Get a life, elsewhere
And certainly it does not deprive the end result, intelligent life, from the charm and magic we relish on experiencing.
Interestingly, so called "genetic algorithms" are now being used in engineering. The idea is to present a certain problem, for example, the design of an optimum turbine blade shape, to a collection of possible shapes. These shapes are in turn subject to mutation, sexual reproduction and pruning, generation after generation, in a computer program that also evaluates performance. Running the evolution clock thus fast, the technology has succeeded in discovering optimal solutions. Disquietingly enough, in the case of design of an optimum electronic filter, the genetically devised solution is not even fully understood by experts as how does it work so well...
Information
We are very fortunate to be living in an epoch where previously unavailable insights are showing up.
Information is present even in that unremarkable stone lying in your backyard, for the orderly crystalline lattice of atoms convey by itself information, making for something that is more than each individual atom, itself an entity with order.
There is information in the way quarks associate to form neutrons and protons, which in atomic nuclei make elements, that in turn form molecules making proteins forming cellular components. Cells that differentiating and associated in an information-carrying order make tissues some of which include synapses (software level) part genetically encoded, part acquired, that integrate sensory data and command mucles, all what in the end amounted to ... that mosquito you just squashed on your cheek.
When dealing with nested hierarchies of layered information-carrying matter, one may wonder if information alone can exist independent of matter.
For a written book, for example, it doesn't matter whether it is instanced on a certain quality of paper and ink, or as pits burned on the surface of a CD, or as bunches of electrons stored within a semiconductor memory, or even as photons that are part of a wireless data stream roaming the Universe. It doesn't matter at all from the standpoint of the information it implies.
In the last example, information is carried essentially by energy alone, but matter and energy are in a way faces of the same coin.
The mind, curiously leaves room for a further dab of weirdness. It should be possible to construct a working model of a human mind in principle; the technology is almost at hand. By model I mean not a bloody wet and pulsating
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