Aaron,
> No, it's a word for stumbling into the right answer by accident.
When you don't understand how it happened. Which is magic.
yours [bottleneck] is inductive generalization
> If you're going to tell me I have a cognitive shortcoming,
Relax, everyone has a few.
> please back it up with whatever reason you believe so,
I've read quite a few of your messages. Anyway, math & programming are
extremely deduction-heavy, so it's a natural assumption that successful
practitioners would have that cognitive bias. Which usually comes at the cost
of bottom-up induction: there is no free lunch.
> and be precise about what you think that shortcoming is.
See above. I can't be terribly specific because you didn't post a write-up of
your approach. But from what you did post, it's all about language, which is
only a superficial conscious manifestation of cognitive process. Any autonomous
GI algorithm must start by processing senses, - that's where the semantics is
derived from.
From: Aaron Hosford
Sent: Thursday, March 07, 2013 10:24 AM
To: AGI
Subject: Re: Re: [agi] Attention to abstractions
"Serendipity" is another word for magic. Any search is uncertain, by
definition, but your chances are much better when you're searching in a
relevant areas. Subconscious searching only works when you build-up enough of
relevant representations, which is what conscious focus is for.
No, it's a word for stumbling into the right answer by accident. No magic or
anything else mysterious involved. It happens most often when you think you
know what is relevant but have left something important out without realizing
it.
yours [bottleneck] is inductive generalization
If you're going to tell me I have a cognitive shortcoming, please back it up
with whatever reason you believe so, and be precise about what you think that
shortcoming is.
On Thu, Mar 7, 2013 at 8:12 AM, Boris Kazachenko <bk...@verizon.net> wrote:
Aaron,
> And what of serendipity?
"Serendipity" is another word for magic. Any search is uncertain, by
definition, but your chances are much better when you're searching in a
relevant areas. Subconscious searching only works when you build-up enough of
relevant representations, which is what conscious focus is for.
> I have also read of several recent studies that show that performance
actually improves after distractions and/or breaks.
Breaks, definitely. Distractions may work like breaks in a short term, but
will keep distracting you in a long term. The simple fact is that you have a
fixed amount of resources between the ears.
> A healthy, happy mind is capable of much more than one constantly under
stress, and being asocial is definitely stressful for most people, as is being
in pain or focusing for too long without a rest period.
You get used to it. Like I said, breaks & naps are great, but socializing is
just as likely to be frustrating as relaxing. Depending on what you expect from
it. Positive emotions from socializing can be replaced by those from work, -
that's conditioning. It's hard at first, but so is anything worthwhile.
> It's not just about how much time you spend thinking about the task at
hand; the quality of thought during that time is also important.
Quality follows quantity, as long as you're focusing on a right level of
generalization.
> Being overly obsessive is probably not in your best interest.
I am obsessive long-term, quite relaxed short-term. We probably have very
different bottlenecks here: mine is deductive focus, yours is inductive
generalization. And the latter must come first, - it defines what a problem is.
So, I may have a leg up :).
On 03/06/13, Aaron Hosford<hosfor...@gmail.com> wrote:
And what of serendipity? I find sometimes my best ideas hit me out of nowhere
when I happen to observe something seemingly unrelated that I then tie back to
the problem I'm trying to solve. A random stimulus sometimes causes ideas to
bump up against each other which otherwise never would have. I have also read
of several recent studies that show that performance actually improves after
distractions and/or breaks.
When I was in high school, I participated for several years in a Number Sense
competition, which consisted of taking a 10 minute high-speed test in which
math problems had to be solved without showing any work or correcting any
answers. Skipping or missing problems resulted in negative points, so the goal
was to get as far through the 80 problems as possible without missing or
skipping any. Each school year I would practice daily, gradually improving my
score. Then, I would relax over the summer break. When I returned to school
again the next fall, I would find my score had jumped up far above what it
would have been had I continued to improve at the same rate that I did while I
was practicing daily. I suspect the resting time allowed the concepts to go
"offline" temporarily and be reorganized in my head, which could not be done as
effectively while I had to keep them ready for active use. Most people would
just call it getting a fresh perspective.
Don't underestimate the value of self-maintenance, either. A healthy, happy
mind is capable of much more than one constantly under stress, and being
asocial is definitely stressful for most people, as is being in pain or
focusing for too long without a rest period. It's not just about how much time
you spend thinking about the task at hand; the quality of thought during that
time is also important. I don't believe the human brain is designed for
constant focus. It seems more likely, given our evolutionary history, that it
is designed for spurts of high-intensity focus with frequent rests in between.
So you might find your average productivity rate increases when you allow
yourself to alternate between focusing and resting, so long as resting isn't
excessive. Being overly obsessive is probably not in your best interest.
On Wed, Mar 6, 2013 at 12:03 PM, Boris Kazachenko <bori...@verizon.net> wrote:
A (not so) new conclusion on my intro (
http://www.cognitivealgorithm.info):
… I am deeply convinced that main challenge we face in formalizing GI is
our specie-wide ADHD…
Our cognitive psychology, lagging a light year behind our technology, is
addicted to mental crutches of authority, examples, & experimentation, while
theoretical integrity is neglected & abused.
It’s pretty obvious that AGI is by far the most important problem now. Yet,
not one out of 7B people pays it his full attention. A handful of people claim
to do so, but they all find excuses to fluff & tinker, at the expense of
building coherent theory. To me, it’s a stark proof that a dressed-up ape
desperately needs therapy. I’ve experimented with various methods to focus on
my meta-theory, with subjective success. For those who like the results
(above), I posted suggestions on my other blog:
Cultivating focus on extreme generalizations.
Sustaining top-down attention is critical for anything complex, especially
a theoretical breakthrough. Such ability is scarce because we evolved to focus
on here & now survival, while far & future was back-of-the-mind luxury. Modern
society is drastically more secure, but our attention spans lag far behind.
Almost anyone can become a world-changing genius, if he spends 10 years fully
focused on important problem… at the cost of so-called “life“: unthinkable for
ADHD- addled hunter-gatherers we still are.
Attention span as discussed here is not simply a duration of focus on a
given subject. Rather, it’s a relative strength of higher cortical areas, which
represent generalized experience, in selecting subjects for focused attention.
For me, selection & basic understanding of my top priority came early & easy.
But actually maintaining effective focus on important stuff in spite of
ubiquitous distractions was far more difficult. Over the years, I majorly
improved my concentration thanks to these observations:
Practice, externalizing thoughts, & avoiding distractions:
Practice forms increasingly redundant representations, differentiated by
their context to explore alternative scenarios. Such redundancy is key to
maintaining subconsciously searching threads, even when your consciousness is
distracted. It also fills up memory & starves unrelated subjects out of
resources. This is very important: irrelevant memories keep competing for our
attention until well forgotten. But we need a conducive environment to
facilitate this virtuous cycle of practicing.
The most basic working environment is a notepad or a computer screen, so we
need to fill them with a well designed write-up of the subject matter. The
brain, quite obviously, has plenty of memory for a few pages of text, scarce
resource here is attention. Writing down thoughts simply turns them into a
sensory feedback, which attracts attention much better than internalized
abstractions. Also helps a motor feedback, such as vocalizing, writing by hand,
semi-random editing/ re-arranging text or code.
Even more critical is concise & cohesive (thus memorable) terminology,
abbreviations, & symbols, - small enough to keep reverberating within one’s
working memory. To build a coherent mental model, one should be using/
designing a dedicated pseudo-language, with subject-specific syntax &
semantics. Just as important is a macro-structure: comprehensive write-up with
regular & contextually integral paragraphs & parts. Basically, one should
always try go for quality vs. quantity, continuously refining, consolidating, &
extending old articles or programs, rather than piling-up new loosely related
ones.
Of course, we’re social animals, & our most important “environment” is the
people we deal with.
Hence the urge to bounce our ideas & decisions off others: it forces us to
focus on the implications. Your listener's attention (if credible) stimulates
yours, even if he doesn't really contribute anything. One solution is a
socially-imposed institutional environment, as in a good university or a
company.
But that requires societal consumer competence, which is sorely lacking in
relatively generalized fields.
Absent relevant stimulation (be honest about “relevant“), one must block
the irrelevant one, AKA life. Real-life socializing is almost always
meaningless, at least compared to impersonal reading & writing. But people are
so desperate to belong that they will settle for the least irrelevant group
they can join, even obviously detrimental to their stated purpose. Suppressing
this urge is a must for any significant progress. However miserable social
isolation feels at first, avoiding distractions is an effective way to
ultimately focus: broadly stimulated brain always does something, so attention
is a zero-sum game. Anyway, social stimulation can be largely replaced by
“pseudo-social” one: writing or talking to oneself.
Beside socializing, the worst attention hog now is the web, & my solution
is rationing. Unless there is something urgent or work-related (unlikely), I
only connect for ~2 hours once a day. Sticking to it was a challenge, I have to
use “Freedom“(& highly recommend it) to keep myself honest. This sounds
trivial, but staying off-line made a huge difference to my concentration. And I
am not even talking about cell phones, - never considered catching that plague.
Also helps using a specific desk, computer, & times of the day only for
work, down to locking oneself in. Such cognitive behavioral therapy is also
useful with insomnia & other self-control problems.
But even more insidious, at least for a generalist like me, are internal
distractions: wandering thoughts. Just recently, I came up with a low-tech
solution: thought conditioning. Positive conditioning of relevant thoughts
seems impractical because the delay is too long, but the negative one is very
simple & old-fashioned: catch yourself thinking about some obvious
distractions, & slap your face hard. Eventually, these subjects become
subconsciously unpleasant, & you will stop thinking about them. Even the habit
of specifically monitoring thoughts for distractions already helps to terminate
them.
A less direct form of thought conditioning is via neurofeedback, article. I
currently use, with moderate success, very simple feedback: every day, I write
down the number of hours spent effectively focused on work, translating total
number of hours spent into top 10% out of recent working hours.
More advanced neurofeedback may become possible in relatively near future
by visualizing subject-associated cortical activity via transcranial imaging,
such as EEG, fMRI, or infrared spectroscopy.
Ideally, we should be able to directly stimulate or condition cortical
areas that represent the subject we want to focus on, via transcranial direct
current, magnetic fields, ultrasound, or even implants.
Big-picture intellectual integrity should be improved by stimulating left
dorsolateral prefrontal cortex: the last to myelinate during development &
containing most general concepts, thus executive function.
BCI-assisted control over the focus of one's attention will be the most
profound revolution yet, - it will change what we want out of life. But,
waiting for the technology might leave you hopelessly behind those who
cultivate their attention the old-fashioned way.
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