Re: virus: MEME UPDATE: To Censor Or Not? (fwd)

Dave Pape (davepape@dial.pipex.com)
Wed, 18 Dec 1996 00:40:01 GMT


At 10:19 17/12/96 -0600, you wrote:
>
>
>---------- Forwarded message ----------
>Date: Tue, 17 Dec 1996 09:36:32 -0600 (CST)
>From: zaimoni@ksu.edu
>To: Alex Williams <thantos@decatl.alf.dec.com>
>Subject: Re: virus: MEME UPDATE: To Censor Or Not?
>
>On Mon, 16 Dec 1996, Alex Williams wrote:
>
>> > We're pushing some fine lines here. A nonalgorithmic search is *not* a
>> > hunt. My impression is that a genetic algorithm is an algorithmic search
>> > [that usually uses (pseudo)random numbers....]
>>
>> Is it really possible to have a /nonalgorithmic/ search, even on or
>> especially on, a computer? The GA "algorithm" is to take two things
>> that are close and look somewhere between and around them, moving
>> closer the whole time. Its algorithmic, but not explicit. Sort of
>> like how I navigate when lost in downtown Atlanta; get somewhere I
>> almost recognize and drive toward what looks most familliar, repeat
>> until home.

Well if that isn't memetic navigation, I dunno what is. Notice that there's
no guarantee that you won't get stuck in an energy well, a point where every
other place round you looks LESS familiar than the one you're in now, yet
the place where you are now ISN'T home... until maybe a policeman moves you
on from where you are and you spot an extremely familiar shopfront, which
sends you to yet more familiar territory, which gets you home.

Energy-state diagram stuff in action (I just posted about this...)

There is no such thing as anything.

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