Mark, On 4/22/08, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > My first thought is that you put way too much in a single post . >
Our agreement on this reflects a shortcoming in the "posting" process. We need an organization of posts that is similar to the US Patent Office's sorting of patents, into which I would have split my post into several parts. Then, years in the future, those parts would have become threaded with other people's thoughts to become a hopefully-useful completed result. >> The process that we call "thinking" is VERY different in various > people. > > Or even markedly different from one occasion to the next in the same > person. I am subject to a *very*strong Seasonal Affective Disorder effect > (call it seasonal-cycle manic-depression though not quite that extreme). > After many years, I recognize that I think *entirely* differently in the > summer as opposed to the middle of winter. > Absolutely expected with your low daytime body temperature. This is a VERY common observation from "low temps" (people whose temperature is stuck low). This IS easily correctable, providing a very substantial gain in IQ. Like an alcoholic, you have learned to think fairly well while considerably impaired (as I once did until corrected in 2001). The high level of mental organization needed to do this well (which you must certainly have to avoid being classified as "retarded") can propel you WAY ahead of "normal" people, once you are "playing with a full deck". Also, you will live ~20-30 years longer. > > >> Once they adopted an erroneous model and "stored" some information based > on it, they were stuck with it and its failures for the remainder of their > lives. > > While true in many (and possibly the majority of cases), this is nowhere > near universally true. This is like saying that you can't unlearn old, bad > habits. > > >> Superstitious learning is absolutely and theoretically unavoidable. > > No. You are conflating multiple things here. Yes, we always start > learning by combination -- but then we use science to weed things out. The > problem is -- most people aren't good scientists or cleaners. > When you do something and observe a bad result, then do it again and observe a similar bad result, at exactly WHAT point do you conclude that this is no accident? My point is that there is NO "correct" answer to this question, as it is always possible to have any number of "accidents" that support an erroneous conclusion. Given that we have ~10^11 neurons, many of which are simultaneously forming theories, some of them are going to get it wrong. Of course, some situations are more prone to superstitious learning than others. Religious explanations are a beautiful example of this - where everything that defies present explanation is simply credited to God. How are you going to keep your future AGI from becoming a religious zealot? ... then, when you have short-circuited such thoughts, it won't be able to see the value of first presuming intelligent design as a first-level approximation to what should be expected from evolution. Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
