>> You have hinted around it, but I would go one step further and say that
>> Emotion is NOT contrary to logic.
:-) I thought that my last statement that "<emotion> is equally likely to be
congruent with <logic and reason>" was a lot more than a hint (unless congruent
doesn't mean "not contrary" like I think/thought it did :-)
I liked your distinction between illogical and irrational -- though I'm not
sure that others would agree with your using irrational that way.
----- Original Message -----
From: James Ratcliff
To: agi@v2.listbox.com
Sent: Tuesday, December 05, 2006 11:34 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] A question on the symbol-system hypothesis
Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Are
> you saying that the more excuses we can think up, the more intelligent
> we are? (Actually there might be something in that!).
Sure. Absolutely. I'm perfectly willing to contend that it takes
intelligence to come up with excuses and that more intelligent people can
come up with more and better excuses. Do you really want to contend the
opposite?
> You seem to have a real difficulty in admitting that humans behave
> irrationally for a lot (most?) of the time.
You're reading something into my statements that I certainly don't mean to
be there. Humans behave irrationally a lot of the time. I consider this
fact a defect or shortcoming in their intelligence (or make-up). Just
because humans have a shortcoming doesn't mean that another intelligence
will necessarily have the same shortcoming.
> Every time someone (subconsciously) decides to do something, their
> brain presents a list of reasons to go ahead. The reasons against are
> ignored, or weighted down to be less preferred. This applies to
> everything from deciding to get a new job to deciding to sleep with
> your best friend's wife. Sometimes a case arises when you really,
> really want to do something that you *know* is going to end in
> disaster, ruined lives, ruined career, etc. and it is impossible to
> think of good reasons to proceed. But you still go ahead anyway,
> saying that maybe it won't be so bad, maybe nobody will find out, it's
> not all my fault anyway, and so on.....
Yup. Humans are not as intelligent as they could be. Generally, they place
way too much weight on near-term effect and not enough weight on long-term
effects. Actually, though, I'm not sure whether you classify that as
intelligence or wisdom. For many bright people, they *do* know all of what
you're saying and they still go ahead. This is certainly some form of
defect, I'm not sure where you'd classify it though.
> Human decisions and activities are mostly emotional and irrational.
I think that this depends upon the person. For the majority of humans,
maybe -- but I'm not willing to accept this as applying to each individual
human that their decisions and activities are mostly emotional and
irrational. I believe that there are some humans where this is not the
case.
> That's the way life is. Because life is uncertain and unpredictable,
> human decisions are based on best guesses, gambles and basic
> subconscious desires.
Yup, we've evolved to be at least minimally functional though not optimal.
> An AGI will have to cope with this mess.
Yes, so far I'm in total agreement with everything you've said . . . .
> Basing an AGI on iron logic
> and 'rationality' alone will lead to what we call 'inhuman'
> ruthlessness.
. . . until now where you make an unsupported blanket statement that
doesn't
appear to me at all related to any of the above (and which may be entirely
accurate or inaccurate based upon what you mean by ruthless -- but I
believe
that it would take a very contorted definition of ruthless to make it
accurate -- though inhuman should obviously be accurate).
Part of the problem is that 'rationality' is a very emotion-laden term with
a very slippery meaning. Is doing something because you really, really want
to despite the fact that it most probably will have bad consequences really
irrational? It's not a wise choice but irrational is a very strong term . .
. . (and, as I pointed out previously, such a decision *is* rationally made
if you have bad weighting in your algorithm -- which is effectively what
humans have -- or not, since it apparently has been evolutionarily selected
for).
And logic isn't necessarily so iron if the AGI has built-in biases for
conversation and relationships (both of which are rationally derivable from
it's own self-interest).
I think that you've been watching too much Star Trek where logic and
rationality are the opposite of emotion. That just isn't the case. Emotion
can be (and is most often noted when it is) contrary to logic and
rationality -- but it is equally likely to be congruent with them (and even
more so in well-balanced and happy individuals).
You have hinted around it, but I would go one step further and say that
Emotion is NOT contrary to logic. In any way really, they cant be compared
like that. Logic even 'uses' emotion as imput. The decisions we make are
based on rules and facts we know, and our emotions, but still logically.
What emotions often contradict is our actual ability to make good decicions
/ plans.
If we do something stupid because of our anger or emotions, then it still
is a causal logical explanation.
So humand and AGI may be irrational, but hopefully not illogical. If it is
illogical then that implies it made its decision without any logical reasoning,
so possibly random. AGI will need some level of randomness, but not for
general things.
James Ratcliff
_______________________________________
James Ratcliff - http://falazar.com
New Torrent Site, Has TV and Movie Downloads!
http://www.falazar.com/projects/Torrents/tvtorrents_show.php
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