Pei,
I don't think there's any confusion here. Your system as you describe it IS
deterministic. Whether an observer might be confused by it is irrelevant.
Equally the fact that it is determined by a complex set of algorithms
applying to various tasks and domains and not by one task-specific
algorithm, is also irrelevant. It's still deterministic.
The point, presumably, is that your system has a clear set of priorities in
deciding between different goals, tasks, axioms and algorithms
Humans don't. Humans are still trying to work out what they really want, and
what their priorities are between, for example, the different activities of
their life, between work, sex, friendship, love, family etc. etc. Humans are
designed to be in conflict about their fundamental goals throughout their
lives. And that, I would contend, is GOOD design, and essential for their
success and survival.
If there's any confusion, think about many women and dieting. They will be
confronted by much the same decisions about whether to eat or not to eat on
possibly thousands of occasions throughout their lives. And over and over,
throughout their entire lives, they will - freely - decide now this way,
now that. Yo-yoing on and off their diets. Your system, as I understand it,
would never do that - would never act in such crazy, mixed up, contradictory
ways. Humans do, because they are, truly, free - and, I contend,
non-deterministically programmed - and, repeat, this is, paradoxically, good
design..
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pei Wang" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <agi@v2.listbox.com>
Sent: Sunday, May 06, 2007 8:48 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] The Advantages of a Conscious Mind
Mike,
I believe many of the confusions on this topic is caused by the
following "self-evident" belief: "A system is fundamentally either
deterministic or non-deterministic. The human mind, with free will, is
fundamentally non-deterministic; a conventional computer, being Turing
Machine, is fundamentally deterministic". Based on such a belief, many
people think AGI can only be realized by something that is
"non-deterministic by nature", whatever that means.
This belief, though works fine in some other context, is an
oversimplification in the AI/CogSci context. Here, as I said before,
whether a system is deterministic may not be taken as an intrinsic
nature of the system, but as depending on the description about it.
For example, NARS is indeed "nondeterministic" in the usual sense,
that is, after the system has obtained a complicated experience, it
will be practically impossible for either an observer or the system
itself to accurately predict how the system will handle a
user-provided task. On the other level of description, NARS is still a
deterministic Turing Machine, in the sense that its state change is
fully determined by its initial state and its experience, step by
step.
Now the important point is: when we say that the mind is
"nondeterministic", in what sense are we using the term? I believe it
is like "it will be practically impossible for either an observer or
the mind itself to accurately predict how the system will handle a
problem", rather than ""it will be theoretically impossible for an
observer to accurately predict how the system will handle a problem,
even if the observer has full information about the system's initial
state, processing mechanism, and detailed experience, as well as has
unlimited information processing power". Therefore, for all practical
considerations, including the ones you mentioned, NARS is
nondeterministic, since it doesn't process input tasks according to a
task-specific algorithm.
[If the above description still sounds confusing or contradictionary,
you'll have to read my relevant publications. I don't have the
intelligence to explain everything by email.]
Pei
On 5/6/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Pei,
Thanks for stating your position (which I simply didn't know about
before -
NARS just looked at a glance as if it MIGHT be nondeterministic).
Basically, and very briefly, my position is that any AGI that is to deal
with problematic decisions, where there is no right answer, will have to
be
freely, nondeterministically programmed to proceed on a trial and error
basis - and that is just how human beings are programmed.
(Nondeterministically programmed should not be simply equated with
current
kinds of programming - there are an infinity of possible ways of
programming
deterministically, ditto for nondeterministically).
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