Chapter 110 18.4 Evolution of evolution

Evolution is a framework for organized change.Not only that, evolution is a structure of organized change that seeks change and reorganizes itself. The evolution on the earth has gone through four billion years of long structural changes, and there will be a longer way to go in the future.The evolution of evolution can be boiled down to the following series of historical processes: System spontaneous copy genetic control physical plasticity meme culture self-directed evolution In the early days of Earth, before any life could evolve, evolution favored things that were stable. (There is a circular logic implied here, because in the beginning, stability meant survival.)

Evolution can act on things that are stable for a longer period of time, so that stability through evolution begets further stability.From the work of Walter Fontana and Stuart Kaufman (see Chapter 20) we know that simple compounds that catalyze their own products can form self-sustaining chemical reaction loops through simple chemical processes .Thus, the first step in evolution is to evolve a matrix capable of self-generating complexity, providing a persistent population upon which evolution can act. The next step in evolution is to evolve stability from replication.Self-replication allows for errors and mutations.From this, evolution evolves natural selection and unleashes its powerful search function.

Next, the genetic mechanism splits from the surviving mechanism, and evolution evolves a dual system with both genotype and phenotype.Evolution taps into a vast operating space by compressing a vast library of possible forms into a compact gene. As evolution evolved more complex bodies and behaviors, bodies were able to reshape themselves, and animals were able to choose their own doors of life and death.These choices open up the body to "learn" and allow evolution to continue. Learning speeds up the next step, the evolution of the complex symbolic learning machine of the human brain.Human thinking evolves into culture and meme (that is, idea) evolution.Evolution is thus able to speed up its own evolution in a conscious and "smarter" way through a vast new pool of possible forms.This is the stage of history we are in now.

Only God knows where evolution will go next.Will the artificial evolution created by humans become the next stage of evolution?It is obvious that, sooner or later, evolution touches upon the process of self-direction.Under self-direction, evolution chooses where to evolve by itself.This is no longer the domain of biologists. I tend to restate this history as follows: Evolution has and will continue to explore the space of possible evolution.Just as there is a space of possible pictures, a space of possible biological forms, and a space of possible computations, there is a space of possible ways of exploring space, and we don't know how big that space is.And this meta-evolution, or it is named by the super-evolution, deep-evolution, and even the ultimate-evolution, is wandering around in all possible evolution games, and searching for all possible evolutions.

Organisms, memes, biomes, all of these are just tools that evolution uses to sustain its evolution.What evolution really wants—that is, where it is going—is to reveal (or create) some mechanism that will reveal (or create) the fastest possible forms, things, ideas, processes in the universe.Its ultimate purpose is not only to create forms, things and ideas, but also to create new ways to discover or create new things.Through the strategy of starting from scratch and staged, super evolution constantly expands the scope of its reach, constantly creates new areas for exploration, and constantly finds better and more creative ways to create, so as to finally achieve this purpose.

This sounds a little garrulous, like talking in a circle.But I couldn't find a less tongue-in-cheek way of saying it.Perhaps it could be said that it is the job of evolution to create all possible possibilities by creating the spaces in which all possible possibilities live.