Hi, We don't have any solid **proof** that Novamente will "work" in the sense of leading to powerful AGI.
We do have a set of mathematical conjectures that look highly plausible and that, if true, would imply that Novamente will work (if properly implemented and a bunch of details are gotten right, etc.). But we have not proved these conjectures and are not currently focusing on proving them, as that is a big hard job in itself.... We have decided to seek proof via practical construction and experimentation rather than proof via formal mathematics. Wright Bros. did not prove their airplane would work before building it. But they were confident based on their intuitive theoretical model of aerodynamics, which turned out to be correct. The case with Novamente is a bit more rigorous than this because we have gotten to the point of stating but not proving mathematical conjectures that would imply the workability of the system... As for Matt Mahoney's point about "definining AGI" being the bottleneck, I really think that is a red herring. Rigorously defining any natural language term is a pain. You can play for hours with the definition of "cup" versus "bowl", or the definition of "flight" versus "leaping" versus "floating in space", etc. Big deal! -- Ben G -- Ben G On 4/24/07, Joshua Fox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Ben has confidently stated that he believes Novamente will work (http://www.kurzweilai.net/meme/frame.html?m=3 and others). AGI builders, what evidence do you have that your design will work? This is an oft-repeated question, but I'd like to focus on two possible bases for saying that an invention will work before it does. 1. A clear, simple, mathematical theory, verified by experiment. The experiments can be "pure science" rather than technology tests. 2. Functional tests of component parts or of crude prototypes. Maybe I am missing something in the articles I have read, but do contemporary AGI builders have a verified theory and/or verified components and prototypes? Joshua ------------------------------ This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?&;
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