Words have meaning. We use words to express ourselves both internally (through our thought processes) and externally (through communication). Languages, therefore, shape our very ability to comprehend the world. Languages are not generated spontaneously — they evolve over generations as the people using them invent and re-define words to express new concepts or simplify existing ones. Every word and idea in a language, or culture, therefore is constantly competing for an evolutionary niche, where the fitness function is ease of communication multiplied by expressiveness.

In addition to words, cultures contain stories. Stories are used for entertainment and to convey lessons about our world. Every cultural archetype — every hero and villain — is a character that people think about and cannot help but compare to themselves and others because of similarities in their stories. Therefore, every common story exerts effects on people’s emotional and rational perception of others. Cultures therefore control our perception of reality and effect therefore effect our actions.

What do you call a set of information that informs a machine’s internal state and actions?

Software!

At the molecular scale, we are all machines. Our bodies and brains are made of billions of tiny, computationally deterministic nano-structures such as DNA and RNA. At the molecular level, DNA transcription processes look a lot like parallel Turing machines. Each of our cells executes a genetic program stored in a write-only archive (DNA) and stores information in randomly-accessed memory (RNA and cellular state). Because we are made of cells, we are therefore very complex machines. We have a higher-level informational process (thinking) which occurs as a massively parallel computation running across our neural network (grey matter). We have evolved to maintain a concept of the self as a single, atomically-thinking entity because it is the easiest way to represent our self-concept — but in reality, the self is merely a useful concept that provides an abstraction over a vast computation that we cannot understand. Mathematically, it is impossible for a computational system to store the full information pertaining to it’s internal state in addition to hardware, because to do so would require an amount of memory equal to the amount of available memory + additional details about it’s structure. Our minds cannot hope to achieve this — especially since human consciousness only supports analysis of 6–8 concepts at a time. Abstract concepts allow us to reason about larger sets of information then we can store in working memory.

What is our source of such abstract concepts — the very handles we use to hold information in our minds and communicate with others? Culture and language! Therefore, culture and language are our software, and our minds are also software running on the hardware layer of our brains. Furthermore, this software is constantly being installed and modified as we think and communicate. The software is ordered. It spreads, or reproduces, through communication. It responds to the environment passively as we modify our ideas to incorporate new information. It grows and develops as we build on ideas. It self-regulates through reflection. It maintains homeostasis and energy-processing through our own homeostasis and energy processing.

Therefore, ideas are not just software — one might even go so far as to say they are alive!

Ideas come in many shapes and sizes. Individual words are like single-cellular organisms. Stories and complex ideas that incorporate multiple words are like multi-cellular organisms. Our ideology is an ecosystem in which ideas constantly compete for dominance, and when larger ideas incorporate smaller or less effective ideas one might even draw parallels to predation.

If ideas represent a secondary evolutionary system, and the self is but a constructive idea incorporating other ideas, one might make the claim that they represent a secondary evolutionary system. On top of our evolving hardware, human knowledge and behavior evolves in this secondary system. Our genetic code exists on multiple levels — both as hardware and software.

Therefore, I characterize creativity and scientific discovery as a valid form of reproduction. Design your offspring with care.