Intellectual Beings Based on Practice and Informationization: Life from the Perspective of Proteins
One of the central mechanisms of life is the synthesis of various proteins. Proteins in the bodies of living organisms control various chemical reactions by promoting or inhibiting them, convey information, and become parts that support the structure of the body.
When thinking about protein synthesis, it is often seen that proteins are produced starting from DNA. However, this is a one-sided perspective, and from the viewpoint of proteins, a different landscape emerges.
In the first half of this article, we will look at life phenomena from the perspective of proteins. From there, we will confirm that DNA and proteins have different strategies of informationization and practice, respectively.
In the latter half, we will consider the interplay between informationization and practice. We will then contrast proteins and DNA in living organisms, the human body and brain, and robots and artificial intelligence, framing them as intellectual entities based on informationization and practice.
Example of Cooking
It might be a bit of an odd example, but let’s think about the approach to cooking.
One person, upon making a delicious dish, remembers the recipe and continues to cook the same dish forever. Another person, even if the first dish they made was delicious, considers the possibility of making even tastier dishes and challenges themselves with different dishes each time.
While these two people have the common goal of wanting to cook and eat delicious dishes, they adopt different approaches to achieve it. The former focuses on informationization, while the latter focuses on practice.
If the two collaborate, they would accumulate a repertoire of delicious dishes and the know-how to choose dishes according to the season or mood. Furthermore, as more recipes accumulate, they could create new combinations of cooking methods and ingredients.
In this way, by effectively collaborating on the two approaches of informationization and practice, it becomes possible to maintain and explore with stability and creativity.
Life Phenomena from the Perspective of Proteins
If a certain protein works advantageously for the maintenance and proliferation of life, the offspring of an individual that can produce that protein should increase in number more easily than the offspring of an individual without it.
Then, the proportion of individuals that can produce that protein increases. In other words, from a holistic perspective, one can also see that the total amount of that protein is increasing.
Even from the perspective of proteins, it seems as if proteins are self-replicating. In this view, the self-replication ability of DNA and other biological mechanisms are utilized for the proliferation of proteins.
DNA and proteins are contrasted to the two people in the cooking example. DNA, which is good at retaining stable information, takes the former strategy of informationization. On the other hand, proteins, which can easily change and take on various structures, adopt the latter practice strategy.
By these two strategies held by DNA and proteins working hand in hand, it can be thought that they can continue life activities with a core, accepting changes flexibly, and evolve appropriately.
Experience, Induction, and Agile
The proliferation of proteins through feedback loops, not self-replication, is a continuous trial and error of producing countless combinations of random amino acids.
Among many failures, the combination of amino acids that can form a good feedback loop is found, and it self-replicates and remains.
This is, philosophically speaking, the very idea of empiricism. And scientifically, it’s an inductive approach. In the engineering world, it’s agile development of software, products, and services.
These are approaches to develop thoughts, theories, products, and services by inputting ideas, experiments, and creations to the real world and reinvesting what received positive feedback from the real world.
Looking at organisms or the origin of life from the perspective of proteins, life phenomena also seem to be working on the approach of experience, induction, and agile. These are strategies that emphasize practice.
Rationalism, Deduction, and the Waterfall Model
Compared to the agility and immediacy of protein interactions with the real world, the process from DNA to protein synthesis appears slow and careful.
DNA is often likened to the blueprint of an organism. It has recorded numerous ways to synthesize proteins that have proven to be useful through the history of evolution.
Moreover, it has a mechanism to synthesize the necessary proteins according to the situation and timing.
The evolution from the perspective of proteins can be likened to agile development. The maintenance of life activities from the DNA perspective can be likened to the waterfall model of software development, as it carefully decides and produces the appropriate proteins without failure.
In this context, DNA encompasses the accumulated knowledge of a software development team, including domain knowledge and design know-how. It also stores reusable software components. By accumulating vast knowledge and reusable software components, high-quality software development and appropriate product design become possible without relying on empirical feedback.
Similarly, DNA not only holds design information for protein synthesis but also remembers knowledge-like laws and conditions about how to use it. All these can be considered as information.
This accumulation of information in DNA and the method of utilizing this information for appropriate reactions can be philosophically aligned with rationalism and, from a scientific approach, with deduction. DNA seems to be the key component that enables an entity to rationally or deductively respond based on past experiences. This can be termed as an “informationization” strategy.
The Role of DNA from the Protein’s Perspective
For example, consider a protein that enables the synthesis of other proteins even in low temperatures and its feedback loop. Separately, consider another protein that protects other proteins from damage in high pH conditions and its feedback loop.
What if you find yourself in an environment with low temperatures and high pH? The aforementioned two proteins might not function effectively. The feedback loops of proteins alone cannot seamlessly integrate the two mechanisms that have already been developed.
However, if these proteins are encoded in the DNA and can be synthesized appropriately based on the situation, then it would be possible to address such a condition. This mechanism takes advantage of the “informationization” ability to remember and utilize information on synthesizing the two proteins and the suitable conditions for producing them.
Furthermore, DNA has evolved the ability to mate, introducing mutations during generational changes. This mechanism reminds us of a deductive approach where knowledge is combined to produce useful insights. Humans come up with new ideas by combining various known pieces of information. Similarly, DNA mating combines different information to try and produce new proteins or to generate them under new conditions.
This represents the strength of DNA’s approach of rationalism, deduction, and the waterfall model.
Learning through Informationization and Practice
Philosophically, there’s a thought similar to pragmatism that useful wisdom arises when rationalism and empiricism collaborate. In science, mere deductive reasoning based on theories is not valued without evidence, and induction based solely on experimental data is not valued without theory. Therefore, it’s generally necessary to incorporate both deduction and induction skillfully into research.
Society too, while preserving traditions, is required to take on new challenges. Stubbornly clinging to traditions leads to being left behind in the changing times, but only chasing new challenges results in exhaustion from competition and endless friction. While exploring at an appropriate pace to adapt to change, it’s essential to maintain spaces, cultures, and social foundations that provide comfort and peace.
Both experimental data and theories, individual experiences, and traditions are all recorded and retained as information. However, it’s not just about recording; theories and traditions are refined information shaped by the accumulation of experiences and something akin to inspiration.
The human brain, of course, possesses advanced capabilities to accumulate and refine such information. On the other hand, it’s also conceivable that DNA and its entire evolutionary mechanism achieve a high degree of information accumulation and refinement. Those proteins deemed useful through their function will continue to be refined and inscribed into DNA.
In this sense, it can be said that DNA also conducts intellectual operations, recording real-world information obtained through proteins and using it effectively. As observed, DNA utilizes learned information to instruct the appropriate synthesis of proteins, robustly adapting even to unfamiliar environmental conditions. The approach of seeking useful information by recombining known information through mating embodies a highly intellectual deductive knowledge discovery method.
Considering this, one could express that through the inheritance of information by DNA, not only individual organisms but also species as a whole are “learning” from the real world.
Human Learning
Likewise, in times without language, humans probably stored experienced information within their brains. Communication of dangers and emotions might have been possible through facial expressions, body language, and non-verbal vocal communication, but sharing experiences would have been challenging.
The advent of language allowed group sharing of experiences. In a spoken-word-only era, traditions could only be passed down orally, with very limited information transmitted, possibly changing with each generation. This is akin to a biological system producing proteins solely through a feedback loop without DNA. The production wouldn’t be stable, and if the loop was interrupted, information would be easily lost.
Then, with the invention of writing, it became possible to record vast amounts of information over long periods. Biologically speaking, this is analogous to DNA. Even if the medium on which the writing is stored is damaged, the information is lost. In both a backup sense and to communicate to a larger audience, like DNA, document copying would have facilitated the preservation and distribution of information. Furthermore, by manipulating mathematical or logical information written in characters, advanced deduction, similar to DNA recombination, became possible.
Book copying became significantly easier with the advent of the printing press, and the information revolution, spearheaded by the internet, truly accelerated the informationization of human society.
Human Brain Function
One of the aspects that makes the human brain more advanced intellectually than DNA isn’t just its basic deductive capability or the ability to form new knowledge. It lies in two points: the speed of information processing and the ability to predict the future.
For DNA to learn or deduce, it requires an extended period, encompassing several generations of a species. In contrast, for tasks that a human brain can accomplish in an instant or a few seconds, it would take that long for DNA.
Furthermore, DNA essentially mutates randomly and acts based on the current situation, without the ability to do much beyond appropriate reactions to the immediate environment.
The Function of the Human Brain
The superiority of the human brain over DNA, in terms of intelligence, isn’t merely about basic deductive abilities or the capacity to form new knowledge. It lies in two specific areas: the speed of information processing and the ability to predict the future.
For DNA to learn or deduce, it requires a span equivalent to several generations of an organism. In contrast, the human brain can accomplish similar intellectual tasks in mere moments or seconds.
Furthermore, DNA primarily undergoes random mutations and acts, or it only responds aptly to the present conditions it finds itself in.
On the other hand, the human brain has the capability to anticipate the future to some extent, based on experiences, logical reasoning, and internal simulations. Leveraging this ability, humans can take preparatory actions based on anticipated future scenarios. Moreover, this predictive ability enables us to design various things.
In Conclusion: Intellectual Beings Based on Practice and Informationization
Now, information isn’t merely accumulated, copied, and shared or deduced by humans. Artificial Intelligence (AI) learns and uses this information. In the era approaching us, in metaverse or cyber-physical systems, information in virtual spaces is treated as if it has a physical presence, and information in virtual spaces interacts with the real world in real-time.
Robots automatically repeating practices and converting real-world experiences into information, with AI learning and deducing from that information, suggests a more advanced learning world ahead.
The practice of proteins and informationization through DNA, human physical practice and informationization through the brain, robotic practice, and informationization through AI — intellectual beings will likely evolve in this manner, based on strategies of practice and informationization.
