I cannot find the reference for this despite repeated attempts, but the rock example reminds of a story I once read in a letter from a student describing a lecture Von Neumann gave.
In this lecture, Von Neumann made a reference to thinking of evolution as a universal principle; the gist of it was that if we replace “have many descendants” with “propagate your information into the future” then atoms are excellent from an evolutionary point of view, because most atoms are very stable and therefore very likely to still exist in the future.
So when asked what the rock is optimizing for, I immediately thought of this story, and that the rock is optimizing for being rock in the future and that minimizing interaction with the environment is probably optimal for this purpose.
I cannot find the reference for this despite repeated attempts, but the rock example reminds of a story I once read in a letter from a student describing a lecture Von Neumann gave.
In this lecture, Von Neumann made a reference to thinking of evolution as a universal principle; the gist of it was that if we replace “have many descendants” with “propagate your information into the future” then atoms are excellent from an evolutionary point of view, because most atoms are very stable and therefore very likely to still exist in the future.
So when asked what the rock is optimizing for, I immediately thought of this story, and that the rock is optimizing for being rock in the future and that minimizing interaction with the environment is probably optimal for this purpose.