It's driving me nuts because it's basically simple.
My definition covers your point:
"
" If I drop this pencil, does it have
the 'goal' of reaching the floor? If 'goal' is the wrong word here (and
clearly it is), then what exactly is a real goal?"
No - only living creatures (and agents with some kind of mind), have general
drives and the power to set specific goals for them, and then solve the
problems of how to reach those goals.
Inanimate matter can only move in basically straight lines and so can only
be said to have "destinations." Put a forked road or obstacle in its path
and it crashes into the obstruction. It has neither the mental or physical
capacity to solve problems.
Living creatures have "goals" - if you put obstacles in the path to their
goals, they have the capacity to solve the problem both cognitively and
physically of how to get around those obstacles and still reach their goal.
All problem-solving comes down to that.
If you keep redefining the basic terms, like goal, problem etc. , you
achieve 0 but disappearing up your rectum in company with Derrida and a
million other philosophers. Language can never be precise.
The big deal in terms of AGI for me, is polishing up a little the definition
of the second kind of intelligent problem-solving , i.e. open-ended
problem-solving, which is central to AGI . - and then finding a few choice
examples of what is entailed, with the memorability of the Turing Test
example, but without its impossible vagueness..
----- Original Message -----
From: "Richard Loosemore" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
To: <[email protected]>
Sent: Thursday, April 26, 2007 9:58 PM
Subject: Re: [agi] Circular definitions of intelligence
Mike Tintner wrote:
You guys are driving me nuts.
Jumping in at the middle, here goes:
"Intelligence is the capacity to solve problems.
(An intelligent agent solves problems in order to reach its goals)
Problems occur when an agent must select between two or more paths to
reach its goals.
Sorry to hear it's driving you nuts, but....
Jumping in at the middle means you missed the original point,
unfortunately: the original point is whether you can do build a
definition without begging any questions, and the terms 'solve',
'problem', 'agent' and 'goal' in the above definition all require
definitions of their own.
When you really push hard on it, it turns out that these terms cannot be
defined without implicitly leaving it up to an 'intelligence' (i.e. us) to
make a judgment call about what constitutes 'solve', 'problem', 'agent'
and 'goal'.
Try it: what counts as a 'goal'? If I drop this pencil, does it have the
'goal' of reaching the floor? If 'goal' is the wrong word here (and
clearly it is), then what exactly is a real goal?
You may have to go back to the beginning of the thread and read exactly
what I was arguing, to know why I said what I did a few hours ago.
Why is it important? Well, I did say why, too..... :-)
Eric B. Ramsay wrote:
> Several emails ago, both Ben and Richard said they were no longer going
> to continue this argument, yet here they are - still arguing. Will the
> definition of intelligence be able to accomodate this behavior by these
> gentlemen?
Well...... actually I said "Unless you or someone else comes up with a
definition that does not fall into one of these traps, I am not going to
waste any more time arguing the point."
But Ben did try to come up with one, so I continued.
Okay, so at a meta level it was brainless of me to continue ;-)
Richard Loosemore.
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