>Subject: request subscription to PCP-discuss mailing list
>From: "Menno RUBINGH" <rubingh@delftnet.nl>
>Date: Mon, 23 Oct 100 20:34:40 +0200 (MET DST)
>To: owner-pcp-discuss@listman.lanl.gov
>Cc: rubingh@delftnet.nl
>
>L.S.,
>
> Email address: rubingh@delftnet.nl
> Name: Menno Rubingh
> URL of home page (if any): http://www.rubinghscience.org
> Postal address: Doelenstraat 62, 2611 NV Delft, Netherlands
> Phone: +31 15 2146915 (answering machine backup)
> Affiliations: At the moment I'm just a private person.
>
> How did you hear about PCP?
>
> I found the website 'http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be' by searching on
> the ''WWW'' for people/groups who are doing work/research on AI,
> cybernetics, and so on.
>
> Please take at least one page to describe your work
> and how it might relate to PCP:
>
> At least one page !! well well. All right.
>
> I'm a 33-year old scientific programmer, graduated 1991 as an
> electrical engineer, who gradually during the last few years has
> discovered that he's highly interested in AI and in the
> philosophical
> implications of it.
>
> My webpage 'http://www.rubinghscience.org/philos' contains a
> description of my outlook on life and on AI -- and by extension
> on how
> I look at the possibility of intelligent artificial life forms
> arising. I am a programmer and technologist and
> philosophically-inclined person who, having had a look at your
> Principia Cybernetica website, cannot help seeing huge overlaps
> between the ideas and approach-followed on the Pr.Cyb. website
> and his
> own ideas.
>
> I still am definitely hugely new and uninformed about your
> Pr.Cyb. project, but regarding the overlaps, I definitely simply
> have to try to make contact and to find out to what degree it is
> possible to construct a mutually interesting and beneficial
> communication and exchange of ideas.
>
> Of course :-):-) I have my own little humble programming project
> concerned with creating a self-aware AI: see
> 'http://www.rubinghscience.org/aiclub'. But recently I realized
> that really au fond, ''self-aware'' AI already exists all around
> us -- ''self-aware'' is just our way of labelling/interpreting
> things. A thermostat in a heater is already ''self-aware''.
> Therefore creating a ''self-aware'' intelligent AI is (IMO) only
> a question/matter of reaching sufficient complexity. A process
> that has reached sufficient complexity AND that has the
> propensity to adapt itself into a form that tries to optimize its
> own chances of survival, IMO (almost?) automatically will be both
> ''self-aware'' and intelligent in a ''human''-like way.
>
> So I think that the ''automatic'' drive towards survival is very
> important in the study/problem-field of ''AI''. IMO, all
> self-replicating entities that survive, therefore have wired-in (are
> programmed such that they have) a ''will'' to survive -- otherwise
> they wouldn't survive. Anything that doesn't have this
> will/drive to
> survive is eradicated.
>
> The above obviously overlaps hugely with the philosophical
> questions of e.g.: what's the ''meaning'' of life ? ; and : what
> is the optimal ''ethics'' for any entity ? Reading the Pr.Cyb.
> website, I'm delighted to find that the approach in it like my
> own approach basically tries to find answers to these ''age-old''
> philosophical questions in evolutionary and Darwinistic
> considerations. Ethics is what is optimal behaviour for any
> entity that optimally serves its own survival. This is not
> specific to humans, but is general for any kind of entity and any
> kind of ''system'' -- including robots, ant colonies, and
> Martians. :-) IMO, the huge advantage of this approach is that
> does not base itself on ''moral'' values, and neither on any
> needed a-priori belief about what is the ''Goal'' in/of life. In
> contrast, IMO it's in a way plausible to say that in this
> ''Darwinistic'' view the question of ''Goal'' or ''Moral values''
> is entirely not an issue.
>
> Well, this maybe has given you some impression of ''where I come
> from''. I'm with interest looking forward to your reply.
>
>Best regards,
>
>Ir. Menno Rubingh,
> Scientific programmer, Software designer, & Software documentation writer
>Doelenstraat 62, 2611 NV Delft, Netherlands
>phone +31 15 2146915 (answering machine backup)
>email rubingh@delftnet.nl
>http://www.rubinghscience.org/
---- O------------------------------------------------------------------------> | Cliff Joslyn, Member of the Technical Staff (Cybernetician at Large) | Distributed Knowledge Systems and Modeling Team | Modeling, Algorithms, and Informatics Group (CCS-3) | Los Alamos National Laboratory, Mail Stop B265, Los Alamos NM 87545 USA | joslyn@lanl.gov http://www.c3.lanl.gov/~joslyn (505) 667-9096 V All the world is biscuit-shaped. . .======================================== Posting to pcp-discuss@lanl.gov from Cliff Joslyn <joslyn@lanl.gov>
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