Re: Paper by ~MM on distributed self-awareness


Stephen Harris wrote:
"feedbackdroids" <feedbackdroids@xxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
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Stephen Harris wrote:

I think the use of the terms self-adaptive, self-managing, self-healing,
self-organizing and self-configuring in relation to describing computer
behavior in network software is widespread.

I keep trying to tell you ... the usage you give here is no problem.
From Webster, "self-" simply means of oneself or itself, the object or
subject of the action.


Well the definition of aware is "having knowledge of". In this discussion
information is passed on by ants or immune system cells of the body.

The problem is specifically in use of the term "self-aware", as this is
most commonly used in regards consciousness and other psychological
concepts.


Not any more. There used to be big philosophical fights about whether
the running the right program would "instantiate" a mind. Most people
consider the computationalist movement to have already failed. Even
then self-aware was not equivalent to 'conscious of ones own existence'
to the majority of philosophers. Lay people might not know or think
about how the terms were different. But academics don't write to please
lay people; they use terms in the accepted manner of their particular field
or discipline which often have specialized meanings rather than common.

There were 10,200 matches to a Google search for the keywords,
self-aware, reflection and java. Here is a quote from one of them:

"An online job advertisement described a vacancy in July 2002 for a junior
Java
professional for whom the duties were "development of distributed,
intelligent
and self-aware systems". Unless Science Fiction is becoming true even faster
than usual, the words "intelligent" and "self-aware" are being used here in
a
way that is different from their use in everyday conversation, and also from
the way many philosophers use them.

In fact, many computer scientists agree that the definition of
self-awareness
for software and middleware is related to reflection. Reflection is the
ability
of the program to manipulate as data something representing the state of the
program during its own execution [Bobrow et al., 1993]."

SH: That was four years ago and this condition is no longer just a trend.

Why do you keep failing to see the distinction?

I see the distinction because I am an old fart. But the distinction no
longer
matters, it is obsolete. Melanie used self-aware the same way that hundreds
of thousands of computer professionals use the term. It isn't just Java, but
IBM pushes self-aware network middleware.

They cover some of the same theoretical background which is why
I left the quote about the ant colony below. But they don't make any
clarifications about not meaning self-aware in the philosophical sense
or how a lay person might think about it. Because for them, there isn't
any controversial usage, no water to muddy, requiring an explanation.

Melanie (BTW, her other advisor was Jim Holland) has the background
to be aware of a potential issue for some people, so she is careful and
provides a definition which excludes speculations about consciousness.

MM: "This information about the global state is distributed and statistical
in nature, and thus is difficult for observers to tease out. However, the
system's components are able, collectively, to use this information in such
a way that the entire system appears to have a coherent and useful sense of
its own state. Defined in this way, self-awareness is not unique to the
brain."

She uses the term self-aware the same way thousands of the 10,200 use it.
Melanie's paper is quite clear about not using self-aware as a synonym for
a centralized self which is aware of its own existence; that strong AI claim
is very much muddy water long gone under the bridge except for a few. So
I see the distinction, I think it no longer matters, and if it did, Melanie
was
careful to provide a definition which should have dispelled any confusion.


doi.ieeecomputersociety.org/10.1109/DEXA.2004.1333561
"Natural Inspiration for Self-Adaptive Systems"

"The emergent behaviour of autonomic systems, together with the scale of
their deployment, impedes prediction of the full range of configuration
and failure scenarios; thus it is not possible to devise management and
recovery strategies to cover all possible outcomes. One solution to this
problem is to embed self-managing and self-healing abilities into such
applications. Traditional design approaches favour determinism, even when
unnecessary. This can lead to conflicts between the non-functional
requirements. Natural systems such as ant colonies have evolved
cooperative,
finely tuned emergent behaviours which allow the colonies to function at
very large scale and to be very robust, although non-deterministic.
Simple
pheromone-exchange communication systems are highly efficient and are a
major contribution to their success. This paper proposes that we look to
natural systems for inspiration when designing architecture and
communications strategies, and presents an election algorithm which
encapsulates non-deterministic behaviour to achieve high scalability,
robustness and stability."


Is MM referring to collective consciousness here?
In some ways you might liken a human being to
a collective of cells (living ones) performing minute
tasks for the collective good of the body. If you
say that consciousness is the border between the living
and the dead, and the limit of our consciousness
extends only as far as our physical (including cerebral)
experiences, then I can't see a problem. Accepted the
idea is a holistic one, but there are many many differences
between active ant colonies and 'human-cell-colonies' :\
Another thing I was reminded of was of group
dynamics, how living, related organisms (humans, ants,
sheep etc) communicate, swarm, flock etc.

Just a few ideas. N.

.

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