Autopoiesis Must Fail?

James Ashford discusses the importance of imperfect autopoiesis through virtual worlds.

Why aren’t we all clones? Life seems strongly adapted for maintenance and self-replication (broadly: autopoiesis!) creating systems with astonishing self-regulation and emergent behaviours. Yet imperfect autopoiesis is the norm, bringing with it uncertainty and potentially fatal changes. Why risk this? Is it simply too hard to achieve perfect autopoiesis, or is the imperfection essential? By creating simple virtual worlds I aim to explore these questions, and showcase some examples of what we can do with and learn from them!

James is a researcher and software engineer in human genetics, with a passion for finding and creating life in code! In their work, they build tools to study, predict, and treat disease from population-level genomic data at Genomics Ltd in Oxford. Jack is drawn to communities that share similar interests in the weird and wonderful joy of programming, speculative questions about life (as it is and could be!), and working together to make the world a more hopeful place.