Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser wrote: Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. Richard, you're obviously not familiar with high-speed aerodynamics. There is not "a certain amount of unpredictability". It is out-and-out virtually unconstrained chaos. There are *no* nice little tables of lift coefficients. A human being cannot operate an F-14 by themselves. A computer cannot operate an F-14 unless it is receiving sub-millisecond updates because the behavior is too chaotic to predict. Yet, like everything else in nature, this seeming chaos is the result of a relatively small number of relatively simple rules (and a huge butterfly effect). An F-14 in flight makes "a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc." look nearly trivial because virtually *anything* can effect it (temperature thermoclines, radiant heat differences because of changes in the land below, wind speed, clouds, even the passage of migratory birds) -- yet the behavior is entirely bounded enough for a fast reacting computer to manage it. How is this not complex (according to your definition)? Remember that the strict definition of "complexity" asks whether a theory can be found to predict the overall behavior. In this case, the engineers DO have a theory, because they were able to build a flight control computer to make sensible adaptations to overcome the instability of the system. If they did not have such a theory, they would not have been able to write any flight control software at all. The system does indeed have some complexity in it (all systems do, remember), but the engineers found enough predictability in the system that they were able to write the control software and treat the complexity as a noise signal that had to be compensated for. So at the most important level of description, the system is not complex. My point is that to be able to make the plane fly straight, the engineers did not have to second-guess anything complex they did not have to make any predictions about whether a particular bit of the plane was going to exhibit [Behavior A], they just had to wait to see which behavior was going to turn up, then make the appropriate reaction to it (and the engineers know what the "appropriate" reaction is, of course). The engineers are not second-guessing the complexity, they are factoring it out. They are making it irrelevant by simply compensating for it. They are turning it into a noise signal. So the plane's behavior does not "depend" on the complexity in any way, because the whole point of the flight control computer is to watch the complex behavior like crazy (several times a millisecond, as you say) and simply counteract it. The fact that they were able to counteract the instability tells us that there was a lot about the plane's dynamics that was extremely predictable (or else no rational compensation software would have been possible). And once the system has been built with [complex-behaving plane] PLUS [complexity-cancelling software], the result is an overall system that is not complex. Is the math underlying the F-14 untouchable? No: there is enough regular math to enable the engineers to write that flight control software. Looking at the math AT THAT LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION, we would never have predicted that this system was complex: we would have predicted some instability caused by a complex component, but the rest of the math would have caused us to predict that the system would not be complex as a whole. So, this system is consistent with my observation that untouchable math begets complexity, and that touchable math is consistent with non-complexity. One last note: remember that we have to look at the system as a whole. We can always dip down into a system and find some complexity, but that would be to change the terms of reference. Richard Loosemore Stepping back to the intelligent systems context: you cannot pull this trick of compensating for the complexity in an AGI. There is simply no analogy between these two systems. Build an intelligent system in which something cancels out all the annoying influence of the symbols, with their complex interactions, so that all of that symbol-stuff can be treated as noise and the system as a whole becomes non-complex? Makes no sense. The symbols and their interactions are the very core of the system's intelligence. You cannot factor them out. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Fe
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Mark Waser: > I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing > aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. > The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted > to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small > enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human > can fly it unaided). I agree that this is a very sensible way to think about being "complex" and it is certainly similar to the way I think about it myself. My embryonic understanding of Richard's argument suggests to me that he means something else, though. If not, traditional engineering methods are often pretty good at taming complexity as long as they take the range of possible system states into account (which is what you have been saying all along). Since I'm trying (with limited success) to understand his point of view, I might suggest that (from the point of view of his argument), the global regularities of the aircraft (its flight characteristics) DO have a sufficiently-efficacious small theory in terms of the components (the aircraft body, including the moveable bits). In fact, it is exactly that small theory which is embedded in the control program. Since the global regularities (straight-line flight, turns, and so on) are sufficiently predictable from the local interactions of the control surfaces with the air, the aircraft is not complex *in the sense that Richard is talking about*. Now I suppose I've pissed everybody off, but I'm really just trying to understand Richard's definitions so I can follow his argument. I read this after replying to Mark's later comment. You have summarized exactly what I said there. It is most important that, when answering these questions about whether or not system X is complex, we keep in mind that we have to choose our level of descriotion and then stick to it. So in this case the system as a whole is not complex. A component of it is complex (though not in a very demanding way, compared with many complex systems), but if we accidentally slip from discussion of one to discussion of the other, things do get confused. So Mark is right to see complexity, but that is one level down. Richard Loosemore --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Richard Loosemore:> it makes no sense to ask "is system X complex?". You can only ask > how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. Yes, I apologize for my sloppy language. When I say "is system X complex?" what I mean is whether the "RL-complexity" of the system is important in describing the behaviors of interest under the operating conditions being discussed, in particular whether the global behaviors have an effective small theory expressed in terms of local components and their interactions -- because my current understanding of what you mean by complexity means the extent to which no such small theory is available. --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. Richard, you're obviously not familiar with high-speed aerodynamics. There is not "a certain amount of unpredictability". It is out-and-out virtually unconstrained chaos. There are *no* nice little tables of lift coefficients. A human being cannot operate an F-14 by themselves. A computer cannot operate an F-14 unless it is receiving sub-millisecond updates because the behavior is too chaotic to predict. Yet, like everything else in nature, this seeming chaos is the result of a relatively small number of relatively simple rules (and a huge butterfly effect). An F-14 in flight makes "a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc." look nearly trivial because virtually *anything* can effect it (temperature thermoclines, radiant heat differences because of changes in the land below, wind speed, clouds, even the passage of migratory birds) -- yet the behavior is entirely bounded enough for a fast reacting computer to manage it. How is this not complex (according to your definition)? The amount of complexity is almost trivial, compared with a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. I believe that the pieces of intelligence can be uncoupled far more than you're ever going to be able to uncouple the factors hitting an aircraft at trans-sound speeds. Don't forget that ALL systems are complex if you push them far enough, so it makes no sense to ask "is system X complex?". You can only ask how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. My point exactly. --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
I have a sneaking suspicion that you all are still arguing WWII era or earlier aircraft while I'm arguing the last few decades. Yes, passenger aircraft (most of which date much earlier than most people realize) are not that complex. No, trans-mach, variable-geometry-wing fighter aircraft are horribly complex. - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 7:21 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...] Mark Waser: > I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing > aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. > The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted > to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small > enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human > can fly it unaided). I agree that this is a very sensible way to think about being "complex" and it is certainly similar to the way I think about it myself. My embryonic understanding of Richard's argument suggests to me that he means something else, though. If not, traditional engineering methods are often pretty good at taming complexity as long as they take the range of possible system states into account (which is what you have been saying all along). Since I'm trying (with limited success) to understand his point of view, I might suggest that (from the point of view of his argument), the global regularities of the aircraft (its flight characteristics) DO have a sufficiently-efficacious small theory in terms of the components (the aircraft body, including the moveable bits). In fact, it is exactly that small theory which is embedded in the control program. Since the global regularities (straight-line flight, turns, and so on) are sufficiently predictable from the local interactions of the control surfaces with the air, the aircraft is not complex *in the sense that Richard is talking about*. Now I suppose I've pissed everybody off, but I'm really just trying to understand Richard's definitions so I can follow his argument. -- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser: > I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing > aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic > behavior. > The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be > predicted > to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is > small > enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human > can fly it unaided). I agree that this is a very sensible way to think about being "complex" and it is certainly similar to the way I think about it myself. My embryonic understanding of Richard's argument suggests to me that he means something else, though. If not, traditional engineering methods are often pretty good at taming complexity as long as they take the range of possible system states into account (which is what you have been saying all along). Since I'm trying (with limited success) to understand his point of view, I might suggest that (from the point of view of his argument), the global regularities of the aircraft (its flight characteristics) DO have a sufficiently-efficacious small theory in terms of the components (the aircraft body, including the moveable bits). In fact, it is exactly that small theory which is embedded in the control program. Since the global regularities (straight-line flight, turns, and so on) are sufficiently predictable from the local interactions of the control surfaces with the air, the aircraft is not complex *in the sense that Richard is talking about*. Now I suppose I've pissed everybody off, but I'm really just trying to understand Richard's definitions so I can follow his argument. --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Me: > Can you give me some examples where engineering > has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex > that Richard means)? Mark: > Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. The amount of complexity is almost trivial, compared with a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. Don't forget that ALL systems are complex if you push them far enough, so it makes no sense to ask "is system X complex?". You can only ask how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. Richard Loosemore --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human can fly it unaided). - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 6:00 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...] Me: > Can you give me some examples where engineering > has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex > that Richard means)? Mark: > Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? -- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Me:> Can you give me some examples where engineering > has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex > that Richard means)? Mark:> Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:20 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...] Mark Waser: > Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? -- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser:> Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
I'm not sure I have ever seen anybody successfully rephrase your complexity argument back at you; since nobody understands what you mean it's not surprising that people are complacent about it. Bit of an overgeneralization, methinks: this list is disproportionately populated with people who satisfy the conjunctive property [do not understand it] and [do like to chat about AGI]. That is no criticism, but it makes it look like nobody understands it. I understand what Richard means by his complexity argument and see his point though I believe that it can be worked around if you're aware of it -- the major problem being, as Richard points out, most AGI systems developers don't see it as necessary to work around. As I have said before, I do get people contacting me offlist (and off-blog, now) who do understand it, but simply do not feel the need to engage in list-chat. . . . . because many people on this list are more invested in being right then being educated. I think that this argument is a lost cause on this list and generally choose not to wast time on lost causes -- but I'm in an odd mood, so . . . . If you just randomly slap together systems that have those kinds of mechanisms, there is a tendency for complex, emergent properties to be seen in the system as a whole. Never mind trying to make the system intelligent, you can make emergent properties appear by generating random, garbage-like relationships between the elements of a system. Emergent is a bad word. People do not understand it. They think that emergent normally means complex, wonderful, and necessarily correct. They are totally incorrect. But now here is the interesting thing: this observation (about getting complexity/emergence out if you set the system up with ugly, tangled mechanisms) is consistent with the reverse observation: in nature, the science we have studied so far in the last three hundred years has been based on simple mechanisms that (almost always) does not involve ugly, tangled mechanisms. Nature likes simple. Simple producing complex effects is what nature is all about. Complex producing simple effects is human studpidity and prone to dramatic failure. Richard tends not to make the point but the most flagrant example of his complexity problem is Ben Goertzel's stories about trying to tune the numerous parameters for his various AI systems. I think that Richard is entirely in the right here but have been unsuccessful in repeated attempts to convince Ben of this. Yes, you *do* need tunable parameters in an AI system -- but they should not be set up in such a way that they can oscillate to chaotic failure. To cut a long story short, it turns out that the Inference Control Engine is more important than the inference mechanism itself. Many people agree with this, but . . . The actual behavior of the system is governed, not by the principles of perfectly reliable logic, but by a messy, arbitrary inference control engine, and the mechanisms that drive the latter are messy and tangled. This is where Richard and I part ways. I think that inference is currently messy and arbitrary and tangled because we don't understand it well enough. This may be a great answer to Ed Porter's question of what is conceptually missing from current AGI attempts. I think that inference control will turn out to be relatively simple in design as well -- yet possess tremendously complex effects, just like everything else in nature. Now, wherever you go in AI, I can tell the same story. A story in which the idealistic AI researchers start out wanting to build a thinking system in which there is not supposed to be any arbitrary mechanism that might give rise to complexity, but where, after a while, some ugly mechanisms start to creep in, until finally the whole thing is actually determined by complexity-inducing mechanisms. Actually, this is not just a complexity argument. It's really an argument about how many AGI researchers want to start tabula rasa -- but then find that you can't do everything at once. Some researchers then start throwing in assumptions and quick fixes until those things dominate the system while others are smart enough to just reduce the system size and scope. 5. Therefore we have no methods for building thinking machines, since engineering discipline does not address how to build complex devices. Building them as if they are not complex will result in poor behavior; squeezing out the complexity will squeeze out the thinking, and leaving it in makes traditional engineering impossible. Not a bad summary, but a little oddly worded. Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Engineering discipline can address everything (just like science) as long as you're willing to open up your eyes and address reality. Richard's arguments are only cogent if an AI researcher is trying to ignore
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Richard Loosemore: > I'll try to tidy this up and put it on the blog tomorrow. I'd like to pursue the discussion and will do so in that venue after your post. I do think it is a very interesting issue. Truthfully I'm more interested in your specific program for how to succeed than this argument about why everybody else will fail, but I understand that they are linked. I understand your eagerness for more positive info. The main reason, though, that I stress this backround reasoning is that in my experience people tend to misunderstand the positive proposal unless they understand exactly how the background arguments serve to motivate it. More later. Richard Loosemore --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Richard Loosemore: > I'll try to tidy this up and put it on the blog tomorrow. I'd like to pursue the discussion and will do so in that venue after your post. I do think it is a very interesting issue. Truthfully I'm more interested in your specific program for how to succeed than this argument about why everybody else will fail, but I understand that they are linked. --- 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=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
