Talk:Intelligent Plastic Machines

my name is djhbrown. i am the orginating author of the page "Intelligent Plastic Machines" - what you see there so far is the first part of the introductory chapter of a book by the same name which i have been writing over the last 2 years or so. if you dont delete it, i will continue to add the rest of the material i have so far. i chose to put it up on wikibooks as i am working alone, don't have all the answers, and would like the input of others.

yes, i suppose the introductory bit does read a bit like an essay, especially as it doesnt as yet include a full explanation about what the title means, which i plan to put in soon. i need your patience, editors, as well as - hopefully - constructive suggestions and contributions from others who come across it.

the subject matter supports a university course i am teaching entitled "Biological Computation" - being unable to find a textbook which was not too detailed and did give the big picture, i decided to write my own. its central concept is that explained in these first few paragraphs, but i appreciate that it will require a lot more detail and explanation before it will become clear and obvious to the reader. my hope is that its subject matter will one day become part of the standard curriculum taught in high schools - but at this point in time, it is only included in graduate-level computer science courses which focus on one otr another aspect of it in great detail.

whilst the concept is not new science, it is new to a general readership. i chose not to call it "biological computation" as that term creates iamges in some peoples' minds that are more properly described as "computational biology".

in the book itself, i intend to make the distinction clear without engaging in a lengthy discussion about what how the same word or phrase can mean different things to different people.

i won't remove the "deletion threat box" on the page myself, but hope that the person who placed it there will do so him/herself on reading this explanation.


 * Hi, you need to read WB:OR if you haven't already. It has important information about books that contain original research. QU TalkQu 12:45, 2 January 2010 (UTC)

this is not original research. it is merely an attempt to gather together knowledge already reported in the public domain under a variety of discipline labels, as the variety of sources in the citations testifies. however, if someone who knows better than i what can and cant be written in a wikibook decides to erase it, i will not contest the action and simply look elswhere for a medium of cooperation (i chose wikibooks simply because it is a vehicle for multiple authorship, plus it is intended to be purely factual content, rather than personal soapboxing). In the meantime, i will leave it as it is for reviewers to assess its relevance to the objectives of wikibooks, which i appreciate is no easy task, especially as most of the pictures have yet to be put in and the text requires a lot more massaging.07:00, 3 January 2010 (UTC)

evolution
whereas most people would accept the theory of biological evolution, and Dawkins makes a compelling argument for the evolution of memes, whether texts can evolve into coherent forms is still something i am unsure about. my gut feel is they could - the classic example is the Bible, whose present form(s) is the result of numerous revisions: edits, additions and deletions by a multitude of authors and translators over a long period of time.

wikipedia is, as far as i know, the first substantial effort to democratise knowledge and foster the spontaneous evolution of texts. so far, there seems to be a tendency for its pages to become overladen with detail, to the demise of readability. nonethless, i find it one of the most convenient sources of information for my own enquiries. i see wikibooks as a child of wikipedia, in an operational as well as genealogical sense: readers new to a subject need some kind of structure to make it easier for them to see the whole picture - something very difficult and timeconsuming to do from wikipedia alone. so i congratulate wikimedia for having fostered the birth of wikibooks (and all its varieties - wikiversity, wikijournals, wikiwhacky, wikiyellowbrickroad,...)

from a cursory glance, it seems that most wikibooks to date are pretty much solo-author efforts. whether "Intelligent Plastic Machines" will evolve, through the processes of wikiing, into a multiple author document that makes sense is perhaps overly optimistic, but it might change a bit for the better (or it may be cudgelled to death by thought police!). i have decided to see if, without my further intervention, a heterarchical evolutionary process will develop and move it in a constructive direction.

the seed is sown, and the sower has left the building. over to you... Djhbrown (talk) 02:56, 4 January 2010 (UTC)

I Think This Is a Good Idea
Keep it up!

I Also Think This Is a Good Idea
I agree that this is a good idea. I also agree that both memes and texts/books can evolve, usefully via democratic processes. Preferably, such processes would lose not contested information. For instance, Jefferson was called to task for overstating the extent to which the British had deprived the colonists of jury trials, and was forced by the committee to qualify the statement, by adding "in some cases." This made the Declaration stronger, by lending the appearance that the Founders' grievances were not overstated, and thus each was to be taken as more legitimate, with any excesses being worse than stated.

The initial state was preserved in the debate, as the "talk" pages (hopefully) will preserve your initial content.

The constitutional convention, Declaration of Independence, Federalist and Anti-Federalist Papers contain good examples of meme evolution.

The existing discipline that this seems to be filed under appears to be "cybernetics." Norbert Weiner wrote a book with the same title, and Jeff Hawkins recently wrote "On Intelligence." Previous books with similar content are Kevin Kelly's "Out of Control" (available for free at http://www.kk.org in original and "remixed" form) and Taleb's "Antifragile."

None of the prior notes should be taken as discouragement. I have already benefited from reading your writing in some areas where my knowledge had gaps in it.

My ideas are in the domain of political science, economics, law, and social organization. I most closely agree with Harry Browne, who was a voluntaryist who did not eschew electoral political engagement, and Frederick Hayek, whose contributions are well-known. -Jake Witmer cell: 701-204-3215

Let noone discourage you. Your ideas are good, as is your synthesis of them. Even if your writing only clarifies or organizes things for you, it will have been worth the effort. Also: the world needs more people who understand emergent order. Preferably people who cannot be easily bought out or misdirected by sociopaths.