Yes, you are very right. And my point is that there are absolutely major
philosophical issues here - both the general philosophy of mind and
epistemology, and the more specific philosophy of AI. In fact, I think my
characterisation of the issue as one of monism [general - behavioural as
well as of substance] vs pluralism [again general - not just cultural] is
probably the best one.
So do post further thoughts, esp. re AI./AGI - this is well worth pursuing
and elaborating.
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Loosemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 3:31 PM
Subject: [agi] The role of incertainty
The discussion of uncertainty reminds me of a story about Piaget that
struck a chord with me.
Apparently, when Piaget was but a pup, he had the job of scoring tests
given to kids. His job was to count the correct answers, but he started
getting interested in the wrong answers. When he mentioned to his bosses
that the wrong answers looked really interesting in their wrongness, they
got made at him and pointed out that wrong was just wrong, and all they
were interested in was how to make the kids get more right answers.
At that point, P had a revelation: looking at right answers told him
nothing about the children, whereas all the information about what they
were really thinking was buried in the wrong answers. So he dumped his
dead-end job and became Jean Piaget, Famous Psychologist instead.
When I read the story I had a similar feeling of Aha! Thinking isn't
about a lot of Right Thinking sprinkled with the occasional annoying
Mistake. Thinking is actually a seething cauldron of Mistakes, some of
which get less egregious over time and become Not-Quite-So-Bad Mistakes,
which we call rational thinking.
I think this attitude to how the mind works, though it is painted in
bright colors, is more healthy than the attitude that thinking is about
reasoning modulated by uncertainty.
(Perhaps this is what irritates me so much about the people who call
themselves Bayesians: people so desperate to believe that they are
perfect that they have made a religion out of telling each other that they
think perfectly, when in fact they are just as irrational as any other
religious fanatic). ;-)
Richard Loosemore.
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