> From: Matt Mahoney [mailto:[email protected]]
> 
> --- On Fri, 12/26/08, Philip Hunt <[email protected]> wrote:
> 
> > Humans aren't particularly good at compressing data. Does this mean
> > humans aren't intelligent, or is it a poor definition of
> intelligence?
> 
> Humans are very good at predicting sequences of symbols, e.g. the next
> word in a text stream. However, humans are not very good at resetting
> their mental states and deterministically reproducing the exact
> sequence of learning steps and assignment of probabilities, which is
> what you need to decompress the data. Fortunately this is not a problem
> for computers.
> 

Human memory storage may be lossy compression and recall may be
decompression. Some very rare individuals remember every day of their life
in vivid detail, not sure what that means in terms of memory storage.

How does consciousness fit into your compression intelligence modeling?

The thing about the word compression is that it is bass-ackwards when
talking about intelligence. The word describes kind of an external effect,
instead of an internal reconfiguration/re-representation. Also there is a
difference between a goal of achieving maximum compression verses a goal of
achieving a high efficiency data description. Max compression implies hacks,
kludges and a large decompressor. 

Here is a simple example of human memory compression/decompression - When
you think of space, air or emptiness like driving across Kansas, looking at
the moon, or waiting idly over a period of time, do you store the emptiness
and redundantness or does it get compressed out? The trip across Kansas you
remember the starting point, rest stops, and the end, not the full duration.
It's a natural compression. In fact I'd say this is a partially lossless
compression though more lossy... maybe it is incidental but it is still
there.

John



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agi
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