Insight

It seems that the universe is heavier than it should be and that it is also expanding at an ever increasing rate.  So we claim that some unseen matter called dark matter is responsible.  One thing that stands in the way of this claim is that further away (and therefore back in time) galaxies are forming much faster than they should have following the big bang- this throws a number of assumptions about the early universe into doubt.

I’m not certain how often this is looked into, but I for one believe it is probable that a mass can be counted several times over in the overall ‘weight’ of the universe.  If two objects approach each other in space at some point in time before impact they will shift on some shared axis.  They will behave as a single mass rather than two unique masses.  Could masses be counted multiple times in the universe?  The individual mass of an object, the total mass a solar system, the total mass of a galaxy- and finally the universe.  If not in real mass than in how gravitational systems work?  Is gravity a localized force or could it be shared throughout a larger system?  There are some experiments that allow for a mass to exist in two places at one time until it ’snaps’ back into place- the more mass the faster this occurs.  At some point in time before physical impact two objects will behave as both individuals and as one depending on how close their masses are and relative velocity.  If a mass can exert its gravity multiple times it would display a behavior similar to if it had more mass.  Most of an atom is empty space, yet it has a gravitational weight- and at the same time the individual particles within the atom have weight.  Do these have to be the same force, or could the ’system’ act as a seperate weight altogether?  Could the solar system behave as one large mass with just a lot of empty space between planets?  Could a galaxy, the universe?  In which case we would have several times the real masses seeming to interact at one time.

I don’t like the conventional model of an object having mass and therefore gravitational force.  I like a step up model where you begin with the planets which are relative to themselves and then to surrounding space (the solar system) rather than to each other.  Next would be the solar system is relative to itself and surrounding space which would be the galaxy- rather than other solar systems.  And finally the universe which could only be relative to itself.

It’s a weak argument as I stated it, but I do think there are many plausible alternatives for theories on why the universe should ‘weigh’ more than it does.  And if a model such as I suggested does occur it might explain the missing weight.  The mass simply works in more than one place at a time.  A cup on earth has a gravitational pull, but it also adds to the gravitational pull on the moon and surrounding space.  It doesn’t have to be unique.  If it is simply a cumulative effect rather than being distorted and made a part of the earths total mass then it would be possible to see a ‘gravitational’ field and make out objects upon it based on the shape of the field.  That it would not be evenly distributed rather than a fairly even increasing sphere.  Another note on that topic, if the earths gravitational field is merely made up by the various masses on and under the surface- then is there a limit to how many gravitational fields that can exist in one space at one time.  Simiarly is there a limit to how much mass can exist in one space at one time.  I find the argument for ’self-relativity’ more userfriendly.  The earth is relative to itself, that is everything that makes up the earth and then is relative to surrounding space.  Something closely linked to mass or gravity bends space to create dimension.  Personally I think this is a left over effect of preventing two particles from occupying the same space at the same time in a super condensed universe where it would become increasingly likely.  I use the term self relativity often when trying to figure out what happens to an object approaching the speed of light- that it becomes increasingly relative to itself.  The ‘warp’ of space is bent back to where the object was at the last moment in space time.  The object would view that as a point closer by than surrounding space and would be more impacted by it’s previous gravitational field than that of surrounding space.  An example I use to this is if you’re driving down a road with letters on it and were currently on the letter C- it would take more time/energy to stop at C than to stop at D or further down the road.  If everything in the universe is in motion- one could extrapolate that to imply that point D and point B (depending on trajetory and momentum) are actually closer to the object at motion than the point it actually is.  You can break it down further and further as needed for slower and slower velocities but it would remain valid.  However, my thought is that when you approach fast enough speeds- the point C actually becomes closer.

  Dogs are going nuts and I think I’ve posted about this before.   Peace to any who reads this and let me know if it’s way off the wall.  I do think the concept of self relativity and that a mass can theoretically run into itself deserves to be looked into more- but the rest of it is more sci fi than anything else.

For awhile now I’ve been toying with the idea of using artificial gasses (collection of soft metals) influenced by a magnetic field to heat up air.  Originally I was playing around with the notion of use in hover crafts or some similar technology.  The artificial gas would not have to be contained and the acceleration of the air into the chamber would be minimal compared to the velocity of the air exiting it.  However it was pointed out to me that this would require more energy than conventional methods.

Later, while discussing windmill technologies-I came across the premise that the perfect windmill (one that would absorb all possible energy from the air) would create a vacuum.  Albeit a small and temporary one.  Though the perfect windmill is most likely an impossibility at any near time in the future it made me appreciate how great vacuums could be in generating a much greater amount of energy than windmills do.  I imagined a device, roughly in sphere with several dozens of layers of very small electric generating fans.  Placed in the middle of a collapsing vacuum the onrush of air would generate much more energy than a much large windmill blade even given the greater volume of air.  Not to mention if placed right the displacement of air into the vacuum would be evenly distributed so as to maximize energy yield.  The energy requirement of creating a vacuum however, is again greater than the energy yield.

So I started thinking that if it were possible to create a bubble, that was basically filled with a vacuum and would exist momentarily before collapsing-it would drastically cut back on the power requirements.  If the bubble was responsive to an electric static filled, and the artificial soft metal gas (manipulated by a magnetic field to behave like air) could maintain and cause the bubble to expand.  A powerful magnet at the center then could turn on and pull the soft metal artificial gas back to the center faster than the bubble collapses.  The rapid diffusion of air into the new vacuum would then hopefully generate more energy then was required creating the vacuum in the first place-since the real energy would be generated by air that is already present around us it wouldn’t violate a conservation of energy law.

Of course this may not be feasible or practical at all.  However the idea of creating vacuums using an artificial gas that can be virtually destroyed on a seconds notice could have a wide range of applications.  Used in a mixture of some combustable gas could influence the direction and rate of reaction.  It could depending on conditions-one day hold back liquids generating areas of no pressure deep underwater.  The ability of an artificial gas, possibly even a liquid that can be turned off and on with a magnetic field rather than cooling or heating it (or pumping it out) could have an impact on how we produce electricity and chemical reactions.

I’ve been reading a little bit on how higgs fields might give particles their mass.  That space is actually flooded with higgs boson that we cannot yet detect but particles push against them which in turn give them their mass.  In turn I’ve been trying to connect it to my own thoughts about space time.

The key I think is going back to when the universe started, where the same physical laws must have existed as they do today.  In a super compressed universe or any mass the tendency for any two particles to attempt to occupy the same space at the same time would expand exponentially.  There must be some natural reason this cannot occur.  In super dense spaces below that in which quantum tunneling would occur mass alone cannot explain this, unless the particles had some foresight into not only where another particle is now-but where a particle will be.

If anything I am assuming that the higgs field or something similar is generated by each particle, rather than totally flooding space.  With limited force and energy however how would a particle ‘tag’ a future point in space time and what would occur when two particles attempted to mark the space point?  Keep in mind I am imagining space as near totally compressed with the same amount of mass that currently exists. 

For the first, I think there is some pocket of the particles energy and/or mass dependent upon the particles motion that dictates how quickly the fields are formed and dispersed.  I am thinking that the way the energy is dispersed occupies more space than should be possible.  Since the fields would be of short duration and ideally would only interact with other higgs fields rather than the particles themselves the force necessary could be smaller.  If the strength of the field varies with distance but the rate of field generation varies with time then more massive particles would generate weaker fields at greater distances while particles with less mass would generate the equivalence of stronger fields since in the same time frame the particle would continuously be generating the fields ahead of it’s trajectory.  This would depend mostly on the velocity of a particle generating more fields in a given time that may not totally dissipate versus a slower moving particle.

To the second idea, I have thought along similar lines for a while that the two interacting fields would curve space time such that each would be displaced along a central axis.  The same thing I believe occurs when any two masses collide in a pure vaccum, they will rotate along an axis before impact regardless of the velocity of either mass.  Though one mass may rotate more.

I should think more on this of course.  Yet I do think that most of the difficulties encountered with physics and specfically quantum mechanics have to do with time and dimension.  In my mind I do think there is a force that prevents a mass from tunneling into itself or other masses.  Whether this is the higgs fields or some unique aspect to gravity I’m uncertain.  Both could give objects their ‘mass’.  Unlike electro-magnetism-mass and gravity are cumulative.  It may not require that different forces exist to give one particle more mass than another, if more higgs fields are generated in one space at one time-by interacting with one another curving space more in one direction than another.  It’s not necessary that one large mass acts as a single body, if there is some byproduct of particle interaction that behave as if one large mass. 

A few years ago I contemplated a language without nouns.  I felt that the main difficulty with creating a intuitive interface with a machine was the lack of a mutual language.  To that end, I felt that a middle-language would have to be created without nouns. 

The idea came in part from the book "Lila" (By the author of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance"); the main character attempts to organize everything in the world into categories-in which the categories kept increasing in complexity and in number.

The difficulty faced by character in Lila is similar to that of attempting to use quantum mechanics to predict weather patterns.  Let us say we wanted to plug all the data of weather patterns for as long as there have been adequate records, allow the computer to interconnect the data into a series of cause and effect-and when finished make a weather prediction as how current conditions compare with conditions in the past.  The difficulty is that the data will grow exponentially as more and more connections are found and will never be completed enough to make a good prediction.  The more data that comes in, the more data that comes out.  It never finalizes into a single solution that will output an answer.

Perhaps a better example can be borrowed from Asimovs Foundation and Empire series.  All of history is plugged into the tools of psychohistory, every connection between cause and effect is plotted-finally you can make predictions on what new trends in history will occur.  Again the same problem, when the data is fed into the program-the program generates more data from that data set rather than less.  It will evaluate say all the times a hit to the local economy follows an earthquake and label this even A.  It will then evaluate all the times a hit to the economy is followed by political turmoil; this event is labeled B.  The system will keep going creating more data.  Every time event A is followed by event B will now be labeled event C.  The data grows as the computer finds more and more connections- the goal is to minimize data to get a few answers not produce more data.  It is similar to a child having a question answered; in turn the child has two more questions to ask.  Each answer provokes more questions.

I think there are similarities between the above problems and a real language that a computer can actually understand.  Nouns themselves are the variables, the interconnections between them grow exponentially.  If you say chair alone, the potential for what ‘chair’ means/implies is near infinite.  Without nouns however, the word ‘chair’ would be replaced with exactly what it means being situational and temporally specific. 

I had a lot more on the subject written in lost journals.  I even attempted to break down the fewest possible grammar techniques I would need.  It’s an interesting puzzle however to just contemplate a language without nouns.  A noun would be the equivalent of a memory location/variable for a program.  Rather than plugging in all the data for each possible word and then trying to train a computer to recognize all possible interconnections-a midpoint language would have to have all the data necessary self contained in the commands/languages themselves.

Hope to write more later on the subject.

Though I do not think Intelligent Design is appropriate to use in a science class, nor do I agree with whose Intelligence the belief is referring to-I do think there is some merit to the idea.  The focus is on intelligence.  From the few courses I’ve taken, and journals I’ve read, the role of intelligence is understated in most theories on evolution.  Near everything seems to suggest that evolution is primarily driven by cause and effect.  External stimuli and competition.  Intelligence, no matter how small, plays a great role I believe in evolution.  Understanding how human beings can evolve in such a relatively short time (or even other animals), merely due to reactions from their environment does seem to be a large time.  However if human beings selected their mates along those same lines, the time it would take to evolve is dramatically reduced.  It seems that most theories of evolution have the animals behaving as mindless bacteria, and in such a setting you would think evolution would take more time.  Yet if the animals, on even an unconcious level, actively promoted the selection of those traits it would not take as much time.  Not to mention that even the role of play in younger animals, would have an impact on their ability to fight as they are older.

Too often I find that people break human beings and other animals down into merely complex machines.  We respond to stimuli, our environment shapes us.  Some people may say that humans can shape their environment, but it seems to be rarely applied to animals.  Choices in life, from the smallest animals to human beings, have an impact on evolution and the rate of evolution.  I think the role of an animals intelligence does have an impact on the rate and type of evolution.

In previous posts, [see original thought], I have questioned whether there is such thing as original thought.  Perhaps I should seperate simple from complex thought.  Flight or fight is a simple thought.  It is a direct response to the environment.  Planning on a fight, or a flight is a complex thought.  It is not directly stimulated by the environment, but is a mixture of past experience and awareness of ones abilities.  Complex thought may not be original at root, but nor is it a direct response to environmental stimuli.

This is not a friendly nor poetic meaning of life by any stretch.  It is one small part science, one giant part assumption.  Simply stated, the purpose of life (well at least to the universe) is to allow various elements to co-exist in smaller spaces than would otherwise be possible.  A micro-cosm representative of the elements of the universe on a much smaller scale.  If several rocks of different elements collided in space, you would still have relatively large spaces between them.  Chemical reactions are better, but are limited to the number of interacting elements.  In a super compressed space, such as a black hole, the elements would be destroyed.  In life however, we allow small portions of different elements to interact from a single cell to more complex animals and human beings. 

I haven’t given it as much thought as I would like, mainly because it isn’t as grand as a meaning of life to discover self awareness or to be at one with the universe on a conscious level.  However I think there is some merit to this hypothesis/theory.  It could be applied perhaps to try to understand how the first life formed, if we were to approach it as what allows the most elements to exist in the smallest space (relative to the universe at large) possible.

Personally, I’ve given some odd thought to protocellular material.  Taking advantage of natural occuring cells, such as bubbles in a pool of ammonia or perhaps a denser material.  This material would take advantage of these bubbles as a slight defense to the surrounding environment, confering perhaps a small but a real advantage.  Several biologists I have spoken with are of the mind that DNA predated other microcellular material but I am hestitant to agree.  I think DNA originally was a method of sharing resources amongst colonies of advantage cells (those that use natural bubbles to serve as a cell wall).  There could be ‘locks’ on the original strands of DNA to prevent competing pre-cell types from accessing materials necessary in reproduction/food.  Eventually, cells began to act as a more cohesive unit and further down the road to create their own cell walls.  I’m not a biologist, so there could be a number of flaws with these ideas-I hardly think bio 101 and chem 100 qualify me as novice.   

I’ve had this conversation on a few occasions, I believe that the defining factor that seperated human beings from other mammals was the creation of the Beta Male.  The Beta Male represents he who may exceed in a certain respect though is not technically leader of the entire group.  Division of leadership allowed for a number of advantages that could not be found in an alpha dominated tribe.  Primarily, the death of the alpha male no longer created as great a power vacuum.  It is possible that real complex language would not even be a requirement until there was some division of authority.  What the alpha wanted, occured.  Now, there could be more complex disagreements that were not necessarily a power struggle.  The hunter may have to convey to the leader that there was food to be had, a sentry may have to communicate to the alpha that there was trouble to be had.  Over time the rate of communication would have to increase.  The sentry would not only have to say, ‘threat’-but would also have to communicate the level of threat.  The hunter would no longer just say,’food’, and wait for the Alpha to determine whether it was a valid hunt.  Individuals increasingly had to think on their own and had to communicate these more complex original thoughts.  Leadership became shared. 

Some, including myself at one time, believe that it is possible to be all things at one time.  That we could create the perfect man or women who is supreme at all tasks.  I do not, I believe that division of authority/labor is a fact of nature and of our lives.  I used to believe that it would be great if each person could know how to construct a television set, fix their own plumbing, build a computer, improve their cars performance-etc,etc.  Yet with such multitasking would come an overall limit to how much we can achieve.  Insects can often be drafted to perform other tasks, but the overall complexity of each task is quite limited. 

It is my opinion that the emergence of the beta male in the pre-human species allowed for the first branch from the animal kingdom to modern humanity.  That without him we would not have developed a complex language, we could not have formed societies without a division of power, invention would be primitive at best as there would be no individual specialization- and social growth/new ideas would be much harder to emerge in society as they would have had to come through the few tribe leaders rather than within a random element of the tribe itself.

I wanted to get a little more into how I started thinking about self-relativity in the first place [see anti-gravity].  I’ve tried to picture the universe in it’s entirety for about as long as I can remember.  Once upon a time I used to see numerous universes existing throughout space, big-bangs occuring and collapsing with great distances between universes.  I felt that way through much of my eary teen years until I started to question what defines space and dimension, and what would happen if we were to move far enough away from the universe.  Some of my early thoughts were that space would curve back in on itself at the edge of the universe, and though we may travel in a straight line eventually we’d start to head back towards our starting point.  Next I began to question what then would the universe as a whole be relative to?  I started recognizing that the universe must be relative to itself, and I extended that to work with particles and larger bodies of matter.  At about that point I began to consider that if it were possible to move far enough away from the ‘mass’ of the universe, an object would start to orbit itself.  The why was that some form of relativity must exist in order to define dimension.  Perhaps the object would break apart but its component particles would still exist in some form.  In effect, I believe that if an object were to move far enough from the universe (as defined by the universes mass), it would begin to behave as a second universe.  There are a number of arguments against this idea, but it seems to make sense to me.  In this regard distance and speed could be interchangeable.  At a high enough velocity mass will behave in the same way as if it were a far enough distance away from the universes mass.  I personally haven’t heard much of the issue of self-relativity, if anything on the subject before, but I think it will prove to be an important concept.  In a supra-compressed universe the potential for an objects mass to interfere with itself could become an issue, at the very least ‘like’ or identical masses would have difficulty with trying to exist in the same space at the same time.  Gravity in that regard I believe is a curvature of space time to prevent two or more masses from attempting to occupy the same point, an echo of some sort saying ‘i will be there soon and have approximately this much mass’.  If a correct picture of movement of a mass would have some of its mass preceeding the majority of the object, then it could more readily interact with another body.  So that say a very heavy mass is heading towards a very slight mass, the point where they would meet both have relatively equal ‘weight’ at the leading edges of the bodies movement.  Space would curve near equally between these two points, next more mass comes and space would curve slightly more.  Eventually however the larger body will outdo the slighter mass.  In this way the two masses would not occupy the exact same space at the same time, the distances would be infinitely small but I do believe gravity is some form of a bending of space to prevent multiple masses from ‘tunneling’ into the same space at the same time as would be a common occurance in a super compressed universe with the same mass that the universe has now.

I’m a hack at a lot of subjects, but one of my fondest (fueled by too much star trek, why didn’t they just go warp 9 everywhere?) is when science meets science fiction.  One thing I’ve been curious about for awhile is anti-gravity.  A misnomer to be sure, but something similar to anti-gravity should be possible.  Science has been able to decrease the effect of gravity to some degree, Space Probe B up in space is currently trying to measure the curve in space-time due to gravity (lots of neat artist conceptions of a ’swirl’ of gravity being twisted in on the earth), not quite floating cities-but it is a start. 

One premise of mine is that if a object was to increase in mass faster than the larger gravitational body, it would ‘float’.  There are several assumptions on the table with that idea.  The first is that it takes some ‘time’ for a gravitational attraction to occur.  If it were possible to construct some form of a worm hole, so that it opened several hundred feet above the ground, the idea is that the object would ‘hang’ at that exact spot for a period of time before it would be ‘pulled’ down towards the earth.  Second, I presume that there is a limit to how many gravitational fields can exist in one space at one time-which is implying a limit on relativity.  Most of the time I hear gravity explained this way, that my computer mouse has an infinite gravitational field extending out from it, but it also becomes infinitely diffuse the further away it travels in space time.  Einstein believed in a form of a limit to gravity, in that if the sun were to suddenly explode, it would take the time light travels outward to the planets before the planets would be effected by the sudden change in the solar systems mass.  I disagree with the first belief that gravitational fields extend infinitely and I’m not sure if gravity is limited by the speed of light-but I believe it does take ’some’ time.  If gravitational fields were limitless, then I could crush the universe down into an infinitely small space and maintain seperate masses-then increasing mass faster than the parent body can account for it would be meaningless for two reasons.  1.) the gravitational effect of surrounding space outside of the parent body would still play a role in curving space-time, 2.) the amount I would have to increase the mass each moment would have to approach infinity to have a noticable impact.  Ideally the amount of mass increase could be very slight, just occur at a very fast rate.

A third concept I would like to put into play, is that there is a built in physical law to the universe that prevents objects from running into themselves.  Compress space down far enough and quantum tunneling [description of how particles travel through space, you cannot draw a line between point A and point B on a particles trajectory and pick a random point and say the particle has crossed it.  Taken into smaller and smaller bits the particle 'tunnels' through space time rather than crossing every single point] would allow different particles to try to exist in the same space at the same time.  I believe that a critical role, especially when approaching the speed of light, is an object interacting with itself moreso than surrounding space.  Something creates dimension to this universe, gives us ’space’ to move through.  We move relativistically to the plane of probably the majority of mass to the universe.  A straight line would have no meaning if there was no dimension, no relativity.  If self-relativity does exist, that the physical rules of the universe are made such that an object could potentially run ‘into’ itself, and my first premise that it takes ‘time’ for relativity to occur is correct, then perhaps that is exactly what is occuring at higher velocities.  If it takes time for relativity to occur, than it takes time for space to curve inward to give direction to the mass of an object.  To step a bit further along this thinking, if an object were to move to fast for the ‘universe’ to account for its mass, the object would begin to move more relative to itself than to surrounding space.  In effect, it would begin to orbit its last position in space time because that location appears to be closer to it than surrounding space.  Surrounding space would seem to become further and further away.  An example of this I use often is if you were driving down the road at any speed, say 20 mph and along the side of the road were an increasing series of letters marking each point along the road.  If you are just passing point C what point are you closest too?  As a matter in terms of the energy required to get to point C, the next point down the road is actually closer because you are a body in motion, as is the universe.  Time is not a fixed point, to the universe, point D .. or point E is closer than where you are now because it is the least energy dependent point to reach.  However if you are moving faster than the universe can account for most of your mass, then the point you are now at becomes closer and the rest of the points fall further and further away.  To the universe it would begin to functionally appear that there were several objects orbiting a point in space time rather than just one.

If the previous paragraph adds up, then the idea of self relativity holds a bit more merit.  If self relativity exists, than with an increase in mass an object should become more attracted to itself than surrounding space.  If there is also a limit to relativity as I attempt to establish, at least partially, earlier on, then with the increase in mass the object should be pulled more towards it’s last position in space time then towards the parent body.  What should occur would be that it would appear to float, because however much pull the earth exerts on the object it would never be as much pull as the object exerts on itself.

Not sure if much of that made sense, I have a lot more to try to say on the subject but it is difficult for me to put into words-plus I don’t have much of a formal science background unless bad sci-fi and high school physics count.

Awhile back during a conversation on memes [units of information transmitted between two or more people, often used to describe how fads such as Pogs emerge] a biologist friend of mine postulated the notion that there may be no such thing as original thought.  The premise is that all original ideas come about as a merging or mutation of memes already present.  Prior to this, I had been attempting to define intelligence as the ability to receive, create and transmit memes.  That the more memes that could be accessed at one time the greater the potential for creating them.  Transmitting them would rely on the ability to share the idea, we may have ideas all the time, but being incapable of putting them into speech,music or art (of some form) we would be unable to even remember them consciously.  The idea of there being no original thought has plagued my waking mind for some time.  We couldn’t create an idea, we can only put ones that already exist into different forms until one that can be expressed (survives) emerges.

The term meme is a play on letters based on the word gene.  They are often spoken of similar to genetics though for some reason they are no longer treated as a serious subject matter, probably because it is too far encompassing of a term to be useful in most psychological matters. 

Recognizing the possibility of no original thought, has given me a reaffirmed concept of how society evolves.  One of the main focuses of my attention has been on the idea of social prompting.  Social prompting, as I define it, is the information that must already be present in society inorder for a new idea to emerge.  An example I often use is that it would have been impossible for someone to develop nuclear science in 1000 B.C., or even 1000 A.D.  It applies both to technology and social idealogies.

Perhaps the strongest realization of lack of original thought, is that any truly original thought could not be consciously acknowledged.  We define what we see around us based on schemas [how we store categorize information in our mind, word association].  Imagine if you saw something, completely unexplainable in your daily life.  Not an animal, not a ghost, but something so totally alien to our comprehension that you could not begin to describe it.  How could you remember it?  You couldn’t say, oh that’s a blank.  You couldn’t think, the blank reminds me of something.  It would be so far outside of your grasp of reality that it should in effect be invisible.  A more down to earth example would be someone who not knowing how a computer works, would have a more difficult time drawing a picture of a circuit board-if shown the circuit board briefly, than someone who is familiar with the components.  We have a need to name things, even if the name is inappropriate, and that naming is based on previous knowledge and experience.  So a totally foreign idea or event in life, would be so indescribable that even if it reoccured frequently, we should have no recollection that it ever transpired.  The same would hold true with thinking, if we had a moment of extreme clarity or insight, without any basis in the collective social consciousness as told by Carl Jung, it should slip out of our minds completely.

The difficulty may simply be in semantics.  Perhaps simply juggling around ideas that already exist is close enough to original thought, in which case simple Artificial Intelligence systems may not be so far from our own.  It requires outside input and training in order to accomplish a task.  It could most likely not act without some external demand upon it.  But can we?