Sergio: But algorithms are causal. Computers are causal, our brains are causal..!
Sergio, What was the cause[s] of the economic crisis/French revolution/Vietnam war/ ipad's success? - Any historical event whatsoever? What was the cause of your writing your post? What will cause people to buy EI, or Opencog? What will cause any product on the market to be successful? How successful will shale oil be? What will cause any technology to be successful? In the real world, yes, events/effects have causes, and causal actions will produce effects. Unfortunately, events have *infinite* causes ultimately - a worldwide web of causes. And ditto causes have a worldwide web of consequences. We are also typically uncertain as to which causes produced a given effect, or what effects given causes will produce. Not just statistically uncertain, but fundamentally Knight-ianly uncertain. And we are plain ignorant about lots of relevant causes and consequences - and don't factor them in. A great deal of the time we have to do some research and experimentation in order to unearth new causes. That's why in the real world there are almost always radically different, historical explanations of events - there is no such thing as a right explanation, identifying a right set of causes. And there are almost always radically different predictions as to the effects of significant causal actions - and as to the possible sets of effects, - like the future course of the stockmarket . Again there is no such thing as a right prediction. Plus, every example of an event is individual and new and different from every other example - the causes of the last financial crisis were different from that of the '80's and the Depression. So algorithms (and sets) (and logic) don't apply to real world reasoning/inference - the real world isn't uniform like the artificial worlds of logic and algorithms, and can't be similarlyh inferred *every effect/event has an infinite set of causes - it is arbitrary as to which you choose to highlight - there are no algorithmic or logical rules *every effect/event is individual - somewhat different from others - algorithms and logic can only handle a uniform modular world, not the real individual, nodular world *real world events are INCONSISTENT - just because something or someone produced an effect yesterday, doesn't mean it or he will do so today - living creatures often turn round and do the opposite *we always have deeply imperfect knowledge of real world workings Put that more generally, in the real world, there are *NO UNIFORM CLASSES - every class consists of individuals which are exceptions to the rule, - so you can't GENERALISE (without making individual qualfications) *INFINITE WEBS of relationships between objects - you cannot define FINITE SETS of relationships such as causes, comparisons, classifications *INCONSISTENT OBJECTS (incl. both classes and individuals) - you cannot assume CONSISTENCY in objects * IMPERFECT KNOWLEDGE of objects - not PERFECT KNOWLEDGE Logic and algorithms can only work with, and infer from uniform, consistent sets of objects of which we have perfect knowledge (wh. includes statistics) - that's why they're strictly used in artificial worlds and environments only. The real world consists of individual-ly formed, unbounded webs of inconsistent and imperfectly known objects. As Bertrand Russell insisted, logic doesn't apply to the real world. ------------------------------------------- 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
