Charles: As a practical matter, however, figuring things out from scratch is grossly inefficient, and so is dragging the entire context of meanings through a specialized calculation...so these should get delegated.
Well, figuring things out from scratch seems to be to a great extent the preferred method of the human system. If you think about it, humans start with wail and flail before say cry and grasp, and babble and bobble before making distinct sounds and taking definite steps. There seem to be few skills that we don't learn painstakingly through trial and error. And I would have thought this makes adaptive sense - you never know what environments a human will be exposed to, what terrains they will have start to walking on, from Kenyan highlands to New York pavements, or what skills they will have to learn from those of an illiterate native to those of a city child.
In general, the principle seems to be - consciously flounder around at it, before it becomes a smooth automatic unconscious routine.
If you want to be a truly general-purpose general intelligence, that, I think, is the way it has to be.
[What related principles govern the Novamente's figure's trial and error learning of how to pick up a ball?]
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