So it's message recognition and not actor recognition? Can actors collaborate to recognize a message? I'm trying to put this in terms of subjective/objective. In a subjective world there are only messages (waves). In an objective world there are computers and routers and networks (actors, locations, particles). On Apr 8, 2013 4:52 PM, "Tristan Slominski" <tristan.slomin...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Therefore, with respect to this property, you cannot (in general) reason >> about or treat groups of two actors as though they were a single actor. > > > This is incorrect, well, it's based on a false premise.. this part is > incorrect/invalid? (an appropriate word escapes me): > > But two actors can easily (by passing messages in circles) send out an >> infinite number of messages to other actors upon receiving a single message. > > > I see it as the equivalent of saying: "I can write an infinite loop, > therefore, I cannot reason about functions" > > As you note, actors are not unique in their non-termination. But that >> misses the point. The issue was our ability to reason about actors >> compositionally, not whether termination is a good property. > > > The above statement, in my mind, sort of misunderstands reasoning about > actors. What does it mean for an actor to "terminate". The _only_ way you > will know, is if the actor sends you a message that it's done. Any > reasoning about actors and their compositionality must be done in terms of > messages sent and received. Reasoning in other ways does not make sense in > the actor model (as far as I understand). This is how I model it in my > head: > > It's sort of the analog of asking "what happened before the Big Bang." > Well, there was no time before the Big Bang, so asking about "before" > doesn't make sense. In a similar way, reasoning about actor systems with > anything except messages, doesn't make sense. To use another physics > analogy, there is no privileged frame of reference in actors, you only get > messages. It's actually a really well abstracted system that requires no > other abstractions. Actors and actor configurations (groupings of actors) > become indistinguishable, because they are logically equivalent for > reasoning purposes. The only way to interact with either is to send it a > message and to receive a message. Whether it's millions of actors or just > one doesn't matter, because *you can't tell the difference* (remember, > there's no privileged frame of reference). To instrument an actor > configuration, you need to put actors "in front of it". But to the user of > such instrumented configuration, they won't be able to tell the difference. > And so on and so forth, "It's Actors All The Way Down." > > ... > > I think we found common ground/understanding on other things. > > > On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 6:40 PM, David Barbour <dmbarb...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Tristan Slominski < >> tristan.slomin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> stability is not necessarily the goal. Perhaps I'm more in the >>> biomimetic camp than I think. >>> >> >> Just keep in mind that the real world has quintillions of bugs. In >> software, humans are probably still under a trillion. :) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> fonc mailing list >> fonc@vpri.org >> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >> >> > > On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 6:40 PM, David Barbour <dmbarb...@gmail.com> wrote: > >> On Sun, Apr 7, 2013 at 2:56 PM, Tristan Slominski < >> tristan.slomin...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >>> stability is not necessarily the goal. Perhaps I'm more in the >>> biomimetic camp than I think. >>> >> >> Just keep in mind that the real world has quintillions of bugs. In >> software, humans are probably still under a trillion. :) >> >> >> _______________________________________________ >> fonc mailing list >> fonc@vpri.org >> http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc >> >> > > _______________________________________________ > fonc mailing list > fonc@vpri.org > http://vpri.org/mailman/listinfo/fonc > >
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