pg 2: Langton is calling life a set of "dynamic physical processes". Again, we are getting the "any physical substrate" view. He conjures Simon's perspective, which is that it is the behavior of the system, not the composition of the parts that matters. Simon also suggests that this is easier when it is the organization of the system that is important to us. So, to me there are three things: composition, structure, and function, but I am not getting a clear read on which of structure and function are important.
pg 4: Organization = animation. To create life is to bring together a population of machines in such a way that the resulting system is alive.
pg 5: AI is about intelligent solutions, rather than intelligent behavior? Whu? He acts like this follows naturally from the fact that AI doesn't care if the mechanisms look at all like natural mechanisms, but I don't see how. Well, maybe this is the whole composition/structure/function thing. AI people only care about function, biologists care deeply about composition, and ALife people care about structure. It's like this:
Composition -> Structure -> Function
{ Biology -------------------------------------- }
{ ALife -------------------- }
{ AI ------ }
And I guess the analogy the ALife people are relying on is that like carbon-chain biology only represents a subset of possible forms of life, human thought represents only a subset of possible forms of intelligence. So like ALife people discover natural phenomena in artificial systems, and then stretch the boundaries of those phenomena, they ought to be able to stretch the bondaries of cognitive phenomena too. That means they're not trying to just build an artificial human, they are using the artificial human as a starting point to try to discover all possible forms of intelligence.
So Von Neumann = out.
True to life = parallel.
Talks about the game of life. This page has an animation of a glider gun.
pg 21: Approaches to AI w/o a centralized controller are the most promising approaches (unfounded).
pg 22: Genotype - DNA Phenotype - Organism
pg 33: Life is what behaves like it
pg 35: Life is what evolves
Question: Is life a delicate coincidence or an irresistable attractor?