I present, in the spirit of examination, a more detailed exposition of my original commentary on your Life and Intelligence test. Hopefully we can settle all concerns and end up with something that might work. I find some full stop problems, and some fixable details. None are inherently and instantly fatal, but some are going to be very hard to survive.
Let's take this point by point. I begin with your preamble.
A Unified Theory Of Machine Life And Artificial Intelligence
Life and intelligence are the natural consequence of a particular pattern of ordered complexity.
This is inductive reasoning. It asserts that the subject is caused by its properties. While it may be true, and I may even believe it to be true, it is closer to a religion than science. Without a truly intelligent lifeform of some other source than our earthly biological process to compare with, we are speculating and then accepting the result as reality.
You are not the first to speculate, a short list includes Orson Scott Card, Gregory Benford, Frederick Pohl and Isaac Asimov just among SciFi writers. But to take it further than speculation without an example, as you have, requires a belief that is not founded on observation or deduction : Religion.
The medium does not matter; carbon atoms, electrons, light, even symbols.
Only if the first statement is true can the veracity of this statement even be addressed. But since it is inconsequential to the whole thesis, we can discard it without prejudice. Any intelligent life that can exist will be comprised of what it is comprised of whether we believe it or not.
Once any pattern reaches this ordered complexity, it becomes a living being - then a thinking entity.
Again, this can be discarded as speculation which is unneccessary to the premise. Further statements can be validated or disputed independently of how living thinking beings come into existence.
While this ordered complexity remains as yet un-defined by higher mathematics, it can be detected via a set of definitive elements.
The second clause of this sentence is the central hypothesis of your proposition. It predicts an outcome that
should be able to be shown to be true or false by way of experimentation. Let's make it completely clear, because I don't think you phrased it as you meant to.
I suspect what you meant was "The Life and Intelligence created by this ordered complexity" can be detected - not the ordered complexity itself. If this is true, as recent conversations assures me is so, then we can proceed.
For now, we do not require the "set of definitive Elements" (SODE), we can assume for the sake of discussion, that you will present a detailed and workable set once the time comes. Let's just see if the experiment can be performed for now.
The experiment is to detect life and intelligence using the SODE. First we need Life and Intelligence to test. We will use Biological Life. Hooray, we pass the test!
Now we need another experimental subject for Repeatability. Lets pick from the large number of Living and Intelligent other types of creatures.
(sound of crickets)
Wait... in other posts you have asserted that by using your test, you have identified other types of Living and Intelligent creatures that we can use.
No... that won't work, we can't use your test to find subjects for your test. For instance, lets assume that your SODE consists of being blue, and being round. In that case - this here juggling ball is living and intelligent - so we can use it to test your hypothesis by applying your test to it to see if it is Living and Intelligent.
Question: Is it blue and round? Answer: Yes
Hooray! It passed the test!
Unfortunately, as you can see, that tells us nothing about the validity of the test. No matter what SODE you propose, unless we first have a second source of Life and Intelligence, your hypothesis is untestable.
A hypothesis which is untestable is discarded. We are going to need a new hypothesis. Fortunately for my interest in this system, I believe we can find a few more in your essay.
But not in your preamble....
These elements define certain obvious properties of the Agent, and thus can be identified and measured in a controlled way and using a scientific method.
By organizing these elements into a coherent system, we can efficiently know when a given Agent is alive and thinking.
... because we have to discard these babies with the bathwater. We now know that no SODE can identify Life and Intelligence until we have at least two samples for testing.
How can we know if we have a sample? Sorry to say, we will have to blow some of the dust off your tomes, because your test won't do it. I suggest we start with an accepted test for intelligence, the Turing test.
Unfortunately, as you may know, the Chinese Room can pass the Turing test, yet we know it is neither Alive nor Intelligent. So we must add a second step. We must examine the mechanism of Purported Life and Intelligence to assure ourselves that we are not measuring the appearance of Life and Intelligence rather than actual Life and Intelligence. We must, after all, pay attention to the man behind the curtain.
I assert that such a mechanism will be intuitively obvious to the most casual observer for any level of complexity we desire. For instance, a cusory examination of the Chinese Room would show a guy in there passing scrolls around. A quick glance at an UltraHal brain script shows how parsing and coin tossing stands in for the guy passing scrolls around. Both are easily excluded on first principles.
My hypothesis then, is that by using
both a Turing test
and an examination for a requsite level of complexity, we can identify a Living Intelligence for the purpose of testing your Hypothesis. If only we had something to test my Hypothesis on....
So, if we ever get our hands on a second Living Intelligence, then we can test your main Hypothesis, until then, we might as well move on to your ancillary Hypotheses in the body of your essay.
Another day.
With respect, Bill DeWitt