Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!uunet!olivea!mintaka!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: computer life? Keywords: Survival, instincts Message-ID: <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Date: 26 Feb 91 17:52:43 GMT References: <8617@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Feb22.220125.20891@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1791@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA Lines: 23 In article <1791@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> wsinpim@info.win.tue.nl writes: >In my opinion, a very important aspect has been omitted from the ongoing >discussion so far: The drive to survive. If we (or any other creature) >would not have an instinct for survival or an other mechanism to protect >our life, we would not be there. And if that instinct would not have been >supported by the means to detect threats to our life and to repel them, >it would be useless. > >Computers so far lack both the drive to sustain their own existence and >the means to do so. They are easily maltreated and demolished and their >software is easily removed. Animals are easily maltreated, too. And they have no drive to survive. Instead, it is a consequence of evolution that animals accumulate many ways to avoid destructions. The combination of these gives rise to the illusion that they come from a single "survival instinct", but that's only an illusion. But that shows the great joke in the attempts to "define life" that have appeared in this newsgroup. Missing the whole point of how natural selection produces stuff. The lesson should be, you can't define stuff, only words. And then, as the above illustrates, the words you define may not have much to do with the stuff you intended them for.