Thanks for throwing in on this one, Glen. Your thoughts are
ever-insightful. And ever-entertaining!
For example, I did not know that von Neumann put forth a set theory.
On the other hand... evolution /is/ stochastic. (You actually did not
disagree with me on that. You only said that the reason I was right was
another one.) A good book on the stochasticity of evolution is "Chance
and Necessity" by Jacques Monod. (I just finished rereading it for the
second time. And that proved quite fruitful.)
G.
On 8/8/17 12:44 PM, glen ☣ wrote:
I'm not sure how Asimov intended them. But the three laws is a trope that clearly shows
the inadequacy of deontological ethics. Rules are fine as far as they go. But they
don't go very far. We can see this even in the foundations of mathematics, the
unification of physics, and polyphenism/robustness in biology. Von Neumann (Burks) said
it best when he said: "But in the complicated parts of formal logic it is always one
order of magnitude harder to tell what an object can do than to produce the object."
Or, if you don't like that, you can see the same perspective in his iterative
construction of sets as an alternative to the classical conception.
The point being that reality, traditionally, has shown more expressiveness than
any of our rule sets.
There are ways to handle the mismatch in expressivity between reality versus
our rule sets. Stochasticity is the measure of the extent to which a rule set
matches a set of patterns. But Grant's right to qualify that with evolution,
not because of the way evolution is stochastic, but because evolution requires
a unit to regularly (or sporadically) sync with its environment.
An AI (or a rule-obsessed human) that sprouts fully formed from Zeus' head will
*always* fail. It's guaranteed to fail because syncing with the environment
isn't *built in*. The sync isn't part of the AI's onto- or phylo-geny.
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