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Comment by smilliken | Hacker News Reader

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.

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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.

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