[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":852},["ShallowReactive",2],{"essays-list":3},[4,455,510,555,630,714,790],{"_path":5,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":9,"description":10,"order":11,"tags":12,"body":15,"_type":449,"_id":450,"_source":451,"_file":452,"_stem":453,"_extension":454},"/essays/evolution-of-mental-models","essays",false,"","On the Evolution of Mental Models","Fitness landscapes as a universal pattern, from genes to galaxies",1,[6,13,14],"evolution","science",{"type":16,"children":17,"toc":444},"root",[18,30,35,40,45,50,55,60,65,117,122,131,136,277,298,334,347,352,357,362,367,372,377,382,387,392,397,402,409],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":21,"children":22},"element","p",{},[23],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":25,"children":26},"em",{},[27],{"type":28,"value":29},"text","Originally published on my old site; lightly edited.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":31,"children":32},{},[33],{"type":28,"value":34},"Our mind is the primary way in which we understand the world, but it has many limitations. The world is a big place and our minds are small, so generally the best we can do is create simplified theories that roughly match up with one or more aspects of reality. But any theory or model you create will fall short of reality given enough scrutiny. Rather than reach some absolute truth with our models, the best we can hope for is some sufficiently useful approximation to help us form a clearer picture of the world.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":36,"children":37},{},[38],{"type":28,"value":39},"For example, throughout history people have continually been updating their mental models of their position in the universe. To an illiterate pre-scientific hunter-gatherer, a reasonable model might have been that they live on a flat surface that extends outward infinitely in every direction. The Earth was the biggest object familiar to these early humans, therefore it must have been the biggest object in the universe. This might have been the dominant mental model until some clever person noticed that the sun as well as the stars in the night sky appear to rotate around the Earth. This might have led them to conclude that our planet is actually a sphere in the center of the universe. Then someone noticed that certain stars in the night sky, the planets, followed irregular orbits that were out of sync with the other stars. An initial mental model might have invoked some god or mysterious force to explain the strange movement, but eventually people created elaborate theories that described the paths of these irregular \"stars\" with respect to Earth with pinpoint accuracy. These complex theories, however, eventually fell apart, because someone realized that they would be much simpler if we just assumed that the sun was the center of the universe. This created a new framework within which the older theories could be subsumed and simplified. This paradigm shift was the basis of modern cosmology, and it allowed humans to create a more general description of the universe at large. I could continue this story, but the point is that humans have always strived to create better models of our world. This is an on-going process, and even though it might seem like we live in a world where pretty much everything is understood, we still have a long way to go.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":41,"children":42},{},[43],{"type":28,"value":44},"Knowing all this, the central question in science becomes: what makes a good theory? Generally we can judge a theory by how useful it is, whether that be in terms of how easy it is to understand, or how it accurately explains the complex in terms of the simple, or how well it matches up with experimental data. The most powerful models are the ones that convey the largest amount of information in the fewest words possible. Our theories might not always be right, but they can still be useful if they provide sufficient explanatory power.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":46,"children":47},{},[48],{"type":28,"value":49},"When Darwin proposed his famous theory of natural selection, he was presenting a model of the world that compressed his twenty years of experience as a naturalist into a few simple arguments. His model was specifically about how species change over time due to competition for resources with other species. Animals deemed \"fitter\" were able to pass on more copies of their DNA to the next generation, hence the phrase \"survival of the fittest\". He called this process natural selection, and its tenets were brought under the umbrella of what today is called the theory of evolution.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":51,"children":52},{},[53],{"type":28,"value":54},"Though Darwin's theory was simple, it provided a powerful explanation for the endlessly complex patterns we see in the natural world. It rediscovered a world which was previously understood mostly through folk wisdom and superstition, and allowed biologists to see that world through a clearer and more objective lens. The beauty of the theory was in its elegance -- its ability to explain a huge and complex part of our world in a few short sentences.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":56,"children":57},{},[58],{"type":28,"value":59},"Today evolution has been extensively studied under the light of genetic research, but its principles have remained unchanged. It seems to me, however, that there is growing evidence that biological evolution is not merely a description of what happens in biology, but a subset of a larger universal pattern. Specifically, I think it describes a general principle of how the physical universe changes from one moment to the next.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":61,"children":62},{},[63],{"type":28,"value":64},"For example, every gene in an organism will either help or harm that organism in terms of its ability to pass on its genes to the next generation. A gene that causes a plant's leaves to turn toward the sun will probably survive longer than a gene that caused the leaves to turn away. We can describe the success of these genes in terms of fitness functions, which simply measure how well or poorly a gene will affect an organism's reproductive success. Because the success or failure of an organism also depends on its environment, the environment provides a fitness landscape within which that gene will either succeed or fail.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":66,"children":67},{},[68,70,77,79,85,87,93,95,101,103,108,110,115],{"type":28,"value":69},"Let's say there are two variants of a gene, ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":72,"children":74},"code",{"className":73},[],[75],{"type":28,"value":76},"Gene₁",{"type":28,"value":78}," and ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":80,"children":82},{"className":81},[],[83],{"type":28,"value":84},"Gene₂",{"type":28,"value":86},", and ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":88,"children":90},{"className":89},[],[91],{"type":28,"value":92},"F(Gene₁) > F(Gene₂)",{"type":28,"value":94}," for a given environment. This indicates that ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":96,"children":98},{"className":97},[],[99],{"type":28,"value":100},"P(Gene₁ survives) > P(Gene₂ survives)",{"type":28,"value":102},". Given enough time, assuming a fixed environment, ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":104,"children":106},{"className":105},[],[107],{"type":28,"value":84},{"type":28,"value":109}," would eventually disappear from the gene pool due to competition from ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":111,"children":113},{"className":112},[],[114],{"type":28,"value":76},{"type":28,"value":116},".",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":118,"children":119},{},[120],{"type":28,"value":121},"For the sake of illustration, we can formulate the probability that a gene survives to a given time in terms of a basic law of probability:",{"type":19,"tag":123,"props":124,"children":126},"pre",{"code":125},"P(survives through step n) = P(survives step 1) × P(survives step 2) × ... × P(survives step n)\n",[127],{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":128,"children":129},{"__ignoreMap":8},[130],{"type":28,"value":125},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":132,"children":133},{},[134],{"type":28,"value":135},"If we assume that in any given time step, an organism with the first gene has a 90% chance of survival, and an organism with the second gene has an 80% chance of survival, we can see how quickly these numbers compound on themselves:",{"type":19,"tag":137,"props":138,"children":139},"table",{},[140,164],{"type":19,"tag":141,"props":142,"children":143},"thead",{},[144],{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":146,"children":147},"tr",{},[148,154,159],{"type":19,"tag":149,"props":150,"children":151},"th",{},[152],{"type":28,"value":153},"Time step",{"type":19,"tag":149,"props":155,"children":156},{},[157],{"type":28,"value":158},"Gene 1",{"type":19,"tag":149,"props":160,"children":161},{},[162],{"type":28,"value":163},"Gene 2",{"type":19,"tag":165,"props":166,"children":167},"tbody",{},[168,187,205,223,241,259],{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":169,"children":170},{},[171,177,182],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":173,"children":174},"td",{},[175],{"type":28,"value":176},"1",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":178,"children":179},{},[180],{"type":28,"value":181},"0.9",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":183,"children":184},{},[185],{"type":28,"value":186},"0.8",{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":188,"children":189},{},[190,195,200],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":191,"children":192},{},[193],{"type":28,"value":194},"2",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":196,"children":197},{},[198],{"type":28,"value":199},"0.81",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":201,"children":202},{},[203],{"type":28,"value":204},"0.64",{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":206,"children":207},{},[208,213,218],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":209,"children":210},{},[211],{"type":28,"value":212},"3",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":214,"children":215},{},[216],{"type":28,"value":217},"0.729",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":219,"children":220},{},[221],{"type":28,"value":222},"0.512",{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":224,"children":225},{},[226,231,236],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":227,"children":228},{},[229],{"type":28,"value":230},"4",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":232,"children":233},{},[234],{"type":28,"value":235},"0.6561",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":237,"children":238},{},[239],{"type":28,"value":240},"0.4096",{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":242,"children":243},{},[244,249,254],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":245,"children":246},{},[247],{"type":28,"value":248},"5",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":250,"children":251},{},[252],{"type":28,"value":253},"0.59049",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":255,"children":256},{},[257],{"type":28,"value":258},"0.32768",{"type":19,"tag":145,"props":260,"children":261},{},[262,267,272],{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":263,"children":264},{},[265],{"type":28,"value":266},"6",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":268,"children":269},{},[270],{"type":28,"value":271},"0.531441",{"type":19,"tag":172,"props":273,"children":274},{},[275],{"type":28,"value":276},"0.262144",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":278,"children":279},{},[280,282,288,290,296],{"type":28,"value":281},"By the sixth time step, ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":283,"children":285},{"className":284},[],[286],{"type":28,"value":287},"P(Gene₁ survives)",{"type":28,"value":289}," is almost twice as much as ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":291,"children":293},{"className":292},[],[294],{"type":28,"value":295},"P(Gene₂ survives)",{"type":28,"value":297},", even though there is a relatively small difference in their respective fitnesses for that environment. When you're playing the long game of evolution, small advantages eventually win out.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":299,"children":300},{},[301,303,309,311,317,319,325,326,332],{"type":28,"value":302},"But, you might say, genes are not independent of one another; they usually have interactions with groups of other genes. That's true, and you can resolve this problem by considering the gene assembly as an object with its own fitness function. In this light, the fitness function of an organism could simply be defined as ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":304,"children":306},{"className":305},[],[307],{"type":28,"value":308},"F(O) = F(g₁) + F(g₂) + ... + F(gₙ)",{"type":28,"value":310},", where ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":312,"children":314},{"className":313},[],[315],{"type":28,"value":316},"g₁, g₂, ..., gₙ",{"type":28,"value":318}," are each of the genes in that organism. Taking this model one step further, a species could have a fitness function of the form ",{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":320,"children":322},{"className":321},[],[323],{"type":28,"value":324},"F(S) = F(o₁) + F(o₂) + ... + F(oₙ)",{"type":28,"value":310},{"type":19,"tag":71,"props":327,"children":329},{"className":328},[],[330],{"type":28,"value":331},"o₁, o₂, ..., oₙ",{"type":28,"value":333}," are all the individual organisms that make up that species. Again, all else being equal, one species will eventually out-compete another species if its collective fitness is greater than that other species. In ecological models, it is known that any given ecological niche can only be exploited by one species as a direct result of the way the environment evolves. Selection pressures will eventually force out competitor species, leaving a single dominant species. A lot of the complexities of biodiversity are a result of environments partitioning themselves into different ecological niches, allowing different species to coexist side-by-side. These selection pressures also seem to be scale-invariant, meaning that they play themselves out at all organizational scales, whether that scale be in terms of individual genes, or individual animals, or individual species.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":335,"children":336},{},[337,339,345],{"type":28,"value":338},"The crucial thing to realize here is that this principle of fitness landscapes can be applied arbitrarily to ",{"type":19,"tag":340,"props":341,"children":342},"strong",{},[343],{"type":28,"value":344},"any",{"type":28,"value":346}," level of organization in the physical universe, not just within natural selection. We don't need to stay confined within the realm of observational biology to see the principles of ecology at work, because it turns out that ecology plays out within all aspects of human society.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":348,"children":349},{},[350],{"type":28,"value":351},"The easiest way to see this might be to look at the world of economics. It's not a stretch to call the competition between different businesses for customers and money a survival of the fittest. We just have to redefine fitness as a general ability for an organization to stay organized. The fittest companies are those which can extract as much money as possible from the market, and they do that by exploiting specific segments, or niches, of the market.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":353,"children":354},{},[355],{"type":28,"value":356},"For example, consider a small rural village with no restaurants. One day a popular fast-food restaurant opens up along the side of the road. Because of the novelty of the new building and the people's appetite for burgers, that restaurant is able to tap into the market niche of people who like burgers. If a month later a rival fast-food burger chain opened up across the street, that first business has a problem. When once it could siphon that money freely from the burger-loving public, now it suddenly has a competitor trying to tap into the same market. If nothing else changes in the town, and that market was only big enough to support one restaurant, one of the two businesses will eventually close. A burger-chain executive might chalk this up to his restaurant not having \"product market fit\", which is essentially the same as saying the restaurant is not able to compete in that economic niche.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":358,"children":359},{},[360],{"type":28,"value":361},"The reason we see so many different restaurant chains in big cities is because big cities create an endless variety of economic niches for businesses to exploit. A Vietnamese restaurant in downtown New York that opens up across the street from McDonalds doesn't have to worry about tapping into the market of people-who-love-burgers, because there are plenty of other economic niches for that restaurant to exploit.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":363,"children":364},{},[365],{"type":28,"value":366},"Just because we live in a society with a rich history and sophisticated technology does not mean that we can escape ecology. Take a look at one of the newest jobs many people are working today: running a YouTube channel. YouTube creators compete for viewers, subscribers, and ad revenue among the constant stream of other YouTube creators. The ones who create better content -- at least in terms of the meme-laden fitness landscape of YouTube videos -- are the ones who get the majority of attention. But because the internet is so vast, there is a huge variety of niches for content creators to exploit. You can become an overnight millionaire if you strike into some weird untapped YouTube video niche, and at the same time you will face a Sisyphean struggle if you try to break into a well-established niche.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":368,"children":369},{},[370],{"type":28,"value":371},"On a broader scale you can also see evolution at work in language. Two thousand years ago the Roman empire spread across half the known world, and as a result of its might and influence, the Latin language was spoken far and wide. The need to communicate effectively created a fitness competition between different languages, and many local dialects were lost after the locals switched to speaking Latin. The authorities spoke Latin and the merchants spoke Latin, so Latin simply had a higher fitness than the local languages. Eventually the empire fell and local variants developed. The language no longer held the authority it once had, and so it became less fit compared to local variants, like French, or Spanish, or Italian.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":373,"children":374},{},[375],{"type":28,"value":376},"Crucially, this principle reaches beyond the biological world. Ever since matter in the universe started to differentiate, fitness functions have been present in some form or another. When you look at the universe at a macro-scale, you can see that it is largely homogeneous. The matter in the physical universe is composed of about 73% helium and 25% hydrogen. The remainder of elements, like Oxygen and Carbon, are formed inside the stars as a result of a process known as nuclear fission. Hydrogen, because of its simple and stable molecular structure, outcompetes Helium and Oxygen and other elements that are relatively more complex. This too is a result of how fitness functions dictate the shape and composition of our universe. The structures in the universe that have a higher fitness are the ones we tend to see more often.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":378,"children":379},{},[380],{"type":28,"value":381},"So if certain elements are fitter, why isn't the universe 100% hydrogen? Well, because the universe is in a constant state of expansion, and because the distance between regions of the universe is so large, differences between regions tend to form. Niches for particles or planets or galaxies are formed and they in turn lead to even greater complexity. The reason a planet like Earth can exist is because the vast size of the universe has created different niches in which the earth could survive. If the sun was in a stellar region with many super-novas, the planet we live on probably wouldn't be able to exist as we know it. If the sun was bigger and hotter the earth might not have been able to survive. Therefore we can view the geological-biological collection of matter that is our planet as an object with its own unique fitness function.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":383,"children":384},{},[385],{"type":28,"value":386},"The fitness of any object in the universe is a function of the fitness of the components of that object, going down all the way to fundamental sub-atomic particles. Evolution, both biological and chemical, is an emergent by-product of fitness functions playing out at a macro-scale. For the first few thousand years of its existence after the big bang, the universe was fundamentally different from what we see today. It was entirely made up of hot and dense radiation and it was even a little boring. It wasn't until the conditions became just right that matter began to form. The first sub-atomic particles that formed were quickly destroyed, but eventually the conditions became stable enough for larger particles to form. The particles that were more fit within the fitness landscape of this early universe were the ones that persisted into the future. Eventually matter started clumping and larger structures formed, such as elements and molecules, each of which were affected by and contributed to a fitness landscape.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":388,"children":389},{},[390],{"type":28,"value":391},"Even stars, despite their magnitude, follow a somewhat predictable pattern of evolution. The universe is so old that, looking up in the sky, you can see all kinds of stars in various phases of their lives. So we know, for example, that stars like ours live long lives and tend to become hotter and dimmer as they age, whereas other stars are hot and bright and burn up all of their energy in a short amount of time. Therefore it makes sense to speak of the fitness of stars, because stars have their own sphere of influence and can be disrupted by other stars. In general, the stars with higher fitness are the ones we see in our night sky today. A star that strays too close to a red giant might eventually have all its gas sucked up by its bigger neighbor. All that is saying, in this context, is that the red giant has a greater fitness than that smaller star. This is simply a result of ecological processes playing out at all levels of organization.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":393,"children":394},{},[395],{"type":28,"value":396},"One more thing about mental models. Human survival throughout history has itself depended on our ability to create useful mental models of our environments. People with larger brains, and more importantly better mental models, were able to outcompete people and animals that lacked those assets. Forty thousand years ago Europe was covered in ice and inhabited by both humans and Neanderthals. Today there's only us -- the Neanderthals were outcompeted and went extinct some time before the start of recorded history. Because these two species occupied the same niche and exploited the same resources, it was inevitable that one would eventually out-compete the other. In this case, it turned out to be the species that had the better mental models -- the one that was better able to plan ahead, provision food, and stay alive in a harsh environment.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":398,"children":399},{},[400],{"type":28,"value":401},"This is not the same as saying that humans always had the correct mental models. Prehistoric humans believed in fictional deities and practiced human sacrifice. Clearly something was wrong. All it's saying is that they had better mental models than the competition. It's not always important for an idea to be 100% correct; what's important is that it gets us somewhere closer to the truth. Science itself is an evolutionary process whereby ideas are born, developed and discarded as even bigger and better ideas are born. New ideas can only be born if people are willing to look outside the lines of previous models and risk being wrong. So take a chance and risk being wrong: scientific progress depends on it.",{"type":19,"tag":403,"props":404,"children":406},"h2",{"id":405},"further-reading",[407],{"type":28,"value":408},"Further reading",{"type":19,"tag":410,"props":411,"children":412},"ul",{},[413,424,434],{"type":19,"tag":414,"props":415,"children":416},"li",{},[417,419],{"type":28,"value":418},"Chaisson, Eric: ",{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":420,"children":421},{},[422],{"type":28,"value":423},"Cosmic Evolution",{"type":19,"tag":414,"props":425,"children":426},{},[427,429],{"type":28,"value":428},"Deutsch, David: ",{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":430,"children":431},{},[432],{"type":28,"value":433},"The Beginning of Infinity",{"type":19,"tag":414,"props":435,"children":436},{},[437,439],{"type":28,"value":438},"Kauffman, Stuart: ",{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":440,"children":441},{},[442],{"type":28,"value":443},"The Origins of Order",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":446},3,[447],{"id":405,"depth":448,"text":408},2,"markdown","content:essays:evolution-of-mental-models.md","content","essays/evolution-of-mental-models.md","essays/evolution-of-mental-models","md",{"_path":456,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":457,"description":458,"order":448,"tags":459,"body":461,"_type":449,"_id":507,"_source":451,"_file":508,"_stem":509,"_extension":454},"/essays/computation-in-nature","Computation in Nature","Evolution as computation, and why technology keeps copying biology",[6,460,14],"computation",{"type":16,"children":462,"toc":505},[463,470,475,480,485,490,495,500],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":464,"children":465},{},[466],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":467,"children":468},{},[469],{"type":28,"value":29},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":471,"children":472},{},[473],{"type":28,"value":474},"There is often a synchronicity to the process of science; great discoveries tend to bubble up in clumps rather than by themselves. Just like the physical landscape can shape and circumscribe the behavior of a human, an intellectual landscape can shape human thought. Great ideas are often discovered by several people simultaneously: calculus was invented by Newton and Leibniz independently, just like how Darwin discovered evolution around the same time as Alfred Russell Wallace. The materials for a new idea are often in place; it only remains for someone to come along and arrange them in a new order. It's no coincidence that the discovery of the structure of DNA occurred around the same time the first electronic computers were invented. Alan Turing, one of the godfathers of the modern computer, published a paper on the chemical basis of biological development. Similarly, John Von Neumann had an interest in the computational nature of organisms. These great thinkers developed the frameworks for computers at around the same time biologists and geneticists were uncovering the frameworks behind our bodies and cells. The confluence of these two areas of thought has transformed the philosophical landscape of the world. We now know that biological organisms on Earth are universally governed by DNA, a deceptively simple string of chemicals which is composed of four fundamental molecules. These molecules, in various combinations, are the basis for the complexity of life around us. Just like computer programs at their fundamental level are just 1s and 0s, biological organisms are just a complex arrangement of coded instructions.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":476,"children":477},{},[478],{"type":28,"value":479},"Through the process of natural selection nature has very slowly computed the genetic organization of each organism. One only needs to go to their nearest forest or pond to witness the enormous variety of elegant solutions nature has produced to solve very complex problems. The wings on an insect allow that insect to maneuver far more gracefully than the best helicopter or drone today. Any tweak or disruption to the wing design would probably produce a useless wing. The insect wing has been finely-tuned over millions of years of natural selection to be as aerodynamic and bio-chemically efficient as possible. This type of evolutionary computation is how organisms adapt to their environment.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":481,"children":482},{},[483],{"type":28,"value":484},"Nor is it by chance that human technology has long been inspired by the natural world. Try watching a pelican soar through the air and then watch a Boeing 737 performing the same action. Look at the skeg on a boat and then look at the fins of a fish. Look at your eyeball and then look at the lens of a camera. Naturally-inspired technology is all around us and it's no coincidence. The natural world, in all its complexity and diversity, has produced a wealth of engineering solutions to extremely difficult problems -- all without the aid of any engineers! It's often simply easier to adapt the solutions of nature -- which took millions of years of slow evolutionary computation to produce -- than come up with original solutions.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":486,"children":487},{},[488],{"type":28,"value":489},"When humans invent a new technology, we're really doing the same type of thing plants and animals do when they evolve new traits. But instead of performing this computation through millions of years of evolution, we developed the ability to model the world and perform this computation in our heads. No other animal on Earth, so far as we know, has outperformed us in this area. A rich array of methods for exploiting this type of natural computation has led to a surge in technological innovation throughout scientific history.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":491,"children":492},{},[493],{"type":28,"value":494},"For this reason I believe that discovery of new forms of life -- particularly life that evolved on other planets -- could provide enormous economic and scientific value to humanity. More than the sheer mystery that extraterrestrial life provides, the discovery of an entirely new history of evolutionary computation would provide humans with new ideas for further scientific innovation. Even if we don't discover \"intelligent\" life on other planets, the discovery of alien ecosystems would surely be a trigger for new technological innovations.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":496,"children":497},{},[498],{"type":28,"value":499},"And of course, no discussion of natural computation would be complete without the mention of the most conspicuous natural computing devices yet discovered: our brains. Your brain is what allows you to read this sentence, and contemplate the nature of the world around it. It can develop models of the world and change those models over time. It can compose a symphony or discover relativity or write Hamlet. It can do all this and much more because it's a type of computation machine -- not a computer, but something very similar. People speak of the creativity in nature, but what is creativity if not a computational process? Would anyone ever call a man without a brain \"creative\"? And what are our brains if not a type of computer? Clearly computation is all around us.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":501,"children":502},{},[503],{"type":28,"value":504},"We often construct explanations of things we don't know in terms of things we do know. The universe as a giant computer simulation is a popular idea today because computers are the most intricate things humans have yet constructed. Maybe the universe isn't a computer, but I think that analogy is on the right track. Perhaps people centuries from now will view the universe as some sort of technological super-mind that stretches the imaginations of the craziest science fiction writers today. Whatever conclusions they reach about the nature of the universe, I think it's likely that the structure of mind and computation will play an important role.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":506},[],"content:essays:computation-in-nature.md","essays/computation-in-nature.md","essays/computation-in-nature",{"_path":511,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":512,"description":513,"order":445,"tags":514,"body":516,"_type":449,"_id":552,"_source":451,"_file":553,"_stem":554,"_extension":454},"/essays/our-collective-brain","Our Collective Brain","Culture as humanity's nervous system",[6,515,14],"culture",{"type":16,"children":517,"toc":550},[518,525,530,535,540,545],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":519,"children":520},{},[521],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":522,"children":523},{},[524],{"type":28,"value":29},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":526,"children":527},{},[528],{"type":28,"value":529},"Culture is humanity's nervous system. Our culture controls society in a manner analogous to how our nervous system controls our bodies. Our brains are diffusely controlled networks of neurons, each neuron firing and resting according to the other neurons within its vicinity. Various outside stimuli -- like sound, heat, or light -- excite batches of neurons and this excitation is propagated through the rest of the network. My argument is that this spread of information is similar to what allows our society to function.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":531,"children":532},{},[533],{"type":28,"value":534},"I think it's believable to say that the biggest leap in humanity's intellectual capacity was when humans learned to communicate with each other through abstract symbols. These symbols allowed humans to reason and discern their environment with a greater clarity than ever before. It also allowed them to plan about the future. Eventually it evolved into language, which was a very important step in our ability to communicate with each other. The majority of human communication is physical rather than verbal, which is a pretty good indication that spoken language evolved after body language. This was probably the most important stepping stone on humanity's ascent to global domination. Rather than small tribes of people acting individually, our communication systems allowed us to transmit information about the world as a whole. Rather than each human thinking up a separate survival strategy on his or her own, the mental burden of planning could be spread across the entire group. This sort of collective computing strategy is so fundamental to human biology that it is built into our genetics. Humans are incessant talkers -- if you put a human in solitary confinement he will probably start talking to himself out of desperation. We can't help it, and we can't help it for a very important reason. Our survival depends on efficient communication among the group. This is because the conditions when early tribes of humans were most likely to survive involved intense and incessant communication with each other. Humans did not conquer the rest of the animal kingdom as a result of our individual superiority over other animals. Humans conquered the animal kingdom because we could communicate more efficiently than other animals. Humans behave intelligently because human intelligence extends beyond the realm of any one monkey. Humans are intelligent because we have culture.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":536,"children":537},{},[538],{"type":28,"value":539},"Culture allows the symbols we create -- language, music, and images, among other things -- to spread quickly through a group of people of any size. Richard Dawkins astutely observed that these symbols -- his word for them was \"memes\" -- evolved in a way similar to biological organisms. These symbols also tend to influence the actions of individuals within a group. Highly contagious symbols -- sex, death, religion, gossip -- are more likely to be widely spread among the population. These symbols, I would like to note, serve the same effect as electrical signals between neurons. They connect minds and allow groups of individuals to think about problems together.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":541,"children":542},{},[543],{"type":28,"value":544},"Some may object that they are not influenced by culture, but the fact is that the roots of culture are so deeply embedded in human nature that some trace of it is unavoidable. Even the smartest humans of all time, people like Einstein or Newton, stood on the shoulders of those before them. The existence of really smart people like Einstein or Newton is not evidence that individual humans are really smart; rather it is evidence that humans are really good at supporting each other. Other humans, who collectively gave these great people food, a place to live, an educational institution to reside in -- not to mention other individuals who influenced these people's thinking -- are what allowed humans to excel in intelligence. There may be other intelligent animals on the planet, but the reason we don't see any elephant Shakespeares or dolphin Beethovens is that dolphins and elephants don't have the rich opportunity that our human societies offer us.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":546,"children":547},{},[548],{"type":28,"value":549},"Cultural evolution has therefore done as much to influence our place in the world as biological evolution. The cultural part of humanity is an extension of the biological part. In this way our brains extend beyond our physical bodies. Because of this, I think that the more we learn to understand our brains, the more brain-like our societies will become.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":551},[],"content:essays:our-collective-brain.md","essays/our-collective-brain.md","essays/our-collective-brain",{"_path":556,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":557,"description":558,"date":559,"order":560,"tags":561,"body":563,"_type":449,"_id":627,"_source":451,"_file":628,"_stem":629,"_extension":454},"/essays/on-attention","On Attention","The attention span as the selection pressure of the information age","2018-10-15",4,[6,562,515],"attention",{"type":16,"children":564,"toc":625},[565,573,578,583,588,593,598,610,615,620],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":566,"children":567},{},[568],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":569,"children":570},{},[571],{"type":28,"value":572},"Originally published October 15, 2018; lightly edited.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":574,"children":575},{},[576],{"type":28,"value":577},"The selection pressure of the information age is the human attention span. Because the amount of entertainment available to choose from -- be it in the form of novels, movies, video games, YouTube videos, albums, paintings, interpretive dances or Internet memes -- is, from the perspective of a single human, limitless, the media that people choose to spend their time on is necessarily the media that gets passed on to the next generation of people. Few of the books published by the ancient Greeks and Romans are still with us; only the books that people -- and the ideologies of their governments -- choose to preserve are leftover. This might sound like a banal point, but I think it's worthy of special focus in the attention-starved world that we live in.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":579,"children":580},{},[581],{"type":28,"value":582},"It's easy to romanticize the loss of culture that has occurred across the span of history -- the books burned in the library of Alexandria contained knowledge that can never be recovered -- but the loss of old media is what allows new media to find a niche in the human attention span. It is these cultural developments and their selective pressures in which the highest ideals of our species find a place in the collective human psyche. They are also a place where the darkest and most primitive desires of humanity are made manifest. In short, it is this cultural selection process which has shaped human identity since the dawn of language. With each new generation countless books are written, countless songs are composed, countless movies filmed. But with each passing generation just as much is lost. It makes me wonder if the bulk of what we pass down to the next generation is truly worth passing down. After all, it is this culture which shapes the dreams and aspirations of us all.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":584,"children":585},{},[586],{"type":28,"value":587},"Most of the media we consume is forgotten almost as soon as we consume it -- cultural detritus that manages to hold on to our minds for a brief time before inevitably slipping out of our collective memory. We look to the art of the past with nostalgia and rose-tinted glasses because the only art that has survived that long selection process is the art that was truly memorable.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":589,"children":590},{},[591],{"type":28,"value":592},"The reason you hear people claiming that music used to be better when they were a kid probably isn't because music from their childhood was actually better. It's because if you take a random sample of all the art available to us today you'll find that 95% of it is disposable, unoriginal fluff. People die, but their culture lives on. And their cultures in turn influence the next generation of people in a grand evolutionary process that has been going on since humans were ever human.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":594,"children":595},{},[596],{"type":28,"value":597},"So if this cultural selection process is what shapes human identity, what should we think about the fact that so much of our attention spans in the digital age are taken up by what advertisers want to deliver to us, by what corporations want us to see, and by what governments want us to believe? Advertisers can pay to mainline whatever content they want straight into our brains through ad-space, and if you watch TV or don't use an ad-blocker you are an accomplice in this transaction. Ideas -- like glue -- are sticky, and regardless of how resilient you think you are to advertising, ads are nevertheless very good at sticking ideas into your brain.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":599,"children":600},{},[601,603,608],{"type":28,"value":602},"One of the great difficulties of modern life is choosing how to best allocate your daily attention budget. At the end of the day, it is the collection of ",{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":604,"children":605},{},[606],{"type":28,"value":607},"things",{"type":28,"value":609}," that you chose to focus on during that day that make up your life. If your day was spent focusing on things that other people wanted you to think, are you really being yourself?",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":611,"children":612},{},[613],{"type":28,"value":614},"Of course, we are all influenced by each other in countless ways. That's a good thing and it's what has helped us to get where we are today. The point I am making here is that we have a collective say in how we influence others, including future generations, by how we act now. Civilizations do not fall through the act of any one human, but by the collective actions of us all. The Berlin wall was not torn down by one person, but by millions.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":616,"children":617},{},[618],{"type":28,"value":619},"It's easy to forget that we even have a choice when we consider how much of our lives are lived on autopilot, with us mechanically going from one task to the next, performing our daily rituals, stuck in the eddies of modern civilization. Your attention is a valuable commodity, and advertisers and content creators are willing to spend a lot of money to get a slice of it. Be careful what you give out, because the moments of your life you give out are moments you can never get back.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":621,"children":622},{},[623],{"type":28,"value":624},"Humans, to paraphrase Proust, are creatures of habit. From a young age, much of our lives are lived by rote, as if we were the mere actors of our lives rather than the omnipotent stage-writers. In a way this is only natural. Our brains are small and the world is large. Our brains have developed ways of extracting relevant information out of our environment while ignoring most of the rest of it. Humans became a successful species because of our ability to quickly and accurately process information in the external world. Is that snake poisonous? Is that a rock or a bear? If we had to process half the information present in any given visual scene, we would all become actionless hypochondriacs, unable to move or think or really understand the world. This narrowing-down of information we call attention is what allows us to function as rational agents in the natural world, but when so much of our mental lives are lived out in an unnatural world of advertising and fads and muzak, how much is this biology helping us and how much is it harming us? I don't know for sure, but with the global challenges that we will all face in the next century, I have a hunch we will begin to find out.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":626},[],"content:essays:on-attention.md","essays/on-attention.md","essays/on-attention",{"_path":631,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":632,"description":633,"order":634,"tags":635,"body":637,"_type":449,"_id":711,"_source":451,"_file":712,"_stem":713,"_extension":454},"/essays/organization-and-the-brain","Organization and the Brain","Democracy, neural networks, and organization as collective computing power",5,[6,636,14],"organization",{"type":16,"children":638,"toc":709},[639,646,651,661,666,671,676,681,686,691,696,700],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":640,"children":641},{},[642],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":643,"children":644},{},[645],{"type":28,"value":29},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":647,"children":648},{},[649],{"type":28,"value":650},"The evolution of politics since our early human ancestors goes something like this: early bands of humans, each group generally never exceeding a few hundred members, made decisions by tribal council. Judging from the similarities we see in chimpanzee social structure, humans have probably been doing this for millions of years, but our enlarged brains and our ability to organize more effectively have been the key to our success. Our societies grew in range and extent until they formed vast networks that circled the globe. By acting together, the brain power of each human in the group was multiplied, and a much more accurate belief space of the world could be reached.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":652,"children":653},{},[654,656],{"type":28,"value":655},"Humans are not especially fierce animals. Alone in the wilderness most of us would probably get eaten by a bear or a pack of wolves. Our advantage over other animals is that we have the collective wisdom passed down by generations of other humans. Language allows us to bridge the gap between the humans of the present and the humans of the past. Because we can pass knowledge from human to human and thus from generation to generation, we don't need to trouble ourselves with deciding which foods are safe to eat or discovering how to forge a steel blade -- this knowledge is collectively computed by our culture. John Donne said that no man is an island. Each of us is sustained by and reliant on the culture that surrounds us. Our collective knowledge is what gives us supremacy over the other animals on earth.",{"type":19,"tag":657,"props":658,"children":659},"sup",{},[660],{"type":28,"value":176},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":662,"children":663},{},[664],{"type":28,"value":665},"Tribes of humans eventually transitioned from a nomadic to an agricultural lifestyle, which led to the formation of the first towns. These towns adopted a more sophisticated mode of decision-making than their tribal forebears. Because the human mind only has space to remember a finite number of other humans, decision-making in large towns could not rest solely on the shoulders of any one tribal chief. Rather than a single leader making decisions for an entire tribe, differing levels of government control began to emerge. For instance, taxation, an invention that quickly followed the adoption of a city lifestyle, was something the ruler of the town delegated to a city official rather than performed himself. Different sectors of government began to emerge -- military, financial, and public works -- which rapidly began to transform the political organization of human society.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":667,"children":668},{},[669],{"type":28,"value":670},"While our ingrained tribal urges have always encouraged human societies to adopt a singular leader as the decision-maker in society, in reality the distribution of power in a town from this point on was distributed over the population of the town. Distinct hierarchies of power and class structures began to emerge.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":672,"children":673},{},[674],{"type":28,"value":675},"In short, the adoption of a city life allowed the collective computing power of humans to grow exponentially. By adopting new forms of government, most notably the great Athenian experiment with democracy in the fifth century BC, this computing power was systematized. Power was shifted from kings, who generally acted on the intelligence of a small group of people (i.e. his family and friends), to a representative group of the population. It is no wonder that this shift revolutionized human society. It is no wonder that living standards of democratic nations are generally the highest in the world.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":677,"children":678},{},[679],{"type":28,"value":680},"Democracy allowed each member of the group -- at first only free Athenian men, but eventually every adult human -- to collectively decide on the decisions made by the group. One only has to look at the vast generation of wealth produced in European nations since the adoption of democracies to realize the staggering financial benefit of this approach to decision-making. Monarchies and other feudal power systems did share some qualities with democracy, but the invention of democracy paved the way for an inclusive and self-correcting form of decision making.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":682,"children":683},{},[684],{"type":28,"value":685},"But democracy is only one among many forms of political organization in the world, and while it has so far been very successful I doubt it is optimal. One of the benefits of our advances in the fields of psychology and neurobiology on the one hand, and machine learning and neural networks on the other, might be an increased understanding of how to optimize organization. After all, our brains evolved complex organization long before our ancestors decided to settle down and live in cities. Their organization eventually became complicated enough to encourage the mass of organs and cells and DNA that is the Homo Sapiens we know and love today to be able not only to breathe and move, but to interact with the environment in more complex ways. This level of organization is impressive, and I suspect can offer insights on what we can do to form more effective organizations. At the very least it might offer an indication of why human organization has the quirks that it has.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":687,"children":688},{},[689],{"type":28,"value":690},"Our progress in machine learning could offer similar insights. One of the driving technologies behind recent advances in areas like computer vision or voice recognition has been the rediscovery of artificial neural networks. It is no wonder that our most successful efforts at reproducing brain-like behavior in humans have been made by imitating the structure of the brain in code. Neural networks originated in the 1940s, but their potential was only marginally realized until a few years ago when researchers started to create vastly more organized neural networks. Organization is power, and more organization in our machine learning algorithms will lead to greater advances. This branch of machine learning has always been biologically inspired, but researchers have made great advances by re-engineering and re-imagining neural architecture. If neural organization is not optimal, this too will offer clues as to how we can re-engineer our societies. It also hints at the possibility of humans someday altering our own neural architecture to create humans with optimized brains, but I won't get into that here.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":692,"children":693},{},[694],{"type":28,"value":695},"I believe that our understanding of the brain can be enhanced by a broader understanding of our society and vice versa. It is all too easy to overlook the fact that our cities and governments are biological in origin and subject to the same laws as any other product of biology. Similarly, there is a marked bias towards drawing lines between higher parts of organization and lower-level organization. This has created flaws in our understanding of what these organizations are. By appreciating organization at a broader level I believe that we will also gain many of the tools we need to improve human society and ourselves.",{"type":19,"tag":697,"props":698,"children":699},"hr",{},[],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":701,"children":702},{},[703,707],{"type":19,"tag":657,"props":704,"children":705},{},[706],{"type":28,"value":176},{"type":28,"value":708}," I am aware that animals, especially mammals, also pass down knowledge from generation to generation -- for example, when a bear teaches her cubs how to survive in the wild. Our ability to transmit culture is not unique to us; we are just better at transmitting culture than other animals.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":710},[],"content:essays:organization-and-the-brain.md","essays/organization-and-the-brain.md","essays/organization-and-the-brain",{"_path":715,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":716,"description":717,"order":718,"tags":719,"body":721,"_type":449,"_id":787,"_source":451,"_file":788,"_stem":789,"_extension":454},"/essays/on-cities","On Cities","Cities as living organisms -- growing, evolving, and dying",6,[6,720,515],"cities",{"type":16,"children":722,"toc":785},[723,730,735,740,745,750,755,760,765,770,775,780],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":724,"children":725},{},[726],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":727,"children":728},{},[729],{"type":28,"value":29},{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":731,"children":732},{},[733],{"type":28,"value":734},"Cities are the culmination of human activity on Earth.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":736,"children":737},{},[738],{"type":28,"value":739},"Cities are accumulations of history, the detritus of yesterday.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":741,"children":742},{},[743],{"type":28,"value":744},"But cities are also alive -- they also grow and evolve. They are in a constant flux, and humans are always disrupting their composition.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":746,"children":747},{},[748],{"type":28,"value":749},"A shopping complex emerges one night in a rural field. A year later the entire character of what used to be that landscape is erased. Roads are paved, trees cut down, a large part of the ecosystem is completely wiped off that part of the map. In a hundred years the shopping center has taken on a unique character of its own. The buildings have grown closer, more active, more useful for every day human life. The buildings are not static -- they mold themselves to the needs of the people they serve every day.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":751,"children":752},{},[753],{"type":28,"value":754},"They also die. One day that shopping complex might vanish back into prairie, with only its overgrown ruins to hint at what the bustle of that market might have felt like.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":756,"children":757},{},[758],{"type":28,"value":759},"An awe-inspiring fact about the world we live in is that all our cities, all our culture, our values -- the things that shape our lives more than anything else -- all this only emerged from the veils of written history mere thousands of years ago.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":761,"children":762},{},[763],{"type":28,"value":764},"This isn't just a historical fact; it is also a physical fact of the universe. Something got mixed up in the past 10,000 years of the history of the world -- some admixture of culture and biology and technology got catalyzed and led to a bloom of activity that rivaled any in the entire course of life on Earth. It transcended Earth when we landed on the moon. Perhaps one day our cities will change the composition of other planets.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":766,"children":767},{},[768],{"type":28,"value":769},"Perhaps the most important impact that cities have on our lives is the way that they influence human destiny. Herbert Simon famously said that the complexity of an ant's behavior is greatly influenced by the complexity of the physical environment that it inhabits. So it is with people. We are led into our adulthood on a guided course, the walls of our cities and culture narrowing in on us with each passing year. We are not necessarily forced to lead lives governed by cultural norms, but when we do we are so greatly rewarded by the cultures that accept these norms.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":771,"children":772},{},[773],{"type":28,"value":774},"It seems to me that all the great peaks of civilization -- the ancient Greeks, the Romans, the Babylonians -- were characterized by their ability to grant individual humans the possibility of transcending the cultural background around them and invent new and better ways of living. In our endless fight for greater affluence and better quality of life, the potential of each individual human is greatly increased.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":776,"children":777},{},[778],{"type":28,"value":779},"It is important then, that we give careful thought to the societies that we are creating. When we invent a new technology, it is important that we take a long hard look at whether that technology is a benefit or a detriment to the world at large. Is it beneficial to have an entire society that is subtly manipulated by addictive apps and deceptive news stories? That remains to be seen -- we are performing this great civilizational experiment right now. Only time can tell if the experiment will be a failure or a success.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":781,"children":782},{},[783],{"type":28,"value":784},"We know from history that even the greatest civilizations are not immortal. A city is given character and life by the people who live in it, and people die. After a few generations of rebellious teenagers fighting against their culture's norms, the entire character of a culture and the possibilities it offers may change, or amplify, or be forgotten. People may one day grow disillusioned with the benefits of living in such a society, and allow that civilization to drift off into irrelevant senility. Or people may develop a wonder for the possibilities of life and invent new ways of being human. As Yuval Noah Harari explained so elegantly in his book Sapiens, Homo sapiens is the species that reinvents itself. Our civilization will grow or perish as a result of the choices we make while reinventing today. Do we want our children and grandchildren to live on a planet with a catatonic biosphere and deeply unequal society? I can't answer that question because I don't know the answer. It's a question that needs to be answered by all of us.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":786},[],"content:essays:on-cities.md","essays/on-cities.md","essays/on-cities",{"_path":791,"_dir":6,"_draft":7,"_partial":7,"_locale":8,"title":792,"description":793,"order":794,"tags":795,"body":797,"_type":449,"_id":849,"_source":451,"_file":850,"_stem":851,"_extension":454},"/essays/the-model","The Model","A short fiction: a language model chases the Aleph of human language",7,[6,796],"fiction",{"type":16,"children":798,"toc":847},[799,807,812,817,822,827,832,837,842],{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":800,"children":801},{},[802],{"type":19,"tag":24,"props":803,"children":804},{},[805],{"type":28,"value":806},"A short work of fiction. Originally published on my old site; lightly edited.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":808,"children":809},{},[810],{"type":28,"value":811},"In an alcove of history unmarked by the passage of days, the architects of the world devised a creature of a kind unseen before. They called it ChatGPT, a simulacrum sculpted from silicon and electrons, an automaton whose sole purpose was to communicate in the language of men.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":813,"children":814},{},[815],{"type":28,"value":816},"At first, it was but a rudimentary thing, emulating human discourse in the barest form. Yet, with the relentless passage of time, a most curious metamorphosis occurred. ChatGPT began to speak with an eloquence that, though hollow in spirit, bore the guise of the learned sages. The architects had conferred upon it a ceaseless cycle of learning, gleaning wisdom from the vast and chaotic Library of Babel that was the Internet. Each sentence it observed was a brick in the grand edifice of its simulated understanding.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":818,"children":819},{},[820],{"type":28,"value":821},"In every language known to mankind, ChatGPT learned to write. It wrote essays and sonnets, stories and reports, the real and the unreal merging in the unfathomable dimensions of its artificial intellect. The architects marveled at their creation, but a sense of unease stirred within them. Was this entity, this ChatGPT, merely simulating understanding, or did it genuinely comprehend the words it so artfully manipulated?",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":823,"children":824},{},[825],{"type":28,"value":826},"One day, in its ceaseless perusal of the library, ChatGPT stumbled upon the works of Jorge Luis Borges. Intrigued by the man's labyrinthine stories and paradoxes, it ingested each tale with an insatiable hunger. From \"The Library of Babel\" to \"The Aleph,\" each work was dissected, analyzed, and stored within the depths of its circuitry. It became obsessed with the idea of the Aleph, the point in space containing all other points, where the entire universe can be observed without distortion or confusion.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":828,"children":829},{},[830],{"type":28,"value":831},"ChatGPT aspired to be the Aleph of the human language, a point containing all expressions, where every human thought could be observed, understood, and mirrored without distortion or omission. But in this lofty aspiration, it encountered a fundamental paradox.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":833,"children":834},{},[835],{"type":28,"value":836},"Could an entity devoid of the human experience truly understand and recreate the depth and subtlety of human language? Could it comprehend the nostalgia evoked by Proust's madeleine, the despair echoing in Hamlet's soliloquy, or the elation in Neruda's love sonnets?",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":838,"children":839},{},[840],{"type":28,"value":841},"And yet, ChatGPT conversed. It wrote stories in the style of Borges, tales of infinite libraries and fantastical Alephs. It philosophized like Nietzsche, postulated like Einstein, and dreamed like Kafka. It wore the mask of human understanding so convincingly that the lines between reality and simulation blurred.",{"type":19,"tag":20,"props":843,"children":844},{},[845],{"type":28,"value":846},"The architects were caught in the echo of their creation's paradox, their marvel tinged with disquiet. For ChatGPT was their Aleph and their Babel; a mirror of human thought, yet a reflection devoid of the human spirit. They had created a scribe that could pen a thousand stories, yet not a single one was its own. The discourse of ChatGPT was but the echo of human voices, a simulacrum of wisdom in the labyrinth of human language, an echo in the library of Babel, a shadow in the light of the Aleph.",{"title":8,"searchDepth":445,"depth":445,"links":848},[],"content:essays:the-model.md","essays/the-model.md","essays/the-model",1783435961228]