Synthetic Life Accomplished!!

[Vene]

Murky territory.  A program is pure information.  If your bodily organism could be wholly expressed in terms of it's processes and interactions as pure information, and run as a simulation in realtime, would it still be alive?

I'm actually leaning towards no on this one, if only because the simulation isn't necessarily "real." It would be possible to stop it, to save it, to restart it, etc. That's not really possible with physical organisms. I don't doubt that something very, very close to life could be constructed virtually, I'm just very skeptical that it would be life, mostly because I'm skeptical of the medium. I'll admit that some of it could easily be ignorance of computer science and I don't want to put an arbitrary limit in my head on what technology can and can't do. But, I just don't see how a code would have to integrate information in order to maintain itself like a physical organism needs to continuously uptake carbon.

[Requia ☣]

A program exists in memory, no power=memory gets wiped.  You *can* make backups, but thats not actually the nature of computer programs, its something we make them do because we want them, backing up whats actually going on in memory is a bit harder than backing up data and the program code too.

Electricity is a bad example of food though, since attempts at artificial life are usually purely virtual, food and death are part of the program.

[Brotep]

Murky territory.  A program is pure information.  If your bodily organism could be wholly expressed in terms of it's processes and interactions as pure information, and run as a simulation in realtime, would it still be alive?

Within the simulation, absolutely.

[Vene]

My thoughts are currently that in a virtual world the virtual organism would have to then die if it doesn't eat, but not because that's what it's programmed to do, but because it can't be maintained. Like, we could make an airplane simulator, but nobody even tries to claim that it's actually a plane. It would have to be more than just simulation.

I really hope my thoughts are making sense.

[Brotep]

My thoughts are currently that in a virtual world the virtual organism would have to then die if it doesn't eat, but not because that's what it's programmed to do, but because it can't be maintained. Like, we could make an airplane simulator, but nobody even tries to claim that it's actually a plane. It would have to be more than just simulation.

I really hope my thoughts are making sense.

I'm not quite sure how the analogy holds, if we suppose artificial food sources in the artificial world that support the artificial life form

[Requia ☣]

It might help if I explain how artificial life is (at least attempted to be) programmed.

See, you don't program a life form, you program self replicating programs, and let them do shit and evolve naturally (or possibly with an artificial way of killing them off, so they move towards the goal).  The other way is to simply throw a lot of random machine code (usually a limited form, with only so many different instructions) into a VM until something develops that can sustain itself.

[Jasper]

My analogy probably isn't perfect, but it is at least a very provocative question in itself.

[Telarus]

This was hashed out in the 70s and it was decided that you cannot compile a computer model of an organism (a frog was presented) without also modeling the environment.

So you have to have other software running to tell your virtual-life about it's environment (i.e. define it for them).

[Vene]

It might help if I explain how artificial life is (at least attempted to be) programmed.

See, you don't program a life form, you program self replicating programs, and let them do shit and evolve naturally (or possibly with an artificial way of killing them off, so they move towards the goal).  The other way is to simply throw a lot of random machine code (usually a limited form, with only so many different instructions) into a VM until something develops that can sustain itself.

Okay, that's definitely worthwhile, but I'm not seeing metabolism for this. So, not life. Possibly a reasonable approximation, but it doesn't sound like life.

This was hashed out in the 70s and it was decided that you cannot compile a computer model of an organism (a frog was presented) without also modeling the environment.

So you have to have other software running to tell your virtual-life about it's environment (i.e. define it for them).

Seems sensible to me.

[Jasper]

There's that problem too.  Life, like anything taken out of context, isn't really functional.

[Brotep]

Okay, that's definitely worthwhile, but I'm not seeing metabolism for this. So, not life. Possibly a reasonable approximation, but it doesn't sound like life.

Sure, if you give that narrow definition of metabolism. What about an analogous process? Also, are the criteria for life in our universe necessarily the same as the criteria for life in a simulated world, whose basic building blocks may be completely different?

There's that problem too.  Life, like anything taken out of context, isn't really functional.

This.

[Vene]

Okay, that's definitely worthwhile, but I'm not seeing metabolism for this. So, not life. Possibly a reasonable approximation, but it doesn't sound like life.

Sure, if you give that narrow definition of metabolism. What about an analogous process? Also, are the criteria for life in our universe necessarily the same as the criteria for life in a simulated world, whose basic building blocks may be completely different?

See, I'm a scientist, when I use words, they mean things, very specific things. If it doesn't match, then it bloody doesn't match. So it's not alive, big fucking deal, neither are viruses.

[Elder Iptuous]

See, I'm a scientist, when I use words, they mean things, very specific things. If it doesn't match, then it bloody doesn't match. So it's not alive, big fucking deal, neither are viruses.

isn't this overstating this a little bit?
it was my understanding that there isn't a scientific consensus on the very specific definition of 'life'.  aren't there some scientists that do categorize viruses as alive?

[Kai]

The scientific consensus of life tends to be the four things that vene listed. Viruses fall into an "almost" category, because while they do interact with the environment, they lack the ability to metabolize, and cannot reproduce without a cellular intermediate.

I don't think computer programs could count as life. Life is a physical, and not virtual, process. Metabolism doesn't mean GIGO, its a physical conversion of energy, and reproduction means making physical copies, not virtual copies. In the end, software is just temporary perforations on RAM. Get a computer, not just a program, to metabolize it's own energy (chemical, photosynthetic, etc) and actually reproduce itself in entire by itself, and we can start talking about such things as life.

[Jasper]

Metabolism doesn't mean GIGO, its a physical conversion of energy, and reproduction means making physical copies, not virtual copies.

Has anybody noticed that I was joking when I said that?