Digital Organisms

[avad]

Interesting article...
from a post in scientificwhims:
Testing Darwin
Digital organisms that breed thousands of times faster than common
bacteria are beginning to shed light on some of the biggest unanswered
questions of evolution
By Carl Zimmer
DISCOVER Vol. 26 No. 02 | February 2005
www.carlzimmer.com/articles/2005/articles_2005_Avida.html

Reminds me of Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene...

Comments

[babayada.livejournal.com]

Science is a kind of interesting thing that I like to watch and sometimes poke with a stick from afar. If I get too close I get overwhelmed by complex systems of categorization, large amounts of information, and mathematics that is over my head.

Science was amazing to me when I was a kid. Along-side the religion I was being taught it seemed to me to be more filled with the fascination and wonder of life and magic. It also used reason, curiosity, and experimentation as its guidelines. I contrasted that with the emotional manipulation tactics and demand for mindless obedience from religion and found science to be a great liberator.

Science made sense. Science told you to trust your reason and your senses. Science put the power of living into the hands of people rather than having things dictated supposedly from God to the power structure ... individuals you were supposed to fear, obey, and (sickeningly) love.

At a point, however, science seems way too complex and is the domain of a certain elite who were trained rigorously from youth. It kinda saddens me. I still latch on to what interests me and try to delve, but I can only delve so far.

I don't have Wolfram's A New Kind of Science ... but I am sure I'd love to give it a look over. :)

Back to the original subject ... I feel that it's important to speak clearly and to not romanticize or anthropomorphize too much. But then, sometimes I think, well, it's attacked in some places where it may be appropriate. For instance, some science people go as far as to say that feeling pain when an animal is crying out is anthropomorphizing because, well, how do you know it experience pain like you do? I think they use that as a way of distancing themselves from the animals they experiment upon. It's rationalization in that case, because when a dog yips and yelps from being hurt, I kinda know what that feels like, you know?