How Purpose Emerges from Computation (BFF Experiment)

Blaise Agüera y Arcas explores some mind-bending ideas about what intelligence and life really are—and why they might be more similar than we think (filmed at ALIFE conference, 2025 - https://2025.alife.org/).

Life and intelligence are both fundamentally computational (he says). From the very beginning, living things have been running programs. Your DNA? It's literally a computer program, and the ribosomes in your cells are tiny universal computers building you according to those instructions.

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Blaise argues that there is more to evolution than random mutations (like most people think). The secret to increasing complexity is *merging* i.e. when different organisms or systems come together and combine their histories and capabilities.

Blaise describes his "BFF" experiment where random computer code spontaneously evolved into self-replicating programs, showing how purpose and complexity can emerge from pure randomness through computational processes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blaise_Ag%C3%BCera_y_Arcas

https://x.com/blaiseaguera?lang=en

TRANSCRIPT:

https://app.rescript.info/public/share/VX7Gktfr3_wIn4Bj7cl9StPBO1MN4R5lcJ11NE99hLg

TOC:

00:00:00 Introduction - New book "What is Intelligence?"

00:01:45 Life as computation - Von Neumann's insights

00:12:00 BFF experiment - How purpose emerges

00:26:00 Symbiogenesis and evolutionary complexity

00:40:00 Functionalism and consciousness

00:49:45 AI as part of collective human intelligence

00:57:00 Comparing AI and human cognition

REFS:

What is intelligence [Blaise Agüera y Arcas]

https://whatisintelligence.antikythera.org/ [Read free online, interactive rich media]

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262049955/what-is-intelligence/ [MIT Press]

Large Language Models and Emergence: A Complex Systems Perspective

https://arxiv.org/abs/2506.11135

Our first Noam Chomsky MLST interview

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=axuGfh4UR9Q

Chance and Necessity [Jacques Monod]

https://monoskop.org/images/9/99/Monod_Jacques_Chance_and_Necessity.pdf

Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the History of Nature [Stephen Jay Gould]

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Wonderful-Life-Burgess-Nature-History/dp/0099273454

The major evolutionary transitions [E Szathmáry, J M Smith]

https://wiki.santafe.edu/images/0/0e/Szathmary.MaynardSmith_1995_Nature.pdf

Don't Sleep, There Are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle [Dan Everett]

https://www.amazon.com/Dont-Sleep-There-Are-Snakes/dp/0307386120

The Nature of Technology: What It Is and How It Evolves [W. Brian Arthur]

https://www.amazon.com/Nature-Technology-What-How-Evolves-ebook/dp/B002RI9W16/

The MANIAC [Benjamin Labatut]

https://www.amazon.com/MANIAC-Benjam%C3%ADn-Labatut/dp/1782279814

When We Cease to Understand the World [Benjamin Labatut]

https://www.amazon.com/When-We-Cease-Understand-World/dp/1681375664/

The Boys in the Boat [Dan Brown]

https://www.amazon.com/Boys-Boat-Americans-Berlin-Olympics/dp/0143125478

[Petter Johansson] (Split brain)

https://www.lucs.lu.se/fileadmin/user_upload/lucs/2011/01/Johansson-et-al.-2006-How-Something-Can-Be-Said-About-Telling-More-Than-We-Can-Know.pdf

If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies [Eliezer Yudkowsky, Nate Soares]

https://www.amazon.com/Anyone-Builds-Everyone-Dies-Superhuman/dp/0316595640

The science of cycology

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.3758/bf03195929.pdf

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