YES, WE ALL ARE ROBOTS
I think I see something critical and essential to the discussion in the concept of emergence. From my viewpoint there is a direct, physical causality that links me in this present moment all the way back to the Big Bang. I am at the end of a chain of successful "changes" in the physical world that go all the way back through species to and through the first organic single-celled being which all brains agree to call living into the changes that preceded that arrangement. Just because different arrangements of matter act in ways that seem different (emergent) from what came before, does not mean that the chain of physical causality has been broken.
There is a past vision I have had when I imagined myself as not different from a mountain, a tree or an atom but as just a collection of non-living chemical and electrical impulses organized so as to act in such a way as to be called "life-like" by all the physical brains interacting with and perceiving this arrangement of atoms. The body which is me is just a collection of inorganic materials, all arranged and working to represent the affect of what other brains have agreed to define as "life" and "thought". In short, there is no such thing as "life". Life is completely and totally material, turtles all the way down. That vision hit me quite strongly, early on, when I was just starting to explore this fascinating world of evolutionary psychology. I know almost for sure that this act of imagination came to me as I was reading Consciousness Explained by Daniel Dennett in the passages where he explains robotic behavior so as one can interpret is as "conscious" behavior, indicating "life". I believe that that moment of imagination has kept me pretty close to a physical explanation of life all this long time since. Perhaps that is the distinction that keeps some of us passing in the dark.
If nothing else, my vision of reality eliminates the difficulty of defining and explaining the emergence of life, since life itself is just a definition for a certain arrangement of materials in the material Universe.
Showing posts with label artificial life. Show all posts
Showing posts with label artificial life. Show all posts
Thursday, May 13, 2010
Sunday, May 04, 2008
FINDINGS
“Findings” is a feature on the last page of Harper’s Magazine. It’s a long list of facts and figures gleaned from the multitudinous worlds of science. I selected but a few. One disturbing thing about the format is that, after reading so many closely spaced facts, piled atop one another, I felt that the substance, brought in from such a wide range of topics, takes on a comical air. Do ya s’pose they meant to do that? By the way, I made a few observations of my own.
[CUT]
A team of scientists at Newcastle University created human embryos by combining the genetic material of one man and two women [called a genage a trois], another team of scientists at Newcastle University discovered how to create sperm from the bone-marrow cells of women, and Brazilian scientists created egg cells from the embryonic stem cells of male mice. American scientists artificially reproduced the DNA of a venereal-disease bacterium and expected to use the technique to create artificial life within ten years. [Look out gods!]
Female yellow baboons with supportive fathers were observed to reach menarche earlier, to begin having children earlier, and to have more children than female baboons whose fathers were not involved in their lives. [They also were found be most sympatico with Blackwater employees].
It was determined that lonely people are more likely to anthropomorphize animals [and suck their thumbs]. Italian doctors found high testosterone levels in lovestruck women and low testosterone levels in lovestruck men… [and that they tended to make pets of each other].
Two studies concluded that biofuels are worse for global warming than conventional petroleum fuels; one of the studies calculated that harvesting grain for fuel creates 93 times more carbon emissions than are saved by the production of cleaner fuel.
Researchers found that physical scientists are less likely to believe in God than social scientists, that traditional religious beliefs make people more likely to forgive [everyone but atheists], and that temporary, self-absorbed sadness makes people spend money extravagantly [and masturbate in front of mirrors].
People who volunteer to take part in psychology experiments were found to be more mentally stable than those who do not volunteer. Young mice separated from their mothers and fed junk food experience less stress than orphan mice who are fed healthy food. [They also gain weight faster then thumb suckers.] Also engineers were said to be at greater risk of becoming terrorists [than field mice]. A survey determined that children universally dislike clown wallpaper and find it "frightening" and "unknowable." [Bush is their most frightening clown.] Scientists hoped to vibrate viruses to death [and get a little thrill of their own, rubbing against the vibrating machines].
[PASTE]
“Findings” is a feature on the last page of Harper’s Magazine. It’s a long list of facts and figures gleaned from the multitudinous worlds of science. I selected but a few. One disturbing thing about the format is that, after reading so many closely spaced facts, piled atop one another, I felt that the substance, brought in from such a wide range of topics, takes on a comical air. Do ya s’pose they meant to do that? By the way, I made a few observations of my own.
[CUT]
A team of scientists at Newcastle University created human embryos by combining the genetic material of one man and two women [called a genage a trois], another team of scientists at Newcastle University discovered how to create sperm from the bone-marrow cells of women, and Brazilian scientists created egg cells from the embryonic stem cells of male mice. American scientists artificially reproduced the DNA of a venereal-disease bacterium and expected to use the technique to create artificial life within ten years. [Look out gods!]
Female yellow baboons with supportive fathers were observed to reach menarche earlier, to begin having children earlier, and to have more children than female baboons whose fathers were not involved in their lives. [They also were found be most sympatico with Blackwater employees].
It was determined that lonely people are more likely to anthropomorphize animals [and suck their thumbs]. Italian doctors found high testosterone levels in lovestruck women and low testosterone levels in lovestruck men… [and that they tended to make pets of each other].
Two studies concluded that biofuels are worse for global warming than conventional petroleum fuels; one of the studies calculated that harvesting grain for fuel creates 93 times more carbon emissions than are saved by the production of cleaner fuel.
Researchers found that physical scientists are less likely to believe in God than social scientists, that traditional religious beliefs make people more likely to forgive [everyone but atheists], and that temporary, self-absorbed sadness makes people spend money extravagantly [and masturbate in front of mirrors].
People who volunteer to take part in psychology experiments were found to be more mentally stable than those who do not volunteer. Young mice separated from their mothers and fed junk food experience less stress than orphan mice who are fed healthy food. [They also gain weight faster then thumb suckers.] Also engineers were said to be at greater risk of becoming terrorists [than field mice]. A survey determined that children universally dislike clown wallpaper and find it "frightening" and "unknowable." [Bush is their most frightening clown.] Scientists hoped to vibrate viruses to death [and get a little thrill of their own, rubbing against the vibrating machines].
[PASTE]
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