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.
Well, Sniffnoy has already pointed out the finite computation limit. But the following is an almost example. (Note that this example is not completely deterministic and allows arbitrarily many states in cells although any fixed configuration has only finitely many such in use.) Example: Cells can have any non-negative integer in them (with zero representing the empty cell): In any given iterarion, for any cell , there is a (1-1/(k+1))/2 chance that the cell is filled with k, where k is the largest number in an adjacent cell, and a ( (1-1/(k+1))/2) chance that it will fill with k+1. Now, start this with a single cell with k=1 and all others empty. The population will rapidly expand, and "evolve" towards higher and higher integers, expanding rapidly from the initial point, with different populations of integers expanding outwards and competing. One could make more complicated versions of this to allow more complicated adaptions (say giving a slight benefit to primes to preserve their current value rather than be overwritten). This would deal with the fact that this model doesn't allow any interesting evolution (and indeed the ladder nature of the evolution in question makes it a very poor model, almost reflecting certain common misconceptions about evolution somehow being progressive.)
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.
Right, I was bringing this up because you made a comment about Turing machines simulating anything.
Also note that a universe based on real numbers could reasonably have life and could not be simulated by a Turing machine but only a Blum-Shub-Smale machine.
...Cells can have any non-negative integer in them (with zero representing the empty cell): In any given iterarion, for any cell , there is a (1-1/(k+1))/2 chance that the cell is filled with k, where k is the largest number in an adjacent cell, and a ( (1-1/(k+1))/2) chance that it will fill with k+1. Now, start this with a single cell with k=1 and all others empty. The population will rapidly expand, and "evolve" towards higher and higher integers, expanding rapidly from the initial point, with different populations of integers expanding outwards
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.