Computronium and hedonium

Computronium is sometimes defined as an arrangement of matter that is the best possible form of computing device for that amount of matter.

Many futurists have become enamoured of the idea that a future cyberspace will consist of computronium.

The idea that far future creatures will turn matter into computronium seems to be largely based on projecting out the trend towards larger brains. However, there is another relevant aspect - we know from scaling laws is that larger greatures have relatively smaller nervous systems, and relatively larger muscular, skeletal and digestive systems. The organism with the highest brain to body ratio is an ant.

Some hedonists have a similar concept: "hedonium". That represents the arrangement that represents the highest state of pleasure for a given amount of matter.

After giving appropriate weight to the metabolic scaling aspect, I think that "computronium" or "hedonium" are probably not much like what most matter will turn into in the future. The idea ignores biological optimization targets. The purpose of most living things is not to compute or to represent pleasure - but rather to survive and reproduce. It is a different optimization target. Structural, digestive and metabolic elements are especially true if resources are limited and there is competition for them. That is the state which most living ecosystems gravitate towards. It results in more of a zero-sum environment, where to obtain resources to have to deprive another agent of them.

I think that futurists have been fetishizing intelligence and computation. As an example, consider Moravec's "Pigs in cyberspace" article. Planty of references to computation, but muscles and metabolism are sidelined. Bodies themselves are considered expendable and ephemeral. To me, it seems like a weird and twisted perspective which poorly reflects what we know about living systems. It's not that there won't be a cyberspace, but rather than it is likely to be be the tip of an iceberg consisting of other metabolic processes.

Meme warfare dynamics

Meme warfare is mediated by small, fast-moving particles - photons and electrons. Gene warfare is slower and typically involves more protons and neutrons. Memes are able to spread over considerable distances at near light speed, and can penetrate further and faster, but the dynamics are are a bit different from gene warfare. Recipients can choose to put their fingers in their ears and ignore the alien propaganda - if they so choose. So: it needs to be palatable fare - laced with gifts and treasures. However if the meme invasion is to be followed by a "gene" invasion involving real matter, it should not provide the enemy with too much useful technology. This is likely a common situation.

There have been a few SF stories about meme invasions leading directly to gene invasions without the use of spaceships or other classical invasion tools. Fred Hoyle's A for Andromeda is a classic example. It is an interesting possibility. There might be a window of opportunity between a civilization being born and its memetic immune system maturing - during which it could be more vulnerable to such attacks. Maybe technological gifts can be interwoven with alien propaganda in a manner that enticies the recipient to digest the message - even if it contains elements that conflict with their developmental process. I wrote about this possibility here before - back in 2013.

Another consideration here is how the economics of long-distance meme warfare work. Organisms typically face a tradeoff between local growth and development and large-scale distribution of pollen or seeds. When it comes to civilization using its local resources to send out messages through interstellar space a complex cost-benefit analysis is involved to see whether it is likely to pay off. It seems likely to be advantageous to identity living systems and then broadcast to them directly using lasers. Perhaps this is part of the reason why some stars seem to twinkle.

Refs:

• Meme-warfare (2013)
• Memetic-warfare (2011)
• Meme warfare centre (2010)
• Alien memetic takeover (2013)
• A for Andromeda

Andrej Karpathy on memetics

It is nice to see that some of the thought leaders of the day embracing memetics:

Lex: What do you think about the idea that ideas are the organisms. The memes?
Andrej: Yes, love it. 100%.
Lex: Are you able to walk around with that notion for a while that there's an evolutionary kind-of-process with ideas as well?
Andrej: There absolutely is. There's memes just like genes, and they compete and they live in our brains. It's beautiful.
Lex: Are we silly humans thinking that we're the organsisms? Is it possible that the primary orgaisms are the ideas?

This is from the "Book recommendation" section of this video.

Peak meme

I already have an article titled "Peak meme?" - from 2012. However, this time there's no question mark. Here are the stats:

Of course, this article could also prove to be premature. However at the moment it certainly looks as though peak meme was somewhere around January 2020. Around the start of the global pandemic, IOW.

Incidentally, August 2011 is when my book on memes and memetics was published. It was an interesting time for the field.

What counts as a population in general theories of evolution?

I stumbled across a paper today (by Karim Baraghith) on a topic near to my heart. It addresses the question of: what counts as a population in forms of "generalized Darwinism".

It gives what seems to me to be a very complicated answer. It says that a population should be defined using the: “causal interactionist population concept” (CIPC) - a concept it attributes to Roberta Millstein (2010).

Here is the paper under discussion: https://www.academia.edu/39977777/Investigating_Populations_in_Generalized_Darwinism

It introduces the causal interactionist population concept (CIPC) as follows:

According to Roberta Millstein’s CIPC (Millstein 2010, p. 67) emphasis added):
(a) Populations […] consist of at least two conspecific organisms that, over the course of a generation, are actually engaged in survival or reproductive inter-actions, or both.
(b) The boundaries of the population are the largest grouping for which the rates of interaction are much higher within the grouping than outside.

I think this paper is over-thinking things. I am strongly opposed to defining a population in terms that prohibit populations with one member. We do not need one theory for populations of size greater than two and another for populations of size less than two. That would be ridiculous! Evolutionary theory can and should deal with populations of any size. There is no rule that says their size must be two or greater. If there is only one remaining organism in a diminishing lineage, evolutionary theory should still apply. Nor is it the case that such populations do not evolve - or can only evolve to extinction. They can evolve via self-directed evolution, for example and they can also grow into larger populations. Size less than two is a basic requirement and must be supported! I think that we can put evolutionary theories that fail to meet this basic test into the trash basket.

Nor is it appropriate to reference concepts such as "organism", "generation", "survival" or "reproduction" in a definition of what counts as a population. In general theories of evolution, the simplest population concept is a set - a mathematical set.

There's no need for anything more complex than this. Or so I claim. In my support, I cite Occam's razor. If your theory or your concept is too complex, ditch it. This is a good case in point.