I wrote:
> Which is as useful as knowing information about soccer players. And
> yet I value the neutrino information more, because of the way I have
> been told it connects with all the other information that has been
> useful when I fiddled about with chemicals.
On 16/06/06, Anneke Siemons <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
Hi,
Let's not focus too much on mathematics (and other abstract knowledge
domains). The human brain originated in the stone age, and we still have a
stone age brain. And in the stone age people did little mathematics.
Hi,
Heh, I'm sure that stone age people had lots of abstract concepts.
What are gods and animal spirits if not abstract concepts little
attached to reality.
People were busy with hunting, gathering fruit and cooperating with each
other in those tasks. People only did very practical stuff. It just
happened to be that while evolution selected on being good at the
practical concrete level, people could do mathematics also (which can also
be practical by the way). It's a kind of side effect.
A useful one we want to emulate.
It seems that when a
system crosses a certain threshold of abstraction capability (abstract
thought) it becomes an agi system (all abstract thought possible), and
that that threshold is on a very practical level.
So my guess is that focusing on the practical level for building an agi
system is sufficient, and it's easier than focusing on very abstract
levels. When you have a system that can e.g. play soccer, tie shoe lases,
build fences, throw objects to hit other objects, walk through a terrain
to a spot, cooperate with other systems in achieving these practical goals
etc etc, then that suffices for that system to become an agi system.
As long as some of those things are learnt by watching humans doing
them, in practise I agree with you. In theory though a sufficiently
powerful Giant look up table, could also seem to learn these things,
so I also going to be look at the systems insides and see if they look
like Look Up tables.
-----
The concept neutrino does not help you to predict the outcome of your
actions? Then it is a useless concept to you.
At the moment and on a practical level, yes. It may or may not become
useful somepoint in the future, e.g. avoiding physics snake oil
investment scams.
For elementary particle physicists the concept of neutrino is helping them
to predict the outcome of actions (performing certain experiments).
Actually the neutrino concept was invented because of a prediction
failure: conservation of energy was violated in certain particle
experiments. Then it was proposed that there was an (then) undetectable
particle created during those experiments. So, also such an abstract
concept as neutrino is playing a role in prediction.
Indeed this is part of why I value it rather than say valuing the
names of the American Soccer team, because it has helped other people
in prediction about the fundementals of the universe.
About Charles Peirce (logician/philosopher):
'When he said that the whole meaning of a (clear) conception consists in
the entire set of its practical consequences, he had in mind that a
meaningful conception must have some experiential "cash value," capable of
being specified as some sort of collection of possible empirical
observations under specifiable conditions. Peirce insisted that the entire
meaning of a meaningful conception consisted in the totality of such
specifications of possible observations.'
Peirce:
The meaning of a concept is given by a description of the experiences you
would have if you were to perform actions involving objects to which that
concept applies; in particular, it is given by a list of conditionals
(if-then statements) of the following form:
If you were to do so-and-so, then you would experience such-and-such.
I like pragmatism, yet I also like meta statements, such as
If you were to value and remember information about science, then even
though it might not be of direct value to you so far they have been
useful to others and they will generally help you predict information
about what is possible in the world in general and may come in useful
at a later date.
Neutrinos are one of those facts that hasn't come in use so far, an
investment yet to be cashed in.
If your neutrino concept only helps you to predict the contents of text
books and web pages, then that is the meaning of that concept
I prefer the speculative value that I have laid out, because there are
any number of concepts that I could have learnt that would help me
predict text books and web pages, yet it is science ones that get
stuck in my head. I could not explain why that was, if the predicting
web pages is the only value I am allowed to give them.
. And then it
is not synonymous to the meaning of the neutrino concept that particle
physicists have.
This is true, they have cashed out their speculation.
Will Pearson
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