The CBC ran a contest to come up with a canadian version of the expression "as american as apple pie". People had to phone in with suggestions for "as canadian as...".
The handsdown winner was:
"As Canadian as possible under the circumstances"
Yes, I'm from Toronto area.
I think there's definitely a sense in Canada that people want to make their identity known, perhaps because we feel like we all to easily get confused with americans. As a canadian living in europe I can tell you that happens quite a lot.
There's quite a difference I think between the urge to have a common identity, and actually having a common identity. This is maybe something that isn't apparent to an outsider, but canada is very fratured regionally - and most areas of canada have much more contact with the americans south of the border than we do with canadians from other regions. Also given that so much of our culture is shared with the US and is indistinguishable for the most part, there is a sense throughout the country that there is a void in terms of national identity in Canada - particularly felt whenever we deal with the whole issue of Quebec wanting to seperate.
There is also the notion ( perhaps its only a myth ?!? ) that canadians are modest, reserved and particularly non-nationalistic ( nationalism here being different from patriotism ).
So in the end all the flag waving mania - which I totally agree with, it does exist, but I think its more an attempt to fill that void, rather than an expression of a real heartfelt sentiment.
As for those Molson's ads go - I think those are largely a parody of all the above stuff. The whole thing of Joe ranting on and on about how he is different from americans is particularly clear that its a parody of that feeling of getting confused with americans so easily. Maybe its this kind of inside-joke that unites canadians more than anything else.
While I agree with you that it is a very good thing that the international community is working more together on space projects, I think you might want to do some research on the history of space exploration. It's sad that in the US so much is said about the american space program, and how they gloriously and righteously ( *cough, cough*) bested the russians in the 60's etc. etc. but little or nothing is ever mentioned about other countries. It comes down to a lack of education.
But in reality many many countries have been involved in space exploration and development for decades. Granted none have done as much as either the US or Russia, but they have been playing lots of important rolls. Canada has been contributing to NASA for decades - including the original Canadarm and many astronauts. Europe has had a joint space agency since the 60's - both China and Japan have their own space agencies and they launch satellites quite frequently.
"often simply because it doesn't have the means to create them"
I'm sorry buddy, but that's just crap. If we canadians felt like building some great nationilstic ventures, we would, cost doesn't even venture into it. How many nations of 30 million people have G7 status eh? Us and Australia that's who - and there are scads of countries with way more people who can't claim that. We have definitely got the money to burn on meaningless nationalism if we wanted. The reason we don't do it is two-fold: firstly canadians just don't have any nationalist sentiments, or very little. Hell most of us don't even know what it is we identify with as a country. Secondly the business and political culture of our country is so tight-assed and conservative that they refuse to invest in anything canadian for fear that it will flop, despite the overwhelming evidence that as such a small nation we have an insane overabundance of intelligent, talented and creative people.
"I would like to keep it that way. Armstrong's lunar vacation didn't do anything for the human race (after all, the Russians had already had a successful moon landing with the Luna-9 well ahead of his arrival)"
Yes, the russians did put plenty of unmanned landers on the moon - the key word here being 'unmanned'. NASA also sent lots of unmanned orbiters and landers on the moon before Armstrong and company went. There is a huge difference in sending a robot out into space and sending people - the requirements for sending human life into the emptiness of space is much much more demanding.
I think trying to measure achievements of this kind in terms of dollars & cents returns or immediate gratification to the masses is a very small-minded and limited way to look, and typical of the canadian business culture I mentioned above. The achievements of NASA in the last half century are certainly some of the most important feats humanity has ever accomplished. Putting human beings not only outside of the thin tiny little biosphere in which we evolved, but fully onto another celestial body ranks up there with the discovery of fire and the wheel as some of the most significant events in our evolution. I don't know if you've ever been to see any of the NASA stuff at Cape Canaveral or not - but I definitely have the sense that it is a place that will rank up their with the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China thousands of years from now as one of the most important human landmarks. Don't belittle the great achievements of the species with petty economical arguments - that is an insult not only to the people who achieved true lasting greatness but an insult to humanity in general.
"The nordic nations, the Netherlands and Finland, in particular, have the best human rights and social development records on earth and they've never engaged in the kind of nationalistic nonsense from which the space race has proceeded (the Swedes have a space program, mind you). Canada (and the United States) should aspire to such progressiveness."
And for your information, all the countries you mentioned DO participate in the European Space Agency, which is actively involved in building large portions of the International Space Station, as well as numerous other projects. Taken from slide 2 of ESA's website presentation (
http://www.esa.int/presentation/ ):
ESA has 15 member States :
Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Norway, the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom.
Canada takes part in some projects under a cooperation agreement.
Thank you for saying exactly what I was thinking.
I think that whoever the people are at the NSA who're driving this thing are very smart and very bold, and worthy of respect.
Doesn't publishing the source kind of make it meaningless to incorporate monitoring features?
Somebody out there will find the monitoring features pretty quick, and then nobody will use your code. Somehow I think the NSA is a bit smarter than that.
The NSA has always been so close-doored about exactly what it does and doesn't know in the crypto field, it has a lot of public domain cryptography experts wondering whether all their hard work is actually in any way useful, or whether the NSA is so much further ahead of them that they're just wanking - to use the parlance of our times.
Its interesting to me then that the NSA has chosen to partner with NAI on this, it seems to give some very strong support to the belief that public domain cryptography is at least as good as NSA level stuff.
Of course it could all be a massive ruse to put us poor saps off guard - but honestly I'm not willing to go that paranoid today. any takers?
The point is not to do with whether they forced consumers to use their software or not. The point is all about the fact that they have already been found guilty of anti-competetive practices by a court, and so it is a natural extension of this ruling that anybody who purchased a computer which was subject to this particular instance of anti-competetiveness ( ie an pre-installed OEM machine ) "suffered" from the lack of a fair and open marketplace and so they were "harmed".
This isn't about the morality involved, its about the natural extension of law.
The key difference you're forgetting is that nobody has ever died because of buggy windows software - if they did then the federal govt. could force them to recall and fix all such systems out of their own pocket.
Although it is true that the bovine Foot-and-Mouth disease is not spread via Microsoft Outlook, a close relative to this same virus, the Foot-in-Mouth virus is spread quite rapidly via Outlook.
The Foot-in-Mouth virus is a particularly embarrassing one, which scans all the email you have sent and received with a particular contact, getting a good sense of your relationship with that person. It then sends a series of emails in your name to that contact saying many things you would be very embarrassed about later.
The effects of this virus are very similar to those produced by the psychological condition "Typing while drunk", and researchers are working very hard to examine whether any causal link exists between the this virus, its bovin cousin and alcohol-induced computer use.
there is no evidence of any such backdoor (the site which originally made the NSA claim has been taken down)
Well, there is no evidence that has been made public, yet. I was under the impression that it was the german govt. which made this claim - not some website, and the fact that the article is gone or not has no bearing on this. Assuming that the german govt. really did make this statement and is intending to follow through on it. It seems unlikely that a very influencial world govt. would make such an "outrageous" statement unless they had some good reasons to believe it was true. The fact that they have not specified what those reasons are yet means nothing.
Also given that the NSA released such a large number of microsoft weaknesses recently suggests that even if there were no NSA/CIA designed holes in M$ products, they have obvioulsy spent a good deal of time investigating what was there without their own contributions, and would naturally have been in a marvellous position for years to take advantage of same.
Why should they want to publish these backdoors that they themselves have discovered and (potentially) been using then? Well probably because they figure that these back doors and security weaknesses aren't so well hidden that many people outside the US couldn't find them and exploit them, and they'd rather see the vastly computer-dependant US economy be more secure rather than have easy access to foreign interests. Just a trade-off that makes sense in the long run.
I'm not an expert on this kind of thing, but I would assume that spying on countries that are presumably your allies is at the least not going to win you much good sentiment, even if it doesn't break any treaties.
I believe that they can't simply bar American software for various trade legalities. So they need to use "security concerns" as a cover to justify this.
This would be true if they wanted to implement an across the board ban on all M$ or all American software in Germany ( makes you wonder what they'd have left? ) - or impose trade sanctions against all american or M$ software. However, the policy decisions of what one business or govt. agency is going to use for its own software is not prohibited by trade sanctions - that would just be ridiculous. If it were the case a govt. would have to have equal numbers of computers made by american, japanese, russian ( god forbid ), and other companies just to keep it fair. They don't need to cook up such an outrageous story just to cover what comes down to an IT dept. decision of buying local stuff instead of american.
The different branches of govt. likely wouldn't be sharing this kind of info. Its unlikely that if the NSA and/or CIA were using undisclosed backdoors in M$ software to snoop on people ( an act which would violate any number of laws within the US and any number of international treaties outside of it ) they would be wanting to tell the justice dept. of all people anything about it.
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'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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Jargon + outdated ideas = powerful criticism - that's clever, i like it.
However I don't think these ideas are at all outdated - rather in recent years many of the most noted proponents of AI ( Jerry Fodor among the most notable ) have largely reversed their perspectives for precisely this reason.
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.
Yes, I agree completely ( at least as far as the music goes - intelligence is another matter ) - because in digital media we have found a way to formally define ( nearly ) all forms of information. A potato is not formally defined, therefore it cannot truly pass the these levels because it is not formally defined. This is the point of my criticism - life is not formally defined, and like the potato cannot be digitally encoded.
And what's wrong with that? When I copy MS Word to another computer, isn't that a "perfect simulation" of the original?
No, its not a simulation at all - they are exact copies. Don't confuse a copy with a simulation - they are not the same things at all. A simulation is a model of a system that attempts to render a reasonably accurate copy of a certain reduced set of the original system's parts. A computer program which models thunderstorms or tornados models a reduced set of the aspects of the airmasses in which those weather systems occur - the set of features being modeled are those which meteorologists have deemed to be relevant to the pursuit of understanding those weather systems. These programs are unlikely to model the movements of seagulls through the same airmass, or the relative density of seagull feces - because nobody considers these to be relevant features, despite being parts of the system. A copy of MS Word is a one-to-one exact digital copy, there is nothing of simulation about it.
What about when I reimplement a program to read Word files?
You could say that this was a simulation of MS Word, yes. And depending on how good a job you did you might even be able to prove that the two programs were formally equivalent ( although chances are you'd have to have access to MS Word source code for this ). Formal equivalence is only reached when you have an exact matching in functionality of all the features of two systems - so if your program could do everything that MS Word could do in exactly the same way then both programs would be formally equivalent.
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.
Well showing that computers are less complex than brains is really very easy. Considering that your average human brain has something on the order of 10 billion neurons connected to make over 10 trillion neural connections each of which creates and responds to a vast array of environmental stimuli both electrical and chemical, most of which is poorly mapped and ill understood.
As far as creating a program that behaves exactly like you, I hope you won't be offended if I remain sceptical and say that I'll believe it when I see it. But granted that you were able to create a system that could successfully pass for T3 equivalence ( ie the Total Turing Test - simulating all human behaviour convincingly for a human life span ), this is still not enough to claim formal equivalence. For a truly rigorous examination of what would satisfy a scientific definition of a truly accurate psychological model read Jerry Fodor's "Psychological explanation" particularly chapter 4: "The logic of simulation". You'll see why simply simulating behaviour is not good enough to count for a model of the thing being simulated - particularly when it comes to intelligence.
The point is that there is NO clear definition of life, one must work on common sense and other features, not a list of defining features. This is why it is easy to confuse people with fancy talk and make it seem like a computer system is alive. Exactly because there is no clear definition.
Slashdot Mirror
The CBC ran a contest to come up with a canadian version of the expression "as american as apple pie". People had to phone in with suggestions for "as canadian as ...".
The handsdown winner was:
"As Canadian as possible under the circumstances"
Yes, I'm from Toronto area.
I think there's definitely a sense in Canada that people want to make their identity known, perhaps because we feel like we all to easily get confused with americans. As a canadian living in europe I can tell you that happens quite a lot.
There's quite a difference I think between the urge to have a common identity, and actually having a common identity. This is maybe something that isn't apparent to an outsider, but canada is very fratured regionally - and most areas of canada have much more contact with the americans south of the border than we do with canadians from other regions. Also given that so much of our culture is shared with the US and is indistinguishable for the most part, there is a sense throughout the country that there is a void in terms of national identity in Canada - particularly felt whenever we deal with the whole issue of Quebec wanting to seperate.
There is also the notion ( perhaps its only a myth ?!? ) that canadians are modest, reserved and particularly non-nationalistic ( nationalism here being different from patriotism ).
So in the end all the flag waving mania - which I totally agree with, it does exist, but I think its more an attempt to fill that void, rather than an expression of a real heartfelt sentiment.
As for those Molson's ads go - I think those are largely a parody of all the above stuff. The whole thing of Joe ranting on and on about how he is different from americans is particularly clear that its a parody of that feeling of getting confused with americans so easily. Maybe its this kind of inside-joke that unites canadians more than anything else.
While I agree with you that it is a very good thing that the international community is working more together on space projects, I think you might want to do some research on the history of space exploration. It's sad that in the US so much is said about the american space program, and how they gloriously and righteously ( *cough, cough*) bested the russians in the 60's etc. etc. but little or nothing is ever mentioned about other countries. It comes down to a lack of education.
But in reality many many countries have been involved in space exploration and development for decades. Granted none have done as much as either the US or Russia, but they have been playing lots of important rolls. Canada has been contributing to NASA for decades - including the original Canadarm and many astronauts. Europe has had a joint space agency since the 60's - both China and Japan have their own space agencies and they launch satellites quite frequently.
I want to see the canadarm opening a can of Molsons. =)
I'm sorry buddy, but that's just crap. If we canadians felt like building some great nationilstic ventures, we would, cost doesn't even venture into it. How many nations of 30 million people have G7 status eh? Us and Australia that's who - and there are scads of countries with way more people who can't claim that. We have definitely got the money to burn on meaningless nationalism if we wanted. The reason we don't do it is two-fold: firstly canadians just don't have any nationalist sentiments, or very little. Hell most of us don't even know what it is we identify with as a country. Secondly the business and political culture of our country is so tight-assed and conservative that they refuse to invest in anything canadian for fear that it will flop, despite the overwhelming evidence that as such a small nation we have an insane overabundance of intelligent, talented and creative people.
"I would like to keep it that way. Armstrong's lunar vacation didn't do anything for the human race (after all, the Russians had already had a successful moon landing with the Luna-9 well ahead of his arrival)"
Yes, the russians did put plenty of unmanned landers on the moon - the key word here being 'unmanned'. NASA also sent lots of unmanned orbiters and landers on the moon before Armstrong and company went. There is a huge difference in sending a robot out into space and sending people - the requirements for sending human life into the emptiness of space is much much more demanding.
I think trying to measure achievements of this kind in terms of dollars & cents returns or immediate gratification to the masses is a very small-minded and limited way to look, and typical of the canadian business culture I mentioned above. The achievements of NASA in the last half century are certainly some of the most important feats humanity has ever accomplished. Putting human beings not only outside of the thin tiny little biosphere in which we evolved, but fully onto another celestial body ranks up there with the discovery of fire and the wheel as some of the most significant events in our evolution. I don't know if you've ever been to see any of the NASA stuff at Cape Canaveral or not - but I definitely have the sense that it is a place that will rank up their with the pyramids of Giza or the Great Wall of China thousands of years from now as one of the most important human landmarks. Don't belittle the great achievements of the species with petty economical arguments - that is an insult not only to the people who achieved true lasting greatness but an insult to humanity in general.
"The nordic nations, the Netherlands and Finland, in particular, have the best human rights and social development records on earth and they've never engaged in the kind of nationalistic nonsense from which the space race has proceeded (the Swedes have a space program, mind you). Canada (and the United States) should aspire to such progressiveness."
And for your information, all the countries you mentioned DO participate in the European Space Agency, which is actively involved in building large portions of the International Space Station, as well as numerous other projects. Taken from slide 2 of ESA's website presentation ( http://www.esa.int/presentation/ ):
Thank you for saying exactly what I was thinking. I think that whoever the people are at the NSA who're driving this thing are very smart and very bold, and worthy of respect.
Doesn't publishing the source kind of make it meaningless to incorporate monitoring features? Somebody out there will find the monitoring features pretty quick, and then nobody will use your code. Somehow I think the NSA is a bit smarter than that.
The NSA has always been so close-doored about exactly what it does and doesn't know in the crypto field, it has a lot of public domain cryptography experts wondering whether all their hard work is actually in any way useful, or whether the NSA is so much further ahead of them that they're just wanking - to use the parlance of our times.
Its interesting to me then that the NSA has chosen to partner with NAI on this, it seems to give some very strong support to the belief that public domain cryptography is at least as good as NSA level stuff.
Of course it could all be a massive ruse to put us poor saps off guard - but honestly I'm not willing to go that paranoid today. any takers?
The point is not to do with whether they forced consumers to use their software or not. The point is all about the fact that they have already been found guilty of anti-competetive practices by a court, and so it is a natural extension of this ruling that anybody who purchased a computer which was subject to this particular instance of anti-competetiveness ( ie an pre-installed OEM machine ) "suffered" from the lack of a fair and open marketplace and so they were "harmed".
This isn't about the morality involved, its about the natural extension of law.
The key difference you're forgetting is that nobody has ever died because of buggy windows software - if they did then the federal govt. could force them to recall and fix all such systems out of their own pocket.
Although it is true that the bovine Foot-and-Mouth disease is not spread via Microsoft Outlook, a close relative to this same virus, the Foot-in-Mouth virus is spread quite rapidly via Outlook.
The Foot-in-Mouth virus is a particularly embarrassing one, which scans all the email you have sent and received with a particular contact, getting a good sense of your relationship with that person. It then sends a series of emails in your name to that contact saying many things you would be very embarrassed about later.
The effects of this virus are very similar to those produced by the psychological condition "Typing while drunk", and researchers are working very hard to examine whether any causal link exists between the this virus, its bovin cousin and alcohol-induced computer use.
This is very interesting - I had no idea that they were so lax about allowing foreign spying. Thanks for the heads up - it explains much.
Well, there is no evidence that has been made public, yet. I was under the impression that it was the german govt. which made this claim - not some website, and the fact that the article is gone or not has no bearing on this. Assuming that the german govt. really did make this statement and is intending to follow through on it. It seems unlikely that a very influencial world govt. would make such an "outrageous" statement unless they had some good reasons to believe it was true. The fact that they have not specified what those reasons are yet means nothing.
Also given that the NSA released such a large number of microsoft weaknesses recently suggests that even if there were no NSA/CIA designed holes in M$ products, they have obvioulsy spent a good deal of time investigating what was there without their own contributions, and would naturally have been in a marvellous position for years to take advantage of same.
Why should they want to publish these backdoors that they themselves have discovered and (potentially) been using then? Well probably because they figure that these back doors and security weaknesses aren't so well hidden that many people outside the US couldn't find them and exploit them, and they'd rather see the vastly computer-dependant US economy be more secure rather than have easy access to foreign interests. Just a trade-off that makes sense in the long run.
I'm not an expert on this kind of thing, but I would assume that spying on countries that are presumably your allies is at the least not going to win you much good sentiment, even if it doesn't break any treaties.
This would be true if they wanted to implement an across the board ban on all M$ or all American software in Germany ( makes you wonder what they'd have left? ) - or impose trade sanctions against all american or M$ software. However, the policy decisions of what one business or govt. agency is going to use for its own software is not prohibited by trade sanctions - that would just be ridiculous. If it were the case a govt. would have to have equal numbers of computers made by american, japanese, russian ( god forbid ), and other companies just to keep it fair. They don't need to cook up such an outrageous story just to cover what comes down to an IT dept. decision of buying local stuff instead of american.
The different branches of govt. likely wouldn't be sharing this kind of info. Its unlikely that if the NSA and/or CIA were using undisclosed backdoors in M$ software to snoop on people ( an act which would violate any number of laws within the US and any number of international treaties outside of it ) they would be wanting to tell the justice dept. of all people anything about it.
Nasa has good servers - but the /. effect is apparently more powerful still.
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.
Thanks, its always nice to get positive feedback amongst the barrage of criticism =)
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.
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.
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.
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.
However I don't think these ideas are at all outdated - rather in recent years many of the most noted proponents of AI ( Jerry Fodor among the most notable ) have largely reversed their perspectives for precisely this reason.
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.
Yes, I agree completely ( at least as far as the music goes - intelligence is another matter ) - because in digital media we have found a way to formally define ( nearly ) all forms of information. A potato is not formally defined, therefore it cannot truly pass the these levels because it is not formally defined. This is the point of my criticism - life is not formally defined, and like the potato cannot be digitally encoded.
And what's wrong with that? When I copy MS Word to another computer, isn't that a "perfect simulation" of the original?
No, its not a simulation at all - they are exact copies. Don't confuse a copy with a simulation - they are not the same things at all. A simulation is a model of a system that attempts to render a reasonably accurate copy of a certain reduced set of the original system's parts. A computer program which models thunderstorms or tornados models a reduced set of the aspects of the airmasses in which those weather systems occur - the set of features being modeled are those which meteorologists have deemed to be relevant to the pursuit of understanding those weather systems. These programs are unlikely to model the movements of seagulls through the same airmass, or the relative density of seagull feces - because nobody considers these to be relevant features, despite being parts of the system. A copy of MS Word is a one-to-one exact digital copy, there is nothing of simulation about it.
What about when I reimplement a program to read Word files?
You could say that this was a simulation of MS Word, yes. And depending on how good a job you did you might even be able to prove that the two programs were formally equivalent ( although chances are you'd have to have access to MS Word source code for this ). Formal equivalence is only reached when you have an exact matching in functionality of all the features of two systems - so if your program could do everything that MS Word could do in exactly the same way then both programs would be formally equivalent.
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.
Well showing that computers are less complex than brains is really very easy. Considering that your average human brain has something on the order of 10 billion neurons connected to make over 10 trillion neural connections each of which creates and responds to a vast array of environmental stimuli both electrical and chemical, most of which is poorly mapped and ill understood.
As far as creating a program that behaves exactly like you, I hope you won't be offended if I remain sceptical and say that I'll believe it when I see it. But granted that you were able to create a system that could successfully pass for T3 equivalence ( ie the Total Turing Test - simulating all human behaviour convincingly for a human life span ), this is still not enough to claim formal equivalence. For a truly rigorous examination of what would satisfy a scientific definition of a truly accurate psychological model read Jerry Fodor's "Psychological explanation" particularly chapter 4: "The logic of simulation". You'll see why simply simulating behaviour is not good enough to count for a model of the thing being simulated - particularly when it comes to intelligence.
The point is that there is NO clear definition of life, one must work on common sense and other features, not a list of defining features. This is why it is easy to confuse people with fancy talk and make it seem like a computer system is alive. Exactly because there is no clear definition.