

Ask HN: Is Linus creating AI Life? - rudin

I was reading a HN page http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=898675 where Linus argues that Linux was not "designed" and was struck by the strength of his views. Here are some quotes:<p>"I'm deadly serious: we humans have _never_ been able to replicate something more complicated than what we ourselves are, yet natural selection did it without even thinking.<p>Don't underestimate the power of survival of the fittest."<p>This intrigued me so I looked at his blog http://torvalds-family.blogspot.com where he comments a few times on what he is reading. I will list some of the books he mentions there:<p>Phantoms in the Brain,
The Brain that Changes Itself,
Why Evolution is True,
Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life's Origins<p>This quote is interesting:<p>"Usually, I tend to read about genetics or similar (that is, when I read anything serious to begin with, which tends to be less than 10% of the time). This one is obviously related, but about the processes that came before it all began. And it also gives more of a look into the issues faced by &#60;BOLD&#62; somebody &#60;/BOLD&#62; trying to do experiments in the area."<p>From the above comments his viewpoint possibly falls into the artificial life camp that tries to imitate traditional biology by recreating biological phenomena (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Artificial_life).<p>What do you think of this idea? He is well-noted for his programming skills and general ability. Maybe the kernel is just a basis for some sort of massive ai-life simulation?
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jrockway
There is no artificial intelligence, just a lot of humans doing experiments
and keeping the best results in the kernel. I think that's plain-old
"intelligence".

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noonespecial
_Maybe the kernel is just a basis for some sort of massive ai-life
simulation?_

The kernel isn't the emergent life, the community is. The kernel is just
the/(a) side effect.

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joubert
Right. The kernel is an extended phenotype.

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chrischen
He said he believes in guided evolution, which I agree is the best way to do
things. But really it's the only way, because if you're not doing that then at
some point you must have lied to yourself when your vision misaligned with
results.

I think what he's going at is trying to design things logically and
rationally, just as evolution does. That is, seeing how the world designs
itself and modeling his own methods to it with a little human guidance to
speed the what would be random process up.

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joubert
Evolution doesn't design anything. It just sometimes seems that way from our
(builder-mind) perspective.

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chrischen
Well I guess it's how you define _design._ It designs in the sense that it
produces something that simply works. Evolution/survival of the fittest is
absolute and all human design is simply to imitate it's efficacy (its efficacy
is perfect) in less time.

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joubert
I think most people would agree that "designing" something means that its
construction/development is planned. There's no planning in evolution.

~~~
chrischen
Well our argument is about semantics. If "designing" by your definition
requires planning, then so be it.

The point is that when we design we try to create something that _works_.
Evolution is basically the products produced by reality that _work_ , and this
is by definition. So in essence we try to speed up evolution by designing. We
try to predict what _works_ before it gets there by random luck. Obviously the
simplest algorithm is to try random iterations that are completely independent
of past ones, but this is essentially _evolution_. So what Linus is in favor
of is _guided_ evolution, that is instead of trying random iterations, we try
to predict the next working iteration based on past knowledge, and identifying
any patterns. Of course everyone probably does this. Unfortunately most people
break out of this if they don't understand this, and may be blinded by ego. So
when you can't admit you're doing something wrong, you're no longer designing
through guided evolution, you're designing by complete random chance at best.

In any case evolution is the absolute process that design tries to mimick
because its results are by definition what we are trying to achieve.

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joubert
Does your definition of "designing" not include the concept of planning? I can
see how "building" could forego planning (and result in poor products), but
"design" implies planning I would argue.

Some comments about evolution:

1) Evolution very often has results that, if it were the product of design,
would be considered very poor design

2) Evolution is not random luck. It is anything but random. Mutation is
random, but evolution by natural selection is not.

3) Things do not evolve unless:

    
    
       - there's replication 
    
       - there are mutations that natural selection can "see" 
    
       - there is pressure for certain kinds of mutations to be favored

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chrischen
In response to your bullet points:

1) Evolution always has results that will be considered poor design. Every
time an evolved "design" becomes obsolete with respect to its surroundings,
then it becomes a poor adaptation, at which point it must evolve again. But
because this process is continuous, we consider this whole continuous process
as evolution. As time increases, evolution will always force something to
adjust to its environment and become _perfect_ with it, therefore evolution as
a whole can be considered absolute and perfect.

2) Evolution as a whole is absolute, so obviously it's not luck. The
adaptations and changes before the _perfect_ "design" arrives are determined
by luck as you say.

When I say design I just mean the product of some systematic process. Planning
is systematic, but so is evolution.

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allenwhitt
sounds like he's also been reading wolfram's nks. the whole book is about how
complexity is created. and wolfram suggests that humans wouldn't be able to
_purposefully_ create something more complicated than ourselves (though
leaving open the possibility of doing it by semi-accident).

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nazgulnarsil
is _____ creating _amazing technological breakthrough_?

I'd prefer not to see question mark headlines. they're really easily abused.

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VonGuard
Perhaps "Hive Mind" is a better term than AI.

