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RobinZ comments on Bloggingheads: Robert Wright and Eliezer Yudkowsky - Less Wrong
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What Wright said in response to that claim was: how do you know that?
"Optimisationverse
The idea that the world is an optimisation algorithm is rather like Simulism - in that it postulates that the world exists inside a computer.
However, the purpose of an optimisationverse is not entertainment - rather it is to solve some optimisation problem using a genetic algorithm.
The genetic algorithm is a sophisticated one, that evolves its own recombination operators, discoveres engineering design - and so on."
In this scenario, the process of evolution we witness does have a purpose - it was set up deliberately to help solve an optimisation problem. Surely this is not a p=0 case...
That's not the same thing as acting purposefully -- which evolution would still not be doing in that case.
(I assume that we at least agree that for something to act purposefully, it must contain some form of representation of the goal to be obtained -- a thermostat at least meets that requirement, while evolution does not... even if evolution was as intentionally designed and purposefully created as the thermostat.)