DNA and Consciousness: The Brains Behind Biology

Consciousness and Natural Selection

Natural selection, although intricate, is a very slow process. It depends on probability and generations to have significant impact on populations. This time frame is not very useful when it comes to responding to events in real time. If you wanted to create a species that runs from a specific danger, nature would require centuries of time and countless deaths before such a mutation arises, let alone spreads across the population. As a result, nature produced brains.

Brains, Reaction Time, and Survival

The evolution of brains was a major game changer. It allowed organisms to observe a situation, make a calculation, and act accordingly. At this stage, consciousness had not formed but organisms had evolved a “calculator” that responds to specific stimuli. The evolution of such a system significantly improved a gene’s odds for survival but came at a cost. Now, the DNA molecules are not in charge of all the organism’s actions.

To understand the relationship between genes and brains, it is useful to look at both parenting and computation as analogies. A good example of a computation example is self learning AI.

AI and the Gene-Brain Theory

Recently, the company Open AI created a bot that was capable of playing the game Dota 2. For two weeks, the programmers made the bot play against versions of itself telling the bot which actions it took was good and which bad, while setting the ultimate goal as winning the game. At the end of the program, the bots were able to defeat every professional in the tournament.

What happened was that the programmers served as genes for the “brain,” which was the bot. The programmers did not tell the bot explicitly every move and counter move possible. They simply let the bot solve the problem presented to it and provided bias for good and bad actions. This is much like parenting; although each child is an independent unit able to make its own decisions, the parents serve as a guide by using positive and negative reinforcement.

Genetic Guidance for Behavior

If you cannot think of ways genes may be influencing your thinking, think about what makes you feel good. Do you like sweet, salty, or fatty foods? Your genes aren’t making you pick up that donut but they are rewarding you with pleasure signals when you do. Feel an itch? You choose to itch it but your genes provide you the sense of relief that follows. Like sex? The reason is the same.

These biases promote behaviors essential for survival during most of human evolution. However, since genes work over eons, these biases remain even in the present. This causes humans to become a victim of their genetics: in times of plenty, these biases begin to harm the individual. Excessive food consumption leads to diabetes, high blood pressure, and plaque buildup.The bias for sex leads to porn addiction and even the smaller biases like itching manifest in individuals as stress itching. These modern problems are never resolved because genes lack foresight.

Consciousness and Imagination of Reality

Now we can turn to consciousness. There are many theories as to how consciousness evolved. An interesting such theory involves the idea of simulations. If you look at computers, the way they predict the future is by running simulations. This is analogous to the primitive brain. However, nature would obviously select for organisms capable of running more accurate simulations.

It may be that in the quest for better simulations, it became useful to recognize oneself as part of the simulation. This evolutionary step allowed the organism to consider itself and take conscious steps to ensure survival instead of relying on robotic calculations. Ultimately, such an organism is capable of creativity and can persevere in situations where an “algorithmic-ally run” being would fail. Can’t find food? While most organisms would expend energy looking for food elsewhere, conscious beings would try setting traps and choose to spend their time for other essential activities, saving energy.

Regardless of whether or not this theory is true, we must consider the effect of consciousness on the process of natural selection:

Effects of Consciousness on Evolution

First and foremost, we must understand that human genetic evolution has either halted entirely or become slower than it ever was before. This is entirely due to our ability to solve problems. For nature to select genes over others, there has to be a loser that does worse. Now, with medicine and other innovations, humans solve problems before nature even has a chance to act. As a result, physical health in most places is immune to evolution. The few examples that occur such as sickle cell only happen in places where technology hasn’t had a chance to take effect.

In addition, humans actively defy the will of our genes. Although the end goal of DNA is to reproduce and exist in as many bodies as possible, we actively limit the number of offspring we have for financial or moral reasons. This is a direct counter to the will of our genes.

Creativity and Progress

Finally, consciousness has given humans the power of creation. We are capable of not only reorganizing our environment but also of reassembling the environment into useful objects. This power is most obvious when looking at computers.

When looking at computers, you are basically looking at something equivalent to a primitive brain. However, as mentioned earlier, this product is less efficient at storing information than life itself. This alone is a testament to the power of consciousness. While nature took over 2 billion years to create organisms with brains, humans were able to do so in under 100 years with even less information capacity to play with. This is over .000005% time efficiency to create a primitive being that bypassed natural selection entirely.

Language 

When addressing consciousness we must come to the unique topic of complex language. This invention is one of the main items that sets us apart from other organisms. The greatest advantage natural selection bestowed upon us is the ability of our brains to form and understand language . Language allows us to expand our knowledge beyond what we learn in one lifetime. While other organisms with brains must relearn everything each generation, humans can transmit information by text or speech, enabling almost infinite learning capacity over time.

Conclusion 

With this foundation, I present an interesting idea from The Selfish Gene. Although DNA is no longer the driving force of human improvement, consciousness has created a new replicator that can evolve and copy itself much faster than DNA ever could. That replicator is ideas. Essentially, ideas that can embed themselves in many people over generations will survive. However, every time ideas are exchanged, there is potential for “mutation,” affecting the interpretation and implication of the ideas. These ideas can range from deeply rooted doctrines like religion to viral videos on the internet.

As long as the idea persists, it carries information that continues forward. As inter-connectivity increases, the human community becomes a huge network of ideas, forming a beehive-like global brain driven by the persistence of ideas. This may explain the idea of a “legacy” that is so prominent in our culture. Your DNA will be diluted every generation. However, your ideas will leave behind a legacy that will stay for much longer. Although Charles Darwin’s combination of genes may no longer exist, he will still be remembered for everything he accomplished in his lifetime.