I read another article, this one by Frank T. Vertosick, Jr., a neurosurgeon. It is a brief history of intelligence, and was quite interesting, if a bit difficult to follow. For ex., knowing nothing about the man previously, I didn't know at first whether he meant an actual computer he knows about somewhere when he referred to "Darwinian computers". Then there were the words like eukaryotes and prokaryotic.

But I am hoping someone here can explain to me more clearly (examples would be extremely helpful) what he meant when he talked about noise. I did infer that he meant noise is something that gets your attention, but that's as far as I could get. I have only the most elementary knowledge of this field.

Okay--he's talking about natural selection, and says: "Darwinian systems learn in the simplest way possible, trial and error, and such systems require just three basic components: 1) a noise source to generate a diverse library of possible solutions to any given problem; 2) a competitive ecosystem in which the noisy library of solutions can compete to solve a problem by "surviving"; and 3) a virtual* storage system to save symbolic representations of correct solutions for future implementation. In conventional Darwinism, spontaneous mutations serve as the noise source..."

Later on he talks about organisms adjusting their noise levels. And, "Noise is a critical parameter in Darwinian systems...Insufficient noise makes their systems inflexible; excessive noise renders them unstable. ... all modern cells have mechanisms for raising their own rate of genetic noise..."
*I think this contributed to my confusion over whether he meant an actual computer.

FTR, he goes on to talk about how the original theory of evolution has itself evolved.

I hope I've put enough to get across his idea of "noise". But, beyond mutations, I truly don't "get" what he was talking about. Thanks for any help, and any errors in copying are mine.