Ian Parker wrote:
:On 24 Dec, 14:42, Fred J. McCall wrote:
:
: Fred, at least, knows no such thing. *By merely a slight extension of
: that thinking, Earth can't exist completely independently, then.
:
:
:I am talking about something that can be built at reasonable cost
:within today's emergent technology.
:
Note that this eliminates every wet dream you've spurted here.
:
:The Earth is in fact a biosystem.
:
So? It is still a 'von Neumann machine' in the loosest sense.
:
:It is for example a truism to say that we could not exist without
:insects.
:
So?
:
:
: Or, to put it in your usual loonytoon vocabulary, are you insisting
: that a von Neumann machine is impossible?
:
:
:Make up your mind bin Al-kalb. You castigated me for lunacy when I
roposed such a thing. Now you are postulating one yourself!
:
My mind is made up. You're an idiot. However, that has nothing to do
with my having just shown you to be talking about of both (at least)
sides of your mouth.
:
:To build a siege colony you need a VN machine.
:
Only in the loosest possible sense (which involves people taking care
of all the 'creative' bits).
:
:There is no other way
f doing this at reasonable cost.
:
And that's not a reasonable cost. Ergo, your visions of VNs and AI
are 'impossible' by your own selective definitions, above.
:
:You can look at the Asteroid belt
:and if a VN machine could be made to work in that environment there is
:no limit to what you might think of doing.
:
Just as there is no limit if one cannot be made to work in that
environment and you send people, instead.
:
:You could even make an
:interstellar trip with a Forward type laser system.
:
As you could without one.
:
:One word of caution. A colony based on a VN machine would in itself
:consistute an antropgenic risk. Kevin Warwick has written a book on
:"The mind of the machine" in which he states that machines will be
:more intelligent than us and (if given a will of their own) will take
:us over.
:
All sorts of loony people will write all sorts of loony things.
The prime example is virtually everything you write.
--
"Ordinarily he is insane. But he has lucid moments when he is
only stupid."
-- Heinrich Heine