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Creation: Life And How to Make It
If God wrote a book about the way he put the universe together, why the laws of physics were the way they were, how he came to design humans and all the other life forms on Earth, and why they are interdependent with each other and with the planet, it would be a lot like Steve Grand's Creation: Life and how to make it.
Steve is a self confessed digital god -- and he can prove it: there are over a million lifeforms created by him running around in computers all over the world. They live in their own world of Albia within the computer game Creatures. These are not the run-of-the-mill scripted non-player-characters common in computer games. These little creatures aren't simply programmed to behave: their behavior emerges from the way they are. They are artificial life -- ALife.
This is a lightly written but mind-bendingly deep book. When you realize you have been smooth talked into abandoning the last fifty years of AI research and development along with the majority of current thinking on ALife you know the Grand philosophy has gotten into your blood.
Creation isn't just about the inhabitants of a game; it's about existence, the nature of life, and perhaps more important to humans, the nature of intelligence. What is a conscious mind, and can machines have one too?
This is not a book about exactly how to write the code behind Alife; instead it's about how to think about both simulations and actual living organisms, so that there's some point to writing the code.
Explaining how to think about the world, starting with understanding subatomic particles, then moving onto items of greater complexity -- atoms, then molecules, then autocatalytic networks, self-reproducing systems, adaptive systems, intelligence and mind -- is something Steve is very good at. It must come from all the thinking he does. He says that sitting in a darkened silent room and just thinking is one of his favorite occupations. It's left him with an almost Buddhist sense of detachment from reality as most people conceive of the world.
He's pushing for a paradigm shift in our view of reality, and like others before him who've tried that -- Copernicus, Gallileo, Newton, and Einstein -- he's finding it hard work standing the world on its head. But as with his predecessors once the ground has moved under your feet the new place you're standing seems completely right and obvious. It's a new way of seeing that is vital to continued progress.
If there has to be a God, I wouldn't mind letting Steve have a go at the job -- as long as he isn't answerable to another marketing department controlling what his creatures look like. Those cutesy Norns -- ugghh!
I feel that this is too simple a brush off. Many definitions made vague enough could allow you too fit any half arsed theory to any observably repeatable thing (like life). A theory must not only hang heavily on a definition it IS A DEFINITION.
In the fields of AI and ALife (amongst others) this kind of philosophers trap can lead to a whole lot of not doing anything at all and should generally be taken with a dose of salt!
That aside I applaud Steve Grand's work and have (mostly, haveing met a few!) respect for people still asking these kinds of fundamental questions whilst I code `new mousetraps` for cash.
Carlos Fandango
I also enjoyed Heiserman's books. I built some simple robots "back in the day" when those books were still in print. I have a copy of the machine intelligence one at the very least, I think I have one of the others as well. (not for sale, tho!)
I spent quite a bit of time as a teen playing with MI. Was alot of fun, even tho the computing power I had at my disposal was a wopping 16K CoCo (later a 64K CoCo, the 256K bank switched, but that's for another discussion). It might be fun to break out my notes and play w/it some more now that the Palm Vx I have is more powerful!
I have no idea where Heiserman went, but if he did anything interesting it should be out there, either on the web or in Gopher space. I think I'll have a look later tonight. I'll report back if I find anythin!
--
If your map and the terrain differ,
trust the terrain.
does anyone know what happened to Mr. Heiserman and his robots?
I think he founded Cyberdyne Systems and was contracted by the Government to build the SkyNet project. I expect great things from their T-9000 model.
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Men with no respect for life must never be allowed to control the ultimate instruments of death.
GW Bu
Probably the best intro to the subject is Steven Levy's Aritifial Life: The Quest for a New Creation. Getting old, but still relevant.
- Tal Cohen
"Attached to this, and more importantly is the fact that informational simulations HAVE NO CAUSAL POWERS! Having no physical existance, they cannot cause or affect anything except what is formally defined for them in the simulation."
:-), there is no outside world to be simulated in. This is basically how we function since we are constrained to exist within our own universe.
So, how is this any different from us? We can only affect things that are formally defined for our own existence. I cannot move something which does not exist.
If I program a nice red bouncy ball object for my artificial creatures to play with and they go about pushing it around all by themselves simply because it triggers a "fun" response in some code someplace (there was no directly coded 'play_with_red_ball' function), how is this any different from Real Life(TM)? I may pick up a basketball and bounce it around simply because I find it fun. Not because anyone told me to do it. In the same way that the AI creatures caused the ball to move simply because they "wanted" to, I caused a real ball to move because I "wanted" to. That seems very causal to me.
As far as I can tell, you're just as guilty of using "confusion and elaborate talk" and "intellectual slight-of-hand" to make us all believe it simply can't be done because you say so. I fail to see how this comment is proof of anything other than you having not read the book. (I did, BTW)
Also, Grand doesn't propose that we make simulations of life. In fact, that's exactly what he says the more traditional AI research is doing wrong. He suggests that the only way to make artificial life is to let it happen itself on its own terms. So, he simulates a very simple "world" which has basic rules (similar to our own) like gravity and such. And he then places his creatures into it. Instead of trying to simulate intelligence or actions in the way we experience them, he instead lets the creatures see their "life" from their own point of view. The idea is that as far as the creature is concerned (if it could be concerned at all
I think you have fallen into the trap of not wanting to think outside the box. Who says that the meaning of life is *required* to have causal power in OUR universe? If it can cause change in it's own universe, then that seems to be good enough since that's all we do (as far as anyone knows). Just because our universe may be the container of this virtual universe doesn't mean that you can escape your reality. Is there any reason not to think that perhaps our own universe exists inside of a larger one? How could we ever find out? And does it matter? This is the same reasoning the author used when he got into particle physics and other strange topics. It was not to create a simulation of our universe, but to use that knowledge to create a simpler sub-universe in which his creatures could live.
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
They're reproducing cells *within* their body.
the simplest thing would be to have it be the the first post to add partners to any nytimes link. it might take a while but one karama point at a time would add up.
It's not even listed on Amazon, bn.com, fatbrain. Please, book reviewers, give us rudimentary information about a book's availability.
Early on, I got into AL, back when I was in middle school. Ever since then, I've been programming little guys to live out in their worlds. The interesting thing is how it has affected me philosophically. For example, I believe in the existance of natural laws. The reason is not because of some sort of magical force making them be, but that there are certain behaviors that naturally emerge from the system. Amongst humans, we all act a certain way because we are equal, more or less. Of course, as humans evolved, there were different levels of humans living at the same time, so we developed power structures that have made it through to this day. If only we could throw off these artificial laws, the world would be a much better place.
AL has also led me to be an anarchist. To me, anarchy is the perfect system in which everything will optimize and everyone will be happy.
Anything else is a desperate attempt to optimize that, at best, might work for a few seconds until something changes. Anarchy is liquid and quick to change, while archies are slow and ridged and unable to adapt to rapidly changing situations.
I often have a hard time understanding how other people can miss such obvious truths. My best guess has been a simple lack of knowledge. Hopefully, this book and maybe a wider exposure to AL will change people's minds.
-- Gordon Worley
I searched on both Amazon and Powell's with no luck...
The problem with causality, as I anderstand it, is that (most) physicists believe that the description of nature (at subatomic level) given by current quantum physics is (reasonably) complete. Specifically, that a particle has no location, but instead only the probability distribution curve/wave of a location.
But when the particle is observed, it is found at a specific place. However, without a _causal_ reason. Admittedly, thats sounds pretty strange.
The following page looks like a reasonably good introduction:. html)
Quantum Primer (http://www.sfu.ca/chemcai/QUANTUM/Quantum_Primer
Quotes of the relevant parts:
"Q13. Exactly what is it that is "waving"?
We pointed out earlier that a wave is a change that varies with location in a periodic, repeating way. What kind of a change do the crests and hollows of a "matter wave" trace out? The answer is that the wave represents the value of a quantity whose square is a measure of the probability of finding the particle in that particular location. In other words, what is "waving" is the value of a mathematical probability function.
Q14. What is the uncertainty principle?
In 1927, Werner Heisenberg proposed that certain pairs of properties of a particle cannot simultaneously have exact values. In particular, the position and the momentum of a particle have associated with them uncertainties x and p given by [...]
As with the de Broglie particle wavelength, this has practical consequences only for electrons and other particles of very small mass. It is very important to understand that these "uncertainties" are not merely limitations related to experimental error or observational technique, but instead they express an underlying fact that Nature does not allow a particle to possess definite values of position and momentum at the same time. This principle (which would be better described by the term "indeterminacy" than "uncertainty") has been thoroughly verified and has far-reaching practical consequences which extend to chemical bonding and molecular structure.
Q15. Is the uncertainty principle consistent with particle waves?
Yes; either one really implies the other. [...]
When looking at the complete "mathematical equation" (the complete computer program, which includes the AI), then, after "loosing interest", the data comprising the AI no longer exists.
More precisely: The "equation" (complete computer program) that includes the AI is logically identical to the one that has the AI eliminated.
E.g., if a Java program cuts the last reference to an object ("loses interest", now and forever), then the Java virtual machine will simplify the equation. There is no recovery possible (otherwise it would be illegal to simplify the equation).
Our reality was not always the way it is now, how do we know it won't suddenly smash down to one particle?
This would be modifying the object (us). There is no logical contradiction then, since killing someone by modifying him is easy :)
In my scenario, the object/AI is not modified in any way. The outside is modified (it cuts the data flow from the object/AI). This is killing someone without changing his state (which seems logically contradictory).
How does any of this even relate to intelligence?
Interesting question :)
From my point of view it relates to a very strict but common definition of artificial intelligence: An AI can be all what a human person can be.
Another conclusion from the scenario is: For AIs, existence and nonexistence is the same.
A program is, regardless of its size, is a purely mathematical/logical formula/expression.
Computers simply process precisely defined instructions, they do not think.
There arise some logical problems if we assume that a human personality also simply is a purely mathematical/logical formula/expression.
Well, Slashdot surely is not the perfect place for such discussions.
Your point that an artificial being can only exist if its host computer takes an interest in it is valid, but it applies to humans also. We cannnot live, and cannot be considered self aware, if our bodies do not support us in some way.
Modifying the support function of (our physical) body would effectively be a modification of the state of the object/person/self awareness, or its conciousness. This differs from the scenario I painted, since there the state of the AI is not modified in any way. Lets just assume that the AI has not input data channel from the outside, just an output data channel. No state change from the outside is possible then.
You also make another big leap. You just assume that anything that "can intentionally be killed without outside influence to it, at a specific time, and even without that 'artificial being' being able to notice any difference" is not self aware. Why not? Certainly it is not self aware after bring killed, but then again neither are we.
The interesting question is: Can something be equivalent to a human person, if its complete state, when the being does exist, is exactly the same, as when the being does not exist?
The problem is, the word "killed" does not really seem to make sense if the state of the object is not altered (which is impossible anyways if there is no input data delivered to this object/subexpression).
Furthermore, this artificial being's state is changed if you consider the entire computer system as a part of that being.
Yes, however, the computer may hold all kinds of additional objects, and we can isolate these from each other and the outside, and just leave some specific data connections in place. We have different beings within the computer then.
Of course, one could still state that anything, which is connected by information links, has to be viewed as parts of one entity/being. However, since the data link to the outside world is required, we would have to include this, too, and probably would end up with the entity "universe" then. This likely would lead to some kind of "information based pantheism".
The free will issue is one of the questionable but inevitable conclusions of the idea that computer programs can be alive, or that human conciousness can be the product of a computer program.
Another such conclusion is that humans then are machines that are completely defined by an initial state and the subsequent input data.
This effectively means that a human is identical to a static string of bits of limited size (which simply contains initial state + subsequent input data). This surely looks philosophically interesting.
So, we have the "string of bits" in the computer, or, alternatively an "intelligent" subsystem that creates that string of bits "live" from outside input.
The specific problem here is (beyond others), that with this picture we have no handle to reality. This string of bits is only "real" relative to the computer it is stored.
The "string of bits" can only exist if there is an outside interest in it. Because, by inherent necessity of computer mathemathics/logic, for the state of that "string of bits", its existence and nonexistence are identical if the computer loses the "interest" in it.
"Losing interest", for a computer, means deleting the last reference to the data object (think Java). Now, in computer logic, the object which represented the "artificial intelligent being", can be removed without modifying the meaning of the overall formula/expression.
The result is: An "artificial intelligent being" can only exist as long as there is an outside interest in it (like a Java reference to the object). As soon as this "interest" vanishes, existence and nonexistence become logically identical.
Another logical problem here is that an "artificial intelligence" can, as shown above, brought from existence into nonexistence without changing its state (from the outside, we dont change a single bit of the objects state).
Should we call something a person, if it can intentionally be killed without outside influence to it, at a specific time, and even without that "artificial being" being able to notice any difference?
Not only that it cannot notice a difference, there effectively is no difference for the "being", as its own state was not changed at all.
Now why would you want to bother trying to talk a household thermostat into a definition which you just make up on the fly? There's no point in saying `If a define A as being that, i can talk B into being A! Isn't that great?' No it isn't. There's no use. No offense to meant to you by the way; It's just that my Philosophy classes have learnt me just one thing: there's a lot of crap in Philosophy (but some good things as well).
0x or or snor perron?!
You're jumping to conclusions there.. have you actually read the book.
Just because the reviewer states that the book lays out the reductionist explanation for the emergence of life/intelligence, doesn't mean that the author believes that is the way to create it artificially.
In fact, given that adaptive systems are mentioned, it would appear that the author is very much aware of complexity/emergence. Let's face it, one doesn't craft AI bots out of molecules even if we believe that's the desired approach.. one builds them to be adaptive and exhibit certain behaviors - not very reductionist, eh?
I guess you were just shooting for an "insightful" karma troll?
Wouldn't the opposite of reductionist be emergent, rather than functional? Functionality is the goal rather than the means of achieving it.
If one is approaching something like this at the level of adaptive systems (I havn't read the book either, so this is just a premis), then surely that implies that you're putting together a bunch of lower level behaviors that you hope will provide the adaptability you're hoping for. The actual sum total behaviour is emergent, not designed in, even if you crafted the lower level building blocks to have certain synergies with each other.
A reductionist approach would seem to imply a reductionist hierarchy of modules resulting in well defined top level behavior. Perhaps it's a grey line, but if all the behaviors are programmed in rather than emergent, then that doesn't seem very "adaptive".
suck his balls while she's at it?
this has to be one of the most retarded 'reviews' i've ever read.
jesus christ, it's just some woman gushing about some guy. i have no more reason to believe either of them knows anything than i did at the start of reading the review (which means the review was totally unsuccessful.)
comparing this guy to einstein, galileo, copernicus, etc. is laughable.
i think i'm gonna go vomit now.
...dave
(moderators: this is a good post, mark it up.)
Think different? I'd be happy if most people would just think...
HaltingProblemNot (HPN) is interesting, but I do not like it for one reason. What HPN is doing is first waiting for HaltingProblem (HP) to give its answer and then prove it wrong by doing differently. In other words, it asks HP to foretell a changeable future which it itself has control over. To me this is breaking the rules.
So let us allow HP to break the rules a little bit. If I construct HP to predict the ansver, but never return it to HPN, I will force HPN to either wait for ever or time out and halt. The answer was found (Halting Problem solved), just not returned.
But it seems to me making intelligent life in a computer is just a matter of finding a computer with a big enough case to get both yourself and your girlfriend into at the same time. These look like they might be big enough.
Oh god. Can't you see how naive you are? It's like part of your brain got poisoned when you were little. I don't think the concept of a deity is necessarily trivial, but to think that someone's "experience with God" proves anything is ridiculous. People have experiences with Cocaine, too, of which they sometimes speak quite highly. Many people have "witnessed" the lochness monster. So neener neener, now because some crackheads believe in the lochness monster... you can never prove that wrong.
Cats know what you're thinking. They don't care, but they know.
I disagree that we should be taking an approach that simulates life as we know it. Why should we assume that life has to resemble us in any way? The concept of life for a computer is going to be entirely alien. For example, replication, which is a big deal for organic life, is a trivial problem for a computer program.
Making simulations of DNA life with assembly programs that recreate, such as Tierra, and RedCode, are fascinating ways to study alife, but they're not the way to go.
Computer virii are currently the best example of how alife can exist. It would be good however if we could write some good virii. Imagine a series of open source computer virii that self propagate between linux and/or windows boxes and automatically tighten up security loopholes. They fulfill a function on the machine, and in turn are fed CPU time they need to survive and reproduce. So you put a box on the net and within minutes it's self-secured. I know this is a ridiculous pipe dream, just a speculative example of how alife might work.
But to really be considered life, such an organism would need the ability to modify itself in a coherent way.
Now if this author gets into nanobots self replication, I can see why he would be going on about atoms.
Didn't I just say that we should not worry about creating life in our own image? That life in computer form can be completely alien?
So why is it necessary to stipulate that Alife shouldn't be able to self modify just because *we* can't.
That's a bizarre definition. Are you saying that a hamster isn't alive unless it could learn to speak French? How about plants - do they "think" enough to fit your definition? Bacteria? Protists?
I think you've gotten Artificial Intelligence and Artificial Life confused.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
But the question relating Conway's Game of Life to ALife in general is: Given an infinite (or at least sufficiently large) random field of cells, will Life develop self-organization?
You could use a true random number generator to generate the original field. All the randomness comes from the beginning. Certainly what happens afterward is deterministic, but it's chaotic.
Cells in Conway's Game of Life would probably never develop intelligence, but that's not necessary. ALife is not the same as AI.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
I haven't heard of "AI life", but it would seem you're talking about AI. Meanwhile, this article is about ALife, which is, in fact, "striving and competing processes".
I agree that AI is a buzzword - so much of a buzzword that people hear it even when nobody says it.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
Why should they have to? The goal is to simulate life, unlike AI which is meant to simulate human thought.
A dog would not pass the Turing Test. Yet, it is alive and conscious. There goes your definition.
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Obfuscated e-mail addresses won't stop sadistic 12-year-old ACs.
Win dain a lotica, en vai tu ri silota
If you're talking about the God in the Bible.... I don't think that what you just said could be farther from consistant with it. The whole folly of Satan was that he wanted to become as powerful as God. Also, it makes it very evident throughout the book that we are to be humble and understand that God is much bigger than us.. ]
TheRain
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
It's been a whlie, but I've heard talk of this very thing being done.
Someone built a PC Board with a radio wave receiver on it that sampled many frequencies and generated random numbers constantly.
This card was effectively "Dice" for your computer.
Likewise, there are other ways to get truely random numbers, if you don't mind poking deep into the hardware.
How random you want your number is soley dependent on how complex you want to make your method of getting the seed.
Methods I've heard about include taking values from psuedo randomly selected locations in video memory, sound memory, and other buffers in the system, putting them together to create part of a seed, and then using other methods such as system timers to finish it all up.
The more factors being brought in to generate the random number, the more random it becomes.
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
"Everything you know is wrong. (And stupid.)"
Moderation Totals: Wrong=2, Stupid=3, Total=5.
>Then you need some kind of grammar algorithm so that it sounds reasonably coherent.
Either that or post it under CmdrTaco's ID....
Savant
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Nothing to see here. Mooooove along...
The lava lamp system is chaotic, not random. The difference is that randomness is unpredictable. A chaotic system is deterministic, but so sensitive to initial conditions that we cannot predict its operation very far into the future.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
That's quite a bold assertation. It is most probably false (and you have no scientific evidence that it is true).
Randomness does not result in free will, but in "random will", just as determinism results in no free will.
The free will we appear to have cannot be adequately explained [at this point in time] by a random universe any better than it can a deterministic one.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
I use a primitive part of my brain when i walk and have sex, too. That in of itself doesn't prove anything.
Did you notice how you can't think straight, or you can't read on a dream? can you say you are not self aware? You are, but on a lower level.
I can mostly think straight in my dreams - when i remember to do so. At those times i have will and intent. I can read in a dream, however, attempting to read in a dream as we normally would is usually inappropriate, as the printed words tend to change with time. Rather than turning the page in a book, try reading the same page again. Most likely its different, and perhaps just as useful. ;-)
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Actually, the "creatures" in the game "Creatures (I, II, and III)" can all do this. They can learn by observing the other creatures exclusively. You can teach them, too, but it is not required.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
I have evidence that I am thinking. I have no evidence that my thinking is not controlled (ie. brain in jar). The rest is supposition.
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
When i was building a Tesla Coil, i got shocked all the time. Does this mean it was real life? :-P
Demonstrant's Open Source Tools
Obviously the ones that did survive are the ones that have some brains. ;-)
"Hang on a second, exactly why am I jumping off a cliff again?
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
There are differing levels of intelligence.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
are all animals capable of thought
Yes. Not at our level of thought, but thought nonetheless.
Ameobas, paramesiaum
Yes, they can intelligently adapt to an enironment.
Do viruses count as thinking life
A virus is usually not considered alive AFAIK. It exhibits few of the traits of life since it has no facilities for reproducing itself and exhibits little behaviour and adaptability... they just float along until they run into a cell. So virii don't count in this discussion.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
The more factors being brought in to generate the random number, the more random it becomes.
Not necessarily. You should revise that statement and say, "The more random factors being brought in to generate the random number, the more random it becomes." If you start including non random factors, then the randomness does not increase or decrease.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Why is the stupid idea that randomness is required for life so common among ordinary people? Are people so dumb that they can't distinguish between randomness (indeterminacy) and practical unpredictability?
;-)
Exactly! Life is chaotic(physics def'n), not random.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
Can we say that the insect is not self aware? How about a simple rectile?
;-)
No, I don't think my rectum is self aware, though sometimes it seems like it has a mind of it's own because it doesn't do what I want it to... "I said out dammnit!" Oh! you meant reptile!
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
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"People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them"
Higher Logics: where programming meets science.
What a silly argument. There is no point in arguing objectively when you can't match definitions. About your point a) and b), those are highly subjective opinions that most people share because they (we) are trained to believe in them. A belief-system on which our science is founded.
Btw, what is deep?
- Steeltoe
http://www.debunkingskeptics.com/
I've been working on one that looked on google for things in sequence, and I would feed the output back into itself, see what new popped back out. If I could just get it to recognise crapo from good returns, I'd be happy. But, as always, if you can't define the problem, how will you solve it?
All my bot did was increment to the next sequence, and send. Unfortunately, browsers are PARANOID! They wont allow reading of the pages, but a *NIX LYNX DOES! Funnel, grep -u, tada! You have a workable find ALL bot.
The next step in evolution is to make the beastie mod the results. If it could find bad nodes(reloader pages), that would help, also if it gave information density info.
The last evolution would condense it all into an informative article with such a high information content, you could read it instead of all the other articles, and it would be more "balanced".
This mind intentionally left blank.
The KKK a bunch of sheetheads? You decide!
The thing is that we don't know where the line is. Any computer can reproduce the behaviour of an insect. Can we say that the insect is not self aware? How about a simple rectile? The insect, rectile, and a human, have brains that are based on the same principle: a bounch of neurons. Where is the line between self-awarenes and just 'a program'?
Acording to some people (scientists) we use a primitive part of our brain when we dream. We got this part of the brain from reptiles and small mammals. Did you notice how you can't think straight, or you can't read on a dream? can you say you are not self aware? You are, but on a lower level.
Maybe the 'programmed reactions' are a simple form of self-awareness. Of course our brains are a lot more complex, it's a bounch of neurons.
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Stay tuned for some shock and awe coming right up after this messages!
It's becoming just another buzzword. AI life is much more complicated than just striving and competing processes. Its about socail interaction between those processes. Communication and learning between those processes. Sharing of experiences. Logic to avoid bombs and duck bullets in fps are becoming known as AI. Real AI is so much way over all these. Where is the emotions ..
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
My dad has two of those books. They were wonderful. I never got the chance to actually build Buster or Rodney, though...
I wouldn't say that "Nothing is supposed to be taken as given" should be taken at face value itself. Why not question it.
:)
What if we were to take things as given?
Then any statement made would be accepted at face value, and never looked at again, even if it were (intentionally or not) wrong.
What if we question everything?
Then it is possible that mistruths and mistakes will be found out and corrected, bringing us closer to the Truth. If we do not question, this can never be so. (Although note that questioning held beliefs is no guarantee of uncovering falsehoods). As the idea of science is to uncover Truth, questioning everying is good for the advancement of science.
So I would say that 'Question everything' is _not_ gospel in science, it can itself be questioned quite validly in the scientific framework is applies to and ends up (according to my reasoning) being something worth 'believing in' on its merits, not due to any 'faith' required in its accuracy.
And I'm pretty sure I didn't use any circular arguments in there either!
Why doesn't the gene pool have a life guard?
Trees dont think. Fungi don't think. Alive these things are, are they not? When 900 years old you reach, speak english so well you will not, eh?
Personally I think the theory of a non predetermined universe is debatable (and a theory is all its every going to be, there are no truths in fysics)... but disregarding that, randomness is easy to introduce. Thats what we have ADC's for.
Well, after scrambling around various online bookstores looking for this one, I finally found it by author searching, and lo and behold, got the following title: "Creatures: The Quest to Create Artificial Life" (actually 'Cratures', which I assume is a typo) at the chapters.ca website. The ISBN number was right, too. Other online stores have proven less than useful in finding this.
And yet, there are still hamsters and lemmings. What is intelligence?
Our own thought can be seen to be defined as "A reaction to external stimuli". Our thoughts always turn to stimulus "i'm hungry, horny, drunk, lonely, etc.". The mind then chooses a path to resolve the stimuli and then the mind is off to other stimuli. Since all plants/animals respond in some way to external stimuli then they all, in essence, think, just not to the same level that we would want to define thought. To us thought is something more abstract and undefinable. I think we take this view to help seperate ourselves from the "lower" life forms on the planet, as opposed to lumping ourselves in and having to take responsibility for being part of nature.
When we deny that artificial life can have some of the same characteristics as we ourselves have then we begin to again show our own ego and vanity. We will eventually get to a point where the issue of rights for AI is discussed and will again try to show ourselves as superior by declaring the "faults" or limitations of other entities.
"Do not be swept up in the momentum of mediocrity." - anon
this is so wrong its hard to know where to begin. "life" is a human classification that concerns certain kinds of behaviour in the world. the details of the classification (and they vary from era to era and person to person) explain why we consider a rock to be dead and a bacteria to be alive. the question provoked by the "strong a-life" proponents such as grand is not over whether or not you can create a potato or a bacteria inside a computer - you obviously cannot since the definition of a potato or bacteria include certain material properties that a computer could not have. no, the question is whether or not, given a particular definition of what "life" means, its possible to organize the behaviour of a computer so that is satisfies the definition. what generally happens when someone makes this claim in the positive (and it was being made very effectively even in 1994 and before), some objection is raised to the definition or new clauses are added to it. the reason a tornado simulation is not a tornado is simple: the definition of a tornado involves things that simply don't happen in the simulation. but go take a look at a college textbook's definition of "life". typically, there are about 10 characteristics used to define "life". its not that hard to create a computer system that satisfies every part of the definition, even though it shares nothing in common with what we typically consider "life".
A yes, the all proving Turing Test, able to prove consiousness in any creature. But will a human baby pass the Turing Test?. No. Is it alive and consious? Yes.
.sdrawkcab si gis siht
Speaking as a Sociology Major I must remind everyone that the current leading theory for the development of civilization was so that people could have a steady supply of grain to make beer with. I dunno exactly how this fits into this discussion except that whatever our definition of life is it should probably include "that which seeks beer"...
--Richard
When English first forked from the Germanic trunk, it too had a flexible word order. The languages spoken in Star Wars world most likely evolved in a similar fashion.
All your hallucinogen are belong to us.
Will I retire or break 10K?
now, i don't think fire's alive either, but i am saying that the definition of life isn't so easy to define.
--------------------------
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fight global cooling
No, I haven't read the book. I was making a comment on my reading of the review - that's why I included the quote.
You seem to think that mentioning adaptive systems is evidence that the author was not very reductionist. But one can take a reductionist approach to buliding adaptive systems or one can take a functional approach. If you disagree, I would be interested to hear why. (Your post suggests you didn't like what I wrote, but were more concerned with getting a punch in below the belt than making an argument.)
Anyway, I hope this gives you guys at mad.scientist.com food for thought!
Then we have ejaculations like the following: "somehow I think that it is beyond our technology. Life is not a simple Turing machine, and intelligent life cannot, I suspect, be reduced to a Turing or Von Neumann machine. We are more complex than that, more beautiful, more mysterious, and more profound." Unless you think that what accounts for intelligence are souls, what you say just looks ignorant. And if you do believe in souls, just go ahead and say it.
Well, the AI "creatures" are being put to use by the RAF to play enemies in the flight simulators that train elite pilots. Already they are kicking some limey ass, so much so that they are considering the idea that future generations might pilot actual Tornados and Harriers, or whatever the RAF flies at that point. Would that be enough "CAUSAL POWERS" for you?
But there are some informational things for which simulations are no different from reality. Suppose I write a simple BASIC program with an infinite loop, and run that in an Apple II emulator on a Pentium. Is it a real infinite loop, or just a simulation of an infinite loop? It's a silly question. Similarly, an ALife form in a simulated world has no less effect on external reality than a gerbil in a cage with manufactured toys and synthetic cedar shavings. Both could affect the real world -- the gerbil by being set loose, the ALife by being downloaded into a robot and placed in a real environment that's analogous to the simulated environment it was trained in. The fact that Artificial Life programs are many orders of magnitude simpler than natural living things is only relevant if complexity is defined as a prerequisite for life, and I don't see why it should be.
These humans are just a bunch of protiens, chemicals, and electrical signals.
I don't see how they can be any more self aware than a tree or a slug.
--
Soma: because a gramme is better than a damn.
Well at least in one form... Windows... I mean just think it KNOWS when your working on an incredibly important project you haven't saved in awhile and CRASH all gone... And it's gotten more and more advanced over the years. Now, with WinME, it will actually crash during boot... and to proove the intelligence this crashing seems random, but when looked at closely it's only when speed is of importance. So remember, next time your flaming Micro$oft, they created life... who knew. Oh and if consumtion and creation of energy have to do with anything just look at all the CPU cycles wasted on an overblown GUI.
/. isn't as good as this link to nothing
--OStone
it's much better
Remove *your pants* to send me email.
Of course, Life (like intelligence, as well as countless other things) is only beautifully mysterious and profound until we understand how it works. After we figure THAT out, it's only just beautiful.
But these systems are relient on external physical sources (i.e., a Lava Lamp), not an isolated bunch of code and transistors. It is impossible to have such true randomness in a software level because the software must have predefined definitions on what is random and what algorithms to use to generate "randomness". In order for it to be truly random there would have to be _no_ algorithm.
--
--
#nohup cat
I've seen this simulation several years ago, probably a eary version. The creatures evolve by themselves and only the environment and the habits of other creatures (hunting, etc.) affect the way they evolve, as it turns out, the system automatically leans towards interdependence among the creatures, not all that surprising I suppose, since we see it all the time in the Ecosystems of Earth.
I used to hate computers, but then a server went down on me.
-Don
Take a look and feel free: http://www.PieMenu.com
Artificial Death !
What a relief when that son-of-a-digital-bitch of tamagochi ends its endless whinning !
-- javaDragon is an instance of JavaDragon.
Thats easy: self-replicating. duh. /bluesninja
How bout "the purposeful patterning of matter and energy against the flow of entropy"?
Numbers 31:17,18 Now kill all the boys. And kill every woman who has slept with a man,but save for yourselves every virg
the thing about Conway's Life is that the smallest bit of the system can radically affect the whole; but you can't predict how... without solving the Halting Problem.
this is just like the real universe, where the effects of chaos amplify infinitesimally small noise into macroscopic effects. as the number of components in a deterministic system rises, the overall effect becomes more and more similar to "true randomness".
e.g. imagine a version of Conway's Life with 10^24 cells (a very small number by real-universe standards); and running at 10^12 steps per second. in one second, every one of the cells in this simulation is potentially influenced by every other, in a completely unpredicable way. if you're looking at one tiny bit of that system, then you'd find it extremely hard (nay, impossible!) to tell whether there were truly random impulses going on in the system.
by the above argument, i don't think that the distinction between deterministic and non-deterministic is so important. if you're looking at a small part of a very large system, the thing that really matters is the structure of that small part (i.e. how it reacts to external influences), not whether the system as a whole is predictable.
the universe as a whole might be deterministic, but we have no way of telling...
it's as if i said, "i can predict the weather perfectly - i just wait and see what happens, and that's my prediction!". of course, the difference between Conway's Life and the normal universe is that we can take a copy of all the cells in a game of Life and run them independently of the "main" simulation. i don't think that's a fundamental distinction though. if the universe really was a game of Life at the bottom level, we'd be just as unable to predict it as if it was completely random underneath, because we're unable to find out the whole state of the universe in order to copy it and run it independently (not to mention you'd have to run a copy of the universe inside itself, a bit hard methinks!)
so, functionally, i don't think we could possibly tell the difference between a deterministic universe and a non-deterministic universe.
of course i agree that CAs are fundamentally deterministic (i've programmed enough of them!), but i do maintain that they're fundamentally unpredictable, in the same way that predicting arbitrary runtime properties of an arbitrary program is impossible - without actually running the program in question.
what's interesting is that you can prove certain properties of some programs, in the same way that you can find some invariants using the above CA topology display. i like to think of those invariants as the "laws of nature" in that CA. it's very obvious when you look at a few different CAs that each set of rules produces its own stable structures and its own emergent set of rules by which those interact. (think of the gliders, glider guns, blinkers, etc in Life).
i think this a nice way in which to perceive our own universe. the fact that something as simple as 2 bit single-dimensional CA can be fundamentally unpredictable should tell us much about the fundamental limits of scientific endeavour.
Go to their website, they have patches available to make it run on NT (I tried, it works). If you don't find them: email me, I'll send them to you (I have them archived somewhere). Of course, you figured out that my domain name is reversed.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
Most definitions of life normally include some idea of genetics. That is offspring look somewhat like their parent(s). Fire is not like that. If you set fire to some fuel the end result will be pretty much the same whatever source of fire you use to start it.
"Programs may seem real, but they aren't alive until they think: Cognito Ergo Sum "
You are confusing the idea of life and intelligence. Trees dont think either, at least not as far as I know. They are definately alive however.
Phil
I always thought the prequsite for life "made of cells" is totaly ignorant and arogant. It is basicaly saying, here's what we know, and we're gonna disregard every possible thing we don't because we couldn't bear it if there was life not like us so we're just not gonna think about it.
"Cornflakes are not the innocent critters they seem"- Sterling Morrison
There is a definition I was taught in school 40 years ago. It includes 'irritability' and 'reproduction'.
Zero Sum (don't amount to much). [root@localhost]
. In the overall context of personal and commercial Net traffic, assaultive comments are rare. (Boy, did The Matrix do it better. Piracy, they say, is wrong, and copyright isn't necessarily a bad thing.. Individualism values a humane workplace. If "Virtual War" has a flaw, it may be in failing to take account the influence of modern media on the shaping of military conflicts. But that's exactly the sensibility that pervades MyVideoGames. military left Vietnam convinced they were undermined as much by grisly TV footage shown at home as by the North Vietnamese. (Read More) "The spirit of the hacker is one of the great creative wellspings of our time, causing the inanimate circuits to sing with ever more individualized and quirky voices; the spirit of the bard is eternal and irreplaceable, telling us what we are doing here and what we mean to each other. As for the idea of living outside guarded, walled enclaves, that's already more than a fantasy: Just visit Redmond (a name frequently invoked in "Shadowrun") for a couple of days, or Silicon Valley (the epitome of the megacorp enclave from which average folks get driven out) and the idea takes on real meaning. MyVideoGame. The technology we depend on doesn't bring us together.
Pity the cop whose job it is to enforce existing copyright -- tracing and punishing violators -- online.
---
All technically true, but science implicitly requires empirical objectivism. From a scientific perspective, faith is an act in contrary to empirical knowledge. You also seem to be mistaken (along with many people) in that science says god does not exist. Empirically, there has never been the need for a god hypothesis. It's not a matter of saying he doesn't exist, that would require proof by science's own standards, but rather that nothing needs god as an explanation.
I think that goes back to the whole 'garden of eden' thing. That's why we aren't immortal. Because then we'd be gods. We can't be both immortal and intelligent. Or something.
"Watch these suckers jump when I get Administrator."
So what if someone's sterile? What about my dog who was fixed? They aren't reproducing, so they aren't alive?
Trees dont think. Fungi don't think. Alive these things are, are they not?
I just finished writing this bot (in perl of course). I ran it through the last 50 comments of this story, and it did keyword searching on many important sites. I then ran the results through a genetic algorithm, designed to enhance and clarify the results. I publish this result with pride in the computerized intelligence that brought it about. Here is what it said:
All your base are belong to us.
PS:I don't care. That was worth losing a bit of karma for!
Wrote a speach about this topic after I took AI in a class. Take a look: http://www.calpoly.edu/~kdobrien/personal/truth/pl ayingg0d.htm.
He's wrong, since he is assuming that the same trick can't be applied to show that humans aren't conscious. It can, unless you assume some sort of cartesian dualism or other deus ex machina to save them - he takes quantum effects, but there's no evidence that these matter on the large scale of neurons, and quite a bit to the contrary.
We have excellent observational evidence that we are - namely we can feel ourselves think, and we can watch other people do things that clearly involve reasoning. What more do you want?
And, no, reasoning isn't just learning from accidents.
So far as I am aware, evolution does not depend on RANDOM mutation, merely on variation. Mutations could occour in a completely predictable fashion and still allow evolution to take place. The only limiting factor on evolution is the variation within a species not how the variation is arrived at.
...Us...Them...
Actually, no logical proof can ever be given that has anything whatsoever to say about whether humans are conscious, or not, nor can consciousness be "explained."
The reason is simple. Any logical argument based on reality (i.e., observation of the real world) must take as axiomatic the existence of observors to make the observations. Moreover, these observors must be interchangable, since no single observor could ever hope to recapitulate all the experiments necessary to bring (for example) neuroscience to it's current state, and each observor's observations much be comparable to those of all other observors.
All of science is, of necessity, based on a whopping metaphysical assumption: there exist numerous observors, with essentially identical awareness. No scientist would accept observations from unconscious observors, so all observors are also assumed to be similarly conscious.
Science _assumes_ the existence of numerous, essentially identical, conscious observors. Having made this assumption, science can no more "explain" consciousness, than a geometer can "explain" parallel lines - they're just axiomatic.
and it goes w/out saying that modded up != a sign of intelligence...
My .02,
My .02,
zencode
iactivist.org/jason
Create Life:
Insert Tab "A" into Slot "B". Repeat until it feels good.
Wait nine months. Bam. New life.
<APOLOGY>Sorry</APOLOGY>
"Champagne for my real friends - and real pain for my sham friends!" http://ericblade.postalboard.com/
Do the creatures pass the Turing Test, being able to carry on an extended conversation of at least human ability? As far as I know, that's the only true test of consiousness. There's a great deal of difference between writing a program to simulate the movement of an ameoba and their actions and writing a program to simulate human thought. When I can have a conversation with one of these things, I'll accept them as alive, and not before.
Rather blank and white isn't it? Personally I prefer Turing's way of looking at life: if it acts intelligent, it probably is. Besides, insects and the like are "programmed" to do specific tasks. A scarab beetle goes through a set routine when checking its nest hole; it has to go through the same routine every time, if it is disturbed while doing it, it does it all over again, regardless of how many times it does it before, and never varying its routine. A "self-aware" animal would probably stop checking after the 10th time of being interrupted.
About a year ago, I'd written an essay on using DNA mapping & AI to create Virtual Life & evolution. You can find it here at -
http://www.metlin.f2s.com/ai/dna.html
"...Fear the people who fear your computer"
What is the difference between an source of random seed and your afformentioned transistors? Just imagine I would construct a chip with a random gathering devic on board, will that be an internal resource? I could setup a hardware register, which will return a true random value every time you read it
But your thermostat doesn't reproduce. Also it isn't made of cells.
Douglas Adams
1952-2001 :(
Consciousness doesn't have to depend on randomness. All randomness gets you is nondeterminism. People sometimes guess that this further solves questions about consciousness, or free will as well, but it really has no bearing on either.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
You're just arguing semantics here. There is no reason whatsoever that consciousness can't be studied like any other thing, and as a matter of fact, it is heavily studied.
We have tremendous evidence that the subjective perceptual experience arises from purely mechanical means -- your living brain. Current understanding of ai shows ample evidence a computational device capable of everything you are can arise from a simulation -- except for the subjective perceptual experience. So there is a disconnect here, but when people start hauling out quantum mechanics, they may be entering the realm of hucksterism rather than science -- because qm doesn't explain it, either, and if you look closely, it is a buzzword in this context, substuting for a dualist's spritual realm.
I am for the complete Trantorization of Earth.
(My guess is, this will not be possible until we can give a machine sensory perception--the ability to fully observe the world surrounding, and to experience pleasure and pain...I challenge the AI professionals to prove me wrong :)
--
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Mod this up. This funny.
But seriously he probably isn't American. or maybe not
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
Wouldn't feeding a neural net slashdot stories be considered "AI abuse!"
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
Ok. Most games today give the enemies the ability to learn and adapt. Does that mean that their a-life? When I kill those little baddies am I really just killing innocent life. I can't wait till PETA gets a hold of this idea. Stop the gameboys! Please, for the children.
The single identifying trait of real life is when it shocks it's creator. That's what HAL did. Its what we do every day.
But Yogi, the RIAA won't like that.
What about fire? It consumes energy (oxygen), produces energy (heat), responds to its environment (too little oxygen, no fire... too much oxygen, BIG fire). AND it reproduces by spreading.
But sorry, NO. Neither thermostats nor fire are alive.
Thermostats don't think, fire doesn't think, robots don't think. Robots and characters that exist in virtual worlds don't think, they merely respond or act as they are programmed. Let's see a virtual character learn another language merely by interacting with other virtual characters that speak that language. If a real person went to France and lived there for several years, you'd eventually learn the language from just being around French speaking peoples and using cognitive thinking to reason that certain words pertain to certain objects, after seeing so many people use those words and objects at the same time.
Programs may seem real, but they aren't alive until they think: Cognito Ergo Sum
Dave
damn the graphics are good
All hail the mighty slashbot!! or something. Could you call a posting bot with a philosopical outlook intelligent? if not self aware...
"Umk. So maybe it was a stupid plan after all." -God to his angels, just after creating the universe
Suppose for an instant the our universe, and our lives, were created by what we might call an omnipotent being, "Just to see what'll happen" this being creates a means for life to evolve, gives it a few rules, and then tells it "Evolve to become more like me". Perhaps creation on such a grand scale is our inevitable destiny
"Umk. So maybe it was a stupid plan after all." -God to his angels, just after creating the universe
Here's a site devoted to the evolution of man (sort of) Read on the singularity, very interesting veiwpoints
"Umk. So maybe it was a stupid plan after all." -God to his angels, just after creating the universe
This is very interesting. I will study this. :>
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Well, I dont know if even life is 'true' random. Something to think about... :>
However, there are websites that stream random bits based on things from radioactive decay to lava lamps(btw radioactive decay on average is very predictable, but it actually happens in bursts that are random). It wouldn't be too hard to integrate something like that into a life sim if you feel that they are less pseudo-random than a math function...
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Indeed, the principle of self-preservation is provably programmed into you. 'Flight or fight responce' anybody?
How can you prove that you are truely sentient? You cant.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
"What is the difference between an source of random seed and your afformentioned transistors? Just imagine I would construct a chip with a random gathering devic on board, will that be an internal resource? I could setup a hardware register, which will return a true random value every time you read it"
:>
:>
Yes, that is the kind of thing I am talking about. This would make it so that it isn't 'just' a pre-programmed pattern.
Here are some of the thoughts I have been having recently:
Isn't real matter(and real life that is made out of real matter) predictable, following a static set of physical rules? Is an atom different from a some bits representing an atom(assuming 100% accuracy in physics- not yet achieved)? If they are the same, then then wouldn't the random issue ultimately be mute?
If they are not the same, despite supposed 100% emulation of real physics, what is the difference? Is some unknown force (soul-power maybe?) acting upon the physical neurons in our brains? If so, why would or would not that same force affect bits on a computer?
As our imaging technology improves, we may eventually be able to make a 3d neuron-by-neuron map of someone's brain. If you pop this in some kind of physics simulator, will the 'brain' think and react as it should? Could we pop this program with a real brain pattern into a robot and have a conversation with it?
If such a thing were to fail, wouldn't it imply that you can't use 'soul-power' with a machine, if it exists at all(IOW biological cones work, but would an inorganic clone work)? If someone actually did this and it failed, it would also imply some bugs in the sim
Just the kind of thoughts that keep me up at night
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
"We have excellent observational evidence that we are - namely we can feel ourselves think, and we can watch other people do things that clearly involve reasoning. What more do you want?"
/x or not, but I will explain. There was an experiment in which some fish were put in jars with corks on them. These were then put in tanks with (isolated) octapi. They would cover the jars and probe them. Some would figure it out and some would not.
;>
Well, an octapus can do the same. I am not sure if that was posted on
The neat part is what happened next. The scientists paired up the tanks of ones that did and the ones that didn't figure out how to get at the fish. Then they put a fish-in-a-bottle in the tank of the octapus that knew how to get at the fish. The octapus that didn't know got really colse to the edge of it's tank and watched the other octapus remove the cork and eat the fish. Then when the octapus that (a moment ago) didn't know how to get to the fish was given a fish in a jar, it was able to quickly remove the lid and chow down.
Reasoning, learning from others.... I guess you are as sentient as an octapus!
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
"how they got there is of no consequence; if strong AI appears tomorrow it will be impressive regarless if it evolved or someone sat down & coded it up."
I agree with this.
"You can't just program something to check and see if something is attacking it/trying to change it and then make it protect it self. You have to program the program so that it notices something attacking and defends or protects itself BECAUSE it is self-aware and not because its a principle programmed into it."
My point was that the above was not right because it would mean that humans are not sentient or something; we are pre-programmed to do things. We can even be programmed after we are born (hypnosis, social programming etc). He is trying to say we are somehow different (which is fine) but without saying how (which is not).
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
We barely have the ability to simulate insect intelligence. Even worms are still impressive.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Re:Computers can not be "intelligent" or "alive" (Score:1)
by gunner800 (gunner800@yahoo.spamisbad.com) on Sunday March 11, @07:38PM EDT (#195)
(User #142959 Info) http://www.asomethingiknownotwhat.com
I'll repeat for you a phrase which nearly caused me to flunk a philosophy class, but is pretty much the standard approach for most people:
"I choose to believe in free will because if I'm right, I get the credit, but if I'm wrong, it's not my fault."
I will have to remember that.
Back in a science class alot of people I asked believed that we will one day break the speed of light(we kind of have since then with the cesium gas stuff) but firmly believed that we will never haf AI as good as human intelligence. It seems like a paradox to me; they believe in science and yet they dont.
"Never, never suspect the dreams within the dreams of dreaming children." ~The Amazon Quartet
Please give me a definition of "life" that includes humans, cats and bacteria but excludes thermostats.
--
324006
"If I were to tell you that I created a potato in a computer, and then invited you to eat it, you'd laugh at me."
But if you invited a computer intelligence to eat it, he would (after cooking it on his stove, using his electricity). You are making a category error.
Consider a counter-example: When I write notes down and then play them on a piano, they make music. What if the computer writes the notes down and I play them on a piano? Is it still music or is it "simulated music"? What if the sound comes out the computers speakers? What if the sound is inaudible to you and me, but goes in the simulated ears of a simulated intelligence?
A potato can't cross levels from inside to outside because a potato is a physical object. Music (and intelligence) CAN cross levels because it is just a pattern of information.
"You cannot pefectly simulate a real system - the only perfect simulation is the original system itself."
And what's wrong with that? When I copy MS Word to another computer, isn't that a "perfect simulation" of the original? What about when I reimplement a program to read Word files? And when I reimplement a program to behave exactly like me? Sure, you can't simulate a system in another medium that is less complex. But that leaves it up to you to prove that computers are less complex than brains.
--
324006
The idea of fire is a good arguement but it should be noted that as fire spreads it is not a matter of reproduction but rather a matter of growth. Thought shouldn't be necessary for life, are all animals capable of thought? Ameobas, paramesiaum? Do viruses count as thinking life? Or the hive minds of ants and bees? Not by a standard definition of thought. I agree that robots are not yet capable of high-level (read human-like) life but this lies in the handicaps of technology being unable to handle the number of sensory inputs and outputs required. For years now people have been creating low-level life robots (http://set.lanl.gov:80/programs/robotics/concept. htm) that emulate certain principles of life without programming.
In conclusion while I agree that the definitions of life are very loose it would be wrong to say that only humankind is life and everything else is dead.
Is there an Alife simulation/game that has a good physics engine and a development capabilities? All those 3DFX games SUCK while lacking these!!
took a while, but found a reference:
http://agents.umbc.edu/agentnews/1998/02/02.txt
btw, I'm Chris, not Scott. :)
"Thought meme" is like saying "genetic gene." A meme is a self-replicating unit encoded through cells in the brains of higher order primates (much like a gene is a self-replicating unit encoded through proteins in the DNA of living things). The idea was first proposed by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene (which I would highly recommend).
Big apple, new Yorik, undig it, something's unrotting in Edenmark.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/029764391 6/o/qid=984429094/sr=8-1/202-0998819-2323061
steve grands website is:
http://www.cyberlife-research.com/
Regarding whether life is possible in a computational environment, I would dissagree and say that it is not. Simple life, such as viruses and bacteria certainly is, but I think that conscious life in a computational universe is not possible. The mind and consciousness depends on randomness - hence the importance of quantum mechanics - but in a computational universe this does not exist. Only pseudorandomness can be said to exist - meaning that everything is, again, utterly moribund and predictable.
I hope that I am proved wrong - it would be excellent if we could produce intellegent computers, but somehow I think that it is beyond our technology. Life is not a simple Turing machine, and intelligent life cannot, I suspect, be reduced to a Turing or Von Neumann machine. We are more complex than that, more beautiful, more mysterious, and more profound.
--
Science constantly questions itself.
Those who question core religious beliefs have always faced the harshest of punishment, expulsion/excomminication, or death. Science ALWAYS questions itself. Any contradictions discovered are not covered up nor just accepted on faith, as somehow true beyond our understanding. The false concepts are eliminated (e.g., Earth centered solar system), or reconciled into a higher truth (e.g., Newtonian mechanics into general relativity.) Science constantly questions itself and grows stronger as a result. No religion can make that claim. No other religion has gained new truth. No religion grows stronger or more true. In fact, quite the opposite, religion has been weakeded over time, often by science, more often by simple reality and the growth of mankind. Location of the Earth, age of the universe, there are plenty of situations of where religion has had to swallow its falsely held tenets.
And while some of science's ideas have died hard and lingered longer than they should have, like e.g., people who couldn't accept that the Earth was not at the center of the universe, nor accept quantum mechanics over traditional natural philosophy, but those adherents eventually grow old and die and a new generation grows with the revised beliefs. And science grows stronger.
All your ideas are belong to David Chalmers!
Radioactive decay is the prime example
Interestingly enough, this is not necessarily the case. (Put in boldface because the first time I ran across this, it stunned the hell out of me.) It's possible to find RNGs based on radioactive decay which exhibit a degree of determinism. Why? Depends on the time window that you're looking for a radioactive decay in, and the recharge time of the Geiger counter.
Take an extreme example: let's say that if a Geiger counter picks up a stray bit of radiation in a 1-second window, it'll peg a '1'. Otherwise, it pegs '0'. However, after pegging a '1' the Geiger counter has to spend 60 seconds resetting itself. During this time, it'll peg '0's.
Now say that your radiation source is something viciously radioactive, like Pu-238 (even more active than Pu-239). You're essentially guaranteed a peg in the first 1-second window, and then the Geiger counter will peg 60 straight 0s.
That means that with this setup, which is based on creating random numbers by measuring radioactive decay, you can successfully predict that over 98% of the time it'll return a 0, and virtually 100% of the time it'll follow a repeating pattern of 1 followed by 60 zeros on a 61-second cycle.
This example is very contrived so that you can immediately see the problems with generating random numbers via radioactive decay. When the reset time is a fraction of the exposure window, you'll get a mostly random stream.
But you'll never, ever get a truly random stream from a radioactive source/Geiger counter setup.
Even if the source of your randomness is absolutely and totally entropic, your measuring instruments aren't. Hidden determinism enters the system and lowers the quality of your entropy.
I was younger when I first read the books, and didn't have anywhere near enough money (or skill) to try to build one. When I got older, and managed to find and buy the books (no mean feat, those kind of TAB books you grab when you see them, no waiting), it was clear from reading them (knowing you have the skills now) that it would cost more to build either device than it would be worth in the end.
But by having all three, and seeing how simple Rodney is sensor-wise (I think all it has, IIRC, is some bump sensors, and some current-draw sensors on the motors - maybe a sound and light sensor), was that you could wire it all up to a cheap 486 laptop, and use the code from "Robot Intelligence" to achieve the same device, but cheaper.
Such is progress...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
I have no idea where Heiserman went, but if he did anything interesting it should be out there, either on the web or in Gopher space. I think I'll have a look later tonight. I'll report back if I find anythin!
Actually, finding anything about any of the 70's and 80's robot makers is near impossible, in my experience. Recently, I found what happened to Ben Skora, and his robot AROK - they both were featured on a home show recently about "strange" homes (Ben lives in this weird UFO shaped house he built in the early 70's - complete with all the disco era trimmings - you know automated lights and entertainment, that kind of thing). Apparently AROK is still around.
There are other robots whose whereabouts are completely unknown - one that I was always curious on was named C.H.A.R.L.I.E. (an acronym that means something, I forget what, but his inventor was also named Charlie, I believe). There are many others from the time. I just tend to wonder what happened to them...
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
You'll have to check out Oolon Colophid's books for that...
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Colluphid, Oolon
Controversial philisophical author of the blockbuster trilogy Where God Went Wrong, Some More of God's Greatest Mistakes and Who is this God Person Anyway?
- - - - -
Napster-to-go says "Fill and refill your compatible MP3 player", which is a lie. It's not MP3. It's WMA with DRM.
Check out "Permutation City" by Greg Egan; it deals with a very similar scenario, among other ai-related topics.
How to solve most of our problems: 1.Lots of nuclear plants. 2.Cure aging.
I've written a couple a-life programs and have the following observations: one can definitely program systems that demonstrate some behavior that was not explicitly programmed into them. For a coder, this is a cool thing, especially when it works and especially when it surprises you with what it does. But emergent behavior based on programmed-in attributes rather than procedural instructions does not "life" make.
As far as I could tell, the a-life crowd has (to date) failed. All the things we agree on in the real world as being "life" are enormously more complex than these digital abstractions. The definitional issues are hard to agree on ('what is life? what is intelligence? what is consciousness?') And an honest practitioner recognizes the huge amount of work required to set up "just the right initial conditions and assumptions for something 'interesting' to happen". So one way for them to succeed is to dumb down their definition of life. IMHO, the field is in significant danger of doing this. When you hear people proclaiming that they are gods (sounds ridiculous, i know, but the word was even applied in this slashdot review) and have created digital life, take it with a pound of salt as the hubris and grant-inducing-hook that it really is. IMHO.
--LP
True randomness does exist. Radioactive decay is the prime example, and there are random number generators that use radioactive decay as their seed. I think it was DEC (could be wrong) that used to have an online random number generator based on the position of the "bubbles" in a Lava Lamp. There is noting deterministic about their location. Pseudorandomness is a result of lazy programming not an immutable property of a computational universe.
Maxis has SimLife, which is somewhat similar in concept. There are genomes, combination, mutation, etc. It's hard to see what's being accomplished, though. It's not a game at all, just a genomic simulator with graphics.
Sorry. If I could type traditional in on this keyboard, I would. but I can't, so deal.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
It wasn't until I read the article itself that I realized you guys were talking about more then one person, it seemed like you were referring to 'Sue Wilcox' as the author, and as both 'she' and 'he' interchangeably.
Rate me on Picture-rate.com
"and dear god does this website suck now." -- CmdrTaco
This is just my opinion, but I think this is completely the wrong way to go about it. I think an analogy will help explain what I mean. Suppose I show you a picture, then ask you to write a program which generates pictures....
A much better approach in the case of the picture (and I would assert in the case of life) would be to give up the reductive approach. Instead, one should focus on the function the picture serves and try to replicate that. I.e. try to do the same job rather than trying to do the job in the same way.
This is exactly the approach used by Samuael when he wrote his groundbreaking checkers playing program in the 80s. He wanted to make a program that would play checkers the way people do. So he started comming up with all sorts of interesting ideas for how to do it, such as search trees with alpha-beta pruning, buffering board scores, etc.
He ended up with a program that played checkers extremely well. Unfortunatly, it did so in a way that was NOTHING LIKE the way real people play checkers. Particularly in light of various insights from psychologists and neuroscientists, it has become aparent that people play checkers in a signifigantly different fashion than this program did. (We don't really use search trees nearly as much, for example)
The moral of this story (I think) is that if you want to emulate a complex system, if you go from the direction of "This is what I want it to do; how would I set up something to behave like it", then you'll probably get something that is quite a bit different from what you're looking for. Particularly in the case of extremely complex systems (such as life or AI) the possibility that your implimentation is the same as that of the example you're trying to duplicate is probably pretty tiny.
So while I'll freely admidt (without having actually read the book) that to my thinking, starting subatomic might be a little in the extreme, I think that it is at least aproaching the problem from the right end.
damn the graphics are good Source can be a pain, though.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
If I'm not mistaken, someone was using a MegaHAL-like bot trained on JonKatz's ramblings. (At least I'm guessing that it was a script -- it's entirely possible that the person was cooking up their own fake JonKatz ramblings.) The postings were done under some name that implied it was a fake JonKatz. I do remember it getting moderated up as funny on a few occasions.
Personally, I think it wouldn't be too hard to hit the karma cap by writing a bot that posts "First, they ignore you. Then they laugh at you. Then they fight you. Then you win." to every Slashdot story that has both Microsoft and Linux in it.
I suppose you might also make a bot capable of recognizing similar Slashdot stories and then just have it still a few +5 posts from the earlier story. There's a bit of risk with having it grab irrelevant comments -- it'd probably be worthwhile to ignore any (+5, Funny) posts since they tend to be more specific to a given article. It'd also be funny if someone posted the latest DeCSS/DVD thing and the bot tried to pick an article out of the Big Brother awards, because the article text has a gratuitous mention of the MPAA. But in general, I think it would do decently, although probably not as well as the google-bot.
Finally, if you wanted to get really ballsy, you could do a script that skimmed The Register, the NY Times, and a few other popular sources of Slashdot articles for anything with "Linux", "Internet", "MPAA", "RIAA", "DVD", "DeCSS", "Intel", "AMD", "Transmeta", "Playstation", "PS2", "Dreamcast", "DMCA", or any other keywords that're especially hot on Slashdot and then submitted the resulting story. It'd be an all-or-nothing gamble, with a whopping 5 points of karma for every hit, but the potential to reach new levels of negative karma should it raise the ire of CmdrTaco and crew.
Hmm, I think not. There's nothing going on with Grand's approach that is alien to recent AI/AL research. Check out D. Hofstadter or S. Kauffman, for example.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
I wonder if a simple script that ripped unusual words from the article, Google searched for sites with those words, then posted an 'informative' link would work...
Wonderful! Karma Whorebots!
"And like that
Supposing for a moment that this is possible and one day somebody will be able to create intelligent artificial lifeforms within a computer. I wonder will they...
:-)
Speculate on how they came into being?
Postulate a Creator (or Creators)?
Create religion(s) around those Creator(s)?
If so, have arguments/wars based on their religious beliefs?
Philosophise about the meaning of life?
Imagine if they came up with something like "I think therefore I am", based purely on their own intelligence.
Of course, if they're really intelligent, they'll realise that we were created 75 million years ago by Xemu the intergallactic alien ruler
HH
My point about causal powers was to point out just one way in which it is very tricky to try to define what does and does not qualify for life - given that nobody has any idea what would make for a valid definition. But its common sense to say that causal powers are something important to life, I should think. There are lots of machines with causal powers - but that in and of itself does not define them as intelligent or alive. A pile driver has causal powers, but nobody's going to claim it is alive. The tricky bit with informational systems is that its easy to project our own assumptions about intelligent seeming behaviour onto a system and imbue it with intelligence it doesn't necessarily have.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Yes, it is a silly question. Especially because one of the features of all computers is that they are Turing machines - or if you prefer they are interpreted automatic formal systems. As such they can be made to emulate each other. An emulation is a perfectly accurate recreation of everything that the other system does ( if it is a low level emulator ). Chances are that the timing of the operations won't be the same - but the steps to doing anything in an emulated system will be the same. Two formal systems which are formally equivalent to each other are not simulations of each other at all. They ARE each other, so there's no simulation involved. So a pentium emulating an AplleII in an infinite loop is the same thing as a real AppleII in an infinite loop - as far as the relevant systems are concerned.
As far as your comparison to a gerbil in a cage and an ALife gerbil in a virtual cage are concerned, the problem here is that totally unlike your previous example the ALife creature is going to be formally defined at some level, whether it be implicitly or explicitly - all its behaviour and operations have to be enumerated into code at some point or it could not be programmed. A real gerbil in a real cage is not formally defined at all. If you can reverse-engineer and give me a complete technical spec. for a gerbil in a cage I will be very surprised indeed. This is my whole point - a living thing is not formally defined, so there is no basis for saying that you've created a living thing in a purely formal system.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Yes, I must agree with you completely here. The real crux of the whole issue is where we choose to define life. And because there is no clear definition for life, there can't be any basis for saying that one has or has not created life in a computer.
I agree that given any formal definition X for life, a computer program can be created which fulfills X. But the real point is that any definition X ( as far as has existed - nobody knows what the future may bring ) is insufficient for satisfying a definition for life because it is either too strict, and would deny that many living things are not alive, or it would be too loose and allow many non-living things to qualify.
Yes, a college textbook will give you a ~10 characteristics of life. This is used as a rough and ready teaching aid - not a final and definitive definition. Humans have an intuitive common-sense way of discriminating living and non-living things that is not understood, but seems right to us. If you take the 10 characteristics you'll most likely find that they would allow many things to qualify for living things that seem obviously wrong and vice-versa disqualify many things that are obviously alive.
My original point was that in the absence of a formal definition for life any claims to have made living things in a computer is empty and meaningless. However, I see nothing wrong with the attitude that says: "give me a definition for life and I shall give you living computer organisms."
Personally I doubt whether it will ever be possible to create a formal definition for life, but that is something only time will tell.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
There's a big difference between somethign "existing" and being formally defined. A red ball is not formally defined. You cannot give the complete set of all its behaviours to all possible situations, so it is not formally defined. Basketball is not a formal system, and so the analogy between a human playing basketball for fun and a computer "creature" playing a simulation of basketball is not proof of anything other than the human imagination.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Thanks, its always nice to get positive feedback amongst the barrage of criticism =)
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
I'm sorry, I don't think I understand you.
I don't undserstand how any of this is relevant to the discussion.
Slipping and falling on a chess board is not a legal chess move, and as such is not a part of the "game system". A computerized game of chess is just as much a real game of chess as any game that can be played with a physical board, but you can't slip and fall on a computer chess board.
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
No, not at all. Why would this make it count as life?
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
Since several people here have been talking about (among other things) "if we do create ALife, what are the implications?", I just thought I would mention I wrote a paper on that topic back when I was an undergrad, titled "Implications of Creation". It was published in the journal Idealistic Studies vol. 23 no. 1 (Winter 1993), and you can also find it online at my publications page. Looking at it now, it's kinda embarassingly amateurish, but I feel that way about almost everything I've written after enough time passes...
I don't think that anything which is designed can qualify as life - genetically modified things are, by the way, very far from being designed (I'm a geneticist.) The really fascinating property of real living things, as they exist in nature, is that they are not designed or streamlined - they are endlessly refreshing and unexpected, they have properties which you could not concieve of, acquired in response to environmental factors of which you are not even aware. Even an artificial creation which you place in a highly complex environment and permit to "evolve" is really just echoing your own ideas and preconceptions back at you - an environment designed by more than one person is more along the lines of what I'm thinking about but is still qualitatively different from the real world in a way that precludes, to my thinking, containing anything which is alive.
Consciousness, however, you can have. We think it's such a cool trick just because we do it but the mixed scum living under twenty cubic meters of top soil is, as an aggragate, far more complex than a human being, possessed of more of this quality that I think seperates actual life from this digital stuff, and nothing like sentient.
Sam
I just got into the columbia university biology graduate program. I will do my victory dance.
There is a common notion of 'beliefs' and 'intention' in artificial intelligence thinking. The only reason to attribute such concepts to a system is if, by adding these attributes, it makes it easier to understand or describe that system.
For a thermostat, we could say it "intends to keep the house temperature just right," but that doesn't really help up understand or describe it any better. However, describing the hated Microsoft paper clip as "intending to help (or should I say hinder?) a user's writing style" makes a bit more sense.
_foo
What is impressive is self awareness. Big deal if you can create some program that fits some vague system of what is life (see thermostat post)... make it self aware and funtion at that level at that is something to talk about.
You can't just program something to check and see if something is attacking it/trying to change it and then make it protect it self. You have to program the program so that it notices something attacking and defends or protects itself BECAUSE it is self-aware and not because its a principle programmed into it.
(...clearly it's not a necessary condition.)
Have a look at www.artificialworlds.net for some fun with ALife (and a touch of AI).
I have read the book and this is NOT the approach he takes. In fact he strongly argues against this exact approach for the reasons you've given (and others).
As I remember it, the main reason he got into subatomic particles and such was in the area of the book where he was talking about life itself and how it works. He never once suggested that we should emulate that in order to create artificial life. In fact, one of the key arguments was that artificial life shouldn't be the same as physical life since the enviroments are different. Life tends to form and grow according to the enviroment it lives in and it wouldn't make sense to have normal biological life in a computer simluation.
Instead, the approach he takes is that he starts with some very basic principals and builds from there adding things like desire, attention, needs, wants, etc. to the creature. The end result is that it looks and acts a whole lot like real life. And with the addition of a digial DNA concept, it even reproduces like real life in that genes are inherited and even a little bit of teaching between parents and children take place (from what I can gather this is just one of the millions of behaviors that have been observed that were not directly programmed!). It even goes so far that the genes describe the color of the "fur" on the creatures and so sometimes common traits will pop up where you can recognize familes by physical attributes. It is quite amazing, really (I have played the game as well).
At any rate, my point is that he does *not* suggest starting at the bottom and building a complete life/universe simulator up. He just started there so as to better understand the process of life itself and its various drives and motivations. Then he went about similating those drives and NOT the actual details that lead us bilogical beings up to them (because, after all, an artificial life form does not live in our world!).
It really is an amazing book and IMHO the review does very little justice to it. You just have to read it!
Hexy - a strategy game for iPhone/iPod Touch
How about a post generated by a neural network? You could train it by feeding it stories and resulting replies for each story - and then the scores for each of those replies. The idea would be to train it for +5 posts. Of course, every time it posted something itself, it would recieve feedback on what score its own post recieved.
--
Vidi, Vici, Veni
Aside from the fact that your thermostat example is stolen from Chalmers, the real problem is that you both seem to be claiming to have said something deep, but then admitting it all hinges on the definition.
If we define life in such a way as to include thermostats then:
a) that's probably doesn't capture the essence of what we want to use the word for, and
b) it's then not very deep to say that thermostats are alive!
OTOH, if we define life in such a way as to exclude thermostats, then you are wrong.
I'm going for the latter.
I haven't read the book mentioned in the article, but I have read (and played with the programs contained in it) a much earlier book, published in 1981 by TAB Books, called "Robot Intelligence (with experiments)" by David L. Heiserman (TAB Books, 1981, ISBN 0-8306-9685-7).
In this book, the author explores ideas and meanings behind a type of life he calls "Evolutionay Adaptive Machine Intelligence" or EAMI for short. He explores this through a number of BASIC code programs written in stages, from simple "Alpha-class" systems, to much more complex "Gamma-class" systems.
What makes this book all the more interesting is that in theory (and I believe this is explored somewhat in the book) you can apply all of this back to real-world machines: This book is simply the culmination of two earlier robotics project books by the same author: "Build Your Own Working Robot" (TAB Books, 1976, ISBN 0-8306-6841-1) and "How to Build Your Own Self-Programming Robot" (TAB Books, 1979, ISBN 0-8306-9760-8). This last book actually started to explore the concepts outlined in "Robot Intelligence", but stopped just short of it. The point is, this series of books showed the hobbiest of a couple of decades ago (thereabouts) how to build real ALife, long before it was very popular (not to mention cheap).
I encourage anyone with interest in this subject to pick these three books up. As far as I know, they are long out of print, so happy hunting.
In a side note - does anyone know what happened to Mr. Heiserman and his robots?
Worldcom - Generation Duh!
Reason is the Path to God - Anon
Obviously some people think Norns are alive judging by the amount of hatemail AntiNorn got for his Norn Torture page. Personally I think it's hilarious.
This is just my opinion, but I think this is completely the wrong way to go about it. I think an analogy will help explain what I mean. Suppose I show you a picture, then ask you to write a program which generates pictures. It would be stupid for you to start analysing the subatomic particles so that you could get a better idea of the pigments, so you could understand the use of colour...
A much better approach in the case of the picture (and I would assert in the case of life) would be to give up the reductive approach. Instead, one should focus on the function the picture serves and try to replicate that. I.e. try to do the same job rather than trying to do the job in the same way.
I think this whole obsession with reductive solutions stems from the success of physics. In physics looking at subatomic particles has been fruitful, but this is because of the particular nature of the problems physics tries to solve. Problems involving life and consciousness, for example, are very different: we should rethink our methods rather than blindly trying to apply those that worked in the past.
AI creatures don't climb artificial mountains.
Of course not;
Because it isn't there.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"Ah, yet another book which uses cute language and twisting analogies to make us believe we're seeing something that isn't there. If I were to tell you that I created a potato in a computer, and then invited you to eat it, you'd laugh at me. When dealing with solid examples of real things, computer simulations of them seem laughably easy to separate from the real mccoy, however, when you come to abstract concepts for which nobody has a clear definition ( Life, Intelligence, etc. ) its actually much easier to fool people ( including yourself ). It becomes especially easy when you take the time to spin yarns about the structure of the universe, from subatomics upwards, in order that it all fit your end goal.
Formula: Uncertainty + sophisticated language = plausible story.
Now don't get me wrong here, I'm sure the book is a great and valuable work in the field of ALife, which is a very intriguing field in computing today. But to make claims that one has actually created life in a computer that is equivalent to even the simplest forms we see around us in the natural world is just plain ridiculous.
I'm not going to waste time debating the particulars of the systems involved here and whether they do or don't meet the criteria for living things as abstracted by whomever, or whether those criteria are a sufficient definition for life. I just want to point out something that all too often gets forgotten when dealing with informational systems - the gulf between a simulation and the simulated.
Firstly it is a necessary element of all simulations that they are a reduced set of the properties of the system being simulated. You cannot pefectly simulate a real system - the only perfect simulation is the original system itself. But this is a minor point. Attached to this, and more importantly is the fact that informational simulations HAVE NO CAUSAL POWERS! Having no physical existance, they cannot cause or affect anything except what is formally defined for them in the simulation. If I say that I have simulated a tornado in my computer, nobody is going to worry that it might destroy my city. If you put a lovely roaring log fire screensaver on your computer it will never keep you awake at night worrying if the fire will melt your monitor. A computer will never be crushed by the weight of the eifel tower if it has a 3d model of it. All of these are informational simulations of NON-FORMAL systems and therefore do not entail the be-all and end-all of the systems they simulate, and therefore ( finally... ) are not equivalent to the real thing. Only formal systems ( ie like a game of chess ) can be said to exist entirely in any medium in which they are rendered. Non-formal systems can only exist as a simulation when rendered in other media. Life is not a formal system.
Why is it that stories like these are so easy to fool us? Well probably because humans are informational creatures - we are the makers and consumers of our own information. Therefore we sometimes find it difficult to see the line between simulations and the simulated - because both get represented to our minds by roughly equivalent information. Add to that the above mentioned confusion and elaborate talk and its a marvelous act of intellectual slight-of-hand that makes us see life where it doesn't exist.
Nice try guys, keep it up - its a fun show =)
There are a thousand forms of subversion, but few can equal the convenience and immediacy of a cream pie -Noel Godin
I ran into a few people from his company at the Alife VI Conference in LA in 1998. The Creatures game was part of what they were discussing, but not really. They were really excited about a new contract they had with DERA. (British Defence Evaluation Research Agency, public/private defence contractor org, and home of the Harrier jet)
They had contracted to build more adaptive and intelligent combat flight enemies for the simulations. The pilots were able to predict how the existing rule based systems worked, and were becoming rigid in their own reactions. So they contacted these guys, and they built a system (way less complex than the characters in Creatures) pretty quickly.
The first version that they came out with was incredibly effective, but you'd be unlikely to come across this strategy in a human pilot: barrel roll incessantly, pull up if the enemy is above you, and fire when they're in your sights. Very simple rules, works no matter what the position of the enemy, and would pulp a human pilot. After some tweaking, they ended up with something that more resembled human behavior.
But the first round got them thinking. In a dogfight, maneuverability is key. A plane can handle maybe 15 Gs, a human pilot 8-10 tops. If a fighter plane weren't dependent on the limitations on the human pilot, it would win against a plane having such limitations, *every time*. or nearly. be able to pull sharper turns, more extreme maneuvers, etc.
Based on this, and the way the flight sim was coded (the neural net flying the plane got its inputs from the data that would be available from the actual instruments), they were proceeding with a proposal to put this puppy in a live plane. Haven't heard anything more about it, but I still get the willies when I see the Creatures box in stores.
--Shameless SelfPlug Check out the papers I published on social environments and language origination using multiagent sims.
http://www.cs.rochester.edu/u/www/u/stoness/
(about halfway down the page
The one that gets my vote is the idea that life is a game because the definition of a game supplies the metarules. Things that you need in things like things you can do, things you cannot do, loopholes to exploit, limitations due to the nature of the game itself, multiple levels of games, games within games, games you do not know about, being someone's pawn, etc.
Then you get into the philosophy of game design. It was an illuminating thought that most people would not like to live in real life that world that is their favorite gaming world. And looking at the games people play, and sometimes trap themselves inside.
The philosophical payoff is knowing what is the price you have to pay to get out of the game or change it if you want, and knowing better the games you are really playing in the first place.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
1) This is not a book review. We heard nothing about the contents of the book except that they were "mind-bending". So bend our minds a little with some excerpts or paraphrases or something.
2) You twice compare the author to God (including one comparison that compares the book to something God would write)...yet you only give it an 8.5. Surely it would be newsworthy to explain how "God went wrong" and lost 1.5 points.
--
324006
Well, I cant say I've read the book, but I can tell you this much -- I once wrote a paper for a Philosophy class I was in that argued that ordinary household thermostats can technically be considered alive, if you agree that the fundemental definition of life is an object that both consumes and produces energy, responds to its environment..The ability to reproduce isn't necessarrilly required -- Life itself could be a dead-end.
If you make the definition intentionally vague, you can fit pretty much any dynamic system under the flag of being "alive"...So be careful when someone tells you that they have a formula for it. Chances are it hangs heavilly on the definition of "alive" to make it work.
Bowie J. Poag
Bowie J. Poag
Anyone know if this has been attempted before? (I'm aware of the First Post scripts; they obviously aren't going to get karma.) If I had some free time (oh I wish) this would definitely be a cool project to undertake.
I wonder if a simple script that ripped unusual words from the article, Google searched for sites with those words, then posted an 'informative' link would work...
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Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
You can totally predict the evolution of Conway's game of Life, and other deterministic cellular automata, given the initial configuration. It's not necessary to solve the halting problem in order to predict the state in the future -- you just execute the completely deterministic rules. Simple. Conway's Life is awkwardly Turing complete, but it's inefficient for the purpose of general computation (much less efficient that a Turing machine). But at least it means that theoretically you could implement a higher level of Conway's Life (or any other computable function) in terms of a lower level Conways' Life implementation, but it would take a whole lot of time and space.
Andy Weunsche at the Santa Fe Institute has come up with a beautiful way to plot out the deterministic state map of any cellular automata rule: it's a colorful branching graphical fish-eye tree representation of the topology of every possible state and transition of a cellular automata rule (the basin of attraction fields).
You can see for yourself how a given cellular automata rule is completely deterministic, by viewing all the possible interconnected states at once. "Garden of Eden" states (that there was no possible way to arrive at through the rule, so they must be original conditions) are drawn at the extreme tips of the branches, that converge into cycles of the basins of attraction (repeating dead-ends where there is now way to break out). This is really wonderful stuff, well worth scrolling through the whole gallery:
http://www.santafe.edu/~wuensch/gallery/ddlab_gall ery.html
On the other hand, the halting problem has to do with one program's ability to predict if another program will halt (not to just simply simulate the program's execution at a higher level: because if the other program doesn't halt, the simulator will never halt either, therefore failing to give the result). It means that there are undecidable questions that a deterministic Turing complete program can't answer: even if the answers are out there somewhere, they just can't be reached by a Turing machine. It also depends on being able to represent any program as data (a number), that can be given to another program as input, which is essential to the Universal Turing Machine in "On Computable Numbers".
The paradox can be demonstrated by asking such a hypothetical program (called "HaltingProblem") to predict whether another subtly (yet insideously) modified version of itself, called "HaltingProblemNot", will halt.
Given a program "HaltingProblem" that attempts to predict if another program halts (taking as input data that program and its inputs), you can always construct another program "HaltingProblemNot" to give it as input, for which it will never be able to give you a correct answer.
"HaltingProblemNot" just has to call the first program "HaltingProblem" as a subroutine, and then it inverts the return value (not just logically, but by halting if it says it won't halt, and infinitely looping if it says it doesn't halt). An obnoxious trick (called diagonalization), but it's proven to work every time. The fatal Achilles' heel of logic -- Godel strikes again.
No matter how cleverly written, the original program "HaltingProblem" is doomed to fail given "HaltingProblemNot" and another program as input, by either looping infinitely or returning the incorrect result.
This does not mean the mind is any more powerful than a Turing machine, nor unpredictable. Nobody really knows for sure. The only thing we know for sure is that there are many things we'll never know.
Gilda Radner summed it up:
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