The Emotion Machine by Marvin Minsky

Author:Marvin Minsky
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2006-02-22T16:00:00+00:00

In other words, as a system gets better it may find that it is increasingly harder to find more ways to improve itself. Evolution is often described as selecting good changes—but it actually does far more work at rejecting changes with bad effects. This is one reason why so many species evolve to occupy narrow, specialized niches that are bounded by all sorts of hazards and traps. Humans have come to escape from this by evolving features that most animals lack—such as ways to tell their descendants about the experiences of their ancestors. See §§Evolution.

In any case, for a machine to keep developing, it must have ways to protect itself against changes with too many side effects. One notable way to accomplish this is to split the whole system into parts that can evolve separately. This could be why most living things evolved as assemblies of separate ‘organs’—that is, of parts with fewer external connections. Then changes inside each of those organs will have fewer bad external effects. In particular this could be why the resources inside our brains tended to become organ-ized into more-or-less separate centers and levels—like those suggested in §5-6.

Reactive systems operate on descriptions of real, external situations.

Deliberation operates on descriptions of future reactions.

Reflective systems operate on descriptions of deliberations.

Self-Reflection operates on descriptions of reflections.

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