Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
Hi Folks, I can't throw myself any further into this ... I have to get back in the fray here. However - a couple of quick-ones for Brent and Bruno: COL > the instant the > abstraction happens, from that moment on you know NOTHING about the > current state of the distal environment...all you have is IO > measurements. > BRENT And that's all a human scientist has too - IO measurements by his senses. COL This is just plain empirically, factually wrong. The whole of neuroscience for 100 years confirms that perception is a central nervous system functiona: CRANIAL, CENTRAL. Not peripheral. The CNS qualia are observation. The peripheral nervous system has/bestows no experienced qualities whatever. It only feel like it does because of the CNS doing its thing. I don't want to debate this. I shouldn;t have to. Go and look it up. There's about a million books and papers on it. In terms of my discussion of a scientist: a) CNS qualia are scientific observation b) The events in the distal world outside the scientist are the scientific measurement. In the scenario I painted, the scientist COMP_S has to be hooked up to IO (you could even put the COMP_S inside a human body). Results are identical. There is absolutely no point in simulating the distal natural world! You are there to do SCIENCE: You don't know what the distal natural world is, by definition! Therefore you can't possibly simulate it ...and... if you could you wouldn't want to do science on it... that's the nice point about this scenario. It cuts out the logical holes. BRUNO: Please don't get me wrong. I actually hold the universe to be literally a mathematics...not COMP _OF_ a mathematics. There is no computer. The universe is the computer. There's no _abstractions_ of it. There's actual reified symbols interacting with each other, not being forced to interact by something else. but that's a whole other story only indirectly related to the one I told. In regards to being guided by what the HUMAN_S vs COMP_S scenario tells us - as is usual in the most Popperian of science... what I get is merely guidance in my behaviour - my choices - as a designer. I don't get told by the analysis a 'truth' or what to do. I get told by the analysis what NOT to do - or better - what choices to refrain from making. The COMP_S is an _abstract_ symbol manipulator. When you abstract X, then all relations between X and everything else (through the parallelness with all the other entities in the universe) - are all gone. Classical mathematical thinking is a single stream - a single line of proof. Our abstractions are the axioms in such a style of proof. But that's NOT what any entity X (the intended abstracted entity) has. If there are 10^1234 entities in the universe then X has (10^ 1234 -1) relationships with everything that is not X. Our models throw all of them away. I cannot prove that these relationships play no part in scientific behaviour. Nor can you. So in my design I shall, in the popperian tradition, refrain from making any choice that eliminates those relationships. So: abstract COMP is OUT as an option. You said: "That we cannot build constructively a scientist is correct. But it is then very misleading to use the word "false". Also, it is not because we cannot built constructively a scientist that we can infer that we are unable to isolate one, or to copy one, (and then: without constructively proving that we have done so). We just cannot know who we are. By using "false" here you change the usual meaning of the word, and it could lead to add misunderstandings in a field where there are already many misunderstandings." OK we're getting to the nub of it. Firstly I disagree that "we cannot build constructively a scientist". I hold that we can... unless by "We" you mean "All those people who subscribe to COMP" .. in which case you are correct. I hold that we CAN. I am not interested in copies or 'simulations' = pretending. My scenario demands authentic original science done from a point of view of incomplete knowledge of a system from the vantage point of being literally built inside the system being scientifically described. RE: 'falsity', 'refutation' etc. The BEER definition of COMP = '...the theoretical claim that a system's behavior derives from its instantiation of appropriate representations and computational processes." Beer, R. D. (1995), 'A Dynamical-Systems Perspective on Agent Environment Interaction'. Artificial Intelligence 72(1-2):pp. 173-215. Such a definition does not preclude "scientific behaviour" as a "system behaviour". Therefore COMP predicted that a scientitist can be created by "instantiation of appropriate representations and computational processes" , which I take to mean, as most would , a Turing Machine/digital computing abstraction-based symbol manipulator. *FACT 1:* COMP cannot deliver one very specific, highly specialised thing: an authentic sci
Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
On Sep 2, 6:27 pm, Colin Hales <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hello again Jesse, > I am going to assume that by trashing computationalism that Marc Geddes > has enough ammo to vitiate Eleizer's various predilections so... to > that end... To make it clear, I'm not trashing computaionalism. I maintain that comp is true (See what Bruno said). It's Bayesianism I'm trashing. And yes, I now have enough 'intellectual ammo' to crush Yudkowsky. Cheers --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
On 02 Sep 2008, at 03:56, Colin Hales wrote: > Computationalism is FALSE in the sense of 'not useful', not false in > the sense of 'wrong'. Remember that if we are machine then we cannot *know* (correctly justify) which machine we are. We can do bets. But comp entails many indirect propositions about the observable realm, so comp can be refuted, and is "scientific" in Popper sense. Up to now, the observation of nature (quantum physics notably) confirms the comp hyp. Also, to negate comp you have to put actual infinities and/or 3- indeterminacy in nature. Where? > Computationalism is FALSE in the sense that it cannot be used to > construct a scientist. That we cannot build constructively a scientist is correct. But it is then very misleading to use the word "false". Also, it is not because we cannot built constructively a scientist that we can infer that we are unable to isolate one, or to copy one, (and then: without constructively proving that we have done so). We just cannot know who we are. By using "false" here you change the usual meaning of the word, and it could lead to add misunderstandings in a field where there are already many misunderstandings. Bruno http://iridia.ulb.ac.be/~marchal/ --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Everything List" group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
Colin Hales wrote: > Hello again Jesse, > I am going to assume that by trashing computationalism that Marc Geddes > has enough ammo to vitiate Eleizer's various predilections so... to > that end... > > Your various comments (see below) have a common thread of the form "I > see no reason why you can't ..X.". So let's focus on reasons why you > can't ...X. These are numerous and visible in real - empirically > verifiable physics...let's look at it from a dynamics point of view. In > saying 'you can see no reason' would mean that if you chose a > computationalist abstraction level (you mentioned atoms) that you would > claim the resultant agent able to demonstrate scientific behaviour > indistinguishable from a human. > > I would claim that to be categorically false and testably so. OK. > Firstly call the computationalist artificial scientist, COMP_S. Call the > human scientist HUMAN_S. Call computationalism COMP. This saves a lot of > writing! The test regime: > > HUMAN_S constructs laws of nature tn using the human faculty for > observation (call it P) delivered by real atoms in the brain of HUMAN_S. > If COMP_S and HUMAN_S are to be indistinguishable then the state > dynamics (state vector space) of COMP_S must be as sophisticated, > accessible as HUMAN_S and ALSO /convergent on the same outcomes as those > of HUMAN_S/. Our test is that they both converge on a law of nature tn, > say. Note: tn is a abstracted statement of an underlying generalisation > in respect of the distal external natural world (such as tn = ta, a > model of an atom). Yes? That is what we do... the portability of laws of > nature tn proves that we have rendered such abstractions invariant to > the belief dynamics of any particular scientist.. Yes? > > HUMAN_S constructs a model of atoms a 'law of nature' = ta. Using that > model ta we then implement a sophisticated computational version of > HUMAN_S at the level of the model: atoms. We assemble an atomic-level > model replica of HUMAN_S. We run the computation on a host COMP > substrate. This becomes our COMP_S. We expect the two to be identical to > the extent of delivering indistinguishable scientific behaviour. We > embody COMP_S with IO as sophisticated as a human and wire it upIf > the computationalist position holds, by definition, the dynamics of > COMP_S must be (a) complex enough and (b) have access to sufficient > disambiguated information to construct tn indistinguishably from HUMAN_S. > > If computationalism is true then given the same circumstance of original > knowledge paucity (which can be tested), A demand for a scientific > outcome should result in state-vector dynamics adaptation resulting in > the delivery of the same tn (also testable), which we demand shall be > radically novel If they are really equivalent this should happen. > This is the basic position (I don't want to write it out again!) > > > I would claim the state trajectory of COMP_S to be fatally impoverished > by the model ta. (abstracted atoms). That is, the state-trajectory of > COMP_S would fail to consistently converge on a new law of nature tn and > would demonstrate instability (chaotic behaviour). Just like ungrounded > power supplly voltage drift about, a symbolically ungrounded COMP_S > will epistemically drift about. > > Indeed I would hold that would be the case no matter what the > abstraction level: sub-atomic, sub-sub atomic , sub sub sub atomic > .. etc ... the result would be identical. Remember: there's no such > 'thing' as atoms...these are an abstraction - of a particular level of > the organisational hierarchy of nature. also note ... so-called' > ab-initio quantum mechanics of the entire HUMAN_S would also fail > because QM is likewise just an abstraction of reality, not reality. COMP > would claim that the laws of nature describing atoms behave identically > to atoms. The model ensemble of ta atoms should be capable of expressing > all the emergent properties of an ensemble of real atoms. This already > makes COMP a self-referential question-begging outcome. HUMAN_S is our > observer, made of real atoms. COMP assumes that P is delivered by > computing ta when there is no such 'thing' as atoms! Atoms are an > abstraction of a thing, not a thing. Furthermore, all the orighinal > atoms of HUMAN_S have been replaced with the atoms of the COMP_S substrate. > > What is NOT in law of nature ta is the relationship between the > abstraction ta and all the other atoms in the distal world outside > COMP_S. (beyond the IO boundary). Assume you supplied all the data about > all the atoms in the environment of the original human HUMAN_S used to > construct and initialise COMP_S. You know all these relationships at the > moment you measured all the atoms in HUMAN_S to get you model > established. However, after initialisation, when you run the C
