Jim Bromer wrote:
Ben G wrote: >>...<<
...
Concerning beliefs and scientific rationalism: Beliefs are the basis
of all thought. To imply that religious belief might be automatically
different from rational beliefs is naïve. However, I think there is
an advantage in defining what a rational thought is realitve to AI
programming and how scientific rationalism is different from simple
rationalism. I am going to write a few messages about this when I get
a chance.
By the way, I don't really see how a simple n^4 or n^3 SAT solver in
itself would be that useful for any immediate AGI project, but the
novel logical methods that the solver will reveal may be more
significant.
Jim Bromer
But religious beliefs *ARE* intrinsically different from rational
beliefs. They aren't the only such belief, but they are among them.
Rational beliefs MUST be founded in other beliefs. Rationalism does not
provide a basis for generating beliefs ab initio, but only via reason,
which requires both axioms and rules of inference. (NARS may have
eliminated the axioms, but I doubt it. OTOH, I don't understand exactly
how it works yet.)
Religion and other intrinsic beliefs are inherent in the construction of
humans. I suspect that every intelligent entity will require such
beliefs. Which particular religion is believed in isn't inherent, but
is situational. (Other factors may enter in, but I would need a clear
explication of how that happened before I would believe that.) Note
that another inherent belief is "People like me are better than people
who are different." The fact that a belief is inherent doesn't mean it
can't be overcome (or at least subdued) by counter-programming, merely
that one will need to continually ward against it, or it will re-assert
itself even if you know that it's wrong.
Saying that a belief is non-rational isn't denigrating it. It's merely
a statement that it isn't a built-in rule. Even the persistence of
forms doesn't seem to be totally built-in, though there are definitely
lots of mechanisms that will tend to create it. So in that case what's
built in is a tendency to perceive the persistence of objects. In the
case of religion it's a bit more difficult to perceive what the built-in
process is. Plausibly it's a combination of several "tendency to
perceive patterns shaped like ..." in the world that aren't
intrinsically connected, but which have been connected by culture. Or
it might be something else. (The "blame/attribute everything to the big
alpha baboon" theory isn't totally silly, but I find it unsatisfactory.
It's at most a partial answer.)
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agi
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