Over the last decade or so there has been a lot of research dedicated to “Human Accelerated Regions (HAR’s).” These are the regions of our genetic code which have, for some reason, shown accelerated evolution since our divergence from chimpanzees about 7 million years ago and they make up most of the 1% genetic difference between us and the other primates.
More recently, there is also a growing amount of work demonstrating other meta-processes that have impacted our intelligence. For example, new papers have been written on the gene family NOTCH2NL which seems to govern the size of the human-specific elements of the cortex, on human-specific microRNA genes which regulate protein production, and on subtle amino acid changes unique to human beings which improve the accuracy of replication of the genes governing brain development.
All of this work is fascinating in its own right, but when we take a step back it also becomes interesting to consider how important process is to reach a result. For the last 70 years (or so), we have a habit of intuiting that our big brains are “simply” the result of different genes. This way of thinking has become particularly prevalent in the digital age as we think to ourselves, “ah, just a few lines of different code and a chimp becomes a person.”
But what the research mentioned above demonstrates as a whole is: more than just the code matters. How the code is written and expressed also matters. Is it written quickly or slowly? Is it expressed for more time or less time? Is it checked once or five times? Is its output throttled or not? Note that these elements are not simply more lines of regulatory code. They are the equivalent of how long the blacksmith works, not just what he is making in that time. They are the location of his shop in the village, how many pieces he needs to complete in a day, how much he is paid for one piece vs. another. In other words, they are external to the work being produced.
I think it is worth carrying this lesson from the biology of what makes us ourselves into the lives that biology allows us to live as human beings.
We live in a time when we are barely allowed to consider a thought (a thought already reduced to a few characters or a photo) before we are hammered with the next one. Consequently (or perhaps only concurrently), we also live in a time when the only thing that seems to matter is results. And the combination of these two trends is that we seem to be producing more and more noise and less and less actual substance.
This isn’t an (aging) person’s call for the modern world to “slow down” and “take a breath” before acting. I do, for example, believe very much in certain artistic processes that require the exact opposite methodology – the ones from which Nike stole their tagline.
The point here is that even “Just Do It” is a considered process – a chosen process. And it leads to specific results which are different from other methods of artistic production.
In our desperate clambering to produce content to feed the insatiable internet beast with empty calories, I think many of us – myself included – are forgetting how important process can be. As long as we produce something it doesn’t matter how it was made. But maybe this is precisely why the ratio of noise to substance is accelerating exponentially. Maybe if we all took a lesson from our own neurobiology that how we render an idea is as important as the idea itself, we could bring that ratio back down.
Process matters.