I am re-posting this because I first sent it out an hour ago and it is not yet showing on my email
-----Original Message----- RE: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? ---re Loosemore's complexity argument Richard, I read the article in your blog (http://susaro.com/) cited below entitled "The Complex Systems Problem (Part 1)". I think it contains some important food for thought --- but it is so one sided as to reduce its own credibility. You don't mention that there are many relatively stable "Richard-complex" systems that have proven themselves to function in a relatively reliable --- although not always desirable --- way, over thousands of years. Take market economies. They have shown surprising stability --- despite having suffered many perturbations, such as wars and famines --- over thousands of years in many very different settings --- varying from ancient Rome or Han China --- to barter economies in primitive cultures --- to modern financial markets --- to opinion markets --- to markets used in AI systems for attention allocation. As people from the Sante Fe institute have pointed out, economies show amazing emergent effects, such as --- dealing with complex issues like allocating resources --- producing chains of suppliers for ingredients and parts at various states along the production process --- and determining who has which job --- much better than any planner. And they involve hundreds to billions of independent actors each with non-linear transactions --- such as decisions to buy or sell --- with many other actors. This does not mean markets are not without disastrous instabilities --- just that the damage of their instabilities are minor compared to the overall benefit of their operation. And now that we are beginning to learn how to better control their instability, they are even less unstable than they have generally been in the past. (Although currently the world markets are cruising for a bruising because of things such as of America's insane borrowing, and the massive percent of our equity that has gone into the hands of speculative and manipulative hedge funds.) Or take the brain itself. It is a complex system and yet it remains relatively stably within reasonable bounds over the vast majority of the lifetimes of the billions of people who have lived. In large part it does, because of mechanisms for damping its behavior, and something equivalent --- in the basil-ganglia and thalamus --- to markets for competing thoughts for the allocation of the resource of attention and the potential for spreading activation. You don't mention that multiple AI and brain simulation programs --- that have many or all of the features you imply are almost certain to produce chaos --- have been run without such chaos. You don't mention that you, yourself, agreed in a response to a previous email from me months ago that Hofstadter's Copycat, is, to a certain extent, a "Richard-complex" program, and yet has shown itself to be quite reliable in producing analogies that appear in some way appropriate. And, finally, I found it odd that you ended this article citing Ben Goertzel as your major evidence AGI systems such as the one he is designing are almost certain to run into disastrous complexity Gotcha's, when he, himself, does not --- and you failed to point that out in your article. SO SINCE YOUR ANALYSIS TOTALLY FAILS TO DISCUSS THE OTHER SIDE OF THE ARGUMENT IT IS MAKING, IT HAS TO BE TAKE AS LESS THAN DEFINITIVE DISCUSSION OF ITS SUBJECT. Ed Porter P.S. Unfortunately, because of work, this is the end of my posting to this list for at least today, and perhaps multiple days. But I hope the rest of you carry on, and I will try to at least read all the posts in this thread. -----Original Message----- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Monday, April 21, 2008 10:02 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] WHAT ARE THE MISSING CONCEPTUAL PIECES IN AGI? --- recent input and responses Ed Porter wrote: > Richard, > > I read you "Complex Systems, Artificial Intelligence and Theoretical > Psychology" article, and I still don't know what your are talking about > other than the game of life. I know you make a distinction between Richard > and non-Richard complexity. I understand computational irreducibility. And > I understand that how complex a program is, in terms of its number of lines > is not directly related to how varied and unpredictable its output will be. > > I would appreciate it, Richard, if you could explain what you mean by > Richard complexity vs. non-Richard complexity." [?] Maybe you should get to me offlist about this. I don't quite know that means. Did you read the blog post on this topic? It was supposed to be more accessible than the paper. Blog is at susaro.com Richard Loosemore ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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