tag > ALife
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In complex, self-organizing systems like animals, plasmas, and crystals, filtering and composting abundant information is far more crucial than creating new information.
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The study of self-organizing systems that exhibit intelligent behavior is too heavily focused on linear-time-bound causal cases. The real mystery lies in timeless, acausal phenomena like time crystals. Next gen post-computation systems embrace the eternal paradox at their core.
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Fascinating paper. Side note: In China, you can now visit e-commerce sites to customize your pet's traits (size, eye color, muscle tone, etc.). Genetically engineered on demand, shipped to you with a money-back guarantee.
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La Mancha Negra: Why This ‘Mysterious Black Goo’ Has Plagued Venezuela for Nearly 40 Years
Since 1986, the strange, black sludge has been terrorizing city streets, supposedly causing deaths and inspiring myths. Is it oil seepage? An offering from aliens? Political sabotage? Or something more sinister?
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Among the many remarkable properties of Life ("intelligence" as reductionists call it) these stand out:
- Self-reproduction
- Open-ended evolution
- Extreme energy efficiency
- Embodiment in the complex ecological web of life.
AI has basically none of these properties.
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Proof that creativity does not linearly scale with compute? 30 year old works that in many ways are still more creative than many contemporary "generative AI" works made with 1000x more compute.
Scientific American, 30 years ago this month. Feature on Creative Evolution covering the work of Karl Sims, Michael Tolson and William Latham
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The notion that "intelligence" and "life" is a "distinct thing" that is contained "in a box" is likely one of the most short-sighted dogmatisms in current AI & Neuroscience culture.
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New GWAS research found genetic links between poor math ability and most psychiatric disorders. Links between strong language ability and schizophrenia and employment in creative professions were also found.
#Comment: They measure genetic predictors of only 30,982 individuals in "school performance" which is a strange metric awarded by a strange institution, and then ignore the complex web of influences and make bold claims. Pathways to eu-gene-ics?
"There are no genes 'for intelligence.' Mutations in thousands of genes indirectly and non-specifically affect intelligence." - From Innate: How the Wiring of Our Brains Shapes Who We Are, by Kevin Mitchell, Princeton University Press (2018).
