Misc. Conjectures Re: AGI and Evolution
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Knowledge growth (such as in genes in the biosphere, or in a person) can only proceed by conjecture and criticism -- variation and selection. In a system which can create knowledge, but has not yet, there are no modes of substantive criticism available, since that would itself require knowledge. So how can the system create knowledge at all? Because although substantive criticism is not yet possible, the crudest form of full-on refutation is: the destruction of the information medium on which a conjecture is based, i.e., death. Death is the only "undesigned" refutation. So any initial knowledge created in an otherwise empty knowledge-creating system can only be that relating to how to avoid death in the local environment. This is the knowledge which defines replicators.
All subsequent knowledge in the system will be descended from the initial knowledge. So all knowledge in a knowledge-growing system must be either created by or comprised of replicators.
If other criteria for the selection of conjectures were built into the system, such as in the genes of a human, the growth of knowledge would be bounded to only conjectures meeting those criteria, even if the variation/conjecture aspect of the process were proceeding via a random process with no built-in knowledge. Fixed criteria means bounded knowledge, means no universality. So for unbounded progress (universality), the criteria must also be varied. But how are they criticized? What criteria for their selection can there be to avoid a regress, except survival?