Re: The Facts of Life

From: CMR <jackogreen.domain.name.hidden>
Date: Sun, 18 Jan 2004 11:14:05 -0800

> Just to be mischievous, I'll here pronounce "the facts of life" or more
> precisely
> "a sketch of a theory of the emergence of life" which will serve the
> purpose of partially constraining/
> defining what is meant by life. This is a hobby project.

Wow! A Rather exhaustive and admittedly impressive sketch, that. I'll
concede that given those requirements, "life" may indeed be rare in this and
other universes.

I think it's useful here to note that from the "strong" AI point of view
"life as it could be" is empahasized as opposed to "life as we know it".
It's also worth pointing out that the latter is based upon a single data
point sample of all possible life, that sample consisting of life that
(apparently) evolved on our planet. Given that, defining life in the
universe, and certainly in all universes, based only upon that sample is
speculative at best. (Unless, as some claim, our biosphere is truly unique;
I doubt this is the case).

Here, I think that I tend to agree with Kory that patterns in a simulation
need only meet some set of basic recognized criteria (perhaps Dawkins
replicators?) within the contraints of the self consistent "physics" of the
"simulation" in order to be considered life.

Ilachkinski suggests that as AI extends the exploration of possible life,
the associated self-consistent artificial physics might well point to
"physics as it could be" as opposed to the physics we know(?).

CMR
Received on Sun Jan 18 2004 - 14:16:05 PST