Mechanical Darwinism

[FireFry]

This is an idea that sprung into my brain yesterday. If machines are made in our image to do the things we used to (sew, build, farm, etc) then is it possible that, through economic efficiency and individual mechanic speed of production that the survival of the fittest -- within machines -- would prevail??

For example, less polluting machines would prevail over polluting machines, more manuevarable and faster cars would prevail over slower ones, machines that can be made more easily to serve us would prevail over machines that can't be made easily.

Which is what is so curious about machines, they evolve and innovate and there are millions of blueprints : like there are millions of species -- if not billions or trillions or more (beyond 9 zeroes) and much like living things, their survival is determined by their utility within the mechanical ecosystem and their ability to feed off one another.

For example, we could see it like this : oil drills feed cars. Steamrollers, like fungi, pave a platform -- the soil -- the roads -- for the cars to use and transit. As cars need to transit to survive. I just thought this topic may be a little fun for everybody where we can set our intellect wild and imagine what may be the next dominating machine of the future.

[BurnTheOliveTree]

Well, this depends on whether or not the machines can act independently of our instruction. If they are just automatons, then I suppose you'd have a system of artificial selection - we would pick the best machines for purpose, and there would be an evolution of sorts. It's not a Darwinian idea though, he was about natural selection, which requires them to act independently, reproduce, and compete for resources.

-Alex

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Is there a mechanism that passes 'genetic material' on from one generation of machines to another?

Indeed, do machines 'reproduce'?

[Ferryman 5]

Maybe humans can evolve to become more ‘mechanical’ but retain the ability to reproduce the species.

[Hit The North]

Maybe humans can evolve to become more ‘mechanical’ but retain the ability to reproduce the species.

Aren't organic systems more complex than mechanical systems? If so, then humanity would have to de-evolve to become more mechanical.

Firefry:

Which is what is so curious about machines, they evolve and innovate

No they don't. The ability of human beings to construct better machines evolves on the basis of technical innnovation.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Z is right here; this analogy with machines only works if we anthropomorphise them.

[Luís Henrique]

Generally speaking, forcing theories into aspects of reality that they were not intended to deal with results in bad science.

Biological "Marxism" (Lysenkoism); Social "Physics" (as imagined by Comte); "Memetics"; the "Tao" of Physics; Linguistic "Marxism" (Marrism) "Cliometrics"; Social "Darwinism", etc., are some of the "Piltdown Man" fossiles of such incongruent combinations...

Luís Henrique

[Ferryman 5]

Aren't organic systems more complex than mechanical systems? If so, then humanity would have to de-evolve to become more mechanical.

Ok, de-evolve is good and regress would work even better. Are there any examples of life form regressing or is 'regressing' just a concept?

[Hit The North]

Ok, de-evolve is good and regress would work even better. Are there any examples of life form regressing or is 'regressing' just a concept?

Well the most important question would be why you would think it remotely desirable for humans to 'regress' to a more 'mechanical' state? :confused:

[Ferryman 5]

Well the most important question would be why you would think it remotely desirable for humans to 'regress' to a more 'mechanical' state? :confused:

I only meant that your word 'de-evolve' was a good description and that 'regress' was possibly a better description, not that I desired any of it.
However, it is imaginable that we could evolve, de-evolve or regress mechanically.

[Ferryman 5]

Just imagine people injecting themselves to with chemicals to cancel out the appearance of ageing. Just imagine if people had their stomachs reduced mechanically in order to stop them eating. Just imagine a combination of chemical and mechanical reforms and revolutions in human physical and mental development of this kind that would ‘change’ our notions of what it is to be human. Just imagine! While you can.

[Luís Henrique]

That, however, is prosthetics, not evolution.

Luís Henrique

[Ferryman 5]

Is evolution only biological? can't it be machanical, social, Or is it simply, only, merely, just a 'concept'?

P.s Stay withit

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Well, Darwinian evolution requires a selectable medium (i.e, some form of genetic component), and machines do not seem to have any.

If the term 'evolution' is used of machine development, it refers analogically to what we do to their designs, or to what we program into their own design parameters.

[MarxSchmarx]

There is a very well-studied subfield in engineering called "Genetic Algorithms":
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genetic_algorithm

In essence, this is an "optimization" method that involves developing computer models of the product (machine, software, time-table, etc...), simulating the product under a variety of conditions, and figuring out which products performs best. Then you mix and match the best-performing products, simulate those new products under the same conditions, determine their performance, select the best performing, mix and match those guys, ad nauseum.

This technique has been used to design airplanes (http://aero.stanford.edu/GA.html), as well as solve operations research problems and of course software development.

The idea here is that the object of selection are actually pieces of computer code - e.g., you have code for airplane's wings, code for its engine, etc... and then you can mix and match the codes (recombination). You can also allow for "mutations" of random effect and whatnot. It's actually pretty freaking cool (ok, if you're a nerd) and apparently extremely efficient.

In most engineering applications, the mapping between the code and the physical product is one-to-one, which means it is readily applicable to artificial systems.

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

Of course, many of these words are being used mataphorically, hence the 'scare' quotes.

[piet11111]

Well the most important question would be why you would think it remotely desirable for humans to 'regress' to a more 'mechanical' state? :confused:

i fail to see how that would be regressive.
a complicated device is not better then a simple one just look at how the earliest computers where complicated yet did not have the calculating capacity that our current digital watches have :lol:

the human body is an impressive biological machine that served us well but there is a lot of room for improvement.
everyday people die because of thousands of different "breakdowns" in the machine.

it should be obvious why people want to replace biological components with mechanical ones so that they can live longer and increase all of their ability's.

you might want to look up transhumanism

[Ferryman 5]

Well, Darwinian evolution requires a selectable medium (i.e, some form of genetic component), and machines do not seem to have any.

If the term 'evolution' is used of machine development, it refers analogically to what we do to their designs, or to what we program into their own design parameters.

Oh joy of joys! What great contributions. This could go anywhere. I could not have hoped for a better development of this thread even if I’d started it or planed it. Hope FireFly who did start it feels the same.

Firstly, just one quick rant. I don’t want to derail the thread but all this partly answers the evergreen debate about ‘workers’ and/or ‘intellectuals’ organising the revolution etc. How are workers like me supposed to access the intellectual food we need in order to be modern humans, without the truly essential comradeship of ‘pen pushers’, ‘egg heads’ and ‘shiny arses’ who have a handle on the better technology of the educated petit-bourgeoisie. We workers need you lot because we are suspicious of anti-socialist/anti-communist bourgeoisie experts and we just don’t have the time ourselves to sift and research even the most prominent experts in science and art etc. Viva the ‘swats’. END OF RANT

Thanks for the clarification Rosa. Could we use the term ‘evolution’ to refer to WHAT WE DO analogically/biologically to human designs as well as to machines designs?
Note: Generic ‘WE’ meaning both capitalists and communists. (For the time being) I understand that genes, among other things, are decisive at present, but isn’t everything capable of manipulation (theoretically at least).

[Ferryman 5]

Of course, many of these words are being used mataphorically, hence the 'scare' quotes.

What doses this mea?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

I am not sure what to tell you.

Do you know what a metaphor is?

Or is the term 'scare quotes' worrying you?

[Rosa Lichtenstein]

F5:



Thanks for the clarification Rosa. Could we use the term ‘evolution’ to refer to WHAT WE DO analogically/biologically to human designs as well as to machines designs?

Note: Generic ‘WE’ meaning both capitalists and communists. (For the time being) I understand that genes, among other things, are decisive at present, but isn’t everything capable of manipulation (theoretically at least).


Sure, but then it won't be evolution in the literal sense, but 'evolution'.

No problem with that.

I am not sure though that this gets us very far.

By the way, I am working class, too.

[Ferryman 5]

Rosa
You did not mean to say mataphorically but metaphorically and I’ve Googled ‘scare quotes’ so that’s sorted.

Now I think the word we should be using is adaption. Firstly in the general biological sense as product of natural selection, secondly as mechanical adaption as in Luis Henrique’s “prosthetics” and thirdly as any specific adaption under discussion. Could we not adapt ourselves for a less muscular and more cerebral existence e.g. brains in a jars, while we continue manipulating adapting or ‘evolving’ machines, which is what the original proposition on this thread is about. And it is imaginable that all our terms for all the material we are discussing could lose the distinctions we currently place on them.

[Ferryman 5]

You did not mean to say mataphorically but metaphorically and I’ve Googled ‘scare quotes’ so that’s sorted. Now I think the word we should be using is adaption. Firstly in the general biological sense as product of natural selection, secondly as mechanical adaption as in Luis Henrique’s “prosthetics”and thirdly as any specific adaption under discussion. Could we not adapt ourselves for a less muscular and more cerebral existence e.g. brains in a jars, while we continue manipulating adapting or ‘evolving’ machines, which is what the original proposition on this thread is about. And it is imaginable that all our terms for all the material we are discussing could lose the distinctions we currently place on them.