Ben, It seems that you agree the issue I pointed out really exists, but just take it as a necessary evil. Furthermore, you think I also assumed the same thing, though I failed to see it. I won't argue against the "necessary evil" part --- as far as you agree that those "postulates" (such as "the universe is computable") are not convincingly justified. I won't try to disprove them.
As for the latter part, I don't think you can convince me that you know me better than I know myself. ;-) The following is from http://nars.wang.googlepages.com/wang.semantics.pdf , page 28: If the answers provided by NARS are fallible, in what sense these answers are "better" than arbitrary guesses? This leads us to the concept of "rationality". When infallible predictions cannot be obtained (due to insufficient knowledge and resources), answers based on past experience are better than arbitrary guesses, if the environment is relatively stable. To say an answer is only a summary of past experience (thus no future confirmation guaranteed) does not make it equal to an arbitrary conclusion — it is what "adaptation" means. Adaptation is the process in which a system changes its behaviors as if the future is similar to the past. It is a rational process, even though individual conclusions it produces are often wrong. For this reason, valid inference rules (deduction, induction, abduction, and so on) are the ones whose conclusions correctly (according to the semantics) summarize the evidence in the premises. They are "truth-preserving" in this sense, not in the model-theoretic sense that they always generate conclusions which are immune from future revision. --- so you see, I don't assume adaptation will always be successful, even successful to a certain probability. You can dislike this conclusion, though you cannot say it is the same as what is assumed by Novamente and AIXI. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:12 PM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 10:00 AM, Pei Wang <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: >> >> Ben, >> >> Thanks. So the other people now see that I'm not attacking a straw man. >> >> My solution to Hume's problem, as embedded in the experience-grounded >> semantics, is to assume no predictability, but to justify induction as >> adaptation. However, it is a separate topic which I've explained in my >> other publications. > > Right, but justifying induction as adaptation only works if the environment > is assumed to have certain regularities which can be adapted to. In a > random environment, adaptation won't work. So, still, to justify induction > as adaptation you have to make *some* assumptions about the world. > > The Occam prior gives one such assumption: that (to give just one form) sets > of observations in the world tend to be producible by short computer > programs. > > For adaptation to successfully carry out induction, *some* vaguely > comparable property to this must hold, and I'm not sure if you have > articulated which one you assume, or if you leave this open. > > In effect, you implicitly assume something like an Occam prior, because > you're saying that a system with finite resources can successfully adapt to > the world ... which means that sets of observations in the world *must* be > approximately summarizable via subprograms that can be executed within this > system. > > So I argue that, even though it's not your preferred way to think about it, > your own approach to AI theory and practice implicitly assumes some variant > of the Occam prior holds in the real world. >> >> >> Here I just want to point out that the original and basic meaning of >> Occam's Razor and those two common (mis)usages of it are not >> necessarily the same. I fully agree with the former, but not the >> latter, and I haven't seen any convincing justification of the latter. >> Instead, they are often taken as granted, under the name of Occam's >> Razor. > > I agree that the notion of an Occam prior is a significant conceptual beyond > the original "Occam's Razor" precept enounced long ago. > > Also, I note that, for those who posit the Occam prior as a **prior > assumption**, there is not supposed to be any convincing justification for > it. The idea is simply that: one must make *some* assumption (explicitly or > implicitly) if one wants to do induction, and this is the assumption that > some people choose to make. > > -- Ben G > > > > ________________________________ > agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
