This is a bad deal. It won't help people in the long term and it plays directly into the hands of the administration, reinforcing their narrative, not yours. Your support for this is going to burn all of us.

Nice meeting you too! Esme' was a bit awestruck meeting you - "I talked to a famous guy!" she told her sister afterward, but she had a great time. The person at George Mason I mentioned was Dan Nicholson and the book they just release is "Everything Flows." Hope that helps!

Yup. Or at least under the larger "life-like" umbrella. I don't have a huge issue with that.

Neat paper! I wonder if it might explain persistence of variance in some of the aposematic genetic algorithms we're working on. We had thought it was just a response to Batesians - keeping them from masking the signal of the aposemat species - but maybe there's more to it!

Not if you think of life not just as things that have evolved (though most engineered things are built primarily from components that have) but as things that are currently evolving. Genetically modified organisms are still acted on by natural selection now.

I usually think of life as anything that evolves through natural selection. That does include some "not lifey" stuff like viruses and genetic algorithms but it at least lumps up what biologists study. AI systems are impacted by NS, but I do like the idea of giving them their own sublabel at least!