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From: mwtilden@math.uwaterloo.ca (Mark W. Tilden)
Subject: Re: [Q] Robotic 'ants' for Pest control...
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Marvin Minsky <minsky@transit.ai.mit.edu> wrote:
>
>As for the COG project of Brooks et al., I disagree with them about
>the value of building the real-time hardware machinery.  My personal
>opinion is that more would be learned by making simulated robots
>operate in relatively simplified simulated worlds.  They object that
>if you do this, you might overlook serious real world problems.  I
>don't agree: in my view, it is not important precisely which kinds of
>noise , you encounter -- or otherwise unpredictable friction effects,
>etc.  You'll run into the same basic cognotive problems whatever you
>do, so you might as well introduce cheap, easy to compute types of
>variation.  I'm not winning that argument, though.

But isn't there the problem that computer life would then only evolve
for computer environments?  Isn't the goal to see how to pull
intelligence out of the box so we can test it personally for validity?
Granted it might be cool to have a simulated creature on the other side
of the screen that we could talk to, but so far as been seen there's no
evidence of intelligence beyond biological means.  Alife environments
are progressive and neat but they are also too shallow dimensionally to
emerge competence.

Computer worlds are fine for us because we can extend our belief to
encompass them, but without a physical ability, computers have no
influence to exercise change by themselves.  

You've gotta build robots, otherwise how can you ever *know*.

Is all.


-- 
Mark W. Tilden.  "Gomi no Sensei des"   _    _    ________________________
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