RE: The Ultimate Connection Machine.

From: Ben Houston (ben@exocortex.org)
Date: Thu May 02 2002 - 18:54:36 MDT


> Gaia doesn't reproduce.

The living organisms that make up the world (and potentially gaia) do
reproduce though. Sort of similar to the fact that the cells that
compose by body reproduce.

> How would it have
> enough complexity to engage even in homeostasis, let alone think?

The world is fairly homeostatic though -- that's pretty undeniable.
This isn't an easy feat either -- remember how many problems people have
had trying to get these self-contained "biodomes" working.

> You don't
> build up complexity like that without a long, long, long period of
> evolution, on a genetic data which is precisely transmitted to the
next
> generation.

That's a very genome-centric world view.

Although that said I don't really buy the Gaia stuff at the current
moment. I buy the super-organism / meta-system transition type stuff
that Francis discusses in some of his papers.

Cheers,
-ben
http://www.exocortex.org

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-sl4@sysopmind.com [mailto:owner-sl4@sysopmind.com] On
Behalf
> Of Eliezer S. Yudkowsky
> Sent: Thursday, May 02, 2002 8:27 PM
> To: sl4@sysopmind.com
> Subject: Re: The Ultimate Connection Machine.
>
> Gaia doesn't reproduce. Gaia is an emergent effect. How would it
have
> enough complexity to engage even in homeostasis, let alone think? You
> don't
> build up complexity like that without a long, long, long period of
> evolution, on a genetic data which is precisely transmitted to the
next
> generation. Emergent phenomena may have attractors, but they don't
have
> complex functional organization.
>
> -- -- -- -- --
> Eliezer S. Yudkowsky http://intelligence.org/
> Research Fellow, Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence



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