So . . . . are you willing to immediately release your current Dr. Eliza code
to Open Source and let us see it and help humanity together?
----- Original Message -----
From: Steve Richfield
To: [email protected]
Sent: Saturday, April 12, 2008 1:53 AM
Subject: Re: [agi] Comments from a lurker...
Vladimir,
On 4/11/08, Vladimir Nesov <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Hence, simulational System Dynamics must be confined to systems whose
> operation can be observed or instrumented. Unfortunately, this lets out
most
> of the REALLY important real-world problems, especially medicine, from
> simulated solution. That reasoning new cures for medical conditions that
are
> unknown to the computer at once appears to be SO difficult, yet is
> relatively easy given the right approach, is why I/we chose chronic
illness,
> the hardest part of medicine, as our demo.
>
Why does it follow? There is only a difference of degree. If you've
got a messy real-world problem, you know little, if you have an
algorithm giving the solution, you know all. The trick is to be able
to benefit from many intermediate grades of specification.
This has two different answers:
#1: When your doctor has just told you that you have something incurable (I
have been there) is a really bad time to start a large research project,
ESPECIALLY when the answers are already out there, but in small fragments that
must be strung together. My own illness took me 4 months to locate the pieces
and string them together. This should have only taken a few minutes with
something like Dr. Eliza. Why bother simulating something when the research has
already been done?
#2: The entire world is working on thousands of important research problems.
Yes, you CAN apply SD principles and develop a simulation that may help with
one of those problems, despite its imperfections. Many of the millions of
people in the world are applying SD principles to the thousands of problems
right now. Yes, anything that can help with such efforts would be very useful,
however...
A machine that tracks what EVERYONE is doing, collects the fragments of
wisdom that come from every project and has the entire world's wisdom to apply
to ANY stated problem, whether or not the person stating the problem has any
clue at all what lies inside the computer or what to ask. THAT would be
thousands of times more valuable than any one SD tool, however successful it
might be. THAT is what Dr. Eliza was designed to do.
YES, something like Dr. Eliza would be more powerful if people had better SD
and other tools to perform their research. As things now stand, the Internet is
only a library with absolutely NO ability to take fragments from here and there
and string them all together to solve a problem. Dr. Eliza's methods makes the
information ACTIVE and able to interrelate.
I certainly wouldn't discourage anyone from developing better research tools.
However, the vast majority of existing research is presently inaccessible
unless you know exactly what to ask for, and adding more to this inaccessible
lot seems to me to be of diminishing value until something like Dr. Eliza is on
everyone's desktop to string the bits of wisdom together to solve everyone's
real-world problems. THEN would be a good time to switch efforts as you
suggest, when the tools are in place to fully utilize the sorts of things that
you are looking to develop.
Steve Richfield
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