I get your joke, but that's precisely the thing: with only one quantum state, you can't have a superposition!

Sure, but you'd still need to capture what about the thing makes it belong in the discipline. I don't think agency by itself gets you there (at least unless you're pulling a Dennet-esque "all true agency derives from the Darwinian algorithm" thing)

And while an individual mule leverages a biologist's expertise, a species of mules, agents without evolution as a source of their complexity...you'd study that as an economist perhaps, but I don't think a biologist would help you much with that. (2/2)

Interesting. I don't know if I'd go that far. Agency, properly operationalized, can have some role. But without replication, the origin of complexity is quite different. Ultimately, the only reason you'd want to be picky about defining a term like "life" is to delineate a subject of study (1/2)

"Life" is pretty obviously circular here, read your original post again. Agency, sure, with the right model I could see that being a missing piece.

What's missing, in your view? Metabolism?

"Five is right out!"

Yeah, I'd love to hear from someone who can explain the actual technical distinction here. Is there nothing *isomorphic* to the complex numbers in the new proposals?

Yes, though ideally we'd be doing this with something like hyperlinks, not literally copying the text.

You may still be able to edit away the meow typo there ;)

I don't think it's necessarily a problem. We do the same thing for fictional characters without issue: I can say that Iago lies and that doesn't make anyone think he has actual thoughts, we understand it's a statement about the behavior depicted. Similarly, LLMs are an engine to produce depictions.

While the point is cute, the implication that physicists don't hike enough is pretty ridiculous. Remember that one weekend when two theorists died in two different hiking accidents?