Ben Goertzel wrote: > Traditional logic-based AI has badly underemphasized the role of trial and >error, but I'm afraid you're swinging to the opposite extreme !!
It has been said that it is easier to bring a wild idea under control than to give life into a lame idea, so considering an extreme position may not be a bad tactic. In further defense of trial and error, I would point out that much or most of our human knowledge and progress has been the result of countless random trials and errors of others. If the pre-Columbian Native Americans had a strong value for seeking advancement through trial and error, I imagine they would have discovered much better archery techniques that would have dramatically altered human history. Would those countless archers have met the criteria for AGI? Surely they would have. But they apparently lacked respect for random trial and error in the pursuit of progress. Clearly they WANTED their arrows to have three times the range, speed and power. Seems this is an obvious case of an AGI (minus the "artificial") that desperately needed the random trial and error problem solving method. In my life, I have found that various forms of negative feedback often taught me an effective lesson, even though I intellectually KNEW the lesson beforehand. As in, "I knew that was a bad idea, tried it anyway, and will never again." I have seen this behavior many times in others as well. This is the type of observation that makes me wonder the extent to which emotion is the real driver in our intelligent behavior. WANTING to succeed often seems to be the real factor in success at solving problems. What is the pattern matching that occurs in our biological neural nets? Is it not a simple "trial and error," with more dimensions? To me, seeing a pattern in a series of words, images, or numbers in an IQ test is a type of trial and error. I am getting beyond my ability to express myself, at least without more energy and time than I have at the moment, but it occurs to me that what we perceive as logic in our brains is actually massively parallel trial and error processes with emotional reinforcement for success or failure. I do not want to say that random trial and error is the ultimate form of intelligent thought. Far from it. But given what nature and humankind have achieved with it to date, and that we may not even recognize the extent to which it is involved in our own thought, it seems to be an intriguing ingredient. Perhaps artificial trial and error systems can lead us to "pure intelligence." That is, if pure intelligence is not an illusion, a mirage, an unachievable holy grail. Cheers, Kevin Copple ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?[EMAIL PROTECTED]
