Russell Wallace wrote:
On Sun, Apr 27, 2008 at 6:08 PM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Certainly, the failure of the Biosphere experiment is evidence in your favor.
There, the scientists failed to predict basic high-level properties of
a pretty simple
closed ecosystem, based on their knowledge of the parts.
Indeed, naturally so. For that matter, we've been building aeroplanes
for a century now, and we still need to test new designs in wind
tunnel simulations.
But Biosphere 2 almost worked, impressively so given that it was the
first attempt, and the species were a large and complicated mixture
from a bunch of different ecologies; based on the information
successfully gathered by the experiment, a Biosphere 3 probably would
work. I think that's strong evidence that, even though complexity is
of course the norm, we still can successfully engineer complex
systems, as long as we accept a certain amount of trial and error is
part of the process.
It was no such evidence: Biosphere 2 had almsot nothing in the way of
complexity, compared with AGI systems, and it was controlled by trial
and error in such a way that .... it failed.
Hey, great example of how to run a science or engineering project.
Richard Loosemore
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agi
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