[ExI] They're Made out of Meat

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 24/05/2026 16:04, Jason Resch wrote:
> I agree that ither life forms can be made that need not be biological (once bootstrapped by biological intelligence). But can you envision any self-emerging intelligence that doesn't go through a biochemical stage in this universe?


The 'They're Made out of Meat' story doesn't say anything about the machine* life having emerged without a biological precursor.

I would imagine that naturally evolved biological life is relatively easy in this universe, intelligent life much less so, but pretty much necessarily based on biology at first, then non-biological (or rather 'post-biological') intelligent, deliberately designed life arising from that, and who knows what beyond that.

*Yet again, the language we use is probably doing us a disservice, 'machine' having the connotation that it's completely distinct from biological, when this is not very useful, or true. We are all machines already. One day, if we don't destroy ourselves, we could be superbiological, or postbiological, machines, instead of biological ones. Even if everybody eventually uploads into some kind of computronium computing substrate, we'll still need a physical presence in the physical world, and I doubt that it will be like our current clunky robots.

--
Ben