Decision Making by Inanimate Objects?

1 points by kathe ↗ HN
There are certain materials (some metal oxides, I think) which adapt to external stimulus quite like sentient beings. Does anyone know of such materials?

2 comments

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Spinoza understood thought and extension were unified. A change in extension is a change in thought and vv.
the word "like" is your big mistake here. They react in a strict one-dimensional sense. No, it does not automatically uplift them into "THEY'RE ALIVE" because thats not how analogies work.

Sorry, but what they are doing is not 'stimulus-response' -Its physics. You mistake the label (stimulus) and the stimulus-response idea, for equalities. They are analogies.

A bi-metallic strip "responds" to temperature change by curling. Its "stimulus" is temperature. Its "response" is to curl. The basic mechanism is not sentience, its differential thermal expansion.