In article <23760 at castle.ed.ac.uk> eanv20 at castle.ed.ac.uk (John Woods) writes:
Now I'd be the first to admit that Tierra is a wonderful program, but
I can't help getting the feeling that a logical point is being
overlooked here. Is it not the case that Tierra `creatures' can only
be considered `alive' because they have what we might think of as
`life-like' characteristics? And how do we define `life-like'? I
think we're still left with a sample size of one!
P.S. Are viruses alive or dead? Just a thought.
The absolute, eternal dogma (for the last decade or so) is "Life is
self-replicating information." Thus, it's the genetic information
inside you that is the part that is *really* alive. And viruses are
alive, although they're dormant most of the time. And the things in
Tierra are alive, as least as long as you keep Tierra running...
Dale Worley Dept. of Math., MIT drw at math.mit.edu
--
Orwell was an optimist.
