[extropy-chat] Self replicating computer programs ?

[Brett Paatsch]

Emlyn O'regan wrote:

> > > I don't know why that would be a requirement for anything;
> > > someone always needs to press the "go" button, if that's 
> > > what you mean.
> > > 
> > > What about the various viruses & worms? Don't these 
> > > count?
> > 
> > Seems to me that the notion that self-replication programs
> > are the existence proof for the feasibility of self-replicating
> > molecular assemblers and for artificial intelligence is suspect
> > if self-replicating programs don't in fact exist. 
> 
> ok
> 
> > 
> > Are viruses and worms good existence proofs of the 
> > feasibility of either artificial intelligence or self-replicating
> > nano-assemblers?  I don't think so.  This doesn't mean
> > that artificial intelligence or assemblers are impossible like
> > perpetual motion machines. It just makes me question the
> > utility of viruses and worms and other software as a case
> > for AI and for nano-assembler feasibility. 
> 
> Wait, you've shifted ground here. There's no doubt that viruses
> and worms are self replicating. They definitely make copies of
> themselves, in entirety. That's self replication. They don't need
> to be intelligent to behave like this, and I didn't think that was
> the issue.
> 
> > 
> > Perhaps we don't need truly fully "self-replicating" at all.
> > 
> > Regards,
> > Brett
> > 
> 
> It depends what you mean by "truly fully". I don't think MNT
> is a discontinuity without self replication. But as others have
> said, the kind of stuff we posit MNT being able to make 
> should trivially include assemblers themselves, thus we get
> self replication for free (just as we do with computer programs).

I think I see what's going on.  I was questioning how 
"self-replicating" a thing is if its design spec requires both an 
external "go" event (as you said) and expectations on feedstock 
availability, that it cannot satisfy or influence but can only expect.  

Viruses and worms have someone launch them in the first place
(as you note) and they are constrained in the sense that they
cannot replicate without available space in which to do it. 
Available memory, software and hardware on which to run the
software etc.

I was thinking about the concerns raised by the folks writing in 
New Atlantis (referred to in one of Greg Burch's recent posts)
who seem to see self-replication in the case of nano-machines
and the grey goo scenario as something that happens without 
constraint. In fact self-replication seems to be never replication
without *some* environmental constraints.

The "self-replication" as an engineering specification is less
demanding then the specification to have to also forage for 
substrate and start itself off as well. And from a political (safety?)
standpoint because every interesting-to-a-designer (even a malicious
designer) device must do something besides just replicate in order
for the designer to have bothered designing it, it seems that the self-
replicating system cannot be a *very* closed and truly fully 
self-replicating system at all. There must be extraneous data or
environmental sampling by the system seeking to replicate itself
periodically as instructed and seeking to do other work as well
as was its designers intent in making it.  

Making a self-replicating nanosystem that could forage for 
its own foodstock AND that would be of interest to a designer
(as non-threatening to the designer) seems very non-trivial. I guess
I was hoping it might be a contradiction in design terms but I don't
see that it necessarily is.  

That was what I had in mind with the truly fully self-replicating 
comment anyway.

Regards,
Brett