Mike,
You have mischaracterized "cog sci". It does not say the things you
claim it does.
What you are actually trying to attack was a particular view of AI (not
cog sci) in which everything is "symbolic" in a particular kind of way.
That stuff is just a straw man.
Cog sci in general encourages a wide range of different theories of
cognition, and the one that you vaguely describe is easily part of teh
cog sci mainstream.
Richard Loosemore
Mike Tintner wrote:
I think I've found a simple test of cog. sci.
I take the basic premise of cog. sci. to be that the human mind - and
therefore its every activity, or sequence of action - is programmed.
Eric Baum epitomises cog. sci."Baum proposes [in What Is Thought] that
underlying mind is a complex but compact program that corresponds to the
underlying structure of the world.."
As you know, I contend that that is absurd - that, yes, every human
activity - having a conversation, writing a post, making love, doing a
drawing etc - is massively "subprogrammed", containing often v. large
numbers of routines - but as a whole, each activity is a "free
composition". Those routines, along with isolated actions, are more or
less freely thrown together - "freely associated" . As a whole, our
activities are more or less "crazy" walks - I use "crazy" to mean both
structured and chaotic - and effectively self-contradictory.
(This has huge implications for AGI - you guys believe that an AGI must
be programmed for its activities, I contend that free composition
instead is essential for truly adaptive, general intelligence and is the
basis of all animal and human activities).
So how to test cog sci? I contend that the proper, *ideal* test is to
record humans' actual streams of thought about any problem - like, say,
writing an essay - and even just a minute's worth will show that,
actually, humans have major difficulties following anything like a
joined-up, rational train of thought - or any stream that looks remotely
like it could be programmed overall. (That includes more esoteric forms
of programming like random kinds). Actually, humans follow more or less
roving, crazy streams of thought - not chaotic by any means, but not
perfectly "joined up" either - more or less free-form, a bit like free
verse - somewhat structured but only loosely).
I still think that this is the proper, essential approach to studying
the connectedness, programmed or otherwise, of human thought. But it is
obviously a complicated affair - even if one could record those streams
of thought absolutely faithfully.
And science likes simple tests/ experiments - the more mathematical and
measurable the better.
So here's a simple mathematical test, which everyone can try.
"Do an abstract line drawing." (for let's say 30 secs. - on this
particular site)
Here are a few of my spontaneous masterpieces:
http://www.imagination3.com/LaunchPage?aFileType=&_nolivecache&sessionID=&message=&room_email=&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&from_name=mike
tintner&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&to_name=&aDrawingID=20080105_194101926_970043768_gbr&transcript=&_lscid=
.
http://www.imagination3.com/LaunchPage?aFileType=&_nolivecache&sessionID=&message=&room_email=&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&from_name=mike
tintner&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&to_name=&aDrawingID=20080105_194033348_926554557_gbr&transcript=&_lscid=
.
http://www.imagination3.com/LaunchPage?aFileType=&_nolivecache&sessionID=&message=&room_email=&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&from_name=mike
tintner&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&to_name=&aDrawingID=20080105_193922629_715992016_gbr&transcript=&_lscid=
.
http://www.imagination3.com/LaunchPage?aFileType=&_nolivecache&sessionID=&message=&room_email=&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&from_name=mike
tintner&[EMAIL PROTECTED]&to_name=&aDrawingID=20080105_193734879_1708083161_gbr&transcript=&_lscid=
.
The beauty of this site is that it does indeed record the actual stream
of thought/ drawing - and not just the end result. (It would be v.
interesting to see many other people's tests).
Now you guys are mathematicians - I contend that those drawings are
indeed crazy, spontaneous, free compositions - they have themes and
patterns in parts and are by no means entirely random, but they are
certainly not patterned or programmed overall either. Can you find an
overall pattern or program to any of them - let alone a program that
underlies ALL of them? Or, if you prefer, can you find a suite of programs?
(I guess a more formal way of expressing the test is that on any given
page, it is possible to draw an infinite number of line drawings which
are a) structured b) chaotic c) crazy (mixtures of both) - and, in
principle, programmed or non-programmed. And to assert that human
activities are programmed is, in the final analysis, to assert that
there is no such thing as a crazy set of lines. But please comment).
What this test shows, I believe, is the bleeding obvious - humans can
and do produce truly spontaneous,crazy, nonprogrammed,ad hoc, unplanned
sequences of action. Well, it should be obvious but many of you guys
will fight to the death to defy the obvious. So one needs a simple test.
It's a considerable historical irony that "painting by numbers" was born
very roughly at the same time as AI/ cog sci , c. 1950.
Cog sci. is the view that we live - paint, eat, copulate, talk, etc. -
by numbers. That view is wrong. We live, paint etc. by free
composition. (And we find both our own and nature's created forms
"beautiful" or "ugly" precisely because only a relative few are highly
structured/ effectively programmed while the majority are much wilder
and a little too freely composed).
P.S. I welcome any proper mathematical formulations of the idea behind
the test and also any suggested variations on the test.
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