How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation

Re:How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation by naasking on Saturday July 08, 2017 @09:16AM (#14725311)

Then why not the whole Earth? Why not the whole universe? Where do you draw the line? A word has to draw distinctions to be meaningful.

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Re:How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation by nikki93 on Saturday July 08, 2017 @01:06PM (#14726154)

Exactly.

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Re:How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation by naasking on Saturday July 08, 2017 @07:18PM (#14727659)

Exactly what? "Alive" is a meaningless concept?

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Re:How Nature Solves Problems Through Computation by carapace on Thursday July 20, 2017 @08:12PM (#14817222)

Gurdjieff gives a definition of "atom" as the smallest amount of something that evinces all of its properties.

This is an information-theoretic view, and it allows us to speak of an "atom" of water, an "atom" of ice, and so on.

The property "alive" while not meaningless cannot be limited to a set of matter/energy configurations. There is no "atom" of life.

This would be moot except that you are alive. You are [part of] the life of the Universe. You can't actually fix a boundary between you and it. The Universe may not always have been alive, but when you became alive it did too.

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