Stefan Pernar wrote:
Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And
all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the
board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as
you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so.
Wow! This is astonishing.
I gently invited you to take the discussion onto a higher, more rational
plane, and you came back with .... even more personal abuse of the worst
possible sort. There is nothing in the above paragraph except
unsupported insults.
Breathtaking.
All of the points you just made could be met, if you articulated
them. Scruffies? Some people only use that as a derogatory term:
what did you mean by it? I am not necessarily even a 'scruffy' by
any accepted definition of that term, and certainly not by the
definition from Russell and Norvig that I quoted in my paper. As
far as I am aware, *nobody* has accused me of being a scruffy ... it
was actually me who first mentioned the scruffy-neat divide!
Let's not use shady rhetoric here - shall we? You know exactly that
scruffy refers to a technical distinction. How do you expect to be taken
seriously if you try to manipulate like this? Not going to happen with me.
I am honestly completely confused about what you are saying ('shady
rhetoric', 'manipulate' .... ?).
The scruffy-neat distinction was supposed to be a contrast between
Logical AI people and those who came before, but in some people's mouths
it is used to denigrate the 'scruffies' as unscientific and adulate the
'neats' as real scientists. That is a derogatory usage. Some scruffies
don't mind being called that at all, because they consider it to be
merely a summary of the fact that they disagree with the premises of the
Logical AI people ... they certainly do not regard themselves as
unscientific hackers, just interested in getting a system working by a
build-and-fix approach.
So there is a confusion here. Do you just mean that I am not in
agreement with the Logical AI crowd? That would not be insulting, and
it would be correct. Do you mean that I am doing the same kind of thing
that was done by the people who came before the Logical AI period? That
would also not be insulting, but it would be technically wrong. Do you
mean that I am doing something basically unscientific? That would be
insulting and wrong, both.
I was merely inviting you, in a polite way, to explain which of these
meanings you were intending. They are very different.
"Wild speculations"? Which, exactly? "Grand pie-in-the-sky plans
without substance"? Again, what are you referring to? Don't these
all sound like Stefan's personal opinion?
Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to
step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and
let stuff like this slide.
I am happy either way: but I would prefer that you articulate what
exactly you mean by making these allegations.
You see, your statements could be interpreted as based on pure ignorance
on your part .... an inability to actually understand the arguments,
plus a willingness to condemn things that you do not understand, and an
eagerness to imply that the people talking about those things are
ignorant, not you. There are many people who do engage in that kind of
behavior: you don't want to look like one of those people, believe me.
I would really rather that you prove that you understand the arguments,
because if you continue to just complain with supporting arguments, it
does not reflect very well on you.
On all of these points, we could have had meaningful discussion (if
you chose), but if you keep them to yourself and simply decide that
I am an idiot, what chance do I have to meet your objections? I am
always open to criticism, but to be fair it has to be detailed,
specific and not personal.
The lack of consistency and quality to your writings make it not
worthwhile for me to point out particular points of criticism that would
be even worth debating with you. It is not that there are two or three
point that I do not understand. No - your whole concept is is an
uninteresting house of cards to me. Your rhetoric is shady and dogmatic
- you are unresponsive to substantial criticisms. No matter what people
say you will continue to make up stuff and throw it right back at them
- spiked with subtle personal attacks.
Astonishing!
Can you give any examples of these things? These are amazingly strong
allegations. Back them up, please.
In short you are not worth my time and the only reason why I am spending
time on this is because I hope the list will wake up to it.
Also, I am a little confused by the first sentence of the above. It
implies that you only just started looking through my 'stuff' ...
have you read the published papers? The blog posts? The technical
discussions on this list with Mark Waser, Kaj Sotala, Derek Zahn and
others?
It did not take more than about an hour to look through all your stuff
on your website so yeah - anything else I missed please send me a link.
The Publications page of my site (http://susaro.com/publications) has
pdfs of the two most recent papers, including the one published in the
proceedings of the AGI-06 workshop, which describes the complex systems
problem in some detail.
Did you read that paper?
Did you read the other recent paper, in which I describe some aspects of
the framework I am using, then apply that framework to some specific
empirical data from brain-scan studies, and successfully explain some
data that was hitherto impossible to explain?
Have you produced any theories or frameworks that explained any emprical
data recently, Stefan?
Did you note that I co-authored that paper with Trevor Harley, who is
currently Dean of the Psychology Department at the University of Dundee,
Scotland, and one of the world's leading cognitive neurospsychologists?
Are you trying to imply that Trevor Harley must be an idiot, too, if he
chooses to associate with me? Are you trying to imply that Martin Bunzl
and Stephen Jose Hanson, who invited the paper for publication in their
book, and accepted it with great enthusiasm, are both idiots too?
It is beginning to look, Stefan, as though you are a little out of your
depth here.
And although I think it is to much to ask to go through the many emails
you wrote before I actually did that to and what I found only confirmed
my opinion. For example:
Kaj:
I'd be curious to hear your opinion of Omohundro's "The Basic AI Drives"
paper
Richard:
Omohundros's analysis is all predicated on the Goal Stack approach, so
my response is that nothing he says has any relevance to the type of AGI
that I talk about (which, as I say, is probably going to be the only
type ever created).
Stefan:
Utter nonsense and not worthy of learned debate.
You know what I meant by the 'Goal Stack' approach?
You read my extremely detailed descriptions, in past posts, of the
distinction between different types of motivation systems?
You are aware of the fact that I had previously had conversations with
Kaj about these matters, so when I wrote that I was reminding him of my
previous writings?
You are aware of the fact that I previously gave arguments as to why the
Goal Stack approach had such severe limitations that, eventually, it
would have to be thrown out?
Did you have any idea of this background information when you latched
onto that random message? And if you had no idea that all that
background material existed, and did not take the trouble to find out
about it, do you really feel comfortable mounting such a vicious,
uncompromising, personally abusive attack?
Looks pretty bad, you know.
Richard Loosemore
-------------------------------------------
agi
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