Origins of Life: Reproduction Without Information and The Earth as a Effect System Infrastructure
As a system engineer, I am conducting personal research on the origins of life. In this article, I focus on the utilization of information in living organisms.
Organisms carry genetic information in their DNA. It is known that DNA replicates this genetic information, evolving over time, and has mechanisms to produce proteins necessary for the maintenance of life from this information.
If we consider the ability of DNA to copy and utilize genetic information as the foundation of life, it may seem that there is a significant gap between inanimate and living entities when contemplating the origins of life.
However, if we consider that it’s possible to produce life-sustaining chemicals like proteins without copying or utilizing information, it could change our perspective on the origins of life.
This article starts with the discussion of the ability to copy information in intelligence, i.e., the capability to imitate, and demonstrates that it’s possible to produce many of the same things even when the original information is zero. From there, it discusses the possibility that the reproduction and prolonged existence of diverse chemicals in nature could lead to the emergence of life.
The Act of Imitation
When we think about intelligence, its fundamental orientation seems to be to imitate and control.
Abilities like the capacity to recognize things and creativity are, in themselves, advanced capabilities and meaningful on their own. However, from the perspective of imitation and control, they appear to be positioned like convenient tools.
Delving into the act of imitation, it can be said to be copying things. These things include symbols, codes, shapes, structures, movements, behaviors, functions, and properties.
To delve deeper into copying, it increases the number of occurrences or the quantity of the same type of things at the same time.
For example, a document written by hand exists only as a single copy. However, if you photocopy it, the same document increases to two copies.
If you have two copies of the same document, in case one gets wet, torn, or burnt and becomes unreadable, you still have the other one remaining. In other words, increasing the simultaneous existence of copies is advantageous for maintaining their existence over time. Even if they are not physically identical, the content of the document continues to exist.
As in this example, copying or imitation serves to maintain symbols, codes, shapes, structures, movements, behaviors, functions, and properties over a long period, like a relay race.
Increasing the Simultaneous Existence of Things
When aiming to increase the number of occurrences or the quantity of the same type of things simultaneously, copying isn’t the only means. Reproduction is another method.
In the previous example, even without photocopying, if you write a second document, you can increase it to two documents. This is reproduction.
Reproduction can be easily done by the person who knows the content written in the document. If someone else is asked to do it, showing them the original document for them to create a copy works. Conversely, if you convey what to write on the document over the phone and have it written, it can be considered reproduction. However, although the document is reproduced, the knowledge of what to write in the document is copied from the requester to the writer.
Let’s consider an extremely simple document, for example, one that only requires stamping “A” or “B”. In this case, stamping “A” on the first and second documents is reproduction.
If someone else does this upon a phone request, they can reproduce without copying the information about which stamp to use. If the person requested doesn’t know which stamp to use, they can create both documents, one with an “A” stamp and the other with an “B” stamp.
If the goal is simply to increase the number of documents with the “A” stamp, although it is a waste of paper, this can be achieved without copying either the paper itself or the information for reproduction.
Reproduction Without Information
Expanding this concept, it applies similarly if we include all characters beyond just “A” and “B” as symbols. The same approach applies even when arranging multiple symbols, leading to writing long strings of symbols, i.e., sentences. Although the effort increases substantially, in principle, it is not impossible to increase the simultaneous existence of the same documents without copying paper or information.
This is a type of reproduction, but it’s a hit-or-miss method. By generating randomly or through brute force, it includes a lot of waste but still performs reproduction, which can be considered extremely low-precision reproduction. With more information, the precision increases, and with complete information, precise reproduction is possible.
With less information, the precision decreases. However, even if there is zero information, the precision of reproduction does not drop to zero. That is, as long as there is a mechanism for reproduction, it is possible even without information.
The rest is a matter of time and resource efficiency. Without information, or with little information, reproduction is inefficient; with more information, it becomes efficient.
Sustaining Existence Over Time
In a natural state, once a thing comes into existence, it eventually disappears. The stability of a thing determines how long it lasts before it disappears. Therefore, the stability of a thing is one factor that determines its duration of existence.
As previously mentioned, increasing the number of occurrences of a thing simultaneously can also prolong its existence.
We have been considering things that are generated in a natural state. Therefore, the things we are discussing, in terms of the length of their existence, are those that can be generated naturally. This means there is a mechanism for their reproduction.
As stated before, if there is a mechanism for reproduction, then reproduction is possible even with zero information. The exception is when there are limits to the resources needed for reproduction. If resources are abundant, then things generated in a natural state can potentially increase in number or quantity through reproduction.
Therefore, things that are generated in a natural state can have measures of stability and reproducibility. If they have sufficient stability and reproducibility, they will continue to exist. Conversely, if these are insufficient, they will cease to exist continuously and will go through cycles of disappearance and reappearance.
Biological Phenomena
From this perspective, biological phenomena seem to be things that have the properties of enhancing stability and reproducibility to prolong their existence.
From the perspective of reproduction, biological phenomena likely started from a natural state with zero duplication of information. Although the accuracy is low due to the absence of information duplication, various chemicals synthesized and produced in that environment have reproducibility.
If the accuracy of the reproduction of these various chemicals increases for some reason, the quantity of these chemicals existing simultaneously in the environment will increase. Then, these combine to naturally synthesize and produce more diverse chemicals.
If the increase in reproduction accuracy and the synthesis of new chemicals are repeated, the diversity of the produced chemicals will increase, along with the number and duration of each chemical.
If the evolution of the chemicals leading to biological phenomena followed this process, the mechanism by which proteins are produced from RNA information must have been a revolutionary invention for improving reproduction accuracy. And the self-replicating DNA that can produce this RNA, enabling the copying of genetic information, would have been an even greater innovation.
The Effect System
Even without major inventions, for instance, if the production of a certain chemical in the environment promotes the synthesis of that chemical, a feedback loop could enhance the efficiency of the chemical’s reproduction.
As various chemicals are synthesized naturally, if such positive feedback for reproduction accumulates, it’s conceivable that chemicals could have evolved. In this process, overlapping groundbreaking innovations such as DNA and RNA might have led to the emergence of life.
At this time, what’s necessary is not the preservation or copying of information, but the transmission of effects. When a chemical is produced, it’s essential that the effects of that chemical are transmitted to the surrounding environment. Without an environment where effects can be transmitted, feedback does not occur, and the reproducibility of the chemical remains constant over time.
I refer to a system where effects are repeatedly transmitted over time as the “Effect System.” Water provides an ideal stage for the Effect System, as newly formed chemicals in water can easily transmit their effects to the surroundings. Moreover, the convection caused by temperature changes in water makes it effective for various chemicals to exert their influence.
Furthermore, due to the Earth’s water cycle, various chemicals are lifted into clouds by updrafts, fall back to the land as rain, and then flow into various lakes, ponds, and seas via rivers. This cycle creates diverse aquatic environments with different proportions of chemicals and facilitates intricate exchanges of chemicals, making it a highly complex and advanced stage for the Effect System.
With the passage of time on this stage, even if the initial reproduction mechanism was extremely imprecise and inefficient, an evolutionary scenario might have been possible. I believe that the environmental conditions on Earth promoted the generation of complex chemicals and the refinement and efficiency of reproducibility through feedback from those chemicals.
Furthermore, I think that for the evolution from inanimate to living organisms, the key is not the accidental invention of groundbreaking mechanisms or evolution proceeding in a specific order. Instead, the key lies in the performance of the foundational part of the Effect System. When viewed as the foundation of the Effect System, Earth possesses an exceptionally high performance.
Intelligence
Intelligence, too, can be seen as a tool that emerged upon biological phenomena to prolong their survival.
Like biological phenomena, intelligence may have also started with low-accuracy reproduction.
For example, a mechanism that learns which actions to take in response to a stimulus to increase chances of survival could be considered to have properties of intelligence.
Even if actions are taken irrelevant to the stimulus, if there is diversity in action patterns, the lucky individuals would have survived. From there, evolving as a species to respond to stimuli and take more survival-friendly actions is possible within the mechanisms of biological genetics.
Intelligence makes this possible within the lifecycle of a single individual. Once an appropriate action is taken, it is learned and applied next time. Even in case of failure, if the individual survives, that information is utilized. Moreover, if communication is possible, this information can be transmitted to peers.
Here, we see the existence of information about appropriate or inappropriate actions in response to stimuli. The mechanism that stably sustains this valuable information for the survival of the organism is memory. And the mechanism to transmit and increase the number of memories among peers is communication in the sense of copying information.
This explains the nature of imitation as a fundamental aspect of intelligence, as mentioned at the beginning, from the perspectives of the survival of organisms and the survival of information.
In Conclusion: Differentiability of Chemical Evolution
I have proposed viewing biological phenomena as things that possess the nature of prolonging their existence while enhancing both stability and reproducibility.
In this article, I delved deeper into reproducibility.
Firstly, I demonstrated that reproduction is possible even with zero information. While self-replication is often considered the essence of biological phenomena, I believe there is a misconception here. The powerful ability of DNA to self-replicate and mutate tends to be mistakenly regarded as the essence of life.
However, as I have discussed in this article, evolution can be achieved even without self-replication. Even with low precision, mechanisms for reproduction and for improving that precision exist, suggesting that evolution is possible even in inanimate objects, with the possibility that life emerged as an extension of this process.
This leads to the idea that a seamless and gradual evolution was possible without major gaps. The concept of being differentiable, as used in artificial intelligence research, implies that it can also be applied to the origin of life.
This article presented the view that the accuracy of reproduction improves as information increases and that the invention of biological information processing systems like DNA and RNA dramatically enhances the efficiency of reproduction through information copying. Furthermore, I discussed how intelligence allows information to be replicated not only across generations but also within an individual and among peers of the same generation, contributing to survival through appropriate actions.
All these are actions taken to enhance reproducibility in terms of precision and efficiency, contributing to the prolonged existence of the entire organism, species, individuals, and peers.
On the other hand, in terms of properties influencing the duration of existence due to biological phenomena, there is also the perspective of stability. This attribute is obtained by strengthening things, preventing their disappearance, and repairing them.
I will explore stability in another article. Probably, the controlling aspect of intelligence mentioned at the beginning will contribute to stability.
