Re: Howard's challenge

[Howard Pattee <***>]

Tim,

Here is my response to your post.

Tim: I strongly feel you have engaged in willful mischaracterization of other 
listmember's posts in your accusation.

HP: I apologize if I overstated what I took as objections to von Neumann?s views. I will 
use the entire sentences after this. But I take it you still have objections. I don?t see 
how I mischaracterized Bob?s attitude as Judith states it: ?Some of the language choices 
(like "impoverished") ARE incendiary and Howard's instincts are right if he believes 
those WERE deliberate. My father was pissed off, and those words were extremely accurate 
but also a form of returning fire.?

Tim said:
Either von Neumann's work (which, as Judith pointed out, you originally brought up) has 
some relevancy to Rosennean concepts or it does not.

HP: I didn?t ?originally? bring up von Neumann. Bob objected to his argument in 1956, and 
has brought him up continually ever since. What I am trying to get across is the 
possibility that Bob?s legacy gets nowhere by propagating this unfounded objection to von 
Neumann.  According to most knowledgeable experts as well as the written word Bob 
misinterpreted von Neumann. Bob repeated the same complaint for 40 years and as far as I 
can see he never responded to attempts to correct his interpretation.

snip

TIM: But you cannot have it both ways: you cannot simply assert on the list that von 
Neumann's ideas are relevant and even complementary to Rosen's, and at the same time 
argue that that we should not "find fault" with von Neumann because it is bad for Rosen's 
legacy.

HP: I do not see your logic here. I said it is my feeling that Judith and others are 
finding von Neumann irrelevant not because of your knowledge of what von Neumann actually 
said, but because you have faith in whatever Bob said. Others find that Bob 
misinterpreted von Neumann. I?m saying it is not good for Bob?s legacy if we are 
uncritically propagating a misinterpretation.

TIM: Either von Neumann's work have some value to us can be discussed critically 
(including Rosen's criticisms of von Neumann) here or assertions about his work have no 
place here.

HP: As I said, I see value for Bob?s legacy in von Neumann?s work. So why not look at 
what von Neumann actually said and see if he answered some questions that Bob did not, or 
whether Bob misinterpreted him?

A later post:

Tim said:
It is unclear to me whether von Neumann was making an informal analogy.
Guttman refers to it as a proved theorem; in the part of "General and
Logical Theory of Automata" that I have (which is incomplete), von Neumann
labels the section as "Outline of the Derivation of the Theorem Regarding
Self-Reproduction", and seems more like a discussion of a theorem than an
Analogy.

HP: The entire argument is informal and not even well-defined. See my response to Judith 
where I quote von Neumann.

Tim: In any case, it is unclear to me how von Neumann's automata are perforce
relevant to organisms, or what is the "essential argument" that von Neumann
elaborated and which Rosen missed. Can you elaborate on this?

HP: Von Neumann is asking the old question of why living matter is different from inert 
matter. He sees one obvious difference in the long-term temporal behavior of living and 
non-living organizations of matter. He observes that non-living organizations decay in 
the presence of the intrinsic noise of the universe while in contrast living 
organizations continually maintain or increase their complexity (or as he calls it 
?complication?). His argument is a ?common sense? type of logic with several points that 
are ?vague and imperfect.? His essential conclusion is that adaptation and open-ended 
evolution cannot be done by dynamical construction alone but must be constrained by 
non-dynamical (?quiescent? memory) descriptions. Furthermore, for reproduction the 
description must be read in two separate and distinct ways. It must be copied without 
regard to its meaning (untranslated) and it must be read and translated by a fixed code 
to control construction. There are many other necessary details that must be resolved in 
any realization.

The components of von Neumann?s logic correspond to the component of cells and how all 
cells actually replicate and evolve (DNA memory, DNA replicases, tRNAs and coding 
enzymes, protein synthesis, folding, mutation, etc.). He also senses that a useful 
description must be simpler that what it describes (simple is not defined) and that a 
complete description is not possible. He guesses that the gene ?probably contains only 
general pointers, general cues.? It is now understood why descriptions can be simple. It 
is because of the spontaneous dynamics of folding of the proteins. That is why the 
?protein folding problem? is so fundamental for evolution. Remember, von Neumann surmised 
all this about 1951 before the molecular basis of genes and protein synthesis was known.

As I said to Judith, my interpretation is that Bob and von Neumann were asking different 
questions ? a necessity for complex systems. (See my first post.) I found that Bob?s 
?inner workings? conceived of complexity synchronically or outside of evolutionary time, 
while von Neumann was thinking diachronically or of evolution in rate-dependent physical 
time. When I get some time I will elaborate on this interpretation giving some evidence 
from my discussions with Bob.

Howard




http://www.ws.binghamton.edu/pattee/
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