Path: utzoo!utgpu!jarvis.csri.toronto.edu!rutgers!aramis.rutgers.edu!athos.rutgers.edu!nanotech From: alan@oz.nm.paradyne.com (Alan Lovejoy) Newsgroups: sci.nanotech Subject: Re: A fallacy: That which evolved can be rationally designed. Message-ID: Date: 6 Jul 89 23:38:41 GMT Sender: nanotech@athos.rutgers.edu Organization: AT&T Paradyne, Largo, Florida Lines: 78 Approved: nanotech@aramis.rutgers.edu In article dmo@turkey.philips.com (Dan Offutt) writes: >I wrote: >> ... The brain is not magic. If it can evolve, it can be >>purposely designed. There can be no credible refutation of this logic. >The proposition "if X can evolve via biological evolution, then X can >be purposely designed" is generally false. The human brain or immune >system might be copied or imitated, but neither human beings nor >"fast" AI could possibly design such systems. The proposition is false >for two reasons. > >First, purposeful design presupposes a design problem definition. We >know very little about the design constraints for biological systems. >... >Most of the constraints that shaped the human brain are unknowable in >principle because most acted in the distant past, and information >about those influences has been lost. >...In short, systems that evolved by biological evolution cannot be designed by >people or AI because it is impossible to specify more than a minute >fraction of the design constraints. It may be possible to *copy* or >*imitate* these evolved systems (as Mr. Drexler points out), but that >is not the same thing as designing them. None of this is relevant. We don`t NEED TO KNOW these things. We only need to know and understand WHAT FUNCTIONS HUMAN BIOBRAINS PERFORM TODAY. If this were not true, then--by the same reasoning--most of our biological and medical knowledge would have been unobtainable. In fact, we have designed many devices, processes and substances whose functions mimic, replace, outdo and substitute for various biologically-evolved mechanisms and substances. And we did this in all cases without the knowlegde you claim is necessary. This constitutes disproof by massive counterexample. >The second reason the proposition is false is that all human designers >and all "fast" AI systems put together will never collectively possess >the parallel "computational resources" that biological evolution has >had to work with. This argument, although it is an interesting point which is not completely false, is not relevant to my original statement. My statement made no assumptions about the amount of time that might be required to design something--or about the necessary computational resources. The reason for this is that the idea which my statement is intended to refute is the following: "Artificial intelligence on the level of human capabilities is completely and forever impossible." In that context, arguments that it might require 20 billion years to design an artificial human brain already concede my point. Technicalities aside, it is appropriate to consider the implications and relevance of Mr. Offut's second point. After all, if a synthetic human brain will not be built for 20 billion years, then its relevance to us personally--and even to all present and future humanity--is in very serious question. As a sanity check, we should compare the length of time required for natural evolution to design intelligent systems with some quantifiable degree of intelligence with the length of time required for human scientific and engineering processes to achieve similar milestones. The evidence to date not only does not support Mr. Offut's thesis, it flatly and violently contradicts it. By his reasoning, we are wasting our time doing scientific research, since evolution will "compute" or discover this information so much faster than we can. These observations suggest not only that something is very wrong with Mr. Offut's argument, but even point to the source of the fallacy: "natural" evolotion is not the most efficient methodology of discovering truth. There are much better algorithms. In fact, natural evolotion is not some static process whose methods never change. Evolution also evolves. And we are living examples of that fact. Alan Lovejoy; alan@pdn; 813-530-2211; AT&T Paradyne: 8550 Ulmerton, Largo, FL. Disclaimer: I do not speak for AT&T Paradyne. They do not speak for me. ______________________________Down with Li Peng!________________________________ Motto: If nanomachines will be able to reconstruct you, YOU AREN'T DEAD YET.