Good questions are useful. How about this one: Consider the proposition that the Google search engine is a big version of grep. That is, while there's orders of magnitude more technology involved, the fundamental idea, central metaphor, organizing principle or whatever you want to call it, is that of grep: you enter a term to search for, and it looks for occurrences of that term in a collection of text files.
Similarly, a word processor or IDE can be viewed as a big text editor. A spreadsheet is a big table editor. Wolfram Alpha is a big calculator. A web browser is a big file viewer. World of Warcraft is a big Skinner box. Successful large programs in general tend to work - be possible to design, understand and use - by being big versions of something small. If you are trying to design an AGI, what is your design going to be a big version of? On Tue, Dec 17, 2013 at 9:48 AM, Steve Richfield <[email protected]>wrote: > WAY back in the 1960s, a friend of mine, Carl Nicolai, now only known as > the inventor of non-deterministic crypto, was promoting the use of > pseudo-random carrier waves for spread spectrum communication - to go MUCH > farther with less power. As his ideas started to catch on, one UCSF EE > professor even put up a web site to debunk such craziness!!! > > Carl was SO disconnected from the mainstream that he couldn't get his > articles published, and his patent promptly received a Secrecy Order. > > Of course, Carl's thoughts are now accepted as routine communications > methods. > > Now, AGI seems to be caught in a similar sort of "trap" as RF > communications once was, where present dogma and "leaders" are leading it > to a dead end. > > Organizationally, AGI appears to be on a suicide mission, thinking it to > be SO well targeted that it can enjoy the luxury of dismissing articles > about radically different approaches as being "off topic" for conference > presentations. Guys like Carl would NEVER have been acceptable to any > conference. > > I think we have all hoped that guys like Jim and Tintner would see where > the King has put his clothes. when we can all see quite clearly that the > King is wearing them. This has led to an insane level of tolerance, because > we all know that all it may take is one CAREFULLY calculated question to > blow AGI wide open. Yet - apparently, the question remains unasked. > > For example, maybe we just haven't figured out yet where in an AGI to put > the random number generator? We know that we NEED randomness in game theory > and genetic algorithms, so I doubt that an AGI could be guilt without using > a random number generator. > > OK, half a decade of discussions has failed to find the Holy Grail of AGI. > Now, how about taking a step back and working on some good QUESTIONS? > > Any thoughts? > > Steve > > *AGI* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/1658954-f53d1a3f> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > ------------------------------------------- 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
