From: Robert J. Bradbury (bradbury@aeiveos.com)
Date: Wed Jul 07 1999 - 16:07:00 MDT
> Natasha Vita-More <natasha@natasha.cc> wrote:
>
> My initial comment was based on the fact that I grow not only tired, but
> weary of historical accounts focusing on any one type of thinking and/or
> contribution to cultural advances. I think it is important to recognize
> that ideas within the culture stem from many sources. Some of these
> sources are more subtle than others, yet just as poignant. Ignoring this
> is not a fair and complete account of our branching tree, nor its roots.
>
> I'm more interested in the quality and "rounded" (no pun intended)
> influence of meme breeders. By rounded I am referring to the scope of the
> breeder and all the areas of thought and ideas that affect our lives.
Here we get into the thick of it. I'm going to take what I think
you are saying and attempt to put it in my frame of refference.
Presumably, concrete "constructions" and memes (have historically)
survived/florished/become extinct on the basis of criteria to which
little conscious thought has been devoted. [Fundamentally were they
successful in a [local] environment!]
I am an "optimalist". I've devoted years of my life to determining
how one gets "optimal" performance (according to the rigid criteria
in computer science of space & time) from a computer program.
I will freely admit that this approach may not be the best to use
to evaluate things derived from other frames of reference.
Often I may not even be able to see the frame of reference --
I can see the surface of the iceburg, but not know what is
under the water. Nature uses a very simple, and from my
frame of reference, sub-optimal selection criteria, namely
does it survive & prosper. It in no way has to be optimal for
nature to accept it. In some cases surviving & prospering may require
that you mutate most quickly, in other cases it may require that
you undertake heroic efforts to preserve a genome in its "original" state.
(Contrasting for example E. coli that have a relatively high mutation
rate with Deinococcus radiodurans which has a very low mutation rate).
Both of these (because they are opposites) cannot be "optimal"
excepting from the frame of reference "it works" in the local environment.
[Interestingly enough, Nature has built into E. coli, yeast
*and* humans the enzymes for both low and high mutation rates...]
Nature's process of operating blindfolded with her/his/its hands
tied behind its back selecting something that merely "works" may fail
in a very gross fashion in the light of a "consciousness" frame of
reference. The example that comes to mind is the choice of
"iron" as an oxygen carrier in hemoglobin (to provide the energy
we need for metabolism), when iron (in conjunction with oxygen)
may ultimately result in free radical production that destroys our
genetic program (causing cancer and some aspects of aging). Now, if
you were "consciously" designing a system, *would* you select
a feature that caused the system's self-destruction? If you
were creating memes, would you create memes that erased themselves?
In a selection system it would be something that removed the process
by which or the criteria on which the selections are based.
(My mind is really stretched here!)
Even more importantly, how is it possible when designing a system
(or memes) to know whether or not one is excluding design possibilities
that may be *more* optimal? A "better" design may succeed in the
environment of natural selection, but that in no way guarantees
that such a design is in any way the "best". The "optimal" design
(or meme) may fail because it is not close enough to existing
designs/memes to be properly evaluated. In Nature, that doesn't
happen very often because it is usually taking small incremental
steps. Humans on the other hand can take things that are
extrordinarily unrelated to each other and jam them together.
Most of the time this produces garbage but sometimes it doesn't.
But in those situations where we "think" what has been produced
is garbage, do we have any way of being certain that we have
the proper frame of reference to evaluate it? In other words, the
frame of reference required to properly evaluate a new design/meme
may effectively be in a hyper-dimension that is outside of the
dimensions in which the creation and evaluation normally occurs.
This type of thinking leads to my perspective that actions that
promote the increase of diversity and the survival of memes of
diverse derivations seems to be a good strategy. It is a
pitiful approach to increasing our dimensionality, but
it may be one of the few we currently have.
All of that said, the SETI@home meme is still garbage,
even though it appears to be remarkably successful.
Robert
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