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Very interesting. The big idea, as I see it, is that intelligent systems try to maintain as many possible futures as they can - to keep their options open. Peo
by IsaacL 13y ago
Very interesting. The big idea, as I see it, is that intelligent systems try to maintain as many possible futures as they can - to keep their options open.
People often think that all living beings are driven by the need to reproduce, but the need to survive - to maintain homeostasis, to keep one's shape in a complex environment - is even more fundamental, I think.
If you extend the idea of living beings attempting to keep their own metabolism and structure fixed, you realise that if they have the capability, they'll also try and keep their environment fixed.
- pjscott 13y agoThe need to reproduce is more fundamental, and there are plenty of examples in nature of animals sacrificing homeostasis in order to reproduce -- male black widow spiders, for example. It's obvious why this would be the case; that's how evolution works. Keeping your future options open is a nice heuristic, but it's not necessarily an end goal.
- snowwrestler 13y agoReproducing captures more future states than not reproducing, since it allows some of your collected information to extend past your death.
- Houshalter 13y agoYou can explain almost any process with this theory, and that's why it's useless. Trying to "capture more future states" is not the reason certain traits evolve, they evolve simply because they are more likely to survive and reproduce.
- snowwrestler 13y agoWhy any living thing reproduces at all is a much more fundamental question than e.g. why men have nipples or snakes don't have legs.
- Houshalter 13y agoBecause things that do reproduce quickly out-reproduce and out-compete things that don't.
- SittingDuck 13y agoNot exactly: there are things that work quite well with these ideas, and others don't. Check out my comments about "empowerment" further above for examples. Thus, the authors' proposals are emphatically not vacuous - but they are probably not that new, either, if I have properly understood what they are doing. Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the empowerment papers.
- mikecane 13y ago>>>The big idea, as I see it, is that intelligent systems try to maintain as many possible futures as they can - to keep their options open. Sounds both like the U.S. Constitution (which I've never considered an algorithm until now) and Nassim Taleb's idea of anti-fragility.