:-) The epiphany strikes . . . . :-)
One of the hard lessons I've learned in life is that it is very possible
for people to understand the highest levels of a given concept/field and the
lowest/grittiest details and have absolutely no clue about the middle or how to
join them (or often, reality in general). In my professional life, I have been
suckered by job-seekers who could talk the high-level talk, provide code (which
it was quite clear later that they weren't capable of having produced), and
handle reasonably short problems but were absolutely worthless once employed.
Actually, suckered is probably the wrong word since my experience is also that
these individuals truly believe that they are at least as competent as most
people in the field (if not better). I'd classify Mike Tintner as a similar
individual.
----- Original Message -----
From: John G. Rose
To: [email protected]
Sent: Thursday, May 24, 2007 9:09 PM
Subject: RE: [agi] Write a doctoral dissertation, trigger a Singularity
Here's Murray's book AI4U -
http://books.iuniverse.com/viewbooks.asp?isbn=0595654371&page=fm3
I just speed read this book this afternoon and I'm floored because it defies
classification. The chapters are devoted to JavaScript functions within the
"Mind for MSIE" (MSIE = Internet Explorer browser). Think about it, a mind in
JavaScript. And then superfluous and exaggerated wordiness about concepts which
may be represented by just a few lines of JavaScript, and the whole JS code is
like 50 pages, but the grandiose terminology with deep philosophical and sci-fi
references mixed in with weak Chomskyisms, robotics, cog-sci and Psychic Area
Networks...wow. It's like a 1950's theoretical AI software manual written by
Franz Bardon, using 1980's ASCII art, modernized for pseudo AGI design, while
Frankensteining together diverse philosophical, psychological, linguistic and
introspective thought analysis... phew.. unbelievable. I didn't know whether
to laugh, cry, pray or call the psychic hotline. It deserves to be in a museum.
John
From: John G. Rose [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
He definitely has a great vocabulary you have to admit and he is a good
showman. Also his critiques of others writings is interesting and humorous as
well. As far as the technical validity of his AI project I don't know because
I'm still struggling with the ASCII diagrams J
John
From: Mark Waser [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Some people are thrown by unusual ways of communicating, some are not.
Murray is drawing pretty consistent ratings/opinions (in terms of the validity
of his content) so I don't think that it is his communications style that is
the problem.
Personally, I judge content value on some vague formula involving
communication size, correct and new content, incorrect content, and how easily
I can tell the latter two apart. Murray's posts have *very* little
intelligence and wisdom particularly when compared the the amount of just plain
incorrect content. Thus, he has negligible content value for me.
On the other hand, since I tend not to "freak" -- he certainly does have
some humor values (and "there but for the grace . . . ")
----- Original Message -----
From: John G. Rose
Different people have different ways of communicating. Many Murray posts
are sprinkled with annoyances but then they do have some intelligence and
wisdom. They remind me of a W. C. Fields like way of speaking with some Snake
Oil salesmanship. Actual Snake Oil BTW can be good for certain things but fake
Snake Oil is fake, hence the reputation. More generally speaking I have found
from my experience that some of the worst communicators have the most to say
and some of the best communicators, the least. Not to say Murray is a "bad"
communicator, but we have grown accustomed to marginalizing people who break
the mold thus minimizing the variances of personalities. Part of this is due
to a "franchised-like" educational system that has existed for several decades.
Our personality pool is diminishing due to efficiency rewardsmanship. Also
things like dialects, language variations, cultural variations, etc. are
evening out, we are becoming an optimized, homogenized society. Will AGI's
follow the same trend and have minimal personality variations and maximal
text-book style efficiency of communication? Sometimes breaking the mold of
expressing oneself can have maximal effect of conveying an idea or ideas. I'm
reminded of once taking a class where the instructor spoke very fast on purpose
like an auctioneer. Some students immediately "freaked" because it was
abnormal but the theory was explained and it did work as intended where there
was a very high transfer rate of information and rapid two-way communication.
Computers, esp. AGI's could experiment intentionally with different twists on
language perhaps finding new and better ways of communicating.
John
Personally, I find many of his posts highly entertaining...
If your sense of humor differs, you can always use the DEL key ;-)
-- Ben G
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