Artificial life / "Alife". Is it life or not? If not, could it ever be life?
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Soft Alife?
- Thread starter GrowingSmaller
- Start date
Resha Caner
Expert Fool
Do you know the book Godel, Escher, & Bach by Hofstader? He tried to answer that question - spending closed to a thousand pages on the topic. He seemed to be fighting that niggling in the back of one's head, where he though it was possible, but couldn't put his finger on how to do it. Still, walking with him through his thought processes on how it could possibly be done is a fascinating read.
(Edit: To answer the question, no I don't think it would ever be life.)
(Edit: To answer the question, no I don't think it would ever be life.)
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There are 7 characteristics of life according to this astrobiology website.
To summarise:
Cellular.
Require energy.
Reproduction.
Heredity.
Respond to the environment.
Homeostasis.
Evolution and adaptation.
I think if virtual analogues of natural lifeforms which have these characteristics could be modelled in a computer, we might as wall say ther Alife is actual life. I would understand the modellled as the same as the natural because it has the same 'categorical' and 'dispositional' properties, although I need to do more reading on this topic. The fact that they are manifest virtually rather than naturally is irrelevant, because being natural is not regarded as an essential characteristic of life.
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Property of life said:
There are some quite good applets simulations of traits of living things online. I came across this "boid" algorithm based one today, which simulates ants looking for food and taking it back to the nest.
I tick the box "Alife responds to the environment".
What level of programming skills are needed for this type of simulation anyway?
Please share any faviourite simulations.
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well if one supposes that the if CHristianity or any other religion that holds the concept of a bieng or person that created everything, wouldn't that ultimately make everything artificial?
At the technical end it would also hinge on how one defines life or being alive....
As for me if someone were able to combine the elementary particles to form atoms and then continue onward to eventually create something that was complex and appeared and behaved in such a manners we define life to be ... it would be considered alive in my book.
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Whenever I am asked such a semantics question, I am tempted to ask back:
"Why are you asking? What implications do you feel must follow from calling something 'X' (here 'life')?"
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Good question. You might be asking a pragmatic quesiton like "What practical difference would it make if it were life, as opposeds to a mere simulation?" I think that one answer might be that evolutionary modelling in alife would illustrate evolutionary processes to the skeptical creationist. If she accepted alife was real life, then any evolutionary process it underwent would serve as direct evidence for evolution.
Secondly, there might be alife exhibits in the zoo. That would be awesome. Since I have not thought of that before, and now intend to contact the nearest zoo, I especially thank you for your question!
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So I presume she will define "life" in a way that excludes this sort of artificial life from being "life". No matter what the definition of labels, our opinions and feelings aren´t affected by them.
We observe this all the time as the crux of the abortion debates. People try to introduce seemingly objective terms (such as "person", "consciousness", "awareness", "individuality"), and all they end up with are mutual attempts to define the words in a way that suits their opinion on abortion.
Is synthetically produces music "music"? Who cares.
Always glad to help when people are in need of post hoc rationalizations for their questions! And the best: you have found it all by yoursellf!
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Well that threw me for a loop. I'm used to "hard" and "soft" AI. Apparently it's a different critter when it's Alife.
So yeah, I'd say that artificial life could certainly be considered alive, but it's going to be trivial form of life, like bacteria or something. Until you get some real meaningful hard AI into it, I really don't see any qualms about wiping out the hard-drive it lives on or suspending it from processing.
So yeah, I'd say that artificial life could certainly be considered alive, but it's going to be trivial form of life, like bacteria or something. Until you get some real meaningful hard AI into it, I really don't see any qualms about wiping out the hard-drive it lives on or suspending it from processing.
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