Validimir and Mike,
For humans, much of our experience is grounded on sensory information,
and thus much of our understanding is based on experiences and analogies
derived largely from the physical world. So Mike you are right that for
us humans, much of our thinking is based on recasting of experiences of
the physical world.
But just because experience of the physical world is at the center of
much of human thinking, does not mean it must be at the center of all
possible AGI thinking -- any more than the fact that for millions of
years the earth and the view from it was at the center of our thinking
and that of our ancestors means the earth and the view from it must
forever be at the center of the thinking of all intelligences throughout
the universe.
In fact, one can argue that for us humans, one of our most important
sources of grounding – emotion -- is not really about the physical world
(at least directly), but rather about our own internal state.
Furthermore, multiple AGI projects, including Novamente and Joshua Blue
are trying to ground their systems from experience in virtual words. Yes
those virtual worlds try to simulate physical reality, but the fact
remains that much of the grounding is coming from bits and bytes, and not
from anything more physical.
Take Doug Lenat’s AM and create a much more powerful AGI equivalent of
it, one with much more powerful learning algorithms (such as those in
Novamente), running on the equivalent of a current 128K processor
BlueGene L with 16TBytes of RAM, but with a cross sectional bandwidth
roughly 500 times that of the current BlueGene L (the type of hardware
that could be profitably sold for well under 1 million dollars in 7 years
if there were are thriving market for making hardware to support AGI).
Assume the system creates programs, mathematical structures, and
transformations, etc. and in its own memory. It starts out learning like
a little kid, constantly performing little experiments, except the
experiments -- instead of being things like banging spoons against a
glass -- would be running programs that create data structures and then
observing what is created (it would have built in primitives for
observing its own workspace), changing the program and observing the
change, etc. Assume it receives no input from the physical world, but
that it has goals and a reward system related to learning about
programming, finding important mathematical and programming generalities,
finding compact representations and transformation, creating and finding
patterns in complexity, and things like that. Over time such a system
would develop its own type of grounding, one derived from years of
experience -- and from billions of trillions of machine opps -- in
programming and math space.
Thus, I think you are both right. Mike is right that for humans, sensory
experience is a vital part of much of our ability to understand, even of
our ability to understand things that might seem totally abstract. But
Validmir is right for believing that it should be possible to build an
AGI that was well grounded in its own domain, without any knowledge of
the physical world (other than as the manifesting of bits and bytes).
Edward W. Porter
Porter & Associates
24 String Bridge S12
Exeter, NH 03833
(617) 494-1722
Fax (617) 494-1822
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
-----Original Message-----
From: Mike Tintner [_mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Sent: Wednesday, October 10, 2007 11:10 PM
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Subject: Re: [agi] Do the inference rules.. P.S.
Vladimir,
I'm not trying to be difficult or critical but I literally can't
understand
what you're saying, because you haven't given any example of a problem,
where "knowledge of concepts' relations and implications" somehow
supersedes
or is independent of physical casting/ recasting.
Your analogy though of what I might be saying about maths (or other
symbols)
is wrong. Numbers and arithmetic are based on and derive from physical
objects and our ability to add and subtract objects etc . Geometry is
obviously based on an analysis of physical objects and shapes. They are
totally physically object-based and can only be understood as such. To
point
this out is not at all the same as suggesting that their figures are
composed of ink. I am talking about what their figures (and other symbols
like language) refer to, not what they are composed of. (Even a
mathematical concept BTW like "infinity" only became acceptable in maths
about the time of the printing press - when it became possible
physically/
realistically for the first time to imagine objects being produced ad
infinitum).
And I would suggest that our ability to perceive the kinds of concept
relations you may be thinking of is very much physically based and
"digital" - IOW based on pointing with our digits to different objects in
a
scene (even if only in our mind's eye) - to explain, for example, by
pointing to how "this moves that" and classify by pointing out that "he
is
the parent of her" etc.
Your ink analogy BTW is also, very much I suggest, a physically based and
technically fascinating operation. How do you think you arrived at it -
other than physically and spatially? Do you think you could arrive at
such
an analogy simply by comparing sets of symbolic properties of scientific
problems and their physical recasting , on the one hand, and symbolic
properties of numbers and ink on the other?
(Such an analogy is where the Fauconnier-style analysis of "conceptual
blending" of "mental spaces" comes into its own. How the brain achieves
an
analogy as complex as your ink one is still something quite awesome and
problematic, even with Fauconnier's help - and still way beyond
computers, I
suggest).
Vladimirwrote:
>> Vladimir,
>>
>> No I'm sure the problem-solving isn't all down to recasting in terms
>> of physical models. But can you think of a scientific problem area,
>> where such recasting isn't involved?
>
> I just tried to provide my reason for considering it a mirage: even if
> problem-solving doesn't involve physical reasoning, it can be
> introspectively recast as sequence of spatial representations.
> Domain-specific concepts involved in problem-solving can easily be
> placed on spatially arranged schemata, but reasoning is correctly
> carried out because of knowledge of these concepts' relations and
> implications, not simply because of spatial setting in which they are
> arranged. It's equivalent to calling mathematics ink-reasoning because
> it's historically performed with help of remarks made by ink on paper
> and any result can be written down by ink on paper.
>
>>
>> (Very tangentially, what comes to my mind is chess. I'm confident
>> that
>> human
>> problemsolving here - and the ability to search through only scores as
>> opposed to billions of chessboard scenarios to arrive at moves -
>> depends
>> on physical models, and is an ahem graphic illustration of the very
>> different ways in which current computers and a true general
intelligence
>> think).
>>
>> Vladimir: These 'recastings' of problems are essentially inference
>> steps, where
>> > each step is evident and is performed by trained expert's
>> > intuition. Sequence of such simple steps can constitute complex
>> > inference which leads to solution of complex problem. This
>> > recasting isn't necessarily related to physical common sense, even
>> > though each intermediate representation can be represented as
>> > spatially-temporal construction by virtue of being representable by
>> > frame graphs evolving over time, which does not reflect the rules
>> > of this evolution (which are the essence of inference which is
>> > being performed).
>> >
>> > On 10/11/07, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>> >> Just to underline my point about the common sense foundations of
>> >> logic and general intelligence - I came across this from :
>> >> Education & Learning to
>> >> Think by Lauren B Resnick - (and a section entitled "General
>> >> Reasoning -
>> >> Improving Intelligence).
>> >>
>> >> "Recent research in science problem solving shows that experts do
>> >> not respond to problems as they are presented - writing equations
>> >> for every relationship described and then using routine procedures
>> >> for manipulating
>> >> equations.Instead they reinterpret the problems, recasting them in
>> >> terms
>> >> of
>> >> general scientific principles until the solutions become almost
>> >> self-evident."
>> >>
>> >> He points out that the same principles apply to virtually all
>> >> subjects
>> >> in
>> >> the curriculum. I would suggest that those experts are recasting
>> >> problems
>> >> principally in terms of physical common sense models. NARS, it
>> >> seems
>> >> to
>> >> me,
>> >> "responds to problems as they are presented."
>> >>
>> >>
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>> >
>> >
>> > --
>> > Vladimir Nesov _mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> >
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>>
>>
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>
>
> --
> Vladimir Nesov _mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>
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