On 3/29/2012 10:23 PM, Stephen P. King wrote:
Take my favorite thought experiment. Suppose I design two Mars Rovers and I want them
to coordinate their movements in order to round up Martian sheep. I can easily
distribute the artificial intelligence between the two of them, using data links so
whatever one sees the other sees (incidentally this, minus the AI, is what combat
aircraft software does now) and so there is a single top level decision routine on top
of local decision routines about maneuvering around obstacles and managing internal states.
OK, I'll bite. That AI program is running on the combination of the two pieces of
hardware, this is no different than how Watson
<http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2011-01-14-ibm-jeopardy_N.htm> runs on a much of
connected servers. But think about it, does not the data correlated to the sensors on
one of the Rovers have to be synchronized with the data from the other Rover so that
their manuevering can be controled. How exactly is the internal model of this system
built so that it can 'consider itself' as being both exploring some pile of rocks east
of Mt. Olympus while the other Rover is taking a dirt sample in some crater 500
kilometers away. It is not possible for two fixed points to exist on one compact and
closed manifold. You can only have one at a time. What you describe is more like a Rover
with a multiple personality disorder.
You're suffering from a failure of imagination. It can make a model in which it considers
itself has having to bodies at two different places. It wouldn't even be hard to
program. If you can experience two different places and you can act in two different
places you ARE in two different places.
Brent
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