Puzzling Gyros

[Andrew Dinn]

jporter writes:
> 
> While reading  John Maynard Smith's review of Daniel Dennett's:
> 
>  "Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life"
> 
> in the NY Review, 11/30/95, I noted a paragraph of possible interest to
> those foax here with some technical expertise....

>         I seem to remember that the V2 rocket had a gyroscope
>         puzzlingly connected to the fuel supply to the motors; surely,
>         one would think, it should be connected to the guidance system.
>         I leave it as an exercise to any readers who fancy themselves as
>         reverse engineers to work out why, if my memory is correct, it was
>         connected to the fuel supply.

> I'm still puzzling.

Guidance system? What does he think was the guidance system? The two
important factors in determining the final destination of the V2 were
the direction it was pointed in and the amount of time it was moving
under rocket propulsion. I believe that the gyro was used to determine
acceleration and thence via a relevant piece of double integrating
electronic circuitry distance travelled.  Once a preset distance had
been travelled the circuitry cut off the fuel supply - the notorious
Brennschluss, literally `burning cutoff' - leaving the rocket to
continue in `pure ballistic' mode. You don't need to read a commentary
to verify this. It is explained in GR itself.

> But because reverse engineering "works" as an
> explanatory method for both the products of a blind, random, non-teleologic
> evolution, and for those of human design, Smith equates the two processes:
> purposeful and purposeless. He thereby sets the theoretical stage for his
> real aim: the equation of all life processes with purely mechanical ones:

>         ....I thought about the two problems. Indeed, I have become
>         increasingly convinced that there is no way of telling the
>         difference between an evolved organism and an artifact designed
>         by an intelligent being. Thus imagine the first spacemen to land
>         on Mars are confronted by an object which appears to have sense
>         organs...and organs of locomotion...How will they know whether
>         it is an evolved organism, or a robot designed by an evolved
>         organism? Only, I think, by finding out where it came from, and
>         perhaps not even then.

This is hardly a big deal unless, as you seem to do, one places life
on a pedestal, conflating it with some peculiar notion of `purpose'.
What would you say if I bared my forearm and revealed a dipole switch
or opened my abdomen and showed you cogs and gears (call me Septimus).
The problem with Martians would not be whether they are evolved or
designed but whether their behaviour would be appropriately described
by the concepts we use to distinguish human behaviour. With current
robots it is clear which side of the murky grey line they lie since
they are at such an extreme. Other cases migth need a bit of ad hoc
sharpening. Really, the question of design or evolution is, for all
practical and philosophical purposes, far less interesting than the
one of how we can come to classify beings who (which) behave in
radically different ways to us. As Ludwit said `If a lion could speak
we would not understand it'. But we could maybe redefine `speak' in a
useful way once faced with promising looking lion behaviour.

> This, in effect, is not just reverse engineering, but a "reverse Turing
> Test" for the possiblity of a consciousness behind the design of life. In
> other words, if it is impossible to discriminate a difference- in method-
> between purposefully designed inanimate products, and the animate products
> of a blind, random, non-teleologic process, then there is no difference,
> and humans are, in theory at least, capable of engineering life forms.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, `in theory'. Of course we already can engineer life
forms by fucking and waiting the relevant gestation period. Your
amazement here seems to stem from the desire to have your cake and eat
it. You want to be able to produce something which acts so damn near
to human behaviour that the differences are either indistinguishable
or insignificant, but you also want the thing to be radically
different in some way. Is Eliza not good enough? Which features are
you going to make essential and which ones are allowed to vary?

Your `in theory' is very telling. What it shows is that you really
don't know what you are asking for except for some vague
characterisation of what you expect but you are ready, willing and
eager to be convinced when something turns up. It's as much a credo, a
statement of expectation and belief as anything else. Why? Because it
makes no difference whether one assents or disagrees with you until
someone comes up with an actual case in point and we can get down to
brass tacks.

> The origin of the first life form(s) in an inanimate universe remains
> misty. Cause and effect thinking seems to break down at that point. It
> becomes much like a skull session at "the White Visitation" attempting to
> ascertain the reason for the congruence of Slothrop's stars and the V2 hits
> in Pynchon's London. Mexico's methods demonstrate the randomness of the
> pattern, but could the secret of the relationship between Slothrop's penis
> and the guidance system of the rocket ever be revealed by reverse
> engineering?

Well, judging by the above specualtion I don't know if you would look
too out of place at the White Visitation. The real question is which
crowd - psy or psi.

But note that Mexico's methods *do not* demonstrate the randomness of
anything. Read more carefully! Mexico's `random variable' is as much a
metaphysical construct (conceit?) as anything else on offer. What
exactly is a random variable? (what even is a variable?). It's not a
simple question to answer and the answer transcends the strictly
mathematical.

And if you took a sequence of readings for some variable when (and
why) would you decide that you had taken enough readings to determine
that it was random or not? After all, according to the theory
(i.e. according to expectation) any sequence of N readings is just as
likely to occur as any other. So what do you conclude if you toss a
coin and get N heads in a row? And if you draw a conclusion one way or
the other what is the basis for it? Why do you take the presence of
this outcome as indicative of this or that conclusion? Does the
evidence inexorably draw you to the conclusion or do you inject a bit
of your own expectation by inferring after your own chosen fashion? To
put it another way, does your attaching a particular significance to
different outcomes not to some degree `rig' the result?

Think paranoid!  Think anti-paranoid!

Think paranoid!!  Think anti-paranoid!!


Andrew Dinn
-----------
And though Earthliness forget you,
To the stilled Earth say:  I flow.
To the rushing water speak:  I am.