Jim:What kind of material evidence would support your opinion that material evidence is absolutely necessary to qualify as evidentiary support for a theory?
The whoie of science consists of theories based on evidence – from Galileo to Einstein. That’s an awful lot of evidence. That – the reliance on evidence - is what separates the substantive sciences from the formal sciences (logic, maths etc). In science, there is no such thing as “absolute” proof or evidence – everything is theoretical, everything involves only partial evidence and knowledge, everything can be replaced by a superior model or theory. Jim: One problem with the theory that material evidence is a superior kind of evidence is that it is fallible. That is not a problem in science, it is a given. All evidence and theories are more or less tentative, more or less fallible. Science is real world reasoning – you know nothing of this, metacognitively. You live and breathe logical reasoning, which is more or less “absolute” and thus unreal. In the real world, there are no absolute mathematical entities – no perfect numerical units, no perfect geometrical shapes. Nor are there any perfect logical entities. If p then q, etc – is self-evidently not true in the real world. These are all fictions about letters, which are scientifically true neither of real entities nor letters themselves. Logicomathematical entities and structures are indeed useful for *comparing* and *correlating* with the real world and real entities, Yes, there is a good deal of correlation between the two realms. But it is never absolute/perfect. And it is often way off. Meanwhile, you still have produced no *evidence* that a) there is a God, and b) if there is, how S/He/It has anything to do with your endeavours. And you have failed to grasp the central nature of evidence/evidential objects, which is that it/they must **physically connect** with the theory/theoretical objects. If God has laid his hand on you, where is the evidence/imprint of that hand? My personal philosophy is that “God” wouldn’t want you to blindly believe in anything, but look for evidence – that is the way we are designed. That is the way religious faiths and religious people are, I suggest, designed – for they usually seek some form of would-be scientific evidence, like miracles. From: Jim Bromer Sent: Wednesday, December 12, 2012 12:07 AM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Feeds for AGI conference? Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: Evidence is physical, scientific. There has to be a** physical connection** posited between the evident/visible objects/events and the theorised/invisible objects/events. Footprints in the snow are physical evidence for the theory that someone trod – put their feet down there. Footprints are or could be physically connected to feet treading. "In the realm of formal rationality - logic, maths, and computation esp. – there is no such thing as evidence at all. These fields exist by their own cognizance in artificial worlds divorced from the real world and evidence." Mike, If you stopped there, your idea would be interesting. Unfortunately, your exaggeration, without the benefit of evidence, doesn't do too much. For example you conclude with this rather eccentric viewpoint: "In the realm of formal rationality - logic, maths, and computation esp. – there is no such thing as evidence at all. These fields exist by their own cognizance in artificial worlds divorced from the real world and evidence." What kind of material evidence would support your opinion that material evidence is absolutely necessary to qualify as evidentiary support for a theory? Well you might try to find evidence that all the great scientific theories were all based on material evidence and then somehow find material evidence that showed that pure mathematics was not a great scientific theory. I don't know how you would do that! The fact that you cannot find material evidence to prove that "formal rationality" is "divorced from the real world and evidence," shows that your argument has to be rejected. Most people could find plenty of examples where some observed behavior of the real world was strongly correlated with a mathematical pattern. But, your original statement was interesting. Should material evidence be taken as a superior kind of evidence or as a necessary part of evidence? One problem with the theory that material evidence is a superior kind of evidence is that it is fallible. This means that it suffers from shortcomings and misuses just as non-material evidence does. Furthermore, we need to be able to use non-direct or hidden evidence, just as we need to use non-material (conjectured) evidence in our theory-creation process (our thinking processes.) A lot of times people cannot find the material evidence that is needed to support some theory so they need to find an event that can be correlated with the event that is of interest to them. This can be material evidence or it might be rational evidence of another kind. We use mathematics, for example, to show that some observable events does correlate with a mathematical regularity. If this kind of discovery holds up it can be an important step in the advancement of a scientific theory. Without the development of mathematics there is very little chance that modern science would have advanced as far as it did. But, I would not know how to find material evidence to support that theory. Similarly, faith in god is not just based on belief, but on the realization that wisdom and good sense can be found by trusting in god. There is a problem with this of course. You might say that anything that happened to you, regardless of whether it was good or bad was caused by god. You might, for instance, declare that god had helped you on a good day even as you ignored all the efforts people had made to help you on that day. And of course, a computer algorithm is material evidence. What you are questioning is whether one can make a reasonable association between a belief with a possible event. If you couldn't then that would mean that any theory, even yours, is irrelevant. Jim Bromer On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 3:17 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: Jim, You are deeply confused, in fact plain mistaken, about the nature of *evidence*. Evidence is physical, scientific. There has to be a** physical connection** posited between the evident/visible objects/events and the theorised/invisible objects/events. Footprints in the snow are physical evidence for the theory that someone trod – put their feet down there. Footprints are or could be physically connected to feet treading. Your finding or not finding the proof for some math. theorem does not constitute any kind of evidence that you have been inspired or not by God. There is no evident/visible **physical connection** between your maths/logical activities and a God. This doesn’t exclude the possibility that that is the case – nor does it exclude the possiblity that you are driven instead by the Devil, fairies or a severe form of schizophrenia. There just is no physical * for any of these connections whatsoever. OTOH if we could find some obvious chemical imbalance in your brain, we might have physical evidence that you are schizophrenic- though it would still be a theory. That you talk of “rational evidence” is a sign of your deep confusion. In the realm of formal rationality - logic, maths, and computation esp. – there is no such thing as evidence at all. These fields exist by their own cognizance in artificial worlds divorced from the real world and evidence. So we can and do talk of mathematical *proofs*, but we do not talk of *evidence*. You rarely deal in evidence – I keep complaining that you produce no **examples** for your ideas – I could equally say: you produce no evidence. And you v. rarely do. From: Jim Bromer Sent: Tuesday, December 11, 2012 7:32 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Feeds for AGI conference? I am glad you responded. First of all I do not think that your research is anything to brag about. If you actually tried to understand what I had said, you'd acknowledge that I kept repeating the fact that I was trying to make the case that -It was so unlikely that I would actually find a polynomial time solution to Boolean Satisfiability that: -Figuring it out would constitute rational evidence supporting the view that I did receive some divine guidance on the effort. -But if I did not then it would obviously constitute rational evidence that I did not. I believe that the fact that you missed the "rational evidence" part is telling because that is exactly my criticism of your research and the weak criteria for the selection of the papers for the conference and the lack of wise advice that you offer your supporters. I am not saying that you don't know anything but it is very clear that you do not know how to evaluate evidence. Years and years of actual research where you believed that you knew the answers so well so that you could write paper after paper elaborating your theories without anything to show is less than inspiring. Sorry for being unpleasant about this but I am not the one who has shown blatant prejudice against rational methods. It is true that I have written message after message where I thought that I had some valuable insight but I haven't disregarded the evidence. For example, Watson and contemporary search engine technology have gone way beyond anything you have worked on. The idea that you can declare them "narrow AI" as if your proclamation proved the validity of some of the crackpot ideas that you have advanced is a good example where the inability to recognize the value of evidence has interfered with your judgement. Jim Bromer On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 9:12 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: Hmmm... the dude who has repeatedly filled my inbox with ideas about how "the Lord gave me some guidance on my effort to find a polynomial time solution to Boolean Satisfiability," and so forth -- thinks I and the rest of the academic/industry AGI research community can't be taken seriously hmmm... ;p ... ben g On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 2:01 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: You guys can't be taken seriously. Jim Bromer On Tue, Dec 11, 2012 at 5:25 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: Matt, > The majority of papers offer design proposals or prove mathematical > theorems somehow related to intelligence. They all make strong > arguments for their case, but we really don't know if the methods are > useful or not. Yes, that's fair. AGI is still at an early stage and most research is exploratory. However, we're in a time of rapid exponential advancement, so the passage for early to mature stages of a technology can sometimes occur faster than expected ... this may be the case with AGI over the next decade ;) -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10561250-470149cf Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com 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 | Modify Your Subscription 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-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
