On 3/29/07, kevin osborne wrote:
<snip>
You could argue that a lot of all this is the same kind of functions
just operating in 'parrellel' with a lot of 'redundancy'.
I'm not sure I buy that. Evolution is a miserly mistress. If thinking
could have been achieved with less, it would have been, and any
'extra' would have no means of selection.
The (also ridiculously large) amount of years involved in mammalian
brain evolution all led towards what we bobble around with us today.
I think there is an untold host of support functions necessary to take
a Von Neumann machine to a tipping-point|critical-mass where it can
truly think for itself. To even begin to equate top the generalised
abilities of an imbecile.
I think you have too high an opinion of Evolution.
Evolution is kludge piled upon kludge.
This is because evolution via natural selection cannot construct
traits from scratch. New traits must be modifications of previously
existing traits. This is called historical constraint.
There are many examples available in nature of bad design.
So it is not unlikely that a lot of the human brain processing is a
redundant hangover from earlier designs. Of course, it is not a
trivial problem to decide which functions are not required to create
AGI. :)
BillK
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