From: Don Klemencic (klemencc@sgi.net)
Date: Fri Feb 25 2000 - 22:21:40 MST
I posted this over a week ago as "re: top ten list" and it's gotten zero
response. Perhaps that obscure subject heading was a problem, so let me try
again. I'd like to here 'Yea' or 'Nay' on this, or even 'Mu':
There is a proposition that all creative processes have natural selection as
an underlying mechanism: 1. Mutation or a random information source external
to the system. 2. A progressive winnowing of the information for
compatibility or usefulness. 3. Amplification and combination of the
survivors to compete at a higher level. (I use 'natural selection' rather
than 'Darwinian process' because Darwin's view excluded, unnecessarily I
think, feedback from phenotype to genotype as the Lamarckian view allowed.)
This seems very compatible with a 'bottom up' view of mental organization,
such as in Marvin Minsky's book 'Society of Mind' or very recently, in the
article 'Swarm Smarts' in the March, 2000 issue of Scientific American. I
first came across the idea in Gregory Bateson's book 'Mind and Nature'. One
thing I remember from Bateson's book was a discussion of parthenogenesis:
hatching a frog egg by pricking it with a pin. He said that this was
necessary to break the symmetry of the egg-which side would the belly be
on?. The system cannot generate this information internally (technically it
would then not be 'information'). And creativity might be like that-whether
genetic or mental: to avoid getting in a rut, there may need to be a
continual inflow of new information, percolating from the bottom levels of
organization upward.
I was thinking of this while reading Eliezer Yudkowsky's Singularity
documents where he mentioned getting a 'creative spark' into his systems.
Could this be the parameter that must be taken into consideration?
I've only been on the list for a few months and this is my first substantive
post. I hope it generates some discussion.
Don Klemencic
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