I endeavor (and often fail) to behave in what I believe to be moral ways because I frame existence, conscious existence, as an endless, hopeless battle.
In that frame, I see individual humans, and thus myself, as the most advanced, most stable, most awe-inspiring products of a force that acts in persistent, stalwart opposition to the overwhelming, inevitable power of chaos.
A force that defies probability and entropy to create stable structures from varied, and opposing, forces. A force that is responsible for existence at every level - quarks, protons and neutrons, atoms, molecules...
Then, at some point, molecules hit a breaking point of complexity where they could act, influence their environments, change other molecules nearby without affecting oneself. Enzymes enable certain reactions to take place. Some of those reactions create new molecules. Some of those are the necessary resources for other reactions.
On and on
They group, they coalesce, they form pre-prokaryotic bubbles. Each of these has its own characteristics, but one has the ability to record its characteristics and reproduce them. It can create a backup, a blueprint of the current best-known most stable structure for a "thing" - not a cell yet, but a thing, that is, and can be again.
It wins, not by working REALLY HARD but by discovering and stumbling upon other weird "things" with other weird traits and using its incredible ability to record those traits and incorporate them into the blueprint, the canon. More importantly, the individual could experiment, without risking the population. If there's only one functionally stable system of enzymes, and something BREAKS it, the clock is reset millions of years - who knows how long until random chaos produces another set of enzymes as stable? Could be never.
The cell grows and develops, and lots of varieties of the single-celled organism develop, with their own traits and "specialty". Some are really good at photosynthesis, but not much else. They drift in the upper levels of the ocean, soaking up sunlight and reproducing. Some are really fast predators with advanced flagella. Some are excellent scavengers, great at efficiently extracting resources from chaos.
But... they hit a wall. A limitation. They can specialize, and thrive in their own environments, but they are still bound to their surroundings, bound to chaos. So they bargain, often unfairly, for mutual advantage. Each sacrifices some independence for stability and resources from the other. The photosynthetic wunderkind gives its energy to a larger, immobile cell with a hard cell wall in exchange for protection and stability - a cozy home in the sun for one, a near endless supply of energy for the other - but it also gives up its ability to reproduce or move independently, becoming engulfed entirely. The efficient-stomached scavenger trades its skill in separating useful nutrients to the speedy predator, allowing the small, agile creature to power itself with less frequent snacks. Again, it loses independence, becoming little more than a stomach in and of itself.
By incorporating parts of others, the one becomes stronger. The many MUST remain distinct, diverse - that is their value, but some independence is always sacrificed.
Eventually, another wall is reached. There is little left to incorporate. Most of the best most stable structures have been found, and are thriving.
Then, something happens. Two advanced, stable single cells make a fair bargain. No engulfing. No consuming. One does not become part of the other - together they become part of something new. The eukaryote is born.
It repeats. Simultaneous expansion, diversification, and incorporation slowing... slowing... reaching a peak, then condensing, faster, faster, coalescing, bargaining, forming stable structures out of other stable structures, condensing, repeating.
Complex life.
Then - again - something unexpected. In the process of becoming complex life, DNA reached its capacity. It could still work to determine structure admirably, but when a single piece of code is determining every bit of macroscopic structure, every organ and suborgan, down to the variations between each and every type of cell and the various organelles and substructures that make each cell functional, DNA was filling up. There wasn't much room left for determining behavior or telling all these hypercomplicated structures how to work together. Previously it kind of just... happened! You put certain enzymes and resources in a solution with others and they create systems. Now you have hundreds of thousands of those systems, all replicated and placed throughout organs, which are in turn placed in this new bundle that can move around on its own (an animal), and it gets really complicated! You need some form of control system, and it can't be truly 100% democratic because all the individual organs and parts are dedicated 100% do doing a single simplex (simple/complex) task. If the stomach has a vote all the time, its vote is always FOOD IN ME NOW. FOOD.
If the gallbladder has a vote all the time, its vote is always NEED RESOURCES TO PRODUCE BILE. NEED TO PRODUCE BILE.
So something needs to manage the mess of hyperfocused, hyperspecialized, hyper-efficient parts. To do this, the control subsystem needs genuine, direct contact with each and every subsystem, and preferable multiple points of contact. It needs to understand the environment, health, and status of each component down to the finest level of detail possible. Only then can it determine what resources are needed where to make the whole function properly.
But, as I've said, we're talking about REALLY complicated systems. So, assuming that the control system can get direct, physical contact with every part of every other subsystem (we know it can because it does, beautifully) that control system requires immense processing power just to acquire and make sense of the constant stream of data from many many thousands of points of contact.
loop
Greater physical complexity requires exponentially more processing power.
Combined, processing power and stable complexity lead to more opportunities.
More opportunities lead to more adversity.
Adversity demands the development of new traits.
New traits lead to greater physical complexity.
end
Unlike DNA, the control system - the brain - doesn't hit a limit rapidly. With each new physical trait, the control system must grow to accomodate more input and more options, the same way the canon of DNA, the blueprint of the current-best, must grow and update to contain useful new traits.
But the brain matter was more than just an information storage device. DNA is purely replicable storage. The systems that interact with it are purely read/write. Alteration of the data after its stored is almost always Really Bad.
But brain matter isn't a storage media - though parts of it are. The brain, by necessity, from its origins - process varied data from every subsystem, make sense of it, and use it to inform the behavior of the whole in order to fulfill the needs of the components - is a general processor.
The brain must be versatile. It must be able to handle MAXIMUM DATA from ALL SOURCES without being completely overwhelmed, because in such a situation it must be able to continue mediating behavior and important involuntary processes. So the brain MUST by necessity have enough "extra processing power" (literal headroom) to handle every neuron firing at full power and still be able to keep the heart beating. If not, you could expose an animal to bright light, loud noise, and some strong smells and they would just FREAK OUT AND INSTANTLY DIE because their brain wasn't able to handle it. Possums still have this issue.
So there needs to be significant headroom. How significant? How much extra space to ensure you're still breathing after a light turns on? Well... who knows! The more the better, probably. I'd say... in any species, members of that species with more excess brain matter were less likely to DIE OF SHOCK from OVERWHELMING CIRCUMSTANCES. So the ones with more and more and more and more and more and at some point IMMENSELY more brain matter were just unphased by any data they could possibly experience. Alright, great! Perfect! At a certain level of brain matter, the creature can exist in the world and manage all its complexity and NOT DIE at first sight of a scary new predator.
But all that brain isn't really necessary to handle normal, every day, quiet, routine stuff. So what does it do all the rest of the time? Well, the brain has a part that can store information - that came early. Behavior, categorized threats, known sources of water and food. And there's a part that's kinda separated, cordoned off and kept sacred, that manages the icky-gooey of the flesh-thing the brain controls. Then the rest... the rest is all processing power. It takes in data and does stuff to it. But most of the time, there's not a ton of data - or at least not a ton of NEW data. When the creature is just sitting quietly at night, there's very little incoming data.
So that extra processing power would be going to waste... but it doesn't. Instead, the idle processing components of the brain start pulling information from the only available source - the memory. And they do what they're built to - take in various data, make sense of it, and reconfigure it into new forms. So the processing sections take a heaping handful of half-chewed data from your memory and dump it into bowl. Then... it seems to me, the brain shakes the bowl. The brain is able to induce something like chaos, pushing and mushing and flipping and swirling all the ideas together, forcing them to slide up against each other and collide, a seething tumult of contradiction and incomprehension.
Then, mirroring every step before, a crystal begins to form. Two ideas that seem unrelated, or dissimilar, or contradictory, arrange themselves in your head in such a way that they both make sense, both seem true, and actually complement one another to form a thesis that is stronger than its dissimilar parts while strengthening its parts.
And then the tumult crystallizes extraordinarily rapidly. The thesis - the combination of two ideas, mirroring the combination of two quarks to form a proton or three fundamental particles to form an atom or various atoms to form a molecule - Gives the combined thesis more points of contact with which to interlock with other statements or ideas or theses.
Think of traditional jigsaw puzzle pieces used to create an infinite jigsaw. Generally, each piece has four points of contact - four unique shapes through which it can bond with other pieces to form a whole with characteristics that include and transcend those of the individual.
One piece has 4 contacts. When two pieces join together, each must sacrifice one of its contacts. So it is. The bargain is worthwhile - together, the two pieces have a total of 6 contacts. You could say "that's not beneficial! Each piece only gets three!" But it's not about each piece getting three. It's about the fact that this new structure, with 6 points of contact, is more versatile. Now that it's in place, if you can find even one of the pieces that will fit those 6 points of contact, you add another 3 points of contact, each of which gives you more options for which piece you must find next.
The more pieces joined together, the higher the probability that a given piece you pick from the pile will have a valid place in the current structure.
This seems to be true of ideas. Once the initial crystal is formed, the chaos of ideas in the brain's metaphorical "rehash" bowl crystallizes into a robust structure - each idea with a place, positioned to support its surrounding ideas, each supporting their surroundings. The crystal's structure and your feelings about it are usually determined by the starting thesis, just like crystals. Perhaps it's a brilliant epiphany that forms the top of a pyramid of hierarchical ideas, and crystallizes downward to find and affirm its foundations in your quest to make your understanding of everything else line up with this new overarching 'truth'.
Maybe the idea is a spike, a spearhead, formed from a base and a direction, leading to a specific conclusion that demands action. Many of the worst ideas form this way. Most of them form this way when Anger is an abundant resource.
Maybe the idea is a square, a brick, a stalwart hunk of well-considered reasons for being a certain way, kiln-treated and fire-hardened to withstand the chaos of the world. Something you can use as building material. Something that enables you to experiment with other ideas, to choose any life you want and change your mind or fail, knowing that if nothing else, you have a solid foundation of principles - carefully stacked, shaped, pressed, hardened, and tested - to fall back on.
Ideas are the current step in evolution, and we have hardly begun exploring the limitations of this new dimension of simplexity. You are unique, capable of producing and interpreting ideas uniquely.
Share your uniqueness. Share your difference. Share your value. Become part of the simplex.