discussion:lazy, goals - A solution?

[Mike Prince]

On Tue, 29 Nov 1994, Johan Van Schalkwyk wrote:
> On Sat, 26 Nov 1994, Kyle Hayes wrote:
> >  I think we are making this _far too_ complex at this stage..
> Abso-poso-lutely!
Ditto.

> What are our ultimate goals?
>  	...a tool... 
> 	...a symbiosis that combines the beneficial features of human and
		 machine intelligence...

That's my poor summary of your paragraph, could you reword it into a goal 
and I'll add it to the list?

> Well, you asked for holism! (Trivia question, who invented the word)?

Who?

> *** The operating system as an organism ***

That's kind of the idea I had before, except coming from a different 
direction.  Computer programs have existed in a very deterministic world 
for years, that is a program runs encapsulated in one computer that is 
relatively unchanging and does not really interact with others.

Now we have a chance to change that with many computers cooperating as a 
collective, and as such inheriting the problem of how to get along with 
each other.

Biology gives us a whole slew of solutions for how organisms can work 
together.  Code can migrate between machines (virus like), most of the 
time it will be good, but...  How does the body deal with this? Ideally 
how would the body deal with this?  What are the medical companies doing?
Etc.

> I do not think that this is entirely fanciful. I also believe that quite 
> apart from drawing trivial parallels between computer i/o and vision, 
> hearing, etc, we can still learn a lot from biological systems. 
> Principles such as, for example, those derived from analysis of the 
> iterated Prisoner's dilemma, have quite general application to both 
> biological systems and computer systems. Surely there are numerous other 
> principles that we can derive from biological systems?
> 
> If we see the user and "his" program as a symbiotic organism, and channel 
> all our energies into preserving the integrity of that organism, can we 
> not come up with something, as opposed to agonising about the finer 
> points of distributed systems?
> 
> Well?

Your point is very well taken and I'm in complete agreement.  Let's 
integrate your points into our goals.

Mike