There is no doubt whatsoever that information evolves. "Why" is the question.
A very, very deep question that. Why
does information evolve?
Unfortunately, we have to start with a definition of
information. The most brilliant minds in the world have wrestled to define that term. Literally. Shannon, Einstein, Heisenberg, Maxwell, Gell-Mann, Chaitin, Komorgorov, Kullback and Leibler, Wolfram, Mandlebrot, Holland, Arthur, Kauffman, Bohr, Turing, Church, Kleene, Godel... I literally just spit out that list off the top of my head as fast as I could type. I could probably fill this page if I kept going. Almost all of these people invented entirely new disciplines while trying to cope with the ideas surrounding the concepts of "complexity" and "information." The question is linked to problems in biology, quantum mechanics, information theory, meterology, computer science, cryptography, pattern recognition, astronomy, evolutionary computation, optimization, controls theory, statistics, nonlinear dynamics, signal processing, fluid dynamics, economics, natural languages... again, I could go on all day. This subject is clearly very important, but we simply don't have a satisfying answer. Yet.
The wisest thing I've ever heard anyone say is, "Maturity is the capacity to endure uncertainty." This issue, for now, is an uncertainty we all must endure. Species evolve. Information accumulates over millions and billions of years in the genomes of these species and produces magnificent, beautiful diversity. We know the mechanics with an astounding accuracy. But we don't know
why it happened. We learn more about it every day. You can sit down with just a PC, publicly available data, and open source algorithms and make totally new discoveries in biology. You want a dendogram of the evolutionary relationships between all of the organisms with sequenced chloroplasts? It's literally one command away. If you can think of the right questions to ask, there's a lot to learn. We live in exciting times.
We don't know how life started. Was it a fluke? Was it inevitable? We don't know what the odds were, we don't even know precisely what mechanisms were involved in starting this long chain reaction that ultimately produced you and me. These are open questions in science. But people have wondered about them for thousands (maybe millions) of years, and
we will answer some of them in our lifetime. You might know the answers before you die, and
nobody else ever did.
Anyone advertising simple answers to these questions is simply avoiding enduring the uncertainty. If people who assume they know better could stop badgering those of us actually trying to figure this stuff out, come off their high horse, and get to work,
we might answer the questions sooner. Chip in and help out instead of nagging about how uncomfortable you are with certain facts we
already figured out. We all want to know the real answers to these questions. Deep down, we're not comfortable with our little personal pet theories. Once we know the
real answers, we can stop fighting over the made up answers we cling to in the face of that yawning gulf of uncertainty stretching out in all directions.
Emotionally, I can understand that instinct to cling. Rationally, it's the ultimate folly. An open question is an opportunity, not a threat. It's exciting. Let go of those comfortable delusions and look around. There's a chance we can all know better how we fit into this big mystery, and
nobody knows how it's going to turn out.
Don't just
endure uncertainty. Revel in it.
