3 ms·
Without question, that's incredible. Little steps forward and we may just have complete technological simulacrums of life, would these not also be considered l
by messel 18y ago
Without question, that's incredible. Little steps forward and we may just have complete technological simulacrums of life, would these not also be considered life as well?
- Femur 18y ago>would these not also be considered life as well? Is a simulation of life considered life? Good question.
- biohacker42 18y agoThere's not fast and hard definition of life, like there is with many mathematical concepts. The line between crystals and viruses and bacteria and higher order life is very blurry. Because it's so blurry it will be hard to draw a sharp crisp line between old life and any new man created life.
- Femur 18y agoThis is a great explanation. Perhaps new 'forms' of life or life-like processes such as this might end up helping to narrow down what life is truly defined as. Isn't it generally true that the more variety there is of something, the easier classification becomes?
- biohacker42 18y agoI think so. The blurry definitions of life tend to involve self organization, propagation, increase of complexity/local reduction of entropy, the problem is a lot of crystals meet that definition. Remove the constraint of mass and a lot of memes meet the definition of life, religion is a virus and all that. Perhaps digital life will help us come up with better definitions and greater understanding.
- sown 18y agoIf you asked a simulated brain how it felt, would it answer any different than the brain being simulated?
- zhyder 18y agoIf it can self-replicate (without humans having to manufacture hardware for it), yes.
- jng 18y agoI don't think "self-replication" is the key of life as our empathy would understand it. Killing a sterile person doesn't deserve punishment?
- anc2020 18y agoAgreed. The only reason we associate life with self-replicating is because living things don't last long without it, but it doesn't mean you need self-replication to be alive.