Jef, ED ########>> (I have switched ########>> to make it even easier to quickly see each change in speaker)
Thank you for your two posts seeking to clear up the misunderstanding between us. I dont mind disagreements if they seek to convey meaningful content, not just negativity. You post of Thu 11/8/2007 4:22 PM post has a little more explanation for its criticisms. Let me respond to some of the language in that post as follows; JEF ########>> I...tried to highlight a thread of epistemic confusion involving an abstract observer interacting with and learning from its environment.... ...it seems you are confusing the subjective with the objective... Too conceptualize any such system as "receiving sensation" as opposed to "expressing sensation", for example, is wrong in systems-theoretic terms of stimulus, process, response. And this confusion, it seems to me, maps onto your expressed difficulty grasping the significance of Solomonoff induction. ED ########>> Most importantly you say my alleged confusion between subjective and objective maps into my difficulty to grasp the significance of Solomonoff induction. If you could do so, please explain what you mean. I would really like to better understand why so many smart people seem the think its the bees knees. You say sensation is never received by any system and yet the word is commonly used to describe information received by the brain from sensory organs, not just in common parlance but also in brain science literature. You have every right to use your stimulus, process, response model, in which I assume you define sensation as process, but I hope you realize many people as intelligent as you do not make that distinction. Since these are definitional issues, there is no right or wrong, unless, perhaps, one usage is much more common than the other. I dont think your strictly limited usage is the most common. With regard to confusing subjective and objective, I assume it is clear, without the need for explicit statement, to most readers on this list that everything that goes on in a brain is derived pretty much either from what has been piped in from various sensors, including chemical and emotional sensors, or built into in by hardware or software. One can argue that there is no objective reality, but if people are allowed to believe in God, please excuse me if I believe in external reality. Even if there isnt one, it sure as hell seems (at least to me) like there is, and it is one hell of a good simplifying assumption. But I think every reader on this list knows that what goes on in our heads are just shadows cast on our cranial cave walls by something outside. And that as much as many of us might believe in an objective reality, none of us know exactly what it is. JEF ########>> Any kind of Cartesian theater in the mind, silent audience and all -- never mind the experimental evidence for gaps, distortions, fabrications, confabulations in the story putatively shown -- has no functional purpose. In systems-theoretical terms, this would entail an additional processing step of extracting relevant information from the essentially whole content of the theater which is not only unnecessary but intractable. The system interacts with 'reality' without the need to interpret it. ED ########>> I dont know what your model of mind theater is, but mine has a lot of purpose. I quoted Baars Theater of the Mind, but to be honest the model I use is based on one I started decades before I ever heard of Baars model in 1969-70, and I have only read a very brief overview of his model. With regard to gaps, distortions, fabrications, confabulations, all those things occur in human minds, so it is not necessarily inappropriate that they occur in a model of the mind. It is not necessary for the whole content of the theater to have its information extracted, any more than it is necessary for the whole activation state of your brain to be extracted. The audience is not silent. If you think of audiences as necessarily silent, I guess you have never gone to any good shows, games, or concerts. If you have ever listened to a really important tense baseball game on the radio, you have a sense for just how dynamic and alive an audience can be. It can seem to have a life of its own. But that is just 50,000 people. The cortex has probably 300 million cortical columns and 30 Billion neurons. Evidence shows that conscious awareness tends to be associated with synchronicity in the brain. That is somewhat the equivalent of people in an audience clapping together, or doing a wave, or arguably turning their heads toward the same thing. The brain is full of neurons that can start spiking at a milliseconds notice. It can be one hell of a lively house. The minds sense of awareness comes not from a homunculous, but rather from millions of parts of the brain watching and responding to the minds own dynamic activation state, including the short term and long term memory of such states. A significant percent of these viewer can all respond at once in their own way to what is in the spot light of the consciousness, and there is a mechanism for rapidly switching the spotlight in response to audience reactions, reactions which can include millions of dynamic dimension. With regard to your statement that The system interacts with 'reality' without the need to interpret it. That sounds even more mind-denying than Skinners Behaviorism. At least Skinner showed enough respect for the mind to honor it with a black box. I guess we are to believe that perception, cognition, planning, and understanding happen without any interpretation. They are all just direct look up. Even Kolmogorov and Solomonoff at least accord it the honor of multiple program, and ones that can be quite complex at that, complex enough to even do interpretation. Ed Porter Edward W. Porter Porter & Associates 24 String Bridge S12 Exeter, NH 03833 (617) 494-1722 Fax (617) 494-1822 [EMAIL PROTECTED] -----Original Message----- From: Jef Allbright [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Thursday, November 08, 2007 4:22 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] How valuable is Solmononoff Induction for real world AGI? On 11/8/07, Edward W. Porter <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Jeff, > > In your below flame you spent much more energy conveying contempt than > knowledge. I'll readily apologize again for the ineffectiveness of my presentation, but I meant no contempt. > Since I don't have time to respond to all of your attacks, Not attacks, but (overly) terse pointers to areas highlighting difficulty in understanding the problem due to difficulty framing the question. > MY PRIOR POST>>>> "...affect the event's probability..." > > JEF'S PUT DOWN 1>>>>More coherently, you might restate this as > "...reflect the event's likelihood..." I (ineffectively) tried to highlight a thread of epistemic confusion involving an abstract observer interacting with and learning from its environment. In your paragraph, I find it nearly impossible to find a valid base from which to suggest improvements. If I had acted more wisely, I would have tried first to establish common ground **outside** your statements and touched lightly and more constructively on one or two points. > MY COMMENT>>>> At Dragon System, then one of the world's leading > speech recognition companies, I was repeatedly told by our in-house > PhD in statistics that "likelihood" is the measure of a hypothesis > matching, or being supported by, evidence. Dragon selected speech > recognition word candidates based on the likelihood that the > probability distribution of their model matched the acoustic evidence > provided by an event, i.e., a spoken utterance. If you said Dragon selected word candidates based on their probability distribution relative to the likelihood function supported by the evidence provided by acoustic events I'd be with you there. As it is, when you say "based on the likelihood that the probability..." it seems you are confusing the subjective with the objective and, for me, meaning goes out the door. > MY PRIOR POST>>>> "...the descriptive length of sensations we > receive..." > > JEF'S PUT DOWN 2>>>> Who is this "we" that "receives" sensations? > Holy homunculus, Batman, seems we have a bit of qualia confusion > thrown into the mix! > > MY COMMENT>>>> Again I did not know that I would be attacked for using > such a common English usage as "we" on this list. Am I to assume that > you, Jef, never use the words "we" or "I" because you are surrounded > by "friends" so kind as to rudely say "Holy homunculus, Batman" every > time you do. Well, I meant to impart a humorous tone, rather than to be rude, but again I offer my apology; I really should have known it wouldn't be effective. I highlighted this phrasing, not for the colloquial use of "we", but because it again demonstrates epistemic confusion impeding comprehension of a machine intelligence interacting (and learning from) its environment. Too conceptualize any such system as "receiving sensation" as opposed to "expressing sensation", for example, is wrong in systems-theoretic terms of stimulus, process, response. And this confusion, it seems to me, maps onto your expressed difficulty grasping the significance of Solomonoff induction. > Or, just perhaps, are you a little more normal than that. > > In addition, the use of the word "we" or even "I" does not necessary > imply a homunculus. I think most modern understanding of the brain > indicates that human consciousness is most probably -- although richly > interconnected -- a distributed computation that does not require a > homunculus. I like and often use Bernard Baars' Theater of > Consciousness metaphor. Yikes! Well, that goes to my point. Any kind of Cartesian theater in the mind, silent audience and all -- never mind the experimental evidence for gaps, distortions, fabrications, confabulations in the story putatively shown -- has no functional purpose. In systems-theoretical terms, this would entail an additional processing step of extracting relevant information from the essentially whole content of the theater which is not only unnecessary but intractable. The system interacts with 'reality' without the need to interpret it. > But none of this means it is improper to use the words "we" or "I" > when referring to ourselves or our consciousnesses. I'm sincerely sorry to offend you. It takes even more time to attempt to repair, it impairs future relations, and clearly it didn't convey any useful understanding -- evidenced by your perception that I was criticizing your use of English. > And I think one should be allowed to use the word "sensation" without > being accused of "qualia confusion." Jeff, do you ever use the word > "sensation," or would that be too "confusing" for you? "Sensation" is a perfectly good word and concept. My point is that sensation is never "received" by any system, that it smacks of qualia confusion, and that such a misconception gets in the way of understanding how a machine intelligence might deal with "sensation" in practice. > So, Jeff, if Solomonoff induction is really a concept that can help me > get a more coherent model of reality, I would really appreciate > someone who had the understanding, intelligence, and friendliness... Again I apologize for my clearly counter-productive post, and assure you that I will not interfere (or attempt to contribute) while others with understanding, intelligence, and friendliness post their truly helpful responses. - Jef ----- 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/?&; ----- 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/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=63189687-c92f10
