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leiden_hybrid_concepts
label: haiku
community:leiden_hybrid_concepts-run4-c1-c6Living systems as 21st-century machines
Reconceptualizes life and biological complexity through modern computational principles—substrate-dependence, multiscale integration, irreducibility—rather than mechanical reductionism, bridging xenobiology and machine learning circa 2020s.
12 members. Each node is clickable.
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Drawn from 5 sources
The papers/notes whose extracted claims & findings make up this cluster.
- Living Things Are Not (20th Century) Machines: Updating Mechanism Metaphors in Light of the Modern Science of Machine Behavior5 members
- Endless forms most beautiful 2.0: teleonomy and the bioengineering of chimaeric and synthetic organisms4 members
- 2023-03-15_Hibai-Unzueta_2020-RRNW-Joe-Wheaton.pdf_9b7f3d1 member
- On biological and artificial consciousness: A case for biological computationalism1 member
- unfold-chat-catalog.md1 member
Bridges (5)
Other communities that share members with this one — cross-cutting threads or papers that sit at the seam between two themes.
Claims (10)
- 21st-century machines are increasingly unpredictable and noisy.Quantum computers, ML systems, and evolved machines exploit uncertainty rather than requiring determinism.
- A multi-scale competency architecture facilitates evolution of robust problem-solving, living machines.Key proposal linking multi-scale agency to evolutionary advantage.
- Computation is fundamentally substrate-dependent; energy efficiency is the constraint that induces multiscale, scale-integrated computation.Core assertion distinguishing biological computationalism from functionalism; rejects simulation-instantiation equivalence.
- Living things are not 20th-century machines, but may be 21st-century machines.Core thesis: the machine metaphor requires updating, not abandoning, in light of modern machine behavior.
- Machines can now make machines.Evolutionary algorithms and self-organizing systems blur distinction between evolved and designed.
- Modern machines are increasingly interdependent, not independent.Challenges classical assumption that machines are separate from environment and each other.
- Modern machines are increasingly resistant to reductionist analysis and explanation.Deep neural networks, swarms, and complex autonomous systems require holistic ethological and cognitive approaches.
- Strength in numbers: scalable restoration solutionsLTPBR principle that solution scope should match problem magnitude through multiplicative design approaches.
- The life vs. machine distinction is relevant only to the lowest class of machines available in prior decades and is not fundamental.Claim that the organism–machine dichotomy is outdated.
- Entity-Component-System architecture reflects principles of modular wholeness.
Findings (2)
- Brain-computer interface enables paralyzed patient to write via motor cortex decodingArtificial chimaera merging biological motor cortex with software enabling novel communication without understanding underlying neural mechanisms.
- Brain-to-text communication via handwriting achieved 90 characters per minute in a paralyzed person.From Willett et al. (2021), shows high-performance artificial chimaera.