Hi Ben, I think that the current focus has its pros and cons and the more narrowed focus you suggest would have *its* pros and cons. As you said, the con of the current focus is the boring repetition of various anti positions. But the pro of allowing that stuff is for those of us who use the conflict among competing viewpoints to clarify our own positions and gain insight. Since you seem to be fairly clear about your own viewpoint, it is for you a situation of diminishing returns (although I will point out that a recent blog post of yours on the subject of play was inspired, I think, by a point Mike Tintner made, who is probably the most obvious target of your frustration).
For myself, I have found tremendous value here in the debate (which probably says a lot about the crudeness of my philosophy). I have had many new insights and discovered some false assumptions. If you narrowed the focus, I would probably leave (I am not offering that as a reason not to do it! :-) I would be disappointed, but I would understand if that's the decision you made. Finally, although there hasn't been much novelty among the debate (from your perspective, anyway), there is always the possibility that there will be. This seems to be the only public forum for AGI discussion out there (are there others, anyone?), so presumably there's a good chance it would show up here, and that is good for you and others actively involved in AGI research. Best, Terren --- On Wed, 10/15/08, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: From: Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subject: [agi] META: A possible re-focusing of this list To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, October 15, 2008, 11:01 AM Hi all, I have been thinking a bit about the nature of conversations on this list. It seems to me there are two types of conversations here: 1) Discussions of how to design or engineer AGI systems, using current computers, according to designs that can feasibly be implemented by moderately-sized groups of people 2) Discussions about whether the above is even possible -- or whether it is impossible because of weird physics, or poorly-defined special characteristics of human creativity, or the so-called "complex systems problem", or because AGI intrinsically requires billions of people and quadrillions of dollars, or whatever Personally I am pretty bored with all the conversations of type 2. It's not that I consider them useless discussions in a grand sense ... certainly, they are valid topics for intellectual inquiry. But, to do anything real, you have to make **some** decisions about what approach to take, and I've decided long ago to take an approach of trying to engineer an AGI system. Now, if someone had a solid argument as to why engineering an AGI system is impossible, that would be important. But that never seems to be the case. Rather, what we hear are long discussions of peoples' intuitions and opinions in this regard. People are welcome to their own intuitions and opinions, but I get really bored scanning through all these intuitions about why AGI is impossible. One possibility would be to more narrowly focus this list, specifically on **how to make AGI work**. If this re-focusing were done, then philosophical arguments about the impossibility of engineering AGI in the near term would be judged **off topic** by definition of the list purpose. Potentially, there could be another list, something like "agi-philosophy", devoted to philosophical and weird-physics and other discussions about whether AGI is possible or not. I am not sure whether I feel like running that other list ... and even if I ran it, I might not bother to read it very often. I'm interested in new, substantial ideas related to the in-principle possibility of AGI, but not interested at all in endless philosophical arguments over various peoples' intuitions in this regard. One fear I have is that people who are actually interested in building AGI, could be scared away from this list because of the large volume of anti-AGI philosophical discussion. Which, I add, almost never has any new content, and mainly just repeats well-known anti-AGI arguments (Penrose-like physics arguments ... "mind is too complex to engineer, it has to be evolved" ... "no one has built an AGI yet therefore it will never be done" ... etc.) What are your thoughts on this? -- Ben On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:49 AM, Jim Bromer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > > Actually, I think COMP=false is a perfectly valid subject for discussion on > this list. > > However, I don't think discussions of the form "I have all the answers, but > they're top-secret and I'm not telling you, hahaha" are particularly useful. > > So, speaking as a list participant, it seems to me this thread has probably > met its natural end, with this reference to proprietary weird-physics IP. > > However, speaking as list moderator, I don't find this thread so off-topic > or unpleasant as to formally kill the thread. > > -- Ben If someone doesn't want to get into a conversation with Colin about whatever it is that he is saying, then they should just exercise some self-control and refrain from doing so. I think Colin's ideas are pretty far out there. But that does not mean that he has never said anything that might be useful. My offbeat topic, that I believe that the Lord may have given me some direction about a novel approach to logical satisfiability that I am working on, but I don't want to discuss the details about the algorithms until I have gotten a chance to see if they work or not, was never intended to be a discussion about the theory itself. I wanted to have a discussion about whether or not a good SAT solution would have a significant influence on AGI, and whether or not the unlikely discovery of an unexpected breakthrough on SAT would serve as rational evidence in support of the theory that the Lord helped me with the theory. Although I am skeptical about what I think Colin is claiming, there is an obvious parallel between his case and mine. There are relevant issues which he wants to discuss even though his central claim seems to private, and these relevant issues may be interesting. Colin's unusual reference to some solid path which cannot be yet discussed is annoying partly because it so obviously unfounded. If he had the proof (or a method), then why isn't he writing it up (or working it out). A similar argument was made against me by the way, but the difference was that I never said that I had the proof or method. (I did say that you should get used to a polynomial time solution to SAT but I never said that I had a working algorithm.) My point is that even though people may annoy you with what seems like unsubstantiated claims, that does not disqualify everything they have said. That rule could so easily be applied to anyone who posts on that list. 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/?&; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription ------------------------------------------- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
