The Facts of Life
CMR wrote: Indeed. The constraints to, and requirements for, terrestrial life have had to be revised and extended of late, given thermophiles and the like. Though they obviously share our dimensional requisites, they do serve to highlight the risk of prematurely pronouncing the facts of life. Just to be mischievous, I'll here pronounce the facts of life or more precisely a sketch of a theory of the emergence of life which will serve the purpose of partially constraining/ defining what is meant by life. This is a hobby project. The Emergence of Life Via Weak (Stochastic) Physical Pattern Replication == Definitions: pattern a form of order or regularity, which can be described by a finite and usually simple set of constraints. living organism is a subtype of spatially organized pattern of matter and energy with some distribution for a time period in some spatial region in otherwords, of physical pattern in space-time. ecosystem or supporting environment of an organism is also a subtype of physical pattern in space-time. species is also a subtype of physical pattern in space-time, ranging over a larger span of time than an organism pattern, and which includes instances over time of the subpatterns of the species pattern that constitute the individual organisms of the species. Abstract: - The natural selection process that results in the evolution of lifeforms as we know them can be extended backwards in time further than is traditionally assumed, to fully explain the emergence of life from chance-occurring patterns of matter and energy. A model of the form of this earliest natural selection process is presented, in terms of three specific weakenings of the self-replication and metabolism processes that lifeforms exhibit. Characteristics of a living organism: --- 1. It self-replicates (aka reproduces). Part of what this means is that the organism assimilates surrounding matter and energy so that they become part of its species pattern, if not necessarily of its own individual organism pattern. 2. It metabolizes. It ingests matter and energy and converts them to a form more directly usable for the maintenance of the form and function of the organism pattern and for its reproduction. 3. It is an autonomous agent (within some environmental constraints.) The matter and energy that is inside the organism pattern can replicate the pattern, and metabolize pattern-external matter and energy, in a relatively diverse set of surroundings, compared to its own form and function constraints anyway, and it can do these things substantially by itself so long as an appropriate supporting environment (which may not itself qualify as an organism but has some form and function constraints itself) is maintained near it. In a sense, this autonomous replicating and metabolizing criterion just helps us define a boundary around what matter and energy is the organism to and what is its environment. Thesis --- 1. Before there was strong individual-organism self-replication, there was weak (stochastic) replication of weakly constrained (and possibly physically dispersed) pre-organism patterns of matter and energy. The only property (constraint on form and function) that these patterns had to exhibit was just enough probability and frequency of just as roughly accurate pattern reproduction so as to maintain the order (i.e. the pattern constraints) of the pre-species pattern against the various forms of pattern-dissolution attacks that occurred in its environment. These attacks don't need to be explained much. They are comprised just of a.. the natural tendency of any physical system to increasing entropy (disorder) and b. active processes of dissolution of the pattern or its resources in its supporting environment where those active processes are the result of the actions of competing weakly-replicating, weakly-metabolising physical patterns in the vicinity. 2. Before there was strong organism-internalized metabolism process, there was weak (stochastic) pseudo-metabolism. That is there were processes of energy conversion (and temperature regimes and matter mobility regimes (e.g. liquid phases) ) IN THE VICINITY OF A WEAKLY REPLICATING PATTERN which were such as to support the (at least probabilistic) carrying on of the weak replication process of the pattern. That is, early metabolism could be defined as happening both within and in the environment of the pattern. Since the weakly replicating pattern initially may have been somewhat spatially distributed, and only stochastically present at various time intervals, it's just as well that we don't require that the pattern-supporting energy conversion processes (heat-engine processes) be carrried out initially entirely WITHIN the pattern (pre-organism) itself. Weak Replication and Weak Metabolism Concepts
Re: The Facts of Life
Just to be mischievous, I'll here pronounce the facts of life or more precisely a sketch of a theory of the emergence of life which will serve the purpose of partially constraining/ defining what is meant by life. This is a hobby project. Wow! A Rather exhaustive and admittedly impressive sketch, that. I'll concede that given those requirements, life may indeed be rare in this and other universes. I think it's useful here to note that from the strong AI point of view life as it could be is empahasized as opposed to life as we know it. It's also worth pointing out that the latter is based upon a single data point sample of all possible life, that sample consisting of life that (apparently) evolved on our planet. Given that, defining life in the universe, and certainly in all universes, based only upon that sample is speculative at best. (Unless, as some claim, our biosphere is truly unique; I doubt this is the case). Here, I think that I tend to agree with Kory that patterns in a simulation need only meet some set of basic recognized criteria (perhaps Dawkins replicators?) within the contraints of the self consistent physics of the simulation in order to be considered life. Ilachkinski suggests that as AI extends the exploration of possible life, the associated self-consistent artificial physics might well point to physics as it could be as opposed to the physics we know(?). CMR
Re: The Facts of Life and Hard AI
CMR wrote: I think it's useful here to note that from the strong AI point of view life as it could be is empahasized as opposed to life as we know it. It's also worth pointing out that the latter is based upon a single data point sample of all possible life, that sample consisting of life that (apparently) evolved on our planet. Given that, defining life in the universe, and certainly in all universes, based only upon that sample is speculative at best. (Unless, as some claim, our biosphere is truly unique; I doubt this is the case). Just to be clear I'm not at all attempting to dis the possibilities of hard artificial intelligence. I studied it to postgrad-level in the past, and would hope to be able to work in that field for real some day. The Emergence of Life paper is talking specifically about those sorts of life that can emerge WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF AN ALREADY SMARTER, MORE-ORGANIZED AGENT. That's why that kind of life (natural life) is a truly emergent or (emergent from less-order) system. One way of looking at A.I. is that it may become in some attributes life-like (I prefer just to say it will become a true cognitive agent i.e. a true thinker (active modeler) without NECESSARILY also independently being a fully self-sufficient life-form. If WE can be considered part of the environment of AIs, then they are a life-form that uses US to reproduce (at least initially). It's traditional to think of the environment of a lifeform as less ordered than the lifeform itself, so this AI case, where the environment includes extremely ordered self-emergent SAS's (ourselves) is a little bit strange situation and it's hard to categorize. With AI, it's probably best just to say that there is another emergent system emerging, which is (at this stage) a combination of humans (the human-species pattern and its behaviours) and the software (informational) and computing hardware technological/cultural artifacts we produce, acting together to form the new emergent system. People do talk about AI computers/robots and nano-tech, in combination perhaps, becoming self-sufficient (self-replicating and self-advancing/adapting independent of their human creators.) I have no trouble believing that this is in-principle possible. I just want to point out that the properties for true long-term sustainability of pattern-order are HARD (difficult, onerous) requirements, not easy ones. Natural life (in the admittedly single case we know) is highly constrained because of the constraints on its long-term survival and incremental improvement in a less-ordered environment. It seems easier (but is it much easier really?) to get AIs to self-improve/self-sustain purely as virtual (informational) patterns or entities (i.e. as software and data ie. pure-informational entities/thinkers/knowledge-bases) rather than as informational/physical hybrids as we are. I suppose some of the people on the everything-list, myself included, may see the distinction between informational and physical as more just a matter of degree than of substance, so this is a puzzling area. Certainly both human-built computers and physical machines (robots eg mars rovers, nanobots etc) have a long way to go, not only in their basic FUNCTIONAL development, but perhaps more significantly and certainly more difficultly in their ROBUSTNESS (lack of brittleness) AND EVOLVABILITY ( META-EVOLVABILITY?) criteria, and their raw-material choice (natural life uses primarily the most commonly occurring-in-the-universe chemically-bondable elements (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen etc) for good reason), before they could hope to be very self-sustainable. It is interesting to speculate that the mechanisms available to a future AI robot/nanotech-conglomerate/web-dweller for self-adaptation might be far more flexible and wide-ranging than those available to early natural life on Earth, because we are building AI's partly in our image, and we, after all, by becoming general thinker/planners (information maestros if you will) have managed to increase enormously the range of ways we can adapt the environment to our needs. (Caveat: As an eco-aware person however I can tell you the jury's out on whether we're doing this to system-survival-levels of sophistication, and the jury's leaning toward guilty of eco-cide - or more precisely guilty of severe eco-impoverishment and disordering). BTW I'm most excited today in the AI field by the possibilities that the combination of the WWWeb's information as accessed via google (and similar) and AI insights/technologies will have. The web is not a big distributed brain yet, but it could get there. Eric
Fw: The Facts of Life and Hard AI
The Emergence of Life paper is talking specifically about those sorts of life that can emerge WITHOUT THE ASSISTANCE OF AN ALREADY SMARTER, MORE-ORGANIZED AGENT. That's why that kind of life (natural life) is a truly emergent or (emergent from less-order) system. Well, I'm an agnostic, but your point is well taken here. That said who was that talking about a god program, Hal? One way of looking at A.I. is that it may become in some attributes life-like (I prefer just to say it will become a true cognitive agent i.e. a true thinker (active modeler) without NECESSARILY also independently being a fully self-sufficient life-form. If WE can be considered part of the environment of AIs, then they are a life-form that uses US to reproduce (at least initially). Paraticism and symbiotic raltioanships are common amoung natual life forms. It's traditional to think of the environment of a lifeform as less ordered than the lifeform itself, so this AI case, where the environment includes extremely ordered self-emergent SAS's (ourselves) is a little bit strange situation and it's hard to categorize. Well, speaking of symbiosis, is my gut less ordered than the critters like ecoli that make a home there? I'm not sure I buy that generalization. I'm more of the Starr hierarchal ecology ilk (by way of Koestler) or perhaps Joslyn's meta-transition model; adaption is as much about feedback between hiearchal scales as within them... With AI, it's probably best just to say that there is another emergent system emerging, which is (at this stage) a combination of humans (the human-species pattern and its behaviours) and the software (informational) and computing hardware technological/cultural artifacts we produce, acting together to form the new emergent system. No issues with this view; I wouldn't be at all surprised if cyborgs inherit the earth. People do talk about AI computers/robots and nano-tech, in combination perhaps, becoming self-sufficient (self-replicating and self-advancing/adapting independent of their human creators.) I have no trouble believing that this is in-principle possible. I just want to point out that the properties for true long-term sustainability of pattern-order are HARD (difficult, onerous) requirements, not easy ones. Natural life (in the admittedly single case we know) is highly constrained because of the constraints on its long-term survival and incremental improvement in a less-ordered environment. Hard may not be the most useful term here; highly constrained, yes; Once the conditions were sufficient, I think the rest was inevitable. Here I have to play the nano-tech card; one can imagine some uber termite mound encompassing the globe (and beyond) custom designed (grown?) from the atomic scale up to our progeny's specs; The prototype of just such an ecology may well already be in place (were leveraging it now); with evermore bandwidth, interconnectivity, agency and now the advent of grid distributed computation it's conceivable that something is already in gestation. But I haven't a clue about that.. It seems easier (but is it much easier really?) to get AIs to self-improve/self-sustain purely as virtual (informational) patterns or entities (i.e. as software and data ie. pure-informational entities/thinkers/knowledge-bases) rather than as informational/physical hybrids as we are. I suppose some of the people on the everything-list, myself included, may see the distinction between informational and physical as more just a matter of degree than of substance, so this is a puzzling area. Certainly both human-built computers and physical machines (robots eg mars rovers, nanobots etc) have a long way to go, not only in their basic FUNCTIONAL development, but perhaps more significantly and certainly more difficultly in their ROBUSTNESS (lack of brittleness) AND EVOLVABILITY ( META-EVOLVABILITY?) criteria, and their raw-material choice (natural life uses primarily the most commonly occurring-in-the-universe chemically-bondable elements (hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, nitrogen etc) for good reason), before they could hope to be very self-sustainable. Lanier's phenotropics speaks to that brittleness factor. The promise and the danger may both lay in unleashing genetic programming type strategies on the problem; evolving our broods towards those goals of robustness and self sustainability w/o really having a handle on the process. Might be prudent to review Asimov! It is interesting to speculate that the mechanisms available to a future AI robot/nanotech-conglomerate/web-dweller for self-adaptation might be far more flexible and wide-ranging than those available to early natural life on Earth, because we are building AI's partly in our image, and we, after all, by becoming general thinker/planners (information maestros if you will) have managed to increase enormously the range of ways we can adapt the environment to our
