You're saying "I can do it.." without explaining at all how. Sort of "a miracle
happens here".
Crucially, you're quite right that if you have a machine that replicates the
human eye and brain and how it processes the Cafe Wall illusion, then you will
still see the illusion.
The problem is you don't have such a machine. A computer certainly doesn't
process in the same way as the brain. It might conceivably be able to but it
doesn't right now.
At the moment, it can only process the world "in pieces" rather than "in
wholes".
The human brain has all these maps that do enable it to process the world in
wholes and "get the picture" and "see the whole form." Computers right now
don't. They only get the jigsaw pieces.
You're also simply ignoring the massively important point that a lot of the
information expressed in a whole form isn't contained in any pieces. You don't
actually explain how you're going to symbolically describe the Mona Lisa. Say
"she has a smile on her lips"? But she doesn't! The smile only appears when
your brain puts the pieces together and sees them whole - and computers can't
do that, remember. And the same is true of every picture and every form.
A billion computers reading trillions of webpages in seconds still won't be
able to put any pieces together and see any wholes - or get any of that
"missing information.".
The only way for y'all to understand all this is to "see it" whole - give me
any symbolic description[s] you like - a relevant chunk of program say - that
expresses say the eye of Derek Z in that photo, or the eye of the Mona Lisa,
and let's put it beside the actual eyes. And then the difference will click.
Really - try it. Obvious as it may sound, it will be one of the most valuable
things you will ever do.
You guys probably think this is all rather peripheral and unimportant - they
don't teach this in AI courses, so it can't be important.
But if you can't see things whole, then you can't see or connect with the real
world. And, in case you haven't noticed, no AGI can connect with the real
world. In fact, there is no such thing as an AGI at the moment. And there never
will be if machines can't do what the brain does - which is, first and last,
and all the time, look at the world in images as wholes.
MW: Mike Tintner
> Well, guys, if the only difference between an image and, say, a symbolic
- verbal or mathematical or programming - description is bandwidth, perhaps
you'll be able to explain how you see the Cafe Wall illusion from a symbolic
description:
Sure! The Cafe Wall illusion is a result of the interaction between an
image composed of four parallel horizontal lines dividing the image into five
strips with alternating black and white bars with the second and fourth strips
slightly offset so as to trick the human eye into believing that the parallel
lines aren't and the optimizing algorithms of the human eye. I could go into
enough detail to explain exactly how and why the trick works -- the fact that
the eye is attempting to interpret a two-dimensional image as a
three-dimensional scene -- but I think that I've made my point adequately.
> A symbolic description of the above will only describe a set of parallel
lines and rectangles - and there will be no illusion.
Of course not, the illusion is a result of the image being implemented on
the hardware of the human eye and brain. Unless you describe the human eye and
brain, you don't get the illusion -- but you can do so easily as I did above
and the illusion re-appears.
> Or you might try a symbolic description of the Mona Lisa, and explain to
me, how I will know from your description that she is smiling. You see if you
take that image to pieces - as you must do in forming a symbolic description -
there is no smile!:
Huh? All I need to do is include the smile in the description. You can
both take the image to pieces *AND* describe the whole at the same time.
> And perhaps you can explain to me how you will see the final picture on
any fully-formed jigsaw puzzle from just the pieces at the very beginning. Take
a picture to pieces - and you don't "get" the picture any more.
Wrong. Take a child's ten piece puzzle apart and re-arrange all the
pieces. It's simple enough that your mind can hold all of it at once and "get"
the picture. It's only when you take it to too many pieces . . .
> Like I said, we are extremely ignorant about how images work. (I'll
explain more another time - but in the meantime, maybe Vlad can explain to us
how and where the information that is lost in the above examples, is encoded.).
I would be extremely careful about throwing the word "we" around and
assuming that everyone is just like you. Why does everyone else has to be
ignorant about a subject just because you don't understand it yet?
Do you understand general relativity? If not, does that suddenly mean that
I don't understand it any more? How about biochemistry, physical chemistry,
thermodynamics, evolution, simulated annealing, etc.?
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