The Size of Information Stores

The Size of Information Stores
Information stores that coordinate activity with a complex, natural
environment over extended periods of time are necessarily massive. Many
natural environments are complex in the sense that they can be
characterized by a large variety of states. While any single, simple physical
attribute of an environment, such as temperature, pressure, radiation, or
chemical composition, may have narrow limits under some circumstances,
combinations of attributes frequently result in a constantly altering
environment. Information stores governing the activity of an entity must
be capable of coordinating that activity with its variable environment. In
general, the more variable an environment, the greater the size of the
information store required to coordinate activity with that environment.
The complexity of an environment must be matched by a commensurately
complex information store.
The genome of a species provides an example of the required size of a
natural information store. The genetic information contained within the
genomes of organisms surviving in complex environments must be massive
in order to permit survival. The human genome consists of about 3 billion
base pairs. While much of this information appears not to be used in genes,
humans still have an estimated 30,000 or more genes. This enormous store
of information is required to coordinate complex human activity with our
environment. In contrast, the much simpler activity of yeast requires about
1/200th of the number of base pairs and approximately 1/5th of the number
of genes of a human. The simpler activity of yeast requires a much smaller
store of information. Nevertheless, in an absolute sense, even information
stored in the genome of yeast is very large. (It also needs to be noted that
there may be no simple numerical contrast that can be used to correlate
genetic factors and species complexity. While there may be some correlation
between the number of base pairs in the DNA of species and their
complexity, some very simple species have many more base pairs than
humans. Furthermore, the recent consensus that humans have about
100,000 genes has been broken since the successful mapping of the human
genome. The estimated number of genes now varies from 30,000 to 40,000
with the lower number more probable. That number is only marginally
larger than for a plant. Complexity may be incorporated in each gene rather
236 John Swellerthan expressed by the number of genes. It appears that human genes are
more complex than that of simpler organisms, with human genes generating
more protein products. See Aparicio, 2000; International Human Genome
Sequencing Consortium, 2001.)
The large store of information contained within a species’ genome is
mirrored by the large store of information held in human long-term
memory. Information held in long-term memory governs human behavior
in an analogous manner to a genetic code governing the behavior of a
species. Rows 1 and 2 (the learning and central executive function
continua) of the cognitive matrix of continua depicted in Fig. 1 can be used
to substantiate the analogy. On the right side, a very large store of well-
learned material determines much human behavior. Similarly, a large store
of genetic information determines the characteristics of a species. Human
behavior is not permanently fixed, and the left side of the learning and
central executive continua reflects the fact that common patterns of
behavior must alter to reflect a changing environment. Because genetic
characteristics of a species must also change to reflect a changing
environment, mechanisms to aVect genetic change are built into the genetic
system