4 ms·

It's crazy what happens in there. It's as if other lifeforms exist at this cellular level, which wouldn't even care if they form part of a human or a plant, act

It's crazy what happens in there. It's as if other lifeforms exist at this cellular level, which wouldn't even care if they form part of a human or a plant, acting as if they have their own life, their own motivation and ability to execute it, their own purpose and will to live by it. As if what applies to us individuals, with our thoughts and actions, also applies to these subsystems of a cell, in a different form. What could be their motivation to build humans, to assemble brains that can reflect, eyes that can see, senses built to enable interaction with this world? Where do these instructions come from?

Schinken_ 6y ago
With things like these I always like to visualize it backwards. These things don't want anything. It's just the way things work. If you manage to form an organism that survives better than other organisms, there will be more of you (and your cells). There is no "want" and "like" in evolution, just "works" and "replication".
- pharke 6y ago
  It's more interesting to think that evolution is guided by the selective pressures that exist in the environment. That means that all of the current forms of life are finding the optimal design for their environment and interaction with other life forms. Human beings have evolved to fit this world and if we continue to expand beyond it we will continue to evolve to fit the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality.
  - leetcrew 6y ago
    > It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality. depends how optimistic/pessimistic you are. I find it far more likely that humans will eventually hit some local maximum in a trough too deep to ever escape.
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    There are no platonic ideals for humans or beings in general; we explore a giant solution space for reproducing thinking-machines. For every utility function there's a globally maximal physical being or society, but there are also a lot of utility functions.
- qwertox 6y ago
  Don't you sometimes "want" to eat some chocolate, or an ice cream, or even better, a nice, juicy, salty steak? I definitely do, and I "like" what I feel when I get to eat it. Yet I may be no more than a replicating machine whose purpose it is to build these new machines which may likely replace us one day, maybe keep us in a zoo, or as pets, if we get lucky. I can't imagine what motivates these molecules to behave, to group the way they do; why the existing energies get channeled to make them move that way, since there is no need for the energy to do anything at all. Something motivates me, and I see no reason why there isn't motivation in these molecules; what they do is already complex enough to be considered as something which may have a special purpose. We do have consciousness. There is this something in me which sees and tastes, which experiences life. It's hard to believe that this is something material. To me it feels as if complex enough structures of molecules allow something to plug into this universe, to absorb its information and to feed something into it, like instructions which allow this "me" to interact with it. The same could well be applicable to bacteria or to the most rudimentary lifeforms. Because a bacteria forms part of my body doesn't mean that it can't have its own consciousness; the same may be valid for all this stuff that (maybe) "lives" inside my cells. Lucky me, that I get to stand on its shoulders in order to perceive this universe the way I can and interact with it. "Works" and "replication" isn't wrong, but removing the "wants" and "likes" from this equation doesn't feel right.
  - jmoss20 6y ago
    Sure, but the parent's claim was that there is no "want" and "like" in evolution. You might want and like things; perhaps (perhaps) cells and bacteria might want and like things, but evolution certainly does not.
    - benlivengood 6y ago
      The fascinating question is where the line is between action and reaction and our qualitative experience of wanting and liking. Our wants and likes are (probably) physically implemented as a sequence of electrochemical reactions; almost certainly with nothing more than electromagnetism. So which instantiations/states of the electromagnetic field experience feelings and desires? Are they held in the energy potential or in the energy transfer, or both? Is it enough to have a sufficiently complex feedback loop simulating/predicting itself? The answer is likely to be both sort of simple but also profound. Eventually we'll have an a-ha moment studying electrocardiographs or FMRI or individual neural networks and be able to replicate experience in other electromagnetic substrates, and knowing precisely what we are, in a sense, will be pretty neat. Then what will we really know about experience? Is it truly in the electromagnetic field or does it exist in the mathematical relationships that determine the evolution of the fields? That might be a question we never definitely answer from an outside perspective, but is endlessly fascinating to me.
nneonneo 6y ago
I think the main thing you’re looking for is “differentiation”. Unicellular organisms are generally homogenous, as each must be adapted to surviving on its own. Simple multicellular organisms are often just masses of individual cells. But, as you start increasing the number of cells, it becomes evolutionarily advantageous for some of them to take on more specialized roles, rather than have every one be capable of everything. That is differentiation. As these organisms get more complex and develop more and more differentiated cells, mechanisms also evolve to prohibit cells from “regressing” to undifferentiated forms, and to tightly control aspects of cell growth. Unlike unicellular organisms, a functioning multicellular organism needs to have all its cells coordinate in order to survive. Human cells for instance contain a regulation mechanism which detects abnormal behaviour and directs the cell to commit suicide (a key protein in this mechanism, p53, is widely studied in cancer research). So no, your cells don’t get their own “will”. They do what they are genetically fated to do. Those that don’t either die, or wind up as a cancer that chokes the life out of their host.

Schinken_ 6y ago

With things like these I always like to visualize it backwards. These things don't want anything. It's just the way things work. If you manage to form an organism that survives better than other organisms, there will be more of you (and your cells). There is no "want" and "like" in evolution, just "works" and "replication".

pharke 6y ago
It's more interesting to think that evolution is guided by the selective pressures that exist in the environment. That means that all of the current forms of life are finding the optimal design for their environment and interaction with other life forms. Human beings have evolved to fit this world and if we continue to expand beyond it we will continue to evolve to fit the solar system, the galaxy, and the universe. It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality.
- leetcrew 6y ago
  > It's hard not to feel that there is some optimal thing that we are heading towards, the solution to the question posed by reality. depends how optimistic/pessimistic you are. I find it far more likely that humans will eventually hit some local maximum in a trough too deep to ever escape.
- benlivengood 6y ago
  There are no platonic ideals for humans or beings in general; we explore a giant solution space for reproducing thinking-machines. For every utility function there's a globally maximal physical being or society, but there are also a lot of utility functions.
qwertox 6y ago
Don't you sometimes "want" to eat some chocolate, or an ice cream, or even better, a nice, juicy, salty steak? I definitely do, and I "like" what I feel when I get to eat it. Yet I may be no more than a replicating machine whose purpose it is to build these new machines which may likely replace us one day, maybe keep us in a zoo, or as pets, if we get lucky. I can't imagine what motivates these molecules to behave, to group the way they do; why the existing energies get channeled to make them move that way, since there is no need for the energy to do anything at all. Something motivates me, and I see no reason why there isn't motivation in these molecules; what they do is already complex enough to be considered as something which may have a special purpose. We do have consciousness. There is this something in me which sees and tastes, which experiences life. It's hard to believe that this is something material. To me it feels as if complex enough structures of molecules allow something to plug into this universe, to absorb its information and to feed something into it, like instructions which allow this "me" to interact with it. The same could well be applicable to bacteria or to the most rudimentary lifeforms. Because a bacteria forms part of my body doesn't mean that it can't have its own consciousness; the same may be valid for all this stuff that (maybe) "lives" inside my cells. Lucky me, that I get to stand on its shoulders in order to perceive this universe the way I can and interact with it. "Works" and "replication" isn't wrong, but removing the "wants" and "likes" from this equation doesn't feel right.
- jmoss20 6y ago
  Sure, but the parent's claim was that there is no "want" and "like" in evolution. You might want and like things; perhaps (perhaps) cells and bacteria might want and like things, but evolution certainly does not.
  - benlivengood 6y ago
    The fascinating question is where the line is between action and reaction and our qualitative experience of wanting and liking. Our wants and likes are (probably) physically implemented as a sequence of electrochemical reactions; almost certainly with nothing more than electromagnetism. So which instantiations/states of the electromagnetic field experience feelings and desires? Are they held in the energy potential or in the energy transfer, or both? Is it enough to have a sufficiently complex feedback loop simulating/predicting itself? The answer is likely to be both sort of simple but also profound. Eventually we'll have an a-ha moment studying electrocardiographs or FMRI or individual neural networks and be able to replicate experience in other electromagnetic substrates, and knowing precisely what we are, in a sense, will be pretty neat. Then what will we really know about experience? Is it truly in the electromagnetic field or does it exist in the mathematical relationships that determine the evolution of the fields? That might be a question we never definitely answer from an outside perspective, but is endlessly fascinating to me.

nneonneo 6y ago

I think the main thing you’re looking for is “differentiation”. Unicellular organisms are generally homogenous, as each must be adapted to surviving on its own. Simple multicellular organisms are often just masses of individual cells. But, as you start increasing the number of cells, it becomes evolutionarily advantageous for some of them to take on more specialized roles, rather than have every one be capable of everything. That is differentiation. As these organisms get more complex and develop more and more differentiated cells, mechanisms also evolve to prohibit cells from “regressing” to undifferentiated forms, and to tightly control aspects of cell growth. Unlike unicellular organisms, a functioning multicellular organism needs to have all its cells coordinate in order to survive. Human cells for instance contain a regulation mechanism which detects abnormal behaviour and directs the cell to commit suicide (a key protein in this mechanism, p53, is widely studied in cancer research). So no, your cells don’t get their own “will”. They do what they are genetically fated to do. Those that don’t either die, or wind up as a cancer that chokes the life out of their host.