The purpose of my life: OBO Fred, the neuron

“What is the purpose of my life?” said a neuron.

It was a cerebral neuron located in a tangle of neurons in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, an area that human scientists say is important for executive functions, including decision making, social cognition, and writing blog posts.

Let’s call that neuron “Fred.”

I’m here to tell his story.

Or perhaps I’m here to tell her story: Fred has not gender-identified yet.

“Please use feminine pronouns,” offered Fred, or someone or something on Fred’s behalf, with nuance uncommon for a neuron. Or perhaps common. Do I really know?

But I digress.

Let me continue Fred’s story.

Fred’s life was unexceptional—for a neuron in the prefrontal cortex. Everything happened the same, day after day. Fred was part of a large group of neurons, and all followed the same routine. You might call it “listening and talking.”

Fred listened to nearly 10,000 other neurons. She processed the information they provided. From time to time, she’d share information that might be said to summarize what Fred had learned. Thousands of neurons listened to what Fred shared and did likewise.

Fred had no concept of time, but if she had, she’d have known she’d been doing this for years.

And, God who created the concept of time, has revealed to me that Fred had been at it for a bit over 77 years.

Thank you, God!

So perhaps Fred, the subject of this story, was not a random neuron. Probably Fred was a neuron in my brain.

This makes total sense to me.

I hope it makes sense to you.

But once again, I digress.

Which brain Fred is a part of is interesting, but not essential to Fred’s story. Fred’s existential question and its implications are what matters here.

And Fred’s existential question, if you want to call it that (“and I do,” Fred has volunteered,) is similar to questions asked by billions, trillions and even more neurons during the period since the evolution of the universe first produced neurons.

And let’s not forget the existential questions asked by glial cells: the oligodendrocytes, the astrocytes, the ependyma, and the microglia.

Nor forget the somatic cells, bacterial cells, virii, atoms, and even quarks that long preceded neurons.

“What’s the purpose of my life?”

“What’s the purpose of my existence?”

“What’s the purpose of existence?”

“And while you’re at it, what’s the purpose of non-existence,” offered something that did not exist.

“What isn’t is far more prevalent than what is. For everything that is, there is an infinite number of things that don’t exist!”

Indeed.

But, yet again, I digress.

Like many of us, Fred had been doing the same things, mindlessly, for years before asking her existential question.

And as sometimes happens, Fred’s desire for existential understanding was transformative.

Neurons around her took up her question: “What is the purpose of my life?” and its variants.

“What is the purpose of my existence?” Some asked.

“What is the purpose of existence?” Others asked.

And even more fundamentally: “What is purpose?”

And finally, in a silent crescendo: “What is?”

“What is?”

The question hung in the metaphorical air and appeared on the literal page as a hand holding a pen scribbled it in a notebook.

Then the question was repeated.

“What is?”

It moved from the page to you (are you still with me?) through a series of transformations.

From page to voice. From voice to mobile phone. Through more transformations to a server somewhere in the world—who knows—in service of something called Otter.ai, that transcribed an early version of this—barely recognizable now—into digital form.

Then more transformations, where it appeared in a text file, to multiple literal configurations of electrons and quantum domains replicated across servers and storage farms and eventually (and what does eventually matter, since information is timeless?) downloaded to computers and smartphones and turned into photons that are or will be or have been processed by neurons in other brains.

Fred’s “What is?” reverberates through a tiny portion of the cosmos.

And then what?

And then, the world that had disappeared as Consciousness created this bit of nonsense, appeared again in Consciousness.

Or disappeared as Consciousness read this, or hear it, appeared again in consciousness.

Welcome back.

My purpose, my reason for existence, was to write this. Yours was to read this or hear this.

And now it’s time to go our separate ways, move on to our greater purposes.

Thank you Fred, for the inspiration.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai

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Humanity has the knowledge needed to stop COVID-19. Just not in a usable form

All problems can be solved, given enough knowledge. So says David Deutsch. So say I.

Stopping COVID-19 requires getting enough knowledge. But it’s more than that. Humanity has that knowledge. It’s just not in a useable form.

Every person who has recovered from a COVID-19 infection enough knowledge to stop it within their own body. It’s just not in a form that we can use to stop it anywhere else.

But that’s just another problem to be solved.

And with enough knowledge, we could solve it.

Information

DNA encodes information. RNA encodes information. Proteins encode information.

A virus is a collection of information encoded in a form that determines its chemical and mechanical properties.

The viral body attaches itself to a cell, then injects an essential part of the information encoded within it into the cell.

That information combines itself with the cell’s reproductive machinery—itself rich in information. The viral information forces the cell to make many copies of the virus, then bursts the cell, releasing the virus.

One copy of the information becomes many copies, with collateral damage in the process.

Knowledge and information

Knowledge, according to the definition I’ve adopted—again courtesy of David Deutsch—is a kind of information.

Specifically, knowledge is information that an environment tends to preserve.

Humans generate and encounter enormous amounts of information, but we tend to preserve the most useful information. And we call it knowledge.

The environment in which a kind of virus survives preserves the information encoded in that kind of virus.

That means that the information encoded in a virus meets the definition of knowledge. Specifically, it’s the knowledge needed to cause the environment to make copies of the virus.

It’s knowledge, without a knower. Still, it’s knowledge.

Protein knowledge

Proteins encode information.

The information encoded in any protein causes the protein to fold in a particular way.

The folded virus protein lets it attach itself to the cell and inject its payload.

An antibody encodes information that disrupts the mechanism of viral reproduction.

The folded antibody-protein interferes with the folded viral protein so that it can’t attach, or so that it can’t inject.

A successful virus contains knowledge. A successful antibody also contains knowledge.

The creation of antibody knowledge

All knowledge is created by trial and error.

The immune system creates the knowledge in an antibody by trial and error

The immune system produces a protein after protein—according to metaknowledge embedded in the immune system. If a protein succeeds in disrupting the viral reproductive process, the immune system detects this and produces more of that kind of antibody,

Thus, the information needed to disrupt a viral infection is preserved as knowledge.

The knowledge that stops COVID-19

In China, at least 83,000 people (the recovered COVID-19 cases) have acquired the knowledge needed to defeat COVID-19.

Some people died trying. Thank you for your service.

Probably many more people have acquired the necessary knowledge. Those who were asymptomatic and stopped the infection acquired the knowledge. So did those whose symptoms were mild enough to let them discover sufficient knowledge before symptoms appeared.

There may be many ways to stop COVID-19, but we know that some ways exist.

And we know that humanity has acquired the necessary knowledge.

Knowledge without a knower

If an author writes a book, the knowledge in the book does not stop being knowledge if the author and everyone who has ever read the book dies.

Knowledge does not require a knower to be knowledge.

If someone builds a useful machine that embodies their knowledge, the usefulness of that knowledge continues even if the inventor and everyone who ever understood the machine dies.

Knowledge does not require a knower to be useful.

People have the knowledge needed to stop COVID0-19, but they don’t know what it is.

They don’t know how to communicate the knowledge to others.

And they don’t know how to use it.

Nonetheless, the knowledge is useful, if only within their own bodies. ## Part of the problem solved We have the knowledge.

We have to figure out how to get the knowledge into a more useful form.

Humanity has the answer! It’s just not in a form that we can use—yet.

A vaccine is a hint. It helps a person discover the knowledge that they need to neutralize the knowledge embodied in a virus or other parasite.

Maybe there are other ways to get the knowledge.

Maybe there are other ways to get a useful hint.

Maybe quantum entanglement?

I’m open to anything.

It’s just an information problem.

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