p.261 A "machine" is that which behaves in a machine-like
way, namely, that its internal state, and the state of its surroundings, defines uniquely the next state it will go.
[JLJ - Wikipedia says a machine is a powered tool consisting of one or more parts that is constructed to achieve a particular
goal.]
p.264 I am prepared to assert that there is not a single mental faculty
ascribed to Man that is good in the absolute sense.
p.265 When the environment's parts are not richly connected (when it is highly reducible, in other
words), adaptation will go on faster if the brain is also highly reducible, i.e. if its connectivity is small (Ashby, 1960,
d).
p.269 Since no system can correctly be said to be self-organizing, and since use of the phrase "self-organizing"
tends to perpetuate a fundamentally confused and inconsistent way of looking at the subject, the phrase is probably better
allowed to die out. [JLJ - yet Walker and Salt in Resilience Practice (2012) define complex adaptive systems as
self organizing systems. Go figure.]
p.273 there is no difficulty, in principle, in developing synthetic organisms
as complex, and as intelligent as we please. But we must notice two fundamental qualifications; first, their
intelligence will be an adaptation to, and a specialization towards, their particular environment, with no implication
of validity for any other environment such as ours; and secondly, their intelligence will be directed towards keeping
their own essential variables within limits.
p.274 any quantity K of appropriate selection demands the transmission or processing of quantity
K of information (Ashby, 1960, b.) There is no getting of selection for nothing.
I think that here we have a principle that we shall hear much of in the future, for it dominates
all work with complex systems.
p.274 I suggest that when the full implications of Shannon's Tenth Theorem are grasped we shall be, first
sobered, and then helped, for we shall then be able to focus our activities on the problems that are properly realistic, and
actually solvable.
p.277 the artificial generation of dynamic systems with "life" and "intelligence"... will the forms developed
be of use to us? Here the situation is dominated by the basic law of requisite variety (and Shannon's Tenth Theorem), which
says that the achieving of appropriate selection (to a degree better than chance) is absolutely dependent on the processing
of at least that quantity of information. Future work must respect this law, or be marked as futile even before it
has started.
