Rules+Engine

=Rules Engine=

In order to begin to bridge the divide between pure speculative theory and a practical, working self-organizing virtuality, we propose the concept of a rules engine that will help to bootstrap the nascent virtuality into existence.

The rules engine will not offer a set of hard and fast laws by which the virtuality will grow and function. Rather, it will present a scaffolding upon which the virtuality can accrete heuristic structure, much as crystalline growth can proceed from a seed crystal. The rules engine will be subject to the same evolutionary algorithms as the virtuality itself, its output being constantly challenged for fitness in a test harness consisting of model virtualities which are engendered for this purpose alone. Much as instructional scaffolding provides an ecosystem and armature for knowledge acquisition in children, the rules engine will present an analogous scaffolding for the virtuality to grow and learn.

An input to the rules engine could be a ‘teaching world’- a legacy virtuality, possibly based on OpenSim or some other open source virtual world platform, that would feed all of its interactions with avatars into a repository. The rules engine could learn from the repository (machine learning) about avatar behaviors, interactions and pathways and track key metrics about membership, stickiness, chat content, and more over time.

There is perhaps room for human observers to influence the development of the rules engine, with the caveat that therein lies potential corruption of the model (self-organizing, evolutionary: universe, life, mind) but with the additional caveat that intervention may be necessary on a purely practical level for the purpose of, if nothing else, setting boundaries of 'reasonableness' beyond which the rules engine attractors should not be permitted to cycle. Also, as the engine gathers its library of behaviors, interactions and pathways from the teaching world, these human observers can act as counselors, guides and teachers, imparting the benefit of 'soft' logic about human culture, language, history and the like so that the engine and its pupil, the nascent virtuality, do not develop absurd patterns or behaviors that make sense to the machine but violate human conventions, mores and cultural practices.

The next step in the training of the rules engine could be to gather empirical data from the internet, and by extension, from the greater culture and world of human affairs. (Kevin Kelly quote about the internet become one big mind with a billion eyes (cameras) ears (microphones) etc.) Again guided by human observers, the rules engine could gain a first class education in how a world works, and translate this into baseline inputs and rules for the virtuality it instructs.

With these training and educational inputs, the rules engine will be optimally prepared to evolve an heuristic scaffolding upon which the self-organizing virtuality can base its bootstrap and development. As it self-organizes and evolves, the virtuality will feed its acquired knowledge back into the rules engine, the pupil instructing and optimizing the teacher in a virtuous circle that will enable increasingly intelligent virtualities to spawn and flourish.