The 3 Types Of Knowledge Transmissions In The Natural World

Recently, while listening to an interview with Stephen Wolfram about artificial intelligence & the future of humanity, I was intrigued by a specific topic he was talking about which had to do with the ways organisms transmit knowledge between each other.

What Is Knowledge?

Usually when we think about knowledge, we might think of some sort of information, facts or skills that one acquires that are useful in order to do some meaningful work, perform certain actions or have some sort of understanding of a system, concept or idea. however, organisms posses knowledge to allows them to do complex things that may be encapsulated or hidden from their conscious mind, for example, our cells have the knowledge of how to divide, make proteins, fight off enemies such as bacteria and viruses, etc.

So how do living things get their knowledge, and where do they get it from? it seems like there are 3 major types of knowledge transmissions in the natural world. let's examine them.

Genetic

This is probably the most basic and fundamental way in which all life on earth pass knowledge around. Why is genetic information knowledge actually? well, our genetic data, or genes are basically nothing more than recipes for proteins. they are the instructions our bodies use to create all the proteins we have. throughout the process of evolution, our genes change randomly and produce traits that end up serving the organism with their functions in ways that could be useful. then, those traits are passed down to subsequent generations. A simple way to think about it is imagining how an animal figures out how to do something it was never able to do before, such as metabolize a new source of food which may be abundant and then shares that knowledge with its offsprings.

Self Learning

Organisms didn't always have brains, but at some point brains that are basically complex systems of neural networks evolved. suddenly living things were able to explore the world through their senses and learn based on their experiences. now living things could produce new knowledge by themselves without having to inherit it from their parents. All animals with brains do that all the time.

Natural Language

The last level we are going to list is perhaps unique to humans, at least as far as we can tell and it involves the development of natural language, which seems to be a capability only humans truly posses (even though some other species show similar but greatly diminished abilities) which allows for taking knowledge that exists in ones brain, convert it to abstract concepts using language and transmit that into another brain in a disembodied way so that the receiving brain does not have to re-learn but just take on knowledge already learned by another brain and with minimal effort (at least comparing to the original task of learning) and apply it. This ability it considered by many as perhaps the greatest invention or ability that humans ever made and that ultimately led to all the progress we have today.

The Advantage Of Natural Language

To understand why natural language is so much more efficient in transmitting knowledge we can compare it to the 2 other forms. with genetic knowledge, which is a huge body of knowledge with great complexity and sophistication, we still have a process that is based mostly on random mutations and possibility exploration which can span over a very long time (hundreds of millions of years) to evolve, a very long time indeed in any meaningful context. while self learning is dramatically quicker as we can see knowledge being learned by individuals in matters of years, months and even days. the main disadvantage is that this knowledge, that could be extremely useful is "stuck" at the individual level and is almost doom to die off and disappear along with that organism, meaning that it has no chance of surviving. in order for other animals to posses the same knowledge they will have to re-discover and re-learn and it. now it is clear to see where natural language really shines, as it gives us the ability to share our knowledge with others, effectively making it re-usable and protecting it from going lost. the double whammy here is that by doing so, it allows for other brains to make new knowledge based on those things they learn from others that otherwise might not be possible.

With the invention of books and the internet we have also found a way to effectively store our knowledge and allow quick and easy access to it by others. with the internet this has gone to the extreme where each person today owns a device that grants them access to almost all the knowledge in the world. this leads us to an almost exponential rate of knowledge growth and accumulation compared to any other time in history.

We can clearly see how the absolute majority of accumulated knowledge is that which we have effectively learned using natural language whether orally or via the written word (books, internet, etc.) and even knowledge that we discover ourselves throughout our lifetime is usually not unique in the sense that it probably already exist in some other body of knowledge that we have access to.

What Comes Next?

Are there any other levels of knowledge transmissions that we could potentially discover? AI and computer generated knowledge immediately comes to mind. Will it be possible some day to acquire knowledge by some sort of physical procedure such as memory implant with some form of a brain-computer interface? imagine shopping for knowledge on Amazon, adding various traits, skills and abilities to your cart, checking out and downloading them straight into your brain. Our brains seem to learn from incoming data and produce predictive models. there is no reason why we can't imagine this process being automated or exported in some way to achieve the above.