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From: clark@fred.cs.flinders.edu.au (Steven R. Clark)
Subject: Re: LIFE? (was Evolvable Code....)
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Message-ID: <1994Aug31.041115.69207@frodo.cc.flinders.edu.au>
Date: Wed, 31 Aug 1994 04:11:15 GMT
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Michael Sandy (michaels@psg.com) wrote:
: How 'friendly' is the universe to life?  In a computer frame it is fairly
: easy to meet the basic requirements of replicating enough copies to 'survive'.

The universe is neutral to life as far as I can see. It is life which gets
'hostile' to life. There is life almost everywhere on Earth, from armpits,
jungles, nuclear reactor cooling water, and icebergs. There is no way of
knowing if there is no other life 'out there'. Here, life is everywhere, and
goes on despite what one might call adverse conditions. However, the conditions
are only adverse from our perspective. Many bacteria are destroyed under
conditions which we enjoy, and vice versa.

: Our universe is considerably harsher, to the point where any edge in 
: surviving until reproduction drasticly alters its survival odds.  Creating
: a friendly enviroment for the basic requirements isn't going to be enough
: to help create complicated life forms.

You get to decide what conditions are adverse, and what are not when you
develop a computer model - in the biological world, the conditions a lifeform
develops in tend to be the ones it 'enjoys', while different conditions are
'adverse'. It's all a matter of what you are used to, and how you are looking
at the situation.

: After studying the literature I find myslef convinced that life has
: _already_ been created in silico.  I also believe that life appeared
: many times, and died out completely, before it became so successful it
: couldn't completely die out.  It would silly to suppose there was one
: magic moment where before which there were no self-replicating constructs
: and ever after there always were.

Who knows. This is philosophical really. I could never understand the need to
have a definate idea 'when' 'life' came into being on this planet. It is, and
that probably doesn't help us find any other kind - whether it be
extraterrestrial or not. What is life? is a difficult question to answer,
especially when very few people have a concept of their own 'life' - their own
existance.

How do we know what a lifeform living in a computer would be like. We could
guess. But then, try describing what makes a tree, or a lichen, or a bacteria,
or a person 'alive'. Does the description consider viruses, plasmids, prions?

Next, how do we tell if a computer program has the capacity to experience, to
think and feel for itself. How could we know if a program is intelligent and
sentient of itself, or just a clever construct. We don't really understand our
own existence ... can we understand another kind?

: -- 
: msandy@psg.com       uunet!m2xenix!msandy

Philosophy is a great way for philosophers to justify themselves.
--
Steven R. Clark      clark@(cs.flinders.edu.au|(cyberia|cleese).apana.org.au)
 I am returning this otherwise good typing paper to you because someone has
        printed gibberish all over it and put your name at the top.
               -- English Professor, Ohio University
