organism or algorithms?

Algorithm are the fundamental building blocks of computers and sophisticated technology in general as we see today. Algorithms are basically a set of steps that help in accomplishing a desired output. It could be as simple as a set of instructions needed for making coffee or as complex as supercomputers which are a mesh of many complicated algorithms. Algorithms require a set of input data and objective functions that do certain computations on the input data to give certain meaningful results that can further be fed as input data for a different algorithm and the process goes on.

While the terminology of algorithms might be familiar to most of you, an interesting point of view I came across while reading Yuval Harari’s ‘Homo Deus’ was that biological organisms are in its essence ultimately a set of complex biochemical algorithms. Biology in its early days was viewed as more of a mystic science due to the lack of a deeper understanding and thereby treated as a very isolated discipline as compared to the other disciplines of science. The point of view that organisms are biochemical algorithms is however a recent development in biology and allows for lines between the inorganic and organic to be blurred and for them to eventually merge. An understanding of various biochemical algorithms has allowed for significant technological intervention to repair the faulty biochemical algorithms and enhance naturally designed algorithms to our liking. Take for example the human heart which is an organic tool naturally programmed with biochemical algorithms that pumps blood at certain intervals to all parts of the human body and the pacemaker is an inorganic technological intervention that helps repair the heart in case its natural algorithm becomes faulty. A potentially controversial insight is that emotions and feelings are also biochemical algorithms that are programmed based on data gathered during the various evolutionary stages of humans before the human was even born i.e. evolutionary instincts and data from experiences after the human is born. In any situation based on external stimuli which is ultimately input data, the biochemical algorithms that are baked into our system subconsciously performs complex and quick computations and produces an output which is what we call our emotions or feelings. The feelings and emotions help (most of the time) in our decision making process on how to react to the external stimuli.

While recent technological innovation has had numerous benefits to the human race, it has reduced the world into algorithms and data where the natural order of all entities (organic or inorganic) is ultimately data generation and efficient data processing and transfer. This new religion centered around data has been termed as ‘Dataism’ and is continuously reducing the significance of a major part of the human race. Everything around us is ultimately data of one kind or the other and Dataism does not discriminate between the organic or inorganic to carry out its bidding. In the early stages of technological innovation, biochemical algorithms were superior to the inorganic algorithms designed by them and just played a small role in aiding humans. In the current stage, the tables have more or less turned where the inorganic algorithms have gained superiority in previously unimaginable ways. The advent of AI and robotics is not just aiding humans but altogether replacing them as they are now able to perform the algorithms more and more efficiently and accurately.