Imagine a skin of self-reinforcing patterns. A simple version would be immune to a change in any one cell, more complicated versions would automatically replicate to repair damage involving two, three, four, or more cells. Inside, complicated structures could replicate without being all that concerned about the bacteria-like or prion-like replication going on outside. Simple patterns from the outside could break through the skin sometimes by overwhelming numbers, and act as a source of outside randomness.
Imagining such a system that also splits itself in half every so often, preferably without clobbering its own siblings, is left as an exercise to the human reader. Post-humans may imagine a heterogeneous collection of such systems that communicate with one another (like neurons) or provide what we might call structural support, replicate sexually on a larger scale, and eventually evolve to be as intelligent as we are. Of course, since the board is infinite and randomized to begin with, such intelligent collections exist from the first moment. The eventually-dominant type of collection might be more intelligent than I am, so it's hard for me to say exactly what it might be like. Charles Griffiths "J Storrs Hall, PhD" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: I'm not convinced, primarily because I would have said the same thing about actual bacteria vs humans if I didn't have the counterexample. One human generation time is 100,000 bacteria gen times -- and it only takes about 133 generations of bacteria to consume the the entire mass of the earth, if they could. Josh On Sunday 07 October 2007 10:57:41 am, Russell Wallace wrote: > On 10/7/07, J Storrs Hall, PhD wrote: > [rest of post and other recent ones agreed with] > > > It remains to be seen whether replicating Life patterns could evolve > > to become intelligent. > > No formal proof, but informally: definitely no. Our universe has all > sorts of special properties that make intelligence adaptive, that > Conway's Life doesn't have. Intelligence would be baggage in that > universe; best survivors will be bacterialike fast self-replicators > (maybe simpler than bacteria for all I know: it might turn out to be > optimal to ditch general assembler capability). > --------------------------------- Be a better Globetrotter. Get better travel answers from someone who knows. Yahoo! Answers - Check it out. ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=50949188-0c0917