Re: Basic reproductive architectures


In article <120i71ep8ngk87e@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
<URL:mailto:greenaum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Just as an add-on, a computer program which, when run, outputs it's
own source code, is called a Quine. Quines are often easy in
interpreted languages, in compiled languages it takes a lot of
thought. Anyway there's a tangent to look into.

One way to look at things would be to say that the instructions
for the self-replication process are meta-data, and the actual
self-replication process is data.

It is also important to understand that normal operation of a
nanobot, and the self-replication of a nanobot, are two different
processes, even if exponential growth is what most early
generations of nanobot are doing, until you get enough to do the
requested task. You also need a way to detect that you have
enough nanobots, and switch over to doing the task process from
the self-replication process.

The principle that you never change the meta-data being used to
control the process, while it is controlling the process, is the
equivalent of the idea that in constructing a building you either
are assembling or altering the scaffolding or standing on it and
using it for construction of the building, never both at the same
time.

The way in which the meta-data is altered is by being able to
treat it as data, while you use even simpler meta-data to alter
it. This meta-meta-data may just be normal data under other
circumstances, but it is considered unchanging meta-data while
you are changing the normal meta-data.

For analogy a living cell has DNA, meta-data which controls its
operation, but this can be repaired by RNA (meta-meta-data),
which is generated from the DNA. You don't use the DNA as
controlling meta-data for operating the cell while it itself is
being treated as data, and being changed. And the RNA is normally
just data.

Using this approach you avoid "Who shaves the barber?" paradoxes,
and various other ways of confusing yourself while trying to
think about the problem of self-replication.


This approach to data and meta-data comes from work done by Dr
Ian Newman, at Loughborough University, UK, for example on the
GENIE project in the later 1980s.

--
Rory McLean
rory@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx


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