Ben Goertzel wrote:
"Rings" and "Models" are appropriated terms, but the mathematicians
involved would never be so stupid as to confuse them with the real
things. Marcus Hutter and yourself are doing precisely that.
I rest my case.
Richard Loosemore
IMO these analogies are not fair.
The mathematical notion of a "ring" is not intended to capture
essential aspects of the commonsense notion of a "ring." It is merely
chosen because a certain ring-like-ness characterizes the mathematical
structure in question...
On the other hand, the notions of "intelligence" and "understanding"
and so forth being bandied about on this list obviously ARE intended
to capture essential aspects of the commonsense notions that share the
same word with them.
As Eric Baum noted, in his book "What Is Thought?" he did not in fact
define intelligence or understanding as compression, but rather made a
careful argument as to why he believes compression is an essential
aspect of intelligence and understanding. You really have not
addressed his argument in your posts, IMO.
I think you are missing the nature of the point I was making.
I was saying that *because* (for independent reasons) these people's
usage of terms like "intelligence" is so disconnected from commonsense
usage (they idealize so extremely that the sense of the word no longer
bears a reasonable connection to the original) *therefore* the situation
is akin to the one that obtains for Model Theory or Rings.
I am saying that these folks are trying to have their cake and eat it
too: they idealize "intelligence" into something so disconnected from
the real world usage that, really, they ought not to use the term, but
should instead invent another one like "ooblifience" to describe the
thing they are proving theorems about.
But then, having so distorted the meaning of the term, they go back and
start talking about the conclusions they derived from their math as if
those conclusions applied to the real world thing that in commonsense
parlance we call "intelligence". At that point they are doing what I
claimed a Model Theorist would be doing if she started talking about a
kid's model airplane as if Model Theory applied to it.
Richard Loosemore.
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