Pei:As I said before, you give "symbol" a very narrow meaning, and insist
that it is the only way to use it. In the current discussion,
"symbols" are not 'X', 'Y', 'Z', but 'table', 'time', 'intelligence'.
BTW, what images you associate with the latter two?
Since you prefer to use person as example, let me try the same. All of
my experience about 'Mike Tintner' is symbolic, nothing visual, but it
still makes you real enough to me...
I'm sorry if it sounds rude....
Pei,
You attribute to symbols far too broad powers that they simply don't have -
and demonstrably, scientifically, don't have.
For example, you think that your experience of "Mike Tintner" - the rude
guy - is entirely symbolic. Yes, all your experience of me has been mediated
entirely via language/symbols -these posts. But by far the most important
parts of it have actually been images. Ridiculous, huh?
Look at this sentence:
"If you want to hear about it, you'll probably want to know where I was
born, and what a lousy childhood I had, and how my parents were occupied
before they had me, and all the David Copperfield crap, but if you want to
know the truth, I don't really want to get into it."
In 60 words, & one of the great opening sentences of a novel, Salinger has
created a whole character. How? He did it by creating a voice. He did it by
what is called prosody (and also diction). No current AGI method has the
least idea of how to process that prosody. But your brain does. Pei doesn't.
But his/your brain does.
And your experience of MT has been heavily based similarly on processing the
*sound* images - the voice behind my words. Hence your "I'm sorry if it
*sounds* rude.."
Words, even written words, aren't just symbols, they are sounds. And your
brain hears those sounds and from their music can tell many, many things,
including the emotions of the speaker, and whether they're being angry or
ironic or rude.
Now, if you had had more of a literary/arts education, you would probably be
alive to that dimension. But, as it is, you've missed it, and you're missing
all kinds of dimensions of how symbols work.
Similarly, if you had more of a visual education, and also more of a
psychological developmental background, you wouldn't find "time" and
"intelligence" so daunting to visualise.
You would realise that it takes a great deal of time and preparatory
sensory/imaginative to build up abstract concepts
You would realise that it takes "time" for an infant to come to use that
word, and still more for a child to understand the word intelligence. I
doubt that any child will understand "time" before they've seen a watch or
clock, and that's what they will probably visualise time as, first. Your
capacity to abstract time still further, will have come from having become
gradually acquainted with a whole range of time-measuring devices, and
seeing the word "time" and associating that with many other kinds of
measurement especially in relation to maths. and science.
Similarly, a person's concept of "intelligence" will come from seeing and
hearing people solving problems in different ways - quickly and slowly, for
example.. It will be deeply grounded in sensory images and experience.
All the most abstract maths and logic that you may think totally abstract
are similarly and necessarily grounded. Ben, in parallel to you, didn't
realise that the decimal numeral system is digital, based on the hand, and
so, a little less obviously, is the roman numeral system. Numbers and logic
have to be built up out of experience.
[You might profit BTW by looking at Barsalou, [many of his papers online],
to see how the mind modally simulates concepts - with lots of experimental
evidence]
I, as you know, am very ignorant about computers; but you are also very
ignorant about all kinds of dimensions of how symbols work, and intelligence
generally, that are absolutely essential for AGI. You can continue to look
down on me, or you can open your mind, recognize that general intelligence
can only be achieved by a confluence of disciplines way beyond the reach of
any single individual, and see that maybe useful exchanges can take place.
-------------------------------------------
agi
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