The Knowledge Construct
What if our very distant descendants survive?
Physical reality began in a simple way. Simple, that is, compared with how it stands from the perspective of one who can understand these words. The universe at the earliest moments we can describe it contained no regular matter (not only was the temperature too hot for solids and liquids, even atoms themselves - or certain subatomic particles like protons and neutrons would have been shaken apart (particles tend to vibrate more as the temperature increases)). According to our best theories the only possible “material” if we can call it that consisted of the most basic particles out of which the rest are made - according to our best, present understanding of physics. Sometimes referred to as the quark-gluon soup (quarks being what protons, for example, are made from) and gluons which are the “force” carriers - things like photons. And there would have been electrons and neutrinos among other things. This state is “simple” by the measure of there being no complexity.
If we want to make more scientifically precise this concept of “simple” we could refer to the early universe as “low entropy”. Normally low entropy is associated with being “ordered” or “uniform” (like a crystal, but not like a cloud) - so for example a clean room or a complex structure like cow or a computer has lower entropy compared to a messy room or the same cow being butchered and turned into mince meat or a computer smashed by a garbage compactor. All this is to say that “entropy” when used as some kind of ruler to compare the “ordered” state of the entire universe when compared to cows or mince meat seems not much use. A cloud is higher entropy because the molecules of water and other gases are all flying this way and that and unorganised. So how then would the super-hot universe also be low entropy? Basically there is no “clumping” in that early universe. It would have been highly uniform (and it is, according to observations of heat left over from that time) - its signature being the smoothness of the “cosmic microwave background”. But clouds in the sky clump and are not uniform as compared with blocks of ice. This is a technical matter beyond the scope of our present explorations.
The deeper point here is that the initial state of the universe contained no complex structure in the form of anything resembling what we see around us today. From stars, through to galaxies, planets, people and their societies.
But was that initial state of all that is, the only possible state given the laws that govern physical reality? That is an open question. But some set of laws must have governed what that initial state was (and thus explain if it was unique or just one among multiple such states) and deeper laws governing that initial state may also have governed what form the more emergent “dynamical” laws (the laws of motion) took. These dynamical laws are the ones normally thought of as the “fundamental laws of physics” like quantum (field) theory and general relativity.
Those laws, the initial conditions and whatever deeper laws govern the form both of those took have allowed for processes leading to a curious kind of complexity. It is a complexity that allowed for the creation (via neo-Darwinian processes - yet another emergent set of laws governing biological entities) of entities able to model in their own minds the rest of physical reality. This is a form of “self similarity” - a deep fact about what a person is. They contain within them a model of all the rest of physical reality (low fidelity, sure, and most of it unknown, but a model nonetheless). And a model that over time comes to more and more closely resemble what is actually out there in physical reality.
This model of physical reality inside the mind of a person allows them to not merely dream of future states, reflect on the past and explain the present but also take control of the very reality that gave rise to them. For whatever the state is now is contingent, which is to say it depends, on how things are and what exists. And what exists depends on what has been created.
A planet is “created” in the sense that planets did not exist at the beginning of the universe or for some long time after the universe began. But they did “arise” - they did “appear” at some point. They were not there, and then they were there - which is at least one sense of what “created” means. But created by what? Just the outworking of physical forces acting on energy and matter that coalesced as the expanding universe cooled. To explain the creation of planets were need refer to nothing more than purely physical processes. And these processes are so well understood there exist excellent mathematical models and hence computer simulations of such purely physical (and okay, chemical and geological) processes leading to the formation of planets. Because, in the grand scheme of things planets are simple structures. Complex compared to the early universe, sure, but compared to a platypus or Prius - simple (there aren’t that many moving parts in a typical planet.) A planet doesn’t even have the appearance of design. The formation of planets is predictable.
A platypus on the other hand does have the appearance of design. But it wasn’t designed even though it was created; not by anything supernatural but also not just by the outworking of the laws of physics either. A platypus was created by the gradual, incremental selection of genes and their replication in a favourable environment. The process of so-called “Neo-Darwinism” of variation and natural selection explains that how species are created. But this creation is of a wholly different kind: it is unpredictable. The evolution of a platypus is not predictable in the way a planet is. Platypus - so it happens - live in Eastern Australia. That is where they evolve. But if one considers what the land that is now Australia was like 500 million years ago (it was part of the supercontinent Gondwanaland to begin with) one would have found no land animals - certainly no vertebrates - yet. And no amount of looking at what was there at that time and extrapolating would have led one to platypus in Australia. Indeed now, on planet Earth, many environments exist where platypus could not merely survive but thrive (in parts of the Americas, or Asia or Africa and more). So why Australia and not elsewhere? These counterfactuals reveal something curious about evolution: we cannot explain why. There is a kind of randomness to the process (that’s the mutation and variation part of evolution) and there is something about the selection process that is quirky as well.
In anycase the evolution of the platypus was not predictable. It was created by a mindless process but a process that produced knowledge: the knowledge of how to survive in a given environment. Eyes, flippers, special fur and so on for all the complex structure that have the appearance of design and yet were not designed. But that appearance of design constitutes knowledge because the function of particular adaptations must instantiate solutions to problems (for example eyes serve a very similar purpose to telescopes: collecting and focussing light). While one is not designed but evolved the other is designed and both instantiate a theory about how to collect and focus light. The eyes of a platypus do this in-explicitly (it need not have first been put into words or explained) while the telescope was designed only after the explanations were made explicit (this piece of glass, a lens, bends and focusses light it appears: so let’s make more but polish them better and make them bigger and combine them with others and so on).
The Prius is an amazing piece of technology. A hybrid car manufactured by Toyota it contains two engines: a gasoline powered combustion engine and a electric motor. Like other hybrids it can switch between the two. As the battery discharges the combustion engine can take up the slack and the kinetic energy used to power a generator that charges the battery. To save on fuel, the electric engine can take over. And if lots of power is needed such as in steep climbs, both engines can be used. So in this vehicle we have thermodynamics in the form of a combustion engine, we have electromagnetism in the form of an electric motor, generator and battery and we have computation in the form of a control unit to switch between or blend the output of the two engines. All of that science and engineering brought together into one piece of technology had to be created by people. And that form of creation likewise is entirely unpredictable. The creation of a Prius is unpredictable. The growth of explanations and technology is inherently unpredictable. No amount of studying laws of physics and initial conditions will allow one to ever look at the early universe and be able to see a Prius “there” in the equations of motion. Among other things, people may have made different choices and they have different problems. That the Prius could have been the solution to a problem no person yet had could not have been predicted ahead of time let alone at a time before there was any sign the universe might one day have contained people.
The future therefore is deeply unpredictable given so much of what happens is governed by evolution by natural selection (wherever biology is found) and by explanations and technology (wherever people are found). But one thing we can assume as true in general is that people, if they persist, will desire solutions to their problems. For there will be no end to problems no matter how powerful people become. They will always wish to move outwards and, if not explore (because the universe might very well turn out to be “more of the same” in terms of stars and planets no matter how far one goes) - at the very least make use of the matter and energy throughout the cosmos to fuel problem solving. There is also “plenty of room at the bottom” as Richard Feynman said. One consequence we can take from this observation is that if we wish to store information in the form of solutions to our problems using matter - there is lots of space in which to store this knowledge at the molecular, atomic or even subatomic scales.
But in the very long run of a dynamic civilisation how might the universe be affected by people and their problem solving? We cannot predict because we cannot know what choices people then will make or what problems they will encounter much less the solutions to those problems they will decide is best. But we can allow out imaginations for a moment to guess what could be.
If we zoom out now from a position a billion years hence we see tendrils many light years long along which information flows stretching from node to node, perhaps galaxy cluster to galaxy cluster where construction is occurring. This construction occurs because some of the information is being selected from those channels enabling matter and energy to be organised into structures that utilize the forces of nature to the advantage of the explanation creators - the people there.
This structure is a grand “knowledge construct” that resembles a 4 dimensional web able to not merely grow but respond to threats, repair itself and instantiate in newer more robust physical substrates the learnings that minds at each node have achieved individually and cooperatively. It is the largest structure in physical reality and by far the most powerful by the measure that nothing else but it can prevent the collapse of star when it directs its attention that way, or harness the energy from the beams of quasars, blazers, gamma ray bursts and supernovae or organise matter into entities able to outlive any biological organism and control the course of biological evolution. It can explain the laws of chemistry, so can manipulate individual atoms to produce a wider variety of chemicals of greater variety, strengths and utility for people than anything nature would ever have stumbled on even if it were granted a quintillion years of pseudo-random shuffling.
It is able to export entropy to black holes and using physics generations beyond either general relativity and quantum field theory, extract energy from those black holes to even slow the expansion of space itself.
Unencumbered by the ballast of bad ideas stifling their own creativity communities of individuals at these nodes are open to criticising any and all explanations in the drive to correct errors in what they understand of the world now. So they make progress faster by making errors (failed attempts) they can correct faster (find solutions).
All of that is from a “God’s eye view” so to speak. But imagine the perspective from inside the universe a billion years from now on a planet where there exists a civilisation that finds itself roughly at a point technologically we find ourselves now. That civilisations points powerful telescopes to the sky to one day see…what?
Their astronomers may report some kind of “ripple” a billion light years away moving through space at once both glowing and yet also distorting the light from galaxies far behind it. Other report computer modelling of their observations revealing a glowing and growing sphere of energy that seems to be swallowing up entire galaxies. At first it is thought to be some kind of strange gravitational anomaly but careful measurements reveal it is not all moving at the same velocity as a gravitational wave would and nor does it have the simply explained “gravitational lensing” effects normally associated with any other naturally occurring objects in space. Parts of it, as it expands, appear to be exceeding the speed of light itself. Soon the attention of that civilisation is captured and almost all powerful telescopes trained on this strange “ripple” in space and a race is on to “zoom in” and focus on what exactly is happening. Is this a rupture in spacetime?
A century or so goes past and telescope technology reaches the point where from a billion light years away detail can be seen in the ripple. The ripple is the boundary between the near vacuum of “empty” intergalactic space and some strange “construct” that is forming behind the leading edge of the ripple. Parts of that construct seem to be reaching out beyond the ripple to warp the very fabric of spacetime by a process the observers do not understand and which physicists say should not be possible unless whatever is there is in control of gravity. The conclusion is inescapable: not only is whatever it is now in control of the fundamental forces and interactions in the universe, it is transforming empty space into something and at a rate which, from our planet’s perspective, is only getting ever faster - exceeding what is supposed to be the fundamental speed limit of the universe. Zooming in it can be seen that the ripple sometimes arrives at a planet only to slow to a stop for a time before washing over it. Philosophers conjecture this is because a more primitive civilisation has been encountered and the technological superior people in control of the ripple and its construct go to the trouble of kindly and carefully preparing the people there for rapid improvements to their circumstance so they too can join the most powerful entity in the universe. The ripple continues to wash over matter in galaxy after galaxy and supercluster after supercluster transforming matter in galaxies and the space between them into a highly organised complex shining, highly organised structure.
What it is like inside that structure, the people on our proverbial planet do not yet know. But they long ago ceased to be afraid of the ripple when it was noticed a part of it was now directed towards them. At first there were naysayers: those who feared being overtaken by a hostile extra terrestrial force. But now the consensus is: these beings are much like benevolent gods making the universe more safe and interesting as they convert the useless into the useful and its mysteries into knowledge.
As time goes on perhaps the universe begins to more resemble the low entropy of its beginnings as the disorganised matter scattered across the cosmos becomes highly organised into delightful structures because people design it to be that way. But it will not be simple as the primeval universe was; it will be complex. And it will grow in complexity not because of the march of “thermodynamic inevitability” or due entirely to the action of physical forces on the basic constituents of matter and energy. It will grow in complexity, and beauty, and value and significance because people have created the knowledge of how it can and should.
The first node of that vast knowledge construct that may come to dominate the entire visible universe might begin here, on Earth. The leading edge of it, seen as a ripple by those far away and in places where it has yet to wash over, began long ago as little more than ripples in the air from people exchanging ideas as sounds. Eventually some of those ideas extended across oceans on our own planet transforming the lands where they were recreated. But one day channels of information will reach out from Earth to other planets and other stars and then other galaxies. We may well be the first: ancestors and parents of those who will inhabit places billons of light years away. And from there? That is entirely unpredictable.
But what might stop us being the leading edge of a wave washing across the universe transforming it from inert and almost featureless into the most vast and significant thing in existence?
That is a topic for the next post.
Credit: The work of David Deutsch is inspiration for this piece. Read “The Beginning of Infinity” and “The Fabric of Reality” for more.
But what about the Prime Directive!!