-----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- Hash: SHA1 Marcus G. Daniels on 01/08/2008 12:46 PM: > Fine, and I fully support the deconstruction of theory prior to using it!
That's the spirit! > In what way does Genetic Programming not provide an efficient cause? > Having a stochastic aspect, and the possibility to define new > instructions, it seems to me to provide an escape from anything a human > might have intended. This learning algorithm could escape the > constraints of being a `tool' by being used in a robot with similar > senses as ours and interacting with the conditions of the `real' world. Well, correct me if I'm wrong, but GP currently requires a human to set up the objective function. And even in the cases where a system is created so that the objective function is dynamically (and/or implicitly) evolved, my suspicion is that the GP would soon find a computational exploit that would result in either an infinite loop (and/or deadlock), crash, or some sort of "exception". As for the robot, you're just begging the question. A robot is a tool built and programmed by us. Or, positing a regression to where we are currently, a robot_N that is built by robot_(N-1), that is built by robot_(N-2), ..., is built by a living system. RR's position might be that such a chain from 1 .. N is more fragile than a lineage of living systems. Namely, the efficient cause (humans in this case) cannot be removed even with a large but finite N _because_ machines are not closed to efficient cause. Whether or not RR's rhetoric is _sound_ is one thing. We can prove his rhetoric unsound by creating such a robot lineage. But to prove his rhetoric invalid, we'll have to show that computation is not fragile to ambiguity. And as far as I can tell, such a proof (that RR's rhetoric is invalid) would involve a constructive proof that sets up a holarchy of formal systems that, together, are not fragile in the way GP systems are fragile. Somehow we would have to build a set of (sufficiently complicated, as in modern mathematics) formal systems and prove ([meta-]mathematically) that this set is robust to ambiguity. I.e. it will never go into an infinite (null) loop, crash, or trigger some exception. Of course, we could take the _easier_ tack and point out a technical flaw in RR's rhetoric (as the largely ineffective criticism of Penrose's argument does). My choice for such a cheap shot criticism lies at the heart of "closure to efficient cause". And my criticism is basically that nothing is really closed to efficient cause. Everything is embedded in a dynamically generated and evolving goo that is holistically dependent on everything else in the goo. But even if such cheap shots are successful in getting people to ignore RR, it still doesn't make any progress on RR's main question: "can we devise better formalisms that more accurately describe living systems?" - -- glen e. p. ropella, 971-219-3846, http://tempusdictum.com We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. -- E.O. Wilson -----BEGIN PGP SIGNATURE----- Version: GnuPG v1.4.6 (GNU/Linux) Comment: Using GnuPG with Mozilla - http://enigmail.mozdev.org iD8DBQFHg+xkZeB+vOTnLkoRApPWAKCgotysX3Ooh36zeYj7Ipg4Mm59hACdFX+x krJqxKFwyGGc8q99ePPb9X8= =c1fa -----END PGP SIGNATURE----- ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
