It’s always hard to frame life. Everyone has their favorite framing – some frame it as a struggle against entropy, while others frame it as an emergent property of chemicals.
Sara, in her book frames life through Assembly Theory which posits that each object in the universe has two numbers associated with it: assembly index and copy number.
Assembly index is effectively the minimal number of steps required to (recursively) assemble an object from available building blocks. Think of it as analogous to number of steps required to assemble a lego shape. Copy number is how many copies of the object exist in the universe.
High assembly index assures that the process to produce it could not go about randomly. You just don’t smash a bunch of lego pieces and make a Lalibela or Axum or Pyramids.
Perhaps AIs are alive in that sense? They’re a complicated object, present in multiple copies and are playing a vital role in creating more statistically unlikely objects in the universe.
Sara, in her book frames life through Assembly Theory which posits that each object in the universe has two numbers associated with it: assembly index and copy number.
Assembly index is effectively the minimal number of steps required to (recursively) assemble an object from available building blocks. Think of it as analogous to number of steps required to assemble a lego shape. Copy number is how many copies of the object exist in the universe.
High assembly index assures that the process to produce it could not go about randomly. You just don’t smash a bunch of lego pieces and make a Lalibela or Axum or Pyramids.
Perhaps AIs are alive in that sense? They’re a complicated object, present in multiple copies and are playing a vital role in creating more statistically unlikely objects in the universe.
The most transformative theories never come from trying to build better mathematical representations of current theories. Instead we get them by making direct contact with observations not accounted for in our existing Frame of the world.
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Man proceeds in the fog. But when he looks back to judge people of the past, he sees no fog on their path. From his present, which was their faraway future, their path looks perfectly clear to him, good visibility all the way. Looking back, he sees the path, he sees the people proceeding, he sees their mistakes, but not the fog.
Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts
Milan Kundera, Testaments Betrayed: An Essay in Nine Parts
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You watch tiktok feed. I sit and watch o3 & R1 think. We ain't the same.
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profoundly this analogy reframes our understanding of mental processes
the myriad ways in which we “use the world to think”
millennia of first-hand experience from the lives and letters of great artists, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
"Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads — the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us — drawing them into our own mental processes. By reaching beyond the brain to recruit these “extra-neural” resources, we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively — to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone."
“Our minds are all threaded together,”
the myriad ways in which we “use the world to think”
millennia of first-hand experience from the lives and letters of great artists, scientists, inventors, and entrepreneurs.
"Thinking outside the brain means skillfully engaging entities external to our heads — the feelings and movements of our bodies, the physical spaces in which we learn and work, and the minds of the other people around us — drawing them into our own mental processes. By reaching beyond the brain to recruit these “extra-neural” resources, we are able to focus more intently, comprehend more deeply, and create more imaginatively — to entertain ideas that would be literally unthinkable by the brain alone."
“Our minds are all threaded together,”