[HN Gopher] Autopoietic Networks
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       Autopoietic Networks
        
       Author : Fibra
       Score  : 45 points
       Date   : 2024-11-21 21:29 UTC (1 days ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (gbragafibra.github.io)
 (TXT) w3m dump (gbragafibra.github.io)
        
       | gatane wrote:
       | Autopoiesis.
       | 
       | That word alone brings me back to systems engineering, and how
       | everything was "like a biological cell" in modern practice.
        
       | jaaron wrote:
       | Reminds me of:
       | 
       | https://distill.pub/2020/growing-ca/
       | 
       | "Differentiable Model of Morphogenesis"
        
       | for_i_in_range wrote:
       | Niklas Luhmann's systems theory rests on autopoiesis.
        
       | piombisallow wrote:
       | This isn't really a network no? Just a 2D grid? Or am I missing
       | something.
        
         | fjkdlsjflkds wrote:
         | Each cell of the 2D grid (or "neuron") is connected to (and
         | updated as a function of) its immediate neighbours, which makes
         | it a network/graph.
        
       | ratedgene wrote:
       | Love the word "Autopoietic", nobody really knows about it and any
       | text that uses it for sure will capture my interest.
       | 
       | I've first thought of this within the concept of self-assembling
       | autonomous agents in 2016. Good times dreaming about a future
       | where AI permeates every facet our lives.
        
         | block_dagger wrote:
         | Having AI permeate _every_ facet of life seems horrifying to
         | me.
        
           | NitpickLawyer wrote:
           | May I ask why? I'm sincerely asking, no intention of flaming
           | or trolling.
           | 
           | I think we're at a point where "online" stuff already
           | permeates every facet of our lives. And many of these systems
           | already employ "AI" (for very limited definitions of AI) at
           | every step. You search based on embedding and language
           | models. You get ads based on graph theory. You see friend's
           | posts based on this. You get approved for a loan based on
           | "AI", hell even some legal cases are handled by extremely
           | badly implemented "AI" systems, and so on and so on.
           | 
           | I feel we're slowly approaching a phase where we could get
           | that "sci-fi" like "personal assistant" that maybe can have
           | access to all of our data, and can "act" in our best
           | interests. Maybe when our data is considered, the "AI"
           | assistant could have a say. Maybe it gets to decide when and
           | how to share stuff. Maybe it gets access to the underlying
           | algorithms and decides when and where to "agree" or "accept"
           | our data being used for the average / median interest.
           | 
           | It seems plenty of systems already use that data in day-to-
           | day life. I'm looking forward to having systems where the
           | good parts can continue while the concerning parts (control
           | over data, control over algorithms) is somehow limited. It's
           | probably too much for a human, but I can see how we could all
           | have "agents" that follow some of our interests and have a
           | say in the process. It certainly seems closer than "sci-fi",
           | closer than two decades ago.
        
       | DiscourseFan wrote:
       | Let return to Kant's third antinomy.
       | 
       | It is both possible that all actions are fully freely determined
       | AND that everything moves with mechanical necessity.
       | 
       | Poeisis (or _auto_ poiesis) in its model assumes that the natal
       | moment is BOTH freely determined (created _out of itself_ ) and
       | necessary (created in a _chain of effects_ ). But this makes a
       | fairly large, self-contradictory claim about production.
       | 
       | To paraphrase Nathaniel Mackey, there is always some inistent
       | priority behind every natal occasion; but it comes _within the
       | expression itself_ and then masks its own conditions of
       | possibility, so that what happened turns out to have been
       | _happening_. And what is it that's happening is concrete insofar
       | as it can be _determined_ by its natality, but not _given_ by it,
       | and certainly any claim of autopoesis stakes itself on the
       | latter: that it stands as its own proof.
        
         | Fibra wrote:
         | Perhaps you're already aware of it, but this paper by Andreas
         | Weber and Francisco Varela "Life after Kant: Natural purposes
         | and the autopoietic foundations of biological individuality"
         | talks about this. Of special interest is the section 3.4 which
         | more or less summarizes autopoiesis while taking into account
         | Kant's intrinsic teleology.
        
       | davi wrote:
       | In summer of 1997 I interned at the Santa Fe Institute. Barry
       | McMullin was there as well, using swarm (an early cellular
       | automata library) to reimplement and extend the original
       | autopoiesis algorithm. His report:
       | https://www.santafe.edu/research/results/working-papers/comp...
       | 
       | And a later study by him:
       | https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/15245628/
        
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