But, Ben, you still have not produced one example. ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE. I can though – I agree – produce a more precisely reasoned explanation of algorithms’ impotence.
An algorithm or recipe is by definition **a set of rules which prescribe how to combine a given set of elements.** They only prescribe those given elements. There is no facility within an algorithm or recipe for prescribing new elements.[Or you must demonstrate such a facility]. You cannot have an algorithm which says: “take one Lego brick and another Lego brick – oh and something else which I haven’t thought of – but you’ll think of something...” Also – they cannot prescribe GENERAL elements. (Kinda important for A General I). Or GENERAL structures. For example, there is no algorithm for (building) “HOUSES.” There are only algorithms for building one or more specific kinds of house – Lego houses. Ditto there is no algorithm for combining “BUILDING BLOCKS” - any conceivable kind of building part – just, say, Lego bricks. You don’t and can’t have an algorithm which says: “take one building block [of any kind] and another building block [of any kind] and put them on top of each other like this.” That’s a self-evident nonsense. The rules or principles of combining particular kinds of building blocks do not apply to other kinds – those of bricks don’t apply to rocks or lumps of clay. There is no algorithm similarly for (cooking) “A MEAL” or “A STEW” or “A SMORGASBORD.” Just a particular processed dish. There is no algorithm for combining “FOOD INGREDIENTS” – any conceivable kind of food ingredient. There is no algorithm which says: “take one food ingredient [of any kind] and another food ingredient [of any kind] and heat them together to 60deg C. and then add one sauce [of any kind]”. That’s an obvious nonsense. Food ingredients are extremely diverse and do not combine in universal ways. ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE. P.S. General – conceptual – thinking, such as my examples above, is the basis of creative thinking – and the basis of all human activities. We do say all the time: “put together a menu with something healthy as a starter, and a substantial meat dish in the middle, and a really great over-the-top sweet at the end.” “General prescriptions” are the foundation of human action – but they are demonstrably non-algorithmic – and indeed anti-algorithmic. The opposite of specialised thinking. This is why algorithms don’t and can’t handle concepts, period. From: Ben Goertzel Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 1:46 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben But Mike T, You have no argument in favor of your assertion that: complex algorithmic processes, controlling an agent interacting with a complex enviroment, cannot produce results that will be interpreted by humans or other intelligent agents as fundamentally creative and novel. You simply repeat this assertion as if others should find it as intuitively obvious as you do ;p I agree that simple algorithmic processes, which can be written down in a few lines of text, cannot give rise to results that humans will perceive as fundamentally creative and novel -- except perhaps occasionally by chance, or after extraordinarily large run-times on extraordinarily powerful computers. But this limitation of simple algorithmic processes says nothing about complex ones. You don't **feel**, intuitively, like the apparently creative, novel things humans have created could have come out of complex algorithmic processes (controlling agents interacting with environments). But you don't have the ability to see the human unconscious in detail, nor do you have technical understanding of complex algorithmic processes. As an aside, note that an algorithmic process interacting with an environment, can in principle use its manipulation of the environment to modify the hardware on which it runs. This means its behavior in the long run may become quite unpredictable, to someone who knows only about the algorithmic process and doesn't have full knowledge of the environment. -- Ben On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 8:05 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: I’ve already covered it. GA’s do not produce *new elements*. They permutate a very limited set of given elements. So a GA can produce variations on an electric circuit. But that’s it. That’s all it can do. Electric circuits. It can’t produce a new system of water piping. Or oil piping. Or aquifers. Or an irrigation system. And even then, you need the guidance of a human programmer. Creativity is *new elements* m – endless generativity. From: Mike Archbold Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:06 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:54 AM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: PRODUCE ONE EXAMPLE of a creative algorithm. Or a creative recipe. One single algorithm that has produced one new element. I'd say the whole of evolutionary computing which subsumes all of genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary programming etc fits that general goal. See a book called Intro to Evolutionary Computing by Eiben Smith. Optimisation, modelling, simulation are the results. Now you are going to counter "well, it's still narrow and preprogrammed." But then that gets back to the problem of moving the goal posts around in AI. It's creative given the present state of AI, does it scale up to your expectations? Probably not at this point. But, it's creative to an extent. I'm not here to sell you on AI, though, just to give you an example (one fucking example that is). AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche 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
