Notes for the Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul - Rudy Rucker

Notes for The Lifebox, the Seashell, and the Soul, by Rudy Rucker
update everyone in parallel a few times, and I think in the limit Kaufman commonly found
limit cycles of a size maybe square root of N. [Can one make Kaufmann network visually
interesting?]
(2c) Simple neuron rules. This would be in the Wolfram style of making rules as
simple as possible and finding the behavior you want anyway, without having to put in a lot
of randomness into the system to start with. Make a network of N neurons each linked to k
others, but use the same Boolean function at each node. Wolfram would do a search over all
the possible Boolean functions and no doubt he’d find the four canonical computation
behaviors: dying out, periodicity, seething, and complexity ⎯ the behavior depending on
which rule you picked.
Could we simplify further? How important is it to have random connectivity?
What’s wrong with simply using k-neighbor CAs? And then we really are just talking about
CAs, as having the same Boolean update method for each node means stating a CA rule. [To
go more towards network, how about giving each cell A its nearest neighbors NA plus one
remote neighbor rA. And say we pick the remote neighbors so they aren’t near each other.
That is, if A and B are close then rA and rB aren’t close. Maybe there could be a nice
canonical way to do this. If I wanted to program this, I could have a CA with an extra real
number field dist, and it would take the usual nearest neighbor inputs plus an input from a
cell whose index is dist*N where N is the size of the CA array. I could fill the dist fields at
startup with a randomizer.]
Mind level 3: Patterns of facts.
Key mental notions that we form are the following. Each needs its own kind of
explanation.
• Notion of objects and actions, nouns and verbs. This could evolve.
• Notion of self. The videogame notion explains this pretty well.
Mind level 4: Lifebox map of what I know.
I can statically map all the facts I know. Everything I know can be made into a web
page, like a blog, an info dump.
As well as the anecdotes and memoirs, I (or a program) can provide a rich set of links
connecting the anecdotes. Lifebox is like fossils of a life form. Traces. What makes the
traces?
To make this a full-fledged lifebox, we supply a browser which fakes understanding
natural language well enough to return reasonable links to database elements in response to
spoken or written questions. We also incorporate an “I’m feeling lucky” feature to have the
lifebox pseudorandomly volunteer information. The lifebox can’t pass a true Turing test, as
it won’t understand or remember things about the interlocutor, but in a weak sense it will
pass it, the weak sense being that you simply ask it questions about itself. Like having a
conversation with William Gibson, who’s been interviewed so much that, no matter what I
say to him, he responds with an interview question answer, rarely bearing any relationship to
anything about my own life which I may have been trying to interject. More precisely,
whatever I say is combed for trigger words to access Wm. Gibson lifebox info. And of
course I do the same to others, when I can get away with it.
Mind level 5: Artificial intelligence.
Now we want to add something to make the lifebox have ideas.
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