Is Self-Replication Required for the Growth of Knowledge?

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Tyler Mills’s avatar

How many times need something be replicated before the term 'replicator' should apply? If it's a matter of reliability, what defines reliable? Is "replicator-ness" on a continuum?

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Benjamin Davies’s avatar

You could think up a design for a self-replicating machine and then build it. Assuming you made no critical mistakes, you have made a self-replicator that hasn’t self-replicated yet.

It is considered a replicator based on what it can do, rather than on what it has done.

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Tyler Mills’s avatar

Agreed. Thanks.