From: Eugen Leitl (eugen@leitl.org)
Date: Sat Jun 08 2002 - 04:24:39 MDT
On Fri, 7 Jun 2002, Jeff Davis wrote:
> Now that Gene --the Dark Prince of Ultra-Darwinism
> ;-)-- has jumped in, I realize my mistake.
Tee hee! I'm hardly breaking a lance for the joys of going exponential
autoamplification (which are necessarily limited, since if you're trapped
deep behind the expansion wavefront you've ran out of pristine substrate
and places to go, unless you go verbatim and the locals grant you the
right of transit) -- I'm just reminding you of nature's standard modus
operandi. If you're selling a scenario which is deviating from the above,
you have to at least propose a specific mechanism to make it viable. (The
only mechanisms proposed so far afair are singleton scenarios, which I
currently regard as highly improbable).
> In the future, if and when non-biological reproduction
> --sentient entity pattern copying or new pattern
Doesn't have to be sentient.
> creation, and designed "hardware" (support substrates)
> upgrades--becomes a reality, (ie --THE SINGULARITY--),
> by that time, any significance of reproductive fitness
> in the biological sense will be a distant memory from
> a bygone age.
Fitness changes shape, but it still remains fitness. In the early stage,
where there are atoms to be incorporated into living (in the widest sense,
whether habitats or bodies) beings, high processivity and low cost of
replication are certainly strongly selected for. In a mature environment
all atoms (or computronium bits) are being locked up in the living, so the
only way to replicate is to prey upon resources of others. Here's a
mechanism to limit longevity of individuals to far below the 10^10 Ga time
scales we usually assume for granted.
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Sat Nov 02 2002 - 09:14:40 MST