Alt-BEAM Archive

Message #05159



To: beam@sgiblab.sgi.com
From: Ripter01@aol.com
Date: Thu, 8 Jul 1999 20:25:16 EDT
Subject: [alt-beam] Re: What does purposeful mean, anyway?


In a message dated 7/8/99 12:46:51 PM US Eastern Standard Time,
zozzles@lanl.gov writes:

> Unless you can convince me that an automaton has a purpose of its "own,"
> I'm afraid that I find that definition to be useless. Furthermore, I
> believe that appealing to Tilden's Three Laws is of no value -- no matter
> what degree of sophistry you employ, the "purpose" of a robot (at least so
> far) is determined by its builder -- whether that purpose is to survive, to
> utilize energy, to seek better sources of energy or whatever.
>
> A photovore seeks light because you build it to.
> A symet jiggles because energy is available and it doesn't have any other
> choice.
> Walkers walk because of very good engineering.
>
> As soon as you talk about "owning" a purpose, you -have- to allow for the
> concept of "not owning" or even "actively avoiding" a purpose. None of the
> robots described in this list have any CHOICES along those lines. The
> choice of purpose (whether survival or anything else) is entirely up to the
> builder.
>
>
> Zoz
>

True they don't have any choices, they are not designed to have choices, this
is the first step of BEAM to make smart bodes, the say was incest have smart
bodes, all it has to do is survive the next step is to add a real bran and
give the robot choices, let the robot learn and develop on its own, with out
the builder designing it to do something, just have it able to do a few
things and let it learn and "grow" on its own. That is how nature did it,
First they where bacteria that only survived then incest's that could move
rocks to survive, and so on to Humans who have free will. We are just copying
nature with robots, after all we are all robots in our own way.

Just my $2.50
-Ripter

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