Evolution, Life and God, a Neural Network thought process
Questions like “who is God?”, “does God exist?”, “what is the purpose of life?”, “what is evolution?” etc have been puzzling a lot of thinkers out there with no productive outcome. Some people say “why find out? It doesn’t change anything” and so on. Though it is very much true, my curiosity doesn’t let me leave it at that. Here are a few thoughts I had when I tried to analyse all of it through an AI/Neural net point of view.
DISCLAIMER: This is neither questioning anybody’s faith /love/belief in God nor is this suggesting anything with regard to God’s existence. Readers discretion is advised.
Evolution — Woah! Humans have great design
One of the many reasons why people believe in the existence of God is the awesome design humans have. From the top of the head till the tip of the toe, human anatomy is awesome ( yeah, other organisms too for that matter. Let’s focus on humans now, can we? :P). Now who designed it? How did it happen?.
Let’s go through my thought process
Hypothesis: Everything you see around you is a result of a random process
Everything around us happened randomly. What does that mean? The fact that humans have hands, legs, a head and other systems is a virtue of chance. Randomly, this design was formed. Humans could have formed with hands on their head, legs on chest and all sorts of combinations. It is just that this design formed based on probability/randomness. That doesn’t make sense? If everything is random, there should have been equiprobable configurations of humans that should have existed today, probably breathing hydrogen and speaking with light and hearing through light and all sort of stuff. Well, where are they!?
That’s where probability played a role. My guess is that all sorts of equiprobable configurations that could have formed, had formed. Over a period of time, they disappeared. Think at an atomic level. The fact that atom has the design it has today is also by virtue of chance. There could have been a billion other types of atoms which formed and over a period disappeared. Who knows?
Everything happening in universe is mathematics and nothing is unpredictable!
Everything happening in this universe possesses a mathematical stability and is completely predictable! Why do I say so? Well, before we go deep into it, let’s explain a coin toss. (Yeah the well known coin toss in the world of probability.)
If I toss a coin, can you estimate/predict ( and not guess ) correctly whether it will be heads/ tails ? Well no, you would say it’s random? Now, what if i tell you the following-
- Initial velocity of the coin,
- Torque and rotating components
- Air friction,
- Force applied
- Distance it went up,
- Gravity measure
- And all other things u would need…
Suddenly it becomes a predictable problem. It is now just mathematics. We can accurately tell whether it will end up being “a heads” or “a tails”.
Woah! What just happened? We just turned something which we considered probabilistic/random into a completely predictable mathematical system. How did we do it? We just captured all those dimensions/finer details we need to make it a mathematical system. ( But remember such fine details were not created from nothing, they existed and we simply captured it ). The same could be true for every damn thing in the universe.
For instance, if I am given the exact configuration of your brain, if I know how the brain works, if I know the minutest chemical reactions happening in brain, your memory and other things, I can specifically predict what you are going to do the very next moment (provided I have resources that I need ). Think about it. It’s just there, as a mathematical process, but we have not uncovered/tapped into the data. That’s all.
It is the same for everything happening in the universe. The more data we have, the more predictable it becomes.
Well, that means everything in the universe is following some sort of mathematical system. There is nothing unpredictable ( right now, it may be unpredictable, but that’s because we don’t have the necessary data ). So, even evolution is a mathematical process. There is nothing random. The fact that some species should go extinct is also coded ( in the mathematics of it ). Some day when the universe goes into some configuration, humans may become extinct too! Who knows? It’s all planned ahead ( not by God ) but by the maths behind it (or you can call it God maybe!).
It then means that nothing is random? Oh shit! Ok, maybe nothing is random. Everything is following a predictable mathematical process (well, we know this, right? What we call as random in one dimension is a process in another , it’s just a matter of getting more data )
Hm, I already thought about “How it is happening”. But why is it happening?
Ok, so the whole damn thing is a random process/ predictable mathematical process and so on. If you notice, every species is trying to evolve. Trying to become better than what they were before in the same environment. Why so? Why the hell do they have to evolve? Where in the system is it programmed that “every life form should try to evolve”. Why!! It is puzzling.
I thought of neural networks here. What is a neural network essentially trying to do? It is trying to converge. What is getting better? Weights!!! Woah! Ok . So does that mean we are part of a huge neural network which is always trying to converge ( for some reason ) and we are the components which are getting better? Interesting topic! Now, the fact that we don’t know “why we are evolving” led to controversial Gods. Let me add one more to the list — a “neural network”.
But.. wait.. The fact that neural networks should converge is coded in its algorithm. What about our system? Where the hell in the universe is it coded that the huge network it is, should try to converge. Where is it coded that “life form” should try to improve, evolve and get better over time. Why!!! And how? Does that mean there is a creator? Whoever created the algorithm to converge? Or does that mean the algorithm itself is a result of many probable algorithms that could have come up in universe by chance?
Hmm or maybe aliens made humans. Aliens planted life on earth to let it “evolve” and “learn” and get better just like how we program a “neural network”. Will we ever know?
I started thinking about Neural Networks. No matter how much they learn, how much stuff happens inside, unless we equip them with the ability to make changes in the physical world that we live, a neural network cannot find/reach his creator. It is a parallel universe. The first one, the one we are living in, and the second, the cyber universe where the neural network is living.
That’s when it struck me, that the intelligence that the neural network develops is not good enough to know/probe the external universe that we human live in. The intelligence that the neural network possesses is by virtue of its algorithm and training process. Same goes for humans. There are dimensions of universe which cannot be uncovered with human intelligence simply because those dimensions had no effect on evolution of human intelligence in the training process that we went through. This could also mean that the “discoverable science” of humans has a limit!
Because discovered science is a manifestation of human intelligence. Science may never reach those dimensions of universe through the way of “intelligence”. Just like a neural network’s intelligence cannot teach it about the existence of human universe.
