Re: [agi] Identity abstraction
Thanks for the more specific answer. It was the most illuminating of the ones I've gotten. I realize that this isn't really the right list for questions about human subjects experiments; just thought I'd give it a try. Richard Loosemore wrote: Harry Chesley wrote: On 1/9/2009 9:45 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: There are certainly experiments that might address some of your concerns, but I am afraid you will have to acquire a general knowledge of what is known, first, to be able to make sense of what they might tell you. There is nothing that can be plucked and delivered as a direct answer. I was not asking for a complete answer. I was asking for experiments that shed light on the area. I don't expect a mature answer, only more food for thought. Your answer that there are such experiments, but you're not going to tell me what they are is not a useful one. Don't worry about whether I can digest the experimental context. Maybe I know more than you assume I do. What I am trying to say is that you will find answers that are partially relevant to your question scattered across about a third of the chapters of any comprehensive introduction to cognitive psychology. And then, at a deeper level, you will find something of relevance in numerous more specialized documents. But they are so scattered that I could not possibly start to produce a comprehensive list! For example, the easiest things to mention are object perception within a developmental psychology framework (see a dev psych textbook for entire chapters on that); the psycholgy of concepts will involve numerous experiments that require judgements of whether objects are same or different (but in each case the experiment will not be focussed on answering the direct question you might be asking); the question of how concepts are represented sometimes involves the dialectic between the prototype and exemplar camps (see book by Smith and Medin), which partially touches on the question; there are discussions in the connectionist literature about the problem of type-token discrimination (see Norman's chapter at the end of the second PDP volume - McClelland and Rumelhart 1986/7); then there is neurospychology of naming... see books on psychololinguistics like the one written by Trevor Harley for a comprehensive introduction to that area); there are also vast numbers of studies to do with recognition of abstract concepts using neural nets (you could pick up three or four papers that I wrote in the 1990s which center on the problem of extracting the spelled for of words using phoneme clusters if you look at the publications section of my website, susaro.com, but there are thousands of others). Then, you could also wait for my own textbook (in preparation) which treats the formation of concepts and the mechanisms of abstraction from the Molecular perspective. These are just examples picked at random. none of them answer your question, they just give you pieces of the puzzle, for you to assemble into a half-working answer after a couple of years of study ;-). Anyone who knew the field would say, in response to your inquiry, But what exactly do you mean by the question?, and they would say this because your question touches upon about six or seven major areas of inquiry, in the most general possible terms. Richard Loosemore --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=126863270-d7b0b0 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Identity abstraction
On 1/9/2009 9:28 AM, Vladimir Nesov wrote: You need to name those parameters in a sentence only because it's linear, in a graph they can correspond to unnamed nodes. Abstractions can have structure, and their applicability can depend on how their structure matches the current scene. If you retain in a scene graph only relations you mention, that'd be your abstraction. I'm not sure if you mean a graph in the sense of nodes and edges, or in a visual sense. If the former, any implementation requires that the edges identify or link somehow to the appropriate nodes -- so how is this done in humans and what experiments reveal it? If the later, the location in space of the node in the abstract graph is effectively it's identity -- are you suggesting that human abstraction is always visual, and if so what experimental evidence is there? I don't mean to include or exclude your theory of abstraction, but the question is whether you know of experiments that shed light on this area. --- 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=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Identity abstraction
On 1/9/2009 9:45 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: There are certainly experiments that might address some of your concerns, but I am afraid you will have to acquire a general knowledge of what is known, first, to be able to make sense of what they might tell you. There is nothing that can be plucked and delivered as a direct answer. I was not asking for a complete answer. I was asking for experiments that shed light on the area. I don't expect a mature answer, only more food for thought. Your answer that there are such experiments, but you're not going to tell me what they are is not a useful one. Don't worry about whether I can digest the experimental context. Maybe I know more than you assume I do. --- 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=8660244id_secret=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Lamarck Lives!(?)
On 12/3/2008 8:11 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: Am I right in thinking that what these people: http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20026845.000-memories-may-be-stored-on-your-dna.html are saying is that memories can be stored as changes in the DNA inside neurons? If so, that would upset a few apple carts. Yes, but it obviously needs a lot more confirmation first. :-) Would it mean that memories (including cultural adaptations) could be passed from mother to child? No. As far as I understand it, they are proposing changes to the DNA in the neural cells only, so it wouldn't be passed on. And I would expect that the changes are specific to the neural structure of the subject, so even if you moved the changes to DNA in another subject, it wouldn't work. Implication for neuroscientists proposing to build a WBE (whole brain emulation): the resolution you need may now have to include all the DNA in every neuron. Any bets on when they will have the resolution to do that? No bets here. But they are proposing that elements are added onto the DNA, not that changes are made in arbitrary locations within the DNA, so it's not /quite/ as bad as you suggest --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] To what extent can our minds experience the consciousness of external reality?
Ben Goertzel wrote: ...my own belief that consciousness is the underlying reality, and physical and computational systems merely *focus* this consciousness in particular ways, is also not something that can be proven empirically or logically... For what it's worth, let me throw out a random thought I had some time ago regarding consciousness. It's half formed and barely alive, so be nice to it, but it resonates (for me at least) with what Ben has said: You can think of information as being orthogonal to matter. Matter is used to represent or embody information, but it is not information. A pile of rocks may represent some quantity -- say if you add one every time someone comes into the room -- or it may be just a random pile. In the same way, could consciousness be orthogonal to information? Without a lot more work, the idea seems just so much half-assed pseudo-science, and I haven't had time/energy to work it out further. But I thought people here might have ideas -- either to flesh it out or give a quick and merciful death. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness
Richard Loosemore wrote: Harry Chesley wrote: Richard Loosemore wrote: I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf One other point: Although this is a possible explanation for our subjective experience of qualia like red or soft, I don't see it explaining pain or happy quite so easily. You can hypothesize a sort of mechanism-level explanation of those by relegating them to the older or lower parts of the brain (i.e., they're atomic at the conscious level, but have more effects at the physiological level (like releasing chemicals into the system)), but that doesn't satisfactorily cover the subjective side for me. I do have a quick answer to that one. Remember that the core of the model is the *scope* of the analysis mechanism. If there is a sharp boundary (as well there might be), then this defines the point where the qualia kick in. Pain receptors are fairly easy: they are primitive signal lines. Emotions are, I believe, caused by clusters of lower brain structures, so the interface between lower brain and foreground is the place where the foreground sees a limit to the analysis mechanisms. More generally, the significance of the foreground is that it sets a boundary on how far the analysis mechanisms can reach. I am not sure why that would seem less satisfactory as an explanation of the subjectivity. It is a raw feel, and that is the key idea, no? My problem is if qualia are atomic, with no differentiable details, why do some feel different than others -- shouldn't they all be separate but equal? Red is relatively neutral, while searing hot is not. Part of that is certainly lower brain function, below the level of consciousness, but that doesn't explain to me why it feels qualitatively different. If it was just something like increased activity (franticness) in response to searing hot, then fine, that could just be something like adrenaline being pumped into the system, but there is a subjective feeling that goes beyond that. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
Trent Waddington wrote: As I believe the is that conciousness? debate could go on forever, I think I should make an effort here to save this thread. Setting aside the objections of vegetarians and animal lovers, many hard nosed scientists decided long ago that jamming things into the brains of monkeys and the like is justifiable treatment of creatures suspected by many to have similar experiences to humans. If you're in agreement with these practices then I think you should be in agreement with any and all experimentation on simulated networks of complexity up to and including these organisms. Yes, my intent on starting this thread was not to define consciousness, but rather to ask how do we make ethical choices with regard to AGI before we are able to define it? I agree with your points above. However, I am not entirely sanguine about animal experiments. I accept that they're sometimes OK, or at least the lesser of two evils, but I would prefer to avoid even that level of compromise when experimenting on AGIs. And, given that we have the ability to design the AGI experimental subject -- as opposed to being stuck with a pre-designed animal -- it /should/ be possible. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness
Mark Waser wrote: My problem is if qualia are atomic, with no differentiable details, why do some feel different than others -- shouldn't they all be separate but equal? Red is relatively neutral, while searing hot is not. Part of that is certainly lower brain function, below the level of consciousness, but that doesn't explain to me why it feels qualitatively different. If it was just something like increased activity (franticness) in response to searing hot, then fine, that could just be something like adrenaline being pumped into the system, but there is a subjective feeling that goes beyond that. Maybe I missed it but why do you assume that because qualia are atomic that they have no differentiable details? Evolution is, quite correctly, going to give pain qualia higher priority and less ability to be shut down than red qualia. In a good representation system, that means that searing hot is going to be *very* whatever and very tough to ignore. I thought that was the meaning of atomic as used in the paper. Maybe I got it wrong. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness
On 11/14/2008 9:27 AM, Richard Loosemore wrote: I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf Good paper. A related question: How do you explain the fact that we sometimes are aware of qualia and sometimes not? You can perform the same actions paying attention or on auto pilot. In one case, qualia manifest, while in the other they do not. Why is that? --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness
Richard Loosemore wrote: Harry Chesley wrote: A related question: How do you explain the fact that we sometimes are aware of qualia and sometimes not? You can perform the same actions paying attention or on auto pilot. In one case, qualia manifest, while in the other they do not. Why is that? I actually *really* like this question: I was trying to compose an answer to it while lying in bed this morning. ... So when I don't remember anything about those towns, from a few minutes ago on my road trip, is it because (a) the attentional mechanism did not bother to lay down any episodic memory traces, so I cannot bring back the memories and analyze them, or (b) that I was actually not experiencing any qualia during that time when I was on autopilot? I believe that the answer is (a), and that IF I can stopped at any point during the observation period and thought about the experience I just had, I would be able to appreciate the last few seconds of subjective experience. ... Does this seem to make sense so far, though? It sounds reasonable. I would suspect (a) also, and that the reason is that these are circumstances where remembering is a waste of resources, either because the task being done on auto-pilot is so well understood that it won't need to be analyzed later, and/or because there is another task in the works at the same time that has more need for the memory resources. Note that your supposition about remembering the last few seconds if interrupted during an auto-pilot task is experimentally verifiable fairly easily. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] A paper that actually does solve the problem of consciousness
Richard Loosemore wrote: I completed the first draft of a technical paper on consciousness the other day. It is intended for the AGI-09 conference, and it can be found at: http://susaro.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/11/draft_consciousness_rpwl.pdf One other point: Although this is a possible explanation for our subjective experience of qualia like red or soft, I don't see it explaining pain or happy quite so easily. You can hypothesize a sort of mechanism-level explanation of those by relegating them to the older or lower parts of the brain (i.e., they're atomic at the conscious level, but have more effects at the physiological level (like releasing chemicals into the system)), but that doesn't satisfactorily cover the subjective side for me. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
This thread has gone back and forth several times concerning the reality of consciousness. So at the risk of extending it further unnecessarily, let me give my view, which seems self-evident to me, but I'm sure isn't to others (meaning they may reasonably disagree with me, not that they're idiots (though I'm open to that possibility too)). 1) I'm talking about the hard question of consciousness. 2) It is real, as it clearly influences our thoughts. On the other hand, though it feels subjectively like it is qualitatively different from other aspects of the world, it probably isn't (but I'm open to being wrong here). 3) We cannot currently define or measure it, but some day we will. 4) Until that day comes, it's really hard to have a non-trivial discussion of it, and too easy to fly off into wild theories concerning it. An analogy: How do you know that humans have blood flowing through their veins? Looking at them, you can't tell. Dissecting them after death, you can't tell -- they have blood, but it's not moving. Cutting them while alive produces spurts of blood, but that could be just because the body is generally pressurized, not because there's any on-going flow through the veins. It requires observing the internals of the body while alive to determine that blood actually flows all the time. And it also helps a lot to have a model of the circulatory system that includes the heart as a pump, etc. With consciousness, we're at the pre-scientific stage, because we know so little about cognition that we're not yet able to open it up and observe it as it operates. This will change, hopefully in my lifetime. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
Matt Mahoney wrote: 2) It is real, as it clearly influences our thoughts. On the other hand, though it feels subjectively like it is qualitatively different from other aspects of the world, it probably isn't (but I'm open to being wrong here). The correct statement is that you believe it is real. Everybody does. Those who didn't, did not pass on their DNA. No, the correct statement is the one I made. It is real. We have empirical evidence that it is real since it influences observable actions. Consciousness *may* be a belief. But we have no empirical evidence for or against that statement, so it's too early to make blanket statements like yours. 3) We cannot currently define or measure it, but some day we will. You can define it any time you want, or use the existing common definition. No, you can't define it any way you want. I am talking about a specific phenomenon that has been observed but not understood. And the definitions from others that I've seen may allow us to identify shared experiences of the phenomenon, but don't provide either a good model or empirical tests, so they're less that I, for one, want in order to say we've defined it. Blood flow can be directly observed, for example, by x-rays during an angioplasty. But that isn't the point. Even without direct observation, blood flow is supported by a lot of indirect evidence, for example, when you inject a drug into a vein it quickly spreads to other parts of the body. Even theories for which evidence is harder to observe, for example, the existence of fractional electric charges in quarks, are accepted because the theory makes predictions that can be tested. So far we're in complete agreement. Concluding that blood flows requires observation which requires technology applicable to the phenomenon (x-rays, needles, tests to see if the drug spread, etc.). But there are absolutely no testable predictions that can be made from a theory of consciousness. But here you suddenly jump from saying we have no empirical tests to saying there can be no empirical tests. This makes no sense to me. Even if consciousness is only a belief with no real substance, there are testable predictions that follow from its existence, and perhaps tests to determine that it is limited to being only a belief. --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
Matt Mahoney wrote: If you don't define consciousness in terms of an objective test, then you can say anything you want about it. We don't entirely disagree about that. An objective test is absolutely crucial. I believe where we disagree is that I expect there to be such a test one day, while you claim there can never be. (I say don't /entirely/ agree because I think we can talk about things that are not completely defined -- in this case, I believe most people reading this do know the subjective feeling of consciousness and recognize that that's what I mean. A scientific exploration requires a more thorough definition, but we can still have some meaningful discourse without it, though we do risk running off into wildly unsubstantiated theories when we do.) --- 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=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
On 11/4/2008 2:53 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) wrote: Personally, I'm not making an AGI that has emotions... So you take the view that, despite our minimal understanding of the basis of emotions, they will only arise if designed in, never spontaneously as an emergent property? So you can safely ignore the ethics question. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
On 11/4/2008 3:31 PM, Matt Mahoney wrote: To answer your (modified) question, consciousness is detected by the activation of a large number of features associated with living humans. The more of these features are activated, the greater the tendency to apply ethical guidelines to the target that we would normally apply to humans. For example, monkeys are more like humans than mice, which are more like humans than insects, which are more like humans than programs. It does not depend on a single feature. If I understand correctly, you're saying that there is no such thing as objective ethics, and that our subjective ethics depend on how much we identify/empathize with another creature. I grant this as a possibility, in which case I guess my question should be viewed as subjective. I.e., how do I tell when something is sufficiently close to me, without being able to see all the features directly, that I need to worry about the ethics subjectively? Let me give an example: If I take a person and put them in a box, so that I can see none of their features or know how similar they are to me, I still consider it unethical to conduct certain experiments on them. This is because I believe those important similar features are there, I just can't see them. Similarly, I believe at some point in AGI development, features similar to my own mind will arise, but since they will be obscured by a very different (and incomplete) implementation from my own, they may not be obvious, even though I believe they are there. So although you've changed the phrasing of the question to a degree, the question remains. (Note: You could argue that ethics, being subjective, are irrelevant, and while that may be true, I'm too squeamish to take that view, which also leads to allowing arbitrary experiments on people.) --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Ethics of computer-based cognitive experimentation
The question of when it's ethical to do AGI experiments has bothered me for a while. It's something that every AGI creator has to deal with sooner or later if you believe you're actually going to create real intelligence that might be conscious. The following link is a blog essay on the subject, which describes my current thinking on the subject, such as it is. There's clearly much more that needs to be worked out. Comments, either here or at the blog, would be appreciated. http://www.mememotes.com/meme_motes/2008/11/ethical-experimentation-on-cognitive-entities.html --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Defining AGI.. PS
On 10/18/2008 9:27 AM, Mike Tintner wrote: What rational computers can't do is find similarities between disparate, irregular objects - via fluid transformation - the essence of imagination. So you don't believe that this is possible by finding combinations of abstract shapes (lines, squares, circles, etc.) within a scene and mapping or spatially transforming those shapes? This was my understanding of how human vision works. I had thought that was fairly well established, but it's not my area -- personally, I'm betting that a purely symbolic approach is workable. And I may be missing the importance of your emphasis on fluid. I generally find that people think in more discrete jumps -- for example, the jump to Italy being a boot, rather than a series of smaller transformational steps from the map to the abstraction. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Reasoning by analogy recommendations
I find myself needing to more thoroughly understand reasoning by analogy. (I've read/thought about it to a degree, but would like more.) Anyone have any recommendation for books and/or papers on the subject? Thanks. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On 10/15/2008 8:01 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: What are your thoughts on this? A narrower focus of the list would be better for me personally. I've been convinced for a long time that computer-based AGI is possible, and am working toward it. As such, I'm no longer interested in arguments about whether it is feasible or not. I skip over those postings in the list. I also skip over postings which are about a pet theory rather than a true reply to the original post. They tend to have the form your idea x will not work because it is in opposition to my theory y, which states insert complex description here. Certainly ones own ideas and theories should contribute to a reply, but they should not /be/ the reply. And the last category that I skip are discussions that have gone far into an area that I don't consider relevant to my own line of inquiry. But I think those are valuable contributions to the list, just not of immediate interest to me. Like a typical programmer, I tend to over-focus on what I'm working on. But what I find irrelevant may be spot on for someone else, or for me at some other time. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Context
I think we would all agree that context is crucial to understanding. Kill them! means something quite different if you're at a soccer game, in a military battle, or playing a FPS video game. But in a pragmatic, let's implement it, sense, I'm not as clear what context means. Let me try to enumerate some options and see if anyone has any dramatic insights (or pointers to existing work). 1) Context = the immediate container. This is the simplest to implement, where the context is simply whatever the object (or action) is directly within. There are times when the relevant context seems to be at a higher level, such as the reality/fantasy distinction between the battle and FPS above. That could be resolved by variants on the lower level containers that inherit from /their/ containers -- not a fight but a fantasy fight. But this proliferation of container variants seems inefficient and over-complex. 2) Context = the highest level container. Clearly sometimes context is not at the highest level only, but it's all a part of the top level. But this, in a sense, doesn't solve anything. It just says that everything is the context. 3) Context = a middle container. This is similar to nouns, in that for any given object, there is usually a middle level is-a noun that we prefer to use (e.q., dog rather than mammal). Maybe there is similarly a middle level container that's the preferred context. But this has many of the same problems as both 1 and 2. 4) Context = a search up the container hierarchy. You just look upwards until you find the relevant context. But this pushes a lot of the semantic complexity into find the relevant context, without answering what that really means. 5) Context = depends on the thing. Each distinct object may have a different context. There's no one-size-fits-all context. But this gives very little guidance on how to implement context. 6) Context = multiple items. A given object may have multiple contexts. For example, I may be a father in the context of my daughter, but a husband in the context of my wife. But this option is not mutually exclusive with the others, so you still have to pick on of them as well. Thoughts? --- 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=8660244id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless (AND fuzzy) reasoning - in one
On 8/9/2008 12:43 AM, Brad Paulsen wrote: Mike Tintner wrote: That illusion is partly the price of using language, which fragments into pieces what is actually a continuous common sense, integrated response to the world. Excellent observation. I've said it many times before: language is analog human experience digitized. And every time I do, people look at me funny. I dunno about that. When I walk into my dining room, I don't see a continuous experience, I see a table and chairs and plates, etc. I clump the world into objects that have discrete boundaries. Isn't that digitization in the sense you mean? I think of language more as serializing something that's parallel internally, and saving communications bandwidth by supplying enough information to uniquely identify an already known concept rather than fully describing it -- part of which is the use of symbols. As a side note: There's some evidence that dolphins communicate by making sounds that imitate what their sonar would return. It's somewhat equivalent to me being able to wave my hands and make an image appear in the air. Thus there's no need for symbols, because they can reproduce the sensory input of the original object. If it had been easier to do the same thing in our sensory environment (vision rather than sonar), we might never have evolved symbolic language and all that led to. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
James Ratcliff wrote: Every AGI, but the truly most simple AI must run in a simulated environment of some sort. Not necessarily, but in most cases yes. To give a counter example, a human scholar reads Plato and publishes an analysis of what he has read. There is no interaction with the environment in the sense I believe you mean -- there is input and output, but the two are disconnected, and the output doesn't affect the input -- yet it's clearly a human-level intellectual activity. But interacting with an environment is often more interesting. There must be structure to its internal information nodes, some level of hierarchy for storage and usage correct? Many and most nodes will contain base nodes such as color or weight or position. How can a network be created without these? The AGI may not have direct experential sampling of these concepts thru an input device, but the concepts must still be there. Three points: 1) The main thing I was arguing is that the base nodes do not need to be different from the rest, other than their position in the network. There is no need for the equivalent of software primitive functions. 2) A hierarchical network needs base nodes, but a graph does not. It can be circular. 3) There are no true primitive concepts in the real world. Or rather, primitives only exist within a give perspective; you can change the perspective and define the previous primitives in terms of other concepts. Color seems primitive from a vision perspective, but if you change to a physics perspective, you can talk about photons; or if you change to a cultural perspective, you can talk about it being warmth or earthy or bold, etc. Data sources: But there is one sense in which a system must be grounded to provide useful results for the real world. The connections between concepts, and the statistics regarding those connections need to come from the real world. A dictionary is circular, but the connections between the nodes are set based on corresponding connections in the external world. Or to put that another way, you can't reason about something you have no data about. This seems to contradict the second notion. The point I was trying to make is that the internal data must be influenced by the real world, but that's different than having to have a direct, primitive connection to the world. If by grounded you mean influenced by the world, then yes, an AI needs to be grounded to reason about the world. I was concerned with a definition that requires direct connections from the data to the world, which is not needed. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
Terren Suydam wrote: Harry, --- On Wed, 8/6/08, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'll take a stab at both of these... The Chinese Room to me simply states that understanding cannot be decomposed into sub-understanding pieces. I don't see it as addressing grounding, unless you believe that understanding can only come from the outside world, and must become part of the system as atomic pieces of understanding. I don't see any reason to think that, but proving it is another matter -- proving negatives is always difficult. The argument is only implicitly about the nature of understanding. It is explicit about the agent of understanding. It says that something that moves symbols around according to predetermined rules - if that's all it's doing - has no understanding. Implicitly, the assumption is that understanding must be grounded in experience, and a computer cannot be said to be experiencing anything. But it's a preaching to the choir argument: Is there anything more to the argument than the intuition that automatic manipulation cannot create understanding? I think it can, though I have yet to show it. Take it from another perspective: Is it possible to make a beer can out of atoms? An aluminum atom is in no way a beer can. It doesn't look like one. It can't hold beer. You can't drink from it. Perhaps the key aspect of a beer can is containment. An atom has no containment. So clearly no collection of atoms can invoke containment. It really helps here to understand what a computer is doing when it executes code, and the Chinese Room is an analogy to that which makes a computer's operation expressible in terms of human experience - specifically, the experience of incomprehensible symbols like Chinese ideograms. All a computer really does is apply rules determined in advance to manipulate patterns of 1's and 0's. No comprehension is necessary, and invoking that at any time is a mistake. I totally agree with all but the last sentence. The Chinese Room does provide a simple but accurate analogy to what a computer does. As such, it's excellent for helping non-computer types understand this issue in AI/philosophy. But I know of no definition of comprehension that is impossible to create using a program or a Chinese Room -- of course, I don't know /any/ complete definition of comprehension, and maybe when I do, it will have the feature you believe it has. Fortunately, that does not rule out embodied AI designs in which the agent is simulated. The processor still has no understanding - it just facilitates the simulation. That sounds like agreement with my point (we might be arguing two aspects of the same side): If the processor has no understanding, but the simulation does, then it must be possible to compose understanding using a non-understanding processor. As to philosophy, I tend to think of it's relationship to AI as somewhat the same as alchemy's relationship to chemistry. That is, it's one of the origins of the field, and has some valid ideas, but it lacks the hard science and engineering needed to get things actually working. This is admittedly perhaps a naive view, and reflects the traditional engineering distrust of the humanities. I state it not to be critical of philosophy, but to give you an idea how some of us think of the area. As an engineer who builds things everyday (in software), I can appreciate the *limits* of philosophy. Spending too much time in that domain can lead to all sorts of excesses of thought, castles in the sky, etc. However, any good engineer will tell you how important theory is in the sense of creating and validating design. And while the theory behind rocket science involves physics, chemistry, and fluid dynamics (and others no doubt), the theory of AI involves information theory, computer science, and philosophy of mind knowledge, like it or not. If you want to be a good AI engineer, you better be comfortable with all of the above. Yes, I don't mean to dismiss philosophy. In some areas of AI, there is far more understanding within philosophy than within computer science. But there's also lots of angels dancing on pins, so it can take a lot of time to find it. In some ways it's like having a domain expert, always a good thing when writing a program. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
Terren Suydam wrote: Harry, --- On Wed, 8/6/08, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But it's a preaching to the choir argument: Is there anything more to the argument than the intuition that automatic manipulation cannot create understanding? I think it can, though I have yet to show it. The burden is on you, or anyone pursuing purely logical approaches, to show how you can cross the chasm from syntax to semantics - from form to meaning. How does your intuition of automatic understanding inform a design that does nothing but manipulate symbols? At what point does your design cross the boundary from simply manipulating data automatically to understanding it? To me, the real problem here is projecting your own understanding onto a machine that appears to be doing something intelligent. I guess I'll settle for the pragmatic answer: When (if) I (we) get it working and it produces useful real world results, I'll be happy, without worrying specifically whether it understands. If your intuition is correct, than it's not a big leap to say that today's chess programs comprehend chess. Do you agree? Yes. Though in a much narrower sense than we do, since they have no larger context of things like games, competition, war, etc. I totally agree with all but the last sentence. The Chinese Room does provide a simple but accurate analogy to what a computer does. As such, it's excellent for helping non-computer types understand this issue in AI/philosophy. But I know of no definition of comprehension that is impossible to create using a program or a Chinese Room -- of course, I don't know /any/ complete definition of comprehension, and maybe when I do, it will have the feature you believe it has. I think your problems here are due to lack of clarity about what it means for some kind of agent to understand something. For starters, understanding is done by something - it doesn't exist in a vacuum. What is the nature of that something? Certainly there is lack of clarity about understanding, at least on my part. Some day we'll all look back and laugh at our misconceptions about the topic. I'm not at all sure that understanding much be active. It may be that a text book on physics understands physics. But it doesn't do anything with that understanding, which is how we're used to seeing understanding expressed, so we don't think of it as understanding. Yes, I don't mean to dismiss philosophy. In some areas of AI, there is far more understanding within philosophy than within computer science. But there's also lots of angels dancing on pins, so it can take a lot of time to find it. In some ways it's like having a domain expert, always a good thing when writing a program. Totally agree! But it is so valuable to have your beliefs challenged, which is why we should not rely on others to do the heavy lifting. Very true. Which is why this list is great when it sticks to challenging rather than insulting. (Which you've done perfectly, BTW.) --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
Terren Suydam wrote: Unfortunately, I have to take a break from the list (why are people cheering??). No cheering here. Actually, I'd like to say thanks to everyone. This thread has been very interesting. I realize that much of it is old hat and boring to some of you, but it's been useful to me. Even the parts that I've been over before can be interesting to rehash occasionally. And there were some variations I hadn't thought about. Also, everyone has been quite civil, and there wasn't overly much unnecessary repetition within the thread itself. It's the sort of thing I had hoped for initially when joining the list. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Understanding (was: Chinese Room)
Vladimir Nesov wrote: I think [having a general (causal) model] is a good fit for understanding. When you understand a phenomenon, you can model it in many different contexts (environments), including those never encountered before neither by the phenomenon, nor by you observing the phenomenon. Rote learning doesn't generalize, it just represents isolated data points. Generally, I agree. However, rote learning can be a part of modeling. We learn arithmetic by rote, but then apply it to non-rote models, for example. Rote learning can provide parts of the model. Taken to extremes (as in an AI program), rote can conceivably provide everything. On Wed, Aug 6, 2008 at 11:36 PM, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I'm not at all sure that understanding much be active. It may be that a text book on physics understands physics. But it doesn't do anything with that understanding, which is how we're used to seeing understanding expressed, so we don't think of it as understanding. A book is a request for understanding, it can be converted into a model if read by someone. I think about meaning as a target of optimization process permitted by a given model of environment. When you have a question, it creates a process of arriving at an answer, and so the meaning of this question is in the shape of your activity about finding the answer, in the target of this process. If it is expected that a book gets read, it is a part of optimization process in the model that anticipates that. If book is currently burning, and is expected to be reduced to ashes, it is not a part of such process and it has no understanding or meaning relevant to what's written in it. Here and above, I think you need to distinguish between understanding and expressing or using understanding. You seem to be saying that understanding exists only when being expressed or used, and I wouldn't agree with that, though the point is subtle enough that it probably doesn't matter, since unused understanding is functionally irrelevant. You say a book...can be converted into a model if read by someone, but what does reading do other than convert from one representation (printed words) to another (neural connections). (It also presumably connects the new knowledge to previously acquired knowledge, but that prior knowledge /could/ have been in the book too.) The only difference is that the new representation is more ready to be used. Then you get asked a question and the neural mechanism goes to work and uses the knowledge to produce an answer showing your understanding. But you still had the understanding before you used it, and you still have it now even though you're not using that part of your brain at the moment. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
Mark Waser wrote: The critical point that most people miss -- and what is really important for this list (and why people shouldn't blindly dismiss Searle) is that it is *intentionality* that defines understanding. If a system has goals/intentions and it's actions are modified by the external world (i.e. it is grounded), then, to the extent to which it's actions are *effectively* modified (as judged in relation to it's intentions) is the extent to which it understands. The most important feature of an AGI is that it has goals and that it modifies it's behavior (and learns) in order to reach them. The Chinese Room is incapable of these behaviors since it has no desires. I think this is an excellent point, so long as you're careful to define intention simply in terms of goals that the system is attempting to satisfy/maximize, and not in terms of conscious desires. As you point out, the former provides a context in which to define understanding and to measure it. The latter leads off into further undefined terms and concepts -- I mention this rather than just agreeing outright mainly because of your use of the word desire in the last sentence, which /could/ be interpreted anthropomorphically. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] a fuzzy reasoning problem
On 8/5/2008 6:53 AM, YKY (Yan King Yin) wrote: On 8/5/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Jeez, there is NO concept that is not dependent on context. There is NO concept that is not infinitely fuzzy and open-ended in itself, period - which is the principal reason why language is and has to be grounded (although that needs demonstration). I see... My current approach is to use fuzzy rules to model these concepts. In some cases it seems to work but in other cases it seems problematic... For example I can give a definition of the concept chair: chair(X) :- X has leg #1, X has leg #2, X has leg #3, X has leg #4, X has a horizontal seat area, X has a vertical back area, leg #1 is connected to seat at position #1, etc, etc But what if a chair has one leg missing? Using fuzzy logic (fuzzy AND), the missing leg will result in a fuzzy value close to 0, which is not quite right. Probabilistic logic is also inappropriate. I know *every* time that a chair missing a leg is somewhat a chair -- there is no probability involved here. YKY My tendency is to say that you're trying to make a single definition cover too much. I think of a chair as being a collection of semi-overlapping sets of predicates. You can have a three-legged chair, a backless chair (stool), a legless chair (seen 'em at the beach), etc. There is no subset of all chairs that defines a chair. Rather chair is the collection of predicate sets for different variants of a chair. And I would also say that part of chair is also a memory of all the actual chairs you've encountered. Which leaves the question of how you categorize a new object that doesn't precisely match any prior chair. If it's sufficiently close to one of the priors, it's easy. If it has nothing in common with any prior, it's easy. In between can be more subtle. And, to return to the original topic, part of each chair predicate set is the relevant context. (I agree that every meaning has context.) --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
I'll take a stab at both of these... The Chinese Room to me simply states that understanding cannot be decomposed into sub-understanding pieces. I don't see it as addressing grounding, unless you believe that understanding can only come from the outside world, and must become part of the system as atomic pieces of understanding. I don't see any reason to think that, but proving it is another matter -- proving negatives is always difficult. As to philosophy, I tend to think of it's relationship to AI as somewhat the same as alchemy's relationship to chemistry. That is, it's one of the origins of the field, and has some valid ideas, but it lacks the hard science and engineering needed to get things actually working. This is admittedly perhaps a naive view, and reflects the traditional engineering distrust of the humanities. I state it not to be critical of philosophy, but to give you an idea how some of us think of the area. Terren Suydam wrote: Abram, If that's your response then we don't actually agree. I agree that the Chinese Room does not disprove strong AI, but I think it is a valid critique for purely logical or non-grounded approaches. Why do you think the critique fails on that level? Anyone else who rejects the Chinese Room care to explain why? (I know this has been discussed ad nauseum, but that should only make it easier to point to references that clearly demolish the arguments. It should be noted however that relatively recent advances regarding complexity and emergence aren't quite as well hashed out with respect to the Chinese Room. In the document you linked to, mention of emergence didn't come until a 2002 reference attributed to Kurzweil.) If you can't explain your dismissal of the Chinese Room, it only reinforces my earlier point that some of you who are working on AI aren't doing your homework with the philosophy. It's ok to reject the Chinese Room, so long as you have arguments to do it (and if you do, I'm all ears!) But if you don't think the philosophy is important, then you're more than likely doing Cargo Cult AI. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult) Terren --- On Tue, 8/5/08, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Tuesday, August 5, 2008, 9:49 PM Terren, I agree. Searle's responses are inadequate, and the whole thought experiment fails to prove his point. I think it also fails to prove your point, for the same reason. --Abram --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Groundless reasoning
As I've come out of the closet over the list tone issues, I guess I should post something AI-related as well -- at least that will make me net neutral between relevant and irrelevant postings. :-) One of the classic current AI issues is grounding, the argument being that a dictionary cannot be complete because it is only self-referential, and *has* to be grounded at some point to be truly meaningful. This argument is used to claim that abstract AI can never succeed, and that there must be a physical component of the AI that connects it to reality. I have never bought this line of reasoning. It seems to me that meaning is a layered thing, and that you can do perfectly good reasoning at one (or two or three) levels in the layering, without having to go all the way down. And if that layering turns out to be circular (as it is in a dictionary in the pure sense), that in no way invalidates the reasoning done. My own AI work makes no attempt at grounding, so I'm really hoping I'm right here. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning -- Chinese Room
Terren Suydam wrote: ... Without an internal sense of meaning, symbols passed to the AI are simply arbitrary data to be manipulated. John Searle's Chinese Room (see Wikipedia) argument effectively shows why manipulation of ungrounded symbols is nothing but raw computation with no understanding of the symbols in question. Searle's Chinese Room argument is one of those things that makes me wonder if I'm living in the same (real or virtual) reality as everyone else. Everyone seems to take it very seriously, but to me, it seems like a transparently meaningless argument. It's equivalent to saying that understanding cannot be decomposed; that you don't get understanding (the external perspective) without using understanding (the person or computer inside the room). I don't see any reason why this should be true. How to do it is what AI research is all about. To look at it another way, it seems to me that the Chinese Room is exactly equivalent to saying AI is impossible. Until we actually get AI working, I can't really disprove that statement, but there's no reason I should accept it either. Yet smarter people than I seem to take the Chinese Room completely seriously, so maybe I'm just not seeing it. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Groundless reasoning
Vladimir Nesov wrote: It's too fuzzy an argument. You're right, of course. I'm not being precise, and though I'll try to improve on that here, I probably still won't be. But here's my attempt: There are essentially three types of grounding: embodiment, hierarchy base nodes, and pattern/data sources. Embodiment: I don't think AIs need to have a connection to a real or simulated environment. Yes, we get a lot of our information that way, and yes, human meaning/understanding probably evolved out of that connection initially. But no, AI doesn't require it to do useful thinking. Hierarchy base nodes: I don't think a hierarchy of concepts or a semantic network need to have a set of base nodes that connect to something outside the system (primitives). Meaning arises out of the network of connections, and doesn't need some basic unit of meaningful nodes. Data sources: But there is one sense in which a system must be grounded to provide useful results for the real world. The connections between concepts, and the statistics regarding those connections need to come from the real world. A dictionary is circular, but the connections between the nodes are set based on corresponding connections in the external world. Or to put that another way, you can't reason about something you have no data about. It was the first two senses that I meant when I said an AI doesn't need to be grounded. P.S. You can think of embodiment as being an example of hierarchy base nodes; or you can think of it as a data source. In the latter case, it can be useful (as other have pointed out on the list), but isn't necessary. --- 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=8660244id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: do we need a stronger politeness code on this list?
In my experience, online communities are like offline communities, their tone and spirit depends on their members. Moderation seldom fixes anything, and content-based moderation only works if the community is intended to reflect the ideas and values of the moderator. But sometimes a respected moderator (and I think Ben is very respected here) can act as a sort of father figure, encouraging a particular style of interaction. I have been a member of many online communities where the interactions were friendly, supportive, and productive, where negative language and attitude was the rare exception. So I don't think that style of interaction *has* to be there. It may be that I just need to keep looking for such a community of AI researchers. I sure hope it isn't inherent in AI work itself -- though the intellectually abstract and scientifically unsettled aspects of it do make it is the sort of field that can attract people who believe they know more than they do and who are insecure enough to need to disparage others around them. (Personally, I'm not at all sure I know anything, as I've found it's an area where I can *so* easily fool myself; and I believe that virtually anyone's approach on this list *might* be of great value.) (Credentials: I've been involved in online communities since the '70s, occasionally working as an expert in the field, most recently as manager of the Social Computing Group at Microsoft Research, which I left in 2001 to work on AI.) Terren Suydam wrote: Just to throw my 2 cents in here. The short version: if you want to improve the list, look to yourself. Don't rely on moderation. If you have something worth posting, post it without fear of rude responses. If people are rude, don't be rude back. Resist the urge to fire off the quick reply and score points (I often write the inflammatory reply and then delete it, just to get it out of my system). Don't feed the trolls. Thicken your skin: see personal attacks for what they are - refuge for someone without a reasonable rebuttal. I've been participating in online forums of various sorts basically since the internet began in earnest and there is nothing unique about the behavior here. People are rude. The anonymity and discorporate nature of virtual communication lowers inhibitions in a big way. Moderation for anything but clear-cut violations of established rules is almost never helpful because it either stifles discussion or the forum devolves into trials about the fairness of the moderation. Moderation based on subjective quality of content is a terrible idea, imo. I would never agree to moderate a forum based on anything but etiquette or on-topic-ness. Assuming the rules are spelled out and warnings are given and behavior is enforced fairly and consistently, moderation can help. But it takes a fairly proactive moderator to do all that. Terren --- On Sun, 8/3/08, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: do we need a stronger politeness code on this list? To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Sunday, August 3, 2008, 12:52 PM I have never posted to the list before for exactly the reasons under discussion. It seems to me that the list is dominated, in terms of volume, not, I think, in terms of people, by two types of posts: 1) You don't understand theory x, which explains why your idea or approach is unworkable; you need to spend hours (perhaps days) reading about that (my) theory. Or 2) You're an idiot and your ideas are trash. I am pursuing a line of research that I believe has potential. It would be useful to have a place I could float ideas and get some feedback. While I'm not particularly thin skinned, I don't have the time to deal with excursions into entirely different theories or to deal with the distractive emotional baggage that's so common here. I would also be happy to provide feedback to posts by others, but I don't want to get dragged into heated and often content-sparse threads of discussion. I have seen very good and productive threads on this list, but they tend to be the exception. Hence I mostly just delete the items from the list, and follow the occasional thread that looks interesting or involves people who have posted more reasonable items in the past. As with most lists, 90% of the content is generated by 10% of the members. In this case, that involves much unnecessary distraction and unpleasantness. Giving posters time outs for personal attacks might go a long way toward calming the list down and encouraging some of the people like me to become more involved. Also, a list FAQ that includes pointers to some of the theories that get repeated endlessly, together with encouragement to the posters to just post the FAQ's URL rather than repeating the entire theory, might reduce the repetition. (Wasn't there a wiki area exactly for that started a while ago?) Anyway, that's my two cents
