http://programmer.ie/tags/ancestry/ Recent content in Ancestry on Programmer.ie: Modern AI programming Hugo en-us Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/digital-life/02-the-closest-thing-we-have/ Fri, 14 Aug 2026 10:00:00 +0100 http://programmer.ie/books/digital-life/02-the-closest-thing-we-have/ <p>We have learned not to trust the first noun.</p> <p>Fine.</p> <p>Now look at this.</p> <hr> <p>The previous chapter used systems small enough that the temptation remained manageable. A glider can look uncannily like a moving thing, but five cells crossing a lattice leave plenty of distance between the observation and the word <em>organism</em>.</p> <p>That was useful for calibration.</p> <p>Now we remove that distance.</p> <blockquote> <p><strong>How far has computation already gone without anyone deliberately building the organism?</strong></p>