SFI took Turing seriously, and provided big, generative answers for what it might mean for something to "compute". Physically, chemically, biologically, cognitively, economically, socially. Networks, CAs, long tails, scaling—a long list of what happened as a consequence. https://twitter.com/orthonormalist/status/1259618240809992192

Early overlap with the world that James Gleick describes in _Chaos_. And with the Game of Life, Cellular Automata, etc (Stephen Wolfram famously threatened to sue SFI for publishing a paper on the universality of 1D CAs that was written by one of his employees—he claimed the IP.)

Yes! I think this explains the interest in genetic algorithms, but also the interest in ideas like "evolution as inference". https://twitter.com/MelMitchell1/status/1259631141444673537?s=20

The interest in feedback loops is also part of the SFI world. SFI has a cybernetic heritage as well, but I've sometimes been surprised by how weak it is. (Maybe I've missed an era, SFI has had many since 1984.)