Terren, Yes, I think you're taking your ideas too far. Manifestly living organisms are not continually changing structurally - we have consistent bodies and brains with a rough plan to them, which is how we hold together so well, It is only in computer programs and models, that you can have things that are continually changing and evolving structurally. Natural evolution is vastly slower and more punctuated.
I actually think you're misinterpreting autopoiesis. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autopoiesis although it really is a poorly set-out concept both in Varela and WIki. One of its features is that organisms are self-building - in the very middle of interacting with the world, (like Dawkins' plane self-building in mid-flight). The others are to do with what I've been talking about - how organisms "maintain the whole" - "the term autopoiesis resembles the dynamics of a non-equilibrium system; that is, organized states (sometimes also called dissipative structures) that remain stable for long periods of time despite matter and energy continually flowing through them. From a very general point of view, the notion of autopoiesis is often associated with that of self-organization. However, an autopoietic system is autonomous and operationally closed, in the sense that every process within it directly helps maintaining the whole" One of the big deals then about organisms is they take in all these radically different foods, in often highly changeable diets, and are subect to different environments, and yet still "maintain the whole" - keep a fairly consistent if nevertheless flexible structure - (flexible, for example, by way of getting fatter or thinner).. And Maturana/Varela's definition also stresses how organisms maintain " a concrete unity in space" "An autopoietic machine is a machine organized (defined as a unity) as a network of processes of production (transformation and destruction) of components which: (i) through their interactions and transformations continuously regenerate and realize the network of processes (relations) that produced them; and (ii) constitute it (the machine) as a concrete unity in space in which they (the components) exist by specifying the topological domain of its realization as such a network." (Maturana, Varela, 1980, p. 78) By extension, we also, as physicopsychological organisms, maintain a constant sense of self and identity, despite continually processing a vast range of bits and pieces of ill-organized information, and assuming a wide range of social roles and personas in different activities (and it would be interesting to see any AGI proposals to do similar). I think I'm right that autopoiesis is much more about maintaining the whole ("keeping it together, man") than evolution. But it is an appallingly messily presented concept. Terren: Well, "identity" is not a great choice of word, because it implies a static nature. As far as I understand it, Maturana et al simply meant, that which distinguishes the thing from its environment, in terms of its self-organization. The nature of that self-organization is dynamic, always changing. When it stops changing, in fact, it "loses its identity", it dies. I think also that you're confusing some sort of teleological principle here with autopoieisis, as if there is a design involved. Life doesn't "adhere to a flexible plan", it just goes, and it either works, or it doesn't. If it works, and it is able to reproduce itself, then the pattern becomes persistent. MT/ 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. ------------------------------------------------------------ agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -------------------------------------------------------------------- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ---------------------------------------------------------------------- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
