RICHARD!
THEN WHAT IN THE HELL DO YOU MEAN BY "NON-LINEAR?" You keep trying to buy your way out of apparently unjustified statements by attacking people --- who interpret your words using their common meanings --- for not having the telepathic power to know the special "Richard" sense of your words. (Note: any definition of "non-linear" you claim you meant should cover the large class of AGI approaches you claim are bound to fail because of Richard-complexity.) Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2008 12:38 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: **SPAM** RE: [agi] Adding to the extended essay on the complex systems problem Russell Wallace wrote: > On Thu, Apr 24, 2008 at 2:14 AM, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> The real gotcha, though is the "Are the functions describing >> the behavior deeply nonlinear". You're just not going to find that with the >> first three. > > Actually, it's true of every program significantly more complex than > "Hello World" that the functions describing the behavior are deeply > nonlinear. This shouldn't be too surprising, because it's also true of > every electronic device significantly more complex than a length of > wire, every chemical system other than a hydrogen atom, every > mechanical device with more than one or two moving parts, every fluid > dynamics system that involves turbulence - and every neural network > more complex than a one-layer perceptron, so if complexity made > systems undevelopable, not only could ANNs not operate, but organic > brains could neither develop in the individual nor evolve in the > species. > > The notions of nonlinearity and complexity simply don't do what > Richard wants them to do. You have fallen into two traps that I have to deal with over and over. 1) The claims are meant to be applied at a chosen level of description - jumping down to other levels of description is not relevant. For example, if a physicist that "below the elastic limit, a spring is a linear system", would you drop down a level and call the physicist a fool, because "every chemical system other than a hydrogen atom [is deeply nonlinear]" .... the exact statement that you just made above? If you would not do such a thing to the physicist, why do you try that trick on the argument I just presented? 2) There is a widely accepted, broader sense of 'nonlinear' than merely "not described by an equation in which x is proportional to y". That broader sense is roughly equivalent to "cannot separate the variables". You then go flying off on a sequence of non-sequiteurs ("so if complexity made systems undevelopable ...") which imply that I made arguments that I did not. Richard Loosemore ------------------------------------------- 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/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- 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
