> Similarly, in human physical life, there is a fairly rigid distinction
> between self and nonself. This is part of being a physical organism.
(Note
> that the immune system makes this distinction too -- one of the key
concepts
> in immunology is self/nonself discrimination!!) There are things that we
> directly sense and control (our arms and legs for instance), and things
> that we don't (trees, other people, the moon,...). This distinction is an
> important one for us to have. Even a mystic need to know that it's easier
> for him to wave his arm than to telekinetically alter the orbit of the
moon.
>
Ben:
I would point out that this distinction, as are many others, is not as clear
as we might think. The book on symbiosis points out that, in fact,
something more than 30% of the human body is other symbiotic organisms, such
as intestinal flora, skin mites, etc., and that even the cell is a symbiosis
of many once independent prokaryotic organisms. Even the human genome is a
collection of genetic material from what were once separate species!
Some of the symbiotic organisms in our body, in fact, play a role in the
immune system.
Thus, this "sense of self" and identity that you are discussing is, we may
find, much more amorphous than you think, and the boundary between self and
not-self much more fractal.
> However, we reify the self/nonself distinction beyond the point where it's
> useful. In fact there are many parts of ourselves that we control very
> poorly -- our romantic emotions, our digestive systems, etc. And there
are
> parts of the outside world ("other") that we are closer to than modern
> culture habitually admits -- nature, family, etc.
>
How does symbiosis have relevance to the quasi-Buddhist debate you and Kevin
are engaged in? On a simple level, it's a validation of the Novamente
design philosophy of combining separate entities together to generate a more
general, robust meta-entity. It seems evolution has used that strategy for
some billion years ... and it works! (So far . . . )
One another one of many levels, there is the idea that true AGI will not,
indeed, be a separate entity, but rather a symbiotic enhancement of the
human mind. It will provide perception, analysis, processing, learning
(copying), and all kinds of other functionalities that people have included
in intelligence, but the human part will still be a necessary component
providing meaning and stuff like that.
In short, silicon may achieve intelligence, but we'll -- or what comes after
us -- still have a role for biological minds to play to provide
consciousness. These are two different things, often confused in literature
but not to be confused in your work.
C. David Noziglia
Object Sciences Corporation
6359 Walker Lane, Alexandria, VA
(703) 253-1095
"What is true and what is not? Only God knows. And, maybe, America."
Dr. Khaled M. Batarfi, Special to Arab
News
"Just because something is obvious doesn't mean it's true."
--- Esmerelda Weatherwax, witch of Lancre
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