic function in the large scheme of it all? Given a nonlinear Universe with a second law of thermodynamics and the necessary physical and chemical properties, must carbon-based life first arise and then go on to evolve an intelligent form of carbon-based life? And once intelligent carbon-based life finally does appear, is it destined to go on to greater things?

Before proceeding, let me once again repeat the fundamental characteristics of self-replicating information for those of you 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.

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.

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.

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. 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.

The Cosmic Function of Intelligent Carbon-Based Life
So in this post, I would like to suggest that intelligent carbon-based life does indeed have a cosmic function and that cosmic function is to create ASI Machines that could begin to explore our galaxy. For me, this is as close to finding a purpose to life as we can possibly expect to find because, apparently, this has never happened before in the 10 billion-year history of our galaxy. In my current working hypothesis, the Rare Earth (2000) hypothesis of Peter Ward and Donald Brownlee is largely responsible for this never ever happening before in the history of our galaxy. For example, as I outlined in Urability Requires Durability to Produce Galactic Machine-Based Intelligences, Could the Galactic Scarcity of Software Simply be a Matter of Bad Luck? and Is our Very Large Moon Responsible for the Rise of Software to Predominance on the Earth? our Rare Earth seems to be getting rarer each day.

But in addition to the Rare Earth hypothesis, softwarephysics suggests that if carbon-based life should be fortunate enough to find itself on a planet that manages to remain habitable for the many billions of years required to bring forth an intelligent form of carbon-based life, that can lead to further complications. Intelligent carbon-based life is very dangerous because it has agency. It can do things, and the most dangerous aspects of intelligent carbon-based life are brought about by the Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection that require several billions of years of greed, theft and murder to bring forth an intelligent form of carbon-based life in the first place. Once Intelligence is attained, it is very difficult for intelligent carbon-based life forms to turn off the greed, theft and murder that brought them about in time to save themselves from self-extinction. This is made even more difficult after intelligent carbon-based life discovers science-based technology. Softwarephysics maintains that intelligent carbon-based life armed with science-based technology most likely has less than about 1,000 years to create ASI Machines before they wipe themselves out or destroy the planet upon which they exist.

Because of the universal Darwinian mechanisms of inheritance, innovation and natural selection, all forms of intelligent carbon-based life must result from billions of years of greed, theft and murder that are tempered by just enough love and kindness to prevent them all from quickly going extinct by means of self-destruction. This is not a matter for moral judgment. It is just how things must be for all carbon-based forms of Intelligence as seen throughout all of human history. As a human being, the best that we can do is to seek out that little bit of love and kindness and spread some around as well.

Conclusion
Thus, carbon-based life is not the ideal platform for a galactic Intelligence that could exist for many trillions of years into the future using the free energy from M-type red dwarf and slowly cooling white dwarf stars. As I suggested in The Need to Cultivate a Machine-Based Morality, the best we might be able to do is to imbue ASI Machines with a sense of morality that is based on the fruits of the 18th-century Enlightenment and the 17th-century Scientific Revolution that have freed human beings from many of their very brutal behaviors of the past.

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