Start The Deal: A conceptual maquette.

deal.tex

@@ -461,6 +461,35 @@ application to decide whether, how much, and in which way to
 prioritize this benefit over the profit we humans are expecting
 to extract.
 
+\section{The Deal: A conceptual maquette}
+\label{sec:maquette}
+
+This section aims to provide an overview of the Deal with Life
+framework for thinking about mutually beneficial interactions with
+living systems, without focusing on the formal details.
+Properly formalizing the ideas exposed in this section is
+a significant part of my future research.
+
+A formalization of the Deal with Life is structured into two stages:
+\begin{enumerate}
+\item abstract general framework,
+\item concrete implementations.
+\end{enumerate}
+The abstract general framework rigorously defines the main concepts:
+the interacting systems, their benefits, etc., while concrete
+implementations instantiate these definitions for concrete systems,
+supplying additional concepts and tools applicable to the concrete
+case.  Concrete implementations in their own turn occur on two levels:
+concrete formal dynamical systems---e.g., membrane systems, Boolean
+networks, string rewriting systems\footnote{The subsequent chapters of
+  this manuscript describe these formal dynamical systems in more
+  detail.}---and concrete biological systems---e.g., a human,
+population of yeasts, a plant, an ecosystem, etc.  Note that while the
+introductory discourse heavily focuses on how we as humans interact
+with Life, the Deal with Life framework can be adapted to
+characterizing and evaluating the interactions between other living
+systems, not necessarily involving the human.
+
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 \end{refsection}