DIYbanter - View Single Post - Quantum Mechanics and Self-Replicating Machines

( Doug Goncz ) wrote:

snip
This does not contradict the finding of Wigner in "On the impossibility of
self-replication" in "The Logic of Personal Knowledge" because the machinist,
an agent not included in Wigner's analysis of structures growing in a nutrient
"sea", is self-replicating (alive).

I assert that a properly trained machinist inherently knows how to operate such
an array to self-replicate, given time, because the machinist is a living,
self-replicating being, but special training in the theory of self-replication
may help.
snip

Just curious what your definition of "self-replicating" is, and where
that definition came from. Is anything other than the machines you
mentioned here included in the self-replicating entity that you
envision? How much assistance or work by an external agent, and what
degree of pre-processing of raw materials and energy sources, can be
utilized while still meeting the qualifications for self-replication?

Bert