Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI?
Thank you! This feeds back into the feedback discussion, in a way, at a high level. There's a significant difference between research programming and production programming. The production programmer is building something which if (nominally) understood and planned ahead of time. The researcher is putting together something new to see if it works. All the knowledge flow goes from production programmer to the system. The important element of knowledge is supposed to flow from the system to the researcher. This is important because AGIers are researchers (if we have any sense). We have a lot to learn about generally intelligent systems. But even more to the point is the fact that our systems themselves must be research programmers. To learn about a new thing, they must program themselves to be able to recognize, predict, and/or imitate it. So it's worth our time to watch ourselves programming because that's one thing our systems will have to do too. As for the theory, I said I think there is one, not that I necessarily know what it is :-) However, you can begin with the observation that if your architecture is a network of sigmas, it's clearly necessary to provide the full context and sensory information to each sigma for it to record the appropriate trajectory in its local memory. (Anyone interested: sigmas are explained in somewhat more detail in Ch. 13 of Beyond AI) On Monday 21 April 2008 09:47:53 pm, Derek Zahn wrote: Josh writes: You see, I happen to think that there *is* a consistent, general, overall theory of the function of feedback throughout the architecture. And I think that once it's understood and widely applied, a lot of the architectures (repeat: a *lot* of the architectures) we have floating around here will suddenly start working a lot better. Want to share this theory? :) Oh, by the way, of the ones I read so far, I thought your Variac paper was the most interesting one from AGI-08. I'm particularly interested to hear more about sigmas and your thoughts on transparent, composable, and robust programming languages. I used to think about some slightly related topics and thought more in terms of evolvability and plasticity (and did not consider opaqueness at all) but I think your approach to thinking about things is quite exciting. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI?
Vlad, Re your comment below, I would argue rapid intuitive decision making is fundamental, because that often largely subconscious ability to quickly decide between which of multiple alternatives to focus attention on to include in your behavior is an essential component to much of human thought an behavior. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Vladimir Nesov [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 1:04 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:20 AM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Vlad, It is my belief that humans can do intuitive cost/benefit analysis without deliberation, although many forms of cost/benefit analysis do require deliberation. For example a basketball player often looks around him in a one or two seconds makes a decision who to throw to, whether to shoot, or whether to make a move with the ball, based on an intuitive cost/benefit analysis. My model of the brain is one of massive parallelism, in which many multi-level patterns are being matched at one time. Thus when a basket ball player scans around him the various things he sees might activate patterns to various degress that involve both patterns of success, patterns of failure and risk associated with various patterns for behaviors, and patterns for various behaviors could receive varying scores, and the equivalent to the basil ganglia could select the pattern with the best score for increasing attention and finally action commitment. All this type of intuitive decistion making could be made without anything approaching what we normally think of as deliberation. Agreed, but still I wouldn't call such process fundamental. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Richard Loosemore: I'll try to tidy this up and put it on the blog tomorrow. I'd like to pursue the discussion and will do so in that venue after your post. I do think it is a very interesting issue. Truthfully I'm more interested in your specific program for how to succeed than this argument about why everybody else will fail, but I understand that they are linked. I understand your eagerness for more positive info. The main reason, though, that I stress this backround reasoning is that in my experience people tend to misunderstand the positive proposal unless they understand exactly how the background arguments serve to motivate it. More later. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Random Thoughts on Thinking...
Steve Richfield wrote: The process that we call thinking is VERY different in various people. [...] [...] Any thoughts? Steve Richfield The post above -- real food for thought -- was the most interesting post that I have ever read on the AGI list. Arthur T. Murray -- http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/Mind.html http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/userman.html http://mind.sourceforge.net/mind4th.html http://mind.sourceforge.net/m4thuser.html --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
Vladimir Nesov wrote: On Tue, Apr 22, 2008 at 5:59 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: H I detect a parody..? That is not what I intended to say. No, as horrible as it may sound, this is how I see the problem that you are trying to address. If you can pinpoint some specific errors in my description, without reiterating the whole description once again, that would probably be helpful. On a second reading, the description of my propsoed paradigm is not that inaccurate, it just emphasizes some things and de-emphasizes others, thereby making the whole thing look weird. I'll elaborate later. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
J Andrew Rogers writes: Most arguments and disagreements over complexity are fundamentally about the strict definition of the term, or the complete absence thereof. The arguments tend to evaporate if everyone is forced to unambiguously define such terms, but where is the fun in that. I agree with this to a point at least. My attempt to rephrase Richard's argument falters because I have not yet understood his use of the term 'complexity'. I'd prefer a rigorous definition but will settle for a better general understanding of what he means. Despite his several attempts to describe his meaning I have not been able yet to successfully grasp exactly what counts as complex and what does not, and for things inbetween, how to judge the degree of complexity. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
J. Andrew Rogers wrote: On Apr 21, 2008, at 6:53 PM, Richard Loosemore wrote: I have been trying to understand the relationship between theoretical models of thought (both natural and artificial) since at least 1980, and one thing I have noticed is that people devise theoretical structures that are based on the assumption that intelligence is not complex but then they use these structures in such a way that the resulting system is almost always complex. This is easily explained by the obvious fact that the definition of complex varies considerably across relevant populations, exacerbated in the case of AGI -- where it is arguably a germane element -- because many (most?) researchers are using complex in a colloquial (read: meaningless) sense rather than one of its more rigorously defined senses, of which there are a few interesting ones. Most arguments and disagreements over complexity are fundamentally about the strict definition of the term, or the complete absence thereof. The arguments tend to evaporate if everyone is forced to unambiguously define such terms, but where is the fun in that. It is correct to say that there is disagreement about what complexity means, but that is why I went to so much trouble to give a precise definition of it, and the use that precise definition consistently. Last thing I want to do is to engage in fruitless debates with other complex systems people about what exactly it means. But then, going back to your first comment above, no, you cannot use other people's confusion about the meaning of the term complexity to explain why models of thinking start off being designed as if they were not complex, but then get used in ways that makes the overall system complex. That observation is pretty much independent of the definition you choose, and any way it happens within my definition, so it still needs to be explained. The explanation, of course, is that intelligent systems really are (partially) complex, but everyone is trying to kid themselves that they are not, to make their research easier. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI?
how I presume a Novamente system would work I think that we all need to be more careful about our presumptions/assumptions. I think that many important comceptual pieces are glossed over and lost this way. Novamente currently has absolutely no sign of and/or detailed plans for *numerous* critical conceptual pieces. They have an awesome low-level discovery architecture but currently have nothing that demonstarates the ability to modularize, scale, or even analogize. I fully expect someone else to leapfrog Novamente which seems to be perpetually stuck at the lowest levels. But until we actually try building systems like Novamenti or larger versions of Joscha Bach's MicroPsi architecture we won't know for sure exactly how complex getting the bottom-up, top-down, and lateral implications and constraints to all work together well will be. Thank you. My point precisely. I'm hoping and expecting it will just be a quite complicated AI engineering task, made much easier by cheap hardware which will make search the space of possible solutions much cheaper and faster --- but it might become a full blown major conceptual piece. I'm not so sanguine. I fully expect that this will be several major conceptual pieces that we don't even know how to START on yet. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
Richard: I get tripped up on your definition of complexity: A system contains a certain amount of complexity in it if it has some regularities in its overall behavior that are governed by mechanisms that are so tangled that, for all practical purposes, we must assume that we will never be able to find a closed-form explanation of how the global arises from the local.on figuring out what counts as a regularity in overall behavior. Consider a craps table. The trajectories of the dice would seem to have global regularities (for which craps players and normal people have words and phrases, like bouncing off the back, flying off the table, or whatever). Our ability to create concepts around this activity would seem to imply the existence of global regularities (finding them is what we do when we make concepts). Yet the behavior of those regularities is not just physical law but the specific configuration of the felt, the chips, the wind, and so forth, and all that data makes a closed-form explanation impractical. Yet, I don't get the sense that this is what you mean by a complex system. If it is, your contention that they are rare is certainly not correct, since many such examples can easily be found. This aspect of complexity iillustrates the butterfly effect often used in discussions of complexity. I'm not trying to be difficult; it's crucial for me to understand what you mean (versus my interpretation of what others have meant or my own internal definitions) if I am to follow your argument. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
I'm not sure I have ever seen anybody successfully rephrase your complexity argument back at you; since nobody understands what you mean it's not surprising that people are complacent about it. Bit of an overgeneralization, methinks: this list is disproportionately populated with people who satisfy the conjunctive property [do not understand it] and [do like to chat about AGI]. That is no criticism, but it makes it look like nobody understands it. I understand what Richard means by his complexity argument and see his point though I believe that it can be worked around if you're aware of it -- the major problem being, as Richard points out, most AGI systems developers don't see it as necessary to work around. As I have said before, I do get people contacting me offlist (and off-blog, now) who do understand it, but simply do not feel the need to engage in list-chat. . . . . because many people on this list are more invested in being right then being educated. I think that this argument is a lost cause on this list and generally choose not to wast time on lost causes -- but I'm in an odd mood, so . . . . If you just randomly slap together systems that have those kinds of mechanisms, there is a tendency for complex, emergent properties to be seen in the system as a whole. Never mind trying to make the system intelligent, you can make emergent properties appear by generating random, garbage-like relationships between the elements of a system. Emergent is a bad word. People do not understand it. They think that emergent normally means complex, wonderful, and necessarily correct. They are totally incorrect. But now here is the interesting thing: this observation (about getting complexity/emergence out if you set the system up with ugly, tangled mechanisms) is consistent with the reverse observation: in nature, the science we have studied so far in the last three hundred years has been based on simple mechanisms that (almost always) does not involve ugly, tangled mechanisms. Nature likes simple. Simple producing complex effects is what nature is all about. Complex producing simple effects is human studpidity and prone to dramatic failure. Richard tends not to make the point but the most flagrant example of his complexity problem is Ben Goertzel's stories about trying to tune the numerous parameters for his various AI systems. I think that Richard is entirely in the right here but have been unsuccessful in repeated attempts to convince Ben of this. Yes, you *do* need tunable parameters in an AI system -- but they should not be set up in such a way that they can oscillate to chaotic failure. To cut a long story short, it turns out that the Inference Control Engine is more important than the inference mechanism itself. Many people agree with this, but . . . The actual behavior of the system is governed, not by the principles of perfectly reliable logic, but by a messy, arbitrary inference control engine, and the mechanisms that drive the latter are messy and tangled. This is where Richard and I part ways. I think that inference is currently messy and arbitrary and tangled because we don't understand it well enough. This may be a great answer to Ed Porter's question of what is conceptually missing from current AGI attempts. I think that inference control will turn out to be relatively simple in design as well -- yet possess tremendously complex effects, just like everything else in nature. Now, wherever you go in AI, I can tell the same story. A story in which the idealistic AI researchers start out wanting to build a thinking system in which there is not supposed to be any arbitrary mechanism that might give rise to complexity, but where, after a while, some ugly mechanisms start to creep in, until finally the whole thing is actually determined by complexity-inducing mechanisms. Actually, this is not just a complexity argument. It's really an argument about how many AGI researchers want to start tabula rasa -- but then find that you can't do everything at once. Some researchers then start throwing in assumptions and quick fixes until those things dominate the system while others are smart enough to just reduce the system size and scope. 5. Therefore we have no methods for building thinking machines, since engineering discipline does not address how to build complex devices. Building them as if they are not complex will result in poor behavior; squeezing out the complexity will squeeze out the thinking, and leaving it in makes traditional engineering impossible. Not a bad summary, but a little oddly worded. Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Engineering discipline can address everything (just like science) as long as you're willing to open up your eyes and address reality. Richard's arguments are only cogent if an AI researcher is trying to ignore
Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
How confident are you that this only-complex-AI limitation applies in reality? How much would you bet on it? I'm not convinced, and I think that if you are convinced too much, you made wrong conclusions from your data, unless you communicated too little of what formed your intuition. I am completely sure that it applies (although your phrasing makes me wonder if you have interpreted my exact worry accurately... I will have to come back to that). I am also sure that it applies but don't believe that it is a huge problem unless you ignore it. Remember, gravity with three bodies is a complex problem -- but it is relatively easy to characterize and solve to reasonable limits (just don't try to make plans too far in the future without making periodic readings to ensure that reality still matches your model). --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Random Thoughts on Thinking...
Any thoughts? My first thought is that you put way too much in a single post . . . . The process that we call thinking is VERY different in various people. Or even markedly different from one occasion to the next in the same person. I am subject to a *very*strong Seasonal Affective Disorder effect (call it seasonal-cycle manic-depression though not quite that extreme). After many years, I recognize that I think *entirely* differently in the summer as opposed to the middle of winter. Once they adopted an erroneous model and stored some information based on it, they were stuck with it and its failures for the remainder of their lives. While true in many (and possibly the majority of cases), this is nowhere near universally true. This is like saying that you can't unlearn old, bad habits. Superstitious learning is absolutely and theoretically unavoidable. No. You are conflating multiple things here. Yes, we always start learning by combination -- but then we use science to weed things out. The problem is -- most people aren't good scientists or cleaners. Certainly, no one has suggested ANY reason to believe that the great ultimate AGI of the long distant future will be immune to it. I believe that, with the ability to have it's beliefs transparent and open to inspection by itself and others, the great ultimate AGI of the near future will be able to perform scientific clean-up *much* better than you can possibly imagine. Mark - Original Message - From: Steve Richfield To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 11:54 PM Subject: [agi] Random Thoughts on Thinking... The process that we call thinking is VERY different in various people. In my own case, I was mercury poisoned (which truncates neural tubes) as a baby, was fed a low/no fat diet (which impairs myelin growth), and then at the age of 5, I had my metabolism trashed by general anesthesia (causing brain fog). I have since corrected my metabolic problems, I now eat LOTS of fat, and I flushed the mercury out of my system. However, the result of all of this was dramatic - I tested beyond genius in some ways (first tested at the age of 6), and below average in others. I could solve complex puzzles at lightning speed, but had the memory of an early Alzheimer's patient. However, one thing was quite clear - whatever it was that went on behind my eyeballs was VERY different from other people. No, I don't mean better or worse than others, but completely different. My horrible memory FORCED me to resort to understanding many things that other people simply remembered, as at least for me, those understandings lasted a lifetime, while my memory would probably be gone before the sun went down. This pushed me into a complex variable-model version of reality, from which I could see that nearly everyone operated from fixed models. Once they adopted an erroneous model and stored some information based on it, they were stuck with it and its failures for the remainder of their lives. This apparently underlies most religious belief, as children explain the unknown in terms of God, and are then stuck with this long after they realize that neither God nor Santa Clause can exist as conscious entities. Superstitious learning is absolutely and theoretically unavoidable. Certainly, no one has suggested ANY reason to believe that the great ultimate AGI of the long distant future will be immune to it. Add some trusted misinformation (that we all get) and you have the makings of a system that is little better than us, other than it will have vastly superior abilities to gain superstitious learning and spout well-supported but erroneous conclusions based on it. My efforts on Dr. Eliza was to create a system that was orthogonal to our biologically-based problem solving abilities. No, it usually did NOT solve problems in the traditional way of telling the user what is broken (except in some simplistic cases where this was indeed possible), but rather it focused on just what it was that the user apparently did NOT know to have such a problem. Inform the user of whatever it is that they did not know, and their problem will evaporate through obviation - something subtly different than being solved. Of course, some of that knowledge will be wrong, but hopefully users have the good sense to skip over Steve's snake oil will cure all illnesses and consider other facts. One job I had was as the in-house computer and numerical analysis consultant for the Physics and Astronomy departments of a major university. There it gradually soaked in that the symbol manipulation of Algebra and higher mathematics itself made some subtle mis-assumptions that often led people astray. For example, if you have a value with some uncertainty (as all values do) through a function with a discontinuity (as many interesting functions have); when the range of uncertainty includes the
FW: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? ---re Loosemore's complexity argument
I am re-posting this because I first sent it out an hour ago and it is not yet showing on my email -Original Message- RE: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? ---re Loosemore's complexity argument Richard, I read the article in your blog (http://susaro.com/) cited below entitled The Complex Systems Problem (Part 1). I think it contains some important food for thought --- but it is so one sided as to reduce its own credibility. You don't mention that there are many relatively stable Richard-complex systems that have proven themselves to function in a relatively reliable --- although not always desirable --- way, over thousands of years. Take market economies. They have shown surprising stability --- despite having suffered many perturbations, such as wars and famines --- over thousands of years in many very different settings --- varying from ancient Rome or Han China --- to barter economies in primitive cultures --- to modern financial markets --- to opinion markets --- to markets used in AI systems for attention allocation. As people from the Sante Fe institute have pointed out, economies show amazing emergent effects, such as --- dealing with complex issues like allocating resources --- producing chains of suppliers for ingredients and parts at various states along the production process --- and determining who has which job --- much better than any planner. And they involve hundreds to billions of independent actors each with non-linear transactions --- such as decisions to buy or sell --- with many other actors. This does not mean markets are not without disastrous instabilities --- just that the damage of their instabilities are minor compared to the overall benefit of their operation. And now that we are beginning to learn how to better control their instability, they are even less unstable than they have generally been in the past. (Although currently the world markets are cruising for a bruising because of things such as of America's insane borrowing, and the massive percent of our equity that has gone into the hands of speculative and manipulative hedge funds.) Or take the brain itself. It is a complex system and yet it remains relatively stably within reasonable bounds over the vast majority of the lifetimes of the billions of people who have lived. In large part it does, because of mechanisms for damping its behavior, and something equivalent --- in the basil-ganglia and thalamus --- to markets for competing thoughts for the allocation of the resource of attention and the potential for spreading activation. You don't mention that multiple AI and brain simulation programs --- that have many or all of the features you imply are almost certain to produce chaos --- have been run without such chaos. You don't mention that you, yourself, agreed in a response to a previous email from me months ago that Hofstadter's Copycat, is, to a certain extent, a Richard-complex program, and yet has shown itself to be quite reliable in producing analogies that appear in some way appropriate. And, finally, I found it odd that you ended this article citing Ben Goertzel as your major evidence AGI systems such as the one he is designing are almost certain to run into disastrous complexity Gotcha's, when he, himself, does not --- and you failed to point that out in your article. SO SINCE YOUR ANALYSIS TOTALLY FAILS TO DISCUSS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT IT IS MAKING, IT HAS TO BE TAKE AS LESS THAN DEFINITIVE DISCUSSION OF ITS SUBJECT. Ed Porter P.S. Unfortunately, because of work, this is the end of my posting to this list for at least today, and perhaps multiple days. But I hope the rest of you carry on, and I will try to at least read all the posts in this thread. -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 10:02 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses Ed Porter wrote: Richard, I read you Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical Psychology article, and I still don't know what your are talking about other than the game of life. I know you make a distinction between Richard and non-Richard complexity. I understand computational irreducibility. And I understand that how complex a program is, in terms of its number of lines is not directly related to how varied and unpredictable its output will be. I would appreciate it, Richard, if you could explain what you mean by Richard complexity vs. non-Richard complexity. [?] Maybe you should get to me offlist about this. I don't quite know that means. Did you read the blog post on this topic? It was supposed to be more accessible than the paper. Blog is at susaro.com Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed:
Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses
Derek Zahn wrote: Richard: I get tripped up on your definition of complexity: A system contains a certain amount of complexity in it if it has some regularities in its overall behavior that are governed by mechanisms that are so tangled that, for all practical purposes, we must assume that we will never be able to find a closed-form explanation of how the global arises from the local. on figuring out what counts as a regularity in overall behavior. Consider a craps table. The trajectories of the dice would seem to have global regularities (for which craps players and normal people have words and phrases, like bouncing off the back, flying off the table, or whatever). Our ability to create concepts around this activity would seem to imply the existence of global regularities (finding them is what we do when we make concepts). Yet the behavior of those regularities is not just physical law but the specific configuration of the felt, the chips, the wind, and so forth, and all that data makes a closed-form explanation impractical. Yet, I don't get the sense that this is what you mean by a complex system. If it is, your contention that they are rare is certainly not correct, since many such examples can easily be found. This aspect of complexity iillustrates the butterfly effect often used in discussions of complexity. I'm not trying to be difficult; it's crucial for me to understand what you mean (versus my interpretation of what others have meant or my own internal definitions) if I am to follow your argument. Okay, I will respond to your questions on two fronts (!) - I just posted a reply to your comment on the blog, too. In the above, you mention butterfly effects. This is not a mainstream example of complexity, it is chaos, which is not exactly the same thing. More generally, you cannot say that a system is complex by itself, it is a system with respect to a particular regularity in its behavior. The solar system, for example, is not complex: the planets move in wonderfully predictable orbits. BUT... actually the solar system *is* complex, because Pluto's behavior is unstable, and every once in a while it comes in and messes with everyone else. So if the solar system remains utterly predictable for a hundred million years, and then Pluto goes AWOL for a few years, what is it? It is partially complex, with just a tiny degree of complexity superimposed on otherwise non-complex behavior. We cannot give a black and white answer to the question is it complex?. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: Language learning
On Apr 22, 2008, at 7:17 AM, Mark Waser wrote: In my experience it is not so much that they sound the same but that we don't know how to say them (in terms of mouth mechanics) such that we can isolate the difference between sounds that would have been in the range of a single phoneme in English. No. We have a Thai exchange student this year. There are words that she swears are different that sound to me (and the rest of the family) to be exactly the same. Precisely my point. They sound exactly the same until you understand the mechanics of the sound generation, at which point you have a frame of reference for recognizing the differences. The differences are there, you are just not using them as a means of discernment because you have no knowledge of which differences are important for discernment. This is why it is futile and silly to use sound examples to teach someone a difference that we have already established they cannot isolate. On the other hand, the phoneme generation mechanics are relatively unambiguous. I could never hear many sounds until I figured out what they were doing to create the sound that was different from how I created the sound. Once I figured that out, it became relatively easy to hear the difference because I knew what to listen for. Austroasiatic languages (like Thai) tend to be particularly difficult for native English speakers because they tend to rely heavily on complex usage of all the possible bits that English speakers do not. However, having delved fairly deeply in one such language myself, it is easier than it seems at first once you figure it out. J. Andrew Rogers --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser: Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 5:20 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...] Mark Waser: Huh? Why doesn't engineering discipline address building complex devices? Perhaps I'm wrong about that. Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Me: Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? Mark: Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human can fly it unaided). - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, April 22, 2008 6:00 PM Subject: RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...] Me: Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? Mark: Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Me: Can you give me some examples where engineering has produced complex devices (in the sense of complex that Richard means)? Mark: Computers. Anything that involves aerodynamics. Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. The amount of complexity is almost trivial, compared with a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. Don't forget that ALL systems are complex if you push them far enough, so it makes no sense to ask is system X complex?. You can only ask how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser: I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human can fly it unaided). I agree that this is a very sensible way to think about being complex and it is certainly similar to the way I think about it myself. My embryonic understanding of Richard's argument suggests to me that he means something else, though. If not, traditional engineering methods are often pretty good at taming complexity as long as they take the range of possible system states into account (which is what you have been saying all along). Since I'm trying (with limited success) to understand his point of view, I might suggest that (from the point of view of his argument), the global regularities of the aircraft (its flight characteristics) DO have a sufficiently-efficacious small theory in terms of the components (the aircraft body, including the moveable bits). In fact, it is exactly that small theory which is embedded in the control program. Since the global regularities (straight-line flight, turns, and so on) are sufficiently predictable from the local interactions of the control surfaces with the air, the aircraft is not complex *in the sense that Richard is talking about*. Now I suppose I've pissed everybody off, but I'm really just trying to understand Richard's definitions so I can follow his argument. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. Richard, you're obviously not familiar with high-speed aerodynamics. There is not a certain amount of unpredictability. It is out-and-out virtually unconstrained chaos. There are *no* nice little tables of lift coefficients. A human being cannot operate an F-14 by themselves. A computer cannot operate an F-14 unless it is receiving sub-millisecond updates because the behavior is too chaotic to predict. Yet, like everything else in nature, this seeming chaos is the result of a relatively small number of relatively simple rules (and a huge butterfly effect). An F-14 in flight makes a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. look nearly trivial because virtually *anything* can effect it (temperature thermoclines, radiant heat differences because of changes in the land below, wind speed, clouds, even the passage of migratory birds) -- yet the behavior is entirely bounded enough for a fast reacting computer to manage it. How is this not complex (according to your definition)? The amount of complexity is almost trivial, compared with a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. I believe that the pieces of intelligence can be uncoupled far more than you're ever going to be able to uncouple the factors hitting an aircraft at trans-sound speeds. Don't forget that ALL systems are complex if you push them far enough, so it makes no sense to ask is system X complex?. You can only ask how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. My point exactly. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Richard Loosemore: it makes no sense to ask is system X complex?. You can only ask how much complexity, and what role it plays in the system. Yes, I apologize for my sloppy language. When I say is system X complex? what I mean is whether the RL-complexity of the system is important in describing the behaviors of interest under the operating conditions being discussed, in particular whether the global behaviors have an effective small theory expressed in terms of local components and their interactions -- because my current understanding of what you mean by complexity means the extent to which no such small theory is available. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Derek Zahn wrote: Mark Waser: I don't know what is going to be more complex than a variable-geometry-wing aircraft like a F-14 Tomcat. Literally nothing can predict it's aerodynamic behavior. The avionics are purely reactive because it's future behavior cannot be predicted to any certainty even at computer speeds -- yet it's behavior envelope is small enough to be safe, provided you do have computer speeds (though no human can fly it unaided). I agree that this is a very sensible way to think about being complex and it is certainly similar to the way I think about it myself. My embryonic understanding of Richard's argument suggests to me that he means something else, though. If not, traditional engineering methods are often pretty good at taming complexity as long as they take the range of possible system states into account (which is what you have been saying all along). Since I'm trying (with limited success) to understand his point of view, I might suggest that (from the point of view of his argument), the global regularities of the aircraft (its flight characteristics) DO have a sufficiently-efficacious small theory in terms of the components (the aircraft body, including the moveable bits). In fact, it is exactly that small theory which is embedded in the control program. Since the global regularities (straight-line flight, turns, and so on) are sufficiently predictable from the local interactions of the control surfaces with the air, the aircraft is not complex *in the sense that Richard is talking about*. Now I suppose I've pissed everybody off, but I'm really just trying to understand Richard's definitions so I can follow his argument. I read this after replying to Mark's later comment. You have summarized exactly what I said there. It is most important that, when answering these questions about whether or not system X is complex, we keep in mind that we have to choose our level of descriotion and then stick to it. So in this case the system as a whole is not complex. A component of it is complex (though not in a very demanding way, compared with many complex systems), but if we accidentally slip from discussion of one to discussion of the other, things do get confused. So Mark is right to see complexity, but that is one level down. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Thoughts on the Zahn take on Complex Systems [WAS Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING ...]
Mark Waser wrote: Richard, is this correct? Are human-engineered airplanes complex in the sense you mean? Generally speaking, no, not in a substantial enough way. Which means that there is a certain amount of unpredictability in some details, and there are empirical factors that you need to use (tables of lift coefficients, etc.), but beyond these empirical factors there is little impact of the complexity. Richard, you're obviously not familiar with high-speed aerodynamics. There is not a certain amount of unpredictability. It is out-and-out virtually unconstrained chaos. There are *no* nice little tables of lift coefficients. A human being cannot operate an F-14 by themselves. A computer cannot operate an F-14 unless it is receiving sub-millisecond updates because the behavior is too chaotic to predict. Yet, like everything else in nature, this seeming chaos is the result of a relatively small number of relatively simple rules (and a huge butterfly effect). An F-14 in flight makes a system in which all the components are interacting with memory, development, nonlinearity, etc etc etc. look nearly trivial because virtually *anything* can effect it (temperature thermoclines, radiant heat differences because of changes in the land below, wind speed, clouds, even the passage of migratory birds) -- yet the behavior is entirely bounded enough for a fast reacting computer to manage it. How is this not complex (according to your definition)? Remember that the strict definition of complexity asks whether a theory can be found to predict the overall behavior. In this case, the engineers DO have a theory, because they were able to build a flight control computer to make sensible adaptations to overcome the instability of the system. If they did not have such a theory, they would not have been able to write any flight control software at all. The system does indeed have some complexity in it (all systems do, remember), but the engineers found enough predictability in the system that they were able to write the control software and treat the complexity as a noise signal that had to be compensated for. So at the most important level of description, the system is not complex. My point is that to be able to make the plane fly straight, the engineers did not have to second-guess anything complex they did not have to make any predictions about whether a particular bit of the plane was going to exhibit [Behavior A], they just had to wait to see which behavior was going to turn up, then make the appropriate reaction to it (and the engineers know what the appropriate reaction is, of course). The engineers are not second-guessing the complexity, they are factoring it out. They are making it irrelevant by simply compensating for it. They are turning it into a noise signal. So the plane's behavior does not depend on the complexity in any way, because the whole point of the flight control computer is to watch the complex behavior like crazy (several times a millisecond, as you say) and simply counteract it. The fact that they were able to counteract the instability tells us that there was a lot about the plane's dynamics that was extremely predictable (or else no rational compensation software would have been possible). And once the system has been built with [complex-behaving plane] PLUS [complexity-cancelling software], the result is an overall system that is not complex. Is the math underlying the F-14 untouchable? No: there is enough regular math to enable the engineers to write that flight control software. Looking at the math AT THAT LEVEL OF DESCRIPTION, we would never have predicted that this system was complex: we would have predicted some instability caused by a complex component, but the rest of the math would have caused us to predict that the system would not be complex as a whole. So, this system is consistent with my observation that untouchable math begets complexity, and that touchable math is consistent with non-complexity. One last note: remember that we have to look at the system as a whole. We can always dip down into a system and find some complexity, but that would be to change the terms of reference. Richard Loosemore Stepping back to the intelligent systems context: you cannot pull this trick of compensating for the complexity in an AGI. There is simply no analogy between these two systems. Build an intelligent system in which something cancels out all the annoying influence of the symbols, with their complex interactions, so that all of that symbol-stuff can be treated as noise and the system as a whole becomes non-complex? Makes no sense. The symbols and their interactions are the very core of the system's intelligence. You cannot factor them out. --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed:
