Are
you saying that the more excuses we can think up, the more intelligent
we are? (Actually there might be something in that!).
Sure. Absolutely. I'm perfectly willing to contend that it takes
intelligence to come up with excuses and that more intelligent people can
come up with more and better excuses. Do you really want to contend the
opposite?
You seem to have a real difficulty in admitting that humans behave
irrationally for a lot (most?) of the time.
You're reading something into my statements that I certainly don't mean to
be there. Humans behave irrationally a lot of the time. I consider this
fact a defect or shortcoming in their intelligence (or make-up). Just
because humans have a shortcoming doesn't mean that another intelligence
will necessarily have the same shortcoming.
Every time someone (subconsciously) decides to do something, their
brain presents a list of reasons to go ahead. The reasons against are
ignored, or weighted down to be less preferred. This applies to
everything from deciding to get a new job to deciding to sleep with
your best friend's wife. Sometimes a case arises when you really,
really want to do something that you *know* is going to end in
disaster, ruined lives, ruined career, etc. and it is impossible to
think of good reasons to proceed. But you still go ahead anyway,
saying that maybe it won't be so bad, maybe nobody will find out, it's
not all my fault anyway, and so on.....
Yup. Humans are not as intelligent as they could be. Generally, they place
way too much weight on near-term effect and not enough weight on long-term
effects. Actually, though, I'm not sure whether you classify that as
intelligence or wisdom. For many bright people, they *do* know all of what
you're saying and they still go ahead. This is certainly some form of
defect, I'm not sure where you'd classify it though.
Human decisions and activities are mostly emotional and irrational.
I think that this depends upon the person. For the majority of humans,
maybe -- but I'm not willing to accept this as applying to each individual
human that their decisions and activities are mostly emotional and
irrational. I believe that there are some humans where this is not the
case.
That's the way life is. Because life is uncertain and unpredictable,
human decisions are based on best guesses, gambles and basic
subconscious desires.
Yup, we've evolved to be at least minimally functional though not optimal.
An AGI will have to cope with this mess.
Yes, so far I'm in total agreement with everything you've said . . . .
Basing an AGI on iron logic
and 'rationality' alone will lead to what we call 'inhuman'
ruthlessness.
. . . until now where you make an unsupported blanket statement that doesn't
appear to me at all related to any of the above (and which may be entirely
accurate or inaccurate based upon what you mean by ruthless -- but I believe
that it would take a very contorted definition of ruthless to make it
accurate -- though inhuman should obviously be accurate).
Part of the problem is that 'rationality' is a very emotion-laden term with
a very slippery meaning. Is doing something because you really, really want
to despite the fact that it most probably will have bad consequences really
irrational? It's not a wise choice but irrational is a very strong term . .
. . (and, as I pointed out previously, such a decision *is* rationally made
if you have bad weighting in your algorithm -- which is effectively what
humans have -- or not, since it apparently has been evolutionarily selected
for).
And logic isn't necessarily so iron if the AGI has built-in biases for
conversation and relationships (both of which are rationally derivable from
it's own self-interest).
I think that you've been watching too much Star Trek where logic and
rationality are the opposite of emotion. That just isn't the case. Emotion
can be (and is most often noted when it is) contrary to logic and
rationality -- but it is equally likely to be congruent with them (and even
more so in well-balanced and happy individuals).
----- Original Message -----
From: "BillK" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 7:03 AM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
On 12/4/06, Mark Waser wrote:
Explaining our actions is the reflective part of our minds evaluating the
reflexive part of our mind. The reflexive part of our minds, though,
operates analogously to a machine running on compiled code with the
compilation of code being largely *not* under the control of our
conscious
mind (though some degree of this *can* be changed by our conscious
minds).
The more we can correctly interpret and affect/program the reflexive part
of
our mind with the reflective part, the more intelligent we are. And,
translating this back to the machine realm circles back to my initial
point,
the better the machine can explain it's reasoning and use it's
explanation
to improve it's future actions, the more intelligent the machine is (or,
in
reverse, no explanation = no intelligence).
Your reasoning is getting surreal.
As Ben tried to explain to you, 'explaining our actions' is our
consciousness dreaming up excuses for what we want to do anyway. Are
you saying that the more excuses we can think up, the more intelligent
we are? (Actually there might be something in that!).
You seem to have a real difficulty in admitting that humans behave
irrationally for a lot (most?) of the time. Don't you read newspapers?
You can redefine rationality if you like to say that all the crazy
people are behaving rationally within their limited scope, but what's
the point? Just admit their behaviour is not rational.
Every time someone (subconsciously) decides to do something, their
brain presents a list of reasons to go ahead. The reasons against are
ignored, or weighted down to be less preferred. This applies to
everything from deciding to get a new job to deciding to sleep with
your best friend's wife. Sometimes a case arises when you really,
really want to do something that you *know* is going to end in
disaster, ruined lives, ruined career, etc. and it is impossible to
think of good reasons to proceed. But you still go ahead anyway,
saying that maybe it won't be so bad, maybe nobody will find out, it's
not all my fault anyway, and so on.....
Human decisions and activities are mostly emotional and irrational.
That's the way life is. Because life is uncertain and unpredictable,
human decisions are based on best guesses, gambles and basic
subconscious desires.
An AGI will have to cope with this mess. Basing an AGI on iron logic
and 'rationality' alone will lead to what we call 'inhuman'
ruthlessness.
BillK
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