This sounds good to me. I am much more drawn to topic #1. Topic #2 I
have seen discussed recursively and in dozens of variants multiple
places. The only thing I will add to Topic #2 is that I very seriously
doubt current human intelligence individually or collectively is
sufficient to address or meaningfully resolve or even crisply articulate
such questions. Much more is accomplished by actually "looking into
the horse's mouth" than philosophizing endlessly.
- samantha
Ben Goertzel wrote:
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]
<mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>> wrote:
On Wed, Oct 15, 2008 at 10:14 AM, Ben Goertzel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]
<mailto:[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
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--
Ben Goertzel, PhD
CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC
Director of Research, SIAI
[EMAIL PROTECTED] <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
"Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be
first overcome " - Dr Samuel Johnson
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