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From: dailey@buster.cps.msu.edu (Chris Dailey)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: computer life?
Keywords: Survival, instincts
Message-ID: <1991Feb28.190553.20519@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 28 Feb 91 19:05:53 GMT
References: <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1991Feb26.213835.27074@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov>
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Reply-To: dailey@buster.cps.msu.edu (Chris Dailey)
Organization: Dept. of Computer Science, Michigan State University
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Originator: dailey@buster.cps.msu.edu

In article <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>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. [...]
>   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.

This is the only form of evolution of which we have some idea of how
things work.  A manmade system which is designed would probably be
designed so it will evolve beyond its design.  We will probably learn a
lot if we do this.  (Some of us believe that WE were designed, and have
since evolved on our own, but I have digressed.)

>   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.  

However, these computers are designed (in many or most cases) with the
human's strategies.  They are algorithmic representations of human
thoughts.  The only way (IMO) they could operate in a manner truly very
different would be if they were the ones that taught themselves how to
play.

>Nevertheless, although the mechanisms
>inside and the playing strategies might be quite different, the end result
>is the same.

But the strategies are not quite different, except that most computers
do not have the pattern matching capabilities of humans are are usually
made to do cost/benefit analysis on most or all possible moves instead
of just the most promising ones.

>   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.

I believe a computer's evolutionary method, although modeled after the
evolution of living (I assume you mean, organic) systems, would be
significantly different (although not necessarily different enough that
we could not learn more about our own evolution).  Kinda like weather
patterns in comparison to living systems.

>[...]
>--scott
-- 
Chris Dailey   dailey@(frith.egr|cps).msu.edu
    __  __  ___       | "A line in the sand." -- The Detroit News
 __/  \/  \/ __:>-    |
 \__/\__/\__/         | "Allein in der sand." -- me