#originoflife #informationtheory #ComplexSystems #CollectiveBehavior #evolutionarydynamics #biogels #informationtheory #philosophy #philosophyofscience #philosophyofmaths #qotojournal #biology #evolution
I continue to hear from scientists and non scientists alike that biological life evolves through more complex forms. I would argue that the bacterial assemblages in a biogel are at least as complex as any organism. An alternative is not to think about how life has changed but what it has done. Life survives, it continues, 4 billion years and counting. It does this by constantly expanding into and modifying new environments. This is accomplished by budding out new states of complexity, the major transitions of life are real but there is no goal of more, there is no goal, the result, however, has been survival.
@wjbeaver It's always worthwhile to remember that every organism alive on Earth today has (as far as we can tell) the same length of evolutionary tree. In terms of "goodness of fit" as criterion for what shapes form, every living organism has had the same amount of time to adapt.
... and any software engineer will tell you, many categories of additional complexity are not the hallmarks of a "superior" system.
