Mike, On 4/12/08, Mike Tintner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Steve:If you've > got a messy real-world problem, you know little, if you have an > algorithm giving the solution, you know all. > > This is the bit where, like most, you skip over the nature of AGI - messy > real-world problems. What you're saying is: "hey if you've got a messy > problem, it's great, nay perfect if you have a neat solution." Contradiction > in terms and reality. If it's messy, there isn't a neat solution. >
However, there are MANY interesting points in between these two extremes. Typically, given the best "experts" (quotes used to highlight the fact that claiming expertise in something that is poorly understood, as doctors routinely do, is a bit of an oxymoron) available, you can identify several cause-and-effect chain links that are contributing to your problem, even though there remains most of the problem that you still do NOT understand. If you can ONLY identify a cure to a single link between the root cause and the self-sustaining loop at the end, and identify any way at all to temporarily interrupt (doctors call this a "treatment) any link in the self-sustaining loop at the end, you can permanently cure the difficult problem, even though most of it remains a complete mystery. That this simple fact has remained hidden has misled AI and AGI, and will continue to mislead it until everyone involved understands this. > > Take most cancers. If you have one, what do you do? Well, there are a lot > of people out there offering you a lot of v. conflicting treatments and > proposals, and there is no neat, definitive answer to your problem. > Only because various misdirected interests are misleading the process. To illustrate, about a year ago I delivered a presentation to a roomfull of cancer survivors (and people who were trying to survive it). I explained the complex part that body temperature apparently played, and exactly why it was almost unknown for a cancer patient to have a "normal" 98.6F=37C body temperature. I then asked if anyone in the room had a 98.6F body temperature, and NO ONE DID. THERE is a pretty definitive answer, but getting it out to the "experts" is probably impossible because they have other dysfunctional models to use. I have an article about this if you would like it. There is a safe and simple one-day cure for erroneous body temperature, yet no cancer sufferer that I know of has ever done it!!! That's the kind of problem a human general intelligence has to deal with, > and was designed to deal with. > Above is a simple case where even when presented with the answer, there is no way of propagating it to the rest of the human race. I have a friend who is the Director of Research for the Medical Center of a major University, whose own personal surgical experiences supported everything I said so he openly accepted it. I spent 4 hours discussing various approaches to getting this message out. His take - there was no path that he could identify to accomplish this. The detailed explanations of the paths that we considered would fill a small book. Places like Wikipedia have a filtering process that is guaranteed to block any such postings. In short, I wouldn't look at "human general intelligence" too closely, as except for some rare cases, it too is an oxymoron. It would be MUCH easier to build a really intelligent system than to build a "humanly intelligent" system. Not the neat ones. > > (And how do I communicate that to you - get you & other AGI-ers to focus > on that? Because what you'll do is say: "Oh sure it's messy, but there's > gotta be a neat solution." You won't be able to stay with the messiness. > It's too uncomfortable. My "communication problem" is in itself a messy one > - like most problems of communicating to other people, e.g. how do you sell > your AGI system or get funding?) > YES, there IS a topic of mutual interest. There used to be people called "venture capitalists", but people doing this function no longer exist. There are now people calling themselves "venture capitalists" whom people used to call "investment bankers". There are "angel investors" who do the initial seed investing, but who lack the resources to follow up with major investments once the seed investment has succeeded. In short, I have sort of given up on finding anyone who has the CAPACITY to invest in any sort of AI/AGI, as all investors have money raised on a prospectus which, upon careful reading, guaranteed that they will NOT invest in AI/AGI. Some of the common exclusional reasons include: 1. Where are your paying customers? 2. What prior University research is this built upon? 3. Where is your intellectual property protection? 4. Where am I going to find other investors with whom to share the risk? Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=98558129-0bdb63 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
