On Sun, May 20, 2018 at 3:26 AM, Alexey Potapov <[email protected]> wrote:

>
>
> For me, observational data is sensory data. It doesn't contain concepts,
> predicates, etc. . If we have an observation that a particular crow is
> black, ... But there are no purely black crows. It's just an abstraction,
> which itself should be somehow generalized from raw data.
> How can we calculate P(crow,black|image)?
>

Do not assume that a probability is what you actually want.  Let me give
three examples.

In real life, when you see a crow, and it is dark, and you want to talk
about it, you just say "black crow" as an identifier of the object in the
scene.  You don't pull out your photometer and measure it's darkness at
87.68% and a blueish hue of 77%. Why? Because you don't need to do that to
have a conversation about it's presence, location, movement, etc. You only
need to evaluate crow-ness and blackness sufficiently to distinguish it
from all other elements of the scene, and then you can assign P==100% for
most practical purposes.

In neural nets, the sigma-function is a non-linear component, used to boost
results towards extremes. whatever sum of weights or evidence or whatever
it is that you have, as inputs feeding the neural net, you apply the
non-linear sigma, to try to sharpen everything closer to either 0% or 100%
-- to discriminate. To increase contrast.  This is kind-of the "secret" as
to why neural nets work, and probabilities don't.

In "integrated information" theory, you work with a large complex network
of things that are all inter-related, all interconnected.  The goal of
applying the theory is to find those extensions of the net that are highly
interlinked, interconnected, and then to draw an accurate boundary around
them.   If and when you can perceive that boundary, you can give everything
inside one name, and everything outside a different name.  The names
assigned are unambiguous, unique, even if the actual boundary is perhaps
uncertain, even if there is a gradation, a smooth-ish transition from the
highly-interconnected thing, to the mostly disconnected parts.   The act of
name-tagging is what gives a handle on being able to think about the object
in symbolic terms.

-- Linas

-- 
cassette tapes - analog TV - film cameras - you

-- 
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups 
"opencog" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email 
to [email protected].
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
Visit this group at https://groups.google.com/group/opencog.
To view this discussion on the web visit 
https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/opencog/CAHrUA34TNn3vxywKZpc33Rq3%2BQfB2V7J0HbMd8Yk9HUesiEdGw%40mail.gmail.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

Reply via email to