Monday, February 24, 2003, 8:24:22 PM, Ben Goertzel wrote:
BG> I wrote, pertaining to problems of positive feedback causing erroneous or BG> uncontrollable dynamics: >> The fact that similar problems occur in Novamente inference as well as in >> the brain, suggests that they're "general system-theoretic >> problems" in some >> sense, perhaps occurring in any distributed network-oriented computing >> system. BG> Of course, the last phrase is an overstatement. We know some distributed BG> network-based computing systems that don't experience such problems, but BG> these systems are sorely limited in capability. BG> A future science could include a general characterization of "positive BG> feedback related learning problems", and a characterization of those BG> network-based computing systems that will experience them. It might then BG> turn out that some of the elements of this characterization, overlapped with BG> an independently defined characterization of those network-based computing BG> systems capable of advanced intelligence. BG> This is the kind of theory that would be part of a real "science of complex BG> systems" (a thing that doesn't really exist yet -- I think "complexity BG> science" today consists of some nice general principles together with a BG> grab-bag of system-specific scientific theories and observations related to BG> the general principles. Theories with both general scope and detailed BG> implications are pretty much lacking.) I wonder how much of this particular problem will turn out, in the human brain, to be "solved" by various neurotransmitter methods -- also interesting are those cases in which the neurotransmitters "go haywire". Copycat has a simple, single analogue: the "temperature" is what I think they call it, which is high, and keeps things in flux, when matters are uncertain, and lowers activity the more satisfactory the solution that is reached. In humans it seems as if some states of depression, boredom, etc. are designed (whoops there I go anthropomorphising evolution) to break through certain types of deadlock and runaway. E.g., there is a separate feedback mechanism that sits on top of and responds to the "intelligence"/"make sense of this" mechanism -- when the latter breaks down, the former kicks in in certain ways. It might not be always productive -- "f*ck it, let's just do it" / "damn the torpedoes" -- but it does get us out of deadlocks and spirals. In Hofstadter's term, there's a JOOTS (Jumping Out of the System) mechanism for when rational cognition fails. In some ways I see this as the (old, deprecated) function of religious ritual/orgy (everybody dances around the fire and lets stuff go, or these days, Mardi Gras, Spring Break, New Years, etc.), and the modern function for whole societies of having a war (can't go *too* long without having one, you know). There's a sort of "shake things up and see what happens" cleansing of the mental/emotional palate that people and societies go through on a pretty regular basis. Perhaps in Novamente you'll find that a certain scenario lends itself to various different "attractors" of sets-of-truth-values, and that shaking it up and finding new attractors (and comparing them to the old ones) could be valuable... -- Cliff ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
