Remember what Ted Nelson said in session 9 about evolution: it isn't fun for
those involved. :-)
I can see it now, a mega-meme slugfest. "My knowledge repository vision can
whoop your knowledge repository vision."
-----Original Message-----
From: Jack Park [mailto:jackpark@verticalnet.com]
Sent: Monday, May 22, 2000 4:42 PM
To: unrev-II@egroups.com
Subject: [unrev-II] And, speaking of evolvability...
Doug says that the DKR must be capable of evolution. It must be able to
track conceptual drift in the culture it serves.
William H. Calvin speaks on this in "The Six Essentials? Minimal
Requirements for the Darwinian Bootstrapping of Quality"
http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit/1997/vol1/calvin_wh.html
Abstract:
"Selectionism emphasizes carving patterns, memes remind us of minimal
replicable patterns, but a full-fledged Darwinian process needs six
essential ingredients to keep going, to recursively bootstrap quality from
rude beginnings. While there may be situations ("sparse Darwinism") in which
a reduced number suffice, another five ingredients, while not essential,
greatly enhance the speed and stability of a Darwinian process. While our
best examples are drawn from species evolution, the immune response, and
evolutionary epistemology, the Darwinian process may well be a major law of
the universe, right up there with chemical bonds as a prime generator of
interesting combinations that discover stratified stabilities. "
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