Seed Software

A short while ago, I commented on Kevin Kelly debunking Kurzweil’s singularity, citing the fact that an all-powerful AI can’t simply infer solutions to all our problems through Cartesian means. Interestingly enough, another kk post, The Forever Book, hypothesizes writing a basic text from which a newcomer to a subject could begin the process of recreating all knowledge in it from scratch. In this way, the book would become a replicating meme, a knowledge seed from which a whole body of knowledge could grow.

Mustard Seed Credit: echoesofstars

I keep thinking of these knowledge seeds in terms of computer programs. Books and DVDs can present nice algorithms to start human beings and civilizations off on a lifetime of reconstructing knowledge about the world, but a computer program can perform the reconstruction far more quickly. The only drawback is that the computer could only do this for subjects discoverable through Cartesian rather than Newtonian methods.

Assuming someone had a computer at their disposal and a Seed Software for the subject of Mathematics, they could set the program running to discover all mathematical knowledge and beyond. The program would come up with its own names, in the form of identification numbers, for every mathematical statement(?) (ie. Pythagoras’ Theorem would be “91254987”), and would not value one statement over another (ie. Pythagoras Theorem would be as important as “2 + 2 = 4”).

It would be fascinating to see how the knowledge would unfold. Unlike humans, computers would have no bias toward two or three dimensional thinking, and could run away discovering mathematical concepts of little use to the human user.

Somebody needs to get Stephen Wolfram working on this. : )