Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Matt. On 10/20/08, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The singularity list is probably more appropriate for philosophical discussions about AGI. Only those discussions that relate AGI to singularity. Another one for Ben's list: *Basic Economic Feasibility: It has been proposed that intelligent but not super-intelligent machines may have great economic value. Others have said that we already have way too many such biological machines, making more such intelligence worthless. This has been countered by arguments that there are hazardous and/or biologically impossible environments where only an intelligent machine could work. This seems to fall into the realm of basic business plan projections, where the cost of engineering and manufacture is returned by sales through market penetration. An abbreviated business plan showing quantitatively how a profit might be made would go a LONG way to settling this argument.* Steve Richfield --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Just an idea - not sure if it would work or not - 3 lists: [AGI-1], [AGI-2], [AGI-3]. Sub-content is determined by the posters themselves. Same amount of emails initially but partitioned up. Wonder what would happen? John --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Samantha, On 10/19/08, Samantha Atkins [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This sounds good to me. I am much more drawn to topic #1. Topic #2 I have seen discussed recursively and in dozens of variants multiple places. The only thing I will add to Topic #2 is that I very seriously doubt current human intelligence individually or collectively is sufficient to address or meaningfully resolve or even crisply articulate such questions. We are in absolute agreement that revolution rather than evolution is necessary to advance. Aside from the specific technique, things like Reverse Reductio ad Absurdum shows that, for example, that intractable disputes absolutely MUST include a commonly held false assumption. This means, for example, that if you take EITHER side in the abortion debate, then you absolutely MUST hold a false assumption. The only hope is broad societal education that flies in the face of nearly every religion, which will never happen. Without that impossible education, a truly successful AGI would have ~half of the world's population bent on its immediate destruction, and not more than 100 people would even understand what it said. Note that if you take either side in the abortion debate, that you will NOT be one of those 100 people. Who could you find to even maintain such a machine, and who would ever follow such a machine? Much more is accomplished by actually looking into the horse's mouth than philosophizing endlessly. Here, you think that AGI efforts will point the way to freeing man from his collective maddness. Given the constraints explained above, I just don't see how this is possible. Another entry for Ben's List: *Impossible Expectations: Man has many issues and problems for which he has no good answers. Given man's inductive abilities, this comes NOT because of any inability to imagine the correct answers, but comes instead because either no such answers exist, or because man rejects the correct answers when they are placed before him. Obviously, AGI cannot help either of these situations. * Steve Richfield === Ben Goertzel wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
The singularity list is probably more appropriate for philosophical discussions about AGI. But good luck on moving such discussions to that list or a new list. Philosophical arguments usually result from different interpretations of what words mean. But usually the people doing the arguing don't know this. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
This sounds good to me. I am much more drawn to topic #1. Topic #2 I have seen discussed recursively and in dozens of variants multiple places. The only thing I will add to Topic #2 is that I very seriously doubt current human intelligence individually or collectively is sufficient to address or meaningfully resolve or even crisply articulate such questions. Much more is accomplished by actually looking into the horse's mouth than philosophizing endlessly. - samantha Ben Goertzel wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Ben, First, note that I do NOT fall into the group that says that you can't engineer digital AGI. However, I DO believe that present puny computers are not up to the task, and some additional specific research (that I have previously written about here) needs to be done before programming can be done with a reasonable expectation of success. After consulting my assortment of reference dictionaries,,, On 10/16/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I completely agree that puzzles can be ever so much more interesting when you can successfully ignore that they cannot possibly lead to anything useful. Further, people who point out the reasons that they cannot succeed are really boors and should be censored. This entire thread should be entitled something like Psychiatric Censorship. I don't know why you are talking about **censorship**. The Internet is large. Censorship (according to all of my dictionaries) only applies to acts in a particular venue, and does NOT indicate any sort of all-inclusive act to expunge anything from the mind of man (or machine). For example, an editor in a particular newspaper may censor something, but of course there are LOTS of other newspapers, radio and TV stations, etc. Hence, I stand by my correct use of censorship here. This email list is not intended for discussions of spiritual philosophy or biochemistry -- for example -- yet that does not constitute **censorship** in the usual sense, as there are many other forums in which to discuss those things. I suspect that the authors and some readers of those same discussions would categorize them systems analysis or feasibility. And the anti-digital-computer-AGI arguments presented on this list have, not in one instance, been significantly original. Agreed. This is because you have FLATLY REFUSED to address the old and obvious objections to approaches presented here. When I arrived, I simply (and erroneously) presumed ignorance of existing arguments and repeated them. Now, I still presume ignorance, but of a very different sort. You somehow believe (please correct me if I am wrong here) that it possible to successfully build something (anything, a building, a machine, or an AGI) where there continue to be unaddressed feasibility objections. This is quite obviously (to me and a couple of other readers here) a management (of your own efforts) failure of major proportions. I and anyone else who has been around the AI community awhile, has heard them all before. However, they still remain unanswered, and as your prior posting clearly stated, they will (at least in your case) remain unanswered. There is nothing to be gained by hearing them over and over again. Ya know, I think that I FINALLY agree with you, at least in your particular case, on this point. You will obviously blindly keep going until you fall in to any one of a long list of holes that others see way ahead of time, but which you are too busy to look at. No, I do NOT (as your signature line suggests) expect you to overcome all objections, but at least you should look at them enough to say words sufficient to communicate that you have overcome them in your own mind, and just to show that you are indeed serious about AGI, you might let is mere mortals in on how you have overcome SOME of the more major objections. If someone has a substantially new argument against the possibility of engineering AGI digital-computers, I would be personally interested to hear it. Who needs new arguments, when you show little/no indication that you have really heard and considered the old arguments? Just as I was intrigued by Penrose's anti-digital-AGI argument in terms of quantum gravity .. at first ... until I dug in more deeply and decided the evidence currently does not support it... Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson Add to that: Nothing will ever succeed if all objections are not first considered - Steve Richfield But this latter aphorism has the immediate logical conclusion that nothing will ever succeed. Because, there is an infinite number of possible objections to any statement, Note the absence of the word possible which you apparently presumed. You only need answer the ACTUAL objections, which are quite countable, and in environments populated by competent managers, always ARE all considered, at least by those managers who want to keep their jobs. Have you heard of the process of Objection Elimination? so long as one counts as different any two objections that differ slightly in wording, even if their meaning is essentially the same. Obviously, one answer can easily address an entire class of objections. What you don't seem to understand is that I, and most of the other AGI engineers on this list, have **already heard all these objections** --- we have read them in the primary research literature, when they were
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Steve, Ignoring your overheated invective, I will make one more attempt to address your objections. **If and only if** you will be so kind as to summarize them in a compact form in a single email. If you give me a numbered list of your objections against my approach to AGI and other similar approaches, in which each objection is summarized in a few dozen words at most, then I will respond by summarizing my reaction to each of your objections. -- Ben G On Sat, Oct 18, 2008 at 12:50 PM, Steve Richfield [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, First, note that I do NOT fall into the group that says that you can't engineer digital AGI. However, I DO believe that present puny computers are not up to the task, and some additional specific research (that I have previously written about here) needs to be done before programming can be done with a reasonable expectation of success. After consulting my assortment of reference dictionaries,,, On 10/16/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I completely agree that puzzles can be ever so much more interesting when you can successfully ignore that they cannot possibly lead to anything useful. Further, people who point out the reasons that they cannot succeed are really boors and should be censored. This entire thread should be entitled something like Psychiatric Censorship. I don't know why you are talking about **censorship**. The Internet is large. Censorship (according to all of my dictionaries) only applies to acts in a particular venue, and does NOT indicate any sort of all-inclusive act to expunge anything from the mind of man (or machine). For example, an editor in a particular newspaper may censor something, but of course there are LOTS of other newspapers, radio and TV stations, etc. Hence, I stand by my correct use of censorship here. This email list is not intended for discussions of spiritual philosophy or biochemistry -- for example -- yet that does not constitute **censorship** in the usual sense, as there are many other forums in which to discuss those things. I suspect that the authors and some readers of those same discussions would categorize them systems analysis or feasibility. And the anti-digital-computer-AGI arguments presented on this list have, not in one instance, been significantly original. Agreed. This is because you have FLATLY REFUSED to address the old and obvious objections to approaches presented here. When I arrived, I simply (and erroneously) presumed ignorance of existing arguments and repeated them. Now, I still presume ignorance, but of a very different sort. You somehow believe (please correct me if I am wrong here) that it possible to successfully build something (anything, a building, a machine, or an AGI) where there continue to be unaddressed feasibility objections. This is quite obviously (to me and a couple of other readers here) a management (of your own efforts) failure of major proportions. I and anyone else who has been around the AI community awhile, has heard them all before. However, they still remain unanswered, and as your prior posting clearly stated, they will (at least in your case) remain unanswered. There is nothing to be gained by hearing them over and over again. Ya know, I think that I FINALLY agree with you, at least in your particular case, on this point. You will obviously blindly keep going until you fall in to any one of a long list of holes that others see way ahead of time, but which you are too busy to look at. No, I do NOT (as your signature line suggests) expect you to overcome all objections, but at least you should look at them enough to say words sufficient to communicate that you have overcome them in your own mind, and just to show that you are indeed serious about AGI, you might let is mere mortals in on how you have overcome SOME of the more major objections. If someone has a substantially new argument against the possibility of engineering AGI digital-computers, I would be personally interested to hear it. Who needs new arguments, when you show little/no indication that you have really heard and considered the old arguments? Just as I was intrigued by Penrose's anti-digital-AGI argument in terms of quantum gravity .. at first ... until I dug in more deeply and decided the evidence currently does not support it... Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson Add to that: Nothing will ever succeed if all objections are not first considered - Steve Richfield But this latter aphorism has the immediate logical conclusion that nothing will ever succeed. Because, there is an infinite number of possible objections to any statement, Note the absence of the word possible which you apparently presumed. You only need answer the ACTUAL objections, which are quite countable, and in environments populated by competent
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
From: Eric Burton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Honestly, if the idea is to wave our hands at one another's ideas then let's at least see something on the table. I'm happy to discuss my work with natural language parsing and mood evaluation for low-bandwidth human mimicry, for instance, because it has amounted to thousands of lines of occasionally-fungible code thus far. It's not on sourceforge because it's still a mess but I'll pastebin it if you ask. What's the gist of the code? Sounds like chat-bot but I just know there is more to it. I don't understand how people wallow in their theories for so long that they become a matter of dogma, with the need for proof removed, and the urgency of producing and testing an implementation subverted by smugness and egotism. The people here worth listening to don't have to make excuses. They can show their work. True though. But if your theory is good enough the first person usually sold on it is yourself. And then you must become an ardent follower. I see a lot of evasiveness and circular arguments going on, where people are seeking some kind of theoretical high-ground without giving away anything that could bolster another theory. It's time-wastingly self-interested. We won't achieve consensus through half-explained denials and reversals. This list isn't a battle of theorems for supremacy. It is for collaboration. Yep. Inter connecting at knowledge junctions could be conducive to more civil collaborative effort. At some point compromises must be made and hands shaken. Minds melded instead of heads banged :) My 2 cents. The internet archive seems to have shed about half the material I produced since the nineties, so I do apologize for being so pissed off _ Did the global brain forget the low latency long term memory of you? Perhaps it's just compressed off into some lower latency subsystem. There has to be more than one internet archive, honestly. The existing one does have it's shortcomings. John --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I'm also bored of type 2 discussions, which makes me read less of the important topics as well... Mark On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me with the theory. Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is an obvious parallel between his case and mine. There are relevant issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems to private, and these relevant issues may be interesting. Colin's unusual reference to some solid path which cannot be yet discussed is annoying partly because it so obviously unfounded. If he had the proof (or a method),
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I'll vote for the split, but I'm concerned about exactly where the line is drawn. --Abram On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me with the theory. Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is an obvious parallel between his case and mine. There are relevant issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems to private, and these relevant issues may be interesting. Colin's unusual reference to some solid path which cannot be yet discussed is annoying partly because it so obviously unfounded. If he had the proof (or a method), then why isn't
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Indeed that is an issue... I appreciate the input from y'all on this topic ... now I'm going to let the responses settle in my brain for a week or so ;-) The nice thing, of course, is that the list has accumulated a community of people who are passionate and thoughtful about AGI issues. That is good to see! ben g On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 11:22 AM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: I'll vote for the split, but I'm concerned about exactly where the line is drawn. --Abram On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I completely agree that puzzles can be ever so much more interesting when you can successfully ignore that they cannot possibly lead to anything useful. Further, people who point out the reasons that they cannot succeed are really boors and should be censored. This entire thread should be entitled something like Psychiatric Censorship. I don't know why you are talking about **censorship**. The Internet is large. This email list is not intended for discussions of spiritual philosophy or biochemistry -- for example -- yet that does not constitute **censorship** in the usual sense, as there are many other forums in which to discuss those things. And the anti-digital-computer-AGI arguments presented on this list have, not in one instance, been significantly original. I and anyone else who has been around the AI community awhile, has heard them all before. There is nothing to be gained by hearing them over and over again. If someone has a substantially new argument against the possibility of engineering AGI digital-computers, I would be personally interested to hear it. Just as I was intrigued by Penrose's anti-digital-AGI argument in terms of quantum gravity .. at first ... until I dug in more deeply and decided the evidence currently does not support it... Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson Add to that: Nothing will ever succeed if all objections are not first considered - Steve Richfield But this latter aphorism has the immediate logical conclusion that nothing will ever succeed. Because, there is an infinite number of possible objections to any statement, so long as one counts as different any two objections that differ slightly in wording, even if their meaning is essentially the same. What you don't seem to understand is that I, and most of the other AGI engineers on this list, have **already heard all these objections** --- we have read them in the primary research literature, when they were first proposed decades ago, and we don't really need to hear them repeated over and over again, usually in rougher and less precise form than the initial presentations in the literature. Our lack of agreement with these arguments is NOT because we have not heard them repeated often enough!! -- Ben G --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Ben Goertzel wrote: Colin, There's a difference between 1) Discussing in detail how you're going to build a non-digital-computer based AGI 2) Presenting general, hand-wavy theoretical ideas as to why digital-computer-based AGI can't work I would be vastly more interested in 1 than 2 ... and I suspect many others on the list feel similarly... -- Ben G RE: (1) OK. I'll deposit (1) in nice easy to digestible slices as and when appropriate... if that can be slotted into your original (1) for discussion every now and then on the forum ...Alrighty then! RE:(2) Well I'm just a messenger from science and other logicians who are adding to an ever growing pile labelled cognition is not computation which has had yet more stuff added this year. It seems to be invalid from so many angles it's hard to keep up with...But the 3 main existing papers I have already cited: I believe them. I also have 2 of my own in review. They are based on existing physics and empirical work...no handwavy anything. I didn't reach the position lightly, because it makes the problem about a million times harder... OK. The message delivered. I can do no more than that. The bottom line: If I am wrong and COMP is true, we get AGI. If COMP is false and I am right, we get AGI. Sounds good to me! Let's leave it there. If minimal postings to the above (1) fit into your original (1) then that makes me feel that the forum is sidling up to a scientifically sound enthusiasm for AGI. Strength in diversity. Think about it. One day a real AGI is going to read this email forum squabbling away- if those involved have the ideas that work, this discussion will part of their personal history, a gestation of sorts, and I hope the AGI will see the work of caring parents on a well informed mission dedicated to their very genesis. That's how I'd want my mum(s) and dad(s) to be. :-) I'd rather be in that lineage than not. Wouldn't you? Far more interesting. Gotta go write the AGI-09 paper, amongst 46782318 other thingsI won't be back without (1)-style deliverables. cheers Colin --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I emphatically agree. I want to see intelligent targeted discussion of AGI. Actually, I wouldn't mind the is AGI possible discussion if it was smart and focused, but I think that narrowing the topic would increase the quality. Joshua On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:01 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me with the theory. Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is an obvious parallel between his case and mine. There are relevant issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems to private, and these relevant issues may be interesting. Colin's unusual reference to some solid path
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Actually, there is another list, called [EMAIL PROTECTED], which has as frequent posters, Marvin Minsky and Eray Orzul, as well as several members of this list. I happened to be on a plane with Marvin on the way to Japan a couple years ago, and he expressed his frustration that the list was more philosophy than AI, so perhaps we could even convince him to join our new, more focused AGI list. I've also been reading the PhD theses of a few of his students, and each of them were focused on modeling an aspect of general intelligence. The first is a model of skill acquisition whose architecture explores the interaction between declarative and procedural knowledge [1], the second is a program for acquiring new cognitive capabilities through Piagetian-inspired development [2], a third is an architecture for reflective common-sense thinking [3] and a fourth is a model of bootstrapping communication between different mind agents who have access to different perceptions of the same phenomenon [4] Any of these theses would be fair game for analyzing what worked, what didn't, and how it could be improved. [1] A computer model of skill acquisition, Gerald J Sussman 1973 [2] Made-up minds: A constructivist approach to artificial intelligence. Gary Drescher 1991 [3] EM-ONE: An architecture for reflective common-sense thinking. Push Singh 2005 [4] Learning by Learning to Communicate. Jake Beal 2007 Sincerely, Jeremy On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On 10/15/2008 8:01 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: What are your thoughts on this? A narrower focus of the list would be better for me personally. I've been convinced for a long time that computer-based AGI is possible, and am working toward it. As such, I'm no longer interested in arguments about whether it is feasible or not. I skip over those postings in the list. I also skip over postings which are about a pet theory rather than a true reply to the original post. They tend to have the form your idea x will not work because it is in opposition to my theory y, which states insert complex description here. Certainly ones own ideas and theories should contribute to a reply, but they should not /be/ the reply. And the last category that I skip are discussions that have gone far into an area that I don't consider relevant to my own line of inquiry. But I think those are valuable contributions to the list, just not of immediate interest to me. Like a typical programmer, I tend to over-focus on what I'm working on. But what I find irrelevant may be spot on for someone else, or for me at some other time. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I almost never bother to read the list these days, but by coincidence I happened to take a look and discovered the below post. Since the complex systems problem is mentioned, I feel obliged to respond. The below suggestion is a perfect illustration of why I have given up on the list: it shows that the AGI list has become, basically, just a vehicle for the promotion of Ben's projects and preferences, while everything (and everyone) else is gradually being defined as a distraction. The so-called 'complex systems problem' perfectly fits the requirements for being included in the (1) category below: it is about the practical aspects of building AGIs, and it is backed up by solid argument. But, Ben, in all my attempts to discuss the topic with you, what I got back was sidetracking, confusion, obfuscation, remarks directed against me personally, and eventually a sweeping dismissal of the whole topic as (in your opinion) not coherent enough to be worth discussing. In short, what I got was your intuition and opinion on the subject just the sort of thing you don't want to see on this list. I will always be ready to debate the subject with you in a serious, methodical, structured way, so let me know if you ever want to do that. But in the mean time I think that it is just political maneuvering on your part, that you want to dump the CSP into the same bucket as all the silly, unscientific arguments about why AGI is 'impossible'. Sincerely, Richard Loosemore Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On 10/15/2008 08:01 AM,, Ben Goertzel wrote: ... It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever ... Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? Another emphatic +1 on this idea. Having both types of discussion on the same list invariably results in type 2 discussions drowning out type 1 discussions, as has happened on this list more and more in recent months. A lower volume list that is more tightly focused on type 1 topics would be much appreciated. I may still subscribe to the other list, but being able to filter the two lists into separate mail folders (which would be prioritized and read or skimmed or skipped accordingly) would save me a lot of time. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I do a lot of lurking around here, I read about 60% of what is posted and I would definitely love to see more engineering-specific content. I myself am working on a pet theory and have a substantial amount of code written... so to me, anything testable, downloadable, and provable hits a good chord with me. I too quickly get bored with the intellectual masturbation as someone once so eloquently put it. I don't like this hyper-abstract ping pong of inapplicable ideas, but rather the stuff I can translate into real code and results. Don't get me wrong however, there are still a lot of very useful discussions that take place here... but I would like to see a bit of a refocus (that is part of the reason why I lurk). - Joseph --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
2008/10/15 Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: What are your thoughts on this? I, for one, would welcome more Type 1s and fewer Type 2s. I realize, having observed AI related forums and lists for longer than I care to admit, that Type 2s constitute the principle mass of the gossip distribution. To be fair, Type 2 ideas do represent a strong attractor for those new to the field. Perhaps there ought to be an agi-engineers list, for those more interested in applied AGI rather than philosophical inquisitions. Such a list could be used for more detailed discussion, although care would need to be taken not to have the list dominated by any one particular project. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
And I remember the good old Usenet comp.ai.philosophy, though it's been a long time. I remember Dr. Minsky once taking time out of his day to post that I was wrong about something or other. That kind of thing can be a bunch silliness, it's true. But I'm not sure that the re-focusing is really so clear. Like Richard said, he wasn't just saying all approaches were impossible, just mostly, and he was trying to give recommendations about how to do it right. Same with Colin. It is only one perspective that sees them as really being anti, so I'm not sure there is a clear way to do this. And I say something because I was planning to write a bit of an essay about some general philosophical issues that plague AGI. Is that going to be off-topic? I understand and respect that if there are no positive recommendations about dealing with them, then they are really pretty useless, and that's the kind of thing that really makes these negative posts less pleasant. It wouldn't hurt to at least have it understood that it really isn't very useful to anyone to say something won't work, if you don't have a suggestion about what will. It's certainly a reasonable policy to consider. andi Jeremy: Actually, there is another list, called [EMAIL PROTECTED], which has as frequent posters, Marvin Minsky and Eray Orzul, as well as several members of this list. I happened to be on a plane with Marvin on the way to Japan a couple years ago, and he expressed his frustration that the list was more philosophy than AI, so perhaps we could even convince him to join our new, more focused AGI list. I've also been reading the PhD theses of a few of his students, and each of them were focused on modeling an aspect of general intelligence. The first is a model of skill acquisition whose architecture explores the interaction between declarative and procedural knowledge [1], the second is a program for acquiring new cognitive capabilities through Piagetian-inspired development [2], a third is an architecture for reflective common-sense thinking [3] and a fourth is a model of bootstrapping communication between different mind agents who have access to different perceptions of the same phenomenon [4] Any of these theses would be fair game for analyzing what worked, what didn't, and how it could be improved. [1] A computer model of skill acquisition, Gerald J Sussman 1973 [2] Made-up minds: A constructivist approach to artificial intelligence. Gary Drescher 1991 [3] EM-ONE: An architecture for reflective common-sense thinking. Push Singh 2005 [4] Learning by Learning to Communicate. Jake Beal 2007 Sincerely, Jeremy On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:29 AM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Ben, et al, Those who have been in the computer biz for more than just a few years know for a moral certainty that the difference between successful and failed projects very often lies in the feasibility study. Further, most of the largest computer debacles in history had early objectors on feasibility grounds, and these people were ignored. Rubbing my own crystal ball (momentary pause for polishing), I think I see the future of AGI, and it goes something like this: Like so many other grossly under-funded efforts, the present efforts here will either fail, or be superseded by someone else's highly funded effort that borrows heavily from your work. My BIG concern is whether a failure here will poison other future efforts for decades to come, much as perceptrons and shallow parsing were poisoned. I believe that the following path that you are apparent on will be COMPLETELY disastrous, not only to your own efforts, but very likely to the entire future of AGI: 1. Fail to advance any substantial argument of feasibility. 2. Refuse to directly address various challenges on feasibility grounds advanced by others. 3. Completely cut off all feasibility discussion. 4. Fail for any of the countless reasons that have been discussed here on this forum, not to mention personal limitations (time, money, health, etc). Note here that it is VERY important that if you fail, that the failure NOT be directly attributable to AGI, but rather be to flaws in your particular approach. Hiding these flaws only dooms the future of AGI. The present format lays these bare and presents no such problems. If you do indeed cement this questionable path, AGI's only apparent long-term hope for success is that you fall into obscurity and are completely forgotten, not that I necessarily think that this will happen. Hopefully you can see that it is in no one's best interest to effectively present the world with a choice between you and AGI, which the decision you are now considering could do. Also, addressing Terren Suydam's comments, no potential investor would EVER give anyone a dime, who had cut off feasibility discussion. Such a decision will forever cut you off from future investment money, probably for everything that you will ever do, and hence doom your efforts to obscurity no matter how great your technical success might be. But, what the heck, these are all just feasibility arguments, and you want to cut these off. May I suggest that you ask people to put something like [agi feasibility] in their subject lines and allow things to otherwise continue as they are. Then, when you fail, it won't poison other AGI efforts. Perhaps Matt or someone would like to separately monitor those postings. Steve Richfield === On 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Richard, One of the mental practices I learned while trying to save my first marriage (an effort that ultimately failed) was: when criticized, rather than reacting emotionally, to analytically reflect on whether the criticism is valid. If it's valid, then I accept it and evaluate it I should make changes; if not, then I try not to take it personally, as it's just a wrong belief on someone else's part. Applying this method to your statement The below suggestion is a perfect illustration of why I have given up on the list: it shows that the AGI list has become, basically, just a vehicle for the promotion of Ben's projects and preferences, while everything (and everyone) else is gradually being defined as a distraction. I conclude that this is just an unfounded, incorrect accusation. What I suggested (as a **possibility to be evaluated and discussed**) was to focus the list's attention on **issues related to creating AGI in the near term, conditional on the hypothetical assumption that this is possible**. This does NOT mean I want to focus the list on my own work. Quite the contrary. If any thread gets too particular about OpenCog or OpenCog Prime, I direct it to the OpenCog list. You are not responding to what I said, but rather to a subtext that you inferred was there. But your inference was wrong. Personally -- as a list participant rather than a list owner -- my preference would be for discussions to focus on constructive analysis of various approaches to creating AGI in the near term. Actually I get tired of explaining my own approaches and am really more interested in reading about details of others' approaches. Discussing my own approaches on this list gets tiresome sometimes because it involves repeatedly summarizing in emails things that are already discussed in books, papers and wikis ... but I do so when it seems the best way to answer a question someone poses. However, as list owner, I want to take into account the preferences of the community and not just my own personal preferences -- so if there is wide interest in discussion of topics that don't amuse me much (e.g. repeated discussion of whether quantum-gravity-computing is needed for AGI, whether Turing machines can be conscious, etc.) then I am quite content to have these discussions on the list. I don't need to be personally interested in every discussion that occurs here. I want to stress that I **do** find foundational philosophical discussions worthwhile, and I discuss a lot of such issues in my own writings. I've just noticed that these sorts of discussions seem to be drowning out more concrete AGI discussions lately, and wondered if this is what the community wants. The so-called 'complex systems problem' perfectly fits the requirements for being included in the (1) category below: it is about the practical aspects of building AGIs, and it is backed up by solid argument. To me, the complex systems problem as you define it illustrates the difficulty of actually dividing threads into two categories as I attempted to do. My own feeling was that *part* of the complex-systems-problem thread focused usefully on issues related to alternative approaches to creating AGI. On the other hand, a large part of that thread seemed to me to be dominated by repetitive, uninteresting philosophical discussions centered on your harsh criticisms of other peoples' approaches, your unusual definitions of terms like complexity and emergence and so forth. Personally, I thought that thread was worthwhile overall, even though most of the particular messages within it were sort of frustrating, due to the emotional tone as much as the contents... -- Ben G --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
By the way, I'm avoiding responding to this thread till a little time has passed and a larger number of lurkers have had time to pipe up if they wish to... ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:07 PM, Bob Mottram [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: 2008/10/15 Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]: What are your thoughts on this? I, for one, would welcome more Type 1s and fewer Type 2s. I realize, having observed AI related forums and lists for longer than I care to admit, that Type 2s constitute the principle mass of the gossip distribution. To be fair, Type 2 ideas do represent a strong attractor for those new to the field. Perhaps there ought to be an agi-engineers list, for those more interested in applied AGI rather than philosophical inquisitions. Such a list could be used for more detailed discussion, although care would need to be taken not to have the list dominated by any one particular project. --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Certain aspects of agi-philosophy are of course fascinating. For instance, I've always been pretty much obsessed with the hard problem of qualia (why is red red ?, etc.). However, I feel most of these aspects are not crucial to building an AGI with computers. I agree therefore with the re-focusing. On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 11:01 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi-philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved ... no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on this list. However, I don't think discussions of the form I have all the answers, but they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha are particularly useful. So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me with the theory. Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is an obvious parallel between his case and mine. There are relevant issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems to private, and these relevant
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I at least glance at all posts but prefer to read, write and otherwise participate in those which: discuss how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people That's why I came over from the SL4 list when this list was founded. -Steve Stephen L. Reed Artificial Intelligence Researcher http://texai.org/blog http://texai.org 3008 Oak Crest Ave. Austin, Texas, USA 78704 512.791.7860 --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I'm in the same situation as Joseph and I agree with him. I think almost everything mailed here is useful in some way, but a division would be fine so we can focus on what is more important to us. = Rafael C.P. = On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:49 PM, Joseph Henry [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I do a lot of lurking around here, I read about 60% of what is posted and I would definitely love to see more engineering-specific content. I myself am working on a pet theory and have a substantial amount of code written... so to me, anything testable, downloadable, and provable hits a good chord with me. I too quickly get bored with the intellectual masturbation as someone once so eloquently put it. I don't like this hyper-abstract ping pong of inapplicable ideas, but rather the stuff I can translate into real code and results. Don't get me wrong however, there are still a lot of very useful discussions that take place here... but I would like to see a bit of a refocus (that is part of the reason why I lurk). - Joseph -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
From: Ben Goertzel [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. Potentially, there could be another list, something like agi- philosophy, devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. I'd go for 2 lists. Sometimes after working intensely on something concrete and specific one wants to step back and theorize. And then particular AGI approaches may be going down the wrong trail and need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Also there are probably many people that wish to speak up on various topics but are silent due to them not wanting to clutter the main AGI list. I would guess that there are some valuable contributions that need to be made but are not directly related to some particular well-defined applicable subject. You could almost do 3, AGI engineering, science and philosophy. We are all well aware of the philosophical directions the list takes though I see the science and engineering getting a bit too intertwined as well. Although with this sort of thing it's hard to avoid. Even so, with all this the messages in the one list still are grouped by subject... I mean people can parse. But to simplify moderation and organization, etc.. John --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
As somebody who considers consciousness, qualia, and so on to be poorly-defined anthropomorphic mind-traps, I am not interested in any such discussions. Other people are, and I have no problem ignoring them, like I ignore a number of individual cranks and critics who post things of similarly low interest.I think a forum divided into topic areas would be better than this mailing list for many different reasons, but if you don't want to move to that setup and if you want to police the posts more actively (this list, according to agiri.org, is already supposed to be about technical aspects of particular AGI approaches), it won't bother me. I do like to see different perspectives on issues of common interest if they are of high quality. That is subjective, though. For example, I consider Matt Mahoney and Richard Loosemore to contribute very interesting material, even if I do not agree with their conclusions. Others may consider Mike Tintner and Steve Richfield to have useful things to say, when I do not. Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:18:14 -0400From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list By the way, I'm avoiding responding to this thread till a little time has passed and a larger number of lurkers have had time to pipe up if they wish to...ben --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
There is already a forum site on agiri.org . Nobody uses it So, just setting up a forum site is not the answer... ben g On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:58 PM, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: As somebody who considers consciousness, qualia, and so on to be poorly-defined anthropomorphic mind-traps, I am not interested in any such discussions. Other people are, and I have no problem ignoring them, like I ignore a number of individual cranks and critics who post things of similarly low interest. I think a forum divided into topic areas would be better than this mailing list for many different reasons, but if you don't want to move to that setup and if you want to police the posts more actively (this list, according to agiri.org, is already supposed to be about technical aspects of particular AGI approaches), it won't bother me. I do like to see different perspectives on issues of common interest if they are of high quality. That is subjective, though. For example, I consider Matt Mahoney and Richard Loosemore to contribute very interesting material, even if I do not agree with their conclusions. Others may consider Mike Tintner and Steve Richfield to have useful things to say, when I do not. -- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 15:18:14 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list By the way, I'm avoiding responding to this thread till a little time has passed and a larger number of lurkers have had time to pipe up if they wish to... ben -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I bet if you tried very hard to move the group to the forum (for example, by only posting there yourself and periodically urging people to use it), people could be moved there. Right now, nobody posts there because nobody else posts there; if one wants one's stuff to be read, one sends it to the high traffic location unless there's a reason not to. Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:00:45 -0400From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list There is already a forum site on agiri.org . Nobody uses it So, just setting up a forum site is not the answer...ben g --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Probably, but I don't have the time and energy to spend a significant fraction of my time starting a public AGI forum right now... On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 4:09 PM, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I bet if you tried very hard to move the group to the forum (for example, by only posting there yourself and periodically urging people to use it), people could be moved there. Right now, nobody posts there because nobody else posts there; if one wants one's stuff to be read, one sends it to the high traffic location unless there's a reason not to. -- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:00:45 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list There is already a forum site on agiri.org . Nobody uses it So, just setting up a forum site is not the answer... ben g -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 7:44 PM, John G. Rose wrote: I'd go for 2 lists. Sometimes after working intensely on something concrete and specific one wants to step back and theorize. And then particular AGI approaches may be going down the wrong trail and need to step back and look at things from a different perspective. Even so, with all this the messages in the one list still are grouped by subject... I mean people can parse. But to simplify moderation and organization, etc.. I agree. I support more type 1 discussions. I have felt for some time that an awful lot of time-wasting has been going on here. I think this list should mostly be for computer tech discussion about methods of achieving specific results on the path(s) to AGI. I agree that there should be a place for philosophical discussion, either on a separate list, or uniquely identified in the Subject so that technicians can filter off such discussions. Some people may need to discuss philosophic alternative paths to AGI, to help clarify their thoughts. But if so, they are probably many years away from producing working code and might be hindering others who are further down the path of their own design. Two lists are probably best. Then if technicians want a break from coding, they can dip into the philosophy list, to offer advice or maybe find new ideas to play with. And, as John said. it would save on moderation time. BillK --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
How about this: Those who *do* think it's worthwhile to move to the forum: Instead of posting email responses to the mailing list, post them to the forum and then post a link to the response to the email list, thus encouraging threads to continue in the more advanced venue. I shall do this myself from now on. I have not participated much on this list lately due to my current work schedule but will make an effort to do so. If used, I do think the forum could help solve some of these META issues. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Oh, also: When I try to register a form account, it says:Sorry, an error occurred. If you are unsure on how to use a feature, or don't know why you got this error message, try looking through the help files for more information. The error returned was: To register, please send your request to [EMAIL PROTECTED] Please include your desired username.A random password will be sent back to you. --- A forum that won't let people register isn't likely to catch on. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On Thu, Oct 16, 2008 at 12:30 AM, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: How about this: Those who *do* think it's worthwhile to move to the forum: Instead of posting email responses to the mailing list, post them to the forum and then post a link to the response to the email list, thus encouraging threads to continue in the more advanced venue. I shall do this myself from now on. I have not participated much on this list lately due to my current work schedule but will make an effort to do so. If used, I do think the forum could help solve some of these META issues. I prefer mailing list, because it has a convenient mechanism for receiving and managing messages. Messages are grouped by threads through the magic of gmail, I see every update and know which threads are boring and which are not, I have filters set up to mark the potentially more interesting threads. Forums are more difficult, and I don't want another workflow to worry about. Using notifications complicates access, and transparent notifications that post all the content to e-mail make forum equivalent to a mailing list anyway. Mailing list also forces better coherence to the discussion. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Not a single one of our current investors (dozen) or potential investors have used AGI lists to evaluate our project (or the competition) Peter Voss a2i2 From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:25 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
why don't you start AGI-tech on the forum? enough people have expressed an interest - simply reconfirm - and start posting there - Original Message - From: Derek Zahn To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 9:09 PM Subject: RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list I bet if you tried very hard to move the group to the forum (for example, by only posting there yourself and periodically urging people to use it), people could be moved there. Right now, nobody posts there because nobody else posts there; if one wants one's stuff to be read, one sends it to the high traffic location unless there's a reason not to. -- Date: Wed, 15 Oct 2008 16:00:45 -0400 From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list There is already a forum site on agiri.org . Nobody uses it So, just setting up a forum site is not the answer... ben g -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I also agree with Vladimir, mailing list format is more convenient and more fun. On 10/15/08, Eric Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also agree the list should focus on specific approaches and not on hifalutin denials of achievability. I don't know why non-human, specifically electronic intelligence is such a hot button issue for some folks. It's like they'd be happier if it never happened. But why? On 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Derek, I am in FULL AGREEMENT. I by far prefer the forum. Frankly I get tired of scrolling through tons and tons of layered quotes, and poor formatting. (just a personal preference though). But if we did move to the forum I would like to see some LaTeX support. I think that would be a blessing! The forum provides a far superior form of organization I think. I don't like having to constantly re-re-re-re-delete uninteresting threads that keep popping up in my inbox. I don't really understand why moving to the forum presents any sort of technical or logistical issues... just personal ones from some of the participants here. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Peter, do you think they would be less overwhelmed if they were given the option of looking at the same content through the use of a forum? I think it would be far easier to wade through... - Joseph --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I also agree the list should focus on specific approaches and not on hifalutin denials of achievability. I don't know why non-human, specifically electronic intelligence is such a hot button issue for some folks. It's like they'd be happier if it never happened. But why? On 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
From: BillK [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] I agree. I support more type 1 discussions. I have felt for some time that an awful lot of time-wasting has been going on here. I think this list should mostly be for computer tech discussion about methods of achieving specific results on the path(s) to AGI. I agree that there should be a place for philosophical discussion, either on a separate list, or uniquely identified in the Subject so that technicians can filter off such discussions. Some people may need to discuss philosophic alternative paths to AGI, to help clarify their thoughts. But if so, they are probably many years away from producing working code and might be hindering others who are further down the path of their own design. Two lists are probably best. Then if technicians want a break from coding, they can dip into the philosophy list, to offer advice or maybe find new ideas to play with. And, as John said. it would save on moderation time. Yes and someone else could be moderator for type 2 list, someone could be nominated. Then Ben could be the super mod and reign in when he has a bad day :) I nominate Tinter. Just kidding. John --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: **JUNK** Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
no From: Joseph Henry [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:56 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: **JUNK** Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list Peter, do you think they would be less overwhelmed if they were given the option of looking at the same content through the use of a forum? I think it would be far easier to wade through... - Joseph _ agi | https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Modify Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com No virus found in this incoming message. Checked by AVG - http://www.avg.com Version: 8.0.173 / Virus Database: 270.8.0/1722 - Release Date: 10/13/2008 7:50 AM --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Steve Richfield said: May I suggest that you ask people to put something like [agi feasibility] in their subject lines and allow things to otherwise continue as they are. Then, when you fail, it won't poison other AGI efforts. This is a strange and quite profoundly disheartening statement. What would compel you to use such a tone? For my part I'd like to see less trolls fed, and more bugs squished On 10/15/08, Eric Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also agree with Vladimir, mailing list format is more convenient and more fun. On 10/15/08, Eric Burton [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: I also agree the list should focus on specific approaches and not on hifalutin denials of achievability. I don't know why non-human, specifically electronic intelligence is such a hot button issue for some folks. It's like they'd be happier if it never happened. But why? On 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I don't really understand why moving to the forum presents any sort of technical or logistical issues... just personal ones from some of the participants here. It's a psychological issue. I rarely allocate time to participate in forums, but if I decide to pipe a mailing list to my inbox, then I often wind up making time to respond to messages ... even if this winds up taking more total time than participating in a forum would. Not too rational perhaps, but I suspect others may have similar psychology... -- Ben --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
*** Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). *** FYI, Novamente has been described in a number of peer-reviewed publications ... which is where I point potential investors interested in our core tech, certainly not to mailing list archives ;-) ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 4:25 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
All that means is that they weren't as diligent as they could have been. Rule number one in investing is do your homework. Obviously there are other sources of information than this list, but this is the next best thing to journal-mediated peer review. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 4:51 PM Not a single one of our current investors (dozen) or potential investors have used AGI lists to evaluate our project (or the competition) Peter Voss a2i2 From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:25 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Terren, What an investor will typically do, if they want to be very careful, is hire a few domain experts and have them personally evaluate the technology of the firm they are consider investing in. I have played this role for some investors considering other technology investments, now and then... -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All that means is that they weren't as diligent as they could have been. Rule number one in investing is do your homework. Obviously there are other sources of information than this list, but this is the next best thing to journal-mediated peer review. --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 4:51 PM Not a single one of our current investors (dozen) or potential investors have used AGI lists to evaluate our project (or the competition) Peter Voss a2i2 *From:* Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] *Sent:* Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:25 PM *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Subject:* Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration). For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On *Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED]* wrote
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
One day the process of discovery will be automated, and all we'll have to deal with will be graphs and charts and other abstract representations of aggregated data, not reams and reams of undigested text. Until that point I guess it's wise to do whatever you can. I for one welcome our angel-investor overlords! --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
If ruby is an option, maybe this is a solution: http://rforum.andreas-s.net/. It's a hybrid web forum + mailing list. Alternatively you can do the same with YahooGroups or GoogleGroups, but they haven't all the common web forum functionalities. = Rafael C.P. = --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Steve, I don't know why you are taking this opportunity to attack my own particular approach to AGI, because that is **not** what this thread is about. I am talking about -- hypothetically, I'm not at all sure it's a good idea, I'm just raising the issue for discussion!! -- separating two different **categories** of discussion: 1) Specifics of attempts to engineer human-level AGI on current computers 2) General discussion of the philosophy of AGI, and the in-principle viability of engineering AGI on current computers My own research is not the only thing falling into Category 1. And, as it happens, I have published a number of books and papers falling into Category 2 So, I'm not trying to force my ideas on anyone nor suggesting to constrain the discussion in line with my personal opinions -- I'm suggesting potentially, maybe, that it might make more sense to have some way of separating the two broad **categories** of discussion defined above as 1 and 2. I am personally interested in both 1 and 2, but I'm interested in devoting more of my time and attention to 1 rather than 2 at this stage in my life. I keep trying to be VERY clear on these points yet people keep misinterpreting me due to thinking I have some sort of hidden agenda. It's not the case. -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 3:26 PM, Steve Richfield [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Ben, et al, Those who have been in the computer biz for more than just a few years know for a moral certainty that the difference between successful and failed projects very often lies in the feasibility study. Further, most of the largest computer debacles in history had early objectors on feasibility grounds, and these people were ignored. Rubbing my own crystal ball (momentary pause for polishing), I think I see the future of AGI, and it goes something like this: Like so many other grossly under-funded efforts, the present efforts here will either fail, or be superseded by someone else's highly funded effort that borrows heavily from your work. My BIG concern is whether a failure here will poison other future efforts for decades to come, much as perceptrons and shallow parsing were poisoned. I believe that the following path that you are apparent on will be COMPLETELY disastrous, not only to your own efforts, but very likely to the entire future of AGI: 1. Fail to advance any substantial argument of feasibility. 2. Refuse to directly address various challenges on feasibility grounds advanced by others. 3. Completely cut off all feasibility discussion. 4. Fail for any of the countless reasons that have been discussed here on this forum, not to mention personal limitations (time, money, health, etc). Note here that it is VERY important that if you fail, that the failure NOT be directly attributable to AGI, but rather be to flaws in your particular approach. Hiding these flaws only dooms the future of AGI. The present format lays these bare and presents no such problems. If you do indeed cement this questionable path, AGI's only apparent long-term hope for success is that you fall into obscurity and are completely forgotten, not that I necessarily think that this will happen. Hopefully you can see that it is in no one's best interest to effectively present the world with a choice between you and AGI, which the decision you are now considering could do. Also, addressing Terren Suydam's comments, no potential investor would EVER give anyone a dime, who had cut off feasibility discussion. Such a decision will forever cut you off from future investment money, probably for everything that you will ever do, and hence doom your efforts to obscurity no matter how great your technical success might be. But, what the heck, these are all just feasibility arguments, and you want to cut these off. May I suggest that you ask people to put something like [agi feasibility] in their subject lines and allow things to otherwise continue as they are. Then, when you fail, it won't poison other AGI efforts. Perhaps Matt or someone would like to separately monitor those postings. Steve Richfield === On 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand
RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Unfortunately there's going to be funding thrown at AGI that has nothing to do with any sort of great theory or concrete engineering plans. Software and technology funding many times doesn't work that way. It's rather arbitrary. I hope the right people get the right opportunities. John --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Interesting ... I didn't find any page describing its features though. (Yes, I know I could sign up for the Ruby forums and play with it... maybe I will) How does the mailing list/forum integration work w/ rforum? On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 6:11 PM, Rafael C.P. [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: If ruby is an option, maybe this is a solution: http://rforum.andreas-s.net/ . It's a hybrid web forum + mailing list. Alternatively you can do the same with YahooGroups or GoogleGroups, but they haven't all the common web forum functionalities. = Rafael C.P. = -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Split seems reasonable to me. Right now this is the closest there is to a venue specifically for AGI engineering, whereas there are other places to discuss AGI philosophy. (For example, AGI philosophy would presumably be on topic for extropy-chat.) As for the suggestions that we regress to the primitive and impoverished web forum medium, the ideal would be a system that provides both a mailing list and forum interfaces, so that each subscriber can choose his preferred interface. I'd be surprised if there isn't something available off the shelf that can do this by now. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:54 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: The below suggestion is a perfect illustration of why I have given up on the list: it shows that the AGI list has become, basically, just a vehicle for the promotion of Ben's projects and preferences, while everything (and everyone) else is gradually being defined as a distraction. For the record, this is of course utter rubbish, and I say that as someone who disagrees with a number of aspects of Ben's approach. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
Honestly, if the idea is to wave our hands at one another's ideas then let's at least see something on the table. I'm happy to discuss my work with natural language parsing and mood evaluation for low-bandwidth human mimicry, for instance, because it has amounted to thousands of lines of occasionally-fungible code thus far. It's not on sourceforge because it's still a mess but I'll pastebin it if you ask. I don't understand how people wallow in their theories for so long that they become a matter of dogma, with the need for proof removed, and the urgency of producing and testing an implementation subverted by smugness and egotism. The people here worth listening to don't have to make excuses. They can show their work. I see a lot of evasiveness and circular arguments going on, where people are seeking some kind of theoretical high-ground without giving away anything that could bolster another theory. It's time-wastingly self-interested. We won't achieve consensus through half-explained denials and reversals. This list isn't a battle of theorems for supremacy. It is for collaboration. My 2 cents. The internet archive seems to have shed about half the material I produced since the nineties, so I do apologize for being so pissed off _ On 10/15/08, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Unfortunately there's going to be funding thrown at AGI that has nothing to do with any sort of great theory or concrete engineering plans. Software and technology funding many times doesn't work that way. It's rather arbitrary. I hope the right people get the right opportunities. John --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
If you're trying to get an idea funded, and you're representing yourself in a public forum, then it is wise to approach the forum *as if* potential funding sources are reading, or may some day read. Which is also to say, a forum such as this one is potentially valuable for investors and engineers alike, even if they're not currently used that way. What investors currently or typically do is beside the point. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 5:09 PM Terren, What an investor will typically do, if they want to be very careful, is hire a few domain experts and have them personally evaluate the technology of the firm they are consider investing in. I have played this role for some investors considering other technology investments, now and then... -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 5:06 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: All that means is that they weren't as diligent as they could have been. Rule number one in investing is do your homework. Obviously there are other sources of information than this list, but this is the next best thing to journal-mediated peer review. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Peter Voss [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 4:51 PM Not a single one of our current investors (dozen) or potential investors have used AGI lists to evaluate our project (or the competition) Peter Voss a2i2 From: Terren Suydam [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, October 15, 2008 1:25 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list This is a publicly accessible forum with searchable archives... you don't necessarily have to be subscribed and inundated to find those nuggets. I don't know any funding decision makers myself, but if I were in control of a budget I'd be using every resource at my disposal to clarify my decision. If I were considering Novamente for example I'd be looking for exactly the kind of exchanges you and Richard Loosemore (for example) have had on the list, to gain a better understanding of possible criticism, and because others may be able to articulate such criticism far better than me. Obviously the same goes for anyone else on the list who would look for funding... I'd want to see you defend your ideas, especially in the absence of peer-reviewed journals (something the JAGI hopes to remedy obv). Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 3:37 PM Terren, I know a good number of VC's and government and private funding decision makers... and believe me, **none** of them has remotely enough extra time to wade through the amount of text that flows on this list, to find the nuggets of real intellectual interest!!! -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: One other important point... if I were a potential venture capitalist or some other sort of funding decision-maker, I would be on this list and watching the debate. I'd be looking for intelligent defense of (hopefully) intelligent criticism to increase my confidence about the decision to fund. This kind of forum also allows you to sort of advertise your approach to those who are new to the game, particularly young folks who might one day be valuable contributors, although I suppose that's possible in the more tightly-focused forum as well. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Terren Suydam [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:29 AM Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
I am also bored of type '2' conversations. --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 8:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called complex systems problem, or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list
My two cents. FWIW: Anyone who seriously doubts whether AGI is possible will never contribute anything of value to those who wish to build an AGI. Anyone wishing to build an AGI should stop wasting time reading such literature including postings (let alone replying to them). This is not advocating blind or unscientific dogma, sometimes you just have to make a choice in belief systems and no one achieved anything of greatness or even just significance by listening to those who say it can't be done. Although reading the various philosophical arguments against AI was a useful step in my AGI education, I went through that phase using books and internet articles. Several times I was on the verge of unsubscribing from the list because of those discussions (and all of the ego-maniacal mudslinging, flamewars and troll-postings) - I agree fully with Harry. I want to see new ideas, experiences on what worked and didnt work, who's working on what approaches, suggestions for ways forward, references to new resources or tools etc. So when e.g. Ben 'criticises' Richard Loosemore's model, I'm highly interested (because Richard's way of thinking is in some aspects much closer to mine than Ben's approach), when Richard replies emotionally, I just skip his reply but when he puts forward a rational argument it is extremely interesting to me. So I vote to stop all philosophical arguments on the possibility of AGI on this list, even though it is a necessary, or better, crucial part of any AGIer's development stage... incidentally: storing any AI reading in my AI philosophy folder is typically equivalent to utter condemnation, despite the fact that philosophy is one of my greatest interests. Note that you should discount my posting somewhat due to the fact that I haven't posting anything for quite a while but that's because I am rather focussing my little time on building a first generation prototype. = Jean-Paul On 2008/10/15 at 18:12, Harry Chesley [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On 10/15/2008 8:01 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote: What are your thoughts on this? A narrower focus of the list would be better for me personally. I've been convinced for a long time that computer-based AGI is possible, and am working toward it. As such, I'm no longer interested in arguments about whether it is feasible or not. I skip over those postings in the list. I also skip over postings which are about a pet theory rather than a true reply to the original post. They tend to have the form your idea x will not work because it is in opposition to my theory y, which states insert complex description here. Certainly ones own ideas and theories should contribute to a reply, but they should not /be/ the reply. And the last category that I skip are discussions that have gone far into an area that I don't consider relevant to my own line of inquiry. But I think those are valuable contributions to the list, just not of immediate interest to me. Like a typical programmer, I tend to over-focus on what I'm working on. But what I find irrelevant may be spot on for someone else, or for me at some other time. --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com __ UNIVERSITY OF CAPE TOWN This e-mail is subject to the UCT ICT policies and e-mail disclaimer published on our website at http://www.uct.ac.za/about/policies/emaildisclaimer/ or obtainable from +27 21 650 4500. This e-mail is intended only for the person(s) to whom it is addressed. If the e-mail has reached you in error, please notify the author. If you are not the intended recipient of the e-mail you may not use, disclose, copy, redirect or print the content. If this e-mail is not related to the business of UCT it is sent by the sender in the sender's individual capacity. _ --- 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=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
