Oh christ... do I really have to explain this?

@shinyblurry said "...that means it was intelligently designed."

I was specifically refuting that argument.

"intelligent design" means that something was designed on purpose by a designer, i.e. I want a plane, so I sit down and design the aerodynamics, propulsion, control surfaces, etc so that at the end, I have a means to fly from A to B. If the plane doesn't fly, as a designer, I need to work on it until it does.

A genetic algorithm is not "intelligently designed". The system itself creates the end product, often with no fixed goal or purpose. The designer does not have an input.

So, it's entirely possible that the universe is a computer simulation where a fixed set of constraints were set up at compile time and then left to run.

No specific end goal or purpose, merely to see emergent behaviours, which actually gels pretty well with what we know about the formation of the universe and life.

If you'd like to learn more, I recommend reading Artifical Life by Steven Levy as a good primer on the subject.

On the other hand, if you just want to make snide remarks, I suggest you stick to a topic you actually have a fucking clue about.

>> ^cosmovitelli:

Amazing. I always thought the CA was the way forward.


Agreed. There are certain classes of problems where CA, genetic algorithms and so on will really start to shine in the next few decades.

If you're interested in this field I highly recommend Artificial Life by Stephen Levy

combine this with the new human technology of artificial life and humans will be one step closer to being God the Creator (you know, the character from those age-old novels).

Bionic pets: you don't need to shovel their poo.

Anyone else find it funny that the guy that's help create the worlds first artificial life is named VENTURE?!

GO TEAM VENTURE!

3030 way past the millennium, check it out
Yo, Deltron thunderforce, ain't no other source of sunlight
Two ton mic, leave you toungue-tied
Runnin amuck with technology with no apology
Shoutin out to my colony with third eye physiology
Millennium past apocalypse is all I spit
Make you swallow it - your weak style, I'll abolish it
with nuclear rockets they glued to your optics with sci-fi
Unsettlin, man and metal blends
Underground chillin with the Mole Man, and his whole fam
Inhibit bacterial growth, material wrote
Impenetrable, incontestable, indigestible intelligence
Never let a computer tell me SHIT
It's rapid innovation, penetratin
Artificial life forms, who bite songs
I'm a buy a vest, lie is next, then I'll flip the bio-techs
Right into the wireless; your third eye is hit with psoriasis
The mightiest, Deltron Zero
Traverse and purge the travesties that tempt your earholds
The area of distribution, lifts the clueless
My flow is like, liquid oxygen
Rip it often with specific impulse, increasin thrust
Grease the cuts - unleash a cluster of thoughts I muster
I talk to touch ya, and rupture commercial communications
Convert solar energy, into imagery
In the mind's eye, blindside the contagious
With radioactive isotopes to decay them
Atomic mass they small as fragments
I magnetize the avid lies
My radiation shields reflects, rejects Decepticons
who take the truth and stretch it long, while I bless a song
Next level incredible, metal melding
Flexability and my engine is never failing

All your rhyme histories combined couldn't violate
the Prime Optimus operative
Use my hydrometer to see how warm you are, watch me form a star
Hydrogen turned to helium when I shine
Ridin 'em revealin 'em leadin 'em to the vacuum
Interact with tunes in my digital citadel
Critical pivotal with the mental shit on you
Spit infinity, hiden energies too dope for our planet
Star spannin, slammin hymms with
mechanical limbs, scanning your lens
with cosmic rays, you'll all get played, your brain's inferior
I hit the lateral AND posterior
My science is eerier
Ionic bonding for your moronic pondering, meet the armorines
My micro machines, might throw your team, into paralysis
They not talented, just a malady
Worry 'bout a salary, creative casualty
Couldn't defrag my power density intensity
Nonequivalence, nine hundred Newtons
Crush you like croutons, you plus Houston
Hiero's like dipoles inside a silo
Turbulence ten-fold, never simple
Defies accepted methods development most unique
Paralyze central nervous when you close to me
Interstellar void fills with color, appears to bubble
and split into four like amoeba
Inhabitin planets with, grandiose boast
and coast like Silver Surfer, feel the purpoise
High velocity, verbal atrocities
Fire resistance, better hire assistants
My pistons glisten ultra, high performance
Inside your private quarters where I fry your components

"So the question is, can code contain all types of information?"
I think so.

There are some definite problems with computability, such as the halting problem which can never be solved by a turing machine. This can be accounted for, with checks and balances - the computer doesn't have to give the right answer, just reply that it can't calculate it - a human couldn't calculate it either.

I am inclined to think that we work much like a computer, but obviously not in exactly the same way; we don't have 1s and 0s in our head. But our head does have much lover atomic parts that our conscience have no connection to, much like a high level language does not have direct access to hardware or the intricacies of register addressing.

My whole point is that it may be prudent to consider that the term Strong AI may be a faulty one, and that there are only different degrees complexity in "Weak" AI. I may be mistaken, of course, and there may indeed be some "magical" step that needs to be taken before something is actually thinking, but I doubt it.

I think that more we learn about the human brain, the more we demystify the I in AI. Thoughts and consciousness will likely be not that special when broken down, but because the brain is so complex it seems a mystical answer is easier for now.

The term "weak AI" does not only mean the classical pre-programmed AI that is used in the games above, it also means neural networks and artificial life (swarm AI) and a better word is probably "narrow AI" because it typically only has a narrow application. The term "Strong AI" could easily be exchanged with "General AI", because it has to be able to do basically everything. My point is that there is no threshold where one becomes the other, it is a sliding scale of complexity.

Theo Jansen's website: http://www.strandbeest.com/
From Wiki: "Jansen is dedicated to creating artificial life through the use of genetic algorithms. These programs simulate evolution inside their code. Genetic algorithms can be modified to solve a variety of problems including circuit design, and in the case of Theo Jansen's creations, complex systems."