Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!sdd.hp.com!elroy.jpl.nasa.gov!news.larc.nasa.gov!grissom.larc.nasa.gov!kludge From: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: computer life? Keywords: Survival, instincts Message-ID: <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> Date: 27 Feb 91 13:48:00 GMT References: <8617@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Feb22.220125.20891@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1791@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1991Feb26.213835.27074@watdragon.waterloo.edu> Sender: news@news.larc.nasa.gov (USENET Network News) Reply-To: kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) Organization: NASA Langley Research Center Lines: 33 minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes: >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. Granted, this is a good point. But manmade systems (like computers) are not evolved, but designed. Knowing the path by which lifeforms evolved might help us construct an artificial life form, but it's not required. Computers play chess. They play chess well. But they play chess in a fashion utterly unlike human beings, because they operate in a manner very different from the human brain. Nevertheless, although the mechanisms inside and the playing strategies might be quite different, the end result is the same. If a computer life form is constructed, it will probably not be constructed in any manner resembling the evolutionary method by which all living systems we know have been formed. This is because computers, again, operate in a very different fashion than organic systems. But nevertheless, the result will be the same. Only by bandying semantics about can we be sure that the result really is the same. --scott Postcript: The [famous AI professor from Georgia Tech, name deleted] method: 1. This is our computer system 2. It has behaviour X 3. Our definition of intelligence is the posession of behaviour X 4. Therefore our system is intelligent.