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Is life a form of computation?

thereader.mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: Is life a form of computation?

#21

Post by logtempo »

karmakurtisaani wrote: post #9

I don't see the point of asking this question. Like, sure, all physical systems follow certain rules, so any such process will develop in a way that it look like a computation of an algorithm. Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation. So asking if life is a computation seems mostly like a semantic musing. Define "life" and define "computatio…

The title should definitely be "Is it possible to simulate living organism?" given the last sentence is "Simulations like these show how computation can produce lifelike behavior across scales".

Nothing about life is discussed here, it's not even defined once.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#22

Post by modzu »

this question reminded me of the poetry of terrence mckenna. "Technology is the real skin of our species. Humanity, correctly seen in the context of the last five hundred years, is an extruder of technological material. We take in matter that has a low degree of organization; we put it through mental filters, and we extrude jewelry, gospels, space shuttles. This is what we do. We are like coral animals embedded in a technological reef of extruded psychic objects. All our tool making implies our belief in an ultimate tool. That tool is the flying saucer, or the soul, exteriorized in three-dimensional space."

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#23

Post by 47282847 »

measurablefunc wrote: post #20
karmakurtisaani wrote: post #9

I don't see the point of asking this question. Like, sure, all physical systems follow certain rules, so any such process will develop in a way that it look like a computation of an algorithm. Also, evolution itself is constantly optimizing organisms to best adapt to their environment, just like a computation. So asking if life is a computation seems mostly like a semantic musing. Define "life" and define "computatio…

Evolution is not optimizing anything. What's happening in the biosphere is a process of mutation & selection, it's not optimization towards any particular goal or objective. Furthermore & slightly more abstractly, b/c of conservation of mass & energy, what's actually happening is re-organization of existing biomass into different life forms enabled by solar radiation.

Survival?

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#25

Post by Barrin92 »

No, and this is a very philosophically confused post because it weirdly does not really give any definition of computation.

Computation really is a fancy word for calculation. What matters about computation is that its teleological. Computers are physical systems designed towards a particular end. A computer is, physically, no different than any other system. What differentiates it is that it's designed and we're interpreting its behaviour in a particular way.

Unless you're trying to make a grand theological argument in which "life" is taken to be some Hitchhikers Guide-like machination towards some end, it's not a computation. Life doesn't compute anything, the same way a falling pen doesn't compute gravity unless in a metaphorical sense.

The article is a pretty good example honestly of the problems of taking metaphors literally, common in the AI space where the author hails from. A similar case "artificial neurons" which are really metaphorical neurons. You have to be particularly careful when making comparisons between intentionally designed technological artifacts and biological and physical processes.

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#26

Post by failingforward »

rck wrote: post #10

This feels like the kind of popsci that's written for people who already agree with the author - there's nothing resembling an argument, or even a definition of "computation." There are nods to Church-Turing, but the leap from "every effectively calculable function is computable" to "life is a computation" is larger than anything you could fit in a book.

Yes, the article appears to be a short excerpt from a book and probably loses a lot of context because of that. I am interested in the questions raised by the author but will wait for the book to come out. The good news is that it appears the book will be open access - MIT Press seems to be encouraging this lately (at least by allowing this as an option for authors).

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#27

Post by logtempo »

bgwalter wrote: post #7

From a neural networks professor: https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/inst/ag-ki/rojas_home/documents... "However, we should be careful with the metaphors and paradigms commonly introduced when dealing with the nervous system. It seems to be a constant in the history of science that the brain has always been compared to the most complicated contemporary artifact produced by human industry [297]. In ancient times the brain w…

To me, the article just ask "Is it possible to simulate living organism features?" and say a small yes by saying "Simulations like these show how computation can produce lifelike behavior across scales".

I'm not expert to judge the result of "drawing a missing hand by using neural network on each pixels"(if it's what it's done? Again not an expert).

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#28

Post by [deleted] »

47282847 wrote: post #23
measurablefunc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Evolution is not optimizing anything. What's happening in the biosphere is a process of mutation & selection, it's not optimization towards any particular goal or objective. Furthermore & slightly more abstractly, b/c of conservation of mass & energy, what's actually happening is re-organization of existing biomass into different life forms enabled by solar radiation.

Survival?

[deleted]

Re: Is life a form of computation?

#29

Post by AIPedant »

Articles like this indicate we should lock down the definition of "computation" that meaningfully distinguishes computing machines from other physical phenomena - a computation is a process that maps symbols (or strings of symbols) to other symbols, obeying certain simple rules[1]. A computer is a machine that does computations.

In that sense life is obviously not a computation: it makes some sense to view DNA as symbolic but it is misleading to do the same for the proteins they encode. These proteins are solving physical problems, not expressing symbolic solutions to symbolic problems - a wrench is not a symbolic solution to the problem of a symbolic lug nut. From this POV the analogy of DNA to computer program is just wrong: they are both analogous to blueprints, but not particularly analogous to each other. We should insist that DNA is no more "computational" than the rules that dictate how elements are formed from subatomic particles.

[1] Turing computability, lambda definability, primitive recursion, whatever.

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