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Evolution is a principle in biology, whereby organisms evolve their ability to replicate and multiply in numbers over successive generations. From a computational point of view, the organisms employ a common programming (DNA, RNA, etc.) and runtime environment (cell biology). This evolution has eventually evolved a more powerful ((in a restricted sense) computational environment, the hierarchy of biological brains, with the currently most powerful class instance being the human brain. A collection of human brains is now working on evolving a quantum computer. Perhaps one day the the quantum computers will produce a....

From an anthropic point of view, we are here to think about these things, because our universe creates environments such as our planet earth, which support the evolution of life.

So my question is whether there is a general physical and computational principle at work here, demonstrated by the following incomplete, in parts almost surely incorrect, and highly speculative hierarchical chain of evolution:

  1. Within the Multiverse, universes are instantiated following particular physical laws originated and adapted from their embedding universe

  2. Each instantiated embedded universe follows computational rules (the particular physical laws of this universe) and create a finite number of embedded universes (the only candidate seems to be for singularities of black holes to correspond with a white-hole, inflationary, embedded universe), each of which evolve in the same general manner

  3. Each universe produces a finite number of computational schemes to build organisms that follow certain classes of program patters. These organism evolve according to the theory of biological evolution.

  4. Biological organisms evolve biological brains, a higher class computational scheme

  5. biological brains build computational devices, which at some point attain the property of replication

  6. The replicating computational devices build higher classes of computational devices, following the general principle of evolution...

Halfdan Faber
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This is the fecund universe idea, due to Smolin. The original form assumed that a new universe formed every time a black hole appeared (as a sink for the information loss that relativists believed in back then), and then the universe is tuned to maximize the number of black holes formed, constrained by the condition that life is possible.

These types of ideas are anthropic, and they are hard to make testable. Even if the universe is replicating itself and changing, it is not life. Life is not about replication. Fire replicates itself, and tries to maximize cumbustible consumption. Fire isn't life.

Life is when you have a computer in nature. That's not the case for universe-forming processes, because the universe is just not that complicated on the elementary scale. You can see the universe wasn't designed, and evolution and design are synonyms. All design is a process of evolution in your head, and all evolution in a complex system can be equally well called a process of design in a disembodied computational entity formed by all the evolving creatures.

Since evolution is a property of complex systems, and there is no complex system here, just black hole formation from galaxies (this doesn't allow a universal computer), you don't have evolution as I see it. You just have, at best, something replicating, like fire.

The theory is also incorrect because black holes don't lose information, and don't make new universes. The current universe we are in is also not particularly tuned for black hole formation. Further, the measure which tells you how to maximize is not at all clear: should you maximize the total number of black holes the universe will ever form? Does it matter if they form early or late? What's the weight? These questions are, to my mind, an abuse of language in the sense of Carnap--- they are positivistically meaningless.

Ron Maimon
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You may want to expand your thought process by including false vacuums. If the universe follows an evolutional pathway, I would assume that universes within a multiverse do the same. Let's assume the existence of a metastable universe which would have false vacuum, this universe will at some point cross the barrier to a true vacuum and form a bubble universe expanding from itself. This bubble universe would be more stable (physical constants would have values closer to ideal for a stable universe) but if it crosses the barrier to a more stable state, another universe will evolve and so on...

Jonh Smith
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