Richard, I think that it would be possible to formalize your "complex systems argument" mathematically, but I don't have time to do so right now.
> Or, then again ..... perhaps I am wrong: maybe you really *cannot* > understand anything except math? It's not the case that I can only understand math -- however, I have a lot of respect for the power of math to clarify disagreements. Without math, arguments often proceed in a confused way because different people are defining terms differently,a and don't realize it. But, I agree math is not the only kind of rigor. I would be happy with a very careful, systematic exposition of your argument along the lines of Spinoza or the early Wittgenstein. Their arguments were not mathematical, but were very rigorous and precisely drawn -- not slippery. > Perhaps you have no idea what the actual > argument is, and that has been the problem all along? I notice that you > avoided answering my request that you summarize your argument "against" the > complex systems problem ... perhaps you are just confused about what the > argument actually is, and have been confused right from the beginning? In a nutshell, it seems you are arguing that general intelligence is fundamentally founded on emergent properties of complex systems, and that it's not possible for us to figure out analytically how these emergent properties emerge from the lower-level structures and dynamics of the complex systems involved. Evolution, you suggest, "figured out" some complex systems that give rise to the appropriate emergent properties to produce general intelligence. But evolution did not do this figuring-out in an analytical way, rather via its own special sort of "directed trial and error." You suggest that to create a generally intelligent system, we should create a software framework that makes it very easy to experiment with different sorts of complex systems, so that we can then figure out (via some combination of experiment, analysis, intuition, theory, etc.) how to create a complex system that gives rise to the emergent properties associated with general intelligence. I'm sure the above is not exactly how you'd phrase your argument -- and it doesn't capture all the nuances -- but I was trying to give a compact and approximate formulation. If you'd like to give an alternative, equally compact formulation, that would be great. I think the flaw of your argument lies in your definition of "complexity", and that this would be revealed if you formalized your argument more fully. I think you define complexity as a kind of "fundamental irreducibility" that the human brain does not possess, and that engineered AGI systems need not possess. I think that real systems display complexity which makes it **computationally difficult** to explain their emergent properties in terms of their lower-level structures and dynamics, but not as fundamentally intractable as you presume. But because you don't formalize your notion of complexity adequately, it's not possible to engage you in rational argumentation regarding the deep flaw at the center of your argument. However, I cannot prove rigorously that the brain is NOT complex in the overly strong sense you allude it is ... and nor can I prove rigorously that a design like Novamente Cognition Engine or OpenCog Prime will give rise to the emergent properties associated with general intelligence. So, in this sense, I don't have a rigorous refutation of your argument, and nor would I if you rigorously formalized your argument. However, I think a rigorous formulation of your argument would make it apparent to nearly everyone reading it that your definition of complexity is unreasonably strong. -- Ben G ------------------------------------------- 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
