Philip, You and I have chatted a bit about the role of simulation in cognition, in the past. I recently had a dialogue on this topic with a colleague (Debbie Duong), which I think was somewhat clarifying. Attached is a message I recently sent to her on the topic.
-- ben **** Debbie, Let's say that a mind observes a bunch of patterns in a system S: P1, P2,...,Pn. Then, suppose the mind wants to predict the degree to which a new pattern, P(n+1), will occur in the system S. There are at least two approaches it can take: 1) "reverse engineer" a simulation S' of the system, with the property that if the simulation S' runs, it will display patterns P1, P2, ..., Pn. There are many possible simulations S' that will display these patterns, so you pick the simplest one you can find in a reasonable amount of effort. 2) Do probabilistic reasoning based on background knowledge, to derive the probability that P(n+1) will occur, conditional on the occurence of P1,...,Pn My contention is that process 2 (inference) is the default one, with process 1 (simulation) followed only in cases where a) fully understanding the system S is very important to the mind, so that it's worth spending the large amount of effort required to build a simulation of it [inference being much computationally cheaper] b) the system S is very similar to systems that have previously been modeled, so that building a simulation model of S can quickly be done by analogy About the simulation process. Debbie, you call this process "simulation"; in the Novamente design it's called "predicate-driven schema learning", the simulation S' being the a SchemaNode and the conjunction P1 & P2 & ... & Pn being a PredicateNode. We plan to do this "simulation-learning" using two methods * combinator-BOA, where both the predicate and schema are represented as CombinatorTrees. * analogical inference, modifying existing simulation models to deal with new contexts, as in case b) above If we have a disagreement, perhaps it is just about the relative frequency of processes 1 and 2 in the mind. You seem to think 1 is more frequent whereas I seem to think 2 is much more frequent. I think we both agree that both processes exist. I think that our reasoning about other peoples' actions is generally a mix of 1 and 2. We are much better at simulating other humans than we are at simulating nearly anything else, because we essentially re-use the wiring used to control *ourselves*, in order to simulate others. This re-use of self-wiring for simulation-of-others, as Eliezer Yudkowsky has pointed out, may be largely responsible for the feeling of "empathy" we get sometimes (i.e., if you're using your self-wiring to simulate someone else, and you simulate someone else's emotions, then due to the use of your self-wiring you're gonna end up feeling their (simulated) emotions to some extent... presto! empathy...). **** ------- To unsubscribe, change your address, or temporarily deactivate your subscription, please go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/[EMAIL PROTECTED]
