Order

here's something that's been bugging me for a very long time, just kind of in the back of my head.
the question is, what is order? what i mean is, how can it truly be defined? a lot of people say something like, it has a purpose, it follows a pattern. but what about when theres no one there to give it a purpose, and the purpose is just kind of incidental? take nature, for example: it has order, it has some kind of a purpose, and that is to sustain life. so, does that mean that nature thought about it, then decided, hey, i think i would like to sustain life? or is it incidental? and if so, how does that 'purpose' come into being? things like computers, nature, engines, our own bodies and brains are ordered systems, in that they have a purpose and they seem to try and fight against the natural disorder of the universe. so my question is, i guess, what makes them ordered if some kind of conscious purpose doesn't instill that ordered purpose into them? nature for example?
it is kind of a theory of mine that the nature of purpose and therefore bias between good and bad(good proceeds toward the purpose, bad does the opposite) are the basis for consciousness and overall feeling and experience, etc.
this kind of sprang out of thinking about the AI thread for a while.

order? it doesnt reallly need to be thought up i mean goin by wat u said it has a purpose and also goin with the nature example things such as cells, molecules would arrane them selves and take on desired functions in which to survive, organisms adapt to a certain way of survivng no one tells them that there to order themselves into changing to suit water or anything like that. Pretty screwed up answer but it gets a point through somehow lol

Its pretty much genetic coding that tells things how to evolve, that is order, sorta like the evolutions of the animals to become stronger and more powerful over long periods of time.
Chaos is like a sudden genetic mutation occurs and the animal is either enhanced or degraded. If its enhanced it is easier for it to produce children and will survive far better than the original and eventually take over =O

it seems to me like more ordered systems have a tendency to emerge out of less ordered systems. this is probably because there are fewer chances for something chaotic to get int the way the more ordered systems get. we sprung out of nature, nature sprung out of an ecosystem, the ecosystem sprung out of the solar system, which sprung out of the chaotic universe.
its true that cells and organisms function to survive, but where did this "purpose" originate? i mean, first there was no purpose, a bunch of molecules floating around, and then they all somehow combined together in this perfect ecosystem and decided, "hey, i think i'll try to stay alive, and then to reproduce." i don't know if cells and bacterium can "decide" anything, they just kind of do what they do--eat and reproduce--without any real incentive.
they are ordered systems that sprang out of a less ordered system, yet are controlled by it. we sprung out of nature, and are more intelligent than that whole system, yet we are controlled by it--we have to eat and we seem to keep reproducing, which are nature's purposes for us, to stay alive and keep going, keep the species going i mean. why we want to do it, i don't really know--its because we just "want" to, and that is all. nature has ultimate control over us.

Who coded the genetics?

well that quistion depends on wehtther or not there had to be someone to have coded the genetics.

Who coded the genetics? Not a "who", but it the coding was done through random variations. Those with bad variations die, wait a few hundred million years and you have today's nature.

I wouldn't say order has a purpose. Nature (whatever that is) doesn't have a purpose, it just is. Nature's creatures have genetic codes which may make it seem like they are "made" to purposefully reproduce, but it is not intentional and is merely the fruits of evolution.

We are bound by our genetic codes if that's what you mean by nature, yes. But still, we are far more flexible creatures then animals. We can indoctrinated/educated to go against instincts/programming. For example, a suicide bomber can override his in-built will to live, a christian (pious) will seek only one mate even though we are inclined towards polygamy.
So although we are bound by our genes, these genes are in such a way that we can override some of our instincts/desires.

yeah, good point--they can be overcome...but not to our liking.

so, if youre saying that nature is just a series of random variations, as are the actions of all animals, then this brings us to human consciousness, which does seem to be purpose-driven.
whether this sense purpose is purpose in itself or an illusion that reflects ordered variations within our brains, where would you say this sensation comes from? what i mean is, the human brain is just as much a part of this random universe as anything else, yet attached to it is this sense of purpose, of meaning, this "soul," or consciousness, or ability to experience...that is intelligent and can make all kinds of decisions that go against the chaotic universe that generated all of it.
now im getting back to the AI question, which is what i was kind of hoping to do with this thread anyway...and that is, where, along the lines of evolution, does this mind, or "soul," appear--and, most importantly, why?
if it exists only in humans, like a lot of people seem to think, the one characteristic that human beings have that other animals dont is that their brains are more complex and "ordered." our consciousness biases good from bad, and assigns purpose to what we do, and meaning to things. outside of us, our brain may be a series of meaningless variations that evolved from the chaos of the universe, but this consciousness takes these things and gives them purpose.
so a machine, if it is made to function just like a human brain, then why wouldn't it be able to have this consciousness also? unless there is something else that we can't conceive of controlling who gets to have it and who doesn't, a god-figure i guess, then it really wouldn't make any sense that machines couldn't be conscious one day.

When is something conscious? That's a very difficult question. For me, consciousness is basically just knowing that oneself exists. How do we know the AI (dolphin/chimp/whatever) knows it exists? There are some tests (like showing an animal a mirror) but they are not terribly meaningful.

The ultimate test seems to be communication though. We "decide" that something is conscious when we can communicate with it. Take babies, they aren't blameable or responsible of anything, that is, until we decide they are conscious which pretty much coincides with speech.
People talk about dolphins being as intelligent as humans and perhaps conscious, primarily because they chat amongst themselves alot. If we can trully have a conversation with them, they will no doubt be considered conscious.
There have been some tests, with a person chatting with a computer. The idea is that if the person thinks the computer is in fact another person, then the computer must be conscious or have some limited sentience. These tests almost always rely on tricking the person, (the computer identifies individual words and say something appropriate without any understanding).

So, though speech may not be the most appropriate test, it is certainly the one carried out in the vast majority of cases.