> More generally, I don't perceive any readiness to recognize that the brain > has the answers to all the many unsolved problems of AGI -
Obviously the brain contains answers to many of the unsolved problems of AGI (not all -- e.g. not the problem of how to create a stable goal system under recursive self-improvement). However, current neuroscience does NOT contain these answers. And neither you nor anyone else has ever made a cogent argument that emulating the brain is the ONLY route to creating powerful AGI. The closest thing to such an argument that I've seen was given by Eric Baum in his book "What Is Thought?", and I note that Eric has backed away somewhat from that position lately. > I think it > should be obvious that AGI isn't going to happen - and none of the unsolved > problems are going to be solved - without major creative leaps. Just look > even at the ipod & iphone - major new technology never happens without such > leaps. The above sentence is rather hilarious to me. If the Ipod and Iphone are your measure for "creative leaps" then there have been loads and loads of major creative leaps in AGI and narrow-AI research. Anyway it seems to me that you're not just looking for creative leaps, you're looking for creative leaps that match your personal intuition. Perhaps the real problem is that your personal intuition about intelligence is largely off-base ;-) As an example of a creative leap (that is speculative and may be wrong, but is certainly creative), check out my hypothesis of emergent social-psychological intelligence as related to mirror neurons and octonion algebras: http://www.goertzel.org/dynapsyc/2007/mirrorself.pdf I happen to think the real subtlety of intelligence happens on the emergent level, and not on the level of the particulars of the system that gives rise to the emergent phenomena. That paper conjectures some example phenomena that I believe occur on the emergent level of intelligent systems. Loosemore agrees with me on the importance of emergence, but he feels there is a fundamental irreducibility that makes it pragmatically impossible to figure out via science, math and intuition which concrete structures/dynamics will give rise to the right emergent structures, without doing a massive body of simulation experiments. I think he overstates the degree of irreducibility. -- Ben G ----- 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=8660244&id_secret=72114408-ae9503