I think the problem of confirmation is one of the main problems. Complexity itself may be the real problem but it may just be that complexity makes the comprehension of what is going on or being said unreliable because the methods of confirmation are too crude to be used reliably in complicated situations. Because confirmation of some sort has to be used to build basic knowledge, the lack of robust methods to confirm theories means that general learning is quite difficult. The problem is that many little detailed pieces of knowledge are fundamental to even elementary theories about what is going on. If human beings could specify what those fundamental pieces of knowledge consisted of and how they help more substantial concepts interrelate then hand-crafted AI programs might stand as strong basis for further AGI design. But the lack of robust methods of confirmation means that many fundamental pieces of knowledge are still elusive. I could refer to these fundamental pieces of knowledge as structural knowledge but that might be a little misleading because my definition of structural knowledge goes beyond that.
The use of imagination to develop theories and to then develop theories to confirm or disconfirm those theories will obviously lead to circular (or loopy) theories. This could serve to explain how human beings become stuck in ineffective strategies and can even become delusional but the problem is that our AGI efforts have not even reached the stage where meaningful delusion can be achieved. (Perhaps I could make the achievement of loopy delusional theories as an initial test of my AGI program – as long as the meaningful delusions are achieved in a system that used true general learning to reach that plain.) So, one of the major problems in a true AGI model, even one designed for limited feasibility tests, is that reliable methods of confirmation are elusive. But since true AGI has not really been achieved with supervised learning methods perhaps this problem might be better expressed as a problem of discovering the tiny theories that have to fill the interstices between the more well-illuminated theories that hold broader meaning. Perhaps it was a mistake to start by focusing on the broadest kind of knowledge that holds the strongest clues to comprehension and meaning. Maybe the secret formulas have been hidden in the trivial details all along. Perhaps there is a syntax of the glue of thought that explains how broader concepts can be held together. My feeling is that structural concepts hold the most promise to explain how knowledge may be advanced in an AGI program. If there is a glue to hold concepts together then that would definitely be called structural. Concepts play different roles when interacting with other concepts, just as some words are verbs some are nouns and so on. For me, a structural insight is one that is discovered when you realize that a combination of concepts (about words or events) can be understood by realizing how different concepts might be combined to make sense of the situation. The idea of conceptual structure has been used before my use of the idea to refer to the abstract rules that lay behind the application of some learned knowledge. For example, a logical deduction might be called structural learning. Or the programming behind a decision process might be called structural. But since I (and I assume a lot of other people) envision an AGI program where abstractions could be derived and learned by experience or by education that means that my idea of structural learning refers to concepts that can be learned or otherwise acquired as well. So then my idea of structural-concepts comes back to concepts that can hold a bunch of other concepts together in a conceptual complex by explaining the kinds of roles the concepts play in the complex. This understanding is definitely necessary for understanding. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- 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
