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From: Joe Lachance <jllachan@midway.uchicago.edu>
Subject: Re: Internet alive?
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thantos@runic.mind.org (Alexander Williams) wrote:

>   To ME, the important question is `does this entity engage in
>interesting, complex behaviour?'  Humans do, animals do, plants do,
>/virii do/, ALife does and the Internet does.  Even the biosphere,
>as a whole, engages in complex behaviour that emerges from lesser
>behaviours of its componants.  Scaling one's perception to take in
>the biosphere as a whole does not make humanity, animalia and the
>Internet less complex or less alive, as some would seem to have it.
>They simply become of smaller scale in comparison.


Even the action of molecules in an aqueous solution exhibits complex 
behaviour...so as you point out, what matters is the scale that we 
obseve these phenomena.


>   So, in brief, to me the wrangling over whether something is
>"alive" or not seems almost a calculated effort to establish
>humanity as an assumed pinnacle.  I fear that assumptions sits but
>poorly with me (even though everyone insists on refering to me as a
>human).


Mankind is far from any pinnacle (though one can never have an 
evolutionary pinnacle).  And while I agree with you that the question of 
"what constitutes being alive" is highly subjective, that doesn't mean 
that we shouldn't make an attempt to define it.  Thus, an alife 
simulation could be descibed as "Alive in Giger's sense, but not in 
Smith's...

Joe Lahcance
(jllachan@midway.uchicago.edu)


