Hi Mike,
I see two ways to answer your question. One is along the lines that Jaron
Lanier has proposed - the idea of software interfaces that are fuzzy. So rather
than function calls that take a specific set of well defined arguments,
software components talk somehow in 'patterns' such that small errors can be
tolerated. While there would still be a kind of 'code' that executes, the
process of translating it to processor instructions would be much more highly
abstracted than any current high level language. I'm not sure I truly grokked
Lanier's concept, but it's clear that for it to work, this high-level pattern
idea would still need to somehow translate to instructions the processor can
execute.
The other way of answering this question is in terms of creating simulations of
things like brains that don't execute code. You model the parallelism in code
from which emerges the structures of interest. This is the A-Life approach that
I advocate.
But at bottom, a computer is a processor that executes instructions. Unless
you're talking about a radically different kind of computer... if so, care to
elaborate?
Terren
--- On Wed, 9/3/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
From: Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [agi] Recursive self-change: some definitions
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Date: Wednesday, September 3, 2008, 7:02 PM
Terren:My own
feeling is that computation is just the latest in a series of technical
metaphors that we apply in service of understanding how the universe works.
Like
the others before it, it captures some valuable aspects and leaves out others.
It leaves me wondering: what future metaphors will we apply to the universe,
ourselves, etc., that will make computation-as-metaphor seem as quaint as the
old clockworks analogies?
I think this is a good important point.
I've been groping confusedly here. It seems to me computation necessarily
involves the idea of using a code (?). But the nervous system seems to me
something capable of functioning without a code - directly being imprinted on
by
the world, and directly forming movements, (even if also involving complex
hierarchical processes), without any code. I've been wondering whether
computers
couldn't also be designed to function without a code in somewhat similar
fashion. Any thoughts or ideas of your own?
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