From: rjones@soartech.com   
      
   jonesrob@emporia.edu wrote:   
   > Hofstadter has said (Godel, Escher, Bach... Basic Books,   
   > 1979) that "below every tangled hierarchy lies an   
   > inviolate level." But is this true? Over the past few years   
   > I have been developing my Asa (Autonomous Software   
   > Agent) AIs. At first Asa was a pair of neural networks   
   > (Trans. Kansas Acad. Sci., vol. 100, pg 85, 1997), later   
   > I modified it to employ case based reasoners (Trans.   
   > Kansas Acad. Sci., vol. 107, pg 32, 2004) and most   
   > recently a hierarchical structure (Trans. Kansas Acad.   
   > Sci., vol. 109, pg 159, 2006). The programming language   
   > was also changed along the way and I no longer run Asa   
   > on the original hardware.   
   >   
   > Now you may not know this but I am a flesh and blood   
   > living and breathing human being.  But just suppose that   
   > I too was an AI, running and modifing Asa. Couldn't two   
   > intelligent agents run and modify one another?  And   
   > modify whatever they wanted, backing up if and when   
   > their modifications caused a systems crash.   
   >   
   > Now perhaps the laws of physics could be held to be   
   > the "inviolate level" but I don't think that is what Hofstadter   
   > had in mind.  And I suppose we shouldn't let the agents'   
   > value system be too easily self-adjusted (Trans. Kansas   
   > Acad. Sci., vol. 107, pg 32, 2004) either.  But values   
   > can change if not too easily and too quickly.   
      
   You say that you and ASA could "run each other".  But the question is   
   "What is each of you running on?"  Somewhere down there, there has to be   
   a machine (mechanical, electrical, biological, molecular, whatever...)   
   on which things are "running".  That is the inviolate level.  For some   
   kinds of "programs", the laws of physics would be exactly what   
   Hofstadter means by an inviolate level (in my opinion)...but most   
   "programmable" machines would be somewhat higher (at least at a   
   molecular level, for example, like DNA transcription).   
      
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