In news:1143215316.262713.13490@t31g2000cwb.googlegroups.com,
ianparker2@gmail.com <ianparker2@gmail.com> typed:

The problem according to a NASA podcast I was listening to the other
day is micro-curcuitry is so small, being bombarded with particles
of radiation in the Solar wind, stray electrons etc, causes multiple
errors in the chip curcuits, which means you have to have say for
example 3 curcuits all doing the same job, or process the same data
over and over, so the results can be MO you can't have a self
sustaining machine without some form of consiousness. Because the
machine would have to be "self aware" it woulds be pretty useless at
maintining itself if it couldn't even reconise it's own reflection
in the mirror to give itself a new paint job LOL

This is quite simply untrue. What about chlorrella? Paradoxically thev
first VN machines are likely to be more intelligent than more advanced
machines involving nano technology. The first VNs will use CAD/CAM
logic and would be "intelligent" using the word in the sense that PE
is "intelligent".

Well I suppose it boils down to the nature of consciousness. Whether
intelligence and consciousness are separable.

compared, and the data in effect cleaned to minimise errors. However
unless you have clean pre-processed contol data which of couse
wouldn't exist outside the laboratory in the void of space, AFAIK
there is no absolute way of ensuring against computer errors in
space. What that means in practice is the computers they can send
into space are about 1/5 the power of state of the art chips used in
consumer electronics on earth.

This is true, there are a variety of ways round. The first point is
that a cosmic ray can strike even in a low radiation environment. One
answer would be to have a error correcting system built into the
chips, or to have 3 chips running in parallel with a voter (Smith's
triplex system).

I have also noted your views on religion. I feel I should point out.

1) That all religions do not support ID. Pope Benedict has excoriated
the notion.

Well in spite of the fact many Christians have jumped on the band wagon of
ID it doesn't necessarily support the Biblical creation story in a literal
sense and in any case is open to interpretation. In fact you can accommodate
aspects of evolution within ID and things such as Panspermia and the Ancient
Astronaut theory and even argue that intelligence and evolution are two
sides of the same coin.

Interestingly in the 2 verse of Genesis chapter 1 it says " And the Spirit
of God moved upon the face of the waters." Which if you interpret this
movement to be *waves* of  energy that interact and resonate together
according to the laws of physics, it would seem to indicate order, and
intelligence and indeed the whole universe happened as a result of this
"movement" or Big Bang or perhaps big splash according to the Bible :)

Of course the fact that it is not talking about actual water is born out in
the next verse which says " And God said, Let there be light: and there was
light." so there is no doubt in the context it speaks this is about energy
waves and has nothing to do with water :)

2) What I was really saying is that if you are to have a naturalistic
view on the origin of life, you cannot then say that a self replicator
is going to be an encedibly complex piece of machinery.

But anything that self replicates would have to be able to adapt and evolve
by a process of trail and error and natural selection and learn by these
adaptations, if evolution is correct it would eventually become more and
more complex until it became sentient, if it didn't already have a kind of
non individualistic sentience in a "We are the Borg" kind of way :)

Interestingly we don't even have control over the cells of our own bodies,
which appear to have a will of their own a tendency to cooperate with each
other and eventually appear to conspire together to cause our death. It's
not surprising this puts the fear of God in us, or we simply give up and
take to the bottle  in order to punish our own cells, which of couse at
least empowers us some destructive contol over matters and possibly some
enjoyment in the process LOL
-- 
Amanda