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Dan,
I think you nailed pretty succinctly what is so dangerous about
artificial living systems. The fact that success would automatically mean we
have NO control over what that system's "view" of the world is or what it's
capabilities evolve into is enough reason for there to be a moratorium on this
far more stringent than any nuclear weapons development ban. I think it might be
worth noting that the potential danger to humanity/the biosphere from
artificial life is only half of what worried my father. His other concern was
more philosophically/ethically oriented in that he knew humanity was likely to
be extremely dangerous to any living systems we create, even if they aren't
dangerous to us. To create artificial life in order to use it or abuse it is an
abomination far beyond the genetic engineering that is currently being done.
That's like having children to sell their organs.
Judith
PS: Incidentally, I don't think they are actually creating
artificial life, based on what I read from Tim's post. It sounds to me like more
reductionism/genetic engineering techniques. They aren't approaching it from a
complexity viewpoint, and if they had a complexity viewpoint, they would
(hopefully) also realize the dangers far more fully than they do
currently.
Dan Fiscus wrote: The catch-22
I don't think they get is that if you start with a machine (with external goal that a designer creates and hopes to control and exploit like protein manufacture) but then somehow "along the road" achieved life (with internal agency, self-created goals, etc. etc.) then at that very point of seemingly great achievement (life) you would lose your original intent (machine, controllable, protein factory, etc.), for in order for the thing to be alive it would have to have internal purpose and agency and thus would likely try in various ways to defy external control.
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