Quantum Mechanics and Self-Replicating Machines

Just curious what your definition of "self-replicating" is, and where that definition came from. Is anything other than the machines you mentioned here included in the self-replicating entity that you envision? How much assistance or work by an external agent, and what degree of pre-processing of raw materials and energy sources, can be utilized while still meeting the qualifications for self-replication?

Bert

Which is also my question. I think Doug and I might have discussed this once before. I have an axiom that and entity (not a machine but something with and using it's own volition and knowledge) cannot create something equal to or certainly not greater than itself. Interestingly though a machine I believe can replicate itself, just as DNA does.

John

Please note that my return address is wrong due to the amount of junk email I get. So please respond to this message through the newsgroup.

Yes, and thanks for asking!

The vision came to me during the intense self-examination typical of the first two years in college, right after high school. I postulated "I am this body" in defiance of those who would have me "be" an engineering, a student (although I was and remain one), or, in particular, a salesman.

During my summer selling high school level study aids (a two volume dictionary set) I became strongly identified with the sales company, due to the usual cult like experience of door-to-door sales. After all, I said, "Hi! I'm Doug Goncz, and I'm just another one of those XXXX BOOK salesman. Y'all don't shoot 'em out here, do ya?" more than 1000 times, with enthusiasm. But when I came back to MIT, there was trouble, so I rebelled. I became a pip, an unknown.

During that rather adolescent phase, I did latch on to the idea that the individuals in any organization identify with the group. Like being all you can be in the Army. So when I learned that machine tools already were capable of self-replication, but that they were still mass-produced (partly, and in any case a product of industry), I theorized that if identity meant what I though it meant, it would be important for the machinist to identify with the machine, to be close to it, to feel it and know it, in order for self-replication to proceed.

I'd learned about the power of exponential growth. We have only about 2^32 people on this planet, so if a machine could be replicated in a month, in 32 months, everyone could have one. And a fork, a bowl, and something to eat. It was a very idealistic notion.

But all of us here know our machines well, and I think it's not too far out to say that a team assigned with reducing a set of pairs of machine tools to their most compact configuration has to be tightly knit.

Why would anyone want to do it. Well, due to transportation costs, and now that we have learned how to make hydrocarbons from CO2 and water, and extract minerals from rock with supercritical CO2, we're almost ready to colonize Mars, and we will HAVE to bring a "fully equipped machine shop" with us. It'll be expensive enough just to transport the people!

It's the only place we can reach where SRMTs are required. And so that is where I am bound, and have been since 1979.

Thus the experiments with cross vise, drill press, collet indexer, and four jaw chuck in 1995, in pairs.

The only source possible, since the energy requirements for synthesis are extreme, is nuclear. I can't go NUPOC. I'm too old to serve 20 years before the age of 55. So I have to go NASA. Solar cells actually do not self-replicate. Solarex tried it at their Rockville plant, near here. It wouldn't come off.

Electronics technology is self-designing, and thus Moore's Law, but it is not self-replicating.

The only thing I've left out of the QM analysis is the foundry. With unlimited available power, the foundry is not a problem.

Just as they leave out "spin" in QM in order to build a foundation for multiparticle systems which includes spin later in the analysis, I am leaving out the foundry for now, but will include it later.

The bookeeping of self-reproduction is the same as taking an order for a typewriter that comes with two free ribbons, an additional paid ribbon, a space bar, and a spare backspace key. It's done with an invertible quantity matrix, lower triangular, in technological order, inverted, and multiplied by the demand vector. I've seen the power of Mathcad doing this sort of thing, and it truly is amazing, so much faster than Excel on the same data....

I'm the guy who likes to bang out the lowest and highest notes on the piano just to see what they sound like together.

Wigner's paper analyzed exactly what Bert has asked, considering a machine or rather configuration of matter floating in a "nutrient sea" of components, which could be fundamental ingredients or parts ready to be final-assembled, and concluded it was impossible for the configuration to replicate in finite time with available ambient thermal energy. But Wigner himself was SR. So by identifying the machine with the operator, we transfer the SR property of the operator to the machine. Transisivity is a powerful theoretical tool that can do things like prove FLT. Or prove simply that if a=b and b=c, then a=c.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

(Same question as Bert)

Probably did, right here, during the drill press days.

The finite problem of this class is the work envelope problem: If a BP mill table is 5 feet long, and it slides back and forth 4 feet 4 inches, how the hell do you replicate it? Answer: By self-guiding the rough work through the mill without moving the table, feeding it like a table saw. How do you make the jig to guide the work? With a lathe, mill, and whatever else is needed, which you assume you have.

The indentification I have mentioned prevents the SRMT from running away uncontrolled. The machine has no initiative and is manually controlled. It can't run away unless the operator goes mad.

I think in this case, I am the RNA or transcriptase, and the machine is the DNA. Ambient thermal energy and enzyme reactions drive DNA replication. A continuous flow of reliable nuclear electric energy drives the reproduction of the SRMTs, but only as they are needed by the growing and increasing colony population.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

Yeah, I hate when that happens, don't you?

The theoretical understanding reduces this problem to general principles guiding "what to do first" and "what to do next" that are subject to insufficient analysis and bookkeeping errors in the finite solution by finite methods. So the inventorying can self-check and self-repair by comparing a description of what's going on with the "wave function" that describes everything that can be known about what's going on, without actually knowing the wave function at every point in time.

Answered in my reply to John.

You see, it's the difference between a woodworking shop and a machine shop.

The jig guides the tool; The jig guides the tool; Hi, ho, the Derry, Oh, The jig guides the tool.

In woodworking the work is fed into and THROUGH the power tool by hand, mostly, and in any case can be larger than the tool. Mostly a linear process. But what's going on is feature projection of an unusual kind.

GD&T teaches us that we need to screw a tap into a hole with a known fit and "project" the hole outwards to where the coordinate measuring machine, or one of us, can measure its location. The process of mathing a transmission and engine that have never met, using a plate between, is feature projection: The holes on the engine and the holes on the transmission are both projected onto the plate so the plate can serve as an adapter.

So what's happening when you rip the edge off a board, or mill a BP x axis table by sliding it through a custom fixture, is that the flat, linear surfaces on the table saw or on the rough table are projected to and at time same time averaged with the produced surface, which improves that surface. Then, that improved surface becomes the guide and what was the guide surface is run through, a little closer this time, to improve it. So progress is made and the work envelope problem is solved by unconventional use of whatever's available, which is what got us through WWII, with drill presses used as milling machines, and milling machines used as lathes, three shifts.

Yes, but that is a self-reproducing automaton, and I am only talking about manually guided machine tools capable of assisted reproduction, not autonomously reproducing machine tools proliferating with no antibiotics in sight.

Yes. It's my job.

In experimental machine work, we use both woodworking and metalworking machines and principles, and the Smithy Super Shop is an experimentalists's dream tool, though its potential for SR is unknown to me. In woodworking, you sometimes make a fixture for just one use. In metalworking, usually a fixture is built for mass production. Different paradigms. Same jig and fixture technology, though. Kinematic contraint.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

Hell, by the time NASA realizes they need me, I'll be on the payroll!

And what could be more fun than a paid trip to Mars?

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

snip self replication

Interesting, but what would be the point in inefficiently producing machine tools that there is no market for? Are you planning on colonizing some distant planet with machinists?

[ ... ]

But a combination of a human and a machine can create a greater machine. In particular, things like the layout of a modern CPU chip, and the generation of the masks is a task for which a human is poorly suited, but a computer (another CPU) is ideally suited, as long as the human sets some design parameters. Things like word size, number of registers, the style of logic used in adders and multiply/divide circuits, and similar parameters.

Even the early Motorola 68000 (one of the first serious

16/32-bit chips) had approximately 68000 devices fabricated in the chip. I have no idea where today's crop is, but certainly well beyond that. Just the time taken for a human to do all that layout, let alone to make sure that it is error-free, boggles the mind.

Machine tools, of course, are much simpler (until you get into CNC, where you need a CPU again). Where they stretch the envelope is in the quest for greater accuracy.

Certainly the combination of a human and one or more machines can do so.

Enjoy, DoN.

You might enjoy reading "Foundations of Mechanical Accuracy" by Wayne R. Moore if you haven't already.

Excellent treatise on the production of accurate machines by simpler - albeit more tedious - methods than self reproduction.

StaticsJason

You sound awfully scpetical; this is the dream of 90% of the newsgroup! :^)

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

Well past 20 million I believe. Things have come a long way since your Commodore 64 ;)

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

This is my first postulate: that the property of self-replication is transitive when the machine tool and operator are considered as a working unit, together. But:

I call this the self-designing, self-upgrading ability of our existing digital computers. However they do not actually self-reproduce. The machine tools we have can be loaded by robots and produce parts, like they do in Japan, automatically, but the generation of circuit lithography patterns, the lithography itself, and the manufacture and use of integrated circuits in appropriate (DIP, flip-chip) packaging, and the integration into the CNC machine tools that make parts is all a scale-up process.

It means you have to outthink the work envelope limitation not just once or twice, but dozens of times, in a cascading series of manifestations, bringing the technology from nanoscale to human scale. Through that "filter" the "self" which is being "replicated" becomes a hideously complex series of interlocking technologies, not subject to theoretical analysis, AFAIK.

Yes, computers do the complex finite tasks well, but this thread is about theory. They are great for designing the geodesic domes on Mars, but we are going to have to build them ourselves.

You mean circuitry can provide accuracy and precision? Yes, it can. So can care and concentration.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

Enjoying the rest after (successfully) returning *from* Mars. :-/

Pete (remembering Columbia) Brooks

Now be realistic Gunner.

You would eventually get tired of that job, after some time. Say, maybe, five or ten years. Like the old joke says, "...and it took the undertaker four hours to get the smile off his face...."

Jim

================================================== please reply to: JRR(zero) at yktvmv (dot) vnet (dot) ibm (dot) com ==================================================

Oh right, Altair. Couldn't think of it so threw in a generic old thing ;)

Tim

-- In the immortal words of Ned Flanders: "No foot longs!" Website @

Yes, I understand the difference between solving for the critical path using exhaustive search and comparing 10,000 paths in the blink of an eye, selecting the best 1000, and continuing for 1000 iterations. With the quantity matrix in technological order, a finite problem not requiring exhausting search, you can avoid exhaustive search and select candidate operations with a real good initial population, adding the others with genetic selection.

Yes, that's all we need. I am not arguing for complete solution of the moment to moment problem of which machine part to replicate next. Most frequently, you just fix the one that's either broken, or the one that's worn out, and that includes scraping ways. But what if the RS-232 level comparator on your CNC goes out on Mars? Fabricate a new TTL gate? Stock the entire TTL inventory?

I am familiar with running the work through the machine self-guided, dong the work on the machine with controls or programs, and attaching the machine to the work to produce a feature on the work which is too large.

Some. The process of replication starts with picking, from the existing inventory of mills, lathes, drill presses, and various grinders, a pair of each for study, determining which jigs and fixtures must be made to replicate each and every part of those particular machines with themselves, and condensing the resulting solution matrix into a specification for a pair of new machines, building them, and knowing that each and every part on the new machine can be reproduced by one of its interchangeable partners.

There's no CAD program that can solve that with a single click. And doing it manually, or without a theoretical basis to guide progress and allocation of resources, invites errors, budget overruns, and cancellation of the project, never to be attempted again.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

It's no longer listed at Lindsay, at least not on:

but that's where I read about it. It is only in cases of extreme production using every machine tool in every factory that we even approach the intensity required of a self-replication project. Older machinists have explained to me that they had to drill 1/16 inch holes with 5 HP drill presses because that's what was available, or had to flame cut a hole in a 2 inch steel plate because the mill with the ten by twenty foot bed was in use, even during non-wartime three-shift production.

But I first read about it in Lindsay.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

Yes, but people are the best place to put critical information, like that which is necessary for a group's survival

.>So you want people to remain back home, and ship

That's fine, but even in earth orbit, there is a time lag. And to Mars, the only place capable of accepting terraforming, it's what, four minutes?

Yes, I think it would be reasonable to bring two universal self-replicating machine tools to Mars.

I agree. I'll stay as long as I can stand up and work.

With a reliable nuclear power source, these operations are less massive in earth moving requirements. Pure sugar, water, air, and 6 months worth of vitamins are all I need to survive. And not that sucrose stuff. If we're going to make it, let's pick a good one.

And some little furry creatures for the occasional snack....

Yes. Different in scale, different problems.

Other than the theoretical knowledge and practical application required to do it, which will create massive spinoff industries.

The one we have is getting a little dirty, stinky, and crowded for me, present company excepted. I can barely stand living here and would prefer not to die here, although I love it. We are killing this place.

Maybe the discussion should center on what to teach The Children of Mars: a whole new thing, or just a few changes? Pick a language to teach in, first. The math we have books for.

Maybe a little ecological responsibility and a new theory of money. I have those, too.

Yours,

Doug Goncz Replikon Research (via aol.com)

Nuclear weapons are just Pu's way of ensuring that plenty of Pu will be available for The Next Big Experiment, outlined in a post to sci.physics.research at Google Groups under "supercritical"

...

Yes, isn't idealism great? I'm guessing that at the time you weren't too concerned with the concomitant exponential growths in the amount of steel required for all those machines, the amount of associated equipment and energy to mine and process the raw materials for that steel, and the amount of energy consumed by the machines during replication.

Unfortunately, even a sub-exponential growth in the population of us "self-replicating" humans is beginning to create problems due to resource scarcity. But that's a whole different topic.

...

I get the impression that, analogies to quantum mechanics notwithstanding, the primary (or only?) requirement for having pairs of machines is so that one machine can serve as a model or blueprint while the other is actually being used for making parts. If that's the case, why not add a pantograph (or other 2-D duplicating device) into the mix and then replace one of each pair of machines with a set of drawings or specifications? That would save you quite a bit of weight (and expense) on your trip to Mars.

Why not combine electronics, machinery, and the requisite chemical processing equipment into a system that is truly self-replicating, and perhaps self-designing and self-evolving as well? That seems a much more intriguing problem, though perhaps not as amenable to analysis or near-term solution.

This seems as good a point as any to interject my personal bias against the term "self"-replicating as you use it. To me, that term suggests that the entity makes a replica OF itself BY itself (such as in the reproduction by a simple asexual organism), whereas your definition describes an entity that is employed to make a replica of itself under the guidance and manipulation of an external agent. For that matter, to the extent that your machine (or system of machines) is involved, it is not making a replica of itself per se, but rather is making a pile of replicas of its component parts, which must be subsequently assembled and adjusted by an external agent to yield the replica machine. Unfortunately, I can't at the moment think of a more appropriate or palatable term for such a process.

With unlimited available power, many problems go away!

Will you also include mining and other requisite operations, and the equipment needed for those operations? How do you account for the non-metallic components of the machines, such as the insulation on wiring and motor windings, or grease, or rubber belts or bushings?

I assume there are more constraints on the "nutrients" in this sea than is implied here. Otherwise, instead of the solution being impossible, it would be quite possible, and in fact trivial for certain sets of machines and nutrients.

In any case, this is quite a different problem than accomplishing the same end result with "unlimited available power" (and by extension, unlimited energy).

How so? Sexual reproduction doesn't produce a replica, at least not what I would think of as a replica. For that matter, neither does cloning -- it produces at most an entity with a replica of one's DNA. But the actual capabilities and attributes of a human "machine" are determined by so much more than DNA that it would be a stretch, IMO, even to say that mature identical twins are replicas of each other (except in very unusual circumstances), let alone a human and a clone that is 20 or 40 or 60 years younger.

Do you have any particular reason for believing that transitivity is a property of self-replication?

Bert