The other thing to say is that there’s an important sense in which most modern creatures don’t value anything—except for their genetic heritage—which all living things necessarily value.
Contrast with a gold-atom maximiser. That values collections of pure gold atoms. It cares about something besides the survival of its genes (which obviously it also cares about—no genes, no gold). It strives to leave something of value behind.
Most modern organisms don’t leave anything behind—except for things that are inherited—genes and memes. Nothing that they expect to last for long, anyway. They keep dissipating energy gradients until everything is obliterated in high-entropy soup.
Those values are not very difficult to preserve—they are the default state.
If ecosystems cared about creating some sort of low-entropy state somewhere, then that property would take some effort to preserve (since it is vulnerable to invasion by creatures who use that low-entropy state as fuel). However, with the current situation, there aren’t really any values to preserve—except for those of the replicators concerned.
The idea has been called variously: goal system zero, god’s utility function, Shiva’s values.
Even the individual replicators aren’t really valued in themselves—except by themselves. There’s a parliament of genes, and any gene is expendable, on a majority vote. Genes are only potentially immortal. Over time, the representation of the original genes drops. Modern refactoring techniques will mean it will drop faster. There is not really a floor to the process—eventually, all may go.
The other thing to say is that there’s an important sense in which most modern creatures don’t value anything—except for their genetic heritage—which all living things necessarily value.
Contrast with a gold-atom maximiser. That values collections of pure gold atoms. It cares about something besides the survival of its genes (which obviously it also cares about—no genes, no gold). It strives to leave something of value behind.
Most modern organisms don’t leave anything behind—except for things that are inherited—genes and memes. Nothing that they expect to last for long, anyway. They keep dissipating energy gradients until everything is obliterated in high-entropy soup.
Those values are not very difficult to preserve—they are the default state.
If ecosystems cared about creating some sort of low-entropy state somewhere, then that property would take some effort to preserve (since it is vulnerable to invasion by creatures who use that low-entropy state as fuel). However, with the current situation, there aren’t really any values to preserve—except for those of the replicators concerned.
The idea has been called variously: goal system zero, god’s utility function, Shiva’s values.
Even the individual replicators aren’t really valued in themselves—except by themselves. There’s a parliament of genes, and any gene is expendable, on a majority vote. Genes are only potentially immortal. Over time, the representation of the original genes drops. Modern refactoring techniques will mean it will drop faster. There is not really a floor to the process—eventually, all may go.