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- Path: sparky!uunet!news.claremont.edu!nntp-server.caltech.edu!SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU!LYDICK
- From: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU (Speaker-to-Minerals)
- Newsgroups: alt.callahans
- Subject: Re: science, religion, and spirituality
- Date: 23 Nov 1992 20:24:35 GMT
- Organization: HST Wide Field/Planetary Camera
- Lines: 29
- Distribution: world
- Message-ID: <1erem3INNst4@gap.caltech.edu>
- References: <1992Nov22.070835.10836@midway.uchicago.edu> <1992Nov22.113007.17652@midway.uchicago.edu> <1eogbrINNe08@gap.caltech.edu>,<1992Nov22.190534.27240@midway.uchicago.edu>
- Reply-To: lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU
- NNTP-Posting-Host: sol1.gps.caltech.edu
-
- In article <1992Nov22.190534.27240@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
- =In article <1eogbrINNe08@gap.caltech.edu> lydick@SOL1.GPS.CALTECH.EDU writes:
- =>In article <1992Nov22.113007.17652@midway.uchicago.edu>, mss2@quads.uchicago.edu (Michael S. Schiffer) writes:
- =
- =>= "The operation, no. But I'll point out that the _purpose_ of
- =>=the program quite certainly and provably _does_ come from outside of
- =>=the computer.
- =
- =>Actually, unless I'm mistaken, some AI researchers at Stanford have managed to
- =>get something going that appears to choose its own purpose, using some sort of
- =>evolutionary setup. I.e., the (self-modifying) programs were given no
- =>"purpose" by the programmers, they were simply started up. Those that survived
- =>showed behavior which, in humans, we'd associate with "purpose." So it appears
- =>that "purpose" may be an emergent property that doesn't require that big father
- =>figure in the sky for its existence.
- =
- = "Except that one purpose of the programs you gave is that some
- =scientists at Stanford wanted to see what would happen if they created
- =a certain environment for self-modifying programs. If one of those
- =programs became self-aware and asked, `Why am I here?' one answer would
- =be `because the Computer Scientists wanted to see what would happen if
- =they created a system with such-and-such constraints.' And that's a
- =purpose external to the sytem."
-
- Perhaps. But the AI people (some of them anyway) were rather surprised when
- the programs started acting this way. Is it possible to give something a
- purpose accidentally? Actually, since the AI people were hoping that SOMETHING
- interesting would happen, I suppose one could say they did this, to use an
- idiom "accidentally on purpose."
-
