[extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ?

[Damien Broderick]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Brett Paatsch" <bpaatsch at bigpond.net.au>
Sent: Thursday, November 13, 2003 7:09 PM
>
> When I see words like self in self-replicating I know that there
> are substantive discussions taking place as to what "self" maps
> to cognitively even in people. The pattern-identity question is
> not satisfactorily resolved yet for me.

No need to get into all this anxious twistiness. To shift away from computer
programs and get more ambitious: A self-replicating assembler just uses the
design mapped decades ago by von Neumann. A little replicator factory swims
in a soup of raw materials. It contains a partioned component with an exact
plan for its own construction, which guides the factory to build a copy of
itself (including the plan) in the workspace and then release the copy into
the amnion, where the copy does the same thing, until some termination code
stops all the sea from being turned into salt or madly whisking broomsticks.

Damien Broderick