What is a human? What is life, and what are the components of living systems?
Is the human a living system? Is humankind a collective assemblage of creatures who are in fact mere machines for processing information?
What is life?
Is it possible to define life? If so, how can one distinguish between alive and dead? Is there a difference?
What is a human?
Are humans alive? Do we have a mind?
An alien intelligence would be a type of lifeform, which is self-aware and considered intelligent by its own species. To add to this definition, the most fundamental characteristic of an "alien" would be that it is from another planet or star system than Earth.
It would be an advanced lifeform with a larger brain than humans. It might also have more complex social structures and the ability to adapt to different environments compared to humans.
If a self-replicating computer program does exist, it could theoretically develop and evolve into an intelligent life form.
Even if we assume that aliens have non-biological bodies, they might still be able to reproduce by using sophisticated technology.
If aliens have a computational body, they would not necessarily need to be large. They could potentially be nanobots or similar microscopic robots which are intelligent and self-replicating.
One should try to avoid biases towards specific forms for an alien intelligence as much as possible, but for me, the ideal case would be something rather non-humanoid. I imagine a more or less brain-like object which floats in space, maybe with tentacles coming out of it.
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