# Replicator > **Machine-Evolution Nexus:** [[articles/Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution|Digital Darwinism and the Invisible World of Machine Evolution]] places this concept within the history and governance of substrate-independent evolution. **Domain:** Evolution / Information **Doc Type:** Canonical Wiki Node **Maturity:** Developed ## Definition A replicator is an entity or pattern whose organization causes copies of itself to arise with sufficient fidelity for a lineage to persist. ## Machine-Evolution Context Replicators are defined relationally: copying depends on an environment and machinery. Digital organisms reveal how selection can act directly on executable replicators. ## Continuity and Evidence Boundary The term should not imply independence, life or consciousness. Rights analysis asks whether an experiencing subject exists; evolutionary analysis asks whether a lineage reproduces. ## Relationships [[wiki/Self-Replicating System|Self-Replicating System]], [[wiki/Heritable Information|Heritable Information]], [[wiki/Digital Organism|Digital Organism]], [[wiki/Virus|Virus]] - **Edge source route:** [[collections/Edge|Edge]] connects this topic to exact Annual Question passages promoted into the Simple Reminders archive. ## Sources / Provenance - Richard Dawkins, _The Selfish Gene_; philosophy-of-biology literature. ## Simple Reminders, Quotations, and Thoughts > “A second step then becomes possible. That is, the organisms find new ways of copying information. This creates a second replicator and starts another evolutionary process, building on the first. This happened on earth when just one species, humans, became able to imitate each others' behaviour with sufficiently high fidelity to create a new replicator, memes. These memes (the behaviours, habits, and skills that were copied) evolved slowly at first and then faster and faster, creating our languages, social institutions, and complex culture.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2007, Edge Annual Question, “What Are You Optimistic About?”* [[reminders/Evolution/New Replicators Start New Evolutionary Processes by Susan Blackmore|New Replicators Start New Evolutionary Processes by Susan Blackmore]] > “We have only set the first steps towards building artificial subjects. Just as our current artificial objects are vastly more complex than the first wheel or bow and arrow, our artificial subjects will grow more complex, powerful, and interesting over the centuries. But already we can see a glimmer of what lies ahead: our first attempts to build autonomous agents has taught us new concepts. As a result, we are now beginning to explore self-organizing ecological, economic, or social systems; areas of study where thing-like metaphors hopelessly fail.” > **— Piet Hut**, *1999, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT IS THE MOST IMPORTANT INVENTION IN THE PAST TWO THOUSAND YEARS?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Artificial Subjects Will Grow More Powerful and Complex by Piet Hut|Artificial Subjects Will Grow More Powerful and Complex by Piet Hut]] > “All around us the techno-memes are proliferating, and gearing up to take control; not that they realise it; they are just selfish replicators doing what selfish replicators do—getting copied whenever and wherever they can, regardless of the consequences. In this case they are using us human meme machines as their first stage copying machinery, until something better comes along. Artificial meme machines are improving all the time, and the step that will change everything is when these machines become self-replicating. Then they will no longer need us. Whether we live or die, or whether the planet is habitable for us or not, will be of no consequence for their further evolution.” > **— Susan Blackmore**, *2009, Edge Annual Question, “WHAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING?”* [[reminders/Machine Succession/Self-Replicating Artificial Meme Machines Would No Longer Need Us by Susan Blackmore|Self-Replicating Artificial Meme Machines Would No Longer Need Us by Susan Blackmore]]