Steve, I thought someone would come up with the kind of objection you have put forward. Your objection is misplaced. ( And here we have an example of what I meant by "knowing [metacognitively about] imaginative intelligence" - understanding metacognitively how imagination works).
Consider what an image sequence/ movie of Ben talking to you would show. Ben talking to you, uttering certain words, making certain gestures; his face showing certain expressions. What you're bringing up here is not what the movie shows, but what went on in your mind - your reactions - as you, in a sense, watched and listened to that movie - and wondered about what was going on in Ben's mind *behind the scenes*. "What does he really think and feel about this, that and the other (as distinct from the limited amount of information he is actually expressing)?" We all react and think similarly to other people all the time and wonder about what's going on *invisibly* in their minds.. But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms of what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual, observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is what a movie records with high fidelity.. In terms of those actual actions, an image/ image sequence is *infinitely* superior to any verbal description. No verbal description could *begin* to convey to you his particular smile and the curl of his lips, the drone of his voice, the precise music of his statements, the tangled state of his hair, the way he tosses his hair etc. etc. No words could tell or show you his state of body - his posture and attitude - at 10.05.01-to-10.05.02 pm. [Words (along with other symbols, like numbers and algebraic symbols) can only provide the *formulae* for objects - their constitutents. They can never provide you, as images do, with actual maps of the whole *forms* of objects - and therefore the layout of those constituents. They can never give us - and we can never "get the picture". of those objects. Consider a verbal statement: "The Alsatian suddenly bit the man on the face." What you have there is a complex action decomposed into a set of words - a verbal formula. How much do you now know about the action being referred to? Now try an image:of the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk9yHKQRE94&feature=related Notice the difference? Now you've seen the whole dog engaging in the whole action - and you've got the picture - the whole form, not just the formula] And here's the reason I talk about understanding metacognitively about imaginative intelligence. (I don't mean to be disparaging - I understand comparably little re logic, say]. If you were a filmmaker, say, and had thought about the problems of filmmaking, you would probably be alive to the difference between what images show - people's actual faces and voices - and what they can't show - what lies behind - their hidden thoughts and emotions. And you wouldn't have posed your objection. Mike, MT:: *Even words for individuals are generalisations. *"Ben Goertzel" is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. *Any statement about an individual, like "Ben Goertzel", is also vague and open-ended. *The only way to refer to and capture individuals with high (though not perfect) precision is with images. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. Even better than a movie, I had some opportunity to observe and interact with Ben during CONVERGENCE08, I dispute the above statement! I had sought to extract just a few specific bits of information from/about Ben. Using VERY specific examples: Bit#1: Did Ben understand that AI/AGI code and NN representation were interchangeable, at the prospective cost of some performance one way or the other. Bit#1=TRUE. Bit#2: Did Ben realize that there were prospectively ~3 orders of magnitude in speed available by running NN instead of AI/AGI representation on an array processor instead of a scalar (x86) processor. Bit#2 affected by question, now True, but utility disputed by the apparent unavailability of array processors. Bit#3: Did Ben realize that the prospective emergence of array processors (e.g. as I have been promoting) would obsolete much of his present work, because its structure isn't vectorizable, so he is in effect betting on continued stagnation in processor architecture, and may in fact be a small component in a large industry failure by denying market? Bit#3= probably FALSE. As always, I attempted to "get the measure of the man", but as so often happens with leaders, there just isn't a "bin" to toss them in. Without an appropriate bin, I got lots of raw data (e.g., he has a LOT of hair), but not all that much usable data. Alternatively, the Director of R&D for Google had a bin waiting for him, as like SO many people who rise to the top of narrowly-focused organizations, he had completely "bought into" the myths at Google without allowing for usurping technologies. I saw the same thing at Microsoft when I examined their R&D operations in 1995. It takes a particular sort of narrow mind to rise to the top of a narrowly-focused organization. Here, there aren't many bits of description about the individuals, but I could easily write a book about the"bin" that the purest of them rise to fill. Steve Richfield ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
