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Aren't humans also differentiated from machines in that the latter are designed, while humans are not designed? Machines are just an expression of humans' exte

• joeyo 17y ago
  Is that actually a quantifiable distinction? Does how something is constructed have any affect on it's properties? (assuming equivalent precision of the tools involved) Building a car by hand versus building one with a modern robotic assembly line both yield the same output.
  • joubert 17y ago
    Construction implies design. Evolved entities (read: complex entities) are not designed.
    • joeyo 17y ago
      Ok, but how is a constructed object and a ... (randomly? naturally? what ever word you want to use) evolved object quantitatively different? One could follow all the steps involved in getting a human from his evolutionary ancestor to his current state by using a pair of magic tweezers to make each mutation in the genome happen at the right time and in the right way. Could you tell the difference based on the result?
      • joubert 17y ago
        Yes, you can easily tell the difference between entities that have evolved by natural selection, and constructed entities. (BTW, mutation is random, but evolution is not a random process). Two example quantitative differences (although, I'm not sure why the specific exclusion of qualitative differences): 1) The human eye, for example, has flaws (that are solved in other similarly evolved eyes) that an engineer laughs at - if you were building a human eye, you wouldn't make the same "mistakes". The deviation from the "better" version is measurable. 2) Evolved entities exist because of procreation. And their only reason for existence is to assist genetic material to replicate. Constructed objects reproduce exactly 0 times and have 0 genetic (or other replicator material).
        • wensing 17y ago
          The human eye, for example, has flaws (that are solved in other similarly evolved eyes) that an engineer laughs at What are those flaws, if you happen to know? I'm curious.
          • joeyo 17y ago
            An example of something that joubert is referring to is the fact that photoreceptors (rods and cones) in the human eye are actually located behind the retinal ganglial cells, nerve fibers, and capillaries. So light has to pass through a layer of tissue before being detected. One consequence of this is the blind spot. An engineer would probably try a different ordering.
          • joubert 17y ago
            In his 1986 book, The Blind Watchmaker, Dawkins comments: Any engineer would naturally assume that the photocells would point towards the light, with their wires leading backwards towards the brain. He would laugh at any suggestion that the photocells might point away, from the light, with their wires departing on the side nearest the light. Yet this is exactly what happens in all vertebrate retinas. Each photocell is, in effect, wired in backwards, with its wire sticking out on the side nearest the light. The wire has to travel over the surface of the retina to a point where it dives through a hole in the retina (the so-called "blind spot") to join the optic nerve. This means that the light, instead of being granted an unrestricted passage to the photocells, has to pass through a forest of connecting wires, presumably suffering at least some attenuation and distortion (actually, probably not much but, still, it is the principle of the thing that would offend any tidy-minded engineer). I don't know the exact explanation for this strange state of affairs. The relevant period of evolution is so long ago.
            • gaius 17y ago
              You often come across odd stuff like this in machinery. The usual reason is that it made fabrication (or access for repair) easier. Engineering is all about tradeoffs, the "right" design is just one of them.
            • 17y ago
• netsp 17y ago
  The more I think and learn about evolution as something abstract (IE something that can exist in principle only, happens to be embodied in biology and could be embodied elsewhere), the more I think that evolution is creation. At the very least it is so similar to "creativity" that any discussion on the topic would probably quickly degrade to boring semantic argument. From this I think there are two potentially interesting products: - Evolution by natural selection may be usable as an engine of machine consciousness. Some variant of evolution may be at the core of our own consciousness. - Evolution by natural selection is a mechanical process that we can "take apart" and understand relatively easily. It also happens to be the engine of the process that created species. Happens to be. Even if the evolution of species had never happened, evolution would still exist in abstract. This put it in very good position to be discovered. Perhaps there are equally powerful concepts waiting to be discovered. Perhaps one of them is at the core of our own creativity. Perhaps one of them can be at the core of machine consciousness.
  • billswift 17y ago
    Eliezer made what I think was a similar point in posts at Overcoming Bias and Less Wrong; he also pointed out that evolution is really stupid. If we can understand the result of an evolved process, we should, using intelligence, be able to do much better. The key is understanding.