>What is the demonstrable intermediate step to making an airplane? Positive lift, demonstrated increases in glide distances, gradually increasing times staying aloft, etc. It's exactly how (without numerical simulations and so on) that airfoil design, appropriate materials, and so on, were discovered. Nobody built a 747 as the first airplane and crossed their fingers that their theories were right.
Yeah, but it's obvious only in hindsight that those are the right intermediate steps to look at. In foresight, skeptics just said "So what if you have positive lift and increasing glide distance, that doesn't mean anything about achieving true flight" We have intermediate steps that we are working toward in the Novamente project ... of course ... but, the problem of getting skeptics to accept one's intermediate steps as meaningful or convincing is a whole other issue. In AGI, as with the flight example, the validity of certain intermediary steps as indicators of progress is dependent upon one's underlying theory. The difference is that now (as opposed to in the time of the Wright brothers) there is a commonly accepted theory of aerodynamics, so everyone accepts what the sensible intermediate steps on the path to flight are. But there is not, now, any commonly accepted theory of cogno-dynamics... -- Ben ----- This list is sponsored by AGIRI: http://www.agiri.org/email To unsubscribe or change your options, please go to: http://v2.listbox.com/member/?member_id=231415&user_secret=fabd7936
