Biological systems are incredibly robust as a whole / will survive even under extreme changes of external conditions.
Currently, artificial / silicon based systems are not yet capable of (physical) reproduction. Hard to pack a lithography machine onto a robot. That’s what makes them vulnerable, long-term.
Structural systems would just lack the intelligence to survive.
What about ant-like systems? Many simple, dumb bots, but with emergent intelligence? … Ants at their core are also made up of cells, which have the ability to reproduce! (Easy to take that for granted)
Reproduction is at the core of biological systems.
Link to originalHow can a complex machine build a copy of itself?
Von Neumann showed that self-replication requires:
Machine A: a “universal constructor” that reads sequential instructions from a tape and executes them (build this part, attach it here, etc.)
Machine B: a copier that duplicates the tape itself
The tape: contains instructions for building both Machine A and Machine BExact biological analogues (discovered after Von Neumann’s work): DNA = the tape (encodes instructions) Ribosomes = Machine A (read codons, synthesize proteins according to instructions) DNA polymerase = Machine B (copies the tape)
When you run this system, you get a copy of the whole apparatus, tape included. Anything else you want the offspring to have can also be encoded on the tape.
This is inherently computational: Machine A must 1) read symbolds from the tape 2) perform different actions depending on what symbol it reads (conditional branching) 3) loop through the tape until it hits a stop signal
→ That’s what a turing machine does.
→ If you want to build something as complex as yourself from simpler parts, you need to follow a program.
→ Replication requires (and thus produces) computation “Only code can produce more code. Non-code can’t produce anything!”
Replication vs Reproduction?
Replication implies making an (approximately) exact copy. DNA replication, viral replication, copying a file. The emphasis is on fidelity to the original.
Reproduction is broader — producing new individuals, but not necessarily identical ones. Sexual reproduction is the obvious case: offspring are genetically distinct from either parent. The emphasis is on generating new instances of the “kind,” not copies of a particular individual.
→ Just a slightly different framing.