Michael Levin - "Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are)"

https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/

 

 

What places all these systems — living or not — on the same spectrum is the fact that all have aspects that are amenable to the mechanistic and agentic lenses, all exhibit surprises and competencies that our formal models do not capture, and none wear their capabilities and limitations on their sleeve (they must be determined by experiment).

An orthopedic surgeon should see your body as a simple, mechanical machine — they’ve got hammers and chisels, and their approach works very well for their remit. In contrast, a psychoanalyst should emphasize and help augment your growth as a free agent in search of meaning.

 

 

We need to come to grips with the fact that all our frames will miss important aspects of things, that it’s OK to say something about a system without claiming you’ve said everything, and that even the simplest of systems can exert surprising effects that reach higher on the continuum of agency than mere emergence of complexity or unpredictability.

Synthetic systems, which we might think are following an algorithm, may or may not have a degree of true mind, but that determination should not be based on their following an algorithm (any more than the reality of human minds isn’t revealed by their following of the laws of chemistry).

Michael Levin - "Living Things Are Not Machines (Also, They Totally Are)"

https://www.noemamag.com/living-things-are-not-machines-also-they-totally-are/

LTNM’s attractive coating comes in an unfortunate package:

 -   Many who support LTNM never specify whether they mean the boring 20th-century machines, today’s quite different artifacts, or the fruits of all possible engineering efforts in the deep future. By failing to answer the hard question of defining what a “machine” is — they neglect a point at the core of their claim.

 -   It locks its adherents into unsolvable pseudo-problems as to the status of cyborgs, hybrots, augmented humans and every possible kind of chimeric being that’s partly natural and partly engineered. An increasing number of mental contortions will be needed as these beings come online, to accommodate the many special cases that don’t fit into LTNM’s binary classification.

 -   It signals support for the power of evolution but fails to define its secret sauce and to explain why a process consisting of eons of trial and error by mutation and selection should have a monopoly on making minds. Why can’t engineers use those same techniques, augmented by rational design, to embody nature’s amazing properties in new ways and in other media?

 -   It sounds grandiose and universal, but rarely do its proponents say what it means for detecting life broadly, in the universe. Would they assess functional capabilities, composition or origin story as definitive evidence when evaluating the moral standing of an eloquent and personable alien visitor who is shiny and metallic-looking, and possibly came into being with the help of other minds?