You lost me on why that would make it any harder to define the difference between patterns and metapatterns. A pattern is a constraint applied to a set of things which is expressed as a description of those things' parts/structure. As such, patterns themselves can be placed in a set constrained by their own parts/structure, creating a metapattern which acts as a category over those patterns. It's the difference between a set of sets and the union of those same sets. Or if you want a different analogy, it's the difference between a group of regular expressions which match against strings, and a regular expression which matches strings that fit the syntax of regular expressions. But fundamentally, the reason this conversation is so complicated is the mixing of levels between description & described. You are both trying to describe what a description or pattern is. What you say about a pattern or description is not that pattern or description itself.
On Aug 23, 2012 9:25 AM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: Aaron,Thanks for helping me with a word. (Meta pattern). But we have been going through this kind of thing with Mike for years and years. He doesn't get it because he doesn't want to or can't. The elements that I mentioned were elements. The white color, for example, was clearly an element of the patterns. The fact that someone might think that a precise form like a particular triangle of the same size and shape had to be the finest definition of an element in some collection of patterns doesn't make it so. Yes we can agree on a definition of what qualifies as an element or we can agree to disagree, but my point is that the color white was an element that was common to every one of those designs and there is no equivocation around that. So the difference between the meta pattern and the pattern may not be so easy to define. Jim Bromer On Thu, Aug 23, 2012 at 9:55 AM, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: Where the disagreement arises is that these two are talking about different levels of representation. It's the difference between use ("a dog" or "a pattern") and mention ("the word 'dog'" or "the pattern 'pattern'"). Mike is insisting on a strictly use-based representation, looking for common elements *between* the patterns, and Jim is failing to point out the difference between elements and characteristics, the characteristics of the different patterns being the elements of the metapattern. -Aaron On Aug 23, 2012 7:38 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: If you want to put that mathematically, take a whole set of diverse patterns – Koch curve, Mandelbrot, herringbone, cellular automaton etc . etc. – and explain how the brain is able to abstract from *all of them together* and recognize them collectively as “patterns” (and not just as Koch curves/herringbones etc. etc). Where’s the pattern in a set of diverse patterns, B & B? And where’s the complexity, Jim? that's easy, these are all obviously susceptible to lossy compression using algorithms native to the brain... ben AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
