Re: [agi] COMP = false
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 3:19 AM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Vladimir, I did not say the physics was unknown. I said that it must exist. The physics is already known.Empirically and theoretically. It's just not recognised in-situ and by the appropriate people. It's an implication of the quantum non-locality underpinning electrodynamics. Extensions of the physics model to include the necessary effects are not part of the discussion and change nothing. This does not alter the argument, which is empirical. Please accept and critique it on this basis. I am planning an experiment as a post-doc to validate the basic principle as it applies in a neural context. It's under development now. It involves electronics and lasers and all the usual experimental dross. BTW I don't do non-science. Otherwise I'd just be able to sit back and declare my world view complete and authoritative, regardless of the evidence, wouldn't I? That is so not me. I am an engineer If I can't build it then I know I don't understand it. Nothing is sacred. At no point ever will I entertain any fictional/untestable/magical solutions. Like assuming an unproven conjecture is true. Nor will I idolise the 'received view' as having all the answers and force the natural world to fit my prejudices in respect of what 'explanation' entails. Especially when major mysteries persist in the face of all explanatory attempts. That's the worst non-science you can have... so I'm rather more radically empirical and dry, evidenced based but realistic in expectations of our skills as explorers of the natural world ...than it might appear. In being this way I hope to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. You can understand a scene when you watch animated movies on TV, for pete's sake! There is no physics in reductionist universe that would know how to patch information about a scene that is thousands of miles away, years ago, and only ever existed virtually. You can't adapt known physics to do THAT. You'd need an intelligent meddler. And you can't escape flaws in your reasoning by wearing a lab coat. -- 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
And you can't escape flaws in your reasoning by wearing a lab coat. Maybe not a lab coat... but how about my trusty wizard's hat??? ;-) http://i34.tinypic.com/14lmqg0.jpg --- 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 Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 9:14 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: And you can't escape flaws in your reasoning by wearing a lab coat. Maybe not a lab coat... but how about my trusty wizard's hat??? ;-) http://i34.tinypic.com/14lmqg0.jpg Don't you know that only clown suit interacts with probability theory in the true Bayesian way? ;-) http://www.overcomingbias.com/2007/12/cult-koans.html -- 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
Excellent. I want one! Maybe they should be on sale at the next conference...there's a marketing edge for ya. If I have to be as wrong as Vladimir says I'll need the right clothes. :-) cheers colin Ben Goertzel wrote: And you can't escape flaws in your reasoning by wearing a lab coat. Maybe not a lab coat... but how about my trusty wizard's hat??? ;-) http://i34.tinypic.com/14lmqg0.jpg *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | Modify https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Your Subscription [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
Ben Goertzel wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I have heard the argument for point 2 before, in the book by Pinker, How the Mind Works. It is the inverse-optics problem: physics can predict what image will be formed on the retina from material arrangements, but if we want to go backwards and find the arrangements from the retinal image, we do not have enough data at all. Pinker concludes that we do it using cognitive bias. I understood Pinker's argument, but not Colin Hales's ... Also, note cognitive bias can be learned rather than inborn (though in this case I imagine it's both). Probably we would be very bad at seeing environment different from those we evolved in, until after we'd gotten a lot of experience in them... ben I think the initial cognitive biases MUST be built in. OTOH, clearly early experiences strongly shape the development from the built in biases. (E.g. experiments on kittens raised in a room with only vertical lines, and their later inability to see horizontal lines.) --- 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
2008/10/4 Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]: 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: I started off doing chemistry at Uni, but I didn't like all the wet experiments. There are things like the bonds in graphite sheets that are degenerate, but that is of a completely different nature to the electrical signals in the brain. 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. I've never thought computer vision to be simple... 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. The locations that the signals travel through would be a strong indication of what they are about. It also seems likely that the different signals would have different statistics. For example somehow the human brain can learn to get visual data from the tongue with a brainport. http://vision.wicab.com/index.php I'm not entirely sure what you are getting at, do you think we are in superposition with the environment? Would you expect a camera + signals going through your tongue to preserve that? 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. The brain starts with at least some structure that has implicit knowledge of the outside world (just as bones shows the genome stores information of what is strong in the world). The Blank slate does not seem a viable hypothesis. There are no numbers in the brain or even in a computer it is all electric signals distributed spatially, temporally and with different statistics that allow them to be distinguished. I'd be curious to read your thoughts in a bit more of a structured format, but I can't get a grasp of what you are trying to say at the moment, it seems degenerate with other signals :P 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
Hi all, This seems to have touched a point of interest. I'll try and address all the issues raised in one post. I hope I don't miss any of them. Please remind me if I have. Apologies if I don;t reference the originator of the query explicitly. You know who you are! Re 'defining terms'. 1) Yes: Theres pages and pages of background information not in the posts. It is the result of thousands of hours of reading and analysis. Without it the readership is not 'calibrated' properly and the dialogue is bound to have its problems. The reader has only been exposed to about 1/50th of the total work, so please don;t assume that any of the terms are poorly defined. They are only.poorly defined here and so far, 1a) Here's the basics of the term visual scene. This is long proven empirical physiology. I already said: it is the occipital lobe deliverable. Very specific neurons, well known, highly documented, are responsible. Officially no-one knows 'how'/'why' visual experience results happens. The official position only declared what does it. Visual Scene = that construct that is replaced by a roughly hemispherical gloom/blackness when you close your eyes. It is highly localised to specific neuron populations (occipital V4 does colour, for example) and has been studied for decades. Everyone who studies cognition should be aware of this empirical knowledge. I do not need to specify it further or justify it. The evidence speaks for itself. An entire empirical science paradigm call the 'neural correlates of consciousness' has been set up specifically to isolate the neural basis. All experiential fields are the same. They are all cranial central nervous system deliverables. This means audition, haptic, olfaction, gustation, vision, situational and primordial emotions and all internal imagined versions of these (including the visual imagery in the post by JLM). My argument deals only with the visual scene. 1b) So, in answer to another comment from one of the posts: visual scene, specifically: I assume you mean the original image impressed on your retina. No, I do not mean this. The molecular machinations of the entire peripheral nervous system, including the 'peripherals' of the central nervous system. are 100% empirically proven for 100 years to be experientially inert. You do not see with your eyes. Vision occurs in the occipital. Please read the literature. Peripheral sensory transduction is not experienced. Central perceptual fields are projected to the periphery. This is physiology. EG. For the peripheral insult sensory transduction, the term nociception is used. PAIN, the experience, is added in the CNS and projected (often rather badly) to the site of origin. There is an entire collection of nomenclature established by physiology to enable descriptive specificity..I should not have to provide any more information along these lines. Please read the literature. There's lots of it. I can supply refs if you need them. 1c) Computationalism. = _abstract_ symbol manipulation. This is meant in specific contrast to the manipulation of _natural_ symbol manipulation. Analog computing is also COMP. This means that all computing based on the various calculii are COMP. It means that all machines using any sort of abstract mathematical or logical framework where the semantics of the symbols need extra documentation... are COMP. The basic defs: See: (i) Moor, J. 'The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The next fifty years', Ai Magazine vol. 27, no. 4, 2006. 87-91. (ii) Beer, R. D. 'A Dynamical-Systems Perspective on Agent Environment Interaction', Artificial Intelligence vol. 72, no. 1-2, 1995. 173-215. RE: The nature of the COMP = false as an argument. 2) I don't intend to formalise the argument any further here. I have given the precis. The two papers I mentioned are in review. One of them for 18 months already. Very painful. When they come out they can speak for themselves. 3) Please do not taint my words with any attributions in respect of being 'philosophical'. ;-) I love reading philosophy and have internalised truckloadsbut this is irrelevant...When I say this is an empirical argument I mean it. All I do is aggregate well known (but hyper-cross-disciplinary) fact into one place. I follow the path of least resistance to what it says of the natural world. If the empirical evidence said anything else I'd say something else. 4) I'll say it again: this is an empirical argument... therefore: If you want to helpfully counter the argument then please deliver the novel evidence to the contrary that counters the evidence I give and explain why. Show references. Point to a history of facts. Then I can respond because i have encountered something I must account for which alters the implications of the evidence. If this cannot be done then the statements you make are empty beliefs and I can do nothing with them. I defer to
Re: [agi] COMP = false
To me, computationalism, defined via Computationalism. = _abstract_ symbol manipulation. is an **interpretation** of certain things that occur inside computers sometimes ... The fact that this is a bad interpretation, doesn't imply that computer themselves aren't able to carry out advanced intelligence... -- Ben G On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 4:28 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Hi all, This seems to have touched a point of interest. I'll try and address all the issues raised in one post. I hope I don't miss any of them. Please remind me if I have. Apologies if I don;t reference the originator of the query explicitly. You know who you are! Re 'defining terms'. 1) Yes: Theres pages and pages of background information not in the posts. It is the result of thousands of hours of reading and analysis. Without it the readership is not 'calibrated' properly and the dialogue is bound to have its problems. The reader has only been exposed to about 1/50th of the total work, so please don;t assume that any of the terms are poorly defined. They are only.poorly defined here and so far, 1a) Here's the basics of the term visual scene. This is long proven empirical physiology. I already said: it is the occipital lobe deliverable. Very specific neurons, well known, highly documented, are responsible. Officially no-one knows 'how'/'why' visual experience results happens. The official position only declared what does it. Visual Scene = that construct that is replaced by a roughly hemispherical gloom/blackness when you close your eyes. It is highly localised to specific neuron populations (occipital V4 does colour, for example) and has been studied for decades. Everyone who studies cognition should be aware of this empirical knowledge. I do not need to specify it further or justify it. The evidence speaks for itself. An entire empirical science paradigm call the 'neural correlates of consciousness' has been set up specifically to isolate the neural basis. All experiential fields are the same. They are all cranial central nervous system deliverables. This means audition, haptic, olfaction, gustation, vision, situational and primordial emotions and all internal imagined versions of these (including the visual imagery in the post by JLM). My argument deals only with the visual scene. 1b) So, in answer to another comment from one of the posts: visual scene, specifically: I assume you mean the original image impressed on your retina. No, I do not mean this. The molecular machinations of the entire peripheral nervous system, including the 'peripherals' of the central nervous system. are 100% empirically proven for 100 years to be experientially inert. You do not see with your eyes. Vision occurs in the occipital. Please read the literature. Peripheral sensory transduction is not experienced. Central perceptual fields are projected to the periphery. This is physiology. EG. For the peripheral insult sensory transduction, the term nociception is used. PAIN, the experience, is added in the CNS and projected (often rather badly) to the site of origin. There is an entire collection of nomenclature established by physiology to enable descriptive specificity..I should not have to provide any more information along these lines. Please read the literature. There's lots of it. I can supply refs if you need them. 1c) Computationalism. = _abstract_ symbol manipulation. This is meant in specific contrast to the manipulation of _natural_ symbol manipulation. Analog computing is also COMP. This means that all computing based on the various calculii are COMP. It means that all machines using any sort of abstract mathematical or logical framework where the semantics of the symbols need extra documentation... are COMP. The basic defs: See: (i) Moor, J. 'The Dartmouth College Artificial Intelligence Conference: The next fifty years', Ai Magazine vol. 27, no. 4, 2006. 87-91. (ii) Beer, R. D. 'A Dynamical-Systems Perspective on Agent Environment Interaction', Artificial Intelligence vol. 72, no. 1-2, 1995. 173-215. RE: The nature of the COMP = false as an argument. 2) I don't intend to formalise the argument any further here. I have given the precis. The two papers I mentioned are in review. One of them for 18 months already. Very painful. When they come out they can speak for themselves. 3) Please do not taint my words with any attributions in respect of being 'philosophical'. ;-) I love reading philosophy and have internalised truckloadsbut this is irrelevant...When I say this is an empirical argument I mean it. All I do is aggregate well known (but hyper-cross-disciplinary) fact into one place. I follow the path of least resistance to what it says of the natural world. If the empirical evidence said anything else I'd say something else. 4) I'll say it again: this is an empirical argument... therefore: If you want to helpfully counter the
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Hi Vladimir, I did not say the physics was unknown. I said that it must exist. The physics is already known.Empirically and theoretically. It's just not recognised in-situ and by the appropriate people. It's an implication of the quantum non-locality underpinning electrodynamics. Extensions of the physics model to include the necessary effects are not part of the discussion and change nothing. This does not alter the argument, which is empirical. Please accept and critique it on this basis. I am planning an experiment as a post-doc to validate the basic principle as it applies in a neural context. It's under development now. It involves electronics and lasers and all the usual experimental dross. BTW I don't do non-science. Otherwise I'd just be able to sit back and declare my world view complete and authoritative, regardless of the evidence, wouldn't I? That is so not me. I am an engineer If I can't build it then I know I don't understand it. Nothing is sacred. At no point ever will I entertain any fictional/untestable/magical solutions. Like assuming an unproven conjecture is true. Nor will I idolise the 'received view' as having all the answers and force the natural world to fit my prejudices in respect of what 'explanation' entails. Especially when major mysteries persist in the face of all explanatory attempts. That's the worst non-science you can have... so I'm rather more radically empirical and dry, evidenced based but realistic in expectations of our skills as explorers of the natural world ...than it might appear. In being this way I hope to be part of the solution, not part of the problem. COMP being false make the AGI goal much harder...but much much more interesting! That's a little intro to colin hales for you. cheers colin hales (all done now!) Vladimir Nesov wrote: 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. --- 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
Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, our visual experience is not computed. This is obviously unsatisfying because it doesn't say where the visual scene comes from; answers range from prescience to quantum hypercomputation, but that does not seem important to the current issue. --Abram --- 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
Abram, thx for restating his argument Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. I do not understand his argument for point 2 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. ben --- 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, I have heard the argument for point 2 before, in the book by Pinker, How the Mind Works. It is the inverse-optics problem: physics can predict what image will be formed on the retina from material arrangements, but if we want to go backwards and find the arrangements from the retinal image, we do not have enough data at all. Pinker concludes that we do it using cognitive bias. --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:28 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Abram, thx for restating his argument Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. I do not understand his argument for point 2 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. ben 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] COMP = false
Agreed. Colin would need to show the inadequacy of both inborn and learned bias to show the need for extra input. But I think the more essential objection is that extra input is still consistent with computationalism. --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:50 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:41 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I have heard the argument for point 2 before, in the book by Pinker, How the Mind Works. It is the inverse-optics problem: physics can predict what image will be formed on the retina from material arrangements, but if we want to go backwards and find the arrangements from the retinal image, we do not have enough data at all. Pinker concludes that we do it using cognitive bias. I understood Pinker's argument, but not Colin Hales's ... Also, note cognitive bias can be learned rather than inborn (though in this case I imagine it's both). Probably we would be very bad at seeing environment different from those we evolved in, until after we'd gotten a lot of experience in them... ben 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] COMP = false
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 7:59 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Agreed. Colin would need to show the inadequacy of both inborn and learned bias to show the need for extra input. But I think the more essential objection is that extra input is still consistent with computationalism. Yes. Also, the visual input to an AGI need not be particularly similar to that of the human eye ... so if the human brain were somehow getting extra visual scene relevant stimuli from some currently non-suspected source [which I doubt], this doesn't imply that an AGI would need to use a comparable source. Arguably, for instance, camera+lidar gives enough data for reconstruction of the visual scene ... note that lidar gives more more accurate 3D depth ata than stereopsis... 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
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arguably, for instance, camera+lidar gives enough data for reconstruction of the visual scene ... note that lidar gives more more accurate 3D depth ata than stereopsis... Is that even true anymore? I thought the big revolution in the last 12 months was that machine learning algorithms are finally producing better-than-lidar depth estimates (just not in realtime). Trent --- 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
cool ... if so, I'd be curious for the references... I'm not totally up on that area... ben On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 8:20 PM, Trent Waddington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arguably, for instance, camera+lidar gives enough data for reconstruction of the visual scene ... note that lidar gives more more accurate 3D depth ata than stereopsis... Is that even true anymore? I thought the big revolution in the last 12 months was that machine learning algorithms are finally producing better-than-lidar depth estimates (just not in realtime). Trent --- 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 -- 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: [agi] COMP = false
On Mon, Oct 6, 2008 at 10:03 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Arguably, for instance, camera+lidar gives enough data for reconstruction of the visual scene ... note that lidar gives more more accurate 3D depth ata than stereopsis... Also, for that matter, 'visual' input to an AGI needn't be raw pixels at all, but could instead be a datastream of timestamped [depth-labeled] edges, areas, colours, textures, etc. from fully narrow-AI pre-processed sources. Of course such a setup could be construed to be rougly similar to the human visual pathway between the retina on one end, though the LGN, and finally to the layers of the primary visual cortex. -dave --- 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. Last one! Please replace 2) with: 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to construct a visual scene. Whether or not that 'constuct' arises from computation is a matter of semantics. I would say that it could be considered computation - natural computation by electrodynamic manipulation of natural symbols. Not abstractions of the kind we manipulate in the COMP circumstance. That is why I use the term COMP... It's rather funny: you could redefine computation to include natural computation (through the natural causality that is electrodynamics as it happens in brain material). Then you could claim computationalism to be true. But you'd still behave the same: you'd be unable to get AGI from a Turing machine. So you'd flush all traditional computers and make new technology Computationalism would then be true but 100% useless as a design decision mechanism. Frankly I'd rather make AGI that works than be right according to a definition! The lesson is that there's no pracitcal use in being right according to a definition! What you need to be able to do is make successful choices. OK. Enough. A very enjoyable but sticky thread...I gotta work! cheers all for now. regards Colin Abram Demski wrote: Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, our visual experience is not computed. This is obviously unsatisfying because it doesn't say where the visual scene comes from; answers range from prescience to quantum hypercomputation, but that does not seem important to the current issue. --Abram --- 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
I suppose what you mean is something like: *** The information from the retina is inadequate to construct a representation of the world around the human organism that is as accurate as could be constructed by an ideal perceiving-system receiving the same light beams that the human eye receives. *** But, so what? The human mind plainly does NOT have a world-representation of this level of accuracy. Our subjectively-perceived visual world is largely made up, as is convincingly demonstrated by our filled-in blind spots, the raft of optical illusions, and so forth We fill in the gaps left by our flawed visual systems using all sorts of inherited and learned inductive bias... -- Ben G On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: OK. Last one! Please replace 2) with: 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to construct a visual scene. Whether or not that 'constuct' arises from computation is a matter of semantics. I would say that it could be considered computation - natural computation by electrodynamic manipulation of natural symbols. Not abstractions of the kind we manipulate in the COMP circumstance. That is why I use the term COMP... It's rather funny: you could redefine computation to include natural computation (through the natural causality that is electrodynamics as it happens in brain material). Then you could claim computationalism to be true. But you'd still behave the same: you'd be unable to get AGI from a Turing machine. So you'd flush all traditional computers and make new technology Computationalism would then be true but 100% useless as a design decision mechanism. Frankly I'd rather make AGI that works than be right according to a definition! The lesson is that there's no pracitcal use in being right according to a definition! What you need to be able to do is make successful choices. OK. Enough. A very enjoyable but sticky thread...I gotta work! cheers all for now. regards Colin Abram Demski wrote: Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, our visual experience is not computed. This is obviously unsatisfying because it doesn't say where the visual scene comes from; answers range from prescience to quantum hypercomputation, but that does not seem important to the current issue. --Abram --- 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 -- 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: [agi] COMP = false
Thank you Colin, that reply is completely satisfying! In fact, ignore the email I just sent off-list. (Still not convinced that COMP is definitely false, but I see how it could be, if you don't want to count quantum computers as computers, and think the brain harnesses quantum computation.) For those watching, a correction is in order: Colin replied to my argument off-list, but I did not notice and re-posted after Colin's big long on-list reply to everyone else. So, Colin wasn't actually ignoring me when I thought he was... :) --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK. Last one! Please replace 2) with: 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to construct a visual scene. Whether or not that 'constuct' arises from computation is a matter of semantics. I would say that it could be considered computation - natural computation by electrodynamic manipulation of natural symbols. Not abstractions of the kind we manipulate in the COMP circumstance. That is why I use the term COMP... It's rather funny: you could redefine computation to include natural computation (through the natural causality that is electrodynamics as it happens in brain material). Then you could claim computationalism to be true. But you'd still behave the same: you'd be unable to get AGI from a Turing machine. So you'd flush all traditional computers and make new technology Computationalism would then be true but 100% useless as a design decision mechanism. Frankly I'd rather make AGI that works than be right according to a definition! The lesson is that there's no pracitcal use in being right according to a definition! What you need to be able to do is make successful choices. OK. Enough. A very enjoyable but sticky thread...I gotta work! cheers all for now. regards Colin Abram Demski wrote: Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, our visual experience is not computed. This is obviously unsatisfying because it doesn't say where the visual scene comes from; answers range from prescience to quantum hypercomputation, but that does not seem important to the current issue. --Abram --- 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
Note that quantum computers cannot compute anything except Turing-computable functions. Their only difference is that they can compute some things massively faster, in the average case. Thus, if a certain body of data is insufficient for a classical computer to draw a conclusion (given infinite compute time), then it is also inadequate for a quantum computer to do so. This does not rule out other odd possibilities, such as that the quantum brain could somehow possess info about the environment via quantum entanglement (info that would not be accessible to a classical computer.) My thoughts on the relation between quantum computing, quantum logic and the brain are highly eccentric, see: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/03/can-quantum-logic-apply-to-classical.html However, my thinking is compatible with the idea that we can create a superhuman AGI on typical digital computers ... my uncertainty regards the degree to which a system much more complex than a given observer should be considered classical with respect to that observer. -- Ben G On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thank you Colin, that reply is completely satisfying! In fact, ignore the email I just sent off-list. (Still not convinced that COMP is definitely false, but I see how it could be, if you don't want to count quantum computers as computers, and think the brain harnesses quantum computation.) For those watching, a correction is in order: Colin replied to my argument off-list, but I did not notice and re-posted after Colin's big long on-list reply to everyone else. So, Colin wasn't actually ignoring me when I thought he was... :) --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK. Last one! Please replace 2) with: 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to construct a visual scene. Whether or not that 'constuct' arises from computation is a matter of semantics. I would say that it could be considered computation - natural computation by electrodynamic manipulation of natural symbols. Not abstractions of the kind we manipulate in the COMP circumstance. That is why I use the term COMP... It's rather funny: you could redefine computation to include natural computation (through the natural causality that is electrodynamics as it happens in brain material). Then you could claim computationalism to be true. But you'd still behave the same: you'd be unable to get AGI from a Turing machine. So you'd flush all traditional computers and make new technology Computationalism would then be true but 100% useless as a design decision mechanism. Frankly I'd rather make AGI that works than be right according to a definition! The lesson is that there's no pracitcal use in being right according to a definition! What you need to be able to do is make successful choices. OK. Enough. A very enjoyable but sticky thread...I gotta work! cheers all for now. regards Colin Abram Demski wrote: Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, our visual experience is not computed. This is obviously unsatisfying because it doesn't say where the visual scene comes from; answers range from prescience to quantum hypercomputation, but that does not seem important to the current issue. --Abram --- 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:
Re: [agi] COMP = false
Ben, I think the entanglement possibility is precisely what Colin believes. That is speculation on my part of course. But it is something like that. Also, it is possible that quantum computers can do more than normal computers-- just not under the current theories. Colin hinted at some physics experiments. As for your views on quantum probability... I must humbly disagree with them. I have not read up on this literature, but for now I'm going to stick with what Wikipedia has told me: The more common view regarding quantum logic, however, is that it provides a formalism for relating observables, system preparation filters and states. In this view, the quantum logic approach resembles more closely the C*-algebraic approach to quantum mechanics; in fact with some minor technical assumptions it can be subsumed by it. The similarities of the quantum logic formalism to a system of deductive logic may then be regarded more as a curiosity than as a fact of fundamental philosophical importance. --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:49 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Note that quantum computers cannot compute anything except Turing-computable functions. Their only difference is that they can compute some things massively faster, in the average case. Thus, if a certain body of data is insufficient for a classical computer to draw a conclusion (given infinite compute time), then it is also inadequate for a quantum computer to do so. This does not rule out other odd possibilities, such as that the quantum brain could somehow possess info about the environment via quantum entanglement (info that would not be accessible to a classical computer.) My thoughts on the relation between quantum computing, quantum logic and the brain are highly eccentric, see: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/03/can-quantum-logic-apply-to-classical.html However, my thinking is compatible with the idea that we can create a superhuman AGI on typical digital computers ... my uncertainty regards the degree to which a system much more complex than a given observer should be considered classical with respect to that observer. -- Ben G On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:32 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Thank you Colin, that reply is completely satisfying! In fact, ignore the email I just sent off-list. (Still not convinced that COMP is definitely false, but I see how it could be, if you don't want to count quantum computers as computers, and think the brain harnesses quantum computation.) For those watching, a correction is in order: Colin replied to my argument off-list, but I did not notice and re-posted after Colin's big long on-list reply to everyone else. So, Colin wasn't actually ignoring me when I thought he was... :) --Abram On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 9:05 PM, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK. Last one! Please replace 2) with: 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to construct a visual scene. Whether or not that 'constuct' arises from computation is a matter of semantics. I would say that it could be considered computation - natural computation by electrodynamic manipulation of natural symbols. Not abstractions of the kind we manipulate in the COMP circumstance. That is why I use the term COMP... It's rather funny: you could redefine computation to include natural computation (through the natural causality that is electrodynamics as it happens in brain material). Then you could claim computationalism to be true. But you'd still behave the same: you'd be unable to get AGI from a Turing machine. So you'd flush all traditional computers and make new technology Computationalism would then be true but 100% useless as a design decision mechanism. Frankly I'd rather make AGI that works than be right according to a definition! The lesson is that there's no pracitcal use in being right according to a definition! What you need to be able to do is make successful choices. OK. Enough. A very enjoyable but sticky thread...I gotta work! cheers all for now. regards Colin Abram Demski wrote: Colin, I believe you did not reply to my points? Based on your definition of computationalism, it appears that my criticism of your argument does apply after all. To restate: Your argument appears to assume computationalism. Here is a numbered restatement: 1. We have a visual experience of the world. 2. Science says that the information from the retina is insufficient to compute one. 3. Therefore, we must get more information. 4. The only possible sources are material and spatial. 5. Material is already known to be insufficient, therefore we must also get spatial info. Computationalism is assumed to get from #2 to #3. If we do not assume computationalism, then the argument would look more like this: 1. We have a visual experience of the world.
Re: [agi] COMP = false
On Sun, Oct 5, 2008 at 11:16 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I think the entanglement possibility is precisely what Colin believes. That is speculation on my part of course. But it is something like that. Also, it is possible that quantum computers can do more than normal computers-- just not under the current theories. Colin hinted at some physics experiments. Well, it is possible that some physical systems can do more than quantum computers as currently conceived. However, I think it's better to reserve the term quantum computers to refer to computers as deemed possible according to quantum mechanics ... If Penrose and other radicals are right, then quantum gravity computers may be able to do stuff that quantum computers can't do ... which is physically sensible since quantum mechanics is known not to be a complete theory of the physical universe As for your views on quantum probability... I must humbly disagree with them. I have not read up on this literature, but for now I'm going to stick with what Wikipedia has told me: The more common view regarding quantum logic, however, is that it provides a formalism for relating observables, system preparation filters and states. In this view, the quantum logic approach resembles more closely the C*-algebraic approach to quantum mechanics; in fact with some minor technical assumptions it can be subsumed by it. The similarities of the quantum logic formalism to a system of deductive logic may then be regarded more as a curiosity than as a fact of fundamental philosophical importance. Yes, I know that view of course, and I think it's wrong ... but, arguing that stuff on this list would be too much of a digression, as well as something I don't have time for tonight ;-) Will be fun to debate w/you someday though!! 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
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] 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] 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: [agi] COMP = false
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 refutation is, in effect, a result of saying you can't do it (replace a scientist with a computer) because you can't simulate inputs. It is just the the nature of 'inputs' has been traditionally impoverished by assumption born merely of cross-disciplinary blindness.. Not enough quantum mechanics or electrodynamics is done by those exposed to 'COMP' principles. This result, at first appearance, says you can't simulate a scientist. But you can! If you already know what is out there in the natural world then you can simulate a scientific act. But you don't - by definition - you are doing science to find out! So it's not that you can't simulate a scientist, it is just that in order to do it you already have to know everything, so you don't want to ... it's
