Exactly

Exactly what?

Cells aren’t generally self aware

We can debate whether your neurons are, but that’s a whole different discussion

So a cell has essentially programming

Just things it does and reactions to stimuli

They don’t even know that they have to survive. If you were to shoot an artificial machine, would it try to dodge the missile without being programmed to?

GG @Yusa, you just advanced to level 19!

No

That’s why I thought we were starting with the assumption that the cells already know they have to survive

But if you shot a missile at 100,000,000 artificial machines, and one was programmed to

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Then you’d only be left with machines that dodge missiles

Cells don’t “know” anything

Or if it accidentally dodged the missile

Because evolution doesn’t allow programming

Yes it does

That’s what instinct is

No it doesn’t. Programming requires an intelligent programmer

Have you seen planet earth 2?

No it doesn’t

Have you heard of machine learning?

Yeah, I use machine learning

It's not *literal* computer programming, think of that term a bit more abstractly

I literally program the algorithms

Ok, so let’s say you start with a program

And you randomly change that program

Even with machine learning, the program needs a goal. It needs instructions

Yes, a goal

That’s what selective pressure does

It gives it a goal

The goal is to exist

But it has no goal

The goal is to reproduce and continue the species, ultimately

Because anything that fails to exist, doesn’t exist

The cells have no algorithm

Yes they do

They respond to stimuli

That’s an algorithm

You can think of a cell as a series of Boolean operators

*operations