What would be convincing evidence of a superior intelligence independent of cultural inheritance?
> On Sep 14, 2022, at 7:34 PM, Steve Smith <[email protected]> wrote: > > >> On 9/14/22 7:31 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: >> ML gets better every day because it learns more like a newborn child than a >> university student. This isn't 1970s AI anymore. It all seems like a >> strawman argument, whether you know it or not. > > And as I have referenced watching a puppy and a kitten grow together from 3 > and 4 months respectively, I believe that broadly, contemporary ML is > learning like they are. Current fetishes for NLP to drive NLG and Visual Art > misses a *lot* that animals (even one's domesticated by us for millenia) do > so well as they express what their genes and gestation already prepare them > for. > > I'd claim the puppy knows a modest vocabulary of human utterances/gestures > already, though to a dog, I think human language is very tonal to animals, to > the point that maybe I can say "YES" in the same tone I say "NO" and vice > versa and the tone, not the phoneme would dominate. > > The kitten is (as I feel all cats are) almost entirely disinterested in our > *intentional* communications and *much more* aware of the implications of our > *actions* than in our words. The puppy does seem to have a much stronger > sense of anticipating our interests and seeking our approval. The cat is > more interested in her interests and treating us as facilitators or > constraints to obtaining those. > > Paw prints of either species qualify as "art" in our house anytime they get > involved in a painting project or the setting of plaster, cement, or clay. > Our appreciation of same reflects *our* training more than *theirs*. > >> >> -----Original Message----- >> From: Friam <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Prof David West >> Sent: Wednesday, September 14, 2022 5:54 PM >> To: [email protected] >> Subject: Re: [FRIAM] Wolpert - discussion thread placeholder >> >> Regarding Wolpert's first four questions: >> >> In my opinion, all four reflect a kind of arrogance that I have accused >> Scientists and Mathematicians of many times in the past—an attitude that >> modern formal and abstract math and science are a kind of ultimate >> achievement of our species. Any and all other forms/means of understanding >> are discounted or denied. This is analogous to the arrogance of Simon and >> Newell (mentioned previously) that a machine that thought like a university >> professor was necessarily intelligent. >> >> Ignored in the AI instance is the learning ability of a new born child. >> Ignored in the case of SAM is the very real Science and Mathematics >> exhibited by our species beginning in the Neolithic. Metallurgy, >> agriculture, animal husbandry, pottery, weaving, cooking, food preservation, >> etc. >> >> Levi-Strauss writes extensively of two different kinds of science: concrete >> and abstract; the former grounded in perception and imagination, the latter >> divorced from same. The object of all science is connections and >> explanations and based on experimentation and empirical evidence, but >> "concrete science" relies far more heavily on sensible intuition and not >> formal "proof." >> >> SAM, for Wolpert, seems to be restricted to the that which came into being >> the past few hundred years. This fetish makes questions like—"Why do we have >> that cognitive ability despite its fitness costs?"—somewhat nonsensical. >> What fitness costs? Mutually assured destruction with nuclear weapons?" >> Certainly there were no evolutionary fitness costs; and, in fact, those >> cognitive abilities were essential and the prime mover of our species out of >> the neolithic. >> >> A more reasonable question is what caused a small subset of our species to >> 'go beserk' and take a subset of the SAM that served our species so well for >> so long, to such abstract extremes? An answer might be found, and is argued, >> in the Ian McGilchrist works on recent "left-brained" dominance. >> [left-brain is such a limited shorthand for what McGilchrist argues in some >> 700 pages of prose, that I am trepedatious using it lest it evoke the wrong >> headed popularization of the notion.] >> >> If we ignore the aberrant contemporary SAM and ask if we can find evidence >> that other species, e.g., cephalopods and cetaceans, have an equivalent to >> the concrete SAM that was widespread among our own species as far back as >> the neolithic. The answer is yes. Tool making, modification of environment, >> herding, even quasi-domestication of other species can be found. >> >> The cognitive abilities of dolphins and octopi (et. al.) are well documented >> and include language, reasoning, knowledge of spatial relationships, >> planning, and even (when given LSD (famously the research by John Lilly with >> dolphins and more recently with octopi), altered states. There is little, or >> no, reason not to assume them to be SAM-sufficient for their environments >> and needs, just as humans were prior to, roughly, the Renaissance. >> >> to be continued ... >> >> davew >> >> >>> On Mon, Sep 12, 2022, at 6:29 AM, glen∉ℂ wrote: >>> My question of how well we can describe graph-based ... what? ... >>> "statements"? "theorems"? Whatever. It's treated fairly well in List's >>> paper: >>> >>> Levels of Description and Levels of Reality: A General Framework by >>> Christian List http://philsci-archive.pitt.edu/21103/ >>> >>> in section "6.3 Indexical versus non-indexical and first-personal >>> versus third-personal descriptions". We tend to think of the 3rd >>> person graph of possible worlds/states as if it's more universal ... a >>> complete representation of the world. But there's something captured >>> by the index/control-pointer *walking* some graph, with or without a >>> scoping on how many hops away the index/subjective-locus can "see". >>> >>> I liken this to Dave's (and Frank's to some extent) consistent >>> insistence that one's inner life is a valid thing in the world, Dave >>> w.r.t. psychedelics and meditation and Frank's defense of things like >>> psychodynamics. Wolpert seems to be suggesting a "deserialization" of >>> the graph when he focuses on "finite sequences of elements from a >>> finite set of symbols". I.e. walking the graph with the index at a >>> given node. With the 3rd person ... whole graph of graphs, the >>> serialization of that bushy thing can only produce an infinitely long >>> sequence of elements from a (perhaps) infinte set. Is the bushiness >>> *dense* (greater than countable, as Wolpert asks)? Or sparse? >>> >>> I'm sure I'm not wording all this well. But that's why I'm glad y'all >>> are participating, to help clarify these things. >>> >>> On 9/12/22 06:13, glen∉ℂ wrote: >>>> While math can represent circular definitions (what Robert Rosen >>>> complained about), there are deep problems in the foundations of math ... >>>> things like the iterative conception of sets ... that are attempts to do >>>> what Wolpert asks for in the later questions. And it's unclear to me that >>>> commutative categories reduce to "finite sequences of elements from a >>>> finite set", prolly 'cause I'm just ignorant. But diagrammatic loops in >>>> graphs don't look to me like finite sequences. >>> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >>> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >>> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >>> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >>> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >>> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >>> archives: 5/2017 thru present >>> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >>> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . >> FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv >> Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom >> https://bit.ly/virtualfriam >> to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com >> FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ >> archives: 5/2017 thru present >> https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ >> 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ >> > > -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . > FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv > Fridays 9a-12p Friday St. Johns Cafe / Thursdays 9a-12p Zoom > https://bit.ly/virtualfriam > to (un)subscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com > FRIAM-COMIC http://friam-comic.blogspot.com/ > archives: 5/2017 thru present > https://redfish.com/pipermail/friam_redfish.com/ > 1/2003 thru 6/2021 http://friam.383.s1.nabble.com/ -. --- - / ...- .- .-.. .. -.. / -- --- .-. ... . / -.-. --- -.. . 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