Quantum Mechanics and Self-Replicating Machines

Doug Goncz · 2003-08-31T02:43:17+00:00

This one was rejected as too speculative for Hi, gang!For two particle systems, the application of quantum mechanics and a change ofvariable allow the separation of the problem into "one concerning only thecentre of mass of the system, and another which describes the behavior of aparticle of mass mu under a potential V(r)." (Alistair I. M. Rae, QuantumMechanics, John Wiley and Sons, New York, 1981, p. 189.If you have a small machine shop with two lathes, two mills, two surfacegrinders, two cylindrical grinders, and two of every other machine tool needed,and duplicate tooling, than taken as a system of 2v machine tools, the systemis capable of self-replication. (The foundry is a separate thing. Don't worryabout it.)This does not contradict the finding of Wigner in "On the impossibility ofself-replication" in "The Logic of Personal Knowledge" because the machinist,an agent not included in Wigner's analysis of structures growing in a nutrient"sea", is self-replicating (alive).I assert that a properly trained machinist inherently knows how to operate suchan array to self-replicate, given time, because the machinist is a living,self-replicating being, but special training in the theory of self-replicationmay help. It may take generations to acheive it if it is done one machine partat a time, but a theoretical solution might be achieved in one machinist'slifetime, and a computer calculation might be a matrix operation that wouldcomplete in seconds, or days. Once stated, the theoretical basis can be taught,in context, to students at the appropriate level of instruction in mereminutes.v is finite and may be 2, for a small shop, or up to around 7. If n is 1, we have a pair of self-replicating machine tools and then canconsider a growing population of them. This idea of growth doesn't work in anarray very well because it's constrained to pairs of machine tools. Multiplepairs of machines. It's rather over constrained. In particular, cross pairingsstart to get all, well,...