All,
Here's a question for you:
What does fomlepung mean?
If your immediate (mental) response was "I don't know." it means you're not a
slang-slinging Norwegian. But, how did your brain produce that "feeling of not
knowing"? And, how did it produce that feeling so fast?
Your brain may have been able to do a massively-parallel search of your entire
memory and come up "empty." But, if it does this, it's subconscious. No one to
whom I've presented the above question has reported a conscious "feeling of
searching" before having the conscious feeling of not knowing.
It could be that your brain keeps a "list of things I don't know." I tend to
think this is the case, but it doesn't explain why your brain can react so
quickly with the feeling of not knowing when it doesn't know it doesn't know
(e.g., the very first time it encounters the word "fomlepung").
My intuition tells me the feeling of not knowing when presented with a
completely novel concept or event is a product of the "Danger, Will Robinson!",
reptilian part of our brain. When we don't know we don't know something we
react with a feeling of not knowing as a survival response. Then, having
survived, we put the thing not known at the head of our list of "things I don't
know." As long as that thing is in this list it explains how we can come to the
feeling of not knowing it so quickly.
Of course, keeping a large list of "things I don't know" around is probably not
a good idea. I suspect such a list will naturally get smaller through atrophy.
You will probably never encounter the fomlepung question again, so the fact
that you don't know what it means will become less and less important and
eventually it will drop off the end of the list. And...
Another intuition tells me that the list of "things I don't know", might
generate a certain amount of cognitive dissonance the resolution of which can
only be accomplished by seeking out new information (i.e., "learning")? If so,
does this mean that such a list in an AGI could be an important element of that
AGI's "desire" to learn? From a functional point of view, this could be
something as simple as a scheduled background task that checks the "things I
don't know" list occasionally and, under the right circumstances, "pings" the
AGI with a pang of cognitive dissonance from time to time.
So, what say ye?
Cheers,
Brad
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agi
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