Re: copy protocol and object ravioli

[Tony]

>But, if I take off my programmer's hat and replace it with my
>"abstract modeller's" cap, I still have to wonder why the 
>object is responsible for cloning itself.  Nothing in the
>world from which we abstract works that way....except for
>living organisms...

>So, it's not the mechanism of self-directed cloning that upsets
>me.  It's the fact that an agent shouldn't clone itself unless
>that cloning process is part of the model being simulated.

Just to add fuel to the fire, I wonder about "nothing in the world from
which we abstract works that way," plus all the biologists must be excited
about how they've been downplayed <grin>.

I'll quote from Fontana and Buss (1996), on an issue that ties into the OO
discussion a bit.  The paper is available at:

http://www.santafe.edu/sfi/publications/Working-Papers/96-05-034.ps

"the constituent entities of a self-maintaining system characteristically
engage in interactions whose direct outcome is the *construction* of other
entities in the same class.  Self-maintenance...occurs when the
construction processes induced by the entities of a system permit the
continuous regeneration of these same entities."

>From the biological perspective,  Szathmary and Maynard Smith's work "The
Major Evolutionary transitions," (1995) discuss dependent replication. 
"The common features [to the major evolutionary transitions] that recur in
many...:  (1) Entities that were capable of independent replication before
the transition can only replicate as parts of a larger unit after it." 
Conditional replication, multiagents, and boundaries are critical to
Holland's work and Echo.  Any biologists / Echo researchers care to
comment?

What is most intriguing to me is the sociological perspective of boundaries
and objects.  I've seen a lot of direct analogies to the biological world,
which don't seem to work very well.  An anthropologist I know is fond of
talking about platform stability and how the biological / organism analogy
doesn't not translate well to social "structures."

Tony