The Role of Currency in the Effects Loop
A process can influence another, and the affected process can, in turn, influence yet another. In this way, a chain of influences exists between processes, potentially forming a circulating chain known as an effects loop.
When this effects loop acts as a positive feedback loop for a process, that process becomes reinforced.
In such effects loops, currency plays a significant role. This article explores the role of currency within an effects loop.
The Difficulty in Forming an Effects Loop Without Currency
Without currency, for a chain of influence to form a positive feedback loop, the outcome of one process must affect the next. Here, the types of things that the previous process results in and the next process accepts must match.
This means that only processes with perfectly matching outputs and inputs can form connections for an effects loop. Until processes that satisfy these conditions randomly connect, new loop formations are delayed, requiring much time to evolve.
Conversely, with the existence of currency, the situation changes. If there is a currency that holds common value as the output and input of numerous processes, it becomes easy to create chains of influence between various processes.
A Typical Example of Currency: Money in the Economic System
A representative example of such currency is, of course, money in human society’s economics and industry. In a barter economic system, if both parties do not want what the other offers, the trade cannot be established, making it difficult to distribute desirable items efficiently.
In an economic system where buying and selling are possible with money, this problem is solved, allowing a smooth and efficient mechanism to obtain what one desires.
Moreover, goods and creations that require various materials and manufacturing stages are hard to realize in a barter system. It’s challenging to prepare the rewards that each person wants in a large or phased organization. Typically, bi- or tri-party effects loops would be formed between individuals engaged in direct transactions, limiting the division of labor in manufacturing or creation.
With money, large-scale division of labor becomes easier. Various items don’t need to be prepared for payment, and as long as sufficient money is prepared, various people can be involved. The ability to perform large-scale division of labor indicates the formation of large and complex effects loops. Thus, the existence of money enables the formation of large-scale effects loops in economics and industry.
Another Example of Currency: Energy Currency in Organisms
Within the bodies of living organisms, there is something called energy currency, represented by a chemical called ATP (adenosine triphosphate). This substance can transport energy, thus called an energy currency.
In the effects loops within an organism’s body, direct material exchanges and loop-shaped barter might form successful effects loops. However, considering the advantages explained in the economic system, the use of energy currency might efficiently build a large-scale divisional system within the body.
The possibility that energy currency assists in forming large effects loops in multicellular organisms that require coordinated actions among many cells is high. Even within a single cell, where incredibly complex chains of chemical substances and reactions occur, energy currency could be the key to forming complex and significant effects loops.
A Similar Example: Basic Nutrients in Ecosystems
Considering the complexity of ecosystems and the size of food cycle loops, some form of currency seems to exist there as well.
Exchanges of nutrients like amino acids, sugars, and fats occur between organisms. Here, while not as unified as money or ATP, compared to the diversity and complexity of organisms and their bodily functions, the kinds of fundamental chemical substances mainly exchanged seem surprisingly limited. This might produce an effect similar to currency.
If organisms evolve to expand diversity and sophistication, it wouldn’t be strange if the fundamental substances used as materials also diversify. However, keeping the diversity of basic substances within a certain range and placing more emphasis on the diversity created by combining them might be a strategically intended architecture targeting this currency effect.
As basic substances diversify, combining them could easily result in diverse and sophisticated composite substances. However, from the perspective of the effects loop, increasing diversity in basic substances becomes a disadvantage. As stated at the beginning of this article, the likelihood of matching outputs and inputs of processes decreases, becoming a disadvantage for evolution.
Thus, while not as simple as money or energy currency, by keeping the types of basic substances that compose an organism’s body to a limited diversity that can still realize various functions, the difficulty of forming an effects loop is reduced. With a minimum variety of basic substances, there’s no need to increase the types, so keeping them to a balanced number makes sense.
Area where something like currency seems to exist: Brain
I have limited knowledge about the workings of the brain, but I hear that chemical exchanges occur within it.
In the human brain, billions of neurons are said to be connected by terminals called synapses, and neurotransmitters are exchanged between them. Despite such a network structure, it is also heard that substances are exchanged over a wide range in the brain space where this network structure floats.
In my understanding or imagination, the neural network greatly oversees extremely intellectual parts, performing intellectual tasks such as implicit knowledge like physical skills, logical knowledge using language and formal expressions, or creativity and planning. On the other hand, it seems that emotional responses such as fear and joy, and sensual actions like taste and beauty, are deeply involved with not only exchanges following this neural network structure but also the exchange of substances over a wide range.
For this reason, neurotransmitters are clearly transmitted to specified neurons in a local part called synapses, but there are also substances that are scattered to act on a wide range of neurons, and I imagine that the brain functions with these intertwined.
This can be understood as neurotransmitters being exchanged between two neurons like barter, and a wide-ranging substance acting on various neurons like currency. When remembering knowledge, big emotions do not appear. At this time, it functions sufficiently by locally exchanging neurotransmitters necessary for remembering knowledge.
However, senses like the taste of food related to the maintenance of life, emotions of liberation from fear, etc., require rewarding all neurons that worked together to perform them. Transmitting rewards by following the structure of the neuron network like barter will reduce efficiency. Therefore, I think that an architecture is adopted where wide-ranging substances, like currency, are scattered to efficiently give feedback.
With such an architecture, a rational effects loop that returns positive or negative feedback to a wide range of neuron groups that had cooperatively performed intellectual joint work until results come out can be formed.
In Conclusion
In this article, I considered the role of currency for the effects loop.
Currency becomes a tool that can abstractly express the value of the results of a process. By expressing the evaluation of the process in a common currency, various processes can be easily incorporated into the effects loop. From that perspective, I also considered the role of ATP within a living organism and the small variety of basic substances exchanged in the food chain between organisms.
By thinking in terms of currency, I explained that the exchange between processes is systemically efficient. On the other hand, the concept of currency reminds us of the economic system, but it is also possible to bring the ideas of economics into the world of effects loop.
The effects loop is an abstract system, and as such, it can be applied to economic systems, chemical evolution systems, systems of organisms and ecosystems, intelligence systems, etc., and can be utilized in interdisciplinary research.
Apart from the currency discussed in this article, there should be more cases where concepts and insights that appear in the systems of each field say the same thing in the systems of another field. By capturing things cross-disciplinary like this, I think it is possible to gain new insights into phenomena such as life and intelligence.
