You partition intelligence into
* explanatory, declarative reasoning
* reflexive pattern-matching (simplistic and statistical)
Whereas I think that most of what happens in cognition fits into
neither of these categories.
I think that most unconscious thinking is far more complex than
"reflexive pattern-matching" --- and in fact has more in common with
explanatory, deductive reasoning than with simple pattern-matching;
the difference being that it deals with large masses of (often highly
uncertain) knowledge rather than smaller amounts of "guessed to be
highly important" knowledge...
Hmmm. I will certainly agree that most long-term unconscious thinking is
actually closer to conscious thinking than most people believe (with the
only real difference being that there isn't a self-reflective overseer --
or, at least, not one whose memories we can access).
But -- I don't "partition" intelligence that way. I see those as two
endpoints with a continuum between them (or, a lot of low-level transparent
switching between the two).
We certainly do have a disagreement in terms of the quantity of knowledge
that is *in real time* actually behind a decision (as opposed to compiled
knowledge) -- Me being in favor of mostly compiled knowledge and you being
in favor of constantly using all of the data.
But I'm not at all sure how important that difference is . . . . With the
brain being a massively parallel system, there isn't necessarily a huge
advantage in "compiling knowledge" (I can come up with both advantages and
disadvantages) and I suspect that there are more than enough surprises that
we have absolutely no way of guessing where on the spectrum of compilation
vs. not the brain actually is.
On the other hand, I think that lack of compilation is going to turn out to
be a *very* severe problem for non-massively parallel systems
----- Original Message -----
From: "Ben Goertzel" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Monday, December 04, 2006 1:00 PM
Subject: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system
hypothesis
> Well, of course they can be explained by me -- but the acronym for
> that sort of explanation is "BS"
I take your point with important caveats (that you allude to). Yes,
nearly
all decisions are made as reflexes or pattern-matchings on what is
effectively compiled knowledge; however, it is the structuring of future
actions that make us the learning, intelligent entities that we are.
...
Explaining our actions is the reflective part of our minds evaluating the
reflexive part of our mind. The reflexive part of our minds, though,
operates analogously to a machine running on compiled code with the
compilation of code being largely *not* under the control of our
conscious
mind (though some degree of this *can* be changed by our conscious
minds).
The more we can correctly interpret and affect/program the reflexive part
of
our mind with the reflective part, the more intelligent we are.
Mark, let me try to summarize in a nutshell the source of our
disagreement.
You partition intelligence into
* explanatory, declarative reasoning
* reflexive pattern-matching (simplistic and statistical)
Whereas I think that most of what happens in cognition fits into
neither of these categories.
I think that most unconscious thinking is far more complex than
"reflexive pattern-matching" --- and in fact has more in common with
explanatory, deductive reasoning than with simple pattern-matching;
the difference being that it deals with large masses of (often highly
uncertain) knowledge rather than smaller amounts of "guessed to be
highly important" knowledge...
-- Ben G
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