On 9/23/2010 8:26 PM, Rex Allen wrote:
On Thu, Sep 23, 2010 at 12:12 PM, 1Z<peterdjo...@yahoo.com> wrote:
On 22 Sep, 17:20, Rex Allen<rexallen31...@gmail.com> wrote:
I guess I'd have to hear your definition of "property" to make any
sense of that. In what sense is it like the properties of charge,
mass, spin, or color?
it's a distinguishing characteristic
that is detectable
So your position is that there is an algorithm that would correctly
detect all instances of intelligence with no false positives?
If you possessed this algorithm, I could present you with a large cube
of metal, silicon, and flashing lights, you could apply your algorithm
to determine for certain whether any form of artificial intelligence
was instantiated by the cube?
No matter how obfuscated, encrypted, or abstract the representation
used to instantiate the AI?
This would be in contradiction to Hilary Putnam's work:
"Putnam's proposal, and its historical importance, was analyzed in
detail in Piccinini forthcoming b. According to Putnam (1960, 1967,
1988), a system is a computing mechanism if and only if there is a
mapping between a computational description and a physical description
of the system. By computational description, Putnam means a formal
description of the kind used in computability theory, such as a Turing
Machine or a finite state automaton. Putnam puts no constraints on
how to find the mapping between the computational and the physical
description, allowing any computationally identified state to map onto
any physically identified state. It is well known that Putnam's
account entails that most physical systems implement most
computations. This consequence of Putnam's proposal has been
explicitly derived by Putnam (1988, pp. 95-96, 121-125) and Searle
(1992, chap. 9)."
Or, as Hans Moravec puts it:
"What does it mean for a process to implement, or encode, a
simulation? Something is palpably an encoding if there is a way of
decoding or translating it into a recognizable form. Programs that
produce pictures of evolving cloud cover from weather simulations, or
cockpit views from flight simulations, are examples of such decodings.
As the relationship between the elements inside the simulator and the
external representation becomes more complicated, the decoding process
may become impractically expensive. Yet there is no obvious cutoff
point. A translation that is impractical today may be possible
tomorrow given more powerful computers, some yet undiscovered
mathematical approach, or perhaps an alien translator. Like people who
dismiss speech and signs in unfamiliar foreign languages as
meaningless gibberish, we are likely to be rudely surprised if we
dismiss possible interpretations simply because we can't achieve them
at the moment. Why not accept all mathematically possible decodings,
regardless of present or future practicality? This seems a safe,
open-minded approach, but it leads into strange territory."
Where do you think that Putnam and Moravec went wrong?
And in what sense is it different?
it's not physically basic
Then what is it? In what sense does it exist, if not physically?
Solving a problem correctly is no more impressive or significant than
rain falling "correctly". You answer the question in the only way the
deterministic laws allow. The rain falls in the only way that the
deterministic laws allow.
so your actual conclusion is not that intelligence isn't
intelligence, but that intelligence isn't an achivement
No, my actual conclusion is the part where I conclude:
"The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the
experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a
consequence of its causal structure."
I have no idea what that means
Okay, so here's a definition of intelligence from the Merriam-Webster
dictionary:
"the ability to apply knowledge to manipulate one's environment or to
think abstractly as measured by objective criteria (as tests)"
But what is an ability in a deterministic universe?
For any given input, a deterministic system can only react in one way.
If you expose a deterministic system to a set of inputs that represent
a particular environment, the system will react in the one and only
way it can to that set of inputs.
And if that reaction is to manipulate it's envrionment is a way
advantageous to it, it's intelligent. Intelligence must always be
relative to some situation or environment. That's where Putnam and
Moravec go wrong and Merriam-Webster get it right.
Knowledge is just the internal state of the deterministic system.
That's not a usable definition: internal=inaccessible. Knowledge must
be expressible. It must be information that makes a difference.
Otherwise you fall into the paradox of the rock that computes everything.
Brent
This is true of a human. This is true of a bacterium. This is true
of a Roomba vacuum cleaner. This is true of a hurricane. This is
true of a rock.
And, as I pointed out in the original post, probabilistic systems are no better.
Intelligence is an arbitrary criterion based only on how things "seem"
to you, and which has no other basis in how things are.
So, that is what I mean by:
"The word 'intelligence' doesn't refer to anything except the
experiential requirements that the universe places on you as a
consequence of its causal structure."
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