Hi Russell Standish Creating structure out of a random environment requires intelligence, the ability to make choices on one's own. Self-organization does not have that capacity, it merely follows a computer program. So self-organization programs cannot be alive, having no intelligence and no free will. In short, they have no self. Instead, they are slaved to a computer programmer.
Roger Clough, [email protected] 10/17/2012 "Forever is a long time, especially near the end." -Woody Allen ----- Receiving the following content ----- From: Russell Standish Receiver: everything-list Time: 2012-10-17, 02:07:16 Subject: Re: Computational Autopoetics 1 On Tue, Oct 16, 2012 at 03:39:18PM +0200, Bruno Marchal wrote: > > On 14 Oct 2012, at 23:27, Russell Standish wrote: > > >On Sun, Oct 14, 2012 at 04:44:11PM -0400, Roger Clough wrote: > >>"Computational Autopoetics" is a term I just coined to denote > >>applying basic concepts > >>of autopoetics to the field of comp. You mathematicians are free > >>to do it more justice > >>than I can. I cannot guarantee that the idea hasn't already been > >>exploited, but I have > >>seen no indication of that. > >> > >>The idea is this: that we borrow a basic characteristic of > >>autopoetics, namely that life is > >>essentially not a thing but the act of creation. This means that > >>we define > >>life as the creative act of generating structure from some input > >>data. By this > >>pramatic definition, it is not necessarily the structure that is > >>produced that is alive, but > >>life consists of the act of creating structure from assumedly > >>structureless input data. > >>Life is not a creation, but instead is the act of creation. > > > >So any self-organised system should be called alive then? Sand dunes, > >huricanes, stars, galaxies. Hey, we've just found ET! > > I am not sure a galaxy, or a sand dune has a "self", unlike a cell, > or a person. > You are, of course, correct that the self/other distinction is crucial to life (and also of evolution - there has to be a unit of selection - the replicator). I was responding initially to Roger's claim that life is the act of creating structure. Any self-organised system can do that. > The self is directly related to the Dx = "xx" trick, for me. The Dx=xx trick is about self-replication. Of course entities with a sense of the self/other distinction needn't replicate (eg certain robots). > > > > > > >Actually, I was just reading an interview with my old mate Charley > >Lineweaver in New Scientist, and he was saying the same thing :). > > > > > >> > >>If life is such a creative act rather than a creation, then it > >>seems to fit what > >>I have been postulating as the basic inseparable ingredients of > >>life: intelligence > >>and free will. > > > >I don't believe intelligence is required for creativity. Biological > >evolution is undeniably creative. > > Is life more creative than the Mandelbrot set?, or than any > "creative set" in the sense of Post (proved equivalent with Turing > universality)? > I would say yes. The Mandelbrot set is self-similar, isn't it, so the coarse-grained information content must be bounded, no matter how far you zoom in. Life, on the other hand, exhibits unbounded information through evolution, in contrast to all ALife simulations to date. I had a look at the Wikipedia entry on creative sets, and it didn't make much sense, alas. -- ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Prof Russell Standish Phone 0425 253119 (mobile) Principal, High Performance Coders Visiting Professor of Mathematics [email protected] University of New South Wales http://www.hpcoders.com.au ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected]. To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected]. For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en.
