Terren,
Thanks for reply. I think I have some idea, no doubt confused, about how you
want to evolve a system. But the big deal re autopoiesis for me - correct me -
is the capacity of a living system to *maintain its identity* despite
considerable disturbances. That can be both in the embryonic/developmental
stages and also later in life. A *simple* example of the latter is an
experiment where they screwed around with the nerves to a monkey's hands, and
neverthless its brain maps rewired themselves, so to speak, to restore normal
functioning within months. Neuroplasticity generally is an example - the
brain's capacity, when parts are damaged, to get new parts to take on their
functions.
How a system can be evolved - computationally, say, as you propose - is, in my
understanding, no longer quite such a problematic thing to understand or
implement. But how a living system manages to adhere to a flexible plan of its
identity despite disturbances, is, IMO, a much more problematic thing to
understand and implement. And that, for me - again correct me - is the essence
of autopoiesis, (which BTW seems to me not the best explained of ideas - by
Varela & co).
Mike,
Autopoieisis is a basic building block of my philosophy of life and of
cognition as well. I see life as: doing work to maintain an internal
self-organization. It requires a boundary in which the entropy inside the
boundary is kept lower than the entropy outside. Cognition is autopoieitic as
well, although this is harder to see.
I have already shared my ideas on how to build a virtual intelligence
that satisfies this definition. But in summary, you'd design a framework in
which large numbers of interacting parts would evolve into an environment with
emergent, persistent entities. Through a guided process you would make the
environment more and more challenging, forcing the entities to solve harder and
harder problems to stay alive, corresponding with ever increasing intelligence.
At some distant point we may perhaps arrive at something with human-level
intelligence or beyond.
Terren
--- On Fri, 10/10/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [agi] open or closed source for AGI project?
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Date: Friday, October 10, 2008, 11:30 AM
Terren:autopoieisis. I wonder what your thoughts are about it?
Does anyone have any idea how to translate that biological principle
into building a machine, or software? Do you or anyone else have any idea what
it might entail? The only thing I can think of that comes anywhere close is the
Carnegie Mellon starfish robot with its sense of self.
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