Hi Steve, “You can NEVER replicate until you understand it well enough to simulate.”
You’re kidding, right? We definitely come from different planets! I come from Earth. Greetings. On Earth, (a) The Wright Bros worked out a bunch of lift/drag ratios on paper then replicated and tested. They had no Navier-Stokes formalisms etc etc. or any formal theory of flight (of the kind we have now). Flying (replication) was used (in a wind tunnel) to _get_ the science/theory! We are still doing this. (b) We burned things (replicated) to _get_ the science/theory of combustion. Lavoisier. There was replicated combustion before there were even scientists to worry about combustion theory! Yeah let’s all wait till Lavoisier before we cook dinner. Or let’s compute fire physics under our computed dinner and eventually we’ll eat. (c) Add centuries (millennia?) of similar examples here. In general: (a) Replication can and does precede theory. (b) Theory can and does precede replication. (c) Replication/emulation (experiment/theory) are a reciprocal pair in modern science. (d) Computer (numerical) exploration of abstract theory was not generally practical for centuries until the 1950s and computers. Those poor buggers solving PDEs by hand. Eeeeeuw. (e) Computer exploration of abstract theory is not replication. (f) In the entire history of science, the only place where replication is totally absent is AI/AGI. The (c) reciprocation doesn’t happen. Or perhaps (e) applies .i.e. (d) is mistaken for replication. Either way, it’s broke. “Artificial” is assumed to mean “Computer”. All of which is in my book. Your statement (above) is exactly what I am saying when I declare computer ‘science’ not to be a science. That exact attitude is what I am highlighting because it stops/ignores replication as a source of insight informing theory. I guess I should be thankful that you have provided empirical evidence of the problem I am trying to bring to light. On the other hand: we are now in possession of all the things needed to fully replicate, including the technology. So let’s start! Or you could be kidding me. If so, then ... you got me! Got me good. I leave it there. ☺. I am genuinely trying to break an impasse here. This is meant to be helpful. To engender progress in thinking. This problem is real. This is not some game. We are not succeeding at AGI specifically because of (e) above, which makes AGI/AI the only discipline in the history of science that is not actually a fully implemented science and doesn’t know it. I hope I have answered your question “So, why replicate without first simulating?” Can I suggest 60+ years of simulating is enough? Cheers Colin From: Steve Richfield [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, 14 January 2015 7:58 PM To: Colin Geoffrey Hales Subject: Re: [agi] How to create an uploader Colin, On Tue, Jan 13, 2015 at 11:46 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: You may say ‘so what?’ Of course. Well guess what you have to do to resolve it one way or the other? Replicate. Simulation is actually better, because you don't have to deal with errors in your setup while you work out the theory. Guess what’s the only thing never done in the history of neuroscience? Replicate. I did the next best thing when I was working with William Calvin at the U. of W. Dept. of Neurological Surgery. I simulated a patch of membrane with an electric circuit simulator. so we could play with it until we got the simulation running like the real thing. The only version ever attempted is sitting on my desk at university. Can you see what I mean? I am trying really hard to reveal the fundamental difference between emulation and replication. Am I getting through? Not yet. You can NEVER replicate until you understand it well enough to simulate. Once you can simulate, you can fiddle with the parameters until the simulation matches real life. Once the simulation matches real life, why replicate? Of course it is possible that the simulation can NOT be made to match real life. Should this happen there are several possibilities: 1. You don't really have a clue how it works in real life. 2. You have screwed up somewhere and introduced a bug. 3. There is hidden functionality that would also preclude replication. 4. You have just found God - THIS is where your soul is hidden. So, why replicate without first simulating? Steve From: Steve Richfield [mailto:[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>] Sent: Wednesday, 14 January 2015 4:11 PM To: [email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>; Colin Geoffrey Hales Subject: Re: [agi] How to create an uploader Colin, There is a curious footnote in history that relates to your position. Are you familiar with the Harmon Neuron? This is a circuit that works much like they thought neurons worked when the circuit was designed. Now we know MUCH more, so such a circuit would need to be redesigned, or better yet, replaced with a tiny one-chip microcomputer instead of a lot of discrete components. Or, given the power of modern one-chip microcomputers you could replace a bunch of neurons with a single microcomputer. A while back there was a sizable startup formed to do just that. I forget its name. As I recall they developed a product, but they never managed to sell any of them Now, this has all been subsumed into neural networks, until... You came along and wanted to do another iteration on the above process. Artificial neurons have one important place in the world - they are FAST, because of their entirely-parallel method of operation. Steve On Mon, Jan 12, 2015 at 4:00 PM, Colin Geoffrey Hales via AGI <[email protected]<mailto:[email protected]>> wrote: Hi folk, My (Chapter 12 PCT) test is ‘consciousness-agnostic’ as far as test subjects are concerned. It only demands full embodiment. Can I suggest that no matter what your attitude to consciousness is, that the PCT (or whatever it evolves into) be considered as a way to bring science to this community that will attract science funding (eventually)? I also note that until we actually build something that has consciousness by physics replication nobody can proclaim to actually know anything solid about it except that the physics of it does not exist in any computational substrate that exists at present. I also note that the only real example of human level general intelligence, natural general intelligence (NGI)! , has consciousness and that we are currently using it to conduct this discussion and that science is critically dependent on it, whatever it is. Empirical fact .... get over it! I also note that some of the attitudes here, to computing as an AGI and the consciousness/intelligence relation, are a bit like climate deniers. That is there’s merely evidence-less opinion masquerading as a science outcome. The reasons for this preference/opinion I can’t claim to understand. It is invariant to evidence in a way that I find quite disturbing. What is it about modern life that fosters this kind of thing? That causes shootings in Paris?Some people would rather be self-assured that they absolutely ‘know’ garbage rather than admit to not knowing something. Some sort of ignorance phobia? So strange. Scientists know that when you realise you don’t know something you’re a long way towards a solution. I’ll try not to go Rumsfeldian here. Being wrong is a job requirement for a scientist. Let yourself be wrong and you’ll get to what is right by wrongness attrition! You can only be wrong so many times in a row. But if you never try to make yourself wrong you’ll never know whether you are right or not. Like climate change and its deniers, the consciousness basis of intelligence will roll over the backs of the deniers, leaving its tread-marks on a bewildered sub-group of denialists’ backs. Thomas Kuhn recognised this sub-group. Ernst Mach died in denial of electrons. They get old and become irrelevant, and are ultimately regarded as having left science. Their preferences become a religion. Their community a cult. BTW Did you know the science of consciousness recently became a ‘generational’ activity? Roughly 25. It started around 1990. An entire generation of scientists has inhabited it. They think they are studying something real and very very important. That community knows _exactly_ what it is studying. They also know they don’t know what it is. Just like fire was, long ago. To know what you’re studying does not mean you know what it is. That is science. That is not being done in the computer-only-centric part of the AGI community. Which seems dominant even now after 60+ years of failure. What the existing computer-based-AGI community has been doing for 60+ years is examine a hypothesis that consciousness is irrelevant. This is being done in a way that is not actually science and none of the practitioners get that. The science-of-consciousness community will be the community that solves the AGI problem. That community will have an explanation as to why the 60+ years of computer-based-AGI failure has happened and could have been predicted. With the consciousness understanding in place, then we’ll be able to design AGI from a perspective of explicitly choosing to include consciousness or not, by design, and by knowing what its presence or absence does to the resulting artificial intelligence. Only then will the ethics issues make sense. Signing off for now. 2015 beckons. Dammit I said I wouldn’t ramble. Sorry. Cheers Colin AGI | Archives<https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> [https://www.listbox.com/images/feed-icon-10x10.jpg] <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/10443978-6f4c28ac> | Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;> Your Subscription [https://www.listbox.com/images/listbox-logo-small.png]<http://www.listbox.com> -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. That will easily create enough new jobs to bring back full employment. -- Full employment can be had with the stoke of a pen. Simply institute a six hour workday. 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