Brad:>
I presume this is the Waldrop Complexity book to which you referred:
"Complexity: The Emerging Science at the Edge of Order and Chaos"
M. Mitchell Waldrop, 1992, $10.20 (new, paperback) from Amazon (used
copies also available)
http://www.amazon.com/Complexity-Emerging-Science-Order-Chaos/dp/0671872346/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1214641304&sr=1-1
Is this the "newer" book you had in mind?
"At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Self-Organization
and Complexity"
Stuart Kauffman (The Santa Fe Institute), 1995, $18.95 (new, paperback)
from Amazon (used copies
also available)
http://www.amazon.com/At-Home-Universe-Self-Organization-Complexity/dp/0195111303/ref=reg_hu-wl_mrai-recs
Speaking of Kauffman, here's a quote from him, illustrating the points I was
making in the other thread, re how a totally algorithmic approach to AGI -
including an algorithmic trial-and-error approach - won't work (I disagree
with him though - the mind IS a machine, just much more sophisticated than
our current conceptions of machines):
"The second, predominant view among cognitive scientists is that
consciousness arises when enough computational elements are networked
together. In this view, a mind is a machine, and a complex set of buckets of
water pouring water into one another would become conscious. I just cannot
believe this. I cannot however disprove it, but I can offer arguments
against it.
On this view, the mind is algorithmic. With Penrose, in The Emperor's New
Mind, I believe that the mind is not algorithmic, although it can act
algorithmically. If it is not algorithmic, then the mind is not a machine
and consciousness may not arise in a classical - as opposed to possibly to a
quantum - system. Penrose bases his argument on the claim that in seeking a
proof a mathematician does not follow an algorithm himself. I think he is
right, but the example is not felicitous, for the proof itself is patently
an algorithm, and how do we know that the mathematician did not
subconsciously follow that algorithm in finding the proof.
My arguments start from humbler conditions. Years ago my computer sat on my
front table, plugged into a floor socket. I feared my family would bump into
the cord and pull the computer off the table, breaking it. I now describe
the table: 3 x 5 feet, three wooden boards on top, legs with certain
carvings, chipped paint with the wood surface showing through with
indefinitely many distances between points on the chipped flecks, two
cracks, one crack seven feet from the fireplace, eleven feet from the
kitchen, 238,000 miles from the moon, a broken leaf on the mid board of the
top...You get the idea that there is no finite description of the table -
assuming for example continuous spacetime.
So I invented a solution. I jammed the cord into one of the cracks and
pulled it tight so that my family would not be able to pull the computer off
the table. Now it seems to me that there is no way to turn this Herculian
mental performance into an algorithm. How would one bound the features of
the situation finitely? How would one even list the features of the table
in a denumerably infinite list? One cannot. Thus it seems to me that no
algorithm was performed. As a broader case, we are all familiar with
struggling to formulate a problem. Do you remotely think that your struggle
is an effective "mechanical" or algorithmic procedure? I do not. I also do
not know how to prove that a given performance is not algorithmic. What
would count as such a proof? So I must leave my conviction with you,
unproven, but powerful I think. If true, then the mind is not a machine.
Stuart A. Kauffman , BEYOND REDUCTIONISM, Reinventing The Sacred, Edge,
11.13.06, http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/kauffman06/kauffman06_index.html
-------------------------------------------
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=106510220-47b225
Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
