The Role of Extinction in the Physical Process of Evolution in Replicators and in Non-Physical (Abstract) Ideas Like Constructor Theory

What is Knowledge?

Knowledge: A replicator that tends to remain instantiated in phyrical systems, and can cause transformations to occur, retaing the property of causing them again and again.

In Sum: That which allows for Resiliency through Replication

The fundamental Principle of Constructor Theory:

Whatever transformation is not forbidden by the laws of physics, can be performed  to arbitrarily high accuracy provided that the requisite knowledge is created.

Excerpt from video above:

The only way knowledge can be created under these laws of physics is by a non-directed process of trial and error correction steps.  And this is true of Natural Selection and of the knowledge creating process that occurs in people's minds.  But here we come to a fundamental distinction between the two, because in Natural Selection, the only way a non-adequate theory or idea, a non-adequate recipe for a bacterium can undergo Extinction is by actual death of the organism that it happens to be travelling in.  This is a feature of Natural Selection.  But it need not be so in general, for extinction.  In fact, in human minds, what happens is that whenever a theory is found to be parochial, that is to say that there are problems it cannot solve, the way it is eliminated, the way it undergoes extinction is by criticism.  And criticism is tentatively directed to progress, and it's a fundamentally non-violent process which doesn't involve death, if not of abstractions.  So as Karl Popper put it, we can let our ideas die in our place.  

Once thinking abilities have emerged, a new kind of extinction has become possible, that does not involve death... 

"one that is based on criticism and on actually criticizing abstractions.  So it is this kind of Extinction which is not only crucial for the creation of new knowledge, but with a Constructor theoretic insight, it is part of the very process where our endeavors to create, to perform transformations that are not forbidden by the laws of physics, take place.  An so this is how Constructor Theory lets us see how"

...Extinction can be a Constructor for future possibilities!