Puzzling Gyros

[jporter]

Accusing J. Maynard Smith of equating life process with purely mechanical
processes through the notion of reverse engineering, I qouted him:

>>         ....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.

To which Andrew replies

>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'.

And I admit, unashamedly; I do put life on a pedestal. If life has a
purpose though, it's keeping it to itself. But if it doesn't, it's the best
damn act I've seen so far.

>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).

I'd say, "more power to you," but surely your design features would be
based on cutting edge nanotechnology, and thus preclude anything as gross
as cogs and gears!

>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.

Well, if the (the beings) in question were designed, then I would say they
were speaking the language of their designers, unless they had evolved
speech post-design, as an emergent phenomenon of their own, in which case,
who knows? Like at the end of Blade Runner- how do any of us really know
how much time we have left (let alone what's going on in somebody else's
head)?

I surmised:

>> 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.

to which Andrew responded:

>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.

Hardly my idea of engineering. My point was that Maynard Smith has
brilliantly moved the debate along by allowing us anti-Darwinists the
belief that our engineered products lack any "elan vital" but, he implies,
that's no stumbling block to creating life, since life, he would say, is
entirely derivable itself from inanimacy and the laws which govern
inanimacy, sans the elan. I agree, but that does not preclude something
wholly new and unexpected and unpredictable from having entered the
universe when life emerged. The fact that life may have been accidental
strengthens that possibility. I, like the rest of the animate side, would
love to have my cake and eat it. Make mine triple chocolate.

I continued

>
>> 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?

To which Andrew responded

>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.

I'm still hovering over the fence myself (sigh). And I'm not ready, just
yet, to discount a bit of secret "higher order" intergration.

>But note that Mexico's methods *do not* demonstrate the randomness of
>anything. Read more carefully!

You or Pynchon? I beg to differ with your interpretation, but why not wait
until we get there with the group read? The pace will ensure a careful
consideration.

>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.

I think you're asking rather, "what is random?" It is not a simple
question, Yes? Let's assume we're discussing the relationship between two
sequential events: Slothrop getting laid and a rocket strike. Clearly, not
all strikes are preceded by Slothrop scoring, Yes? But some are, No? And
every time that Slothrop scores a rocket's sure to follow....Maybe.

>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?

The fact that I'm here at all to attach significance or no, as the case may
be, is enough to rig the results. It's why rats always do better than naive
humans in dual lever Skinner Boxes with "randomly" varying reward
potentials between the levers: The rats rapidly stick to one favorite lever
and maximize reward, but the humans invariably "play hunches" and try to
guess when the change to lever "b" is coming. The rats always do a better
job of dealing with randomness.
But hey, that's the price you have to pay for having ESP!

Jody