On Thu, Aug 7, 2008 at 9:42 AM, Mark Waser <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > Hi Jim,
>> The apparent paradox can be >> reduced to the never ending deterministic vs free will argument. > > Again, I agree but I don't believe that determinism vs. free will is really > a paradox (heresy!). You are deterministic because you will do what your > nature and history inclines you to do. You have free will because you will > do what (your nature makes) you wish to do. > > Mark I am having trouble expressing myself precisely for some reason. You can reduce Searle's Chinese Room problem in a number of ways. One way is to see the question of whether machines can 'understand' in the deterministic vs free will thing. But, I feel that once these kinds of problems are resolved, they have implications about conducting controlled experiments on learning methods. Because we cannot be sure if a learning method is viably extensible, we have to discover some fundamental elements of general learning which can be used in constructions that can be made gradually made more complicated. It's my opinion that is feasible to make the resolution of these apparent paradoxes in concrete programmatic terms. (That is, they can be made in terms that are closer to programmatic terms than, for example, some vague references to emergence). It could turn out that learning is a complex adaptive system in the SLI sense, or that it has some aspects of that kind of complexity, but since we are talking about AGI programs that are capable of global access of memory, and which can be (and must be) designed to track some history of their conceptual development, it is unlikely that the emergence of 'understanding' is going to be totally inexplicable using reductionist methods. The key here though is that the elements of thought refers to the program and not some closed set of high level thoughts. But even if it turns out that these elements of learning are not viable in an extensible model, the effort is still worthwhile. Even though extensible complexity (in the general sense) must be an important area of study, no one else is even talking about it. Everyone knows its a problem, but everyone thinks their particular theory has already solved the problem. I say it should be the focus of study and experiment. Jim Bromer ------------------------------------------- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244&id_secret=108809214-a0d121 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
