bright red Chevy Camaros even though they can’t really afford them—all
because it promotes their survival and ability to reproduce.
This is the story of evolution—survival of the fittest and all that.
But you could also look at it a different way. You could call it “survival of
the best information processing.”
Okay, not as catchy, perhaps, but it actually might be more accurate.
See, that amoeba that evolves sensors on its membrane to better detect
amino acids—that is, at its core, a form of information processing. It is better
able than other organisms to detect the facts of its environment. And because
it developed a better way to process information than other blobby cell-like
things, it won the evolutionary game and spread its genes.
Similarly, the lizard that can camouflage its skin—that, too, has evolved a
way to manipulate visual information to trick predators into ignoring it. Same
story with the monkeys faking animal noises. Same deal with the desperate
middle-aged dude and his Camaro (or maybe not).
Evolution rewards the most powerful creatures, and power is determined
by the ability to access, harness, and manipulate information effectively. A
lion can hear its prey over a mile away. A buzzard can see a rat from an
altitude of three thousand feet. Whales develop their own personal songs and
can communicate up to a hundred miles away from each other while
underwater. These are all examples of exceptional information-processing
capabilities, and that ability to receive and process information is linked to
these creatures’ ability to survive and reproduce.
Physically, humans are pretty unexceptional. We are weak, slow, and frail,
and we tire easily.^11 But we are nature’s ultimate information processors. We
are the only species that can conceptualize the past and future, that can
deduce long chains of cause and effect, that can plan and strategize in abstract
terms, that can build and create and problem-solve in perpetuity.^12 Out of
millions of years of evolution, the Thinking Brain (Kant’s sacred conscious
mind) is what has, in a few short millennia, dominated the entire planet and
called into existence a vast, intricate web of production, technology, and
networks.
That’s because we are algorithms. Consciousness itself is a vast network
of algorithms and decision trees—algorithms based on values and knowledge
and hope.
Our algorithms worked pretty well for the first few hundred thousand
years. They worked well on the savannah, when we were hunting bison and
living in small nomadic communities and never met more than thirty people