>Apoptosis, programed cell death, and its deregulation seems also to be
>involved.
As far as I understand malfunctional apoptosis is not the cause of cancer, it IS
cancer. What ever caused the malfunction is irrelevant to the actual phenomenon.
This is why I stress that the annihilation is a principle rather than a
mechanism.
>Another example of how the "cancellation principle" is another way of looking
at
>homeostasis.
I agree that homeostasis is one of the behaviors of annihilation mosaics (Ben
Goertzel and Kent Palmer calls them magicians systems) but certainly not the
only one. The problem with homeostasis is its highly systemic nature. It assumes
continuity rather than discontinuity. Annihilation mosaics are DISCRETE systems
and any continuity that may arise in them (e.g. homeostasis) is a Gestalt, i.e.
an illusion of the mind. An example of illusory continuity in discrete systems
are films. They look continuous but are fundamentally discrete. This the case
with life too. A lineage looks continuous but is actually full of gaps. Every
generation has to bridge this gap through reproduction. Likewise with the body.
We think of our body as a continuity when it is in fact a discrete renewal
process of mitosis/apoptosis. What is important about this focus on discreteness
is the fact that Life has "sudden death" engraved into it. At every moment in
time the process of life has to bridge a discontinuity in order to sustain
illusory continuity. This means that every moment is a Damocles' sword, a
potential catastrophy, a possible breakdown of continuity. (in allignment with
Per Bak's concept of super-criticality and the butterfly effect). A small
change may have enormous large scale effects. This is why we will always see
mass extinctions, sudden death, spontanious emergence of cancer, all which
apparently come from nowhere. They are embodied into the very discontinuous
nature of life.
But at the same time this Damocles' sword is a source of new order, of
change, of creativity and true emergence. This is why balanced annihilation
surpasses the concept of homeostasis.
Onar.