[MD] Levels in electronic computers

[John Carl]

Arlo, agree completely with your dislike of basing life upon carbon.  It's
too anthropocentric.

I get a twitch whenever I encounter the term "fractal", since my ex-bro used
it all the time.


[Arlo]
>
> Personally, I dislike the notion of grounding the biological level in being
> "carbon-based" or something like that. I like the idea of seeing the fractal
> boundary between inorganic and organic as being something like "inorganic
> patterns that have evolved a mechanism for self-replication". This way very
> early microbes and virii are "organic" not because of their "composition"
> but because of their "activity" (of course, I argue that this distinction
> holds true for all the levels- not defined by "composition" but by
> "activity").
>
>
But let's reduce the problem to its essence, in MoQ terms:

The difference between inorganic and life is that life reacts much more
dynamically to its environment, no?  So when finding where this boundary
instantiates in experience, takes us back to Pirsig's first love - the
chemical-biological interface.  Hypothesis about the exact line can probably
be infinitely drawn, according to the level of life you're talking about,
since life is very immune to reductionistic analysis and much better
understood in a "web" metaphor.

All life is dependent upon other life, in other words.  And when you isolate
out a fragment, you no longer have life, you have something dead.

Thus I don't think your sharpening your scalpel on ribosomes gets us
anywhere.

I think if we found some alien, non-carbon bit of matter reacting
dynamically to its environment and our presence, we'd deduce life.  And if
this unknown life reacted in socially significant ways, we'd deduce
sophistication.  And if it displayed evidences of art, we'd deduce
intellect.

I'd say the same for a computerized algorithm, and thus an MoQ test would be
better than Al Turing's - for a computer can seem intellectual, but unless
it seems social, it has no "being".

John