> > So whether our machine is using analog or
> > digital, sequential or parallels processing makes no difference.  It may
> > be a spectacular super computer, but it can never duplicate a thing like
> > life.
>
> Not even a complex system, let alone life!
>
And what about all this research on Artificial Life ? Maybe we are not able to
duplicate life in our real world, but what if we consider not our real world,
 but a
virtual world, instead, that can be simplified in many aspects ? Didn't it
 capture
the essence of life ?
>  Even von Neuman went off the deep end here with his universal
> constructor.  He confused material cause with effective cause and extrapolated
>  from
> Turings unrealizable machine to a hypothetical constructor which would
 replicate
> itself.  Rosen has shown that the kind of replication we see in organisms
 comes
> about in a very non-machine like manner and that it is impossible in a
 machine.
Are you including here the type of replication that happens e.g. within cellular
automata ? In which sense are they different ?
Best regards,
Ricardo
--
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