A few thoughts... Seems the "disconnect" Jim mentioned, might reside in the knowing part, the consciousness, and not our actions and our thoughts.
This morning I was observing an old (highly-experienced cat walking around objects on a table. The cat had known this table for the most part of his natural life. He walked his elective route through the obstacle course of objects. The organization of the objects on the table differ, and thus changes radically a few times during the day. Some objects are added. Some are replaced. All objects may be relocated. What surprised me was as if the old cat was examining and mapping this space, as if for the very first time he had encountered it in his life. However, a number of the existing objects had changed position slightly over the past weeks, but should be familiar to the cat by now. When he was done walking the table 3 times, the cat went to the corner of the table and sat down with his back towards the center of the table, seemingly reflecting about what he had just discovered. Within 5 minutes, that cat taught me an amazing thing about reason and logic within the universe. He also showed me an elementary error in my understanding of our universe. Humanity is overly concerned with change, and how to manage it, or cope with it, or avoid it. However, change is but a reorganization of existing and latent objects within a constant boundary. As Prof. Handy used to assert; it's just the cheese being moved around. The boundary (our earthly, reasoning universe) or specifically the table we spend our days on and around, did not change at all. This has relevance to logic and reason. Please bear with me. I think, it is only when the spacetime continuum boundary is changed significantly (say more than 17%), that change becomes a systemic factor the mind has to contend with in terms of applying system resources. Until that threshold is reached, reasoning may prevail that there is no "real" need to activate the jet engines, to overburden the consciousness. One information-engineering tutor of mine called that ability to sustain without thought, competency. And competency, as we know, is acquired via repetition. And eventually, there is no need to think about what has to be done anymore. No reason for it exists. Action becomes an instinctive act. Let me return to Jim's thought. So, all brain activity obviously occurs in the neuronal network. Logic may be the policy-management system of such activity. Reason the motivational factor. Both logic and reason develop via a fully-recursive system. That is; open and closed-loop feedback driven. The effect of the feedback system is to encourage the overall system to a point of optimal efficiency, or effective complexity. It is to help ensure the survival of the entity by continuously positioning its net mind (like a neural GPS system) within a probabilistic success range on a stochastic scale. Just my perspective on it, but not my cleverness. The notion is supported by Gell-Mann and neural research. Given that all the data is present in memory, logic may invoke whatever event data it requires, even "past lessons learned", to try and process it for different logical purposes, including systemic compliance. However, the notion that neural forgetfulness activates as soon as data is recorded, diminishing the recall over a period of tens of hours may indicate that a property of data plasticity. I think, the classification of data (as a logical function) may directly affect the retention (or knowledge obsolescence) factor of memory. In other words, in a brain driven by well-developed logic we may find a significant improvement in reasoning potential, which may be evidenced via quick learning, optimized classification, low-error-rate feedback, and steady improvement in competency. In such a brain, active plasticity may be observable, which may be evidenced by parallel reasoning, or adaptive logicreasoning (there's an algorithm at work here). Logicreasoning- a discrete timespace continuum boundary - probably emerges as an mutative outcome of logic and reason within the system of consciousness. That could be the very event of knowing, which would be auto processed within memory. Rob ________________________________ From: Jim Bromer via AGI <[email protected]> Sent: Wednesday, 20 June 2018 10:28 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Discrete Methods are Not the Same as Logic I was just reading something about the strong disconnect between our actions and our thoughts about the principles and reasons we use to describe why we react the way we do. This may be so, but this does not show how we come to understand basic ideas about the world. This attempt to make a nearly total disconnect between reasons and our actual reactions misses something when it comes to explaining how we know anything, including how we learn to make decisions about something. One way to get around this problem is to say that it all takes place in neural networks which are not open to insight about the details. But there is another explanation which credits discrete reasoning with the ability to provide insight and direction and that is we are not able to consciously analyze all the different events that are occurring at a moment and so we probably are reacting to many different events which we could discuss as discrete events if we had the luxury to have them all brought to our conscious attention. So logic and personal principles are ideals which we can use to examine our reactions - and our insights - about the what is going on around us but it is unlikely that we can catalogue all the events that surround us and (partly) cause us to react the way we do. Jim Bromer On Wed, Jun 20, 2018 at 6:06 AM, Nanograte Knowledge Technologies via AGI <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: "As Julian Jaynes put it in his iconic book The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind Reasoning and logic are to each other as health is to medicine, or — better — as conduct is to morality. Reasoning refers to a gamut of natural thought processes in the everyday world. Logic is how we ought to think if objective truth is our goal — and the everyday world is very little concerned with objective truth. Logic is the science of the justification of conclusions we have reached by natural reasoning. My point here is that, for such natural reasoning to occur, consciousness is not necessary. The very reason we need logic at all is because most reasoning is not conscious at all." https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/mathematics-and-logic/ [https://s0.wp.com/i/blank.jpg]<https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/mathematics-and-logic/> Mathematics and logic | Peter Cameron's Blog<https://cameroncounts.wordpress.com/2010/01/03/mathematics-and-logic/> Apologies: this will be a long post, and there will be more to come. But it may be useful to you if you are getting to grips with logic: I have tried to keep the overall picture in view. cameroncounts.wordpress.com<http://cameroncounts.wordpress.com> ________________________________ From: Jim Bromer via AGI <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> Sent: Wednesday, 20 June 2018 12:01 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Discrete Methods are Not the Same as Logic Discrete statements are used in programming languages. So a symbol (a symbol phrase or sentence) can be used to represent both data and programming actions. Discrete Reasoning might be compared to something that has the potential to be more like an algorithm. (Of course, operational statements may be retained as data which can be run when needed) For an example of the value of Discrete Methods, let's suppose someone wanted more control over a neural network. Trying to look for logic in a neural network does not really make all that much sense if you want to find relationships between actions on the net and output. Using Discrete Methods makes a lot of sense. You might want to try fiddling with the weights of some of the nodes as the nn is running. If certain effects can be described (or sensed by some algorithm) then describing what was done and what effects were observed would be the next step in the research. Researchers are not usually able to start with detailed knowledge of exactly what is going on. So they need to start with descriptions of some actions they took and of what effects were observed. If these actions and effects can be categorized in some way then the chance that more effective observations will be obtained will increase. Jim Bromer On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 11:12 PM, Mike Archbold via AGI <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: > It sounds like you need both for AI, certainly there is always a place > for logic. What's "discrete reasoning"? > > On 6/18/18, Jim Bromer via AGI > <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: >> I am wondering about how Discrete Reasoning is different than Logic. I >> assume that Discrete Reasoning could be described, modelled or >> represented by Logic, but as a more practical method, logic would be a >> tool to use with Discrete Reasoning rather than as a representational >> substrate. >> >> Discrete Reasons and Discrete Reasoning can have meaning over and >> above the True False values of Logic (and the True False Relationships >> between combinations of Propositions.) >> >> Discrete Reasoning can have combinations that do not have a meaning or >> which do not have a clear meaning. This is one of the most important >> distinctions. >> >> It can be used in various combinations of hierarchies and/or in >> non-hierarchies. >> >> It can, for the most part, be used more freely with other modelling >> methods. >> >> Discrete Reasoning may be Context Sensitive in ways that produce >> ambiguities, both useful and confusing. >> >> Discrete Reasoning can be Active. So a statement about some subject >> might, for one example, suggest that you should change your thinking >> about (or representation of) the subject in a way that goes beyond >> some explicit propositional description about some object. >> >> You may be able to show that Logic can be used in a way to allow for >> all these effects, but I believe that there is a strong argument for >> focusing on Discrete Reasoning, as opposed to Logic, when you are >> working directly on AI. >> >> Jim Bromer Artificial General Intelligence List<https://agi.topicbox.com/latest> / AGI / see discussions<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi> + participants<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/members> + delivery options<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups> Permalink<https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tcc2adcdd20e1add4-M88d8ac7498296a6893be99b9> ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/Tcc2adcdd20e1add4-Mb2ff2505b37e8c30700bafa9 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups
