I don't think it's necessary to completely discard the idea. However, I do think it's important, at the end of it all, to ask: Okay, so what's the utility of this framework? What am I getting out of setting up my point of view this way?

I'm reminded of an old YouTube video [0] that I rewatched recently. That video is "Every Zelda is the Darkest Zelda." Topically, it's completely different. But in it Jacob Geller talks about how there are many videos with fan theories about Zelda games where they're talking about how messed up the game is. Except, that's their only point. If you frame the game in some way, it's really messed up. It doesn't extract any additional meaning, and textually it's not what's present. So you're going through all this decoding and framing, and at the end your conclusion is... nothing. The Mario characters represent the seven deadly sins? Well, that's messed up. That's maybe fun, but it's an empty analysis. It has no insight. No bite.

So, what's the result here other than: Well, that's neat. It's an interesting frame. But other than the thought to construct it, does it inform us of anything? Honestly, I'm not even sure it's really saying life is a form of programming. It seems equally likely it's saying programming is a form of biochemistry (which, honestly, makes more sense given the origins of programming). But even if that were so, what does that give us that we didn't already know? I'm going to bake a pie, so I guess I should learn Go? No, the idea feels descriptive rather than a synthesis. Like an analogy without the conclusion. The pie has no bite.

[0]: https://youtu.be/O2tXLsEUpaQ

> I don't think it's necessary to completely discard the idea. However, I do think it's important, at the end of it all, to ask: Okay, so what's the utility of this framework? What am I getting out of setting up my point of view this way?

That's the important question indeed. In particular, classing life as a computation means that it's amenable to general theories of computation. Can we make a given computation--an individual--non-halting? Can we configure a desirable attractor, i.e. remaining "healthy" or "young"? Those are monumentally complex problems, and nobody is going to even try to tackle them while we still believe that life is a mixture of molecules dunked in unknowable divine aether.

Beyond that, the current crop of AI gets closer to anything we have had before to general intelligence, and when you look below the hood, it's literally a symbols-in symbols-out machine. To me, that's evidence that symbol-in symbol-out machines are a pretty general conceptual framework for computation, even if concrete computation is actually implemented in CPUs, GPUs, or membrane-delimited blobs of metabolites.

The very immediate utility is that if life is computation, would be to tell us that life is possible to simulate, and that AGI is possible (because if there is no "magic spark" of life, then the human brain would be existence proof that a power and space- efficient computer capable of general intelligence can be constructed; however hard it might be).

If life is not a computation, then neither of those are a given.

But it has other impacts too, such as moral impacts. If life is a computation, then that rules out any version of free will that involves effective agency (a compatibilist conception of free will is still possible, but that does not involve effective agency, merely the illusion of agency), and so blaming people for their actions would be immoral as they could not at any point have chosen differently, and moral frameworks for punishment would need to center on minimising harm to everyone including perpetrators. That is hard pill to swallow for most.

It has philosophical implications as well, in that proof that life is computation would mean the simulation argument becomes more likely to hold.