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πŸ“° "What is an individual? Biology seeks clues in information theory" - Quanta Magazine

Table of Contents

#resource/article

https://www.quantamagazine.org/what-is-an-individual-biology-seeks-clues-in-information-theory-20200716/

Notes

This article talks about how we can look at individuality through different "lenses" such as how a set of organized agents persist through time instead of how it spatially or visually it differentiates from its exterior.

Some people from the Santa Fe institute (and others outside) are working on a scientific framework to have more fluid definitions about individuality in complex systems.

Many philosophers and biologists have taken up this β€œprocess view,” in which organisms and other biological systems exist not as fixed objects or materials but as flowing patterns and relationships in a river of flux.

Information theory allows to setup such a process view in which we can better understand individuality and the composition of life and other complex systems.

This new view of biology aligns to my own view about how we can't create artificial minds without a world, body representations, and interactions with others within that world. So, under the ideas above, we could say that the individuality of an artificial mind or virtual assistant extends to that of the world it lives on.