The essential difference between animal and human intelligence lies in our ability to form and deal with *abstract* concepts. This enables self-awareness, volition, etc. Some chains of abstractions are memes (compact ideas that transmit well in a given environment).
Lower-level concepts (perceptually grounded) form the basis of all adaptive intelligence -- for recognition, generalization, differentiation, learning, surprise, etc. Our AGI approach is based on these insights (among others). http://adaptiveai.com/research/index.htm Peter Voss -----Original Message----- From: DEREK ZAHN [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, April 25, 2007 7:25 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: [agi] GI as substrate for memetic evolution Nothing particularly original here, but I think it's kind of interesting. Suppose that at some point, basically by accident, the brains of our ancestors became capable of supporting the evolution of "memes". Biological evolution started with a LOOONG period of low complexity creatures, during which time the basic pieces were discovered, the fruitful building blocks on which diversity would flourish. Similarly, our ancestors were stupid for a long time because they only hosted simple memes, churning away in their brains. Eventually the core building blocks for complex memes were discovered, leading to faster and faster progress as the size of the substrate increased through population, the ability for fitter memes to spread increased through written language and internets, and the memes themselves are more complex and diverse. Looking at it this way, we can define the general intelligence of an individual as the extent to which it can function as part of this substrate for memetic evolution -- the ability to host, communicate, and perform genetic operations on memes as they exist in human culture. This definition also suffers from a lack of intermediate progress points, but it suggests that studying memes may be an interesting alternative (or precursor) to studying reasoning, perception, memory, architectures, etc. Are any prospective AGI builders working from a viewpoint similar to this? ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&; ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
