Understanding the Basics of Natural Selection Through Tetris

 The essence of life is statistical improbability on a colossal scale — Richard Dawkins

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Summary: The game of Tetris serves as a simplified analogy for understanding the mechanisms of evolution. Tetris and natural selection bear similarities like randomness, selection, and adaptation.

The Evolutionary Game of Tetris

At some point in your life, you may have played Tetris. If not, then you may have watched someone else playing, sitting next to you while waiting for whatever you two were waiting for. Tetris is a game that, on the surface, seems simple: various shapes, known as Tetriminos, fall from the top of the screen, and the player must rotate and position them to create complete lines, which then disappear. However, beneath this simplicity lies an interesting parallel to the process of evolution by natural selection.

Tetris: A Game of Randomness and Fit

Tetris is a game where random shapes are thrown at the player, and only those that fit into the existing structure are useful. Each falling Tetrimino represents a random guess, and the player’s task is to find the best possible fit for it within the current configuration. The goal is to create complete lines, which can be seen as a metaphor for achieving a stable and functional state.

Natural Selection: The Ultimate Game of Fit

Natural selection operates on a similar principle. In nature, random genetic mutations occur within organisms. These mutations are akin to the random Tetriminos in Tetris. Just as in Tetris, where only the pieces that fit well into the existing structure are beneficial, in natural selection, only the genetic variations that enhance an organism’s fitness (in the backdrop of the current state of the environment) are likely to be passed on to future generations. Over time, this process leads to the evolution of species, with traits that are well-suited to their environments becoming more common.

Commonalities Between Tetris and Natural Selection

• Randomness: Both Tetris and natural selection involve an element of randomness. In Tetris, the shapes of Tetriminos are random (although selected from a limited pool). In natural selection, genetic mutations also occur randomly.
• Selection: In both processes, there is a selection mechanism. In Tetris, the player selects the best plays for each shape to fit. In natural selection, the environment “selects” the random mutations that are most advantageous for the survival and reproduction of the organism.

Differences Between Tetris and Natural Selection

• Agency: In Tetris, the player actively makes decisions about where to place each shape. In natural selection, there is no conscious decision-making; the process is driven by the interplay between environmental pressures and random mutations.
• Time Scale: Tetris games are fast-paced, with decisions made in seconds. Natural selection operates over much longer time scales, often spanning generations.
• End Goal: The goal in Tetris is to clear completed lines and achieve a high score. In natural selection, there is no specific end goal; the process is a trajectory of evolution that can go in any direction over time, potentially stopping, bifurcating, or merging.

Conclusion

While Tetris and natural selection operate in vastly different contexts, they share intriguing similarities in their reliance on randomness and selection. Tetris provides a simplified, game-based analogy for the complex and ongoing process of evolution by natural selection.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

Which gene I lack

 

There is a joy
that you are able to find,
in the simple act of
searching for beach glass.

Walking along the shore
your eyes lit up,
coming across,
something other than
a seafoam green.

Watching you languorously walk
your steps in sync
with breaking waves,
I wonder,
which gene I lack
to miss your pleasures.

Science, Engineering, and Evolution

 

Details may vary (and figuring those out is more of an engineering problem) but some basic, or self-evident facts, lead to inevitable outcomes that shape a vast range of downstream consequences.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Summary: Starting with a couple of basic facts, emrgence of the principle of survival of the fittest is inevitable. The various nuances of how survival of the fittest exactly operates, and has resulted in self-replicating molecules evolving to become complex forms like you and me, however, are still being investigated. Survival of the fittest is a fundamental understanding of the workings of nature; the rest (i.e., the exact trajectory of evolution) are practical solutions that the principle of survival of the fittest, operating within the constraints of the environment, finds.

Consider a car. I have a notion of what a car is. At the mention of the word “car,” the image that comes to mind is a metallic box that sits on four wheels. The box has a certain shape; it is longer than it is wider. On two sides of the box, there are doors that can open and close, allowing me to sit behind a steering wheel to get me from here to there.

Beyond the general notions people have about cars, what is under the hood differs from one car to another. Differences also exist in the details of the exterior. The notion of a car could be thought of as the guiding principle (or the science) of a car, while the details represent engineering.

The understanding of the diversity of forms and phenomena of things in the universe works along the same lines. There are some underlying notions that explain a vast majority of general features among individual objects, while specifics for each differ.

This combination of science and engineering works something like the following: The consequences of some simple, self-evident facts result in guiding principles. These guiding principles may, in fact, be inevitable outcomes of a few self-evident facts and interactions among them. Once there, these principles become powerful tools for understanding a wide range of solutions that can emerge. At a granular level, the specifics of solutions differ (like details differ under the hood of a car), but their fundamental workings can be understood by a few guiding principles.

A specific example will help drive this point home.

Limitation of resources is a basic and self-evident fact. The Sun is the provider of energy on the surface of the Earth. Vast as that energy source may be, it is a resource that is still limited and either has to be shared or competed for.

Now let us assume that, for whatever reason, some nascent forms of biology (e.g., self-replicating molecules) were to emerge on the surface of the Earth. Without worrying about the nuances of what the definition of biology may be, a sensible fact to differentiate it from a rock would be that biology has the innate drive to survive and reproduce, a process that requires energy.

When these two self-evident facts are brought together, the inevitable consequence is the emergence of the principle of survival of the fittest. In the quest to survive and reproduce, the traits that facilitate procuring a bigger share of energy get favored and proliferate in future generations, and the nascent forms of biology evolve along a trajectory.

One can argue about the details as to what the definitions of biology may be, or why traits among the members of a class of biological forms have to differ, but given the facts that (a) resources are constrained, and (b) the prime directive of biology is to survive and reproduce (a process that requires energy), the emergence of the principle of survival of the fittest is an inevitability. Once there, then working in the environment it operates it guides the specifics of evolution.

Following the same argument and guided by the principle of survival of the fittest, since biology also needs to be aware of its environment, senses emerge. Senses are the solutions biology has engineered to know the state of the environment. The exact details depend on the environment that biology is in and what solutions the principle of the survival of the fittest can produce.

To seek energy, biology needs to know where plentiful sources of energy are. To do that, it has to know about its surroundings. It just happens that there are various forms of carriers of information — light, sound, molecules — that permeate the environment and encapsulate some details about its state. If a biology comes to possess a means to sense its surroundings, having that capability will make it better at getting a larger share of energy and in its quest for survival and reproduction.

Starting from a couple of self-evident facts and the inevitability of the principle of survival of the fittest that followed, here I am with a collection of senses that are finely tuned to see, hear, smell, taste, and feel the surroundings in which I exist. Beyond serving their primary purpose, with the evolution of consciousness, these senses now let me also appreciate other pleasures in life.

The subtle beauty of the feat of engineering achieved by the principle of the survival of the fittest is that it does not require a conscious or predetermined design. Sensing the environment in which it operates, it tailors the appropriate solutions.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

Aging and the Mailman

 

There was an old lady,
who lived alone
across the street
from my home.

She had told me a story
of how her days
in her old age
feel labored,
something akin to
when she had once climbed
Mt. Kilimanjaro.

But then, life was young,
the sky, it felt brighter,
and there was a companion
walking beside her.

These days, she said,
life looks forward to
a glimpse of the mailman,
who holds promises for,
connecting her world to
a world she once knew.

She is there no more,
and now old myself,
I understand what she meant.

I catch myself
hoping that the mailman
will stop by,
and pump some air in
my ever-shrinking world.

Inevitabilities

 

Details may vary (and figuring those out is more of an engineering problem) but some basic, or self-evident facts, lead to inevitable outcomes that shape a vast range of downstream of consequences.

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Summary: It is a fun exercise to start from a few simple, and perhaps, self-evident facts and to understand the intricacies of nature. One such exercise that brings a sense of enlightenment is coming to a sudden realization that in an energy limited environment, if biology is to evolve, the mechanism of survival of fittest is an inevitable outcome. And once its inevitability is in place, its explanatory power is far reaching. An example is understanding the reason for why I have specific organs for sensing the environment I live in.

A very basic, and a plausible fact is that the amount of energy in various corners of the universe is limited. No matter how plentiful it may be, it is still limited.

For our solar system, the main provider of energy is the Sun. The energy the Sun gives comes from thermonuclear fusion occurring at its core, a process where hydrogen nuclei (protons) fuse to form helium (two protons and two neutrons). This process results in a small loss of mass that is converted into energy, as described by Einstein’s equation, (E=mc²). This energy is transferred from the core to the surface of the Sun primarily through radiation and convection. From the surface, it is then radiated as electromagnetic waves, which travel through the empty space to reach the various planets in the Sun’s orbit.

For everything on the Earth, the Sun is the ultimate source of energy, and further, the amount of that energy that is available is limited.

Because energy is limited, the establishment of the mechanism of survival of the fittest becomes inevitable if biology happens to evolve in a resource limited environment. This is because the fundamental tenets of biology are:

- Biology needs to survive and reproduce.

- To do that, biology requires energy.

- Biology must compete with other organisms for the limited amount energy that is available.

In the desire to survive, thrive, and reproduce — activities that rely on the availability of energy — traits that help secure more energy become dominant over generations. This is the mechanism of survival of the fittest and natural selection. The emergence of natural selection, therefore, is a natural outcome of two self-evident facts: (1) the finiteness of available energy in the environment, and (2) the fundamental characteristics of being a biological organism., i.e., survival and reproduction (requiring energy).

Once in place, the mechanism of natural selection has sweeping explanatory powers for understanding the peculiarities of biological forms we see around us today. Examples include the incredible capacity of bacteria to develop antibiotic resistance, the long neck of giraffes in the African savannahs, the diverse beak shapes of Galapagos finches. And the list goes on.

It is not only biology to which the explanatory scope of natural selection extends. Many psychological traits and cognitive biases that humans exhibit today can also be linked to the process of natural selection. Examples include our preference for social bonding (or tribalism), our fear responses, our tendency to discount the future, our aversion to loss etc. There is an entire branch of evolutionary psychology devoted to exploring human behavior in the context of evolution and natural selection

The explanatory power of natural selection is so sweeping that one might even say that if a biological characteristic does not exist, it is because it failed the test of survival of the fittest in the context of the environment in which it tried to evolve.

Once the mechanism of natural selection is in place, it spawns its own inevitabilities downstream.

The mechanism of natural selection and survival of the fittest can be used to argue that biological organisms will have sensory organs, i.e., is also an inevitability. The argument would go something like this: To survive (and hopefully, thrive), biological organisms have to be successful in getting their share of energy that is available in the environment. They also have to compete for those resources with other biological organisms.

To be able to be successful in this endeavor, it would be advantageous for them to be able to sense the environment they are in and to know the time and locations where energy resources might be concentrated. Not only that, but they also need to sense the environment to avoid the dangers and become a source of energy for someone else.

It also just happens that the environment is permeated with carriers of information about its state, and it is matter of having the right set of receptors. Carriers of information include sight, sound, smell etc.

Given two facts: (1) biology needs to be aware of the state of the environment, and (2) such information is already being transmitted within the environment that the biological system inhabits, it is only a matter of time before natural selection, without any predetermined design, leads to the evolution of sensory organs that are receptive to the dominant carriers of environmental information.

And so, because biology needs to know about the state of the environment, traits that enhance an organism’s ability to sense and respond to environmental cues, therefore, are advantageous. Consequently, development of senses is an inevitability.

To highlight the interplay between the development of senses and carriers of information consider that biology has indeed evolved specialized sensory organs (like eyes, ears, and noses) to detect light, sound, and chemical signals that are present in the environment. These adaptations allow biology to gather information about their surroundings.

An implication of the above argument is also that the biology of senses will not be universal but will be dependent on the environment biology resides in. Organisms evolve senses that are most relevant to their ecological niche.

Returning back to where we started, a couple of basic facts that resources are limited and biology needs resources to survive and reproduce, the emergence of the mechanism of natural selection and survival of the fittest becomes an inevitability. Once natural selection is in place, and the fact that biology needs to know about the state of the environment to secure energy makes development of senses a next level of logical inevitability.

The subtle beauty of these inevitabilities is that they make the world all in place on its own and there is no need for a meticulous designer to do so.

Ciao, and thanks for reading.

Senses and environment: Connecting the threads

 

All credibility, all good conscience, all evidence of truth come only from the senses — Friedrich Nietzsche

Arun Kumar

Arun Kumar + AI

Summary: There is a dualism between me and the external world. To survive and thrive, I need to be aware of my environment. This awareness comes from tapping into various carriers of information. What diverse kinds of carriers are there? Although biological organisms did not consciously know about them, natural selection developed senses that tap into these carriers to improve survival chances.

There is me and there is everything else (i.e., the rest).

The rest is the environment in which the me, a biological organism, is trying to survive and thrive. Me and the rest form the notion of duality, implication of which are so profound and so intriguing that countless philosophers, religions, developers of social norms and ethics, have grappled with since the beginning of time.

Me and the rest are separated by a boundary. In my case, the boundary is my skin. For trees, it is bark and the surface of leaves. For cells, it is the cell membrane.

At the microscopic level it may be hard to tell where me ends and the rest begins, but at the macroscopic level, the boundary is the demarcation between the outside and inside of biological organisms. All biological organisms live inside of a boundedness like a cocoon hanging on the branch of a tree outside of my window.

In this duality of outside and inside, the outside environment is the provider of energy, and I am the consumer. I need energy to glue my biology together and keep it safe inside of my cocoon. It is also my innate desire to survive and thrive (and doing that requires energy). If I do not then I might as well be a rock.

As all other biological organisms also want to survive and thrive, I am also competing with them for the limited resources that the environment has to offer. As part of this competition, I also need to avoid dangers and stay alive and not become a source of energy for some predator. To achieve these goals, a basic need I have is to be constantly aware of what is going on around me. This awareness is facilitated by having some biology that reacts to carriers of information about the state of the environment that surrounds me.

A carrier of information about the state of the environment is something that leaves point A and has the ability to travel to point B (where I stand ready to receive the information). When the carrier of information leaves the point A, it either carries the information about what generated it or is influenced by some characteristics associated with point A. The generator of the information could be a lion having a sudden urge to roar or it could be a drop of morning dew hanging on a leaf and reflecting sunlight.

The carriers of information require a medium to travel through and that medium could just be vacuum or could be air (or water or some other material). It is the presence of those carriers of information about the state of the environment that evolution and natural selection patiently developed corresponding sense organs for.

In the universe I live in, the carriers of information are several and include waves, fields, particles.

The world is permeated by electromagnetic (EM) waves. It is the light coming from stars that travels through empty space and reaches the receptors in my eyes. It is the microwave background radiation that originated the at time of the Big Bang and is still around me conveying a message that originated 13.8 billion years ago. It is the radio waves which we have learned to exploit to communicate. The EM waves can travel through empty space.

The physics behind electromagnetic (EM) waves is electrons circulating the nucleus of the atom and when they jump from a higher to a lower energy orbit, a pulse of EM radiation is released. The orbits, and the corresponding energy levels, are unique to the atom and that information is codified in the spectral characteristics of the emitted wave.

On its way from the source to my eyes, the electromagnetic radiation could be reflected, absorbed, or scattered and such actions impart their own signature. The light that falls on leaves, chlorophyll absorbs the red and blue parts of the electromagnetic spectrum. However, it reflects green light, which is why leaves appear green to our eyes.

Sound, as a carrier of information, is a form of wave that relies on the compression and rarefaction of the medium such as air they travel through. Sound is generated by the vibration associated with the source. Unlike EM waves, sound (or compressions) waves require a physical medium (like air, water, solids) to propagate from point A to B.

Another form of waves is gravitational waves, and they are generated by sudden disturbances in the fabric of space and time. They are like throwing stones in a pond that creates ripples on its surface propagating away from the point of impact. Similarly, massive objects like merging black holes or neutron stars create gravitational ripples in the spacetime fabric that propagates away at the speed of light.

Going beyond the waves, particles like molecules drifting away from their point of origin could also be carriers of information. The particles could drift through emptiness or could be carried away through a medium like air.

Various fields, such as electric, magnetic, and gravitational fields and their gradients in space or variations in time, can also serve as carriers of information. While fields can be static or dynamic, waves are inherently dynamic. Changes in the strength of the fields, either in space or time, can be a carrier of information. Fields can exist in vacuum.

Another carrier of information could be subatomic particles, like neutrinos or cosmic rays, and are capable of carrying information from the source of their origin (e.g., core of stars where thermonuclear reactions generate them) to another location through vacuum.

Lastly, some carriers of information require physical contact to deliver their content. A bit of food has to be placed over my tongue for me to know its profile. Walking on the beach, a sharp piece of seashell pressing against my soles lets me know of its presence.

There may be more esoteric carriers of information out there that are beyond my limits of knowledge but whose existence I can speculate. For example, quantum entanglement where particles become interconnected in such a way that the state of one particle instantly influences the state of another, regardless of the distance between them.

Or perhaps, the neural activity inside my brain generates a signature that like a blue tooth signal can be picked over a short distance and someone with correct and sensitive enough receptors can tune into. Mind reading and telepathy may not be total fiction.

And so, biological organisms need to have a physical boundary. For surviving and thriving, they need to gather information about the state of environment. There are carriers of information that are present in the environment. The miracle is that independent factual threads come together in the patient hands of natural selection and evolution. Natural selections, by developing senses that respond to the carriers of information has connected these threads together.

Ciao and thanks for reading.

Conservation of the Cone of Misery

Seeing Helene’s cone of uncertainty
veer away,
we prayed it to hold,
and not sway.

For our own relief,
we chose to ignore,
that someone’s loss
is our gain, and more.

In the physics behind life,
a principle holds -
The net sum of misery,
is conserved,

It never folds.