In a message dated Tue, 18 Dec 2001 9:12:16 PM Eastern Standard Time, "Alberto Monteiro" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> > The Fool wrote: > > > >But that is not the issue. You create a significantly advanced (and > >probably slightly bug prone) system that is designed to make a better > >system. That system should hopefully be bug free (if the original > >programmers didn't f%&^ up severely). That system in turn creates an > >even more advanced system that should be even more bug free (because > >computers are not prone to the kinds of mistakes that humans make). Even > >if that system was just a pure rewrite of itself, that should be enough > >to create a perfect system within a few iterations. Run the system for a > >few hundred thousand iterations (just to be sure) and you would have a > >system that became infalliable. Also that system would become more and > >more efficient with each iteration. > > > Uh? > > This process will surely increase *one* efficience - it would make > reproducing faster. Natural selection would quickly operate, and > the googol-th generation [*] would be as simple as a virus, and > it would *not* be bug-free, it would be a naked bug. > > I think Alberto has hit the nail on the head. Self dupicating digital systems do >exist. DNA is one. But it is not error free. If copying were perfect than there would >be no evolution. So there will always be mistakes (mutations) in a system. And as >systems become more complex they have more mistakes. There uppper limits of genetic >complexity for various types of organisms that have a variety of error/reduction >correction tools. I woudl the same would be true for machine environments. Selection >experiments have been run in virtual environments and the same rules seem to hold as >in natural selection.
