ERIC P. CHARLES wrote at 09/19/2012 02:54 PM: > But Glen, when you talk about the infiltrator, or the person > "paying lip-service", you are just appealing to a larger pattern of > behavior.
Aha!! Excellent! So, tell me how to classify the patterns so that one pattern is just lip service and the other is belief! If you do that, then we'll have our objective function. I can develop an algorithm for that and we'll be able to automatically distinguish zombies from actors. Then we can begin building machines that try to satisfy it. > Agreeing with your assertion, "faking belief" looks different > than "belief"... if you can see enough of the person's behavior and/or see a > close enough level of detail. The former, again, sounds like memory. The latter is something else. It implies something about scale. We know actions are multi-scale (anatomy, physiology, chemistry, physics). Is there a cut-off below which we need not go? Genes? Chemicals? Or does the multiscalar requirements for measuring belief extend all the way down? > a person who believes X > and a person faking belief in X are distinguished by observing a wide variety > of ways in which the people interact with the world. So, in addition to memory and crossing scales, the measures are also multivalent at any one instant or any one scale. > Also, for the record, one of the problems with using "moles" is that it is > very > difficult to get people capable of participating in cultural practices of > these > sorts over extended periods without becoming believers. The practices become > normal to you, the group becomes "your group", and even if you can still turn > them in/report on them/whatever you are supposed to do, you become > sympathetic. Uh-oh. This makes it sound like not only is there a multi-scale problem, but there may also be a hybrid requirement. The mole either continuously transitions from non-belief to belief or there's a threshold. I.e. some parts of our classifying predicate will be continuous and some will be discrete. I have to admit, this seems like a really difficult multi-objective selection method. Building a machine that generates belief from a collection of mechanisms, thereby satisfying the criteria, will be exceedingly difficult, at least as difficult as artificial life and intelligence. But this is what we have to do if we're going to continue claiming that beliefs reduce to actions. -- glen ============================================================ FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College lectures, archives, unsubscribe, maps at http://www.friam.org
