On Sat, Dec 06, 2003 at 01:41:00PM -0500, Marc Lavallée wrote:
I'm very reluctant to the idea that life could essentialy be a sort of computing process.
i like this sentence, it seems related to an idea which wander in my mind. i would be interested by your opinion about it.
an hypothesis,but if we assume that the "complete life" is contained completly in the body, another way to say it would be, if we assume their is no soul, no immaterial stuff floating above us kindof ghostly, then the life would be a physical process (with a lot of biology and chemistry), i mean just a physical process, so life will only follow the clear rules of physic at the atomique level. thoses rules can be expressed by equations and so could be computed by a computer, at least in theory. so a computer could be able to compute it... "it" is "a life"... so a computer could be able to compute a life. a computer would be able to create life, a computer would be able to "give birth". in short, if we assume there is no soul, a computer would be able to create life. -- the end.
This indeed *is* the reductionist argument. And of course reductionists do beleive that life is *only* a physical process. In terms of floating ghostlike immateriality quantum theory (and epirisism) becomes very interesting. There is a great book called "The Physics of Consciousness" by Evan Harris Walker. I saw him talk at a art-science conference. I does not talk about "life" as being the interesting part, nor the "soul" for that matter but focuses entirely on awarness/consciousness. A lot of the discussion is about the quantum observer and the creation of reality (physically/materially). The question them becomes, do computers (as humans), have the ability to trigger state-vector collapse (the reduction of what *could* be to what will be.)? I think physisists have been using computers for quite some time, yet I don't think any have witnessed a machine causing state-vector collapse. This may not be meaningful since a consciousness needs to cause the state-vector collapse in such a way that another event was collapsed due to a computer...
now this is a (really OT) digression!
I think its certainly true that the prospect of a machine being conscious is much more interesting than being "alive". I would certainly suggest the book to anyone interested in the topic-he makes a very interesting argument.
B
i like this reasonment, it doesn't mean i agree with it, but i find it interesting. it seems to demonstrate that if we assume there is no soul, a computer would be able to compute a life, even better a single computer could compute several lifes. according the moores's law, the speed of computers is doubled everything 18months... so the number of computed life can be doubled 18months, so the population computed inside the computer will increase exponentially.
If all that is true, can a computer be alive ? the answer is let as an exercice for the reader :))
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