Wow, fascinating history! I know both Dean Radin and Ed May ... I haven't been active in empirical psi research but as you may know I edited the book "Evidence for Psi" with Damien Broderick a few years back, and have been lurking around the parapsychology community for quite a while...
This paper https://arxiv.org/abs/2005.04589 which is presented as AGI theory, actually originated in some discussions at the Psi Theory workshop held last year in Paris before the Parapsychology Association conference ... Dean was there though not Ed ... one question raised there was: If this physical universe is part of a higher-dimensional trans-physical world, what might be the "Hamiltonian" or other broadly-physics-ish dynamics of that broader world (which I call "euryphysical"). The algorithmic-information-al dynamics described in the above paper was originated in that direction though it is also relevant I think to AGI as in manifests in the physical universe... Starting at 49:00 or so of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JzlCYCAaMNw I gave a crude sketch of a path leading from Spencer Brown / Kauffmann "distinction" toward AGI theory, with the above stuff as part of that path Regarding your comments on the primacy of time vs. distinction, I think my intuition is more similar to Lou's ... Principles 13-16 as articulated here https://journals.sfu.ca/jnonlocality/index.php/jnonlocality/article/view/65 roughly outline how I suspect time and space emerge from underlying phenomena of distinction, pattern, information and so forth... -- Ben On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 11:49 AM James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: > > BTW: As long as we're going down the "formal tools" rabbit hole, an > important bit of history bears mentioning. > > About the time HP kicked Tom and me out of Fiorina's $500M "Internet Chapter > 2" fiasco, Federico Faggin stepped up to the plate to fund the work. > Although Faggin wasn't directly aware of what Tom did under my sponsorship at > HP, he _was_ aware of the need for better formal tools in VLSI design, and > found imaginary logic an intriguing approach. So he endowed The Boundary > Institute, which Richard Shoup founded and Shoup hired Tom as the theorist. > This work became side-tracked when Dean Radin and Edwin May showed up to > pursue psi research from the empirical side. That was most unfortunate, not > because there can be no interpretation of QM under which "paranormal" > theories may be tested empirically, but because they paid little attention to > Tom's output and sucked all the air out of the room, so to speak. So they > merely added more to the corpus of "evidence" for psi phenomena, without > doing anything to ground such experimental work on (meta)physical theory. > There was only one exception to this -- an experiment designed by Tom based > on his approach to QM -- but the experiment was postponed until Faggin's > original endowment was running out, not to be renewed due to inadequate > pursuit of VLSI tools. By then Radin and May were looking for psi funding > with Radin ending up bolting for The Institute for Noetic Sciences, where it > was easier to raise such funds. All in all it was a very bad decision Shoup > made letting those guys come in. Both Tom and Dick were left without > material support pretty much for the rest of their lives. They both passed > away several years later. I was barely able to salvage Tom's ANPA West > journal archives, and one last paper -- bringing everything together -- > progress on which stopped when dementia started setting in after his wife > passed and he followed her. > > What might the world look like today if Faggin had used his founding role at > Intel to introduce imaginary logic VLSI tools there? > > On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 12:32 PM James Bowery <jabow...@gmail.com> wrote: >> >> >> >> On Sun, Jul 5, 2020 at 11:09 AM Ben Goertzel <b...@goertzel.org> wrote: >>> >>> As you perhaps know I am a big fan of imaginary logic, having started in >>> this direction due to some correspondences w/ Lou Kauffmann (G. Spencer >>> Brown's collaborator) in the mid-1980s ... >> >> >> I'm not at all surprised which is why I said NOR DCGs should ring all kinds >> of bells with you. But I am a _bit_ surprised I don't find you on the Laws >> of Form yahoo group mailing list, which I administer (although that mailing >> list is not very active). >> >> Lou Kauffman is prolific but has not, to the best of my knowledge, pursued >> Tom's construction of imaginary logics from real valued spinors. I know he >> and Tom were very well acquainted because I had dinner with him at Tom's >> house in Palo Alto circa 2000, and Tom was the original editor of the >> Alternative Natural Philosophy West's journal, in which Lou published some >> articles. Lou told me that he didn't think my "obsession" with "time" was >> on target regarding imaginary logic -- which struck me as quite odd given >> his obvious affinity for GS Brown. However, this may have been due to the >> general trend among the LoF folks to place "distinction" as prior to both >> time and space -- with a kind of "space time" emerging without priority. >> Under Tom's notion of a kind of negative valued quantum logic in which >> imaginary logic is only one kind of "spinor", I can see why they may take >> that view. But if so, I would have expected Lou to pursue Tom's quantum >> logic. But I remain suspicious of such impartiality between space and time. >> Sure, quantum laws are symmetric in time and space. Yet we literally >> "observe" time (thence space) into "existence" in the sense that observation >> itself breaks the symmetry. Tom regarded "the collapse of the wave >> function" consequent to "observation" to be tortured metaphysical nonsense. >> I never quite groked that. My understanding of Tom's metaphysics is >> inadequate. >> >>> However as you probably also know, type theory is now far beyond its roots >>> w/ Russell & Whitehead etc., and there are type-theoretic treatments of >>> Anti-Foundational Set Theory and so forth... one could use type-checking on >>> quantifier logic extensions of imaginary logic etc. ... >> >> >> Yes and I haven't followed that work so my understanding is also inadequate >> to critique it. However, the development of the field strikes me as >> analogous to trying to come up with a dynamical mode of description in terms >> of kinematics: Newton in terms of epicycles. >> >>> *** >>> In other words, trying to represent physical dimensions in the theory of >>> types is getting the cart before the horse. You have to go back to the >>> foundation of logic and build up from there to discover that computation is >>> a dynamical system involving imaginary logic, and that "typing" is merely >>> checking that two "objects" have commensurable dimensions (ie: they possess >>> matching relational substructures required by a given operator). >>> *** >>> >>> Sure, that makes sense. I.e. of course you can represent physical >>> dimensions etc. in type theory in various ways, but if I understand >>> correctly, what you're suggesting is a more foundational approach that will >>> build up to certain particular types that are important for physics and >>> mind in a structured and rational way... >> >> >> Yes. As I alluded above, it seems to me that the formal foundation of >> computation, thence the theory of computation, thence AIT, thence notions of >> intelligence, would benefit from a metaphysics derived from attempts to make >> sense of physics in terms of some sort of quantum logic. >> >>> >>> A question in terms of AGI systems design is whether this sort of >>> foundational thinking on specific types and structures etc. needs to be >>> part of the infrastructure of one's system, or whether one can/should have >>> a more generalized infrastructure and use it for research/experimentation >>> on specific types and structures... >> >> >> Well I'm rather partial to formal tools which enable us to think about "the >> empirical world" (using Russell's term) so that attempts at a "top down >> theory of universal intelligence" like AIXI, are more consilient with >> Reality. >> > > Artificial General Intelligence List / AGI / see discussions + participants + > delivery options Permalink -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org “The only people for me are the mad ones, the ones who are mad to live, mad to talk, mad to be saved, desirous of everything at the same time, the ones who never yawn or say a commonplace thing, but burn, burn, burn like fabulous yellow roman candles exploding like spiders across the stars.” -- Jack Kerouac ------------------------------------------ Artificial General Intelligence List: AGI Permalink: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/T044a258b4a99cfd7-Mfab63956f3b5cd740d1da7e8 Delivery options: https://agi.topicbox.com/groups/agi/subscription
