2008/9/5 Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > MT:By contrast, all deterministic/programmed machines and computers are >> >> guaranteed to complete any task they begin. > > Will:If only such could be guaranteed! We would never have system hangs, > dead locks. Even if it could be made so, computer systems would not > always want to do so. > > Will, > > That's a legalistic, not a valid objection, (although heartfelt!).In the > above case, the computer is guaranteed to hang - and it does, strictly, > complete its task.
Not necessarily, the task could be interrupted at that process stopped or paused indefinately. > What's happened is that you have had imperfect knowledge of the program's > operations. Had you known more, you would have known that it would hang. If it hung because of mult-process issues, you would need perfect knowledge of the environment to know the possible timing issues as well. > Were your computer like a human mind, it would have been able to say (as > you/we all do) - "well if that part of the problem is going to be difficult, > I'll ignore it" or.. "I'll just make up an answer..". or "by God I'll keep > trying other ways until I do solve this.." or... "..zzzzzzzz" or ... > Computers, currently, aren't free thinkers. > Computers aren't free thinkers, but it does not follow from an inability to switch, cancel, pause and restart or modify tasks. All of which they can do admirably. They just don't tend to do so, because they aren't smart enough (and cannot change themselves to be so) to know when it might be appropriate for what they are trying to do, so it is left up to the human operator to do so. I'm very interested in computers that self-maintain, that is reduce (or eliminate) the need for a human to be in the loop or know much about the internal workings of the computer. However it doesn't need a vastly different computing paradigm it just needs a different way of thinking about the systems. E.g. how can you design a system that does not need a human around to fix mistakes, upgrade it or maintain it in general. As they change their own system I will not know what they are going to do, because they can get information from the environment about how to act. This will me it a 'free thinker' of sorts. Whether it will be enough to get what you want, is an empirical matter, as far as I am concerned. Will ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
