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> Biological organisms are machines. No, I think we're arguing two different things here. I don't mean machines in the sense of a deterministic mechanism, I me

by dsacco 12y ago

> Biological organisms are machines. No, I think we're arguing two different things here. I don't mean machines in the sense of a deterministic mechanism, I mean machines in the sense of a non-biological computer. Machines do not have generations. Machines are not alive. I can simplify this: we do not yet have computers which are alive, thus they fundamentally do not operate the same way humans do in terms of evolution. This circles back to what I said about leaving machines alone to develop in an evolutionary sense - they won't, they'll die. Machines do not yet improve themselves after a certain "age" of maturation. The natural/artificial divide is not unsound, because artificial means something which is created by a human, and natural means something which is not. There are definitions of these terms and philosophical schools of thought that make this divide unsound, but colloquially, I don't mean those in this context. Here is the basic point I'm trying to make - human beings arose naturally with no apparent intelligence to guide them into existence. Machines did not do so. You can argue they did because "everything is natural", but that's not my point here. They are fundamentally different from human beings and only exist because human beings existed first. You can't compare the relationship between an Intelligent Design and human species and the relationship between machines and humans for this reason because they are the opposite. Humans apparently have no guiding force that opted to create them or guide their existence, whereas machines do - us. That is what I mean by natural. I think an intelligence can arise naturally, but only if it follows the natural conduits that would form conventional intelligence, which is via biological organisms. In order to replicate what happened through evolution using a completely different "container" if you will, you'd need to be able to understand intelligence completely, or at least enough to implement it. Ultimately, intelligence never arises from non-organic components (at least not on Earth). To make it do so where it would not ordinarily happen is what I mean by artificial versus natural. And to do that is to essentially reverse-engineer intelligence itself, which would require understanding it. I apologize if I'm still not being clear, but does this make my point any better?

dragonwriter 12y ago
You keep positing invalid distinction between biological and otger mechanisms. There is nothing limiting generations to biological mechanisms. Consider von Neumann's universal constructors or, for purely software mechanisms, the agents within Avida. We do, in fact, now have machines -- in the software sense -- that have all features necessary for Darwinian evolution to operate. We don't yet have that for hardware devices, but we're fairly close, and we certainly don't need to understand intelligence do build such self-replicating hardware/software systems (though the universality of computation suggests we don't need hardware/software systems, since anything they can exhibit, pure software systems can as well.) The problem isn't that you haven't explained yourself well, it's that your argument rests on a fundamental distinction between natural biological organisms and all other machines which does not exist.
- p1esk 12y ago
  I think you have to address the parent's argument that machines are not "alive", while biological organisms are. Of course, first we need to define "alive", and then we should ask: can we build something that will be "alive"? Do you consider the entities in Avida simulation to be alive? How about biological vs computer viruses? Is there a fundamental difference between them? If we simulate a biological organism on a atomic level, together with its immediate environment, so that it behaves exactly like its real-world counterpart would, do we call it "alive"?

by dsacco 12y ago

dragonwriter 12y ago

You keep positing invalid distinction between biological and otger mechanisms. There is nothing limiting generations to biological mechanisms. Consider von Neumann's universal constructors or, for purely software mechanisms, the agents within Avida. We do, in fact, now have machines -- in the software sense -- that have all features necessary for Darwinian evolution to operate. We don't yet have that for hardware devices, but we're fairly close, and we certainly don't need to understand intelligence do build such self-replicating hardware/software systems (though the universality of computation suggests we don't need hardware/software systems, since anything they can exhibit, pure software systems can as well.) The problem isn't that you haven't explained yourself well, it's that your argument rests on a fundamental distinction between natural biological organisms and all other machines which does not exist.

p1esk 12y ago
I think you have to address the parent's argument that machines are not "alive", while biological organisms are. Of course, first we need to define "alive", and then we should ask: can we build something that will be "alive"? Do you consider the entities in Avida simulation to be alive? How about biological vs computer viruses? Is there a fundamental difference between them? If we simulate a biological organism on a atomic level, together with its immediate environment, so that it behaves exactly like its real-world counterpart would, do we call it "alive"?