Re: Rosennean ideas used as a "weapon"?....exobiology

["John M" <***>]

Tim,
you wrote quite a post about valid things which are IMO not in any
opposition to my position, I just did not deem nevcessary to expand into
them. (And I did not know those RR quotes what you applied).
I stayed within the boundaries where I can agree with what I know of RR, I
have no intention of arguing my points if I may express them differently.

> What do you mean by "the "life-line" dreamers"? I'm not familiar with
>this term, or how it relates to Rosen.<
As far as I remember (I wrote 'under the influence' of some creative extasy
of the writing) I was referring to the 'high scientists' trying to clone a
human being. I was in a discussion about it on the JCS list.
I don't know whether Rosen developed a working position "during the last
millennium", I found it well in his line that the "one type DNA" as the
building ingredient of a living animal is a limited model, missing the input
of "the other type" to combine into a full-blast creature. Nobody knows what
deficiencies MAY arise. If nature would fit such in her plans, the Amazons
would have proliferated by lesbian procreation
and we, males would be museum-exhibits.
I am FOR creative and bold experimentation, this one, however, has too deep
risks of new creatures beyond human control whatsoever.
This is why I questioned how "sheepish" Dolly was undeed?
I equate this idea with a phase in the 'conscious machine' nightmare.

Otherwise I accept any "unnatural" sci-fi ideas as 'natural', since those
minds which created them are part of nature. (As David Bohm's idea that
numbers do not exist in nature - was refuted that ever since humans - part
of nature - invented the numbers, they ARE part of nature and do exist in
nature. )
*
> Well, I don't think a question centered around "human capabilities"
> (whetever that is supposed to mean) is useful. A machine might sort >mail
much faster than a human, and some machines can lift far more >than any
human.<
You just expanded my sentence about 'machines':
>>(IMO it [a machine] is a restriction [no consciousness] with extending
> > certain features [sorting, lifting] beyond our bodily limitations. )
and you added a lot of Rosenspeak, which is OK.

Have a good time

JohnM

----- Original Message -----
From: "Tim Gwinn" <***>
To: <***>
Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 6:05 PM
Subject: Re: Rosennean ideas used as a "weapon"?....exobiology


> Hi John M,
>
> See interposed.
>
> Regards,
> Tim
>
> > -----Original Message-----
> > From: ROSEN Forum [mailto:*** Behalf Of John M
> > Sent: Monday, September 01, 2003 4:04 PM
> > To: ***
> > Subject: Re: Rosennean ideas used as a "weapon"?....exobiology
> >
> >
> > Tim wrote (among a lot of others including outer space stories):
> > ^^^^^^^^^
> > The ability to successfully predict the consequences of the
> > introduction of
> > new lifeforms not based on earthly evolutionary processes, whether via
> > technological means or alien infestation, seems extremely unlikely.
> > Labels such as "predator", "prey", "pathogen", rest on functional
> > distinctions, and function in turn rests on what a thing entails, rather
> > than what entails it.
> > Therefore, even the most intensive study of an "alien" lifeform in
> > isolation, or "under laboratory conditions", will fail to reveal the
full
> > functional potential of such an organism "in the wild".
> > ^^^^^^^^^^^
> > I want to look around right here on Earth. (We may be 'infiltrated from
> > other universes, but that is a sci-fi religion. Why not stay simple?)
> >
> > We have the weirdest (wrong?) ideas about 'alien' lifeforms. IMO it is
> > unpredictable, the 'aliens' are not wide-eyed humanoids in grey,
> > they may be
> > aberrant homo-like offsprings of regular humans by some unusual/esoteric
> > developmental input. 'Aliens' may be virus-like, only causing such
> > aberrations in us. (And I am not speaking about virus as HIV). An
'alien'
> > process is cloning. I consider it a reductionist model of the natural
> > procreation using a select part only. On the JCS list I just had a
> > discussion with an MD about his thought-experiment of -as said -
> > 'completely' artificially synthesized DNA in test-tube-procreation, then
> > implanted into a female womb and he hypothesized about the so
developed
> > psiche of the offspring as compared to quotidien babies. I had some
> > questions (believe it or not<G>) how far he with the 'artificial'
> > ingredient
> > dares go, I would start at natural DNA and make a clone. He
> > proposed simple
> > molecules or even atoms. I said: they are natural products(!) so he
should
> > cook them up as the stars do, from some artificial plasma (energy?) to
be
> > consequent to his plan.
> > Then again I questioned his next step, replenishing all missing natural
> > developmental details (he wanted to eliminate) by a gestation
> > under natural
> > enzymes, hormones, nutrients, processes. He finally agreed that a
gedanken
> > experiment is a poor way to draw (hypothetical) conclusions.
> >
> > Why am I referring to that on this list? Cloning is a
> > model-process, nobody
> > knows how identical it gona be to the natural product, e.g. no
> > "sheep-shrink" analyzed Dolly in sheepese about her emotional life.
> > Was she a sheep-form zombie, or a 'real' sheep?
> >
> > I believe students close to Rosenism may have good arguments to
> > refuse overstated conclusions from the "life-line" dreamers, rather than
> > becoming apostles of it - even as accused to be such.
>
>
> What do you mean by "the "life-line" dreamers"? I'm not familiar with this
> term, or how it relates to Rosen.
>
>
>
> > At this level of biogenetic ignorance I find no real threat of anybody
> > accusing RR with anything like what had been said in this
> > respect. IMO from
> > his teachings (system?) only negatives can be drawn: how NOT?
> >
> > The other thread (on 2 lists) goes about 'conscious machines', not
> > necessarily AI or AL(life) but other 'thinking, communicating' tools.
> > There are opinions - not exactly Rosenites, but close - in favor of the
> > machine-model concept, which I try to encourage cautiously. The
> > misunderstandings go deeper: about the 'complexity': "language", the
term:
> > communication, the (limited or wide) access to the "world": as
programmed
> > vs. an unlimited source, etc. Is a machine an extension of the human
> > capabilities, or a restriction? (IMO it is a restriction with extending
> > certain features beyond our bodily limitations. )
>
>
> Well, I don't think a question centered around "human capabilities"
> (whetever that is supposed to mean) is useful. A machine might sort mail
> much faster than a human, and some machines can lift far more than any
> human. But such abilties do not entail very much else about the machine;
in
> particular, they cannot entail an ability of those machines to be
conscious.
>
> The approach of trying to cobble together a conscious being by assembling
a
> set of capabilities (i.e., behaviors or phenotypes) is what Rosen called
> "mimesis". [EL ch. 4 - 8] Mimesis is based on the notion that if enough"
> phenotypical aspects, or capabilities, of an organism are brought together
> into one entity, that the assembled entity will then *be* one of those
> organisms; and, if the organism in question is conscious, then the
assembled
> entity will also be conscious. (It is very closely related to the von
> Neumann approach to complexity: if enough complication can be brought
> together, then some threshold will be crossed into complexity.)
>
> Mimesis rests on an assertion of complete fractionability - on material
> reductionism - in order for it to even be attempted. So, mimesis is an
> ill-conceived program unless one deeply believes in reductionism as a
> universal physical principle.
>
> Of course, with regard to machines in general, since they are mechanisms,
> and not complex, they will be incapable of the necessary causal entailment
> to be conscious or to be organisms at all. In particular, machines - as
> computing devices - will lack the causal entailment necessary to implement
> any kind of complex (noncomputable) inferential entailment. In other
words,
> they can't implement nonformalizable inferential processes such as natural
> language.
>
> A machine may be able to *approximate* such processes to some degree, but
as
> Rosen points out, such thinking is flawed: "This activity is a
sophisticated
> kind of curve-fitting, akin to the assertion that since a given curve can
be
> *approximated* by a polynomial, it must *be* a polynomial." [EL p. 269]
>
>
> >
> > Such topics do come up and we should take time to infiltrate them.  The
> > majority of the highly learned participants of some lists (mostly
> > name-professors of name-universities international) is faithfully
> > reductionistic. Some, however, have a more open mind and may pick up
> > (topical, even theoretical) encouragement. Then our references
> > come helpful.
> >
> > A sideline to Judith's fears. Don't.
> >
> > John M
> >