Matt:Free association is the basic way of recalling memories. If you
experience A followed by B, then the next time you experience A you will
think of (or predict) B. Pavlov demonstrated this type of learning in
animals in 1927.
Matt,
You're not thinking your argument through. Look carefully at my spontaneous
"COW" - DOG - TAIL - CURRENT CRISIS - LOCAL VS GLOBAL
THINKING - WHAT A NICE DAY - MUST GET ON- CANT SPEND MUCH MORE TIME ON
THIS...." etc. etc"
that's not A-B association.
That's 1. A-B-C then 2. Gamma-Delta then 3. Languages then 4. Number of
Lines in Letters.
IOW the brain is typically not only freely associating *ideas* but switching
freely across, and connecting, radically different *domains* in any given
chain of association. [e.g above from Animals to Economics/Politics to
Weather to Personal Timetable]
It can do this partly because
a) single ideas have multiple, often massively mutiple, idea/domain
connections in the human brain, and allow one to go off in any of multiple
tangents/directions
b) humans have many things - and therefore multiple domains - on their mind
at the same time concurrently - and can switch as above from the immediate
subject to some other pressing subject domain (e.g. from
economics/politics (local vs global) to the weather (what a nice day).
If your "A-B, everything-is-memory-recall" thesis were true, our
chains-of-thought-association would be largely repetitive, and the domain
switches inevitable..
In fact, our chains (or networks) of free association and domain-switching
are highly creative, and each one is typically, from a purely technical POV,
novel and surprising. (I have never connected TAIL and CURRENT CRISIS
before - though Animals and Politics yes. Nor have I connected LOCAL VS
GLOBAL THINKING before with WHAT A NICE DAY and the weather).
IOW I'm suggesting, the natural mode of human thought - and our continuous
streams of association - are creative. And achieving such creativity is the
principal problem/goal of AGI.
So maybe it's worth taking 20 secs. of time - producing your own
chain-of-free-association starting say with "MAHONEY" and going on for
another 10 or so items - and trying to figure out how the result
could.possibly be the narrow kind of memory-recall you're arguing for. It's
an awful lot to ask for, but could you possibly try it, analyse it and
report back?
[Ben claims to have heard every type of argument I make before, (somewhat
like your A-B memory claim), so perhaps he can tell me where he's read
before about the Freely Associative, Freely Domain Switching nature of human
thought - I'd be interested to follow up on it].
-------------------------------------------
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
