From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Mon Apr 28 2003 - 19:51:39 MDT
> I have a vague idea that the original application of von Neumann machines was
> interstellar exploration: send out a probe, have it copy itself, soon you've
> got a sphere of probes spreading through the galaxy, bombarding you with
> increasing amounts of exploration data. So it needn't even cost that much, at
> least the going out and looking part. Storing the data might...
It was in Barrow and Tipler's 1986 book "The Cosmological Anthropic
Principle" that I first heard of the Von Neumann probes. The idea
is to have the dumbest ones possible land on a planet and set up
a factory to manufacture... more Von Neumann probes. A secondary
purpose is to get something going that will soon (if not immediately)
be on the other side of a complexity boundary that Von Neumann was
also the first to talk about IIRC.
When you're on the right side of Von Neumann's line, then you are
complex enough to make something more complicated (i.e. advanced)
than you are.
> Where'd the obsession with complexity come from? What happened
> to just plain _knowledge_?
You're doubtlessly correct that whenever we get a new hammer,
we immediately explore the nail potential of everything in sight.
But "knowledge" isn't quite enough to capture the meaning that
Von Neumann had in mind, I think, and so that's at least one
place to start.
Lee
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