It’s 30 years this month since PERMUTATION CITY was first published. But of course, all the same letters had been present in other books for centuries before, they just hadn’t been read in that order.
Someone said to me at an Artificial Life conference: "You have to read this book, it's about what you do!" (I got into Artificial Chemistry after this book came out but without having read it yet.)
@gregeganSF Was there a paper on Artificial Chemistry that inspired this book?
6 thought provoking questions posed to @awaisaftab (psychiatrist) and myself (brain researcher) and we hit on so much:
The challenge of escaping reductionism. Theories of consciousness. Are mental disorders brain disorders? Why should anyone care about philosophy? Is epistemic iteration is failing? And what bits of brain research are awaiting their Copernican moment?
The authors describe and implement a self-constructing virtual organism capable of Braitenberg vehicle-like properties and which can self-repair in response to damage. The properties of the damaged organism are quite interesting, in that its performance as a vehicle degrades gracefully rather than catastrophically.
After one more year of intensive work and numerous test runs, a new major update for https://github.com/chrxh/alien is finally polished and ready. It offers possibilities I had only dreamed of before. 🪐