Ben, Sorry if my post was confusing - I'm still working towards a fully systematic philosophy here.
What you haven't taken on board is that in all real world activities and problemsolving, you are trying to solve problems.and achieve goals. Your examples are of machines rather pointlessly and goal-lessly not stopping for the sake of not stopping. If you are trying to solve real world/ creative problems - like AGI or writing an acceptable article or program, or trying to convince a friend of their errors - and there are no rules - no algorithms for solving these problems,no definitive criteria for what constitutes a solution, no rule for deciding exactly what and how much you should put into solving them and therefore no stopping rule - then you can go on endlessly, or way too long. And it's a matter of great practical concern and fear. Witness the massively widespread fear of creativity/"the blank page" in all its forms throughout our culture and society. Creative/intellectual projects commonly (if not always!) go on too long. Check out wicked (vs tame) problemsolving (wh. explicitly has "no stopping rule"): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wicked_problem What that article doesn't make clear and doesn't realise is that ALL real world activities and problemsolving (incl. "Sue and Jane") are "wicked" Our entire emotional system is designed to help us solve real world problems - by pressuring us into solutions, even though we could quite reasonably, a la Elliott, keep thinking about them forever. That's why our emotions are painful - to pressure us into real world action *before* we've given real world problems "due consideration". ("Due consideration" of real world problems is infinite). If there were no pain, as you seem to think a good idea, we wouldn't decide and act, and we wouldn't survive, and nor would any real world agent. From: Ben Goertzel Sent: Tuesday, June 19, 2012 5:30 PM To: AGI Subject: Re: [agi] Real World Reasoning Mike, It's quite easy to run a logic engine with no criterion for halting, e.g. forward chaining inference is like that... it just goes and goes and keeps generating new stuff "forever" .. . A random number generator also keeps going a long time and doesn't halt I'm unclear why you think not halting is so terribly fascinating... ben On Tue, Jun 19, 2012 at 6:43 AM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: P.S. The "fear of creativity" - the recognized fear that accompanies all intellectual creative work - from writing an essay or novel, to writing a program, or new scientific theory- is the "fear of the blank page" https://www.google.co.uk/search?aq=f&sugexp=chrome,mod=11&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8&q=%22fear+of+the+blank+page%22 which arises precisely because there are no criteria for halting - i.e. no criteria for what form creative work should take. You may indeed go on forever. Look at Ben, Boris and every other AGI systembuilder - they obviously have no halting criteria, and may go on for the rest of their lives. In different ways we may all be in the same boat. . P.S.AGI's will need to be afraid too. See Damasio's Elliott for a demonstration of what happens when a real world reasoner has both no halting criteria and no fear. AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-c97d2393 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-2484a968 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
