Digital Biology

Related link: http://nytimes.com/2002/03/10/books/review/10ZIMMERT.html

On the question of whether artificial life is possible, the New York Times takes the position that macro-structure, not micro-structure, is what matters:

"Computers don't replicate nature; they replicate what we think we know about nature. And biologists are the first to tell you their models of the brain, the immune system or the network of proteins in a cell are pretty crude. Computer programs modeled after these models are even cruder. The most complex digital ''brain'' consists of a few thousand simulated neurons -- a far cry from the human brain, which consists of 100 billion neurons, each of which is connected to thousands of its neighbors and uses dozens of neurotransmitters to communicate with them. To treat them as the same thing is a bit like treating four notes played in a thousand combinations as the same thing as Mahler's Ninth Symphony. They share some things, but not the things that really matter."

This is pretty much the standard view of biologists. The key features of life, according to this view, may arise from things you can reach from the reductionist principles of evolution, but that does not mean that the evolution is all you need to create life. To this camp a neural network is intelligent if it successfully models a brain, regardless of whether it passes a Turing test.

Pick quote #2, which I paste in here solely because it is funny:

"Washing machines with chaos-theory-driven spin cycles! Carpet-cleaning microrobots! But more stuff tends to clutter life, not change it. To observe people leading an utterly conventional lifestyle, just watch ''The Jetsons.''"