X-Message-Number: 12685 From: Thomas Donaldson <> Subject: more on robots and virtual robots Date: Mon, 1 Nov 1999 23:03:14 +1100 (EST) How is a robot and a virtual robot different? A real robot (ie. such as the machines that wander about looking for electrical outlets) will actually find outlets and use them. This is not the same as a program which imitates such a robot in a computer. The difference comes from the difference between reality (and all the things that can really get in the way of a real robot: obstacles of various kinds, things falling on it etc) and a fictional story. Whenever we deal with computers, WE use or write a program for them. This is essentially the same as telling them what to do on a more primitive level --- it's just that what we tell them is much more complex. To tell a computer to act like a robot (all inside the computer) creates a situation which isn't fundamentally different from that of writing a book of fiction. The virtual robot has the same kind of existence as Hamlet in Shakespeare's play. That Hamlet never existed; study of how it works may tell us valuable things about real robots, but that still doesn't make it a real robot. Another possibility that Mike Perry seems not to discuss is that of a halfway robot: the robot still exists, but it is controlled by a computer program in a computer (either in the robot or elsewhere doesn't really matter). Yes, here we have a shading over. I would say that the same problem exists as when EVERYTHING is virtual: the robot no longer is doing what it wants, it's merely doing what we ask it to do by writing the program we've written. If, on the other hand, we make a robot wired so that it will search out an electrical outlet and plug itself in, we have something that isn't a program (a purely symbolic construction) but an object acting in the real world. Although we're getting very close to a boundary here, I'd say that a robot controlled by a program BURNED INTO A ROM would still qualify (it's the fact that we can change the program which makes the situation in which we are simply telling it what to do. Yes, we can remove that rom and put in another, too, but note that we can also operate on simple LIVING brains and rewire them too... say if it's the "brain" of an invertebrate such as Aplysia. But that does not mean that the original creature wasn't just following our CHANGEABLE instructions). And note also that the original robot has a drive (and in a very primitive sense, feelings). It wants to find a power outlet. A robot guided by a program we write has no such drives, it merely does what we ask it to do by means of writing a program for it. Best and long long life for all, Thomas Donaldson Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=12685