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https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/3759429.3762631
Abstract
A “quine” is a deterministic program that prints itself. In this
essay, I will show you a “gauguine”: a probabilistic program
that infers itself. A gauguine is repeatedly asked to guess its
own source code. Initially, its chances of guessing correctly
are of course minuscule. But as the gauguine observes more
and more of its own previous guesses, it detects patterns of
behavior and gains information about its inner workings.
This information allows it to bootstrap self-knowledge, and
ultimately discover its own source code. We will discuss
how—and why—we might write a gauguine, and what we
stand to learn by constructing one.