In news:1143301959.032002.298630@e56g2000cwe.googlegroups.com,
ianparker2@gmail.com <ianparker2@gmail.com> typed:

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.

This is perfectly true. However most Evangelicals who support ID would
tend to believe in the LITERAL truth of Genesis. The problem with
panspermetia or God beiing an asronaut is that the Universe has been
in existence for a finite time (13.7 billion years). Anything which
evolved before us would have had this problem. In fact it is quite
possible that the solution to the Fermi Paradox is that we ARE the
most advanced in this neck of the woods and that OUR VN probes will
make it to other stars. Nobody else's have yet.

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 :)

A VN machine would have the evolutionary potential which its creator
decided to build into it. No more - No less. In fact its potential to
evolve will have to be limited for our own safety. It is not true that
sentient beings are the inevitable result of evolution. They may
result, they don't have to. Evolution is survival of the fittest. The
fittest may be the most intelligent, but they don't have to be.

Well I think the amout of intelligence you would need to give them would
depend to what degree they needed to work independently of human control or
intelligence. But I dare say one could build a basic intelligence like for
example animals appear to have, which we call instinct.

We would design a self replicator, and the design is in fact not that
compilcated. If a robot can assemble a flatpack it can do the general
mecanical task.

Well I dare say it would have to be able to cope with missing screws and
that bit that's always left over at the end LOL :)

A machine, or process, has a set of inputs and outputs. A tool is of
course an input which is not consumed, or rather is consumed slowly as
it wears out. If every part, assembly, sub assembly or material is
either an output from a process or is naturally occuring we have a
replicator that will replicate itself in the presence of the
resources. Resources are defined as being inputs which are not
manufactured.

Well I suppose that would limit their options and mean they would have to
remain loyal to humanbeings. Of course they would have to be intelligent to
the point of knowing they couldn't take over the maufactuing process So
staging a mass revolt and declaring war on their masters would be futile.

As I have said, this is not necessarily complicated. In fact a vast
range of processes (all CAD/CAM processes) are open to us on assembly
of a flatpack. Thus a VN machine is present (potentially) when we have
a robot that does really useful tasks.

Well it's an interesting possibility :)
-- 
Amanda