Evolving since John Holland's "genetic algorithms" in 1975, there is a solid literature in "Artificial Life" which goes well beyond "artificial intelligence". Search on "Chris Langton", "Symposium on Artificial Life", and "Santa Fe Institute." The work stirs deep anxiety and overt hostility from many and tends to remain low visibility.
Treading on heresy, I discount those who discount the idea that the internet and electronically mediated corporations could become "alive" or might as well be alive, because skeptics have no proven, calibrated tools which to detect e-life, or a-life, looking from the bottom up. What does it look like to a cell to be part of a human body? How does it change the cell's life? Not very much on a moment by moment basis, for sure.
You'd think those same skeptics would argue that a human body is "just cells" and there is no larger animating life (such as us) that emerges from or inhabits that active system of cells. Given that single example of multilevel-multicellularism, what possible basis is there for arguing it does NOT exist on other scales? Pure human vanity and remnants of the desire for humans to be the center of the universe and the greatest creation of God or nature are emotion not reasons.
I think the burden of proof should be the other way. What shows that we are NOT already part of a larger effectively-alive structure?
Science, please, not legend, should guide the exploration of "life". This is a rather critical question with very profound implications that most people find uncomfortable and inconvenient. We need to look at it more deeply. It is far more important than global warming.
Treading on heresy, I discount those who discount the idea that the internet and electronically mediated corporations could become "alive" or might as well be alive, because skeptics have no proven, calibrated tools which to detect e-life, or a-life, looking from the bottom up. What does it look like to a cell to be part of a human body? How does it change the cell's life? Not very much on a moment by moment basis, for sure.
You'd think those same skeptics would argue that a human body is "just cells" and there is no larger animating life (such as us) that emerges from or inhabits that active system of cells. Given that single example of multilevel-multicellularism, what possible basis is there for arguing it does NOT exist on other scales? Pure human vanity and remnants of the desire for humans to be the center of the universe and the greatest creation of God or nature are emotion not reasons.
I think the burden of proof should be the other way. What shows that we are NOT already part of a larger effectively-alive structure?
Science, please, not legend, should guide the exploration of "life". This is a rather critical question with very profound implications that most people find uncomfortable and inconvenient. We need to look at it more deeply. It is far more important than global warming.
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