Filed by Bil at 2:51 pm under The Science

This week I received quite possibly the best e-mail from the corporate people at work:

Just when I think my job is too boring to go on working there, something like this pops up and keeps me going for a few more weeks. Or less than that. Time is irrelevant there.

The job itself is usually just tasking enough that it keeps my mind from wandering onto topics like, “man, I hate this job…” But on this particular day it was slow, and so I was able to think, and ironically this e-mail from the corporate goons got my mind thinking about something that has absolutely nothing to do with the corporation where I work.

I began to think instead about microwaves. How is it that microwaves technology has been around for decades, and yet the most basic danger (flaming microwave popcorn) is still a serious safety threat? How have human beings not created a microwave that instantly seals itself to airtight and thrusts the air outside so that a vacuum is created to extinguish food fires? We have coffee bags that can let air out but not in, we have sprinklers that can detect even the smallest flame, we have conventional ovens that can clean themselves, we have CARS THAT TALK BACK WHEN WE TALK TO THEM, and yet…microwave fires make us scream like two-year-olds on the high dive.

(For the record: these popcorn incidents are not my fault. I don’t even like popcorn.)

So I figured it must boil down to human error. I have a feeling that people would still find a way to set things on fire inside a microwave despite our best efforts. Humans are imperfect, and thus our creations are also imperfect. Our creations occasionally catch fire. The complexity of the universe affords that eventually our machines will fail, no matter how well they are engineered.

However, while speaking with some nerds about this, a point was raised that while humans make imperfect machines, if someone could find a way to program a robot that could self-assess and build another robot, a perfect (entropy-proof) machine might eventually be built. Some said that perfection in a machine could be achieved provided the robot knew its flaws and built another robot even more complex than itself that could also self-assess but with the current errors fixed. This next robot would undoubtedly find new errors that would need correcting, and would build another, more complex, self-assessing robot to correct those errors, who would then find more errors and build another robot, and so on.

This train of thought has to use robots, because robots can be built with a purpose (where their essence precedes their existence), and also because time is not as much of a factor. This hypothetical path presumes that the robots are built steadily enough that they can create the next robot before any errors in their own engineering lead to their destruction.

There are those who argue that a perfectly flawless machine can eventually be built – flawless in the purest sense, where no amount of entropy, no external factor in the universe can cause the machine to fail in its task (e.g. popcorn in a microwave catching fire). The argument is that there are a finite amount of factors in the universe that can affect a task-based machine in its task, and eventually they would all be planned for. The other side of the argument, though, that the universe is so infinite that there will always be factors that were not planned upon, and with the increase of complexity with each new robot, there is an increase in vulnerability to any combination of factors, finite or not, which might eventually lead to the popcorn catching fire.

But…you know…monkeys to Shakespeare. Given infinite time & all necessary resources, it is possible that the unplanned for entropy of the universe would actually enhance the increased complexity of one of these robots instead of destroying it, and by accident there could be a perfectly, 100% universe-proof robot floating around.

We live on just one little planet in one little solar system of just one medium-sized galaxy. How do we know there isn’t already a perfect machine floating through space somewhere?

This is the kind of thing I was thinking about after receiving that e-mail. When I looked down after thinking about this at my desk for a long while, I saw that I had missed a phone call. I was not alert.

That’s the appropriate use of the word “irony.”