Re: Risk vs. Payoff

From: Eugene Leitl (Eugene.Leitl@lrz.uni-muenchen.de)
Date: Thu May 10 2001 - 05:29:12 MDT


On Thu, 10 May 2001, Aleks Jakulin wrote:

> In these times of disposable consumer items, one must ask oneself

I greatly resent to be compared with disposable consumer items.

> whether it is cheaper to fix and patch, or to recycle. It's a simple
> question of cost, not a fundamental philosophical issue. I'm all for
> Lamarckism, if it is cheaper, and if it provides the level of
> invention offered by random ways of Darwinian optimization.

The chief point of the substrate change is that you can test-drive
modifications in the virtual sandbox, before hot-plugging them into
reality. Allow some brief shutdown for maintenance, otherwise you can
patch a live systems. Very difficult to do with monkeys.

> Death is recycling, and nothing is wrong with recycling. Do not be so

Nothing is wrong with recycling, unless you're the object being recycled.
This particular object will only be recycled under much kicking, and
screaming. Not even over my cold, hard body, if safely stashed away in a
dewar.

> fond of these worthless evolved phobias of death. The focus must be on
> life, and death is not the opposite of it, just another aspect of the
> optimization process.

Optimizations does not necessarly include extreme sanction. The first
patch to apply to the monkey platform is a more plastic outlook when the
age-related artifacts start to kick in.

Also, the world needs a great deal more young people to neutralize static
old people until said patch becomes widely available.



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