Steve,
We have a really fundamental disagreement. You think cultural conflicts can be
resolved by logical analysis - I'm pretty damn sure they can't. My off-the-cuff
law - the greater the conflict & more dogmatic the conflicting positions on an
issue, the greater the ignorance about that issue. Evolution. Massive
scientific conflicts. Why? We don't have a single evolutionary scenario, (or
v.v. few) to go on. I.Q. Massive conflict. We have almost zero analysis of
humans' conscious thinking in solving the relevant problems, and v little
longitudinal study of their relevant skill acquisition.
For your sake, I suggest, give me any example of a major cultural conflict that
has been *resolved* by logical analysis. (BTW I'm using "logical" in the strict
sense, not that of "reasonable"- but in this case, you can have the second
sense, too).
Mike,
WOW, you covered a LOT of territory in this posting. I will attempt to do it
justice...
On 6/27/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I just casually quoted this research, because it reinforced a v. general
point of mine.However, it is useful here. I think you're making a classical
mistake, which may be v. much linked to the AGI mindset I'm criticising.
Putting my conclusion first, I think you missed some key points.
That mindset, I think, says: "yes, AGI is about solving problems you don't
know how to. So I'll just set up an algorithm that instructs my AGI to engage,
when stuck, in a process of systematic trial and error... That way, my AGI
will be both algorithmic AND exploratory. and generative "
You seem to be saying something complementary here: "you just try various
new alternatives, and whichever on average, is better - you go with..It's
logical."
Not really. I am saying that there are advanced approaches to problems that
are apparently unknown to EVERYONE here on this forum, that provide smooth
paths to apparently intractable problems. When you are unfamiliar with these
methods, then the world appears chaotic as you now see it.
Sounds ok in theory.
"It makes sense to try new options as they may prove advantageous in the
long run. For example, a monkey who chooses to deviate from its diet of
bananas, even if this involves moving to an unfamiliar part of the forest and
eating a new type of food, may find its diet enriched and more nutritious."
In practice, it doesn't work.
Monkey who do stupid things will loose out to monkeys who are smarter, so
Darwin wins.
You see, if you're that monkey, when do you go in search of new food? You
don't know how long it's going to take, you don't know what dangers lie there,
or what the weather will be like. Today? Now? In a hour? Tomorrow? So you go...
and there's nothing there.. do you keep looking?
There are TWO issues here:
1. finding something with LONG TERM value, like a place to eat for the
indefinite future, and
2. refining your models, e.g. that bananas tend to grow in the lowlands
where there is ground water, so you can focus your search there once you
realize it.
And in the same part of the forest, because maybe you missed something; or
in another part? And how long do you spend? And which parts of trees and
undergrowth etc do you search? And how can you be sure that you've searched
thoroughly? And which senses do you use? And what do you do if there's a
strange plant you've never seen, and you're not even sure if it is a plant,
etc. etc. (I just watched a movie, Finding Amanda, in which a guy can't
remember where in his *room*, let alone a forest, he hid his casino winnings, &
can't find them even after taking the room apart - though the maid does
afterwards).
"Trying something new" is vastly more complicated than it sounds - there
are in fact virtually infinite possibilities, most of which you won't have
thought of, at all. How do you even know you've made a mistake in the first
place, that warrants trying something new? How do you know you just didn't
persist long enough?
All good points, but all with relatively computable answers, albeit with LOTS
of computational noise.
We're continually dealing with problematic problems, and the thing about
them - is - LOGIC DOESN'T APPLY.
I STILL haven't yet seen a situation where logic truly doesn't apply.
There is no such thing as a systematic trial and error approach to them -
not one that can work. That's why creativity is so *demonstrably* hard and such
a eureka business when you get an idea.
How do I invest in the stockmarket now? Buy up shares at their v. low
current prices, and wait a few years? That HAS to work, right - it's logical?
If you'd tried it with Japan in 1989, you'd still be in the red. There are no
satisfactory algorithms for dealing with the stockmarket.
Random investment beats nearly all other methods.
There are some that may work at the moment - but only for a while, until
the market changes radically..
And all problematic problems can be treated as stockmarket problems - in
which you have to decide how to invest limited amounts of time and effort and
resources, with highly limited, imperfect knowledge of the options, and sources
of information, and un-precisely-quantifiable risks and deadlines.
Problematic problems have infinite possibilities - and that's why humans
are designed the way they are - not to be sure of anything. You're all dealing
with the problematic problem of AGI - is there literally a single thing that
anyone of you is sure of in relation to AGI? You ought to be, if you were
algorithmically designed.. But nature is still a lot smarter than AGI. You
haven't been given an instinctive trial-and-error system.
Any approach to trial and error, has itself to be a matter of trial and
error.
You personally, Steve, seem to be making a further, related mistake here.
And you can correct me. As I understand, you want to construct a general
problem-solver, adapted from Eliza that can solve problems in many fields not
just health. Sounds in principle good. Something more limited than a true AGI,
but still v. useful.
You're aware, though, as no one else in AGI seems to be, that in every
field of culture, you face major conflicts. There isn't a single field where
experts aren't deeply split and don't divide into conflicting schools.
There are many reasons for this. Often some have skills that others don't,
have conflicting agendas beyond solving the problem at hand, etc.
That obviously poses major difficulties for any general problem-solver,
YES - definitely. Some proposed but not yet implemented approaches include:
1. Identifying acceptable (and unacceptable) paradigms, e.g. do you consider
divine intervention? At present, Dr. Eliza says NO until you start mentioning
God, whereupon divine intervention goes on the list of possibilities, though
people REALLY don't even want to think about whether God caused their problems,
or is it that God has simply decided not to solve them. Some users would like
NOT to consider approaches that conflict with mainstream medical beliefs, but I
presently provide no control over this though this would be possible by
collecting mainstream and alternative medicine into separate subject domains,
which could be considered separately or together. I would prefer to throw
everything in together and let the user sort it out, but this would be SO
politically incorrect.
2. Filtering the material with moderators, which may be necessary anyway to
make problem solving systems run really smoothly. Presumably, moderators would
be separated along domain lines.
3. Some paradigms, e.g. mainstream medicine, are not readily adaptable to
Dr. Eliza's view of things. Dr. Eliza does NOT deal with same-symptoms
"diagnoses", but rather with cause-and-effect chain links that may vary widely
from one person to the next with the same diagnosis. This will doubtless cause
friction in being adopted in mainstream medical settings.
let alone a superAGI. Your mistake - as I understand it - is that you think
you can *logically* resolve these conflicts.
Generally, yes.
The reason everyone is so divided everywhere is that they're dealing with
problematic problems to which there is no logical or right answer. What's the
best treatment for cancer?
Here I have some experience and have delivered lectures to cancer sufferers.
Cancer, like all other chronic illnesses, almost always involves metabolic
parameters gone crazy, which impairs out body's ability to kill off the tumors
that start every month or so in healthy people. For example, substantially all
cancer sufferers have either elevated or reduced body temperatures. My standard
approach of first correcting the crazy metabolic parameters and then seeing if
there is anything left to fix (which there is in about half the cases) appears
to also be the best approach here.
What's the best way to do AGI now?
As I have been noting - don't, until other social and governmental problems
are first fixed.
What's the best way to deal with the economy, the petrol problem, Iraq etc
etc?
These all involve shared invalid assumptions that reverse reductio ad
absurdum methods would uncover.
No matter how you - or even a superAGI - "drills down" into these problems,
people will still be fighting tooth and nail about their "solutions."
Only until they are educated about advanced dispute resolution methods. The
REAL problem is with people why say that EVERYTHING they need to know is in
their own particular religious book, whether it be the Torah, Bible, Lotus
Sutra, or whatever, so they aren't interested in being "educated". The only
hope against these idiots is a world united against stupidity, though this
appears impossible here in the U.S. that is >50% Christian.
Understandably. It may be unfortunate, but conflict is intellectually
justified and even good for us when we don't know the answers.
BTW, you are apparently ignorant of the advanced dispute resolution methods
that I am referring to. It would be REALLY interesting if somehow I could get
your up to speed, so that you could help me explain these to others.
So I suspect a general but limited multi-field problem-solver won't work
for this and other reasons - although it's certainly worth thinking about.
At minimum, EVERY historically recorded resolved dispute could be
incorporated, so that at least we would stop being stymied by disputes whose
solution is known (to someone somewhere).
Point of clarification: Dr. Eliza only incorporates previously known and
understood cause-and-effect chain links. If a new problem involves enough
UNknown links so that it cannot be solved by affecting known links, then Dr.
Eliza will be unable to solve the problem. I am NOT claiming that Dr. Eliza can
solve all problems, only those that are constructed with known vulnerable
cause-and-effect chain links.
However, the problem list you provided earlier in this email all have plenty
of historical precedents to draw upon. Sun Tsu (the ancient Chinese
philosopher) said a number of things that are VERY applicable to our present
economy. Summarizing: The U.S. won't be around very much longer, so there is
little reason for Al Queda to waste any more martyrs attacking it.
Steve Richfield
===============
Isn't this sort of behavior completely logical? If you try something new
and it is bad, then you have had one bad experience. However, if it is good,
then you have many good experiences. Hence. the average value of trying
something new is many times the value of the best thing that you now have
access to, because of this multiplicative effect.
IMHO, illogical researchers were looking for an "illogical" (to them)
phenomenon that was in fact completely logical.
Jim's God
Steve Richfield
===============
On 6/27/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Jim's God was obviously listening to my last post, because I
immediately came across this. I wouldn't make too much of it directly, but let
me redefine its significance - there are parts of the brain and body that LIKE
not knowing what to do, that LIKE creative, non-algorithmic problems. All
you've got to do now is work out how to design a computer like that:
"Neuroscientists discover a sense of adventure
Wellcome Trust scientists have identified a key region of the brain
which encourages us to be adventurous. The region, located in a primitive area
of the brain, is activated when we choose unfamiliar options, suggesting an
evolutionary advantage for sampling the unknown. It may also explain why
re-branding of familiar products encourages to pick them off the supermarket
shelves.
In an experiment carried out at the Wellcome Trust Centre for
Neuroimaging at UCL (University College London), volunteers were shown a
selection of images, which they had already been familiarised with. Each card
had a unique probability of reward attached to it and over the course of the
experiment, the volunteers would be able to work out which selection would
provide the highest rewards. However, when unfamiliar images were introduced,
the researchers found that volunteers were more likely to take a chance and
select one of these options than continue with their familiar - and arguably
safer - option.
Using fMRI scanners, which measure blood flow in the brain to highlight
which areas are most active, Dr Bianca Wittmann and colleagues showed that when
the subjects selected an unfamiliar option, an area of the brain known as the
ventral striatum lit up, indicating that it was more active. The ventral
striatum is in one of the evolutionarily primitive regions of the brain,
suggesting that the process can be advantageous and will be shared by many
animals.
"Seeking new and unfamiliar experiences is a fundamental behavioural
tendency in humans and animals," says Dr Wittmann. "It makes sense to try new
options as they may prove advantageous in the long run. For example, a monkey
who chooses to deviate from its diet of bananas, even if this involves moving
to an unfamiliar part of the forest and eating a new type of food, may find its
diet enriched and more nutritious."
When we make a particular choice or carry out a particular action which
turns out to be beneficial, it is rewarded by a release of neurotransmitters
such as dopamine. These rewards help us learn which behaviours are preferable
and advantageous and worth repeating. The ventral striatum is one of the key
areas involved in processing rewards in the brain. Although the researchers
cannot say definitively from the fMRI scans how novelty seeking is being
rewarded, Dr Wittmann believes it is likely to be through dopamine release.
However, whilst rewarding the brain for making novel choices may prove
advantageous in encouraging us to make potentially beneficial choices, it may
also make us more susceptible to exploitation.
"I might have my own favourite choice of chocolate bar, but if I see a
different bar repackaged, advertising its 'new, improved flavour', my search
for novel experiences may encourage me to move away from my usual choice," says
Dr Wittmann. "This introduces the danger of being sold 'old wine in a new skin'
and is something that marketing departments take advantage of."
Rewarding the brain for novel choices could have a more serious side
effect, argues Professor Nathaniel Daw, now at New York University, who also
worked on the study.
"The novelty bonus may be useful in helping us make complex, uncertain
decisions, but it clearly has a downside," says Professor Daw. "In humans,
increased novelty-seeking may play a role in gambling and drug addiction, both
of which are mediated by malfunctions in dopamine release."
Source: Wellcome Trust
http://www.physorg.com/news133617811.html
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