Day 907
# I am returning to this piece from Day 905 and going to finish it tonight because if I don’t it will nag at me until I do.
The Binary of Existence: Information Theory, Divinity, and Parenthood
Before a child is born, there exists a state of zero, a void where that unique life has yet to begin. With birth, we transition to one — a new life, a new signal in the universe’s vast array of data. This binary shift from 0 to 1 mirrors Claude Shannon’s revelation in information theory: the world’s complexity can be distilled into simple, binary choices, reducing noise to signal, chaos to order.
Shannon’s work on information theory wasn’t just about communication; it was about understanding the essence of information. Similarly, the birth of a child isn’t merely a biological event but a moment where life’s complexities are distilled into the purest form of existence: the presence or absence of life. This binary event brings parents closer to the divine, echoing the profound empathy of a God who chose to experience human life through Jesus Christ. Here, in the cries and laughter of a child, one might find a sacred connection, a divine signal amidst life’s noise.
The divine’s decision to partake in human frailty, to live and die as one of us, suggests an ultimate act of empathy. But this brings us to a paradox: if God is omnipotent, why the presence of evil? Perhaps, like Shannon’s bits, where the value lies in the distinction between 0 and 1, the universe operates on a principle of necessary opposites. Without evil, good loses its meaning; without darkness, light has no contrast. This duality might not be a limitation of divine power but rather an expression of its depth, where even God navigates the binary of existence.
Consider this: an omnipotent God, knowing all things, might choose to manifest in human form not for His own understanding, but as an act of supreme empathy and connection with His creation. This incarnation as Jesus could be seen as God translating His infinite nature into the finite binary of human experience — a divine compression algorithm, if you will. By entering into the limitations of humanity, God provides a tangible, relatable expression of His love and nature, bridging the gap between the infinite and the finite. Through Jesus, God reduces Himself to the binary of human experience to demonstrate that to truly know joy, suffering must be understood; to appreciate life, one must face death. In this way, God doesn’t just observe humanity; He lives it, thereby closing the loop of divine empathy. This isn’t a limitation of power but an expansion of divine love, a cosmic affirmation that even for an omnipotent being, there’s profound value in the experiential manifestation of life’s 1s and 0s.
In embracing parenthood, we partake in this divine binary. Each decision, each moment of care or neglect, reflects the binary choices that define both our lives and those of our children. These little creatures are a blessing. Through them, parents experience the world anew, seeing through their eyes the wonders and the woes of human experience.
Trying to wrap one’s head around the idea that everything can be reduced to 1 and 0 is a tall order. Before Claude Shannon made many of these breakthroughs in his seminal work “The Mathematical Theory of Communication,” no one predicted that you could represent just about anything with 0s and 1s. The only things we can’t seem to represent are one’s soul and true love: the kind of love you feel for your child.
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Thus, the act of having a child, of adding another ‘1’ to the world, isn’t just propagation; it’s participation in the grand code of existence, where each new life offers a chance to refine our understanding, to filter out the noise, and to connect with something greater than ourselves. In this binary dance of life and information, we find not just the essence of technology or theology but the core of what it means to be human.
What’s astounding to consider is that as our information technology has advanced at unprecedented rates, we’ve lost something in our analog world. We’ve stopped innovating in many areas because we’re preoccupied with the 0s and 1s flashing on our screens. It’s easy to forget how amazing human interaction is when we’re fixated on that next dopamine hit from social media, video games, television, or whatever digital distraction one prefers. In allowing information to be stripped of all noise so it can be transmitted quickly and reliably, we have ironically increased the amount of noise in the world tremendously. Thus, making major breakthroughs in physics nowhere near as common as it is in computer science.
As a result, people are having fewer children, less face-to-face interaction, and fewer positive affirmations. The internet is rife with both bots and individuals who say things online they would never dare say in person, hiding behind screens. This does not mean we should increase censorship online. Quite the contrary! We should teach people how to better handle it, how to debate in the open marketplace of ideas.
A statistic was shared on the PBD podcast that blew my mind. From ages 0–18, children in lower-class families heard 600,000 more negative affirmations than positive ones. Middle-class children heard 100,000 more negative affirmations. Upper-class children heard 100,000 more positive affirmations. Of course, using averages means we are painting with a broad brush. Yet this statistic is a great reminder that even if many of our words are redundant, they matter deeply. Your children’s success depends on it.
So go out and do the thing. Start the business, have more children, chase your dream. Stop listening to the naysayers. The world is full of people who will give you an endless list of reasons why you can’t do something. Ignore them.
As we navigate through life, making binary choices at every turn, we’re not just living; we’re coding our existence much like DNA codes for life. Each decision, each moment of love or neglect, adds to the unique sequence of our personal narrative. In this sense, we are all programmers of our destiny, our lives a script of 0s and 1s, where every choice adds to the complexity of our being. This isn’t just a metaphor for life’s digital aspect; it’s a reminder that in the grand scheme, our individual stories, like our DNA, are both unique instructions for existence and part of the universal code of humanity. Thus, in every child, in every new ‘1’ we bring into the world, we’re not just continuing our lineage but also expanding the universe’s ever-growing codebase. If you ask me, that’s a beautiful thing.
9/14/24
Conor Jay Chepenik
