Newsgroups: comp.ai.alife
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From: gmezero@primenet.com (Game Zero)
Subject: Re: The Meaning of Life
Message-ID: <gmezero.15.00175028@primenet.com>
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Date: Sun, 11 Sep 1994 16:27:39 GMT
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In article <34qm2c$ei2@scratchy.reed.edu> jhopson@reed.edu (jhopson) writes:
>From: jhopson@reed.edu (jhopson)
>Subject: The Meaning of Life
>Date: 9 Sep 1994 22:02:52 GMT

>   Why is a definition of life important?


The "definition" of life is also important to determine because any alife/ai 
that is created should, in some way, match the human frame of reference in 
order to be useful.

Ever see that episode of Star Trek:TNG where Troi tries to explain frame of 
reference in language to Picard? She holds up a cup of tea, says a word and 
asks Picard what she said. He guesses  "cup"--she says nothing, so he starts 
spouting out words like "tea" or "hot". Troi responds by explaining that she 
could have said anything from "brown" to "liquid" to "delicious". But, he 
would be likely to guess the correct word because they have a SIMILAR FRAME OF 
REFERENCE. The alien species the crew was dealing with at the time regarded 
humans as barely alive and not even truly sentient--because to them, our  
language was nothing but childish babble. They had no common frame of 
reference.

Lets say some day we DO create truly intellegent alife. If it doesn't in some 
way match the way we think, or match at least some of the things that drive 
our most basic behaviours, then it is highly likely that it will not be 
comprehensible. These behaviors are something that really should be determined 
at the ground level when its easiest, and not after the fact.

If you are saying that alife should be "interesting", then wouldn't it be that 
much more interesting if you can understand what its doing?


Lisa
gmezero@primenet.com
