From: Arets Paeglis (astronfo@gmail.com)
Date: Tue Oct 13 2009 - 16:40:47 MDT
In case of an ordinary program, this is actually quite accurate
prediction of its long-term operational flow; the point is, most
programs actually *are meant to* periodically or occassionally return
to some prior state (in practically any more complex case, to one of
many prior states, the choice depending on conditional branching).
Actually, not only ordinary programs or AIs, also present human minds
are (as far as my competence allows to state) systems with finite
number of operational states; what truly separates AIs and minds from
other programs, is that they are able to continuously and (in most
cases) autonomously update their data repertoir (either by generating
new knowledge from existing, or by receiving the input stream),
providing their algorithmical inner workings with new data. Thus,
although truly non-repetitive AND infinite algorithm is, most likely,
impossible, the operation of mind (either biological or cybernetic)
could be considered "pseudo-nonrepetitive" (i.e. if it returns to some
prior state, it, most likely does not by limitations of system but by
some kind of flow branching inside the algorithm) and
"pseudo-infinite" (with regard that, in physical terms, it will
operate only for a finitely long slice of time), as it would/should
not terminate while normal operational conditions are met.
On Wed, Oct 14, 2009 at 1:15 AM, Bradley Thomas <brad36@gmail.com> wrote:
> I'm not saying there necessarily has to be a cyclical pattern, I'm saying
> all real programs have to return to a prior state, or halt. If we add input
> to the program that is non-cyclic (for example, the digits of an irrational
> number) then I agree we can create programs that do not repeat with a
> cyclical pattern. But all real programs will still return to an exact prior
> state or halt. So real programs can only be regarded as not operating in an
> infinite loop by virtue of the fact that an external system (e.g. humans)
> snap it out of this loop with unpatterned input data. As I read it, this is
> pretty close to what JKC is saying.
>
>
> Brad Thomas
> www.bradleythomas.com
> Twitter @bradleymthomas, @instansa
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