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Somehow it feels like I'm missing out on something here. When I was in high school I learned some definition of life in biology. Later, I realized that this de
by mo_42 3y ago
Somehow it feels like I'm missing out on something here.
When I was in high school I learned some definition of life in biology. Later, I realized that this definition does not quite work. Especially, when I see a couple who cannot have a baby. At least one of them would fall out of the definition.
(Maybe this could still be alright if we understand life as a flow of genes and not as visible creatures moving around.)
Then, I came to the conclusion that there is no binary distinction. Essentially, the difference depends on the complexity of the chemical reactions. A human is probably chemically-speaking more complex than a bacterium. And a bacterium is more complex than some organic chemical reaction. After all, these are all chemical reactions. So I'd attribute something like different shades of liveliness to all sorts of things (not to be confused with panpsychism).
In that sense a NN would fit as it computes and outputs floats that represent something gradual. But the text expresses rather something binary.
- acyou 3y agoThat's getting to the core of the question. Both morphology and liveliness are abstractions that we're trying to layer onto natural phenomena. I think the best thing to do is to recognize the abstractions as abstractions, and not try to take them too far. Here, we're asking the AI to reconcile these loose notions and come up with concrete answers. If a person were asked to do this task, they would turn right around and say "Your question sucks". Shades of liveliness helps, but we're still hindered by some arbitrary biases that are hampering thought. These biases are brought on by the fact that we are human, and we want to evaluate things as they relate to us. So we need to impart those biases onto our AI, and it sucks, because the biases don't make underlying sense.