Shane Legg wrote, responding to Pei Wang: > Perhaps where our difference is best highlighted is in the > following quote that you use: > > “something can be computational at one level, > but not at another level” [Hofstadter, 1985] > > To this I would say: "Something can LOOK like computation > at one level, but not LOOK at computation at another level. > Nevertheless it still is computation and any limits due to > the fundamental properties of computation theory still apply."
Shane, i think you and pei are using different language to say very similar things... It seems to me that NARS, Novamente, and any other programs that run on Turing machine hardware (like contemporary computers) CAN be analyzed in terms of computation theory. The question is, the extent to which this is a USEFUL point of view. There may, for some programs, be noncomputational perspectives that are more useful. For example, suppose we have a program that simulates a stochastic or quantum process. It may be more convenient to view this program in terms of randomness or quantum dynamics than in terms of strict Turing computation. This view may explain more about the "high level" abstract behavior of the program. But still at the low level there is an explanation for the program in terms of computing theory. This is a special case of the general observation that: Often, in a complex system, the patterns observable in the system at a coarse level of observation, are not useful patterns in the system at a fine level of observation... It may be more convenient to think about and study an AGI program in a noncomputational way ... if one is looking at the overall behaviors & structures of the program ... but if one wants to look at the EXACT actions taken by the system and understand them, one has got to take the computational point of view and look at the code and its effect on memory and processor... > That's one half of the story anyway; the other part is that I > believe that intelligence is definable at a pretty fundamental > level (i.e. not much higher than the concept of universal Turing > computation) but I'll leave that part for now and focus on this > first issue. Intelligence may be *definable* at that level -- and I'd argue that Pei's definition of intelligence (roughly: doing complex goal-achievement with limited knowledge and resources) could even be formulated at that level. But the structures and dynamics needed to make intelligence happen under reasonable space and time resource constraints -- THESE, I believe, necessarily involve primary theoretical constructs VERY DIFFERENT FROM computation theory, which is a theory of generic computational processes not a theory that is very useful for the specific study of computational processes that give rise to intelligence on an emergent level... ben ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
