Do computers "try"?

[Nick Thompson]

Robert,

Sorry about the spamfascist.

What this all suggests is that simulations are "models", which is not surprising to me, but it seems to me that SOMEBODY has made a firm distinction between simulations and models.  To me, a model is used anytime somebody uses a familiar process or object as metaphor for another less well understood process or object.   All good models are wrong in obvious ways, not wrong in obvious ways, and possibly right in interesting ways, which is the source of their heurism.  If one simulates the audience in a crowded theatre just after the word "fire" is shouted as a set of agents with very few rules, then the MODEL implies that human agents under that circumstance are motivated by the same small number of rules.  Now as heurism, this is fine.  As logic, it of course stinks, because it is an example of affirming the consequent.... an infinity of mechanism could after all arrive at this same result.  

Where am I going here.  Oh.  It is to say that perhaps the question of when is a simulation actually the thing simulated is the same as the question when is the metaphor actually the same as the thing to which the metaphor is made.  

Hmmmm.  That didn't help much, did it.  

Anyway, thanks for your comment.

Nick

Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
[hidden email]


----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Holmes
To: [hidden email];The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group
Sent: 11/9/2004 4:22:54 PM
Subject: RE: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?


Y'know this kind of reminds me of that Jorge Luis Borges story about the 'ideal' map that ends up being as big as the thing it is mapping (and still isn't as good as the real thing). in the same way that 'good' cartography is all about deciding what not to represent, 'good' simulation is all about deciding what not to simulate. And if a simulation is always less than the thing it simulates, that suggests it can't ever be the thing it simulates.

Robert (or a reasonable simulacrum thereof)





From: Nicholas Thompson [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Tuesday, November 09, 2004 1:32 PM
To: Friam
Subject: [FRIAM] Do computers "try"?


All,

I have talked to a couple of you about the ontological question of when is a simulation the thing it simulates.  For instance, when does a system cease to simulate motivation and actually become motivated?   I am suspicious about the extension of intentional language to non-animate systems, not because I am a vitalistic crypto-creationist, but because my intuition tells me that inanimate systems do not usually  take the sorts of actions that are required for the use of mentalistic predicates like "motivated".   But talking to you folks is making me uneasy.  If you are curious how I come by my quandary, please have a look at the article On the Use of Mental Terms in Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, which appears at

 http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/ 

The closest I have ever come to conceding this sort of view is in a BBS commentary entitled, "Why would we ever doubt that species were intelligent?", which I will post later in the day.  I guess I am going to have to argue that the definitional strictures for applying intelligence are less stringent than those for motivation.  

This could get ugly.

Thanks everybody,

Nick


Nicholas S. Thompson
Professor of Psychology and Ethology
Clark University
[hidden email]
http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
[hidden email]
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[Russell Standish]

The pointy edge of this debate concerns life. Since we don't really
have a good definition of life, some artificial life researchers would
say that their computational systems really are alive, and worthy of
the tag "artificial life". Others would say that they are only a
model, or a simulation of the real thing.

To make things a little clearer, a Turing machine simulated on a
computer, is still a real Turing machine. So is a cellular automata.

                                Cheers

On Tue, Nov 09, 2004 at 11:37:59PM -0500, Nicholas Thompson wrote:

>
> Where am I going here.  Oh.  It is to say that perhaps the question of when is a simulation actually the thing simulated is the same as the question when is the metaphor actually the same as the thing to which the metaphor is made.  
>
> Hmmmm.  That didn't help much, did it.  
>
> Anyway, thanks for your comment.
>
> Nick
>
> Nicholas S. Thompson
> Professor of Psychology and Ethology
> Clark University
> [hidden email]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~nickthompson/
> [hidden email]
>
>

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