Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Path: utzoo!utgpu!watserv1!watdragon!violet!cpshelley
From: cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley)
Subject: Re: computer life?
Message-ID: <1991Feb26.213835.27074@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Keywords: Survival, instincts
Sender: daemon@watdragon.waterloo.edu (Owner of Many System Processes)
Organization: University of Waterloo
References: <8617@castle.ed.ac.uk> <1991Feb22.220125.20891@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <willdye.667540138@typhoon> <1791@svin02.info.win.tue.nl> <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: Tue, 26 Feb 1991 21:38:35 GMT
Lines: 33

In article <5375@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:
[...]
>
>But that shows the great joke in the attempts to "define life" that
>have appeared in this newsgroup.  Missing the whole point of how
>natural selection produces stuff.  The lesson should be, you can't
>define stuff, only words.  And then, as the above illustrates, the
>words you define may not have much to do with the stuff you intended
>them for.

So, it's all a language game eh?  Unfortunatly, all we can do on a
newsgroup is bandy mere words, as opposed to e-mailing each other
our newly created life-forms to show our points.  The only problem
I've noticed in the discussion to date is that posters are trying to
be all-encompassing rather than confining themselves to relevant
details (or showing why something new is relevant).  I think the
trouble is with the use of 'evolution', which has lead to dispute
over natural selection -- not the relevant process to apply to computer
engineering I would say.

More to the point of the original posting, why don't we leave the
process undefined, assume computers will constitute an intelligence
at some future point, and discuss how this could change our
relationship with our  science and technology, or anything else of
merit.

				Cam

--
      Cameron Shelley        | "Absurdity, n.  A statement of belief
cpshelley@violet.waterloo.edu|  manifestly inconsistent with one's own
    Davis Centre Rm 2136     |  opinion."
 Phone (519) 885-1211 x3390  |				Ambrose Bierce
