Mike T, it occurs to me that your position regarding the non-reducibility of intelligence to math, is similar to the position that complex matter cannot be reduced to atoms and molecules
Consider a hypothetical alter ego to Mike Tintner named, say, Mork Twatner ... who is an advocate of fundamental physical non-reductionism ... Think about these parallels... MIKE TINTNER: Obviously thoughts, feelings and images cannot be reduced to math. Intuitively, thoughts, feelings and images seem NOTHING like math to me. MORK TWATNER: Obviously baseballs, mice and storm clouds cannot be reduced to molecules. Intuitively, baseballs, mice and storm clouds seem NOTHING like molecules to me MIKE TINTNER: AI has been around since the 1950s. Yet after all these decades, what kind of intelligent computer programs do we have? Just narrow AI stuff like Google, Watson, self-driving cars, program trading, Deep Blue, game-AI pathfinding, industrial robotics, Mathematica, blah blah blah. It's cool but it's a far cry from the human mind, or even a worm. You're never going to be able to go beyond that narrow AI level and use math and programming to build something really impressively generally intelligent. MORK TWATNER: Nanotech has been around since Feynman's essay in the 1950s. Yet after all these decades, what has been built using molecules? Just some fabrics and conductors, blah blah. Sure, DNA origami is cool. But you're never going to be able to go beyond that "narrow nanotech" level and use molecules to build something big and complex like a baseball, mouse or storm cloud. MIKE TINTNER: Before you claim that a human-like mind could be programmed or described mathematically, you should prove that a worm can be programmed !! Otherwise you are not doing science, just babbling nonsense... MORK TWATNER: Before you claim that a mouse is made of molecules, you should prove that you can build a ping pong ball or a leaf by piecing together molecules. Until you can do that, you are not doing science, just babbling nonsense... MIKE TINTNER: Look at the math equations you can write down on a piece of paper. These obviously cannot yield the human mind. Therefore no math equations can yield the human mind MORK TWATNER: Look at what you can build with a few dozen molecules. These simple molecular compounds obviously look nothing like baseballs, mice, Andromeda or Rush Limbaugh, let alone the wart on my left big toe!! Therefore, no molecules can possibly combine to produce these complex macroscopic objects!! MIKE TINTNER: Intuitively, the properties I feel associated with my own internal mental process have nothing to do with math and computation. I feel I'm thinking in terms of images and their smooth transformations. Computer programs are not images and their smooth transformations... MORK TWATNER: Intuitively, the properties I feel associated with a mouse have nothing to do with molecules. My pet mouse Hillary is cute, furry and smelly. Molecules are not cute, furry and smelly. MIKE TINTNER: We need a fundamentally new approach to understanding mind, which has nothing to do with math and computation. I will ignore your counter-arguments because they all involve math and computation, which I don't understand and am absolutely sure are irrelevant. MORK TWATNER: We need a fundamentally new approach to understanding matter, which has nothing to do with atoms and molecules and all that nonsnse. I will ignore your counter-arguments because they all involve all sorts of nasty complicated-looking physics equations, which I dont understand and am absolutely sure are irrelevant.... ... And so it goes ;p ;) ... The reductionist method isn't good at explaining all the emergent properties of complex phenomena, like mice, baseballs or minds. Yet, it has proved pretty good at guiding us to build things... Conceiving new theories to complement reductionist explanations, is interesting. But, arguing that the reductionist explanations are outright wrong or irrelevant, seems non-productive and silly to me, given the large and successful, and rapidly growing, body of knowledge obtained using them Robert Rosen has articulated a quite sophisticated relative of the "Mork Twatner" position -- using mathematics, as it happens. I find his work interesting, yet I note it's been pretty non-productive compared to the reductionist perspective. I think the future lies in finding ways for emergentist and reductionist methods to work together... -- Ben G On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 11:23 AM, Ben Goertzel <[email protected]> wrote: > On Sun, Jan 6, 2013 at 5:36 AM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> wrote: >> >> What’s the point of this except to avoid having to think about a new idea? > > The point of that post was to clearly state that > > "Math is irrelevant to AGI" > > implies > > "All known or currently envisioned digital, analog or quantum > computers are irrelevant to AGI" > > since any program on any of these computers has a mathematical > formulation; and furthermore math is the tool used to design these > computers and the operating systems languages that operate on them, > etc. > > New ideas regarding how to program computers to yield AGI would be > interesting to hear. But these ideas will inevitably have mathematical > formulations, else they can't be implemented on any known or > envisioned computers. You may choose to describe them > non-mathematically due to your own specific taste and background; but > this may then make your ideas harder for those of us with > scientific/technical background to understand... > > .. ben g > >> >> If an “iconic program” used logic and/or maths, they would only be parts, >> not the whole program. >> >> The point of doing AGI is to solve the unsolved problems by identifying >> new technologies – not to use old technologies that show no signs of >> working. Your loyalty is to the old technologies. Old technologies never >> solve new creative technology problems. That’s just a wrong idea. We didn’t >> get to jets by adapting the propellor, or to neural nets by adjusting linear >> programs. >> >> From: Ben Goertzel >> Sent: Sunday, January 06, 2013 1:27 AM >> To: AGI >> Subject: Re: [agi] Why Logic & Maths Have Sweet FA to do with Real world >> reasoning >> >> >> But if the robot is controlled by a computer program, that program is >> still embodying some logico-mathematical formula, at any particular point in >> time... >> >> -- Ben G >> >> On Sat, Jan 5, 2013 at 8:01 PM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]> >> wrote: >>> >>> P.S. What I should have spelled out is that the moment you connect an >>> icon to a body - >>> >>> for example, an icon of a hand to a physical hand >>> >>> **the icon automatically becomes a fluid schema** >>> >>> because a hand – like the body - is in effect a fluid schema itself. >>> What can an agent do with a hand? Nobody can state a definite bounded set or >>> frame of hand movements. A hand is capable of virtually infinite hand >>> movements.A fluid range of movements with many yet to be discovered and many >>> continually being invented. So a hand icon [when connected to a body/hand] >>> ipso facto refers to a potentially infinite range of hand movements/shapes >>> etc. >>> >>> No one shall enter into the kingdom of AGI who is not a roboticist. >>> 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 | Modify Your Subscription > > > > > -- > Ben Goertzel, PhD > http://goertzel.org > > "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche -- Ben Goertzel, PhD http://goertzel.org "My humanity is a constant self-overcoming" -- Friedrich Nietzsche ------------------------------------------- AGI Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/21088071-f452e424 Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=21088071&id_secret=21088071-58d57657 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
