Universally useful world

Welcome [bauhouse] to the 0oo! It's great to have you here, and your comment is very relevant!

// The implication is that we may have conceived of the universe as being lifeless, but it is actually alive.

While I also adhere to panpsychism, I think there is a boundary, as Paul Budnik asks in his video poem -- where does the consciousness beings or ends?.

// but that humans have compromised the world’s ability to work as it has been working

Humans are just a new life form on the plant Earth, just like animals were a new form of life, after plant life. If a form of life is able to change ecosystem, does it mean that it really compromises it? For example, Earth's temperature during the last 500 mln. years has been outside the current range, and the ecosystem has recovered. I think it's worth a discussion and research to understand, how much humans do actually compromise the world’s ability to deal with the consequences. Albeit, it's a bit of a digression from universal utility.

My concern is, that of what to consider to be "life," and does all life, including life in computational universes, like in Avida, count, and if so, how?

David Bohm’s explorations of quantum physics, general relativity, and wholeness might bring into question the notion of a distinction between sentient life and non-sentient life. The implication is that we may have conceived of the universe as being lifeless, but it is actually alive. If we depend on the non-sentient life of the Earth for the oxygen we breathe, those life forms are an integral part of the whole that maintains the health of the whole.

Creating such a world is rather presumptuous, then. Instead, should we not merely observe how the world already works for all life, but that humans have compromised the world’s ability to work as it has been working by disrupting the systems of life?