are robots alive?

The emerging science of correlation-based complexity sees life as a layered-hierarchy of subsystem-correlations, in our experience forged in free-energy flows at the surface of a star-illuminated planet. The key word when it comes to robots is "layered".

Even though they might look and act like organisms, they are either an instrument of the layered-hierarchy that created them or (if separate) a much-less-layered phenomenon by comparison. For example they do not have depth in their adaptation to the chemistry of this planetary environment. As a result, like us fragile multi-celled organisms they are likely to be gone long before microbes on this planet find it too inhospitable to stick around.

On the other hand, robots may be quite helpful in the extension of our life-phenomenon to other planets i.e. as an extension of our layered hierarchy of subsystem-correlations. In other words as an extension of us, robots may be an important part of life. Separately, even if they "look tough" they are a pretty shallow phenomenon by comparison.

pointing among cats

I've long been aware of the fact that when you point at something for a cat to look at, they often look at your finger instead of at what you are pointing toward. Based on a simple "two-cup one-treat" experiment done with chimpanzees and children in one episode of Alan Alda's SciAm/PBS "Human Spark" series, chimpanzees (and wolves) apparently don't get it either, even though puppy-dogs (thanks to something like 50,000-100,000 years of co-evolution with us) have this down pat.

It's also possible that as we imagine evolving toward more levels of sub-system correlation, or even just stronger correlations (e.g. with center-of-mass niche-network layer-multiplicity approaching 6), that we too will find ourselves in a world of folks who won't get it when we point at stuff with the goal of helping them out. If you can think of places where this has happened in the past, or if you encounter this same effect now, let us know!

model competition?

The modern mathematics of model-selection (separately in both life and physical sciences) provides guidance for setting up a beauty-contest for concepts, idea-sets, paradigms, and mathematical models of all sorts. Remarkably in this context it's not individual people or even consensus, but data from the world around, that serves as judge.

For more on this topic, check out this link here.

moving past success

Have you noticed that apparently-successful folks sometimes miss the fact that operating-procedures need to evolve?

This is a natural handicap, and one whose potentially-disastrous effects we're working to help eliminate via refinement of the concept-sets that folks use.

For more on this subject, stay tuned...

conserving value

The values of money, community, reputation and culture are all measures of subsystem-correlation. These things are not automatically conserved like, for example, momentum is in the physical sciences.

For example money is often thought of as an analog to total-energy, whose numeric value (like that of momentum) remains the same as it is passed from one form to another. Of course money is really an analog for available-work (what the energy crisis is about), whose value is in fact expected to decrease over time in the absence of new ordered-energy and/or information.

More importantly, uninformed action is likely to erode the usefulness (independent of its numeric quantity) of money, available work, as well as the other measures of subsystem correlation listed above. Hence humility has to accompany hard work if we, as fragile beings in a seriously unfriendly universe, are to make the most of the resources available to us.

feeling vs. logic

The organism-focused world of behavioral ecology perhaps long ago pointed out the behavior modes common to many animals as "four F's", namely feeding, fleeing, fighting, and having sex. More recent work in neuroscience suggests that our behavior is indeed governed by such modules, elicited via a kind of (hopefully) just-in-time spreading-activation (JITSA) by ongoings in the world around. With respect to these activations even today our conscious "press secretary" is at best an observer/advisor, and is sometimes even kept in the dark.

Rapid-response capabilities generally rely on instinctive-reactions (sometimes refined by training and practice in contemporary settings) of neolithic or earlier origin, like the four F's mentioned earlier. Long-term response strategies tend to have more contemporary (and "cerebral") origins. This tension between feeling and logic is a familiar theme in popular culture.

In this context, how about a less "organism-centric" framework in which we consider that natural selection may be operating on all behavior-modules that look in and/or out from one of the three symmetry-defined layer-boundaries (i.e. skin, family & culture) in metazoan communities. Hence there may be (and have been) reasons for the emergence of both short & long term modules for taking care of self, friends, family, community, culture and profession.

The four F's mentioned above are among those behaviors that serve self, friends & family, but of course this task-layer formalism leaves room for stuff that is not included in that original four. The behavior modules which serve culture and profession may be of special importance in human communities.

evolving narratives

Weak, confusing or ill-posed choices/statements/questions, with ways to move past them, might include...

• Drop "Choose one: mano-a-mano OR state-paid healthcare." for "Nurture responsible health-management for & by all citizens.",
• Trade "Organisms do/don't evolve?" (since replicable-codes do that instead) up to "How do code-organism systems change over time?",
• Replace "Either un-tax the rich, or give money to nuts." with "Spend group-funds on well-defined social-goals with checks/balances.",
• Change "Mass increases with speed." into "Proper (not coordinate) time/speed/acceleration underlie dynamics when v ~ c.",
• Substitute "Choose one: support abortion OR prevent birth control." with "Help avoid unwanted pregnancies and abortions.", 
• Exchange "entropy increases" for "correlations decrease" over time, with sub-systems from which you are isolated.
• ...and what else?

Once folks agree on a set of objectives, and are mature enough to put aside gratuitous-cartoonification of one other, different ideas about tactics and strategy for meeting those objectives can be addressed by testing and observation over time.