My final (promise) $0.02 on the Wright brothers analogy. There is a cultural schism at work here.
The Wright bros needed almost zero analytics. They had no computer other than the Turing original: Paper and pencil. They had lift/drag ratios and were innovative in that they replicated flight first in a _wind tunnel_. Artificial flight occurred there, not on the air field. Had they a computer and all the modern physics equations they would have computed a design for flight. This design is not an instance of flight. The computation helps understanding. The computation does not fly. It is a simulator. The analogy is intended to articulate the hypothesis that exactly the same thing happens in AGI That is, a computation of the physics involved in intelligence is not an instance of intelligence for exactly the same reason: Physics essential to it is replaced by the physics of a computer. I have found the perfect physics that could be essential and that has been eliminated from the get-go: The EM fields. Replicating voltages is _not_ replicating fields. Gauge invariance makes the relationship degenerate. An infinity of different field systems can produce the same voltages. That very degeneracy is the reason why electric circuit theory exists! I am rather excited by the recognition of something that is so obvious and whose lack fits the failure etiology of half a century perfectly, including the lack of the actual empirical test that is needed to justify neglecting the fields as essential physics. Neglecting the fields is entirely accidental. You need artificial filtration physics or you don't have an artificial kidney. You need artificial pump physics or you don't have an artificial heart. You need artificial stomach chemistry or you don't get artificial digestion. You need artificial combustion physics/chemistry or you don't have artificial fire. Etc etc etc thousands of cases for centuries. Until 1950ish when computer 'science' was born. Only in the brain have we a single obvious omission that is tantamount to an untested claim that unlike anywhere else in the entire history of science, there is no essential physics in a natural process called the brain. Until we contrast artificial brains done with and without the fields _nobody_ has any scientifically proved claim that the fields can be neglected or even simulated. That is the message I tried to bring with the Write bros analogy. Nothing else. Cheers Colin -----Original Message----- From: "Benjamin Kapp" <[email protected]> Sent: 7/05/2015 3:44 AM To: "AGI" <[email protected]> Subject: Re: [agi] Re: Starting to Define Algorithms that are MorePowerfulthan Narrow AI So the Wright Brothers flew ~1900.. but "Working from at least as early as 1796, when he constructed a model helicopter,[18] until his death in 1857, Sir George Cayley is credited as the first person to identify the four aerodynamic forces of flight—weight, lift, drag, and thrust—and the relationships between them" [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_aerodynamics].. "Cayley is also credited as the first person to develop the modern fixed-wing aircraft concept" As such the fundamental principles of aerodynamics where known more than a hundred years earlier.. "In 1889, Charles Renard, a French aeronautical engineer, became the first person to reasonably predict the power needed for sustained flight." So the math had already been worked out for sustained flight, before the Wright Brothers flew.. Otto Lilienthal, following the work of Sir George Cayley, was the first person to become highly successful with glider flights. Lilienthal believed that thin, curved airfoils would produce high lift and low drag. So the understanding that one could produce lift from curved airfoils was known prior to the Wright brothers.. Octave Chanute's 1893 book, Progress in Flying Machines, outlined all of the known research conducted around the world up to that point.[24] Chanute's book provided a great service to those interested in aerodynamics and flying machines. "With the information contained in Chanute's book, the personal assistance of Chanute himself, and research carried out in their own wind tunnel, the Wright brothers gained enough knowledge of aerodynamics to fly the first powered aircraft on December 17, 1903"... So basically we already had the fundamentals of aerodynamics, and we knew how to create lift and what was needed for sustained flight. What was left for the Wright brothers to discover? It seems to me that given what the Wright brothers knew human flight was more of an engineering problem rather than a research problem. Does this make sense? On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 1:05 PM, Jim Bromer <[email protected]> wrote: Here is an interesting article about the Wrights that sounds similar to what I have read before. http://wrightflyer.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/The-First-Aeronautical-Engineers-and-Test-Pilots.pdf The belief that the Wrights, who invented the wind tunnel, "just saw an algorithm and then all they needed to do was to plug the right variables into the mathematical equation" in order to create the first successful powered airplane capable of carrying a person is an not an acceptable hypothesis to explain how they went about creating the airplane. Jim Bromer On Wed, May 6, 2015 at 12:22 PM, Piaget Modeler <[email protected]> wrote: The only way to test your hypothesis, like the Wright brothers did, is to build working prototypes and then refine them. No way 'round it. Just Do it. (Oh, that's Nike's slogan). ~PM Date: Wed, 6 May 2015 10:59:23 -0400 Subject: Re: [agi] Re: Starting to Define Algorithms that are More Powerfulthan Narrow AI From: [email protected] To: [email protected] I think that the Wright Brothers approach is appropriate for AI / Stronger AI / AGI as well. However, I also think it is obvious that there is ample evidence that digital programming has made numerous advances in AGI even though the successes seem to lack many human-like methods of thought. I have often wondered why the Wrights got so involved in control surfaces before they had a successful powered flight. Was it just common sense to realize that you needed to 'steer' the plane once it got off the ground, or was it just ego - since they 'knew' they would succeed they designed it for their flights of imagination. Or was it a common meme amongst aeronautical enthusiasts at the time? Or, did they realize, based on their experiments with gliders, that they would be able to extend their flights with mechanisms to control the attack of the plane in the air even though the plane would be heavier. (They decided to use wing warping to control the turns. NASA just tested a jet that is capable of changing the shape of its wings by the way.) Because this last possible reason might be related to the design-experiment-modify the design experiment method as it can be applied to AI / Stronger AI research. I want to find some evidence that my design principles would work to produce Stronger AI. So, by including some control mechanisms in my designs I might be able to stretch the distance it can get with the designs I have in mind. But, if I design for the some-day-in-the-future my control mechanisms would get so heavy that they could become a hindrance to any feasible programs that I might try now. But, by designing for a test I could run in the near future I might find some essential control features that could be lightweight and effective to stretch the capabilities of the program. But you have to have some feasible plan in mind to do that. If you want to try to do something with AGI right now your program (or device) has to be simple but effective - in some way. Even though you might not be able to convince other people based on primitive experiments, you have to be able to find some evidence that your ideas are going to do something different than most contemporary AI programs. 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