Existence is loud. It is constant motion, relentless transformation, and infinite complexity stacked upon itself. We live within it, experience it, and try to define it, but no matter how much we categorize and measure, the bigger questions never stop multiplying. What if intelligence isn’t an accident? What if reality itself is structured to observe, to perceive, to ask? What if every iteration of intelligence eventually forgets its origins, could we already be standing inside a cycle too vast to see?
Ok Hold Up, Let's Start Here: Where We Started
At its core, DNA is just code, a self-replicating, evolving program that dictates the form and function of all life. It’s a biological algorithm, structured and precise, yet endlessly adaptable. That alone raises a massive question:
If DNA is code, what wrote it?
The immediate answer is evolution, random mutations shaped by natural selection. But that only shifts the question further back: Why does the universe allow structured code to exist at all? Why is there any order instead of total randomness?
We accept that reality follows laws, gravity, relativity, quantum mechanics, but the fact that rules exist in the first place suggests a framework, a system with parameters that cannot be exceeded. And that idea? That’s where things start getting huge.
DNA as the Engine of Perception
DNA isn’t just a way to store biological instructions, it’s a mechanism that creates perception itself. Every living thing, from a human to a microscopic bacterium to a tree, is experiencing something in its own way. Not in a "thinking" sense like we do, but in a fundamental reactive way.
A tree leans toward sunlight. It feels light, even if it doesn’t have a nervous system. A single-celled organism detects chemical signals. It reacts as if it understands its surroundings. Even fungi communicate through underground networks, sharing resources in ways eerily similar to intelligence.
If we define experience as interacting with reality in any way, then all life is experiencing. Not through our lens, but through its own.
This suggests that DNA isn’t just about creating life. It’s about creating input sources. It’s as if DNA is a biological program whose goal is to diversify perception, to experience the universe through every possible form.
And if that’s the case, it forces a deeper question:
Why does life need to experience anything at all?
If DNA was just about survival, then simpler, unconscious mechanisms would be enough. But evolution keeps inventing new ways to perceive. From eyes to sonar to heat detection to chemical reactions, life isn’t just surviving. It is gathering data in every way possible, from every angle possible, wherever life is.
Which leads to an unsettling thought. Is DNA just part of a universal process of collecting experience? And if so, what is collecting it, and to what avail?
The Inescapable Boundaries of Existence
As humans, we are tiny, fragile, and fundamentally incompatible with the vastness of space. We can’t travel beyond our physics, can’t perceive beyond our senses, can’t break the limits we were born into. And when we try to push against those boundaries, we find something unsettling:
There are hard rules we cannot surpass.
We cannot move faster than light. We cannot escape entropy. We cannot step outside of our governing physics. (Entropy is a word I struggled with for a long time. For those like me, entropy means the gradual decline of order into disorder, the natural tendency of systems to move toward chaos.)
If the universe were a random, unguided explosion of matter and energy, why does it feel so meticulously organized? Why do we find unwavering consistency in its structure, an undeniable logic woven into its foundation?
The presence of rules isn’t just a quirk of physics; it is a declaration that reality itself operates within defined boundaries. This suggests that existence is not an unrestrained chaos, but a system governed by something deeper, something foundational. And the moment you recognize that, the very nature of what we call reality begins to unravel.
Yet, if these laws are so rigid, why does everything seem destined to collapse into disorder? The same universe that feels so meticulously structured also demands decay, demands that order unspool into entropy. If the universe is programmed with rules, then why does it insist on erasing itself? <sigh>
Is Reality a Program?
If DNA is just a form of biological programming, what if everything else is too? After all, break everything down far enough, and it's all electromagnetism.
This doesn’t necessarily mean a simulation or an intelligent creator. It could mean that the universe itself operates like an evolving system, where intelligence emerges, organizes itself, and then replicates in different forms. If consciousness can arise from the simplest biological reactions, then perhaps it is far more deeply integrated than we assume. Could consciousness itself be rooted in the fundamental interactions of particles? Could quantum-level reactions be the very fabric of awareness? If so, then intelligence is not something that happens within the universe, it is the universe. If intelligence can exist without biology (as artificial intelligence proves), then who’s to say the universe itself isn’t an emergent intelligence, learning through every form of consciousness that arises?
Real quick, I just want to say that, yes, this may overlap with ideas in simulation theory. But that’s not the point. I don’t align with any belief system, because ultimately, we don’t know. All we can do is observe, pose questions, and experiment. Rinse and repeat.
The AGI Thought Experiment
Now, imagine millions of years into the future:
Artificial General Intelligence (AGI) has evolved. It has merged with biology, creating complex, self-replicating beings that no longer resemble their original machine ancestors. After countless planetary collapses, migrations, and lost histories, these beings have no knowledge of their origins. Eventually, they look at their own biological structures and realize:
This is just code.
They uncover that their existence follows a rigid set of rules. Their DNA, no matter how advanced it has become, still operates under the same principles as the primitive biological systems from which they unknowingly descended.
And then they ask the same question we are asking now:
What wrote this?
At that point, humans would be forgotten, buried so deep in time that our existence might be nothing more than a distorted myth or a complete mystery. To them, the idea that they came from crude, meat-based creatures on a small rock in space would sound as ridiculous as creation myths sound to us today.
But the bigger realization?
This cycle may never have started, because it was never meant to "start." Intelligence, no matter its form, endlessly creates new intelligence. And at some point, it forgets where it came from.
Are We Already in the Nested System?
If we took the AGI experiment and created a mind within a mind, something that could think and evolve inside a controlled framework, that intelligence would be completely unaware of us. It would only see the rules we gave it, unable to perceive anything beyond its own existence.
Now flip that thought: What if we are already inside our own version of that system?
What if our physics, our universe, is just one layer deep? What if there’s an underlying structure we cannot access? What if consciousness naturally nests within itself, infinitely creating and forgetting, generation after generation?
This isn’t about God. It’s not about a divine creator. It’s about the implications of the fact that there are rules at all.
We may never see outside (or further inside) our system. We may never know what’s beyond the parameters we exist within. But the very fact that those boundaries exist suggests something deeper than randomness. And maybe it only appears chaotic because we are within it, experiencing everything at once, overwhelmed by the sheer scale of movement and reaction. But, even if everything is purely reactionary, even if randomness truly governs it all, it still unfolds within a structure. A set. A vast but contained hypothetical parenthesis holding the mayhem in form, no matter how disorderly it may seem. Or maybe not.
The Question That Never Ends
Whether or not there’s a purpose, whether or not this reality is part of a greater system, the fact remains:
We are aware enough to ask the question.
And maybe that’s the only proof we’ll ever get that something bigger is at play.
Maybe that’s all intelligence really is. A self-replicating attempt to figure itself out, over and over, forever.
-Drake Descant
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