Alt-BEAM Archive
Message #02334
To: Steven Bolt sbolt@xs4all.nl
From: Bob Shannon bshannon@tiac.net
Date: Wed, 14 Apr 1999 22:02:23 -0700
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: CPU again? (was Beam genome)
Steven Bolt wrote:
>
> On Tue, 13 Apr 1999, Terry Newton wrote:
>
> > >*De*coupling from reality? It's coupling you want.
> >
> > Everything you say is true, we do need *much* better sense of and
> > influence over the environment. I might have mis-spoke when I said
> > "alive", I was thinking "conscious life".
>
> Ah. Consciousness is many steps ahead of me. Robotically speaking,
> it's not on my agenda at all. Lack of ambition, perhaps...
>
> > In order to be conscious, something must be able to "think" and
> > be able to "decide" on its own, not as a result of networks code
> > or anything so closely coupled to reality that no other option
> > is possible.
>
> Introducing random factors is easy enough - far easier than
> providing a bot with sufficient input from its environment.
> Sufficient to make relevant decisions, I mean.
A random factor is not exactly what we are looking for here.
We need a stochastic factor, a predictive factor.
> > In other words, it's got to have soul to think,
> That's not something we can design, even in principle. Like we
> can't design the seed for a tree starting with a clean sheet of
> paper. Any little seed will always be immensely more powerful than
> any designable machine. It's a combinatorial explosion - which
> grows into not just a tree, but a forest, and eventually develops
> other species.
I'll disagree with this a bit later!
There have been some very interesting experiments done with cellular
automata based robotic controllers. A lot of this work is unpublished
currently, existing as trade secrets.
> > and I'm afraid that won't happen using existing sequential
> > computers. Best one can do is simulate it well enough to fake it.
But a sequenctial computer can simulate a cellular automata, and the
behavior of that automata has nothing to do with the sequence of
instructions
being executed by the CPU.
Clearly this shows that is can indeed be done!
> > But it isn't *really* thinking. Chaotic networks of analog
> > neurons influencing each other probably has more potential to
> > become "conscious" than cold rigid code. Although I'm working on
> > a solution that will result in more potential for code life...
There is a fundemental misunderstanding of what a computer can do here.
The de-coupling people speak of exists in sofware based systems, like
implementations of cellular automata and analog neural networks on
digital
computers.
> > It's something besides whether it's cpu or analog that will determine
> > if something electronic is "alive" (there's that word again!), who's
> > to say our little four neuron walkers are not alive? Can we tell?
>
> Take it from me, they are dead as doornails.
>
> > Would we recognise that kind of life?
>
> A semantic debate is always possible. But not productive.
How do you know?
We set measuable criteria for biological life, why not artificial life?
> > I'm working on something I can't even verify. I can only go by
> > intuition which says chaos needs to be involved if true
> > multiple-choice responses are to be achieved. A phase space
> > where many things can happen, so sometimes they do.
>
> This again touches on what can and cannot be designed.
Wrong. It can, and is designed. Study cellular automata.
> > With a cpu, generally it works as well as programmed, current
> > programming methods prevent just anything from happening for
> > with any set of inputs and starting conditions only one thing
> > can happen. Unless I find that noise source... really it comes
> > down to what is used for the random number generator. Is it really?
This is incorrect. There are other current methods of programming a CPU
that have the types of behavior your looking for, and its not based on
random numbers either.
> In general terms, adding a random factor merely lifts the
> predictability of machines to the Brownian motion level.
Now Steven's lost me here.
> Life and consciousness won't rise Phoenix-like from the ashes of
> a little chaos. Remember the monkeys, their typewriters and
> Shakespeare.
Life did apparently arise in just this way!
Or does BEAM design demand creationist sciance?
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