You make several points:
"many would argue that simulating isn't the same thing as actually being"
A useless and pointless argument, IMO. Patternism is a better philosophy. Artificial life is really alive.
"More seriously, just because the rule system is capable of simulating Turing machines when one can control the initial configuration doesn't mean that any given universe actually will have that happen for a fixed configuration."
The claim would be something like: living systems are Turing complete and Turing complete systems are capable of supporting life. I don't think what you said impacts on that claim.
Another problem is that one can conceive of (although I'm not aware of any known examples) of a set of cellular automata rules that allow something looks like "life" to occur (growing, dieing, reproducing, competing) but is too weak to be Turing complete.
Yes, maybe. This seems like a pretty rare and esoteric possibility to me - but I wouldn't say it was impossible.
If you define life as having anything to do with constructive evolution and adaptations, though, then I am going to have to ask for an example.
Note also that being Turing complete doesn't mean you can simulate anything- it means you can simulate anything in our universe.
Noted - but that doesn't seem to have much to do with life.
A useless and pointless argument, IMO. Patternism is a better philosophy. Artificial life is really alive.
I'd be inclined to agree that patternism is more coherent. But that doesn't make the argument useless or pointless (indeed it is a pretty pointed issue since it matters a lot in this context).
Yes, maybe. This seems like a pretty rare and esoteric possibility to me - but I wouldn't say it was impossible.
If you define life as having anything to do with constructive evolution and adaptations, though, then I am going to have to ask for an example.
We...
I believe that life on Earth arose spontaneously. I also believe the galaxy around me is largely devoid of life. I reconcile these things using the anthropic principle.
I also believe that fundamental cosmological constants have values convenient for the development of life. I don't know if it makes sense to pretend that those constants could have had other values - it seems to me like arguing that e could have been 2.716. But it's certainly done. And again, the anthropic principle is sometimes invoked, as an alternative to, say, God.
Suppose somebody came up with a new theory of cosmological constants, that claimed that only certain values are allowable, and that a large percentage of the allowable sets would make life possible. Then you wouldn't have to use the anthropic principle. Wouldn't you be more comfortable with that?
But if that's so, doesn't it mean that you really attach a low prior to the anthropic principle? And that you don't truly accept the anthropic principle?
How do you do Bayesian belief revision when one of your alternative hypotheses uses the anthropic principle? Can you give a strong preference to the hypothesis that does not require it? Because I know that I would.