On Thu, Aug 14, 2008 at 5:05 PM, Abram Demski <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > But, I am looking for a system that "is" me.
You, like everyone else's me, has it's limitations. So there is a difference between the potential of the system and the actual system. This point of stressing potentiality rather than casually idealizing all-inclusiveness, which I originally mentioned only out of technical feasibility, is significant because you are applying the idea to yourself. You would not be able to achieve what you have achieved if you were busy trying to achieve what all humanity has achieved. So, even the potential of the system is dependent on what has already been achieved. That is, the true potential of the system (of one's existence or otherwise) is readjusted as the system evolves. So a baby's potential is not greater than ours, the potential of his or her potential is. (This even makes greater sense when you consider the fact that individual potential must be within a common range.) > My only conclusion is that we are talking past eachother because we > are applying totally different models to the problem. > > When I say "logic", I mean something quite general-- an ideal system > of mental operation. "Ideal" means that I am ignoring computational > resources. That is an example of how your ideal has gone beyond the feasible potential of an individual. > I think what you are saying is that we can apply different > logics to different situations, and so we can at one moment operate > within a logic but at the next moment transcend that logic. This is > all well and good, but that system of operation in and of itself can > be seen to be a larger logical system, one that manipulates smaller > systems. This larger system, we cannot transcend; we *are* that > system. > > So, if no such logic exists, if there is no one "big" logic that > transcends all the "little" logics that we apply to individual > situations, then it makes sense to conclude that we cannot exist. > Right? > --Abram Whaaa? You keep talking about things like fantastic resources but then end up claiming that your ideal somehow proves that we cannot exist. (Please leave me out of your whole non-existence thing by the way. I like existing and hope to continue at it for some time. I recommend that you take a similar approach to the problem too.) If it weren't for your conclusion I would be thinking that I understand what you are saying. The boundary issues of logic or of other bounded systems are not absolute laws that we have to abide by all of the time, they are designed for special kinds of thinking. I believe they are useful because they can be used to illuminate certain kinds of situations so spectacularly. As far as the logic of some kind of system of thinking, or potential of thought, I do not feel that the boundaries are absolutely fixed for all problems. We can transcend the boundaries because they are only boundaries of thought. We can for example create connections between separated groups of concepts (or whatever) and if these new systems can be used to effectively illuminate the workings of some problem and they require some additional boundaries in order to avoid certain errors, then new boundaries can be constructed for them over or with the previous boundaries. As far as I can tell, the kind of thing that you are talking about would be best explained by saying that there is only one kind of 'logical' system at work, but it can examine problems using abstraction by creating theoretical boundaries around the problem. Why does it have to be good at that? Because we need to be able to take information about a single object like a building without getting entangled into all the real world interrelations. We can abstract because we have to. I see that you weren't originally talking about whether "you" could exist, you were originally talking about whether an AI program could exist. I don't see how my idea of multiple dynamic bounded systems does not provide an answer to your question to be honest. The problem with multiple dynamic bounded systems is that it can accept illusory conclusions. But these can be controlled, to some extent, by examining a concept from numerous presumptions and interrelations and by examining the results of these pov's as they can be interrelated with other concepts including some of which are grounded on the most reliable aspects of the IO data environment. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=111637683-c8fa51 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
