Re: detritus from vFRIAM

Posted by Eric Charles-2 on
URL: http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/detritus-from-vFRIAM-tp7597543p7597553.html

Lookey here bub.... 

"Mr. Jones will be acting on his own behalf" is a legal notion, being asked to do work here that it really, really isn't meant to do. 

Acting on your own behalf contrasts with "Mr. Jones, Esquire, is filing this brief on behalf of Mega Corp" and "Mr. Jones is acting on behalf of his mother, under a power of attorney." Certainly the notion existed before our modern legal system, but it served the same function, as in "I'm here on behalf of Mr. Darcey, to convey his regrets" or "Father Flannigan is here on behalf of The Church, to perform the baptismal ceremony."  

What would we be asking if we said:

• Look at that buzzard circling the carrion. Is it acting on its own behalf?
• Look at that cow turning towards the east as the herd stampedes. Is it acting on its own behalf? 
• Look at how that salt is dissolving in the warm water. Is it acting on its own behalf?
• Look at that pixelated ant-like image returning to "home" after "picking up food". Is it acting on its own behalf? 
• Look at that computer program cloning and renaming itself to optimize the memory it can monopolize on this particular server cluster. Is it acting on its own behalf? 
• In Little Boy there must have been a first-two Uranium atoms that began the nuclear explosion. Were those two atoms acting on their own behalf? 

What would it mean in each case if the thing-in-question was acting on its own behalf? 

In each case, on who else's behalf could it be acting? (By the later I seek to find out what other possible answers we would accept.) For example, in the final case, would we be willing to say that the uranium atoms were acting on behalf of the United States? 

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020 at 5:04 PM doug carmichael <[hidden email]> wrote:

There is ambiguity about what the self means and includes. There is a selfish self, a little self that is contained with us its own  bubble and there is the big self that includes the world and all of its connections. As Ortega says I am I and my circumstances

doug

On Jul 3, 2020, at 12:24 PM, [hidden email] wrote:



Thanks, Dave,

 

What is the self-interest that is being served in such a system. What is the entity that “has” the interest. 

 

Or am I trapping myself in some stupid loop, here.

 

n

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

From: Friam <[hidden email]> On Behalf Of Prof David West
Sent: Friday, July 3, 2020 1:19 PM
To: [hidden email]
Subject: Re: [FRIAM] detritus from vFRIAM

 

Nick,

 

People write software that self-modifies, learns to shape current actions based on the results of prior actions, clones itself in order to maximize its share of some limited resource (memory or processor cycles) vis-a-vis competing software.

 

This kind of software, once created and deployed, is entirely autonomous. Creators might send messages asking the software to execute a particular behavior, but such messages have no special status, they are just another part of the context to which the software responds. The field is called "evolutionary software."

 

To me, this is an example of a system, that once deployed, is autonomous and acting on its own behalf. It is not aware of any "goals of the whole" only its own will to "thrive."

 

Not sure if this satisfied your request.

 

davew

 

 

On Fri, Jul 3, 2020, at 1:06 PM, [hidden email] wrote:

I tried to post this on the vFRIAM chat, but wouldn’t “take”, so I am posting it here:

 

“Don't do this now, but …. as a favor to me, could you-guys devote some of your shaving time this week to the proposition: "No system ever acts on its own behalf."  My intuition is that whenever we investigate a system that appears to act in its own behalf, we will find that it is pursuing a goal that is short of the interest of the whole, but which will produce benefits to the whole because of some property of the world in which it acts.  I would love to hear a discussion among people trying to design a system that acts on its own behalf. Can someone come up with a simple example of such a system.” 

 

I grant you that the question is not clear.

 

Thanks,

 

Nick

 

Nicholas Thompson

Emeritus Professor of Ethology and Psychology

Clark University

[hidden email]

https://wordpress.clarku.edu/nthompson/

 

 

 

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