The key point was lost, here is a clearer way of saying it. Kepler's experience (his empirical work and experimentation with all his equipment) IS NOT what helped him DISCOVER properties of gravity (equal times for equal areas) (we can agree no one Invented it, though Newton generalized Kepler's insights). He had an INSIGHT separate from his possible SENSORY past or SENSORY future. In the words of Einstein in a speech on Kepler given on Kepler's 300th anniversary of his death:
"One can never see where a planet really is at any given moment, but only in what direction it can be seen just then from the Earth, which is itself moving in an unknown manner around the Sun. The difficulties thus seemed practically unsurmountable [by empirical means]. Kepler had to discover a way of bringing order into this chaos." The breakthrough was Kepler's Universal Mathematical Physics as he defined it, and NOT physical empirical cosmology (which he specifically REJECTS in his attack on Aristotle's SENSORY based beliefs). So what created this peak of human INSIGHT if compression of experienced patterns was not enough? He did "trade one theory for another" but we call that thinking, and he didn't use empiricism to do it, he hypothesized new patterns and compressed them until they could not be disproved empirically... (this is a major difference from how modern science in executed, where most researchers actually give way, way too much worth to new theories arising from their experimental results, instead of simply removing theories that are negated by the same experiments and leaving their belief spaces open) By bringing an agent's "actions" and "beliefs" of future optimized experiences into the discussion of intelligence, i believe you are limiting the agent to human stupidity and going down the same weak path as nature. True intelligence would be infinitely more humble in what it would declare as knowledge, it would only really know what it doesn't know. Intelligence gradients would be products of compression algorithm efficiency, and available workspace resources for the permutations of past concept patterns. to paraphrase Nietzsche "pointing to a picture of yourself and exclaiming ecce homo " says more about you than man, the same for intelligence, human intelligence is limited by our mind blindness resulting from empiricism and reliance on the senses, AGIs dont need to be that dumb t On Fri, May 30, 2008 at 12:40 AM, J Storrs Hall, PhD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Huh? Kepler was the guy who theorized that the planets lived on spheres > whose > sizes were determined by nesting of the Platonic solids. Later, finding > that > the orbits didn't fit the spheres, he finally struck on the idea that the > orbits were ellipses. He believed that the motion of the planets was caused > by a force radiating from the sun, which grew weaker with distance, giving > rise to his law of equal times for equal areas. But he thought the force > pushed the planet along its path -- he never invented gravity (though he > set > the stage for Newton to do so, as Copernicus and Tycho had set it for him. > > Astronomy is perhaps the closest to compression of the sciences, since it's > difficult to do experiments with planets. However, even 15th-century > astronomy used some non-trivial instrumentation, notably astrolabes and the > earliest telescopes (and look at this: http://nfo.edu/italy/meridiana.html > ). > So there's a significant amount of work going on there, not just chewing > over > a given set of data. > > But to repeat: Kepler's major advance was to trade one theory for another > because the first one did not fit the observational data. That's about as > empirical as it gets. > > As far as elegantly compressing one's history, yes, we do that -- but my > point > is that we actively intervene in the world based on the theories we produce > thereby, in such a way as to optimize our expected history thereafter -- > both > for the further production of theories, and other purposes. > > If Zen has any useful advice for AGI, I'd claim it was in its rejection of > endless philosophizing :-) > > josh > > On Thursday 29 May 2008 04:08:14 pm, Tudor Boloni wrote: > > Josh, IF we remove the empiricism bias in "future sensory histories" > (think > > Kepler and the approach he took to discover gravity, such as: what can > > explain observed patterns, knowing our mind is always BLINDED by the > senses > > (similar to zen teachings), he had to negate the tendency to build a > > hypothesis that relied on the "shadows of reality" (i.e. observable > > phenomena limited by our arbitrary senses), and then arrive at the most > > compact hypothesis that could not be disproved at the time) THEN this > seems > > to be a very powerful roadmap: > > > > Recipe for Intelligence: elegantly compress one's history, then > hypothesize > > all reasonable permutations of past events (include permutations of time > > scales also), elegantly compress hypotheses until not disprovable > > > > The more intelligent a system the smaller the information footprint... > > pretty zen > > > > Tudor > > > > > > > > On Thu, May 29, 2008 at 8:41 PM, J Storrs Hall, PhD <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> > > wrote: > > > > > I would demur. There is a huge overlap in the techniques used in > > > compression > > > and those in intelligence. However, the significant difference is that > > > intelligence, in interacting with the real world, has a motor component > > > which > > > allows it to select among possible future sensory histories in a way > that > > > is > > > not a part of the standard formulation of compression. This leads to > > > techniques such as experimental science -- the source of 99% of current > > > human > > > knowledge. > > > > > > Josh > > > > > > > > > On Thursday 29 May 2008 02:27:43 pm, Matt Mahoney wrote: > > > > --- Tudor Boloni <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > > > > > > > > as a side note, does anyone else feel that intelligence and > compression > > > > > (or less formally the ability to summarize) are identical? > > > > > > > > Yes, > http://cs.fit.edu/~mmahoney/compression/rationale.html<http://cs.fit.edu/%7Emmahoney/compression/rationale.html> > <http://cs.fit.edu/%7Emmahoney/compression/rationale.html> > > > > > > > > See also Hutter's work on AIXI which proves the equivalence. > > > > > > > > -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] > > > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > > > 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/?&; > > > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > > 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/?&; > > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > > > > > > > ------------------------------------------- > 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/?&; > Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com > ------------------------------------------- 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=103754539-40ed26 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
