The Anthropic Engine and the Rematerialization of the Anthroposphere

(This is the 1,000th post to Network Address since its inception in 2010)

Every so often, I find my reservoir of bat cave crazy shit running low, and I run a search for lectures via the Santa Fe Institute. This time, after watching the brain-scrambling presentation by Raissa M. D'Souza from UC Davis via Northwestern, and the resulting unintentional revelation about Dragon King events in chaos theory not being integrated into current climate models, I find this: 

"The Anthropic Engine" by Dr Manfred Laubichler of Arizona State University and Santa Fe Institute in 2024. He talks about how during the pandemic he found himself with much less to do, and decided to come up with a metric to assign to human endeavour, and ends up combining energy and information to tell us that 1975 was a turning point in human history, and he adds a positive prophecy about the coming climate catastrophe, that a socio-global correction is in order. 

My tank is overflowing now, thank you Santa Fe Institute (and Vienna Complexity Hub). But this only introduces the current issue. I go back to find the url for the video. I type the guy's name, the title of the talk, the name of the university, nothing. All different permutations, nothing. If you can't find it, maybe it doesn't exist. It used to be the case that if it was on the internet, you could find it, you just had to tune your search. But then the internet got too big, and the search engines too greedy (THE search engine) and it started to eat itself, and now we can't find anything.

Images: Above is a series of screenshots from three search engines for the term "Anthropic Engine"; none of them - Bing, DuckDuckGo, Google - found the result we were looking for. 

When was the last time you searched for something and got zero results? It's been a long time. And these are the things that excite me more than anything, so you bet I'm paying attention. A few years ago I thought, "Thermodynamic Hallucinations"? Not a single result. So I make the result; I generate a single simple post with that phrase in the title. I now own that phrase, right? Wrong. Weeks later, I type that same phrase, and get nothing. Like I said, the internet (as we knew it) is broken. Note that as of this writing, which was Feb 1 2024, the above phrase was found on bing and duck but not google (and you can see the post here).

So today, after my Anthropic Engine discovery, I'm on a roll, and I pump my perennial cyber-barometer into the engine (search engine not anthropic engine) and to my surprise, after waiting long enough, I now own that phrase also. Most other instances have either died due to link rot, or to google-rot, likely both. And it's a big day here at Network Address, the weblog that started as a dematerialized instantiation of the mass transference device itself, and which is today generating its 1,000th post after 10 years. The rematerialization of the anthroposphere is complete. Start your engines (all of them). 

Images: Above is a series of screenshots from three search engines for the term "Mass Transference Device"

Notes:

1. "Complex Networks with Complex Nodes: Emergent Behaviors and Control". Raissa D'Souza, Professor and Associate Dean for Research, College of Engineering, University of California, Davis. Oct 4 2023. https://nico.northwestern.edu/news-events/events/index.php?eid=603965

2. The Anthropic Engine, Dr Manfred Laubichler, Arizona State University and Santa Fe Institute, 2024. 

Thumbnail image credit: AI Art - Artificial Meat_1 - 2024

Who's the Alien Now

Way back when this weblog first started, and I had just begun to read religiously the scientific research press releases, I came across this paper; but then I lost it, and I've been looking for it ever since:

Researchers use Moore's Law to calculate that life began before Earth existed

Apr 2013, phys.org

https://phys.org/news/2013-04-law-life-began-earth.html

By reverse engineering the rate of acceleration of genetic complexification, the zero-point of origin comes out at 9 billion years, five more than Earth’s existence. 

via the Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida and the National Institute on Aging in Baltimore:  Life Before Earth, arXiv:1304.3381 [physics.gen-ph] arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381

https://arxiv.org/abs/1304.3381

Image credit: AI Art - Close-up of a Zoning Regulations Document - 2024

Since it has been many years since I first came across this article, perhaps some re-recognition is in order.

I now understand that extreme claims require extreme evidence. Sure, I knew the Carl Sagan quote back then too, but only now, after many years of being burned over and over again do I think I understand it. The idea of using Moore's Law to compute the age of all living organisms sounds pretty extreme, and pretty amazing, so let's get critical.  

First of all, Florida (Gulf Specimen Marine Laboratory in Florida, to be specific). I'm sorry for everyone who lives and works there, but simply incuding the word Florida in any (any) piece of information I see automatically lowers the credibility quotient.

Next, I look at a couple other papers by the authors:

Embodied cognitive morphogenesis as a route to intelligent systems. Bradly Alicea, Richard Gordon, Jesse Parent. Interface Focus Royal Society 06 June 2023, V13 I3. DOI:10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067

https://doi.org/10.1098/rsfs.2022.0067

Along with the word "Florida", there are other identifiers of low-credibility content I like to use. One of them is "morphic resonance" and "morphogeneis", terms refering to the evolutionary biological theories of Rupert Sheldrake, which are generally considered to be...low on the credibility scale. 

Comprehending the Semiosis of Evolution, Alexei Sharov, Timo Maran, Morten Tønnessen. Biosemiotics. 2016 Apr; 9(1): 1–6. doi: 10.1007/s12304-016-9262-7

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4988684/

And, not that I have anything personally against "semiotics" (big fan actually), it's when you combine semiotics with evolutionary biology that your mouth gets a warning label in my brain. Not that you're wrong, just that it's going to take a lot more to convince me. 

So let's not get too excited. The idea itself though, it's pretty nuts.

Background: The size of non-redundant functional genome can be an indicator of biological complexity of living organisms. Several positive feedback mechanisms including gene cooperation and duplication with subsequent specialization may result in the exponential growth of biological complexity in macro-evolution.

Results: I propose a hypothesis that biological complexity increased exponentially during evolution. Regression of the logarithm of functional non-redundant genome size versus time of origin in major groups of organisms showed a 7.8-fold increase per 1 billion years, and hence the increase of complexity can be viewed as a clock of macro-evolution. A strong version of the exponential hypothesis is that the rate of complexity increase in early (pre-prokaryotic) evolution of life was at most the same (or even slower) than observed in the evolution of prokaryotes and eukaryotes.

Conclusion: The increase of functional non-redundant genome size in macro-evolution was consistent with the exponential hypothesis. If the strong exponential hypothesis is true, then the origin of life should be dated 10 billion years ago. Thus, the possibility of panspermia as a source of life on earth should be discussed on equal basis with alternative hypotheses of de-novo life origin. Panspermia may be proven if bacteria similar to terrestrial ones are found on other planets or satellites in the solar system.

Note: Genome increase as a clock for the origin and evolution of life. Alexei A Sharov. Biol Direct. 2006 Jun 12;1:17. doi: 10.1186/1745-6150-1-17.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1526419/

On Consumerism, Loneliness, and the True Value of Social Capital

Study reveals more depression in communities where people rarely left home during the COVID-19 pandemic

Sep 2023, phys.org

https://medicalxpress.com/news/2023-09-reveals-depression-communities-people-rarely.html

We try to avoid health-based research on Network Address but this is an interesting finding about the value of socialization and how it's being exploited by private industry to make America both the richest and the loneliest place on the planet:

In surveys conducted between May 2020 and April 2022 that were completed by 192,271 adults living the all 50 US states and the District of Columbia, the average county-level proportion of individuals not leaving home on a daily basis was associated with a greater level of depressive symptoms.

via Massachusetts General Hospital:  Roy H. Perlis et al, Community Mobility and Depressive Symptoms During the COVID-19 Pandemic in the United States, JAMA Network Open (2023). DOI: 10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34945

https://dx.doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2023.34945

Image credit: AI Art - Octopus Pushing a Shopping Cart in a Grocery Store - 2024

Post Script:

Either technology or capitalism or just human society in general really wants, above all else, to remove us from each other, because there is no money in sharing, in fact, they are diametrically opposed - public space, public service, public anything, is always more efficient. Social capital and private capital are at odds, and where one is at play, the other is at risk. Lonely people, with nobody else to help them, must pay for help. Also, it's strange that as the planet explodes with human bodies, older folks in wealthy countries have so few people to take care of them (literally putting the food into their mouths and then taking it back out the other end), that they must pay for it with their entire life savings, some losing 30 years worth of investment returns in 3 years, others losing generations of their own family's wealth in as much time.