Selection Dynamics as an Origin of Reason (Causes of “Information”)

Marcus Abundis1 1Org. Behavior (GFTP), Graduate School of Business, Stanford University, USA

55mrcs@gmail.com (http://about.me/mabundis)

Abstract This paper explores evolutionary habits of diverse agents to name informational (adaptive) roles. It details three classic natural selection traits, three classic adaptations, and joins the two views to model selection dynamics. Thus, selection dynamics present a natural (core) informatics, or a “thinking like nature,” as diverse adaptive behaviors with evolving informational traits (9 pages; 3,800 words). Keywords: natural selection, evolution, emergence, reason, psychology, adaptive behavior, creativity

1 Introduction This essay covers the behavioral dynamics of active agents (life) as driven by natural selection. It

posits an ab initio unfolding of an agent’s adaptive: reason, logic, or informational wherewithal. This paper also extends a Shannon-based (material) view of information, developed earlier (Abundis, 2015). It adds meaningful adaptive/behavioral aspects to Shannon’s (1949) account of signal entropy.

To begin: earth’s entropic unfolding (environs) presents a stage upon which all life arises. Thus, earthly shifts must be mapped before a notion of agency or living informatics can be inferred. Earthly entropy vis-à-vis active agents is shown in Figure 1: Selection Vectors surround an existential niche (agency), separated by a Bounded Affordance line. A three-part constraint presents figurative right-ward, left-ward, and down-ward selection forces, where any mix or amount of force can act upon any agent at any time (happenstance). Evolutionary biology labels this existential constraint: purifying, divisive, and directional selection (Figure 2). Natural selection thus has three “logical profiles” that agents must abide, or they become extinct. Further, “survival versus extinction” sets a core meaning for all agents that persist within those shifting environs.

Figure 1: A Constrained-Contested Space. Three figurative Selection Vectors contra three agent responses.

Figure 2: Classic Selection Results. Interactions between selection forces and agents (in Figure 1) have three

typical outcomes. Each image presents a distinct “logical profile” as de facto styles of agent reason, behavior, or reflexive logic.

If Figure 2 showed the full range of entropic possibilities for all agents, and if agents behaved passively vis-à-vis those roles, the map would be complete. But agents have a range of passive and active (adaptive) possibilities. This passive-active “entropic response” is shown by three contesting dynamics: fight, flight, and freeze (Figure 1). This implies a bounded-yet-ambiguous solution space for all agents (quasi freewill). It shows various entropic threats and opportunities, set via purifying, divisive, and directional selection contra fight, flight, or freeze responses – jointly labeled Selection Dynamics. This view names all likely environment-agent (phenotypic, empiric) possibilities, beyond innate genomic adaptation. It marks an initial behavioral/adaptive map, but with missing details.

2 Model Development To map that missing detail I start with an agent’s entropic response (fight, flight, or freeze) to

earthly entropy, and argue that “agent logic” naturally arises as part of three-fold selection. An agent’s reflexive survival thus marks a range of adjacent material possibilities (Kaufmann, 2000) as natural reason. This evolving behavioral (survival logic) continuum is developed here as a “first order ➔ fifth order” unfolding of an agent’s adaptive informational wherewithal, or core consciousness.

2.1 1D Survival – first order logic To initiate this continuum, resilient agents typify first order (1D) logic. Here, minimal habits imply

a range of passive-active possibilities. For example, Figure 3 shows that if a surge of selection force arises (large gray arrows), agents that are frozen (✷ – relatively inactive or rigid) succumb to entropic events and expire. But passive agents (relatively pliant or flexible) may “wash” into a useful niche, arriving bruised but intact (preserved space). Alternately, an active flight instinct drives agents to reflexively flee adverse environs. Lastly, agents that freeze within a preserved space (co-incident flight) linger passively. This means that a fight behavior is not needed for minimal survival.

Figure 3: Minimal (1D) Survival. Agent freeze (✷) and flight (➔) responses to directional selection. Large

gray arrows show a surge of selection force inciting an extinction event (stripped zone). Only agents in the “preserved space” survive. The freeze and flight roles shown here apply to all logical profiles (purifying, divisive, and directional).

Thus, three minimal habits: co-incident, passive, and active flight prime agent survival and initiate 1D niche formation (preserved space). Further, as earthly entropy enlarges, those minimal habits grow via earth’s now-more-diverse environs, adding natural exaptive latency to those habits. This means that later passive-active-latent parsing (1D logic) of those enumerating environs (niche proliferation) defines ab initio agent logic, and drives a divergence in species (re Darwin’s Dilemma [Mayr, 1982]).

This minimal (1D) entropic agency is set by the genomics that fix phenotypic traits. Genomics do not imply reason-able behavior, as no “reason-able memories” exist to drive agent adaptations. DNA alone meets the need for working memory. Agent adaptivity is sustained only by genomic: activation, recombination, and mutation. Inversely, reason-able behavior requires a record of phenomenal events that are “reasoned with.” With no phenomenal memory-as-content, recombinant informational roles (adaptive/generative entropic behavior) are unlikely. Still, DNA’s adaptivity works well for limited entropic events, but acutely shifting environs require a more-robust entropic response.

2.2 2D Polemics – the emergence of phenomenology Fight (↑) as polemic logic meets that need for more-robust entropic/adaptive roles (Figure 4). To

fight earthly entropy marks a type of entropic mimicry in agents (contra action) that affords a de novo differentiation of environs (phenomenological parsing). Primitive polemics first arise as strong flight: an accidental (directional) act contra selection force(s). But as those contra-actions become more directed and refined, they imply the emergence of subject-object (S-O) modeling. Polemic logic thus marks an opportunistic probing of environs, beyond the earlier mechanical 1D parsing of environs, in a generative behavioral/entropic role (adaptive novelty).

Figure 4: 1D – 2D Fight (↑). From Figure 3, accidental strong 1D flights signal weak 2D fights. Directional

shifts mark a departure from passive-active flight (➔ toward ↑). The solid line thus shows a growing “preserved space”as opportunistic niche expansion. Again, these directional shifts apply to all logical (selection) profiles.

This dia-metric sentience first arises as “action potentials,” where molecular ion exchanges (1D genomics) stir cellular dynamics. As new action potential (ion) types arise – due to earthly entropy – a cell’s role must also shift to remain viable. Thus, specialized: neurons, sensory neurons, nerve nets, nerve cords, and cephalization also evolve via 1D genomics. But these new neural orders also produce

2D sentience and crude signal entropy (Shannon, 1948). The later retention of those neural signals then furnishes a base for an adaptive recombinant memory or S-O reasoning (3D).

Fighting allows agents to pro-actively: 1) fortify their place within a niche, contra other agents, and, 2) probe adjacent spaces for weakness in selection force. Ineffective fighting (opposing superior foes or inert objects) implies a loss of energy. But if no immediate gain is likely that interaction may still yield exaptation (model latency), augmenting natural latency. Further, S-O modeling affords more timely behavioral adaptations, and at a lower material cost, compared to DNA’s inter-generational (material) adaptation.

S-O phenomenon thus mark a subtly creative role. First, genomics drive an agent’s sense of willful survival (1D intent). Next, agents become pro-active if the “sensing of gainful acts” is selected for (2D opportunism). For example, 1D flight becomes opportunely directed: strong flight habits signal weak fighting as a new intentional 2D behavior (Figure 4). Further, 1D mechanics of turning toward-or-away from events, as a leaf turns toward light, also mark subtle creative (aesthetic) 2D behaviors. 1D and 2D likenesses thus stress that Selection Dynamics present a continuum of progressive (creative, adaptive) shifts, rather than marking discrete empiric roles.

Dia-metric parsing and probing of environs later grows such that predator-prey (P-P) roles arise. This incites an evolutionary arms race – Van Valen’s (1973) Red Queen’s Race, “where it takes all the running you can do, just to keep in the same place.” This race further enumerates sense-able and action-able possibilities for agents (evolution). Growing polemic psychology then incites ever-more abstract (S-O, P-P) references as phenomenal roles continue to grow. Lastly, polemic references now typify much of modern human behavior, society, and culture.

The diametric ideation of materials-and-behaviors (generative entropy) departs from a reflexive material directness (DNA, nature). Not-reflexive phenomenology (adaptation) thus seems un-natural, despite its natural roots. This paradox leads to a sense of existential angst in some agents, a Sacred Wound. Nature (Mother) urges our demise, ironically contrasted with endless re-creative deeds or Eden-like plenty. Calling earthly entropy contra behavioral entropy a Sacred Wound sets a key archetypal role (aesthetic psychology) for homeostatic events. That shared wound, in turn, drives the social psychology that pervades human culture (Becker, 1973). But this entropically generative mythos is oddly omitted from modern scientific views, despite science itself arising from that mythos.

2.3 3D Dialectics – the emergence of reason Advances past 2D are “non-scientific.” Logical gains now seem to arise from thin air as a more

psychological vista. A retort to this non-scientific dismissal is that science is unreflective, unable to explain the advent of science. It has no cultural or creative narrative. Science claims objectivity and presumably ignores all subjectivity, including subjective survival; a naive view. Inversely, psychology relies heavily on subjectivity for generative (recombinant) novelty.

Cognitively creative dialectics start as naive opposites (2D: thesis and anti-thesis). In this enmity some agents see the output (synthesis) as vital, and perceive a Hegelian dialectic (3D). This shift in reason offers a “stimulus + process = response” advance over stimulus-and-response (pure material directness). Process awareness thus marks a meta-perspective, a 2D ➔ 3D intelligent shift. Agents begin to move beyond the basic sensing and acquisition of material patterns, to focus on recombining those patterns (process). From minimally creative and expansive 1D and 2D realms, a willfully recombinant behavior arises. Thus, variable breadth, depth, and recombination (processing) of 1D and 2D memories drive 3D novelty, where more memories hold more creative potential.

Also, moving from 2D polemic ideation to 3D dialectic ideation implies a shift in memory type: from episodic memory toward procedural memory – a new neural order arises. Early humans exhibit this memory shift via tool use (fire and hand axes), and later in the Upper Paleolithic Revolution. About 90,000 years ago, we exhibit our first culture roles: ceremonial death rites, self-adornment, cave painting, and so on. These novel outputs must be imagined before they are made materially evident, as

proof of a recombinant imagination. But then tool use arises in many species, so the degree to which non-human agents have a creative imagination is hard to verify. Still, it is plain that humans prize adaptive imagination. We now commonly rely on “invented spaces” typified as a cognitive ecology, material culture, an Athropocene epoch, and a sixth mass extinction.

Natural selection further refines 3D logic to an archetypal ideal. That imaginative human Psyche then affords exaptive recombinant latency, to augment model latency and natural latency. Psyche also pro-actively refines its own outputs, extending the lessons learned from prior 2D Polemics (P-P, natural selection). It emphasizes what is most action-able over what is merely imagine-able. Thus, trial-and-error as formalized science later arises. While DNA initiates many material adaptations, a now-willful and formidable Self-directed adaptive behavior comes to the fore (quasi freewill, Psyche).

Figure 5: Dualist-Triune Selection Dynamics. Figure 1 shows natural selection and adaptive behavior as a

natural dualist role, each with three facets (purifying, divisive, and directional selection contra fight, flight, or freeze adaptation). Further, each of these three-part roles is essentially dualist in nature, with reductive and expansive facets (above). Dualist-trune fractal forms arise elsewhere: in DNA’s base pair and triplet codons; as space-time – hight, width, depth and past, present, future; and more, all suggesting a universal theory of information is likely.

Dialectic logic (thesis + anti-thesis = synthesis) is the first role to echo a dualist-triune form that appears in Selection Dynamics (Figures 5 & 6; Abundis, 2015a). Our sense of this 3D (dualist-triune) role deepens informational Self-awareness. It shows “intelligence” of informational abundance contra material scarcity, seen in the “promise of science.” This emerging cultural march then inspires more exploration of Psyche’s (Self) recombinant roles. A task of “making conscious what is un-conscious” is named by Janet, Freud, Jung and others. Peirce’s abductive reason and triadic logic also arise. Our lust for immortality (Becker’s Denial of Death or Schopenhauer’s World as Will) now drives debates on many fronts, currently framed in: notions of extending human life as a technology singularity, threats and benefits of artificial intelligence, genetic engineering risks, calls for universal health care, and so on.

Figure 6: Dualist Triune 2D, 3D, and 4D Logic (right to left) – triune fractal roles. Minimal 2D lines (“one

dimensional”) show a dualist-triune as: two end points + one middle, or one line dividing two spaces. “Two dimensional” 3D planes have 2 faces and 3 edges. Three dimensional 4D (minimal solids) roles add interiority

and exteriority, as a dualist-triune network. Only zero dimensional 1D points (not shown) convey a truly dualist role, and mark existence-and-nonexistence as a core meaning.

2.4 4D Relational – the advent of society Relational logic ushers in societal order. Prior roles focus on creative individuality and climax in

process awareness – with some agents more aware (creative) than others. Now, a four-fold punctuated leap marks the emergence of culturally sustained creativity (Figure E). From minimal 1D ➔ 2D ➔ 3D expansion, 4D logic affords agent specialization and modular redundancies. Coordinated recombinant roles (individual ➔ pro-social) incite a informational/adaptive explosion. Creative individuals are now supported via social roles, which then inspire more creative deeds – in a modular and increasingly specialized manner.

Modular redundancy (4D nodes) facilitates collective evolution. In a modular scheme, some agents hold regular functioning roles, while others attempt new adaptations – which are then socially gauged as helpful, or not (2D refining). Redundant modular behaviors echo the modular redundancy seen in biological/cellular evolution. Here, the resulting pro-social surges appear as: hunting, gathering, and farming (resource aggregation), warfare (resource control), and trade (resource exchange) navigation (resource access), a printing press, wired and wireless communication, semiconductor technology, the Internet, and other “disruptive roles.” What makes later informational roles disruptive is that they influence all prior material roles. They concentrate/unify diffuse-discrete memories and materials, via network logic, to optimize an agent’s creative output and ensuing functional (survival) habits.

Logic or Reasoning Modality Memory/Cognitive Traits 1D Freeze (extinction, or co-incident Flight) narrow material role (embodied: specialist, rigid)

1D Passive Flight broad material role (embodied: generalist, flexible)

1D Active Flight narrow behavioral role (instinctual, rigid)

1D pseudo Fight (Flight direction-force variants) broadening behavioral role (initial ideation)

2D Fight (polemic logic, S-O modeling) narrow material & behavioral ideation (flexible)

3D Play or pseudo Fight (dialectic logic) recombinant ideation (more creative)

4D Relational Logic (personally social) generative complexity via sensual ideation

5D Full Sentience (contextual aesthetic) maximum flexibility, complex and ambiguous

Table 1: Agent Logic and Traits – a reason-able continuum. High-order 5D roles adjust to (mimic) more earthly entropy, than do low-order material roles. Thus, specialist roles (e.g., 1D Freeze) entail minimal energy cost and minimal adaptation. Inversely, adaptive robustness of 5D logic, with higher energy costs, may explain the nearly 25% energy cost of maintaining adaptive human brains, versus the brain’s 2% of total body mass.

In biology, sexual dimorphism incites relational logic (4D). That sexuality later yields pro-social (non-procreative) promiscuity in some agents (e.g., chimpanzees, bonobos, and humans). Sexual re-motivation of some individuals then offers a cultural catalyst that sharpens pro-social skills. Also, the innate interiority-and-exteriority of sexual roles drives a psychology sense of boundary violation and preservation, or social niches. Regulatory social niches (homeostasis) later drive a growing sense of: kinship, tribal roles, morality, justice, and so on. Still, all sociability arises from individuality (social

autonomy), but now paradoxically inspired and negated by social roles. Hence, a social Sacred Wound appears in the later parsing and probing of environs, as a now culturally-driven vista.

4D inter-subjectivity requires language to better coordinate agent: intents, skills, and efforts. Such sharing then drives richer language and enlarges sociability in expressions of: compassion, empathy, reciprocity, shared sensuality, and so on. For example, primatologist Michael Tomasello (2014) calls a human child’s trial-and-error framing of protolanguage and the ensuing cultural “ratchet effect . . . a small difference that made a big difference” in defining complex human society. A psychological “theory of mind” or “touchy-feely” realm lessens reliance on 1D, 2D, and 3D by lessening the material costs of adaptive fighting through ever-broader abstract (informational) references.

But new cognitive strife also arises as competition bewteen orders. This polemic redux occurs as: 1) some agents fail at 3D and 4D logic, and thus emphasize more fundamental views; 2) some agents question the value of added demands from 3D and 4D logic and; 3) humanity holds self-predation (logical reduction) as a regular adaptive need. But this new strife also incites more growth in relational roles. A human potential movement, seen in Maslow’s (1943) hierarchy of needs, Gestalt models, process work, group/individual therapy, and so on, comes to the fore. These efforts are now evident as avant-gard business attempts at “self-organizing holacracy,” team building, and the like. The aim is to enhance co-ordinated creativity and implementaiton, for new competitive gains.

2.5 5D Full Sentience From the enduring strife in 2D, 3D, and 4D roles, full sentience arises (5D). Full sentience sees all

roles as needed but stresses context to optimize agent behavior. “Context” marks the appearance of meta-meta perspectives. It uses patterns-of-patterns in a synchronous multi-modal parsing and probing of environs and events – targeting what is most effective-and-efficient. For example, this paper infers a similar “universal context” as a dualistic-triune informational pattern. Biologist Gregory Bateson also inferred such universality in asking “What is the pattern that connects [the cosmos]?” Lastly, the end goal of quantum computing is to realize a like simulteneous multi-state processing role.

Full-sentient logic jointly uses all prior roles as neural-and-information plasticity, to find maximal behavioral plasticity (adaptivity). It marks a shift in neural order to semantic memory, beyond episodic and procedural memory. New referential strategies distill and synthesize the most meaningful facets (patterns) of episodic and procedural memory. In modern society, full sentience is most profoundly sensed as “being in the zone,” an intuitive or animal-like (instant) behavior. It typifies elite athletes, artists, politicians, researchers, and the like, with one wholly given to a “becoming-ness” before them. The instant one starts to think, “Hey, I’m in the zone!” the state vanishes – stressing a deeply intuitive, nonverbal, and mystical character.

High-functioning 5D roles are often idealized to sharpen social (homeostatic) aims. We reference notable figures: Ulysses, Jesus, championship teams, Bach, Hitler, Picasso, Einstein, and more. Joseph Campbell’s Hero’s Journey becomes the universal mythos. This maximally creative role presents an impossible challenge for most agents, while others are merely entertained or “haunted” by its subconscious effects. But then some agents willfully seek out its driven “altered states.” The full reach of 5D sentience is unknown and implies a likely evolutionary terminus, where no-greater entropic mimicry is possible. Again, the degree to which non-human agents (or even some humans) embody this maximal recombinant role is unclear. But for humanity, it represents a pinnacle in performance.

Full sentience is a dispassionate “thinking like Nature” or natural informatics. It is mystical “think-feeling,” with a cognitive ambiguity distinct from prior cognitively cohesive roles. This cognitive ambiguity typifies deep curiosity. Early mythology calls this deeply recombinant role an Uroboros, a serpent-dragon eating its own tail. Eastern philosophy calls this re-creative destruction (recombnation) Yin-Yang and Shiva Nataraja. Creative destruction is even seen in capitalism as informational cycles that stir new market niches and products (Reinert & Reinert, 2006). Regardless, all 5D roles are necessarily born of a discrete individuality, but with a universal aim of enhanced survival.

3 CONCLUSION This 1D ➔ 5D analysis asserts that earth’s entropic unfolding affords, and thus compels, more

entropic processes and processing (information). Agents entropically match that unfolding or fail. The variability innate to this reflexive entropic mimicry (survival) does not argue that one role surpasses another. Instead, it argues that more-fluid agency wins within dynamic environs, and stable environs require more-specialist roles. It shows Darwinian fit-ness as a recombinant freewill sustained by endless happenstance – a bounded-yet-ambigous solution space.

Our Anthropocene Era offers many stabilized environs. We remain vulnerable to environmental happenstance, but ever-newer gains still arise through our recombinant informational breadth and depth. This cultural twist defies Nature’s “generalist versus specialist” core, clouding our animal roots. Our “human ecology versus natural ecology” puzzle holds new risks. Each gain is equally freighted with ever-newer unintended consequences. The latency innate to all shifts means a risk of “collapse from successes” is ever present. A Red Queen’s Race of us chasing our own tail arises – an Uroboros of humanity consumed/pursued by its own entropic means.

Our early adaptive wins are born of a crude psychology (Sacred Wound), but we need not accept this jejune role; our adaptive fight is not over. Thus, to manage new risks we see increased calls for cross-disciplinary models, computational complexity, integral theory, consciousness hacking, and the like. But following eons of encultured human division (specialization), we have yet to show any true integrating skill. In fact, our most innately integrative/adaptive role is capitalism. But then capitalism seems too narrow and divisive for the risks we presently confront. New models are needed.

The key to find those new models lies in our grasp of informatics. The aim of this paper has been to provide a ground for initiating such an exploration.

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