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t1_ixin2rl wrote

If you were to develop a swarm like this that is internally governed by aggregated self-adjusting neural networks, would such a swarm be considered “alive” or “conscious”?

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t1_ixis86j wrote

It would probably meet the technical definition of alive.

I’m not sure it’s a useful distinction though.

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t1_ixittyn wrote

Yeah but neither is the abstract delineation between non-discrete bioorganic systems lol. That doesn’t stop religious and political institutions from reinforcing such distinctions to provide leverage for social engineering efforts though :/

*Edit translation: The concept of “life” as a distinction from the rest of the stuff that fills our Universe is inherently meaningless, and so far the only benefit to assuming a paradigm that includes this distinction has been to reinforce an effort to manipulate the behavior of other groups and individuals

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