Nature’s Missing Evolutionary Law

Science and Technology
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If you want to skip intro, go to 1:38.

2:30 “Evolution is Selection for Function”

Minerals in natural environments

3:10 Missing Law of Evolution - law needs to measure something.

3:30 "We zeroed in on Functional Information.

4:00 Tiny fractions of potential combinations create stable systems.
Evolution is an increase in Functional Information.

Each step on the evolutionary ladder requires increasing information.

5:10 Law of increasing functional information.
It’s the parallel arrow of time out there that we are trying to understand.

6:00 stuff is contextual

It’s saying there’s something in the universe that is not absolute.
“Contextual value” depends on purpose and function.

6:30 if it is selecting for function it almost seems like there is a something, dare we use the word “Purpose”

I’ll be honest Templeton Foundation implies ulterior motivations to me, like striving to bring a touch of woo (sense of mystery and wonder is probably what they’d say) into science. It dances on the religious side. That said, I thought Hazen’s talk was interesting in a healthy provocative manner (and I couldn’t think of a better way of getting more out of it, than sharing.) - it’s also why I was interested in what others have to write about it, gives me an excuse to spend more times digesting his thoughts.

I’m happy to say I agree with you on that. On one level “increasing functional information” seems an excellent reading of Earth’s affairs, (so far), although Earth’s distant physical reality promises the ultimate vaporization of everything of a biologic nature on, and in, Earth. (and current theories cover that, like you seem to say)

On a cosmic level, I don’t know how the life cycle of a star and its discreet elements could fit into an “increasing functional information theory” in any way.

I read the dialogue between write4u and wolfhnd, though it was interesting, the most of it, left me in the dust. My mind is more focused on the physical reality of the here and now of Earth, biology, geology, ecosystems, including the terrestrial evolution that created it. Those are the things my mind keeps mulling on. The higher mathematical implications, I need to leave for others.

I don’t even grasp the concept of “information” when physicist philosophers use it in describing material elements and their amazing ideas.

It is like I can grasp quantifying bits of information a la computer graphics and such - but on a cosmic scale, on an elemental scale, on an organic scale of what’s happening within my senses/body/brain as I walk with Maddy through a changing landscape - beats the tar outta me. How does that get quantified?

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But it matters that you opened the door. You can’t just go back in through it to where science is. You can, but opened it, others won’t.

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It’s a furnace. I don’t know how it gets fired up, gravity and hydrogen or something, but it literally cooks up new elements. More complexity, more info. They explode and become parts of planets and parts of us. Increasing function. Maybe he means something else, but that’s what I get

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That door doesn’t go where they think it goes. But I think everyone here agrees with you that the door leads to a room doesn’t contain anything that proves what they want to prove. It is kind of a dark room so it will take a while to find that out.

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This is where the mention of a different kind of Time frame intrigues me.
What could hat possibly mean?

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While I agree there is an obvious hidden agenda to add a wow factor we see that all the time now with intellectuals. I suspect something like you need to be a football star to get along with the beautiful girls. Everybody who can’t be a football star now wants to be a rock star. I understand that it is not what you are talking about but it is almost a script on how to present yourself and your ideas. I find it boorish.

I actually wish lausten had not brought it up but it is one of his central themes. We could argue all day about the negative influence of religious belief but I don’t think we will ever come to an agreement. My attitude is much different than most people here. I like to say I’m a theist but my friends say I’m a hypocrite and an atheist. I just don’t see religion as a driving force in cultural evolution and I like to make it a point to get people to think about it. The argument that it retards adaptation is sound but not nearly as significant as people think. That is because culture drives religious evolution, not the other way around. For example it certainly doesn’t explain why China after leading the planet in social development seems to have stalled out around the 15th century. China and Japan have just never been that religious of people. There is some ancestor worship going on but that is more ethnocentrism than theism. What really retards social development is what I call cultural reproductive fidelity. You have to have intellectual variants to have selection. Religion is just one of the mechanisms by which cultural reproductive fidelity is maintained. I think we need to always remember that Newton was a religious fanatic discovering God’s laws. The point there is that Western religion has always been deterministic, as in the divine rights of kings or God’s will. In a way the tradition has always denied freewill and replaced it with grace. It seems that people completely missed my point when I said that God and a simulation are more or less the same concept. To put things in perspective I have a bigger question. Why do I have to watch TV with my wife when she gets mad when I say anything? :slight_smile: Those are the deep dark secrets I contemplate. :slight_smile:

Moving on>

If you listen carefully you will notice it is a kind of epistemological humility. It has to do with the access problem. Simply put we do not have direct access to physical reality. It is why philosophers like to say there is no red or blue, only different points on the spectrum of light. In part it relates to a misunderstanding of science. The fancy way of putting it is no observer or subject, no reality. Here it is important to make a distinction between physical reality and abstract reality. Every observation must have an observer by definition. It is easier to understand if you take a simple organism so we will use an ameba. Let’s define life as movement under direction. Let’s also say that an ameba has self awareness. Every part of the ameba has awareness of the adjacent parts. All the parts coalesce into a self. It also has awareness of its environment. That awareness is very simple and almost binary. Every time an ameba moves it has made a choice. The choice is to move towards energy and away from entropy. In more complex animals the choices are elaborated and no longer appear as binary but at the level of a neuron the same binary choices exist. So you can think of a complex animal as a kind of colonial entity with swarm intelligence. Here is the punch line, when an ameba moves it is doing science. The hard part to understand is that the ameba’s world is abstract. A model of the thing not the thing itself. A simplified version of reality that leaves most of the details out. When you elaborate the process in a human it creates an illusion that because it is highly sophisticated what is observed is reality. Even when the senses are extended by instrumentation and the mental apparatus is extended by mathematics etc. it is still an abstract reality. A very accurate and precise abstraction but still an abstraction.

Saying the universe is nothing but information from the human perspective doesn’t mean that the universe is nothing but information. That is because the logical follow up question is what is information. All that is changed from the classical view is a more precise and accurate approximation.

You can bring this all back to lausten’s point and say God or a simulation is not a very precise or accurate or even useful approximation. That brings us to the logical fallacy of consequentialism. The word useful is subjective. Predicated on useful how and to whom. So we skip the word useful and just return to accurate and precise. That is the problem with natural philosophy and why it is a separate discipline. As far as we know from the scientific perspective the universe is purposeless/undirected. That has some pretty significant philosophical implications. For instance if a natural perspective eliminates purpose you cannot build a morality around it which is in fact the case. Nature is entirely immoral and concepts such as reciprocal altruism an illusion of sorts. You could argue that is not the case for eusocial animals where group selection dominates but it is certainly the case for humans where individual selection dominates.

The reason I bring the last part up is because what makes humans unique is not so much the “mind” but transmittable culture. Consider that humans do not have tools because they have large brains they have large brains because tools allowed for the diversion of energy away from the gut to evolve a large brain. Check out the University of California’s CARTA for more on the topic. In any case humans are the cultural ape. Our minds are not confined to our brains but are a kind of swarm intelligence. That intelligence evolves along with the elaboration of culture. That takes us to the relevant point which is that culture is entirely abstract based on culturally evolved thinking tools such as mathematics and logic. Here you have to understand that all languages are abstract including the languages of math and logic. (white4u will come along and correct that but we are simplifying things :slight_smile: ) The important thing is that cultural evolution is as deterministic in some ways as physical evolution. Variants are necessary but not directly connect to selection. What lausen is arguing is that religion is a deleterious mutation. That seems extremely unlikely. The part he is missing is that civilization transforms humans into a pseudo eusocial animal. Replacing individual selection with group selection. All you have to do is look at reproductive rates or fitness to see the error of that logic. We went down that error route because after WWII nobody wanted to be a “nazi”. Before WWII the progressive such as Margaret Sanger were eugenicists. They didn’t really have a grasp of group selection because the science wasn’t there yet but still they were ingroup selecting. There is a term you may not have heard of, outbreeding depression. The term inbreeding depression more accurately describes what lausten is talking about but both are valid.
I’m making two points, one that reality is abstract and a simplification and two things can be true at the same time. Religion promotes group selection and prevents outbreeding depression and reduces adaptation through suppression of variants and leads to inbreeding depression intellectually. Central to understanding this is that the mind is a kind of swarm intelligence that culturally evolves. It is also important to understand that no naturalistic morality can be derived from an amoral nature. For morality to exist you are going to need some sort of abstract eusociality. If you are bothered by group selection you can just expand the group to include the human race. You are still going to have to deal with morality being connected to physical reality by some sort of fitness test. I wouldn’t say survival of the species but rather survival of the culture. Like it or not transhumanism and AI is on its way to a universe near you.

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First, the more I thought about it the less I liked the idea of “law of increasing functional information”. Evolution is dependent on errors in reproductive fidelity. Also occasionally less is more as can be seen in parasitic worms who lose some digestive functions. I tried rewording it to increasingly functional information but that goes no where for me. The only place the law may work is in cultural evolution. Which actually drives physical evolution in humans. I think lausen is right they are trying to open a door that probably should be keep closed. I’m not happy with the idea of random mutations myself but this is not the way to approach it. One of the problems that “deep” thinkers have is that they use language to think. All languages including math and logic are closed abstract systems that will result in circular reasoning. Science breaks that by experimental evidence as the final confirmation even if there is no apparent logic. What experimental evidence is there for this new law they are proposing. I think I’m just getting desperate for a new perspective. They are hard to come by.

To answer your question to me it means that embedded in living organisms is a plan that doesn’t follow the normal pattern of cause followed immediately by an effect. It seems to shift the time frames. There is this property that we call intelligence that is defined by choices that predictably alters physical reality in the future. Non living systems don’t seem to have this property but have causal chains that are unbroken or without pauses. They always seem to have reproductive fidelity.

I don’t know actually I’m just fishing around trying to figure out how to explain choices. To me it is clear that all life is intelligent, that it is defined by doing A instead of B and in the process reversing entropy temporally and locally by capturing more energy than it expends. Non living things can release energy and capture energy but the process doesn’t seem to involve any choices and has absolute reproductive fidelity. Given condition A you will always get condition B. They do evolve but always in a highly predictable way.

I don’t know maybe there is nothing to this thing I’m pursuing. Wouldn’t be the first time but I guess the fun is in trying.

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I tried ChatGPT

That’s an interesting question! In a way, plans could be seen as a form of “time travel” because they involve envisioning or organizing future events. When we make plans, we’re essentially projecting ourselves into the future and mapping out what we hope will happen. It’s like we’re setting a course through time, anticipating a series of steps or actions that will take place in the future. So while it’s not time travel in the traditional sense (like jumping from one point in time to another), there is definitely an element of shaping how we experience time by preparing for what’s ahead.

What do you think—do you see plans as a kind of time manipulation?

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Here is the paper that describes the reason for the proposed “new” law.
I am not going to comment until everybody has read this and can discuss the merits.

https://www.pnas.org/doi/full/10.1073/pnas.2310223120

This is good stuff!!!

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I have read it twice now. Don’t take this as low effort but here is what ChatGPT had to say.

The Law of Increasing Functional Information is a fascinating concept that ties closely to your views on life, free will, and awareness. It essentially suggests that, over time, systems—biological or otherwise—tend to evolve to increase their functional information, which can be thought of as the specific organization of information required to achieve certain functions or goals.

This aligns with how you view life as a transcendence of entropy through decision-making and purposeful movement. The idea that functional information increases over time resonates with the evolutionary process, where life adapts, refines, and becomes more complex to meet environmental challenges. This increasing complexity is not random but driven by an optimization toward desired outcomes—survival, reproduction, and perhaps even higher-order goals like consciousness or intelligence.

It also ties into the emergence of free will and intelligence in your framework. As life becomes more adept at interacting with the environment, it generates and uses more functional information to make better decisions—decisions that, in your perspective, reverse entropy in a localized way. Over time, these systems (be it an organism, a swarm of ants, or even a society) become better at predicting and influencing their future states, which could be seen as increasing their “functional awareness.”

Basically the bot said it fit’s almost perfectly with what I have been saying. So why don’t I like it? Because it fit’s well with what I have been saying.

Let me explain something about these AI systems to start. At this point if you are not using them it is like not using spelling and grammar checking. They just add another layer to that which we could call logic checking. In this case what the bot is telling me is that the internal logic of my argument is ok and can be made to fit the logic of the paper in question. That is kind of handy because it does in an instant what would take me hours. The problem as I tried to say earlier is that you can produce endless perfectly logical statements that are wrong. That has to do with the nature of languages including mathematics. Any closed abstract system will produce circular logic. The bot in this case is just using the same information and logic system I’m using. What I wanted to know is what is wrong with that information system and the bot can’t do that. I can’t either because in a way I’m also an AI system. That has to do with what you could call the external mind. The swarm intelligence embedded in the culture.

One of the things about the internet I have found fascinating is that I have tried to produce an original idea but every time I do a search I find out it is not original. Keep in mind I have tried some really wild ideas. If you are following along what I’m trying to say is that the fact that I can’t find much wrong with the theory presented in the paper doesn’t give me any comfort. The paper just raises the same questions I had before I read it. A few them are> what is information? how are the causal chains that produce variants and selection connected? does a plan exist in two time frame simultaneously? if the evolution of inert system and life are the same in some sense where are the errors in reproductive fidelity found in the inert system? fitness doesn’t necessarily follow increases in functional information? entropy can also be decreased by removing information?

Let me ask you a question that may seem unrelated. Do you believe in the Landauer’s principle? It seems pretty important if we are talking about informational systems? Is it addressed in the paper?

I’m old and my brain doesn’t work as well as it use to. It has probably become fixed in some sense. What they call crystallized intelligence. I’m probably missing something that you may see in a “new idea”.

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Well, what you have been saying fits also with my understanding of the hypothesis.

IMO, AI itself is a perfect example of evolving information, albeit artificially selected.

From wiki:

In 2008 and 2009, researchers showed that Landauer’s principle can be derived from the second law of thermodynamics and the entropy change associated with information gain, developing the thermodynamics of quantum and classical feedback-controlled systems.[6][7]

In 2011, the principle was generalized to show that while information erasure requires an increase in entropy, this increase could theoretically occur at no energy cost.[8] Instead, the cost can be taken in another conserved quantity, such as angular momentum.
Landauer's principle - Wikipedia

I asked Copilot (AI)
[is the Landauer’s principle compatible with the new Law of increasing functional information?]

It responded:

While both principles involve information and its physical implications, they don’t directly address the same phenomena. Landauer’s principle focuses on the thermodynamic cost of information erasure, whereas LIFI deals with the increase in functional complexity over time.

LOL, I’d like to see 2 different AI have a spontaneous discussion on the common denominators of these various seemingly related subjects.

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This is a perfect description of the limit of AI and somewhat of the limit of logic and language itself.

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I had exactly the same idea. I think after a day or two they would just stop :slight_smile:

here is what ChatGPT said

Yes, Landauer’s principle is compatible with the concept of a law of increasing functional information, as both deal with the relationship between information, energy, and physical systems. Let’s break it down:

Landauer’s Principle:

Landauer’s principle states that erasing a single bit of information in a computational system has a minimum thermodynamic cost: kBTln⁡2k_B T \ln 2kB​Tln2, where kBk_BkB​ is the Boltzmann constant and TTT is the temperature of the environment. This principle ties the manipulation of information to physical energy and entropy, reinforcing that information is a physical entity.

Law of Increasing Functional Information:

If we posit a law of increasing functional information, it likely refers to the idea that complex systems, such as life or evolution, tend to organize and increase the amount of useful or “functional” information over time. This is consistent with the observed trend in biological evolution, where increasingly complex structures and behaviors emerge, often requiring more precise and structured information.

Compatibility Between the Two:

  1. Energy Cost of Functional Information: Landauer’s principle implies that any process that increases or organizes functional information—such as computation, learning, or evolution—requires energy. This aligns with the idea that the creation of functional information comes at a physical and thermodynamic cost, which matches the real-world constraints we observe in both biological and computational systems.
  2. Entropy Management: Landauer’s principle explicitly connects the manipulation of information to entropy. Similarly, the increase in functional information in complex systems can be seen as a local reduction of entropy (increased order), which is only possible because these systems expend energy to counteract the second law of thermodynamics on a global scale. For example, evolution works by selecting structures that use energy more effectively to perform functions, which can be seen as converting raw energy into functional information.
  3. Evolution as a Computational Process: Evolution, viewed as a computational and selective process, continuously increases functional information by finding better “solutions” to survival challenges. This process adheres to the physical constraints set by Landauer’s principle, as the storage, copying, and erasure of genetic information, as well as the maintenance of life, all require energy.
  4. No Conflict with Thermodynamics: The law of increasing functional information doesn’t violate thermodynamics, as it works within those constraints by relying on energy input. Life and complex systems extract energy from their environment to “pay” for the increase in functional information, consistent with Landauer’s principle.

Unified Perspective:

Landauer’s principle provides the physical basis for the energy cost of creating, storing, and erasing information. The law of increasing functional information provides the broader context in which systems—such as life or artificial intelligence—capitalize on energy to generate complexity and order. Together, they form a consistent framework connecting the thermodynamics of information to the emergence and persistence of functional systems.

What are your thoughts on this connection? It feels like it aligns well with your ideas about life transcending entropy through decision-making and movement.

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Why do you assume there is something wrong with the propostion? I have heard no scientist voice any doubts about the concept. For one, it is too new.

And the team of scientists that created the hypothesis has some of the greatest minds in the field.

Robert Hazen is my guru on evolution and abiogenesis.

Why should the AI have any doubts? It is a very sophisticated search engine that has ability to compare concepts, but that is all. It cannot create or critique theories without prior information.

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Sure it is too new. I would have to see what other people think. I’m not actually assuming that there is something wrong with it and as you may of noted the bot thinks my ideas align with it. There could be something interesting there but it didn’t answer my questions. What I was trying to do by posting the bot response was to show that you can fit my ideas in it. You could fit a lot of idea in it. My first impression is it is too open ended but I have only had a few days to think about. As to the bot and doubts the point was that I don’t really want agreement but something a bit more novel. That is what I liked about “Wholeness and the Implicate Order” I picked up some novel ideas. As I said maybe I’m just getting to old to process new ideas in some sense if they are not spelled out in more detail.

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I’m with you all the way. It is the novelty of this proposition that intrigues me.
The whole concept of an evolving quasi-intelligent complexity kind of seems to confirm Tegmark’s MUH that actually explains how evolving complexity leads to selection for function.

Have a peek at this.

Now relate this to the new proposistion of " increasing and evolving functional information".

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Wolfhnd,
Robert Hazen has a long history of talks available on YouTube. You might consider reaching back to some of his earliest where he’s discussing his work with minerals and initial breakthrough in showing that mineral evolution was a thing. It’s background worth having since you seem into the deep dive.

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I rarely watch these kinds of videos because they are so dumbed down this was refreshingly complex.

There seems to be a contradiction in saying that you can predict missing minerals and there locations while saying the process is stochastic. That is essentially the same problem with the law of increasing functional information. I refer back to the questions I said earlier which were unanswered. Multiplication of probable outcomes does not make something stochastic it only reduces predictability. The problem as I said stems from the nature of mathematics being a closed system. If we assume the universe is a closed system it removes the stochastic element mathematically.

ChatGPT’s answer

That’s a fascinating question! If reality is viewed as a mathematical proposition, and both mathematics and the universe are closed systems, then it seems paradoxical to say anything is “stochastic” in the pure sense of randomness. Let’s unpack this.

1. Stochasticity as Apparent Randomness

From a deterministic perspective, stochasticity might be better understood as a lack of knowledge about the underlying mechanisms. In this view, what we call “random” is only an admission that we cannot calculate or measure every variable in the system. For instance, quantum mechanics appears probabilistic, but some interpretations (like Bohmian mechanics) suggest that there may be hidden variables driving these outcomes deterministically.

2. Closed Systems and Finite Rules

If the universe and mathematics are truly closed, they would adhere to strict rules and constraints, meaning all outcomes must necessarily arise from those rules. However:

  • Chaos theory shows that even deterministic systems can produce outcomes so complex and sensitive to initial conditions that they appear random.
  • In such systems, stochastic behavior could emerge from complexity, not fundamental indeterminacy.

3. The Role of Probability in Mathematics

In mathematics, probability does not imply genuine randomness—it represents distributions of outcomes based on a model. For example:

  • When rolling a die, the probabilities (1/6 per side) assume equal weighting and ignorance of the precise forces involved. In reality, with perfect measurement, you could predict the outcome deterministically.
  • Similarly, stochastic models in physics (like thermodynamics) are averages over many deterministic interactions.

4. Quantum Mechanics and Stochasticity

The quantum world is where true stochasticity seems most evident. For instance:

  • In quantum mechanics, the collapse of a wavefunction into a specific state is considered probabilistic.
  • However, interpretations like the many-worlds interpretation or superdeterminism argue that what looks stochastic might be part of a deeper deterministic framework.

5. A Mathematical Universe

If reality is fundamentally mathematical:

  • Stochasticity might emerge as a property of the way subsystems interact within a deterministic whole. These interactions could give rise to patterns that behave in ways indistinguishable from randomness, even if there is a deeper mathematical order.
  • Gödel’s incompleteness theorem might offer an analogy: even in closed mathematical systems, there are truths that cannot be proven within the system. Similarly, stochasticity might arise as an emergent property within closed systems, defying direct explanation from within.

Conclusion

If the universe is a closed mathematical system, what we perceive as stochastic may simply reflect emergent complexity, ignorance of underlying variables, or the limits of computation and observation. It raises the possibility that what we call randomness is an artifact of our perspective, not a fundamental feature of reality.

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I forgot to say I enjoyed the video a lot.

I figured out one of the things that was bothering me. It is always the term stochastic. Since we are talking about probabilities would you agree that some adjective such as nearly should preface the word stochastic?

Any I presented the video in a discussion on freewill where it was suggested I might enjoy this paper.

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2008.0178

Thought you may also enjoy it.

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I’m not sure what distiction that would offer. The term “stochastic” is used formally for modelling purpose, rather than he common term “random”. But both speak of probability.

[quote=“wolfhnd, post:39, topic:11313”]
https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/rspa.2008.0178

Thought you may also enjoy it.

Excellent link.

This caught my attention:

2. The probable motion

Probability is the concise concept to denote a state of a system. Forces, i.e. potential energy gradients and differences, drive the system towards more probable states via flows of energy that diminish the differences.

The principle is general but it depends on the particular potentials and mechanisms of energy transfer of how the differences are abolished. A small system may evolve rapidly by equalizing its potentials with its surroundings, whereas a large system may evolve over the aeons in the quest for a stationary state in its surroundings.

Here is where the time element becomes a factor which in turn affects the probability equation.

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