Steve, A quick response for now. I was going to reply to an earlier post of yours, in which you made the most important point for me:
"The difficulties in proceeding in both neuroscience and AI/AGI is NOT a lack of technology or clever people to apply it, but is rather a lack of understanding of the real world and how to effectively interact within it." I had already had a go at expounding this,and I think I've got a better way now. (It's actually v. important to philosophically conceptualise it precisely - and you're not quite managing it any more than I was). I think it's this: everyone in AGI is almost exclusively interested in general intelligence as INFORMATION PROCESSING - as opposed to KNOWLEDGE (about the world). IOW everyone is mainly interested in the problems of storing and manipulating information via hardware and software, and what logic/maths/programs etc to use., which is of course, what they know all about, and is essential. People aren't interested in, though, in what is also essential: the problems of acquiring knowledge about the world. For them knowledge is all "data." Different kinds and forms of knowledge? "Dude, they're just bandwidth." To draw an analogy, it's like being interested only in developing a wonderfully powerful set of cameras, and not in photography. To be a photographer, you have to know about your subject as well as your machine and its s/ware. You have to know, say, human beings and how their faces change and express emotions, if you want to be a portrait photographer - or animals and their behaviour if you want to photograph them in the wild. You have to know the problems of acquiring knowledge re particular parts of the world. And the same is true of AGI. This lack of interest in knowledge is at the basis of the fantasy of a superAGI taking off. That's an entirely mathematical fantasy derived from thinking purely about the information processing side of things. "Computers are getting more and more powerful; as my computer starts to build a body of data, it will build faster and faster, get recursively better and better... and whoops.. it'll take over the world." On an information processing basis, that seems reasonable - for computers definitely will keep increasing amazingly in processing power >From a knowledge POV, though, it's an absurd fantasy. As soon as you think in >terms of acquiring knowledge and solving problems about any particular area of >the world, you realise that knowledge doesn't simply expand mathematically. >Everywhere you look, you find messy problems and massive areas of ignorance, >that can only be solved creatively. The brain - all this neuroscience and we >still don't know the "engram" principle. The body - endless diseases we >haven't solved. Women - what the heck *do* they want? And so on and on. And >unfortunately the solution of these problems - creativity - doesn't run to >mathematical timetables. If only.. And as soon as you think in knowledge as opposed to information terms, you realise that current AGI is based on an additional absurd fantasy - "the bookroom fantasy." When you think just in terms of data, well, it seems reasonable that you can simply mine the texts of the world, esp. via the Net, and supplement that with instruction from human teachers, and become ever more superintelligent. You or your agent, says the fantasy, can just sit in a room with your books and net connection, and perhaps a few visitors, and learn all about the world. Apparently, you don't actually have to go out in the world at all - you can learn all about Kazakhstan without ever having been there, or sex without ever having had sex, or sports without ever having played them, or diseases without ever having been in surgeries and hospitals and sickrooms etc. etc. When you think in terms of knowledge, you quickly realise that to know and solve problems about the world or any part, you need not just information in texts, you need EXPERIENCE, OBSERVATION, INVESTIGATION, EXPERIMENT, and INTERACTION with the subject, and maybe a stiff drink. A computer sitting in a room, or a billion computers in a billion rooms, are not going to solve the problems of the world in magnificent isolation. (They'll help an awful lot, but they won't finally solve the problems). Just thinking in terms of science as one branch of knowlege, and how science solves problems, would tell you this. Science without in-the-lab experiment and in-the-field observation is unthinkable. The bookroom fantasy is truly absurd if you think about it in knowledge terms, but AGI-ers just aren't thinking in those terms. You, Steve, it seems to me, are unusual here because you have had to think very extensively in terms of knowledge - and a particular subject area, i.e. health, and so you're acutely and unusually aware of the problems of acquiring knowledge there rather than just data. It has to be said, that it's v. hard to think about intelligence from the knowledge side - (although easy to start talking about it for a while) - because it comes under philosophy as well as psychology, and a branch of philosophy that doesn't exist. There is a branch of philosophy for every branch of knowledge - from sci., and tech, to arts, history, and management and business. But there is no overall branch that surveys the whole of philosophy. So different branches, like philosophy of science, can tell you something about the problems of acquiring knowledge in particular areas. But there is no super-branch that can generalise about all the different problems in different areas. Anyway, I'll stop there for now... Mike Tintner, et al, After failing to get ANY response to what I thought was an important point (Paradigm Shifting regarding Consciousness) I went back through my AGI inbox to see what other postings by others weren't getting any responses. Mike Tintner was way ahead of me in no-response postings. A quick scan showed that these also tended to address high-level issues that challenge the contemporary herd mentality. In short, most people on this list appear to be interested only in HOW to straight-line program an AGI (with the implicit assumption that we operate anything at all like we appear to operate), but not in WHAT to program, and most especially not in any apparent insurmountable barriers to successful open-ended capabilities, where attention would seem to be crucial to ultimate success. Anyone who has been in high-tech for a few years KNOWS that success can come only after you fully understand what you must overcome to succeed. Hence, based on my own past personal experiences and present observations here, present efforts here would seem to be doomed to fail - for personal if not for technological reasons. Normally I would simply dismiss this as rookie error, but I know that at least some of the people on this list have been around as long as I have been, and hence they certainly should know better since they have doubtless seen many other exuberant rookies fall into similar swamps of programming complex systems without adequate analysis. Hey you guys with some gray hair and/or bald spots, WHAT THE HECK ARE YOU THINKING? Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- 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=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com