Our boundary-led takes:
On Life
‘Life’ is any boundary that follows three laws:
- Life Boundary Law 1: Distinguish ‘inside-world’ from ‘outside-environment’
- Life Boundary Law 2: ‘Care’ about inside world. Aka active preservation of ‘inside-outside distinction’ against the backdrop of constant change.
- Life Boundary Law 3: Extension of ‘Care’ to adjacent boundaries*
* Defined as individuals or collectives who share strong overlap of organism’s own inside-outside distinction making.
Adherence to laws above lies on a spectrum. It is not a yes/no answer.
On Consciousness
The measure of ‘Care’ deployed by life in defending against external change is what is commonly referred to as ‘consciousness’.
Two important metrics to track ‘Care’
1. Type of change (e.g., physical/chemical, social/relational, symbolic/abstract etc.)
2. Cause-and-effect duration (e.g., seconds for the physical punch, potentially years for the associated relationship damage)
An increase in types of changes tracked, and for longer durations is perceived as increased consciousness.
Life / Consciousness is a measure against change. We have quantified this measure.
Explore scores & rankings of different entities
(thematically categorized; new entities added frequently)
Explore emergent categories of Life/Consciousness (based on scores)
The scoring/quantification methodology
- Metrics cover (and go beyond) widely accepted biology based measures of life (homeostasis, organisation, metabolism, growth, adaptation, response to stimuli, and reproduction). However, they are framed in the language of boundaries – for obvious reasons.
- Each metric decomposes into 2 or 3 specific proxies;
- Each proxy is only allowed four values: 0, 33, 66 or 100. Each score ties to specific observable patterns or behaviors. Each score is gated and exceptionally detailed to reduce interpretive plasticity
- Metric and Proxy weights were adjusted by running monte-carlo simulations to ensure alignment with commonly held intuition on complexity of familiar lifeforms (e.g., virus, bacteria, flatworm, raven, octopus, human etc.).
- The specific weights were then extended to objects which are harder to intuitively understand (e.g., digital entities, collectives)
- Each entity can be independently scored by running a detailed prompt for advanced LLM models – contact us for detailed prompt & exact replicable methodology. Detailed scoring criteria and converging of 5 independent runs on same entity limit scope of interpretive divergence.
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