Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!shelby!msi.umn.edu!cs.umn.edu!ux.acs.umn.edu!oleary
From: oleary@ux.acs.umn.edu (Doc O'Leary)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: computer life?
Keywords: Survival, instincts
Message-ID: <3512@ux.acs.umn.edu>
Date: 2 Mar 91 11:25:55 GMT
References: <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> <1991Feb27.150208.27855@mp.cs.niu.edu> <1991Feb28.215632.19322@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au>
Organization: University of Minnesota, Academic Computing Services
Lines: 47

In article <1991Feb28.215632.19322@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au> typ125m@monu6.cc.monash.edu.au (John Wilkins) writes:
>rickert@mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>In article <1991Feb27.134800.18153@news.larc.nasa.gov> kludge@grissom.larc.nasa.gov ( Scott Dorsey) writes:
>>>   Granted, this is a good point.  But manmade systems (like computers)
>>>are not evolved, but designed.
>
>> But the design has evolved (from the results of experience with prior designs).
>
>Yes, but the "ecology" in which computers "evolve", the selection pressures,
>are those of the teleonomic interests of humans. While one can say that
>there is an evolutionary process going on in the refinement of computer
>design, it is not the blind variation and selective retention of
>organic or other natural systems evolution, and for that reason it
>is dependent upon another evolutionary process to continue: social
>evolution. Computer "life" is therefore supervenient upon three other
>Lebensformen - the biological evolutionary process, the social
>evolutionary process and the social or cultural evolutionary process.
>Computers only have life in the same way any other adaptive tool does:
>as expressions of human goals.

This may very well be true, but much biological life falls into the same
category, namely, domesticated animals.  Cows, have gone through selective
breeding in order to serve human goals; so much, in fact, that (I believe)
it would be impossible for some of the better milkers to survive in the wild.
This doesn't make it any less of a life-form.  The same can be said for
breeding cats with no hair, or tail-less (I forget which breeds these are).
Just as we  will design computers that are more useful to us, we will
geneticly alter "life" to suit our needs, caring little if it benefits the
life-form.

We must remember that, as we search for a definition of life that excludes
computers (hw and/or sw), we must remember that the same definition will,
most likely, exclude something that we would agree are undeniably alive.

Don't deny computers life just because you can't give it to them.

         ---------   Doc


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