“It's not absolutely clear that the brain operates on an algorithm”
You think that a brain/thinking machine that can’t concentrate on any given
subject for more than a few secs. looks like it’s working on an algorithm? Wh.
algo is that?
You think that a brain that struggles to complete any activity – that has
problems sitting down to work, applying itself to a job, keeping it s nose to
the grindstone, not going off at tangents, and finishing projects (or
symphonies or AGI projects) – looks like it’s working on an algo? Wh. algo is
that?
You think that a brain that has major problems in achieving form for any
intellectual task – in achieving order [hence “mental order/disorder”],
coherence, articulacy, balance, not being excessive, not committing omissions
{all commonly applied criteria in our folk culture] – looks like an algo? Which
algo is that?
You think that a brain that in all creative projects, struggles for
inspiration//ideas, struggles with creative blocks, blanks, confusion,
struggles often to find what *kind* of genre it should be working in, looks
like an algo? Wh. algo?
I would say that any suggestion that human deliberations are anything like an
algo could only come from s.o. who had never studied them, never even thought
about them. And science, wh. only generously started studying consciousness c
15 years ago, still continues to refuse to study our conscious deliberations.
When it does do so, it will be absolutely and immediately clear that the brain
is *not* operating on an algorithm or anything like. It’s mechanical,
computational, but definitely not algorithmic.
The grand irony is that far from following a formula/algo, humans are clearly
in every sphere of life, *looking* for “the formula”, “the 7/.10/21 steps to
success”.
What’s the algo for a successful AGI project? Ben and everyone here would love
to know.
From: Charles Hixson
Sent: Friday, October 12, 2012 1:42 AM
To: AGI
Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben
It's not absolutely clear that the brain operates on an algorithm. Not given
that algorithms are by standard definition composed of a finite number of steps
which are all determinate. It is my best estimate that they do so, but if,
e.g., quantum indeterminacy has any significant effect, then the basic steps
may not be determinate. So it would only appears to operate on an algorithm at
a gross level.
OTOH, not being determinate doesn't seem to provide any special advantages. A
good pseudo-random number generator is sufficiently similar to a genuine random
number generator that nobody bothers to build the hardware that uses real
random numbers, even though one can easily do that by amplifying the noise that
appears on a null signal.
So even if it isn't actually an algorithm, it appears to be sufficiently close
to an algorithm that there is no advantage to taking the final step. (And one
could argue that the errors generated by all hardware suffice to render
computer programs non-determinate on analogy with erroneous neural spikes.)
As for finite...I personally consider the universe discrete, so there is no
difference in principle between an analog signal and a digital one, but even if
I'm wrong about that, I would assert that there is no advantage in principle.
Again, even if biological matter is not digital (via continuous electric fields
or some such) I can't see any advantage in the difference. And in principle I
see no difference. (For that matter, computers also have continuous electric
fields, even though there are attempts to mitigate the problem. And biologic
components use things like cell walls to mitigate the continuity. Again, no
body seems to see that as an advantage.)
On 10/11/2012 08:44 AM, Ben Goertzel wrote:
Mike,
The laws of physics, as currently understood, clearly imply that the human
brain operates according to a process equivalent to an algorithm. There is
lots of evidence for these physical laws. But like all scientific knowledge,
the so-called "laws of physics" are not absolutely known and may be disproved
at some point...
Just as the laws of physics clearly imply that a glass window is made of
atoms -- even though nobody can explain, yet, the details of exactly how the
atoms combine to form the glass window...
-- Ben
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 11:39 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]>
wrote:
Ben: Every idea you have ever heard of is an example of a concept formed
via algorithmic processes. Examples: motorcycle, number, chinchilla, Dragon
and Phoenix Lucky Together, nun, none, the Orgiastic Chiliasm of the
Anabaptists, trolls, Internet trolls, Mike Tintner
This is a would-be scientific hypothesis. It is not a fact.
No one has ever spied an “algorithmic process” at the heart of humans
forming concepts. No one even knows how information is laid down in the brain,
period.
In science, hypotheses, to be treated seriously, have to produce
evidence/examples.
You have none. Neither has anyone else here.
IN technology, too you have to produce some evidence, some “proof of
concept,” however limited and informal for your project.
You have none. Neither has anyone else here.
That is simply appalling and inexcusable practice for any professional
scientist/technologist – esp when this is a central question for AGI and AGI is
so stuck.
From: Ben Goertzel
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 3:52 PM
To: AGI
Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben
Mike T --
Every idea you have ever heard of is an example of a concept formed via
algorithmic processes. Examples: motorcycle, number, chinchilla, Dragon and
Phoenix Lucky Together, nun, none, the Orgiastic Chiliasm of the Anabaptists,
trolls, Internet trolls, Mike Tintner
One conceptual problem you're having is a failure to grok that the
lower-level elements combined to form ordinary human ideas are very small ones,
so that your conscious mind cannot perceive the ways that its concepts are
formed of arrangements of very small, unconscious elements
Then you absurdly ask me to give a detailed example showing how, say,
"motorcycle" is formed from zillions of teeny little mental patterns abstracted
from perceptions and actions.... The reason we can't give detailed examples
for you, are that cognitively natural, consciously understood concepts live
near the top of a massive deep hierarchy, and are huge complex combinations of
the teensy underlying elements.
-- Ben G
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 9:14 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]>
wrote:
But, Ben, you still have not produced one example. ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE.
I can though – I agree – produce a more precisely reasoned explanation of
algorithms’ impotence.
An algorithm or recipe is by definition **a set of rules which prescribe
how to combine a given set of elements.**
They only prescribe those given elements. There is no facility within an
algorithm or recipe for prescribing new elements.[Or you must demonstrate such
a facility].
You cannot have an algorithm which says: “take one Lego brick and another
Lego brick – oh and something else which I haven’t thought of – but you’ll
think of something...”
Also – they cannot prescribe GENERAL elements. (Kinda important for A
General I). Or GENERAL structures.
For example, there is no algorithm for (building) “HOUSES.” There are
only algorithms for building one or more specific kinds of house – Lego houses.
Ditto there is no algorithm for combining “BUILDING BLOCKS” - any
conceivable kind of building part – just, say, Lego bricks.
You don’t and can’t have an algorithm which says:
“take one building block [of any kind] and another building block [of any
kind] and put them on top of each other like this.”
That’s a self-evident nonsense. The rules or principles of combining
particular kinds of building blocks do not apply to other kinds – those of
bricks don’t apply to rocks or lumps of clay.
There is no algorithm similarly for (cooking) “A MEAL” or “A STEW” or “A
SMORGASBORD.” Just a particular processed dish.
There is no algorithm for combining “FOOD INGREDIENTS” – any conceivable
kind of food ingredient.
There is no algorithm which says:
“take one food ingredient [of any kind] and another food ingredient [of
any kind] and heat them together to 60deg C. and then add one sauce [of any
kind]”.
That’s an obvious nonsense. Food ingredients are extremely diverse and do
not combine in universal ways.
ONE FUCKING EXAMPLE.
P.S. General – conceptual – thinking, such as my examples above, is the
basis of creative thinking – and the basis of all human activities. We do say
all the time: “put together a menu with something healthy as a starter, and a
substantial meat dish in the middle, and a really great over-the-top sweet at
the end.”
“General prescriptions” are the foundation of human action – but they are
demonstrably non-algorithmic – and indeed anti-algorithmic. The opposite of
specialised thinking.
This is why algorithms don’t and can’t handle concepts, period.
From: Ben Goertzel
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 1:46 PM
To: AGI
Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben
But Mike T,
You have no argument in favor of your assertion that: complex algorithmic
processes, controlling an agent interacting with a complex enviroment, cannot
produce results that will be interpreted by humans or other intelligent agents
as fundamentally creative and novel.
You simply repeat this assertion as if others should find it as
intuitively obvious as you do ;p
I agree that simple algorithmic processes, which can be written down in a
few lines of text, cannot give rise to results that humans will perceive as
fundamentally creative and novel -- except perhaps occasionally by chance, or
after extraordinarily large run-times on extraordinarily powerful computers.
But this limitation of simple algorithmic processes says nothing about
complex ones.
You don't **feel**, intuitively, like the apparently creative, novel
things humans have created could have come out of complex algorithmic processes
(controlling agents interacting with environments). But you don't have the
ability to see the human unconscious in detail, nor do you have technical
understanding of complex algorithmic processes.
As an aside, note that an algorithmic process interacting with an
environment, can in principle use its manipulation of the environment to modify
the hardware on which it runs. This means its behavior in the long run may
become quite unpredictable, to someone who knows only about the algorithmic
process and doesn't have full knowledge of the environment.
-- Ben
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 8:05 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]>
wrote:
I’ve already covered it. GA’s do not produce *new elements*. They
permutate a very limited set of given elements. So a GA can produce variations
on an electric circuit. But that’s it. That’s all it can do. Electric circuits.
It can’t produce a new system of water piping. Or oil piping. Or aquifers. Or
an irrigation system.
And even then, you need the guidance of a human programmer.
Creativity is *new elements* m – endless generativity.
From: Mike Archbold
Sent: Thursday, October 11, 2012 12:06 PM
To: AGI
Subject: Re: [agi] Behold your saviour, Ben
On Thu, Oct 11, 2012 at 3:54 AM, Mike Tintner
<[email protected]> wrote:
PRODUCE ONE EXAMPLE of a creative algorithm. Or a creative recipe.
One single algorithm that has produced one new element.
I'd say the whole of evolutionary computing which subsumes all of
genetic algorithms, genetic programming, evolution strategies, evolutionary
programming etc fits that general goal. See a book called Intro to
Evolutionary Computing by Eiben Smith. Optimisation, modelling, simulation are
the results. Now you are going to counter "well, it's still narrow and
preprogrammed." But then that gets back to the problem of moving the goal
posts around in AI. It's creative given the present state of AI, does it scale
up to your expectations? Probably not at this point. But, it's creative to an
extent. I'm not here to sell you on AI, though, just to give you an example
(one fucking example that is).
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--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org
"My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche
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--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
http://goertzel.org
"My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche
AGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription
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
--
Charles HixsonAGI | Archives | Modify Your Subscription
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