> I would point out that this distinction, as are many others, is > not as clear > as we might think. The book on symbiosis points out that, in fact, > something more than 30% of the human body is other symbiotic > organisms, such > as intestinal flora, skin mites, etc., and that even the cell is > a symbiosis > of many once independent prokaryotic organisms. Even the human > genome is a > collection of genetic material from what were once separate species!
It's true "self/nonself discrimination" is a partial model of immune function only, and it's a model that we've imposed *partly* out of our innate bias toward making self/nonself distinctions.. > Some of the symbiotic organisms in our body, in fact, play a role in the > immune system. > > Thus, this "sense of self" and identity that you are discussing is, we may > find, much more amorphous than you think, and the boundary > between self and > not-self much more fractal. In human psychology, we have to some extent a situation where the boundary becomes reified because we think it's there! In the mind, a fuzzy boundary often becomes more solid by being perceived as solid.. > How does symbiosis have relevance to the quasi-Buddhist debate > you and Kevin > are engaged in? On a simple level, it's a validation of the Novamente > design philosophy of combining separate entities together to > generate a more > general, robust meta-entity. It seems evolution has used that > strategy for > some billion years ... and it works! (So far . . . ) Check out my article on symbiogenesis http://www.goertzel.org/papers/CancerPrograms.htm ;-) > One another one of many levels, there is the idea that true AGI will not, > indeed, be a separate entity, but rather a symbiotic enhancement of the > human mind. It will provide perception, analysis, processing, learning > (copying), and all kinds of other functionalities that people > have included > in intelligence, but the human part will still be a necessary component > providing meaning and stuff like that. I don't think this is the whole story. I think that there will be AGI that symbiotically enhances human minds, but also AGI that stands on its own providing full awareness without need for human interaction. ben g ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
