Search Ideas

So reach should only ever be invoked with respect to existing knowledge? So a program's reach is the intersection of its codomain and the solutions to known problems.

But this depends on what a "problem" is; any output will be the solution to some problem, somewhere, so all programs would have unlimited reach.

Maybe this definition accommodates both the multiversal and atemporal aspects of reality: a program's reach is the set of its outputs that solve problems in any universe (past, present or adjacent).

Fun question. Say the reach of a program is the set of all problems it can solve or help solve (whether anyone knows, or whether the problems exist yet). All of that program's possible outputs together comprise the implication space -- it sounds like "codomain" is actual term. The instantiation of each item in the codomain is an occurrence of my "inferential novelty". The codomain is implicit in a program when it is created, but not all of that output will help solve problems. The program's reach is the subset that does.

Would it help to distinguish between dogmatic vs. critical information processing?

That’s a distinction I’ve been using. All programs written to date are dogmatic. Whereas a genuine evolutionary algorithm would be critical, at least in part.

We don’t know how to write critical code. We only know how to write dogmatic code that looks critical.

Cosmic rays have been known to flip bits in computers, eg impacting election results: https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2021arXiv210505103N/abstract

However, due to computational universality, we should be able to simulate a knowledge-growing system plus cosmic rays impacting that system.

So then at that point the source of the mutation is part of the program again…

How much overlap is there between the concept of inferential novelty and reach, if any?

I've been thinking of death as the loss of an instance of an idea from the soup. Part of what I'm curious about here is the epistemic difference between deaths of instances, and deaths of the whole lineage (which seems like a "refutation" in a different, more meaningful sense). See #5167.

By "weight" I meant that there being fewer instances of an idea (or less causal power, as you propose), doesn't actually criticize anything (content-wise), until the idea drops to zero (at which point, that idea is gone, and the knowledge content in the system has meaningfully changed -- epistemically changed...). Extinction (death of all instances -- and alleles..?) does seem like a refutation of the idea/gene.

This is the same as in an economy, seems to me. Maybe part of what can be clarified in this discussion will be these different modes of criticism. Please see #5133 and related.

Does not happen? With unlimited resources, why can't it? Competition will not always prevent it, will it?

But couldn't scarcity of resources be part of the underlying mechanism? We wouldn't want to say, "assume no speed limit to mass, because we want the underlying necessity of the mechanism of gravity." But the scarcity of speed is integral to the mechanism.

no scarcity for idea resources

"Idea resources" are computational resources, which are always scarce. Even with universality (modulo resources), the limits of the resources must have some effects on the evolution, I would think. Some developmental paths cannot be taken.

Greater causal power, of which differential survival is a subset.

The criticism "this is replicating less" should be generalized to "this allele/information has less causal power than an alternative." That has tremendous weight.

There is a natural preference for the one with more causal power, it is naturally selected over alternatives.

However, it is not clear to me how you are "weighing" these criticisms. So maybe my weighing isn't relevant to your weighing.

The term "death" is being used too vaguely. (Or else I am misunderstanding.) Do you think that a gene replicating and then dying (while its offspring survives) is "death?" A "refutation?"

Or do you mean "total elimination of the allele" as "death" or "refutation?"

In addition to scarcity, you have to assume unbounded growth of the population in an ecosystem, which does not happen.

Scarcity of resources should not be assumed. You want underlying necessity of the mechanism, not a strained analogy. There is no scarcity for idea resources.

The change in population of a replicator is non-specific to its content?

The capital allocated to a business is non-specific to its content? Conflating with the prices of a good?

But the extinction of a replicator by destroying its last instance does seem absolute, unlike the change in its population, which I suggest is non-specific to the content in #5133.

Yes, the quantity variable is instantiated in the collective physical substrate comprising all of the replicator instances.

Wouldn't it have to be instantiated in the overall system itself, which contains the replicators (among other things?)? Otherwise, how could that variable be a form of criticism by the system?

None of the replicators have that information. If that quantity variable exists, it's instantiated somewhere else.

How is the quantity of a replicator not based in the same medium as the replicator?

Non-specific criticisms, those not taking into account the content of their target, are always "analogue" (or quantitative as opposed to qualitative) in the sense of being based on a variable whose quantity changes in a medium distinct from that hosting the knowledge it is serving as criticism for. (E.g. capital allocation in an economy; number of instances of a replicator.)

Specific criticisms, those taking into account the content of their target, are always discrete and absolute because they identify a contradiction. (E.g. criticisms of a scientific theory.)