--- On Fri, 9/12/08, Bryan Bishop <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > On Wednesday 10 September 2008, Matt Mahoney wrote:
> > I have asked this list as well as the singularity and > SL4 lists > > whether there are any non-evolutionary models > (mathematical, > > software, physical, or biological) for recursive self > improvement > > (RSI), i.e. where the parent and not the environment > decides what the > > goal is and measures progress toward it. But as far as > I know, the > > answer is no. > > Have considered resource constraint situations where > parents kill their > young? The runt of the litter or, sometimes, others - like > when a lion > takes over a pride. Mostly in the non-human, non-Chinese > portions of > the animal kingdom. (I refer to current events re: > China's population > constraints on female offspring, of course.) There are two problems with this approach. First, if your child is smarter than you, how would you know? Second, this approach favors parents who don't kill their children. How do you prevent this trait from evolving? > Secondly, I'm still wondering about the representations > of goals in the > brain. So far, there has been no study showing the > neurobiological > basis of 'goal' in the human brain. As far as we > know, it's folk > psychology anyway, and it might not be 'true', > since there's no hard > physical evidence of the existence of goals. I'm > talking about > bottom-up existence, not top-down (top being > "us", humans and our > social contexts and such). You can define an algorithm as goal-oriented if it can be described as having a utility function U(x): X -> R (any input, real-valued output) and an iterative search over x in X such that U(x) increases over time. Whether a program has a goal depends on how you describe it. For example, linear regression has the goal of finding m and b such the straight line equation (y = mx + b) minimizes RMS error given a set of (x,y) points, but only if you solve it by iteratively adjusting m and b and evaluating the error, rather than use the conventional closed form solution. The human brain is easiest to describe as having a utility function described by Maslow's hierarchy of needs. Or you could describe it as a state table with 2^(10^15) inputs. > Does RSI have to be measured with respect to goals? Can you > prove to me > that there exists no non-goal oriented improvement > methodology? No, it is a philosophical question. What do you mean by "improvement"? -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] ------------------------------------------- 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=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
