copy yourself ?
jan ziak
ziakjan at host.sk
Thu May 22 23:51:46 UTC 2003
On Thu, 22 May 2003 14:43:41 -0700, Nevin Pratt wrote
> jan ziak wrote:
>
> > hi. i would like to ask whether some squeaker has ever seen an object
> > which is capable of copying itself. for example, i have a glass in
> > front of me - certainly an object - but i have never seen any glass
> > copying itself in front of me when i say "copy yourself" to it. in
> > contrary, i have only seen people or machines capable of copying a glass.
>
> Don't limit your imagination based on the current bounds of science.
> We currently have a myriad of tangible products that, at one time,
> were completely inanimate, but because of increasingly embedded
> processors, are no longer so. Think books, fridges, appliances,
> etc., for examples. So, what was science fiction yesterday is often
> now everyday reality.
>
it depends on how you define "replicate itself". i define it in a way which
leads me to say that the above paragraph is false. there will not exist such
books, fridges or what ever never. but my opinion is a matter of how i define
the term "to replicate itself". no living creature is a closed system, on the
contrary, it is an open system interacting with its environment.
i define "capable of self replication" like this: let's have an intelligent
glass which knows how to make glasses with the same shape as is its shape.
the intelligent glass has a "glass making" logic attached to it. i personally
do not attribute the capabilities of that logic to the glass which it
attached to it - they are distinct objects to me: the glass as such (without
the logic) is incapable of self-replication, it's a stupid glass. your
opinion, i think, is that when i attach the glass-making logic to this stupid
glass, then you define the resulting composition as self-replicating.
i DO NOT define the resulting composition as self-replicating. for me it is
just a glass incidentially attached to a machine which makes the same glasses
as the one which it is attached to. thus, the glass itself, any glass, is
incapable of self-replication by this definition.
> Hence, the fact that currently a common glass is incapable of
> copying itself is completely irrelevent.
>
> As to your suggestion that "wouldn't it be more rational to have
> objects capable of constructing copies of objects?", that seems to
> me to be an orthogonal question to whether or not the receiver can
> or should be able to create a valid copy of itself. Both concepts
> could both be true simultaneously, both be false simultaneously, or
> one true and the other false, independently.
>
i agree
> Nevin
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