Re: [agi] COMP = false
Hi Colin, I'm not entirely sure that computers can implement consciousness. But I don't find your arguments sway me one way or the other. A brief reply follows. 2008/10/4 Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Next empirical fact: (v) When you create a turing-COMP substrate the interface with space is completely destroyed and replaced with the randomised machinations of the matter of the computer manipulating a model of the distal world. All actual relationships with the real distal external world are destroyed. In that circumstance the COMP substrate is implementing the science of an encounter with a model, not an encounter with the actual distal natural world. No amount of computation can make up for that loss, because you are in a circumstance of an intrinsically unknown distal natural world, (the novelty of an act of scientific observation). . But humans don't encounter the world directly, else optical illusions wouldn't exist, we would know exactly what was going on. Take this site for example. http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/ It is impossible by physics to do vision perfectly without extra information, but we do not do vision by any means perfectly, so I see no need to posit an extra information source. Will --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Basically, you are saying that there is some unknown physics mojo going on. The mystery of mind looks as mysterious as mystery of physics, therefore it requires mystery of physics and can derive further mysteriousness from it, becoming inherently mysterious. It's bad, bad non-science. -- Vladimir Nesov [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://causalityrelay.wordpress.com/ --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Hi Colin, Many thanks for detailed reply. You seem to be taking a long-winding philosophical route to asserting that intelligence depends on consciousness, in the sense of what I would call a sensory movie of the world - vision + sound/smell/taste etc. I absolutely agree with that basic assertion - but any philosophical argument will have no serious interest IMO for AGI-ers. The only way to change them is to demonstrate the *unique* properties of sensory pictures of the world - and why they CANNOT be reduced to logical/mathematical/programming/linguistic form, as AGI-ers still wildly delude themselves. (Obviously evolution has taken consciousness as primary for intelligence and vastly more important than logic or any form of rationality - but AGI-ers, unlike the rest of the scientific world, aren't interested in evolution either).. You're dealing with Helen Keller's here :) - so you have to show them why a movie is essential to intelligence in *their* terms . Hi Mike, I can give the highly abridged flow of the argument: !) It refutes COMP , where COMP = Turing machine-style abstract symbol manipulation. In particular the 'digital computer' as we know it. 2) The refutation happens in one highly specific circumstance. In being false in that circumstance it is false as a general claim. 3) The circumstances: If COMP is true then it should be able to implement an artificial scientist with the following faculties: (a) scientific behaviour (goal-delivery of a 'law of nature', an abstraction BEHIND the appearances of the distal natural world, not merely the report of what is there), (b) scientific observation based on the visual scene, (c) scientific behaviour in an encounter with radical novelty. (This is what humans do) The argument's empirical knowledge is: 1) The visual scene is visual phenomenal consciousness. A highly specified occipital lobe deliverable. 2) In the context of a scientific act, scientific evidence is 'contents of phenomenal consciousness'. You can't do science without it. In the context of this scientific act, visual P-consciousness and scientific evidence are identities. P-consciousness is necessary but on its own is not sufficient. Extra behaviours are needed, but these are a secondary consideration here. NOTE: Do not confuse scientific observation with the scientific measurement, which is a collection of causality located in the distal external natural world. (Scientific measurement is not the same thing as scientific evidence, in this context). The necessary feature of a visual scene is that it operate whilst faithfully inheriting the actual causality of the distal natural world. You cannot acquire a law of nature without this basic need being met. 3) Basic physics says that it is impossible for a brain to create a visual scene using only the inputs acquired by the peripheral stimulus received at the retina. This is due to fundamentals of quantum degeneracy. Basically there are an infinite number of distal external worlds that can deliver the exact same photon impact. The transduction that occurs in the retinal rod/cones is entirely a result of protein isomerisation. All information about distal origins is irretievably gone. An impacting photon could have come across the room or across the galaxy. There is no information about origins in the transduced data in the retina. That established, you are then faced with a paradox: (i) (3) says a visual scene is impossible. (ii) Yet the brain makes one. (iii) To make the scene some kind of access to distal spatial relations must be acquired as input data in addition to that from the retina. (iv) There are only 2 places that can come from... (a) via matter (which we already have - retinal impact at the boundary that is the agent periphery) (b) via space (at the boundary of the matter of the brain with space, the biggest boundary by far). So, the conclusion is that the brain MUST acquire the necessary data via the spatial boundary route. You don't have to know how. You just have no other choice. There is no third party in there to add the necessary data and the distal world is unknown. There is literally nowhere else for the data to come from. Matter and Space exhaust the list of options. (There is alway magical intervention ... but I leave that to the space cadets.) That's probably the main novelty for the reader to to encounter. But we are not done yet. Next empirical fact: (v) When you create a turing-COMP substrate the interface with space is completely destroyed and replaced with the randomised machinations of the matter of the computer manipulating a model of the distal world. All actual relationships with the real distal external world are destroyed. In that circumstance the COMP substrate is implementing the science of an encounter with a model, not an encounter with the actual distal natural world. No amount of computation can
Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Mike Tintner wrote: Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com Seems hard to imagine information processing without identity. Intelligence is about invoking methods. Methods are created because they are expected to create a result. The result is the value - the value that allows them to be selected from many possible choices. Identity, involves placing ones powers into a situation that is unique according to place and time. If it's Matt's global brain, then it will be critical for agents to grasp the value factors - which come from the time and place one inhabits. Is it the time and space bias that is the issue? If so, what is the bias that humans have which machines shouldn't? just quick reactive thoughts... Stan --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
From my points 1. and 2. it should be clear that I was not talking about a distributed AGI which is in NO place. The AGI you mean consists of several parts which are in different places. But this is already the case with the human body. The only difference is, that the parts of the distributed AGI can be placed several kilometers from each other. But this is only a quantitative and not a qualitative point. Now to my statement of an useful representation of space and time for AGI. We know, that our intuitive understanding of space and time works very well in our life. But the ultimate goal of AGI is that it can solve problems which are very difficult for us. If we give an AGI bias of a model of space and time which is not state of the art of the knowledge we have from physics, then we give AGI a certain limitation which we ourselves suffer from and which is not necessary for an AGI. This point has nothing to do with the question whether the AGI is distributed or not. I mentioned this point because your question has relations to the more fundamental question whether and which bias we should give AGI for the representation of space and time. Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008 14:13 An: agi@v2.listbox.com Betreff: Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once. Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: Risks of competitive message routing (was Re: [agi] Let's face it, this is just dumb.)
On Fri, Oct 3, 2008 at 9:57 PM, Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: --- On Fri, 10/3/08, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You seem to misunderstand the notion of a Global Brain, see http://pespmc1.vub.ac.be/GBRAIFAQ.html http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Global_brain You are right. That is exactly what I am proposing. It's too bad you missed the Global Brain 0 workshop that Francis Heylighen and I organized in Brussels in 2001 ... Some larger follow-up Global Brain conferences were planned, but Francis and I both got distracted by other things It would be an exaggeration to say that any real collective conclusions were arrived at, during the workshop, but it was certainly interesting... I am open to alternative suggestions. Well, what I suggested in my 2002 book Creating Internet Intelligence was essentially a global brain based on a hybrid model: -- a human-plus-computer-network global brain along the lines of what you and Heylighen suggest coupled with -- a superhuman AI mind, that interacts with and is coupled with this global brain To use a simplistic metaphor, -- the superhuman AI mind at the center of the hybrid global brain would provide an overall goal system and attentional-focus, and -- the human-plus-computer-network portion of the hybrid global brain would serve as a sort of unconscious for the hybrid global brain... This is one way that humans may come to, en masse, interact with superhuman non-human AI Anyway this was a fun line of thinking but since that point I diverted myself more towards the creation of the superhuman-AI component At the time I had a lot of ideas about how to modify Internet infrastructure so as to make it more copacetic to the emergence of a human-plus-computer-network, collective-intelligence type global brain. I think many of those ideas could have worked, but they are not the direction the development of the Net worked, and obviously I (like you) lack the influence to nudge the Net-masters in that direction. Keeping a build-a-superhuman-AI project moving is not easy either, but it's a more tractable task... -- Ben G --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Stan wrote: Seems hard to imagine information processing without identity. Intelligence is about invoking methods. Methods are created because they are expected to create a result. The result is the value - the value that allows them to be selected from many possible choices. Identity can be distributed in space. My conscious model of myself is not located at a single point in space. I identify myself with my body. I do not even have to know that I have a brain. But my body is distributed in space. It is not a point. This is also the case with my conscious model of myself (= model of my body). Furthermore if you think more from a computer scientist point of view: Even your brain is distributed in space and is not at a single place. Your brain consists of a huge amount of processors where each processor is at a different place. So I see no new problem with distributed AGI at all. Stan wrote Is it the time and space bias that is the issue? If so, what is the bias that humans have which machines shouldn't? I don't know whether it is bias for space and time representation or it comes from the bias within our learning algorithms. But all human create a model of their environment with the law that a physical object has a certain position at a certain time. Also we think intuitively that the distance to a point does not depend on the velocity towards this point. These were two examples which are completely wrong as we know from modern physics. Why is it so important for an AGI to know this? Because AGI should help us with the progress in technology. And the most promising open field in technology are within the nanoworld and the macrocosm. It should be useful if an AGI has an intuitive understanding of the laws in these worlds. We should avoid to rebuild our own weakness within AGI. --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Matthias, First, I see both a human body-brain and a distributed entity, such as a computer network, as *physically integrated* units, with a sense of their physical integrity. The fascinating thought, (perhaps unrealistic) for me was of being able to physically look at a scene or scenes, from different POV's more or less simultaneously - a thought worth exploring. Second, your idea, AFAICT, of an unbiassed-as-to-time-and-space intelligence, while v. vague, is also worth exploring. I suspect the all-important fallacy here is of pure objectivity - the idea that an object or scene or world can be depicted WITHOUT any location or reference or comparison. When we talk of time and space, which are fictions that have no concrete existence - we are really talking (no?) of frameworks we use to locate and refer other things to. Clocks. 3/4 dimensional grids... All things have to be referred and compared to other things in order to be understood, which is an inevitably biassed process. So is there any such thing as your non-bias? Just my first stumbling thoughts. Matthias: From my points 1. and 2. it should be clear that I was not talking about a distributed AGI which is in NO place. The AGI you mean consists of several parts which are in different places. But this is already the case with the human body. The only difference is, that the parts of the distributed AGI can be placed several kilometers from each other. But this is only a quantitative and not a qualitative point. Now to my statement of an useful representation of space and time for AGI. We know, that our intuitive understanding of space and time works very well in our life. But the ultimate goal of AGI is that it can solve problems which are very difficult for us. If we give an AGI bias of a model of space and time which is not state of the art of the knowledge we have from physics, then we give AGI a certain limitation which we ourselves suffer from and which is not necessary for an AGI. This point has nothing to do with the question whether the AGI is distributed or not. I mentioned this point because your question has relations to the more fundamental question whether and which bias we should give AGI for the representation of space and time. Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008 14:13 An: agi@v2.listbox.com Betreff: Re: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once. Matthias: I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Well, I ( possibly Ben) have been talking about an entity that is in many places at once - not in NO place. I have no idea how you would swing that - other than what we already have - machines that are information-processors with no sense of identity at all.Do you? --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Hi Will, It's not an easy thing to fully internalise the implications of quantum degeneracy. I find physicists and chemists have no trouble accepting it, but in the disciplines above that various levels of mental brick walls are in place. Unfortunately physicists and chemists aren't usually asked to create vision!... I inhabit an extreme multidisciplinary zone. This kind of mental resistance comes with the territory. All I can say is 'resistance is futile, you will be assimilated' ... eventually. :-) It's part of my job to enact the necessary advocacy. In respect of your comments I can offer the following: You are exactly right: humans don't encounter the world directly (naive realism). Nor are we entirely operating from a cartoon visual fantasy(naive solipsism). You are also exactly right in that vision is not 'perfect'. It has more than just a level of indirectness in representation, it can malfunction and be fooled - just as you say. In the benchmark behaviour: scientific behaviour, we know scientists have to enact procedures (all based around the behaviour called 'objectivity') which minimises the impact of these aspects of our scientific observation system. However, this has nothing to say about the need for an extra information source. necessary for there is not enough information in the signals to do the job. This is what you cannot see. It took me a long while to discard the tendency to project my mental capacity into the job the brain has when it encounters a retinal data stream. In vision processing using computing we know the structure of the distal natural world. We imagine the photon/CCD camera chip measurements to be the same as that of the retina. It looks like a simple reconstruction job. But it is not like that at all. It is impossible to tell, from the signals in their natural state in the brain, whether they are about vision or sound or smell. They all look the same. So I did not completely reveal the extent of the retinal impact/visual scene degeneracy in my post. The degeneracy operates on multiple levels. Signal encoding into standardised action potentials is another level. Maybe I can just paint a mental picture of the job the brain has to do. Imagine this: You have no phenomenal consciousness at all. Your internal life is of a dreamless sleep. Except ... for a new perceptual mode called Wision. Looming in front of you embedded in a roughly hemispherical blackness is a gigantic array of numbers. The numbers change. Now: a) make a visual scene out of it representing the world outside: convert Wision into Vision. b) do this without any information other than the numbers in front of you and without assuming you have any a-priori knowledge of the outside world. That is the job the brain has. Resist the attempt to project your own knowledge into the circumstance. You will find the attempt futile. Regards, Colin William Pearson wrote: Hi Colin, I'm not entirely sure that computers can implement consciousness. But I don't find your arguments sway me one way or the other. A brief reply follows. 2008/10/4 Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]: Next empirical fact: (v) When you create a turing-COMP substrate the interface with space is completely destroyed and replaced with the randomised machinations of the matter of the computer manipulating a model of the distal world. All actual relationships with the real distal external world are destroyed. In that circumstance the COMP substrate is implementing the science of an encounter with a model, not an encounter with the actual distal natural world. No amount of computation can make up for that loss, because you are in a circumstance of an intrinsically unknown distal natural world, (the novelty of an act of scientific observation). . But humans don't encounter the world directly, else optical illusions wouldn't exist, we would know exactly what was going on. Take this site for example. http://www.michaelbach.de/ot/ It is impossible by physics to do vision perfectly without extra information, but we do not do vision by any means perfectly, so I see no need to posit an extra information source. Will --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Original Message - From: Colin Hales To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Saturday, October 04, 2008 3:22 PM Subject: Re: [agi] COMP = f ... You are exactly right: humans don't encounter the world directly (naive realism). Nor are we entirely operating from a cartoon visual fantasy(naive solipsism). ^^ It is closer to the latter How do you explain the vividness of DREAMS ... They have the same desynchronized EEG wave patterns as waking CONS. -- indistinguishable ! ! Solution ? -- We secrete our own awareness/consciousness -- Solipsism is Painless JLM http://www.forebrain.org --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
The argument seems wrong to me intuitively, but I'm hard-put to argue against it because the terms are so unclearly defined ... for instance I don't really know what you mean by a visual scene ... I can understand that to create a form of this argument worthy of being carefully debated, would be a lot more work than writing this summary email you've given. So, I agree with your judgment not to try to extensively debate the argument in its current sketchily presented form. If you do choose to present it carefully at some point, I encourage you to begin by carefully defining all the terms involved ... otherwise it's really not possible to counter-argue in a useful way ... thx ben g On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 12:31 AM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hi Mike, I can give the highly abridged flow of the argument: !) It refutes COMP , where COMP = Turing machine-style abstract symbol manipulation. In particular the 'digital computer' as we know it. 2) The refutation happens in one highly specific circumstance. In being false in that circumstance it is false as a general claim. 3) The circumstances: If COMP is true then it should be able to implement an artificial scientist with the following faculties: (a) scientific behaviour (goal-delivery of a 'law of nature', an abstraction BEHIND the appearances of the distal natural world, not merely the report of what is there), (b) scientific observation based on the visual scene, (c) scientific behaviour in an encounter with radical novelty. (This is what humans do) The argument's empirical knowledge is: 1) The visual scene is visual phenomenal consciousness. A highly specified occipital lobe deliverable. 2) In the context of a scientific act, scientific evidence is 'contents of phenomenal consciousness'. You can't do science without it. In the context of this scientific act, visual P-consciousness and scientific evidence are identities. P-consciousness is necessary but on its own is not sufficient. Extra behaviours are needed, but these are a secondary consideration here. NOTE: Do not confuse scientific observation with the scientific measurement, which is a collection of causality located in the distal external natural world. (Scientific measurement is not the same thing as scientific evidence, in this context). The necessary feature of a visual scene is that it operate whilst faithfully inheriting the actual causality of the distal natural world. You cannot acquire a law of nature without this basic need being met. 3) Basic physics says that it is impossible for a brain to create a visual scene using only the inputs acquired by the peripheral stimulus received at the retina. This is due to fundamentals of quantum degeneracy. Basically there are an infinite number of distal external worlds that can deliver the exact same photon impact. The transduction that occurs in the retinal rod/cones is entirely a result of protein isomerisation. All information about distal origins is irretievably gone. An impacting photon could have come across the room or across the galaxy. There is no information about origins in the transduced data in the retina. That established, you are then faced with a paradox: (i) (3) says a visual scene is impossible. (ii) Yet the brain makes one. (iii) To make the scene some kind of access to distal spatial relations must be acquired as input data in addition to that from the retina. (iv) There are only 2 places that can come from... (a) via matter (which we already have - retinal impact at the boundary that is the agent periphery) (b) via space (at the boundary of the matter of the brain with space, the biggest boundary by far). So, the conclusion is that the brain MUST acquire the necessary data via the spatial boundary route. You don't have to know how. You just have no other choice. There is no third party in there to add the necessary data and the distal world is unknown. There is literally nowhere else for the data to come from. Matter and Space exhaust the list of options. (There is alway magical intervention ... but I leave that to the space cadets.) That's probably the main novelty for the reader to to encounter. But we are not done yet. Next empirical fact: (v) When you create a turing-COMP substrate the interface with space is completely destroyed and replaced with the randomised machinations of the matter of the computer manipulating a model of the distal world. All actual relationships with the real distal external world are destroyed. In that circumstance the COMP substrate is implementing the science of an encounter with a model, not an encounter with the actual distal natural world. No amount of computation can make up for that loss, because you are in a circumstance of an intrinsically unknown distal natural world, (the novelty of an act of scientific observation). . = COMP is false. == OK. There are subtleties here. The
Re: [agi] COMP = false
--- On Sat, 10/4/08, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Maybe I can just paint a mental picture of the job the brain has to do. Imagine this: You have no phenomenal consciousness at all. Your internal life is of a dreamless sleep. Except ... for a new perceptual mode called Wision. Looming in front of you embedded in a roughly hemispherical blackness is a gigantic array of numbers. The numbers change. Now: a) make a visual scene out of it representing the world outside: convert Wision into Vision. b) do this without any information other than the numbers in front of you and without assuming you have any a-priori knowledge of the outside world. That is the job the brain has. Resist the attempt to project your own knowledge into the circumstance. You will find the attempt futile. By visual scene, I assume you mean the original image impressed on your retina, expressed as an array of pixels. The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. -- Matt Mahoney, [EMAIL PROTECTED] --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - that you can in effect predict new objects as yet unconceived, new kinds of ipods/inventions/evolved species, say, -at least in terms of their representations on a flat screen - with an algorithm? ) --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:37 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - There is a finite number of possible screen-images, at least from the point of view of the process sending digital signals to the screen. If the monitor refreshes each pixel N times per second, then over an interval of T seconds, if each pixel can show C colors, then there are C^(N*T*800*600) possible different scenes showable on the screen during that time period A big number but finite! Drawing on a page is a different story, as it gets into physics questions, but it seems rather likely there is a finite number of pictures on the page that are distinguishable by a human eye. So, whether or not an infinite number of objects exist in the universe, only a finite number of distinctions can be drawn on a monitor (for certain), or by an eye (almost surely) ben g --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Ben, Thanks for reply. I'm a bit lost though. How does this formula take into account the different pixel configurations of different objects? (I would have thought we can forget about the time of display and just concentrate on the configurations of points/colours, but no doubt I may be wrong). Roughly how large a figure do you come up with, BTW? I guess a related question is the old one - given a keyboard of letters, what are the total number of works possible with say 500,000 key presses, and how many 500,000-press attempts will it (or could it) take the proverbial monkey to type out, say, a 50,000 word play called Hamlet? In either case, I would imagine, the numbers involved are too large to be practically manageable in, say, this universe, (which seems to be a common yardstick). Comments? The maths here does seem important, because it seems to me to be the maths of creativity - and creative possibilities - in a given medium. A somewhat formalised maths, since creators usually find ways to transcend and change their medium - but useful nevertheless. Is such a maths being pursued? On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:37 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - There is a finite number of possible screen-images, at least from the point of view of the process sending digital signals to the screen. If the monitor refreshes each pixel N times per second, then over an interval of T seconds, if each pixel can show C colors, then there are C^(N*T*800*600) possible different scenes showable on the screen during that time period A big number but finite! Drawing on a page is a different story, as it gets into physics questions, but it seems rather likely there is a finite number of pictures on the page that are distinguishable by a human eye. So, whether or not an infinite number of objects exist in the universe, only a finite number of distinctions can be drawn on a monitor (for certain), or by an eye (almost surely) ben g -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] universal logical form for natural language
Ben Goertzel wrote: No, the mainstream method of extracting knowledge from text (other than manually) is to ignore word order. In artificial languages, you have to parse a sentence before you can understand it. In natural language, you have to understand the sentence before you can parse it. More exactly: in natural language, you have to understand the sentence before you can disambiguate amongst the roughly 1-50 (syntactically-correct-but-not-necessarily-meaningful) parses that contemporary parsers provide. -- Ben I don't know. People don't fully understand most of what they read. They just understand enough for their own purposes. And a lot of what they do understand is: the motives of the person communicating in communicating what they do. People would never communicate if they didn't have some (self-beneficial) purpose to do so. And this is a lens we always look through in interpreting information coming from some source. Managing the purposes others see in our own communication -- is also an important component in how humans communicate. Also, human communication comes in bite-sized chunks. Because humans would not be able to understand an extremely long sentence that might (to someone who could understand it) communicate more accurately. We have to set up an idea -- frame it -- before we introduce new concepts or new scopes and views of the information. Thus the concept of a Main-Idea-Sentence in a paragraph. - Dimitry Save on Emergency Alert Systems. Click here. http://thirdpartyoffers.juno.com/TGL2141/fc/Ioyw6i3mXtacqvG9l7cxMDI9HIpEjLtcD22CuZMOjXGPI1ZH1DkRWf/ --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Ok, at a single point in time on a 600x400 screen, if one is using 24-bit color (usually called true color) then the number of possible images is 2^(600x400x24) which is, roughly, 10 with a couple million zeros after it ... way bigger than a googol, way way smaller than a googolplex ;-) This is a large number, but so what? Of course, the human eye would not be able to tell the difference between all these different images; that's a whole different story... I don't see why these middle-school calculations are of interest?? ... this has nothing to do with any of the philosophical issues under discussion, does it? ben On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 9:22 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Ben, Thanks for reply. I'm a bit lost though. How does this formula take into account the different pixel configurations of different objects? (I would have thought we can forget about the time of display and just concentrate on the configurations of points/colours, but no doubt I may be wrong). Roughly how large a figure do you come up with, BTW? I guess a related question is the old one - given a keyboard of letters, what are the total number of works possible with say 500,000 key presses, and how many 500,000-press attempts will it (or could it) take the proverbial monkey to type out, say, a 50,000 word play called Hamlet? In either case, I would imagine, the numbers involved are too large to be practically manageable in, say, this universe, (which seems to be a common yardstick). Comments? The maths here does seem important, because it seems to me to be the maths of creativity - and creative possibilities - in a given medium. A somewhat formalised maths, since creators usually find ways to transcend and change their medium - but useful nevertheless. Is such a maths being pursued? On Sat, Oct 4, 2008 at 8:37 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Matt:The problem you describe is to reconstruct this image given the highly filtered and compressed signals that make it through your visual perceptual system, like when an artist paints a scene from memory. Are you saying that this process requires a consciousness because it is otherwise not computable? If so, then I can describe a simple algorithm that proves you are wrong: try all combinations of pixels until you find one that looks the same. Matt, Simple? Well, you're good at maths. Can we formalise what you're arguing? A computer screen, for argument's sake. 800 x 600, or whatever. Now what is the total number of (diverse) objects that can be captured on that screen, and how long would it take your algorithm to enumerate them? (It's an interesting question, because my intuition says to me that there is an infinity of objects that can be depicted on any screen (or drawn on a page). Are you saying that there aren't? - There is a finite number of possible screen-images, at least from the point of view of the process sending digital signals to the screen. If the monitor refreshes each pixel N times per second, then over an interval of T seconds, if each pixel can show C colors, then there are C^(N*T*800*600) possible different scenes showable on the screen during that time period A big number but finite! Drawing on a page is a different story, as it gets into physics questions, but it seems rather likely there is a finite number of pictures on the page that are distinguishable by a human eye. So, whether or not an infinite number of objects exist in the universe, only a finite number of distinctions can be drawn on a monitor (for certain), or by an eye (almost surely) ben g -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://www.listbox.com/member/?;Your Subscription http://www.listbox.com -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modifyhttps://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] Nothing will ever be attempted if all possible objections must be first overcome - Dr Samuel Johnson --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: AW: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once.
Dr. Heger, Point #3 is brilliantly stated. I couldn't have expressed it better. And I know this because I've been trying to do so, in slightly broader terms, for months on this list. Insofar as providing an AGI with a human-biased sense of space and time is required to create a human-like AGI (what I prefer to call AG*H*I), I agree it is a mistake. More generally, as long as AGI designers and developers insist on simulating human intelligence, they will have to deal with the AI-complete problem of natural language understanding. Looking for new approaches to this problem, many researches (including prominent members of this list) have turned to embodiment (or virtual embodiment) for help. IMHO, this is not a sound tactic because human-like embodiment is, itself, probably an AI-complete problem. Insofar as achieving human-like embodiment and human natural language understanding is possible, it is also a very dangerous strategy. The process of understanding human natural language through human-like embodiment will, of necessity, lead to the AGHI developing a sense of self. After all, that's how we humans got ours (except, of course, the concept preceded the language for it). And look how we turned out. I realize that an AGHI will not turn on us simply because it understands that we're not (like) it (i.e., just because it acquired a sense of self). But, it could. Do we really want to take that chance? Especially when it's not necessary for human-beneficial AGI (AGI without the silent H)? Cheers, Brad Dr. Matthias Heger wrote: 1. We feel ourselves not exactly at a single point in space. Instead, we identify ourselves with our body which consist of several parts and which are already at different points in space. Your eye is not at the same place as your hand. I think this is a proof that a distributed AGI will not need to have a complete different conscious state for a model of its position in space than we already have. 2.But to a certain degree you are of course right that we have a map of our environment and we know our position (which is not a point because of 1) in this map. In the brain of a rat there are neurons which each represent a position of the environment. Researches could predict the position of the rat only by looking into the rat's brain. 3. I think it is extremely important, that we give an AGI no bias about space and time as we seem to have. Our intuitive understanding of space and time is useful for our life on earth but it is completely wrong as we know from theory of relativity and quantum physics. -Matthias Heger -Ursprüngliche Nachricht- Von: Mike Tintner [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Gesendet: Samstag, 4. Oktober 2008 02:44 An: agi@v2.listbox.com Betreff: [agi] I Can't Be In Two Places At Once. The foundation of the human mind and system is that we can only be in one place at once, and can only be directly, fully conscious of that place. Our world picture, which we and, I think, AI/AGI tend to take for granted, is an extraordinary triumph over that limitation - our ability to conceive of the earth and universe around us, and of societies around us, projecting ourselves outward in space, and forward and backward in time. All animals are similarly based in the here and now. But,if only in principle, networked computers [or robots] offer the possibility for a conscious entity to be distributed and in several places at once, seeing and interacting with the world simultaneously from many POV's. Has anyone thought about how this would change the nature of identity and intelligence? --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- 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=8660244id_secret=114414975-3c8e69 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
