Imagine a skin of self-reinforcing patterns. A simple version would be immune
to a change in any one cell, more complicated versions would automatically
replicate to repair damage involving two, three, four, or more cells. Inside,
complicated structures could replicate without being all that concerned about
the bacteria-like or prion-like replication going on outside. Simple patterns
from the outside could break through the skin sometimes by overwhelming
numbers, and act as a source of outside randomness.
Imagining such a system that also splits itself in half every so often,
preferably without clobbering its own siblings, is left as an exercise to the
human reader. Post-humans may imagine a heterogeneous collection of such
systems that communicate with one another (like neurons) or provide what we
might call structural support, replicate sexually on a larger scale, and
eventually evolve to be as intelligent as we are.
Of course, since the board is infinite and randomized to begin with, such
intelligent collections exist from the first moment. The eventually-dominant
type of collection might be more intelligent than I am, so it's hard for me to
say exactly what it might be like.
Charles Griffiths
"J Storrs Hall, PhD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I'm not convinced, primarily
because I would have said the same thing
about actual bacteria vs humans if I didn't have the counterexample.
One human generation time is 100,000 bacteria gen times -- and it only
takes about 133 generations of bacteria to consume the the entire mass of the
earth, if they could.
Josh
On Sunday 07 October 2007 10:57:41 am, Russell Wallace wrote:
> On 10/7/07, J Storrs Hall, PhD wrote:
> [rest of post and other recent ones agreed with]
>
> > It remains to be seen whether replicating Life patterns could evolve
> > to become intelligent.
>
> No formal proof, but informally: definitely no. Our universe has all
> sorts of special properties that make intelligence adaptive, that
> Conway's Life doesn't have. Intelligence would be baggage in that
> universe; best survivors will be bacterialike fast self-replicators
> (maybe simpler than bacteria for all I know: it might turn out to be
> optimal to ditch general assembler capability).
>
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