The question is how much detail about the world needs to be captured in a simulation in order to support humanlike cognitive development.
As a single example, Piagetan conservation of volume experiments are often done with water, which would suggest you need to have fluid dynamics in your simulation to support that kind of experiment. But you don't necessarily, because you can do those same experiments with fairly large beads, via using Newtonian mechanics to simulate the rolling-around of the beads. So it's not clear whether fluidics is needed in the sim world to enable humanlike cognitive development, versus whether beads rolling around is good enough (at the moment I suspect the latter) As I'm planning to write a paper on this stuff, I don't want to diver time to writing a long email about it. As for "which subset" of a physical reality: my specific idea is to simulate a real-world preschool, with enough fidelity that AIs can carry out the same learning tasks that human kids carry out in a real preschool. On Sat, Dec 27, 2008 at 9:56 AM, Mike Tintner <[email protected]>wrote: > Ben: in taking the "virtual world" approach to AGI, we're very much > **hoping** that a subset of "human everyday physical reality" is good > enough. .. > > Ben, > > Which subset(s)? > > The idea that you can virtually recreate any part or processes of reality > seems horribly flawed - and unexamined. > > Take the development of intelligence. You seem (from recent exchanges) to > accept that there is very roughly some natural order to the development of > intelligence. So for example, you can't learn about planets & universes, if > you haven't first learned about simple objects like stones and balls - nor > about politics, governments and international relations if you haven't first > learned about language, speech/conversation, emotions, other minds & much > more. Now we - science - have some ideas about this natural order - about > how we have to develop from understanding simple to complex things. But > overall our picture is pathetic and hugely gapped. For science to produce > an extensive picture of development here would - at a guess - take at least > hundreds of thousands, if not millions of scientists, and many thousands (or > millions) of discoveries, and many changes of competing paradigms. > > What are the chances then of an individual like you, or team of > individuals, being able to design a coherent, practical order of > intellectual development for an artificial, virtual agent straight off in a > few years ? > > The same applies to any part of reality. We - science - may have a detailed > picture of how some pieces of objects, like stones and water, work. But > again our overall ability to model how all those particles, atoms and > molecules interrelate in any given object, and how the object as a whole > behaves, is still very limited. We still have all kinds of gaps in our > picture of water. Scientific models are always far from the real thing. > > Again, to come anywhere near completing those models will take new armies > of scientists. > > What are the chances then of a few individuals being able to correctly > model the behaviour of any objects in the real world on a flat screen? > > IOW the "short cut" you hope for is probably the longest way round you > could possibly choose. Robotics - forgetting altogether about formally > modelling the world - and just interacting with it directly, is actually > shorter by far. So I doubt whether you have ever seriously examined how you > would recreate a *particular* "subset of reality".in any detail - as simple > even, say, as a ball - as opposed to the general idea. Have you? > > [Nb We're talking here about composite models of objects - so it's easy > enough to create a reasonable picture of a ball bouncing on a hard surface, > but what happens when your agent sits on it, or rubs it on his shirt, or > bounces it on water, or sand, or throws it at another ball in mid-air, or > (as we've partly discussed) plays with it like an infant ?] > ------------------------------ > *agi* | Archives <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now> > <https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/> | > Modify<https://www.listbox.com/member/?&;>Your Subscription > <http://www.listbox.com> > -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [email protected] "I intend to live forever, or die trying." -- Groucho Marx ------------------------------------------- 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
