[FRIAM] not enough of Robert Rosen

[Marcus G. Daniels]

Joost Rekveld wrote:
> sure, but can a robot develop representations for other operations  
> than those already in its specifications ?
> can it design a processor that has some novel feature that is not  
> already possible in the robots current architecture ?
>   
The main capability it would offer would be to make certain kinds of 
calculations more feasible, or more accurate.
That could be important for a robot to specialize to new kinds of 
physical environments, for example.
Another reason might be to capture chaotic effects that would only be 
witnessed with parallel execution.
But I'm hard pressed to think of many things that can't be simulated, at 
least in principle.   That's to say it can't be described or modeled, 
which is to say that conversation about it ridiculous!  If not, it's up 
to the modeler to say specific ways in which a set of primitives are 
inadequate.
>> But, usually when new computer
>> architectures are being developed, the developers just write a  
>> software
>> simulator for it in initial stages (that mimics the intended  
>> physics of
>> the hardware design).
>> Even the adiabatic quantum computer people at DWave are using existing
>> silicon process technologies to design circuits..
>>     
>
> I guess the main creative factor in these examples are the people  
> involved in designing new specifications and defining symbols  
> representing aspects of the new hardware they are developing...
>   
But in this context, those symbols can be represented with the old 
symbols, provided the old symbols were from a Turing complete system 
(and they are).    The notion of introducing a symbol or verb to a 
computational system is no big deal.   It's a primitive in programming 
languages like Lisp. 

>> 20 amino acids seem to go a long way...  :-)
>>     
>
> characters make no language...
>   
It seems to me it's the language that's important, and how suitable that 
language is to the environment at hand.
That's not to say there aren't new useful primitives to be discovered.

Marcus