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Hey y’all.
I’ve been thinking about more ways to get your feedback on my book as I’m writing it. As part of that, I’m going to start sharing “core idea snippets” that hit the main ideas I’m currently wrestling (rasslin’) with.
This week I want to share Three Alphabets, Three Trees. It’s a (brief) history of the universe through one pattern, applied three times.
My hope is to apply the learnings from big history to our present moment, and to show how the information in genes and memes determines our reality.
Thanks and let me know if you have any feedback!
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Three Alphabets, Three Trees
The universe's complexity can be understood by three trees: the tree of molecules, the tree of life, and the tree of ideas.
These trees are created by three building block alphabets: elements, genes, and memes.
Let's look at each.
I. Elements Create The Tree of Molecules
14 billion to 4 billion years ago
The universe began in a Big Bang fourteen billion years ago. This created a universe full of hydrogen and helium. Through gravity, these simple atoms grouped together to form massive stars. These stars exploded in supernovas to create the elements in the periodic table.
Through the electromagnetic force, these elements combined to form larger molecules like H2O (water) or NaCl (salt).
A few of these elements are especially good at forming bonds with each other. For example, carbon can link up with itself to large massive lattices like graphene.
We call these easily bondable elements "organic" elements because they are the basis for the structures of life. The organic elements are Hydrogen, Carbon, Nitrogen, Oxygen, Silicon, Phosphorus, and Sulfur.
There are an infinite amount of ways these organic elements can combine in 3D space. We call this the Tree of Possible Molecules. Chemists call it chemical space:
The above image is a visual representation of all the different kinds of organic molecules: proteins, sugars, and much more.
As shown in the image below, we can think of this as a small alphabet of foundational building blocks (elements) creating a tree of complexity (molecules).
II. Genes Create The Tree of Life
4 billion years ago to 200,000 years ago
Most of those infinite molecules weren't special. They were just simple combinations of random elements, floating in the vastness of space. But then, four billion years ago, on a random planet, just the right distance from a star, in liquid water, something special happened. A molecule began self-replicating, using the energy from underwater sea vents. How exactly did this happen? We don’t truly know. It doesn’t look like much but is actually the start of something much bigger. The beginning of genes creating the tree of life.
DNA is a molecule that contains the instructions for creating more of itself. These instructions aren’t written on paper or stored on a computer. Instead, they are represented by a series of molecules, connected into a double helix. Strangely, DNA only has four types of molecules—cytosine, guanine, adenine, and thymine—C, G, A, and T. CGAT is the alphabet for the language of life. Arrange them in one way and boom, a kitten. Change a couple (million) letters and boom, a puppy.
Again we see the same pattern as above: a small alphabet of foundational building blocks (genes made of CGAT) creating a tree of complexity (life).
Note: Although there's an underlying pattern, there are differences between the Tree of Molecules and the Tree of Life. Elements take existing matter to create new things, like turning hydrogen and oxygen into water. In contrast, genes take an organism and create more of itself. Elements combine, genes replicate.
Because the genes that don't want to replicate die out, there is an emergent "desire" to replicate. Organisms seem to have a "purpose," to reproduce. Stars don't. I wish that stars wanted to create cute little star babies, but they don't. They just are. The universe abides by laws of physics, not some deeper purpose.
III. Memes Create The Tree of Ideas
200,000 years ago to today
After four billion years of life, the first homo sapiens emerged around 200,000 years ago.
Sapiens are just a small part of the tree of life. However, we developed something special, spoken language. We don’t know exactly how language evolved, but it set us apart from other animals. It allowed us to communicate and spread ideas like “ug, tiger over there.”
Language looks surprisingly similar to genes. Spoken language has a small set of roughly 50 phonemes that our vocal tract can produce—from “ahhhhh” to “ch.” Written language has small alphabets too; the English alphabet has 26 letters. And yet, like genes, this small alphabet can be used to describe an infinite variety of thoughts from “god is great” to “god is just fine.”
These thoughts, called memes, self-replicate to spread through minds, written text, and the internet. They create the tree of ideas, the memesphere.
Like genes, these memes have this same emergent "purpose," to replicate. But like with genes, this “purpose” is just because all the non-replicators die. We're left with only proselytizing religions and catchy songs.
IV. Modular Building Blocks Create Trees Of Complexity
Taken together, we can put these three trees side by side. They tell the stories of cosmic evolution, biological evolution, and human evolution.
Each have the same pattern: A small alphabet of foundational building blocks create a tree of complexity.
7 organic elements create The Tree of Possible Molecules
The 4 letters (CGAT) of genes create The Tree of Life
The 50 phonemes of language and memes create The Tree of Ideas
This leads to other questions like:
How does the tree of life evolve?
How does the tree of ideas evolve?
Do bits create The Tree of Algorithms?
We’ll cover those in a future post.
LINKS
1) Last newsletter I wrote about How to balance recovery and empathy post-COVID vaccine. I don’t think I balanced my message correctly. My dad (a loyal subscriber!) responded:
Good newsletter, but a bit depressing. I continue to struggle with what emergency/crisis/inequity/disaster/shooting/other to respond to. It’s overwhelming. I have to set some boundaries and be realistic on what matters most and what I can impact.
I agree. My favorite thing to do when stressed is bucket what I can control vs. what I can’t control. I think my last newsletter created a bit too much overwhelm and not enough rest.
2) These are two excellent threads that get us into the mindset of Protocols Not Platforms.
First, on protocols for filestorage:
What I want is something like a "filesystem", where I own the data and can open it in whatever app I choose. But I don't want manual conflict merging every time two people simultaneously edit a doc. The "filesystem" needs to know how to merge changes.
Why does Craft (and Figma and GDocs and Notion) have to implement their own custom realtime sync protocol? Could we just have a user-owned "filesystem" that deals with that part? So I can open a file in multiple apps, and have them sync in realtime?
The world I'm imagining is one where I have Craft open, and you have Notion open, and another collaborator has VSCode open and we're all editing the same document live, perhaps from slightly different perspectives.
Second, on protocols for search:
Great search *should not be a competitive advantage* for random apps, it should be a foregone conclusion. HBO should not be focused on the problem of basic search. Unfortunately, if HBO gets a little better at search tomorrow, nothing changes when I search Disney+.
It continues to be dumb that all internet infrastructure after 1993 has been built in walled gardens.
3) Your monthly reminder that political parties mess with your mind. Democrats (wrongly) think COVID is super dangerous, Republicans less so. (Though both are still ridiculously wrong.)
4) Babylon Bee: Men Demand Reparations From Women Due To Eve Eating The Apple
5) The Onion: ‘Oh God What Happened Now,’ Mumbles Congressperson After Seeing Massive NRA Donation
6) Rhys: Uber, Instacart, and Amazon Introduce New "Indentured Servant" Partnership To Have Same Gig Worker Complete All Of Your Tasks
JOBS AND OPPORTUNITIES
VaccinateCA is a great nonprofit that helps gets shots in arms in CA. They are hiring engineers.
There’s a new Zcash-style privacy coin, IronFish. It will allow folks to run nodes directly from the browser. Their CEO Elena is an excellent and fun person. They’re hiring a bunch of engineers.
Initialized Capital (a great VC crew) is hiring a Head of Community.
Automated giving project Momentum (which we discussed in #18) is hiring engineers.
MUSIC
A couple of weeks ago, I shared the all-drums Birdman soundtrack. One reader, Maddie, responded with this fun “Rhythms of Comedy” Youtube channel:
Remember the old Windows and iTunes visualizers? So delightful. I spent hours watching these in childhood.
Here’s a prototype of new AR visualizers. This one is called Beatsy.
Hope you have a good week! Warmth, Rhys
If you like this newsletter, check out my online community of systems thinkers, Roote.
❤️ Thanks to my generous patrons ❤️
Ben Wilcox, Audra Jacobi, Sam Jonas, Patrick Walker, Shira Frank, David Hanna, Benjamin Bratton, Michael Groeneman, Haseeb Qureshi, Jim Rutt, Zoe Harris, David Ernst, Brian Crain, Matt Lindmark, Colin Wielga, Malcolm Ocean, John Lindmark, Collin Brown, Ref Lindmark, James Waugh, Mark Moore, Matt Daley, Peter Rogers, Darrell Duane, Denise Beighley, Scott Levi, Harry Lindmark, Simon de la Rouviere, and Katie Powell.