Hacker News Reader

Comment by mseepgood | Hacker News Reader

> "And we may also wonder if a sentient computer program might one day be called alive of course"

Why does a computer program have to be sentient to be called alive?

Life is metabolism, so a computer program or a silicon-based intelligence cannot be considered alive by current definition. Either we rework the definition or it will definitely not be alive. Also, sentience and intelligence are two very different things, I think we are very far from having ethical problems with switching off computers (if ever).

Computers and their programs consume energy in the form of electricity to do work. How is that not metabolism? I recall seeing a reference to a biological species that also consumes electricity.

In addition, they use that energy to (often) lower internal entropy and replicate themselves. They evolve with the assistance of a symbiote (humans), and are subject to competitive pressures for evolutionary fitness.

Mating is almost unheard of, but composition of parts is rampant.

That's exactly the difference, computers consume energy, while metabolism is the process of creation (and of course, consumption) of energy. An unplugged computer won't start to autonomously break down and convert chemicals into electricity to keep itself running, hence it's not alive.

> An unplugged computer won't start to autonomously break down and convert chemicals into electricity to keep itself running..

You just described a laptop.

You know what I meant, but in case it's needed, that's why I qualified my sentence with "autonomously". And no, a set of software/actuators to regularly plug the laptop into mains is not the same kind of autonomy, since it would just be the execution of an algorithm that a sentient being programmed. Without that, the laptop won't be subject to any necessity or pressure to harvest energy.

>..since it would just be the execution of an algorithm that a sentient being programmed

And the execution of an algorithm that evolution programed is somehow 'special', probably because another algorithm says so.

Well, but again the analogy does not hold water, there is big difference between a sentient agent programming a laptop (for which we have a complete causal/mechanistic account) and evolution, which is not sentient/self-aware and can only be said to be "following a direction". The only way I could steelman this argument is by assuming a telos in nature, in which case it would quickly become a religious argument. If life was just an algorithm to consume energy we would already be past the point of creating artificial life, while instead we have no clue of how it begins, with our best conjecture being abiogenesis which we have so far failed spectacularly to recreate in a lab. I am convinced that it is only matter of time before we have artificial life, but it will come in the form and shape of the regular metabolizing biological life.

Yeah - are insects sentient? Do we debate whether insects are “alive”? Is OpenWorm alive?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OpenWorm

Reply on news.ycombinator.com