Clenes and Genes: Evolution of clay and the genetic takeover

This post is heavily based on Tim Tyler's page. It has lots of dead pictures, so view them on the Internet Archive if you see them.

Genes are not the only thing that can copy themselves. Computer virus, RNA, protein virus (prion), and chain mails, they all can.

The idea of non-gene replicators is not new. Richard Dawkins proposed memes in The Selfish Gene (1976), and Graham Cairns‑Smith proposed clay-genes (clenes?) in The origin of life and the nature of the primitive gene (1966). Genes and memes are getting all the popularities, but clenes aren't, so I'll summarize clene theory. A detailed explanation is here.

Overview of clenes and genes

First we check the 1966 paper's abstract:

Life on earth evolved through natural selection from inorganic crystals.

During the formation of a crystal, certain kinds of lattice imperfections usually replicate as a necessary part of the crystallization process.

... the primitive genographs were patterns of substitutions in colloidal clay crystallites. (The theoretical information density in such a crystallite is comparable to that in DNA.)... A gradual “take-over” of the control machinery by organic macromolecules—a genetic metamorphosis—is then considered to have occurred.

Let's breakdown will like George Ainslie

Breakdown of Will (2001) is a book about breaking down will, that is, dissecting the idea of a "will" and show how will is made from little pieces. The book is too long for me to read because I'm a very busy pony, so I'll just read summarize fro Précis of Breakdown of Will (2005).

BTW, Ainslie's breakdown of will has no relation to Jaynes' breakdown of the bicamel mind, but the name really reminds me of the breakdown, which is how I came to notice Ainslie's breakdown of will theory. I'm such a nihilist, I just can't stop myself from finding another thing to breakdown.

The author, George Ainslie, is most famed for his discovery of hyperbolic discounting in Specious reward: A behavioral theory of impulsiveness and impulsive control (1975).

People devalue a given future event at different rates, depending on how far away it is. This phenomenon means that our preferences are inherently unstable and entails our present selves being pitted against what we can expect our future selves to want.

"Discounting" means that humans prefer the same reward to come sooner. The \$100 that comes in a month seems to be less attractive than the \$80 that comes today. This is a very reasonable assumption, for two reasons:

1. Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we may die.
2. \$80 today can be invested and turned into \$100 by the end of the month. Though to be realistic, the average return on capital is just 5%/year.

Pointless Notes: Pretty Fractals in Your Brain!

Purkinje cells are pretty, neuron cells are pretty, the whole brain is pretty! The spinal cord, however, is ugly. Don't talk about that dumb slimy snake in your back.

All that glitters are Purkinje cells.

So let's measure the fractal dimensions!

Let's escapes boredom with Andy Clark

This post is based on A nice surprise? Predictive processing and the active pursuit of novelty (2018), Andy Clark.

The Brain is a Prediction Machine (Predictive Processing Theory)

Basic idea: the brain is made for predicting what it would perceive. And experiments show how it is using Bayesian inference.

Let's Read: Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995), by David Chalmers

Facing Up to the Problem of Consciousness (1995) is a famous paper by David Chalmers, and it talks about the easy problem of consciousness, the hard problem of consciousness, a sketch of how "usual" attempts to solve the hard problem fails, and how it might be solved.

Chalmers did a TED talk about his ideas. A Let's Read to the paper itself follows.

Nematode matricide, evolution of ageing, and offspring-mother conflicts

Let's start with one death. Pristionchus pacificus eating a Caenorhabditis elegans.

Pristionchus pacificus is a nematode that can eat many kinds of foods. In this video, it uses a small tooth to puncture the cuticle of its prey, then sucks in the contents.

The Celens (imma call C elegans that) come in two sexes: male and herm. Herms contain only about 300 sperm cells, after using them all, the herm cannot fertilize more eggs, unless it gathers more from mating with a male. Males cannot reproduce on their own and must mate with a herm to produce offsprings.

Causality is not fundamental in the world

Today we tear down the illusion of causality, with quantum mechanics.

This started when I was reading The Order of Time (2018) by the rather poetic physicist Carlo Rovelli, and read that he said that causality is not certain, and two events can have a superposition of causality: a superposition of two possibilities: A causes B, and B causes A.

Quantum corelations with no causal order

The paper that started this seems to be a highly cited (over 200 currently) Quantum correlations with no causal order (2012), Ognyan Oreshkov, Fabio Costa, Časlav Brukner.

The abstract starts with a question: is causality fundamental?