Matt Mahoney wrote:
--- Richard Loosemore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Matt Mahoney wrote:
As you probably know, Hutter proved that the optimal behavior of a
goal seeking agent in an unknown environment (modeled as a pair of
interacting Turing machines, with the enviroment sending an
additional reward signal to the agent that the agent seeks to
maximize) is for the agent to guess at each step that the environment
is modeled by the shortest program consistent with the observed
interaction so far. The proof requires the assumption that the
environment be computable. Essentially, the proof says that Occam's
Razor is the best general strategy for problem solving. The fact
that this works in practice strongly suggests that the universe is
indeed a simulation.
It suggests nothing of the sort.
Hutter's theory is a mathematical fantasy with no relationship to the
real world.
Hutter's theory makes a very general statement about the optimal behavior of
rational agents. Is this really irrelevant to the field of machine learning?
Define "rational agent".
Define "optimal behavior".
Then prove that a "rational agent" following "optimal behavior" is
actually "intelligent" (as we in colloquial speech use the word
"intelligent"), and do this *without* circularly defining the meaning of
intelligence to be, in effect, the optimal behavior of a rational agent.
One caveat:
Don't come back and ask me to be precise about what we in colloquial
speech mean when we use the word "intelligent," because some of us who
reject this theory would state that the term does not have an analytic
definition, only an empirical one.
Your position, on the other hand, is that a precise definition does
exist and that you know what it is when you say that a "rational agent"
following "optimal behavior" is an "intelligent" system.
For this reason the onus is on you (and not me) to say what intelligence is.
My claim is that you cannot, without circularity, prove that "rational
agents" following "optimal behavior" are the same thing as intelligent
systems, and for that reason your use of all of these terms is just
unsubstantiated speculation. Labels attached to an abstract
mathematical formalism with nothing but your intuition in the way of
justification.
This unsubstantiated speculation then escalates into a zone of complete
nonsense when it talks about hypothetical systems of infinite size and
power, without showing in any way why we should believe that the
properties of such infinitely large systems carry over to systems in the
real world.
Hence, it is a mathematical fantasy with no relationship to the real world.
QED.
Richard Loosemore.
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