I have been thinking about what it means for something, an action, phenomenon, or belief to be useful, and I had an insight.
Generally, being useful is understood as A being useful to B, meaning that it positively affects something else. However, when this idea is pursued to its limit, it leads to the question of what ultimately benefits from positive effects, leading to difficult questions about ultimate purpose and value.
This way of thinking risks concluding that things not tied to an ultimate purpose or value are not useful. Let’s call this idea of connecting usefulness to ultimate purpose and value “fundamental usefulness.”
On the other hand, there might be cases where A is useful to A, meaning that the existence or occurrence of something is beneficial to its own existence or occurrence. This is the case when there is a positive feedback loop. Let’s call this state where something is useful to itself “self-usefulness.”
In this article, I will delve into usefulness, focusing on self-usefulness.
Effects Loop
When thinking about self-usefulness, it is almost impossible to think that no other object is involved.
Earlier, I expressed self-usefulness as “A is useful to A,” but this implies a loop structure of relationships where A affects B, B affects C, and as a result, C positively affects A. If such a loop structure exists, it is valid to say that “A is useful to A,” and consequently, A has self-usefulness.
Therefore, the formation of this loop of influence is important for self-usefulness. I call this loop the effects loop.
Dynamics of a Single Effects Loop
In the example above, I showed an effects loop involving A, B, and C. For A to have self-usefulness, the last impact from C to A must be positive. Even if the impacts from A to B and B to C are negative, it doesn’t matter as long as this condition is met.
However, if this is the only effects loop in the world, and the effects on B or C are negative, the effects loop as a whole is not sustainable. If this effects loop negatively affects B or C, B or C might disappear. If B or C are people, they may quit participating in this loop.
Therefore, for A to continue having self-usefulness, it is fundamentally desirable for the effects loop to be positive for all involved.
Dynamics of Multiple Effects Loops
On the other hand, multiple effects loops may exist. In the real world, there are countless effects loops.
Everything from physical objects like atoms and electromagnetic waves to chemicals, living organisms, human beings, societies, intelligence, beliefs, imaginations, and predictions affect each other. And various influences interconnect, whether positive or negative, including their mix, and countless effects loops should exist.
One object can be incorporated into multiple effects loops. When considering whether that object has self-usefulness, you can evaluate whether each incorporated effects loop is useful. However, ultimately, you will evaluate whether “A is useful to A” by synthesizing all the effects loops.
If the relationship between the object and the effects loops is fixed and non-fluid, even if negative elements are mixed in individual effects loops, if the overall is more positive, the object is useful. On the other hand, even if the relationship with the effects loops is fixed, if the overall is more negative, the object will conceptually disappear eventually.
If the relationship between the object and the effects loops is fluid, and the dynamics that retain a useful relationship work, the relationship should change to sever ties with the effects loops that receive negative feedback and maintain relationships with effects loops that receive positive feedback. Or, it may change the feedback in the existing effects loops from negative to positive or make it more positive.
Life and Intelligence
In a world with multiple effects loops, a comprehensive assessment is necessary. Things with self-usefulness continue to survive, and those without it will either change or disappear.
At this time, in a state where only entirely inorganic phenomena exist, effects loops occur naturally. However, they may temporarily pause, but eventually, another force will break them. This is repeated.
In the process, things that are temporarily useful may continue to exist, but their usefulness is lost due to the collapse of the effects loop.
On the other hand, life and intelligence prevent this.
When life and intelligence exist, they create a state where, as mentioned earlier, there is fluidity in the relationship with the effects loop, and a mechanics that holds useful relationships works. The phenomena of life and intelligence focus on things with usefulness, change the relationship with the effects loop, and change the impact that the object gives to the effects loop.
In other words, life and intelligence are mechanisms that produce or enhance a situation where “A is useful to A”, and can be said to be a mechanism that pursues usefulness including self-usefulness.
The Pursuit of Usefulness
Life and intelligence did not originally exist on Earth.
It is believed to have been born or strengthened through various evolutionary processes, such as chemical evolution by chemical substances, biological evolution by DNA, and the evolution of intelligence through education and social organization.
At first glance, these processes may seem to be established by completely different mechanisms, but when abstracted, it seems that the evolution of self-usefulness in the effects loop emerges.
Even in an inorganic situation where nothing called life or intelligence is clearly formed, effects loops and self-usefulness can be formed. Incidentally, an effects loop involving all elements receiving positive feedback, or a combination of multiple effects loops giving each other positive feedback, can be established even without forming complex chemical substances.
Even if such positive feedback realizing effects loops appear, the effects loop will eventually collapse due to significant environmental changes. However, on the other hand, effects loops that realize positive feedback have robustness that can adapt without collapsing to small environmental changes.
Environmental changes on Earth are diverse. On the other hand, different effects loops have different robustness. Various effects loops are formed and broken, and effects loops with high adaptability will survive, and by collaborating with multiple effects loops, more diverse and solid robustness will be acquired. If this step proceeds well, it is not impossible to approach life from an inorganic environment.
Therefore, it is thought that the accumulation of the formation of self-usefulness produced life pursuing usefulness, and at the end of the pursuit of usefulness by life, intelligence was produced, and evolution proceeded in this flow.
Principle of Self-Usefulness
Fundamental usefulness is objective usefulness when focusing on the object, but on the other hand, what is considered essentially valuable is arbitrary.
On the other hand, self-usefulness is subjective usefulness that emphasizes feedback to oneself. However, self-usefulness, which feeds back to itself, does not require arbitrary judgment.
For this reason, fundamental usefulness requires a subject of usefulness pursuit, such as life and intelligence, to determine what is useful. And self-usefulness does not require the existence of a subject of usefulness pursuit, such as life and intelligence. Even without arbitrarily determining what is useful, self-usefulness can be established.
Therefore, in situations like the origin of life, where there is no life or intelligence, or situations where there are no clear leaders or centralized power, things with high self-usefulness will continue to survive. And in the competition of multiple self-usefulness, those causing contradictions will win, and those who can cooperate will more likely continue to survive by cooperating. In this survival competition, things evolve with self-usefulness as the central concept, and by that evolution, they develop highly as a whole.
I would like to call this the principle of self-usefulness, where evolution and development can proceed by self-usefulness without requiring life or intelligence.
System Engineers and Usefulness
I am contemplating the origins of life from a systems engineer’s perspective as personal research.
Many studies in this field are conducted by experts in chemistry and biology. On the other hand, I believe it’s also crucial to view life not only from the aspects of materials and existing biological characteristics and functions but as a more comprehensive and abstract system.
By stepping back from specific substances, characteristics, and functions and unraveling the essential structures and mechanisms from a system perspective, I believe systems engineers’ knowledge and experience can be utilized. This is the origin of my approach.
When thinking from a system engineer’s perspective, the characteristic of thinking about things systematically comes into play. However, as engineers, the feasibility and practicality of concepts are also emphasized.
My personal research is merely theoretical and doesn’t involve actual synthesis of chemical substances or observation of organisms. Yet, I ensure my theories could occur in reality, keeping an eye on whether conditions seem to align for such happenings.
I also focus on how various phenomena are useful for life. It is essential to discern whether something is merely occurring as a secondary event or is deeply involved with the essence of life phenomena, to grasp the basic structures and principles at the center of the complex system of life.
In this regard, I take a pragmatic stance, emphasizing the usefulness and utility in all my writings, not just in my research on the origins of life.
Thus, usefulness is at the core of my contemplation.
Hypothesis of the Origin of Life and Self-Usefulness
In several past articles, I have touched upon the importance of feedback loops in life phenomena. In recent articles, I have observed the chain connecting these loops, which includes spatial movement, state transition, and chemical processing, among others, noting it as a chain of effects.
These effect loops, when formed in a circular fashion, if they become a positive feedback loop, will self-enhance and persist. This process of competition and cooperation among numerous such loops is my current understanding and hypothesis of the essence of life phenomena and the origin of life from a systemic perspective.
In addition to the chemical substances that make up life, I have also suggested that geographical features like the Earth’s ponds, waters, and rivers, and the cyclical transitions of water cycles, day and night, and seasons, as well as weather and geographical changes, play a role in these effect loops.
I hypothesize that in the early origins of life, various Earth environments were incorporated as carriers of the effect loops, utilizing these to generate new chemical substances, which were naturally selected based on their contribution to the effect loop, leading to chemical evolution.
Through advanced chemical reactions by evolved chemical substances, the role carried by the Earth’s environment could be internalized within the chemical systems. I believe life emerged as numerous independent effect loops were formed.
This idea led me to the concept of self-usefulness from contemplating feedback loops that accompany self-maintenance and self-enhancement.
In Conclusion
In this article, beginning with the consideration of usefulness, I have delved into self-usefulness.
I am focusing on the importance of a loop-centered perspective, but it is a fact that modeling systems centered on effect loops is challenging. From the perspective of self-usefulness, it’s relatively easier to model focusing on individual substances or objects.
Ultimately, I believe that by being able to express the form of systems from both element-centered and loop-centered models, a deeper understanding of various systems, including chemical evolution at the origins of life, ecosystems, and societies, can be achieved.
