Replication pentagon

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This article defines a novel term (that is hopefully sensibly chosen). The term is introduced to make a concept more concrete and understand its interrelationship with other topics related to atomically precise manufacturing. For details go to the page: Neologism.

This is basically the reproduction hexagon minus the "sufficient adaptivity" side.
It applies to all systems that are incapable of autonomous evolution e.g. by mutations.

The runaway accident analogy to the fire triangle still holds,
but the scope is more limited as replicators can't adapt to more environments beyond the one they where originally designed for.

To consider though is the possibility of adaption using macroscale minds (human and/or AI) for technical evolution though.

The four sides of the immobile self-replication square

There are five necessary requirements on selfreplicativity as found in the (outdated) molecular assembler concept.

Needed is:

  • replication capability
  • building block availability
  • energy supply
  • blueprint data mobility (a mere digital access to a central copy is sufficient, some redundancy is advisable though for resiliency)
  • replicator mobility -- needed for the (outdated) molecular assembler concept

Not needed is:

  • sufficient adaptivity -- needed only by biological life

Even less requirements

For systems which also pose no requirements on "replicator mobility" see: Immobile replication square.
These even further reduced requirements are what applies to gemstone metamaterial on-chip factories.

Choice of terminology

This wiki will use:

Blurry grey zone

For systems that are mere replicative and not reproductive
to even emerge into existence there needs to be external intelligent actors
that do the development, maintenance and improvement on them.

At the current state of technology these
external intelligent actors can only be humans.
One could imagine that though that with progressing (software) technology the creation maintenance and improvement of self replicative systems could get increasingly automated with AI and even AGI.

At this point whether one considers this self replication or self reproduction is dependent what you consider the in-group and what the out-group. If you include the AGIs in control into when you say "we".

To note is:

  • The reproductive "intelligence" is still not baled into the the systems in case they are compact nanoscale selfreplicating.
  • This scenario is more or less targeted design technological evolution beyond natural evolution.

Macroscopic microscopic

On a related note:
For early stage foldamer based precursor systems of gem-gum factories degree of mobility is still rather unclear.
A gradual emergence of self replicative capability in highly distributed multi agent systems seems likely.
IN early foldamer based precursor systems the "building block availability" part of the replication pentagon refers to special foldamer building blocks that are difficult to pre-poduce. Making runaway replication accidents impossible.

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