Using Artificial Life to Assess the Typicality of Terrestrial Life

The extent to which extraterrestrial life questions can be confidently addressed rests in large measure on the extent to which terrestrial life is representative of life in general since we will have to draw from terrestrial life knowledge. This paper outlines a long-term research program that could inform the extent to which terrestrial life is representative of life more generally, which might then help inform our level of confidence in applying terrestrial life knowledge to extraterrestrial life issues. The approach involves appealing to the relatively new field of Artificial Life to: (1) use minimal characterizations of life in (2) a large number of open-ended Artificial Life computer experiments to generate "life possibility spaces" (3) the results of which can be examined for their plausibility within the context of relevant constraining knowledge, so that (4) the remaining results can be examined for variability relative to terrestrial life, where low variability might suggest that terrestrial life is typical of life in general, and high variability could be interpreted to suggest that terrestrial life might be atypical.