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Cyborgs and Digiforms; Artificial lifeforms acting as life
Topic Started: Feb 11 2011, 11:27 PM (1,858 Views)
Zoroaster
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In Richard Dawkins' "The Blind Watchmaker" - he postulates some sort of a "machine" life in the distant future that is conscious, and which considers us bio-organisms as primitive as we consider uni-cellular life....

He also wrote some programs in Pascal on his Macintosh, in the early eighties, that simulated evolution... some neat stuff...

When a machine (or a VAST program running inside a machine) genuinely consciously and truthfully utters the famous Descartes phrase "Cogito ergo sum" ( I think, therefore I am) it should be considered life...

Hmmm - but that posits the question, if there were an AI "virtual glass of water" which thought itself was real, is it real, and does it exist?
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colddigger
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It would be real in the sense that it is a real digital glass of water.
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Space Gorilla
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colddigger
Feb 16 2011, 09:12 PM
It would be real in the sense that it is a real digital glass of water.
But that 'real digital glass of water' can think for itself independently and is fully aware.

So - alive. And real.
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T.Neo
Feb 16 2011, 04:05 PM
Intelligence maybe, but not life, as they lack a physical structure.
Non-physical, self-aware intelligence, is not life?

How do intelligence and life do not correlate? If it wasn't for the evolution of life, we wouldn't become intelligent as well. If the A.I. did not learn, adapt, and act spontaneously like any other living thing (you can attribute this as a feature of its programming, but isn't our DNA another set of codes? Biological program?)

I think some of you here are being too "organocentric" in terms of life in the universe, and its variation/possibilities.
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Zoroaster
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Feb 17 2011, 06:44 AM
I think some of you here are being too "organocentric" in terms of life in the universe, and its variation/possibilities.
I concur - please stop the hate speech against inorganic minds!
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Space Gorilla
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Magoo
Feb 17 2011, 07:25 AM
Orionite
Feb 17 2011, 06:44 AM
I think some of you here are being too "organocentric" in terms of life in the universe, and its variation/possibilities.
I concur - please stop the hate speech against inorganic minds!
LOL

I hope you don't mock me with sarcasm. Or do you really meant what you said?
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Zoroaster
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I wasn't mocking you...

but I was being a tad facetious - but not directed at you...
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And so long as we agree to disagree on that other issue - things are sweet mate, although I thought it was a bit harsh of you calling me a "loser"...
Edited by Zoroaster, Feb 17 2011, 09:22 AM.
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Holben
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Parasky
Feb 16 2011, 07:43 PM
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Feb 15 2011, 04:22 PM
No- far more than that.
Everything which kills people now.
Immortality =/= Invulnerability
Yee-es...
However, DYING can be a tad difficult for the budding immortal, hm? And anyone who can die will, in an eternity, die.
Time flows like a river. Which is to say, downhill. We can tell this because everything is going downhill rapidly. It would seem prudent to be somewhere else when we reach the sea.

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colddigger
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Quote:
 
But that 'real digital glass of water' can think for itself independently and is fully aware.

So - alive. And real.


'~' In a purely biological sense, no, it'd be a mind without an organic body, so it couldn't be a living thing. But in a more casual sense of the word it would be considered alive...

I doubt a digital glass of water is going to be thinking much...
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Zoroaster
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the digital glass of water will find itself in an endless loop until it fills its instuction and data stacks and abends with a "divide by zero" when it is asked if it is half full or half empty
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Kamidio
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Actually, due to the conical nature of a glass, the glass is always less than half empty.

And a person can actually divide by zero.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/43/Hyperbola_one_over_x.svg
Edited by Kamidio, Feb 17 2011, 11:00 PM.
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T.Neo
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Organo... centric? I'll remember that, it's pretty amusing. :P

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'~' In a purely biological sense, no, it'd be a mind without an organic body, so it couldn't be a living thing. But in a more casual sense of the word it would be considered alive...


Exactly what coldigger said. Intelligence and life are two different things, they can be codependant but one does not necessarily imply the other.

It would be philosophically alive, not biologically alive.

Keep in mind I never said anything against life that might be inorganic (i.e. not similar to natural life chemically or morphologically), I'm only ranting about stuff that doesn't exist. In this case, it does exist, but only in a simulation... it has no tangible structure to it, i.e. it doesn't qualify as life.

It's not mystic AI superpowerful whatever, we already have simulated life. I wouldn't regard it as life, it's just a simulation. The aliens in videogames aren't real, even though the way light interacts with their surfaces might be simulated...

The the "machine" life is probably the silliest thing Dawkins as ever said... just because it's cliche, really.

There are various reasons why you can't compare humans (or any other sapient species) to bacteria, really. One is that it's important not to look at things in terms of "evolutionary levels", and more in the defining traits of individual organisms.

It's like someone saying that a certain trait or phenomenon is "never seen beyond the reptile stage". Reptile stage? It's cringeworthy!
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Kamidio
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So it'll become infertile life when we put the program into a mechanical body, no?
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T.Neo
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No. That's not what I said.

Putting a computer on an ATV won't make it an organism. It'll just make it a mobile computer. :rolleyes:
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Cephylus
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What is the exact definition of 'life' anyway?
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