Yes, I could not find a decent definition of irrational at first: Amending my statements now...
Using the Wiki basis below: the term is used to describe thinking and actions which are, or appear to be, less useful or logical than the rational alternatives. I would remove the 'logical' portion of this, because the examples given below, emotions, fads, stock markets. These decisions are all made useing logic, with emotions contirbuting to a choice, or a choice being made because we see others wearing the same clothes, or based on our (possibly incorrect) beliefs about what the stock market may do. The other possibility is to actually incorrectly use the knowledge. If I have all the rules about a stock that would point to it going down, but I still purchase and believe it will go up, I am using the logic incorrectly. So possibly irrationality could be amended to be something like: basing a decision on faulty information, or incorrectly using logic to arrive at a choice. So for my AGI application, I would indeed then model the irrationality in the form of emotions / fads etc, as logical components, and it would implicity be irrational becuase it could have faulty information. And incorrectly using the logic it has, would only be done if there was an error. James Theories of irrational behavior include: people's actual interests differ from what they believe to be their interests This is still logical though, just based on beliefs that are wrong to actual interests. >From Wiki: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irrationality Irrationality is talking or acting without regard of rationality. Usually pejorative, the term is used to describe thinking and actions which are, or appear to be, less useful or logical than the rational alternatives. These actions tend to be regarded as emotion-driven. There is a clear tendency to view our own thoughts, words, and actions as rational and to see those who disagree as irrational. Types of behavior which are often described as irrational include: fads and fashions crowd behavior offense or anger at a situation that has not yet occurred unrealistic expectations falling victim to confidence tricks belief in the supernatural without evidence stock-market bubbles irrationality caused by mental illness, such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, major depressive disorder, and paranoia. Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> You have hinted around it, but I would go one step further and say that Emotion is NOT contrary to logic. :-) I thought that my last statement that "<emotion> is equally likely to be congruent with <logic and reason>" was a lot more than a hint (unless congruent doesn't mean "not contrary" like I think/thought it did :-) I liked your distinction between illogical and irrational -- though I'm not sure that others would agree with your using irrational that way. ----- Original Message ----- From: James Ratcliff To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 11:34 AM Subject: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > 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). You have hinted around it, but I would go one step further and say that Emotion is NOT contrary to logic. In any way really, they cant be compared like that. Logic even 'uses' emotion as imput. The decisions we make are based on rules and facts we know, and our emotions, but still logically. What emotions often contradict is our actual ability to make good decicions / plans. If we do something stupid because of our anger or emotions, then it still is a causal logical explanation. So humand and AGI may be irrational, but hopefully not illogical. If it is illogical then that implies it made its decision without any logical reasoning, so possibly random. AGI will need some level of randomness, but not for general things. James Ratcliff _______________________________________ James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com New Torrent Site, Has TV and Movie Downloads! http://www.falazar.com/projects/Torrents/tvtorrents_show.php --------------------------------- Need a quick answer? Get one in minutes from people who know. Ask your question on Yahoo! 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