Month: December 2020

Categories
Short Story

Mech-Cat Frisby Post-Notes

What are the qualities that give Mech-Cats a soul? Also, what is programmed vs. nurtured?

  1. The mech-cat is a real object. It is not drawing on an unlimited amount of data. It cannot perform an unlimited amount of operations. The brain is finite and so is the system of the mech-cat.
  2. Even so this makes the mech-cat more like an animal or human than a computer. It would be uncanny if a robot could remember every single thing it has ever experienced and recall it instantaneously. What the mech-cat must do is have a high quality source of information from its senses that overwhelms the memory systems so it is forced to extrapolate & synthesize from the data. For example, if you look at some scene and then look away so it is partially in your view, you are taking in a new scene but parts of the old scene are there. Is it the same scene in your mind? Or is it slightly different in your vision? Another example say there is a system that you have studied well and you are asked to reproduce it. While producing it you are not merely copying the old system but doing something else, understanding its operation, entertaining new ideas, even if you were going through the motions of producing normally, for a human it would not turn out the same. If you are merely photocopying it then you get an exact replica but if there is thought put into it the product is different.
  3. What part of the vision system is programmed and which is nurtured? Part of the story is that the mech-cat is programmed to discern between living and non-living things. I think the reason for this is that a human is special. Maybe if their senses are good enough and their programming was good, they would learn without that. But unlike a baby, they are not exactly dependent on people. I believe that life learns what other life is through the early growing process, but since mech-cats are already complete they need this programmed in them.
  4. Another piece of programming is reflexes. I think this is important so even in the example where a robot hand & a human hand are moving, the mech-cat needs to dodge. There is a practical reason too because unlike a living animal it cannot repair it’s own damage. I think in my story anything like the cat being able to recreate its own solar cells or grow muscle is too sophisticated.
  5. This also relates to other programming with self-preservation like with pains. I think for a mechanical being especially for some reason unlike a living creature, it will take longer for them to attain a soul. This is a bit of a cheating concept because I’d say they do have souls yet unlike people it is tough to say whether they are purposeful which is a semi-necessary condition perhaps, but not a sufficient condition for a soul. It is just a recognition that it might take longer for anything to make sense to such a being.
  6. A lot should make sense in terms of its chemical instrumentation. I’m not sure it really understands chemistry, maybe it does, but in a sense this makes the mech-cat a whole lot like humans right off the bat. They are concerned about the same things. They are partners. Humans just like mech-cats want sunshine and clean air. Humans can taste something and understand it is not good because it is bitter. I think only later on would a mech-cat perhaps really understand the why or how of things. I’m sort of imagining a being that can run through some programming and maximize some quality in their environment, but since the environment is very complex and new with a human partner it must adapt its behaviors. Suppose there was a vat of clear liquid and the human was a chemist: he knocks over the liquid and it is a strong acid. It burns a hole in the ground. Perhaps the mech-cat could identify it using its chemical equipment or ask the human on the tablet or any other actions that would lead to an increase in safety. This would be also very important information that would stand out for this particular Mech-Cat.
  7. A big part I think in what makes a soul is the differentiation which cannot be programed exactly. It is differentiation through life which is a semi-random process opposed to say a random number generator in a personality module. A part of this is accomplished in the training center for mech-cats. The testing by humans is one part of this differentiation and the mech-cats themselves the other. What is alive about mech-cats is all the programming they’ve been given which is new to them and how they look and behave to each other. I once read a very interesting story about the many-worlds hypothesis. https://www.tor.com/2020/07/28/hugo-spotlight-ted-chiangs-anxiety-is-the-dizziness-of-freedom-transforms-the-familiar/ It was that there were parallel worlds and it was possible to interact with one of these parallel worlds and at that moment destroy the identical-ness between the worlds by this interaction. So by interacting with yourself to say tell him to take a job whereas in your world you don’t take the job, you can run experiments. But they turn out to be different people. I think reality would be similar for the mech-cats. I think it is beneficial for many mech-cats to be together for a time so that they understand there are differences between them and so that they might have a feeling of camaraderie or being part of a collective. I feel that if there is an AI or a robot of great sophistication like the mech-cat, you have to raise it like a child. The mech-cat has a job but it is still a pet so it shouldn’t have any responsibility. It can be given a certain amount of tasks which might be subroutines that human owners might really want like restrictions like not going into certain areas or scaring off mice, but its learning for these things is pretty minimal because unlike a human it is not expected to create his or her own environment or have to learn everything through language. This might be another useful piece of programming for the mech-cat to have, human language, but I don’t think it is necessary because for a lot of simple things in a household, an animal learns through positive and negative reinforcement, even simple commands. I don’t really know how intelligent this animal is to be. I left the “electronic brain” aspects out because I simply couldn’t think of the right thing. Humans have plasticity, neuronal generation. This one facet is hard to capture with computers because although they take in data, they can easily throw out data and take in new data, whereas making a neuron seems like a much more interesting and indeterminate process. It is possible to simulate a neuron and the plastic part is I suppose a neural network because simulated neurons are very simple functions but in aggregate they can do complex things. The problem here is one of efficiency. A human is able to accomplish so much without using a ton of energy. I believe the mech-cat should have some of both: a silicon computer and something else that is more plastic. In popular sci-fi, AIs sometimes become super-intelligent and runaway from their creators by having computer hardware moved or adding more servers to their network with backups and greater CPU, so in this sense an AI is getting smarter or growing. What I imagine for the mech-cat is some kind of material that can become dense and more intricate on the interior from exertin an electrical signal or adding chemicals on the exterior, and so it is is limited by the cavity in the mech-cat. Maybe it is a different form of memory device; like a brain, it could be an object that strengthens repeated signals and weakens signals that come in less frequently. Since the mech-cat is able to do some chemistry, perhaps it could add to this, and build the structure like a crystal very slowly. Perhaps, also in the body of the mech-cat is a chemical bank that he could add to very slowly and that he could draw on.

Questions about the solar panels: In order to create a surface that is flexible out of cells, how do you accomplish this? How can you do it so it fits over what are like muscles that stretch and move in a large range of motion, even fold and turn over oneself like skin that is pulled?

Categories
Computer Games

Grunt: Games I have known

Grunt was an old platformer for the Mac. I played the shareware version. Thinking back now, I should have purchased a copy as I liked the game so much and it would have made it more playable. As a kid, starting a game over and over from the very beginning and getting to the furthest room possible adds to the challenge, though now it is clear that this is why I never beat the game because that kind of way of playing is somewhat insane. https://www.macintoshrepository.org/3496-grunt

In the game you play a rotund pig that stands upright and looks a bit like Robin Hood with a cap and tunic. The goal of the game is to explore a large dungeon with many levels and rooms. Each room is a screen size and rooms can have multiple entrances and exits that lead to other parts of the dungeon. You can find keys that open up different doors. One of the charms of this game is the variety of levels. At the beginning levels are simple colored brown and green, but levels and doors near the end are red, blue, steel, and all kinds of psychedelic colors. A door might indicate what type of level lies behind it.

You gather different ammo arrows and fireballs, maybe something else, and dispatch with enemies that are blocking your way. Ammo is very limited and lives are few. Enemies might be bouncing or pacing on a platform, or they follow you around. Another way of dying is falling or hitting spikes. If you duck, which is an important mechanic for getting under walls while traveling on a moving platform, and you get up under the wall, you also die. This is the main source of sound in the game except for some intro lute music, the sound of a fireball sounding like something getting hit and burning, and the sound of death being a squeal. To begin with you only had 3 lives though you could gain more by finding them.

Grunt had an interesting movement mechanic. Grunt is a pig with a large oval body standing on two little feet that are always running. Grunt can stand on a very thin platform because his feet are quite small. However he can accelerate quite quickly and had quite a bit of intertia, so if you are on a small platform, say you have just jumped there, you might need to quickly adjust in the opposite direction so you don’t fall off. If you are in air you can actually move slightly in the direction that you are running, so you are accelerating in a direction without there being an obvious force in the opposite direction, like when you walk on a platform. It is such that if you are running quickly, and quickly turn directions on an edge, the inertia attained during running will move you in that direction, but since you turned quickly and started running, you will move then in that direction, making an overall U-turn in air. Therefore if you are under a ceiling which is also a platform, and falling off the edge will bring certain death, you can do this maneuver to run beneath the ceiling and quickly change directions and jump on top of the platform which was just the ceiling. This type of jumping maneuver is the hardest in the game. Another movement was running and sitting, and thus sliding. It was important to gain enough speed while sliding so you didn’t end up underneath a wall. The other very difficult part is to stay on a moving platform. I believe you have to move with the platform to stay on top of it and so if the platform is small you are constantly moving and making slight adjustments, maybe even jumping to avoid an obstacle. This detail might not quite be right, but moving on a moving platform to say do a hurdle is something I remember. There were also elevators.

Overall, the game was very difficult, with lots of need to conserve ammo and a tantalizingly difficult dungeon with many doors that led to far off regions.

Categories
Short Story

From A to Z on the Alphabet Archipelago

All the letters lived together on islands in the Alphabet Archipelago in the Symbol Sea. Certain groups of letters knew each other very well. A,B,C were close as were X,Y, and Z. The letters lived at different addresses. The island addressing system was binary. A was 1 so he lived at 00001, and B was 2 so he lived at 00010, and so on. The distance between islands was the smallest number of bits that had to be flipped. So for example, A and B were not next to each other but lived 2 spaces apart, C at 00011 was the neighbor between them. The 00000 island was reserved for space.

The letters actually did not travel often from their islands. Numbers travelled more quickly than letters so the letters had developed a standard of communication. Messages were of the form X:Y where X was a string of bits that were the addresses of islands and Z was a string of bits that was converted into a message. What about punctuation like the : in the message? It was taken from the Symbol Sea. Numbers made up the atmosphere and could be grabbed from the air.

One night M, was gazing across the Symbol Sea, quiet as an ellipsis, and the reflection of the Moon added to her thoughts. “What if there was an M just like me, an M-prime, but different across the sea looking at the Moon reflecting?” She sent a letter to her friend J.

J: DO YOU THINK THERE ARE LETTERS JUST LIKE US THAT LIVE ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE SEA? – M

M: I DON’T KNOW. LET ME ASK Z. – J

Some time later Z responded.

J,M: IF YOU TURN AROUND THAT IS THE WHOLE WORLD. – Z

M: Z TOLD ME THAT YOU THINK THAT THE WORLD IS REFLECTED BECAUSE YOU ARE M. – J

This annoyed M. Though by this point as Z pontificated to R about his thoughts, and R told his view to his friends, all the other letters had begun to discuss the matter. E was partial to M’s view whereas S was partial to Z’s.

E and S started to collaborate, and with the help of a few other letters they invented a ship. One day they showed up on M’s shore. They had made the voyage okay, E traveling to S, and then together to M. Over those several days, the sea was calm full of periods and commas and no roiling exclamations. M wanted to travel across the sea and look for her reflection. In order to settle the matter, E and S agreed on the voyage and that M could borrow their ship, but first they explained the operation of the craft.

E began, “The ship has two methods of propulsion. It has an adder and a flipper.” The adder was a propeller attached to a windmill whereas the flipper was a set of fins that used currents of exclamation.

“The way the adder works is through binary addition. For example, if you are at space, 00000, you can use the adder to add 1, to get to 00001, A, and again to get to 00010, B, as the 1 adds to 1 giving the result that carries to the next spot.”

“The way the flipper works is that you can flip any bit at any position for example M, at your island, you can visit J, if you flip the bit in the 1s place, so we’ll travel from 01011 to 01010, not accounting wind.”

“Yes, the wind” said S with import.

S began, “Once we got out to Sea, we discovered that the wind blew our craft to and fro over the symbols. Through careful observation, we discovered that if you are at position 01010 or at J’s island, there is a 1/2 probability of getting blown over to T’s island 10100, and a 1/2 probability of going to E’s island 00101. Curiously, if you are at space 00000, the wind doesn’t seem to have any effect.”

“What happens if you are at A, 00001, and the wind blows you over to the right or over to the left?” asked M.

“That’s a very interesting question,” said S “What happens is that the location truncates so you end up at space, so 00001 becomes 00000. If you are blown to the left, a 0 is tacked onto the end, so 00001 becomes 00010. So what the wind does, is that it shifts the entire binary location to the left or right, each with a probability of 1/2, with truncation occurring to digits that go beyond the first bit. As the atmosphere is made of numbers there is a constant inequality, < or >. This difference is the source of the wind.”

“Every day you can use either the adder or flipper,” said E.

“And every day the wind blows,” said S.

M accompanied E and S back to their homes, and then she propelled her way forward, first flipping her way to the different islands of the Alphabet Archipelago, sometimes a lucky shift sending her to her destination and other times closer to space.

M reasoned that since the letters lived in a 5-bit system, her reflection would live within 10-bits. So if her address was 01011, then her reflection lived at 1101000000. In between lay the Symbol Sea.

After putting together her supplies and receiving a message from the letters wishing her good luck, she started out.

M's Log
Each day there is a head or tail wind and an operation.
headwind or tailwind
f11 flip 11th bit
a add 1
00000 Start M' 10110|01101 M 00000 Finish
0 01101
1 00111 a,T
2 0100000011 f10,T
3 101000000110 f11,H
4 1011000001100 f9,H
5 001100000110 f13,T
6 0110000010 f2,T
7 1011000001 f11,T
8 0101100001 a,T
9 10110000 f1,T Almost
10 101110000 f4,H
11 10110000 f5,T
12 1101100000 f10,H
13 1011000000 f10,H

After 9 days of travel she saw land, but the wind swept her away, and on the 13th day, after circling her destination, she made it to 1101000000 where she made landfall. There lived on the island, the letter, m. M was so happy to meet m! M and m were quick friends. As M explained herself, m made mango lassi, and m told M about all the letters that lived around, and M told m about her friends. Although between their two descriptions, they had some trouble following each other. It was as if you learned the story of a long lost twin, and saw in his or her life similarities to your own, but all the same a difference. m produced some letters.

“These are from a game of chess that I am playing with p.”

m: 1. e4

m showed M the board so that she understood. M exclaimed, “That’s very peculiar. We write that as P-K4.” After comparing the systems of notation, m understood.

Just then, a letter came. m opened it.

m: i just saw a vessel coming in your direction, what is it? – z

“Take a look at this,” m passed the letter to M. M read the letter, it looked mostly the same, though letters were connected in places they were not, more curvy, smaller and connected. She understood its meaning. m wrote z. Together M and m visited other lowercase letters.

Eventually M went back home. When she arrived, she told all the uppercase letters of her travels and showed them this new way of writing the letters. It was a great discovery and work began on creating new vessels and means of communication. It was agreed between the upper and lower case letters that an extra bit would be used to distinguish between upper and lower case letters. Until this point, both letter systems were using the same way of encoding messages, on each set of islands 00001 were both A and a. So for the lower case letters, their islands did not correspond with their writing. In the new system, 00001 was A and 100001 was a, 00010, B, and 100010, b, and so on. Though mostly, communication stayed the same. Between all the letters the meaning was clear and bonds of friendship were formed from a to Z and z to A.

ThE eNd