claim

active

claim:evolved-machines-increasingly-exhibit-self-similar-hierarchical-structure-like-living-systems

Evolved machines increasingly exhibit self-similar, hierarchical structure like living systems.

Artificially evolved neural networks and robots often lack modularity unless selected for, resembling life.

Source paper

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Living Things Are Not (20th Century) Machines: Updating Mechanism Metaphors in Light of the Modern Science of Machine Behavior

(2021) · Joshua Bongard · Michael Levin

Neighborhood — ranked by edge-count

Communities (3)

community

Causal emergence in biological systems
members_of
Examines how macro-scale causal power exceeds micro-scale in living and learning systems.
Agential evolution & biological individuality
members_of
Frames evolution as producing goal-directed, problem-solving agents across nested scales of individuality.
Evolutionary individuality and hierarchical agency
members_of
Multi-level selection theory examining how non-aggregative fitness interactions enable higher-order units as genuine evolutionary agents, emphasizing problem-solving over predetermined mechanisms.

Frameworks (1)

framework

Multiscale Competency Architecture
supports
A framework originating from Levin that formalizes how hierarchical biological systems—from cells to tissues to organs—exhibit integrated problem-solving and adaptive plasticity across multiple levels of organization (metabolic, transcriptional, physiological, anatomical). It models system-level behaviors as emergent from competition and cooperation among heterogeneous subunits within composite agents, explaining how goals and regulations scale across biological scales.

Concepts (1)

concept

Self-Similarity
supports
Structural and functional property exhibited by living systems but currently absent from most engineered machines.

Claims (1)

claim

Living things are not 20th-century machines, but may be 21st-century machines.
supports
Core thesis: the machine metaphor requires updating, not abandoning, in light of modern machine behavior.

Related by similarity (8)

cosine ≥ 0.65 · no typed edge

Entities in the same semantic neighborhood but without a typed relation to this one — candidates for new edges or unrecognized duplicates.

Self-similarity and multi-scale competency currently remain a real feature that distinguishes living systems from machines, though there is no deep reason preventing engineered artifacts from exploiting it.claim0.812
The one property the authors acknowledge still distinguishes life from machines, but frame as contingent not essential
Evolution and adaptation may be as inevitable as simple self-organization.claim0.803
Speculation that descent onto a global random attractor implies evolutionary free energy minimization.
Evolutionary transitions to new complex life forms mirror Alexander's levels of scale, each producing new nested centers with division of labor and interdependence.claim0.797
'Machines' and living organisms belong on the same spectrum because both can draw on ingressing forms to get more out than was put inclaim0.795
Key implication drawn from the sorting-algorithm and biobot evidence.
Evolution learns to generalize beyond default morphologies, producing problem-solving machines.claim0.794
Argues that evolutionary learning goes beyond specific adaptations.
The aliveness structure appears in both biological and artificial systems in recognizable form.claim0.792
The living structure emerges, slowly, step by step, and as the process goes forward step by step there is continuous feedback which allows the process to guide the system towards greater wholeness, and coherence, and adaptation.quote0.791
Concise definition of the core dynamic of living process.
Evolutionary transitions in individuality correspond to deep interaction structures or perhaps other mechanisms of multi-scale dynamics.hypothesis0.791
Concrete proposal about necessary architecture for ETIs.