As I understand Monika Krishan's competence/performance distinction, it was one between what the brain can and cannot do (i.e., competency) and how fast it can do it (i.e., performance). (I don't know whether how well (other than how fast) it can do something is competence or performance or both)
I personally think mind augmentation would be applicable for improving both capabilities. We humans are capable of doing a lot of things slowly, that it would be extremely enabling to be able to do 1000 times faster, such as inventing, or programming, to name just a few. In my mind the line between competency and performance is not clear. For example, are memory limitations a competency or performance one, particularly since to some extent how much one remember is a function of how alert, well rested, interested one is, and one could learn and remember different things at different times. It is much easier to think how superhuman intelligences will outshine us in the performance arena, since all one has to do is take known human mental talents and extrapolate. It seems to me it is more difficult to understand what new mental competences superintelligences will have because many of them involve abilities, that because they are outside our competence, we have not yet thought of. Ed Porter -----Original Message----- From: Russell Wallace [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, November 06, 2007 6:22 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [agi] Questions On 11/6/07, Monika Krishan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > So when speaking of augmentation, a clarification would have to made > as to whether the enhancement refers to human competence or human > performance. ..... and hence the related issue of "discovering human > competencies". Ah. *nods* Well, literally millions of volumes have been written on the subject, so you'll need to ask a more specific question :) Are you asking whether computers have enabled any completely new human competencies, anything we didn't in principle know beforehand how to do even the tiniest bit of? There aren't a lot of examples of that (and more or less by definition, we can't foresee future examples). Depending on how you define the terms, experimental mathematics, quantum chemistry and video games might mostly/almost qualify. (Programming itself, ironically, is a mostly/almost; the world's first programmer never did get her hands on a working computer.) ----- 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/?&; ----- 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=8660244&id_secret=62393426-c4811a
