Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
Stefan Pernar wrote:
Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And
all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the
board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as
you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so.
Wow! This is astonishing.
I gently invited you to take the discussion onto a higher, more rational
plane, and you came back with even more personal abuse of the worst
possible sort. There is nothing in the above paragraph except
unsupported insults.
Breathtaking.
All of the points you just made could be met, if you articulated
them. Scruffies? Some people only use that as a derogatory term:
what did you mean by it? I am not necessarily even a 'scruffy' by
any accepted definition of that term, and certainly not by the
definition from Russell and Norvig that I quoted in my paper. As
far as I am aware, *nobody* has accused me of being a scruffy ... it
was actually me who first mentioned the scruffy-neat divide!
Let's not use shady rhetoric here - shall we? You know exactly that
scruffy refers to a technical distinction. How do you expect to be taken
seriously if you try to manipulate like this? Not going to happen with me.
I am honestly completely confused about what you are saying ('shady
rhetoric', 'manipulate' ?).
The scruffy-neat distinction was supposed to be a contrast between
Logical AI people and those who came before, but in some people's mouths
it is used to denigrate the 'scruffies' as unscientific and adulate the
'neats' as real scientists. That is a derogatory usage. Some scruffies
don't mind being called that at all, because they consider it to be
merely a summary of the fact that they disagree with the premises of the
Logical AI people ... they certainly do not regard themselves as
unscientific hackers, just interested in getting a system working by a
build-and-fix approach.
So there is a confusion here. Do you just mean that I am not in
agreement with the Logical AI crowd? That would not be insulting, and
it would be correct. Do you mean that I am doing the same kind of thing
that was done by the people who came before the Logical AI period? That
would also not be insulting, but it would be technically wrong. Do you
mean that I am doing something basically unscientific? That would be
insulting and wrong, both.
I was merely inviting you, in a polite way, to explain which of these
meanings you were intending. They are very different.
Wild speculations? Which, exactly? Grand pie-in-the-sky plans
without substance? Again, what are you referring to? Don't these
all sound like Stefan's personal opinion?
Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to
step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and
let stuff like this slide.
I am happy either way: but I would prefer that you articulate what
exactly you mean by making these allegations.
You see, your statements could be interpreted as based on pure ignorance
on your part an inability to actually understand the arguments,
plus a willingness to condemn things that you do not understand, and an
eagerness to imply that the people talking about those things are
ignorant, not you. There are many people who do engage in that kind of
behavior: you don't want to look like one of those people, believe me.
I would really rather that you prove that you understand the arguments,
because if you continue to just complain with supporting arguments, it
does not reflect very well on you.
On all of these points, we could have had meaningful discussion (if
you chose), but if you keep them to yourself and simply decide that
I am an idiot, what chance do I have to meet your objections? I am
always open to criticism, but to be fair it has to be detailed,
specific and not personal.
The lack of consistency and quality to your writings make it not
worthwhile for me to point out particular points of criticism that would
be even worth debating with you. It is not that there are two or three
point that I do not understand. No - your whole concept is is an
uninteresting house of cards to me. Your rhetoric is shady and dogmatic
- you are unresponsive to substantial criticisms. No matter what people
say you will continue to make up stuff and throw it right back at them
- spiked with subtle personal attacks.
Astonishing!
Can you give any examples of these things? These are amazingly strong
allegations. Back them up, please.
In short you are not worth my time and the only reason why I am spending
time on this is because I hope the list will wake up to it.
Also, I am a little confused by the first sentence of the above. It
implies that you only just started looking through my 'stuff' ...
have you read the published papers? The blog
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so. Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and let stuff like this slide. Sorry, Stefan, but I disagree strongly with you. Richard has an extremely valid point that is obscured by his explanations and personality. Almost every practitioner of AGI is currently looking for intelligence under a streetlight when every indication is that it is in the darkness less than 10 years off (reasonably close to where Texai is curently headed). --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so. Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and let stuff like this slide. Sorry, Stefan, but I disagree strongly with you. Richard has an extremely valid point that is obscured by his explanations and personality. Almost every practitioner of AGI is currently looking for intelligence under a streetlight when every indication is that it is in the darkness less than 10 years off (reasonably close to where Texai is curently headed). Mark - thanks for sharing your point of view. I respect that and will - true to my word - be quiet now. -- Stefan Pernar 3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden #6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi Chao Yang District 100015 Beijing P.R. CHINA Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931 Skype: Stefan.Pernar --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
Stefan, I would prefer that you not remain quiet. I would prefer that you pick *specific* points and argue them -- that's the way that science is done. The problem is that AGI is an extremely complex subject and mailing lists are a horrible forum for discussing such unless all participants are both qualified and willing to follow certain rules and assumptions. I'd love to throw a number of people of this list for making baseless proclamations and not defending them but you generally tend not to make broad, baseless statements (the current thread excluded ;-). I *AM* intending to write more to clarify my view of Richard's point but I'm frantically trying to finish a paper due May 15th that is eating up all my spare time at the moment. Remind me late next week if it doesn't appear. Mark - Original Message - From: Stefan Pernar To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Thursday, May 08, 2008 1:03 PM Subject: **SPAM** Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...] On Fri, May 9, 2008 at 12:44 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so. Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and let stuff like this slide. Sorry, Stefan, but I disagree strongly with you. Richard has an extremely valid point that is obscured by his explanations and personality. Almost every practitioner of AGI is currently looking for intelligence under a streetlight when every indication is that it is in the darkness less than 10 years off (reasonably close to where Texai is curently headed). Mark - thanks for sharing your point of view. I respect that and will - true to my word - be quiet now. -- Stefan Pernar 3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden #6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi Chao Yang District 100015 Beijing P.R. CHINA Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931 Skype: Stefan.Pernar -- agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stefan Pernar wrote: On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DELETED Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first Another person who cannot discuss the issues. Richard - after having spent time looking through your stuff here is my conclusion: You postulate that Achieving AGI requires solving a complex problem and that you do not see this being properly incorporated in current AGI research. As pointed out by others this position puts you in the scruffies camp of AI research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies) What follows are wild speculations and grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance with a letter to investors attached. Oh, come on! PS: obviously my ignore list sucks ;-) Now, if I understand correctly, you got mad at me the other day for being hypercritical of the AGI-06 conference (and frankly, I would agree with anyone who said that I should have been less negative) but can you not see that when you make vague, sweeping allegations of the above sort, you are hardly rising above the kind of behavior that you just criticised? All of the points you just made could be met, if you articulated them. Scruffies? Some people only use that as a derogatory term: what did you mean by it? I am not necessarily even a 'scruffy' by any accepted definition of that term, and certainly not by the definition from Russell and Norvig that I quoted in my paper. As far as I am aware, *nobody* has accused me of being a scruffy ... it was actually me who first mentioned the scruffy-neat divide! Wild speculations? Which, exactly? Grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance? Again, what are you referring to? Don't these all sound like Stefan's personal opinion? On all of these points, we could have had meaningful discussion (if you chose), but if you keep them to yourself and simply decide that I am an idiot, what chance do I have to meet your objections? I am always open to criticism, but to be fair it has to be detailed, specific and not personal. Also, I am a little confused by the first sentence of the above. It implies that you only just started looking through my 'stuff' ... have you read the published papers? The blog posts? The technical discussions on this list with Mark Waser, Kaj Sotala, Derek Zahn and others? Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On 5/7/08, Stefan Pernar [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What follows are wild speculations and grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance with a letter to investors attached. Oh, come on! Um, people, is this list really the place for fielding personal insults? For what it's worth, my two cents: I don't always see, off the bat, why Richard says something or holds a particular opinion, and as I don't see the inferential steps that he's taken to reach his conclusion, his sayings might occasionally seem like wild speculation. However, each time that I've asked him for extra details, he has without exception delivered a prompt and often rather long explanation of what his premises are and how he's arrived at a particular conclusion. If that hasn't been enough to clarify things, I've pressed for more details, and I've always received a clear and logical response until I've finally figured out where he's coming from. I do admit that my qualifications to discuss any AGI-related subject are insignficant compared to most of this list's active posters (heck, I don't even have my undergraduate degree completed yet), and as such I might have unwittingly ignored some crucial details of what's been going on From what I've been able to judge, though, I've seen no absolutely reasons to dismiss Richard as dogmatic, irrational or a wild speculator. (At least not any more than anyone else on this list...) -- http://www.saunalahti.fi/~tspro1/ | http://xuenay.livejournal.com/ Organizations worth your time: http://www.singinst.org/ | http://www.crnano.org/ | http://lifeboat.com/ --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On Thu, May 8, 2008 at 3:54 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stefan Pernar wrote: On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DELETED Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first Another person who cannot discuss the issues. Richard - after having spent time looking through your stuff here is my conclusion: You postulate that Achieving AGI requires solving a complex problem and that you do not see this being properly incorporated in current AGI research. As pointed out by others this position puts you in the scruffies camp of AI research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies) What follows are wild speculations and grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance with a letter to investors attached. Oh, come on! PS: obviously my ignore list sucks ;-) Now, if I understand correctly, you got mad at me the other day for being hypercritical of the AGI-06 conference (and frankly, I would agree with anyone who said that I should have been less negative) but can you not see that when you make vague, sweeping allegations of the above sort, you are hardly rising above the kind of behavior that you just criticised? Richard, there is no substance behind your speculations - zero. Zip. And all the fantasy and imagination you so clearly demonstrated here on the board wont make up for that. You make stuff up as you go along and as you need it and you clearly have enough time at your hand to do so. All of the points you just made could be met, if you articulated them. Scruffies? Some people only use that as a derogatory term: what did you mean by it? I am not necessarily even a 'scruffy' by any accepted definition of that term, and certainly not by the definition from Russell and Norvig that I quoted in my paper. As far as I am aware, *nobody* has accused me of being a scruffy ... it was actually me who first mentioned the scruffy-neat divide! Let's not use shady rhetoric here - shall we? You know exactly that scruffy refers to a technical distinction. How do you expect to be taken seriously if you try to manipulate like this? Not going to happen with me. Wild speculations? Which, exactly? Grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance? Again, what are you referring to? Don't these all sound like Stefan's personal opinion? Beside Kaj - can we see a show of hand who disagrees with me? Happy to step back and be quiet then. It is too often that people stay quite and let stuff like this slide. On all of these points, we could have had meaningful discussion (if you chose), but if you keep them to yourself and simply decide that I am an idiot, what chance do I have to meet your objections? I am always open to criticism, but to be fair it has to be detailed, specific and not personal. The lack of consistency and quality to your writings make it not worthwhile for me to point out particular points of criticism that would be even worth debating with you. It is not that there are two or three point that I do not understand. No - your whole concept is is an uninteresting house of cards to me. Your rhetoric is shady and dogmatic - you are unresponsive to substantial criticisms. No matter what people say you will continue to make up stuff and throw it right back at them - spiked with subtle personal attacks. In short you are not worth my time and the only reason why I am spending time on this is because I hope the list will wake up to it. Also, I am a little confused by the first sentence of the above. It implies that you only just started looking through my 'stuff' ... have you read the published papers? The blog posts? The technical discussions on this list with Mark Waser, Kaj Sotala, Derek Zahn and others? It did not take more than about an hour to look through all your stuff on your website so yeah - anything else I missed please send me a link. And although I think it is to much to ask to go through the many emails you wrote before I actually did that to and what I found only confirmed my opinion. For example: Kaj: I'd be curious to hear your opinion of Omohundro's The Basic AI Drives paper Richard: Omohundros's analysis is all predicated on the Goal Stack approach, so my response is that nothing he says has any relevance to the type of AGI that I talk about (which, as I say, is probably going to be the only type ever created). Stefan: Utter nonsense and not worthy of learned debate. -- Stefan Pernar 3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden #6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi Chao Yang District 100015 Beijing P.R. CHINA Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931 Skype: Stefan.Pernar
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben Goertzel wrote: Feedback on AGI-06 overall was overwhelmingly positive; in fact Richard's is the only significantly negative report I've seen. Of course, if the conference was filled with low-quality presentations and low-quality comments from participants, then all of those people who gave presentations and who made comments would be BOUND to give an objective evaluation of the quality of the conference, wouldn't they? ;-) They wouldn't have any vested interest in saying What a success!, would they? And if one person gave a poor evaluation of the conference based on specific points of fact, rather than just feel-good opinion (if, for example, that person noted a complete inability of the participants to talk about the main theme of the conference in a technically accurate way), that empirically-based observation would count for nothing, compared with the great feeling that everyone had about the meeting? Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first -- Stefan Pernar 3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden #6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi Chao Yang District 100015 Beijing P.R. CHINA Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931 Skype: Stefan.Pernar --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
Stefan Pernar wrote: On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben Goertzel wrote: Feedback on AGI-06 overall was overwhelmingly positive; in fact Richard's is the only significantly negative report I've seen. Of course, if the conference was filled with low-quality presentations and low-quality comments from participants, then all of those people who gave presentations and who made comments would be BOUND to give an objective evaluation of the quality of the conference, wouldn't they? ;-) They wouldn't have any vested interest in saying What a success!, would they? And if one person gave a poor evaluation of the conference based on specific points of fact, rather than just feel-good opinion (if, for example, that person noted a complete inability of the participants to talk about the main theme of the conference in a technically accurate way), that empirically-based observation would count for nothing, compared with the great feeling that everyone had about the meeting? Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first Another person who cannot discuss the issues. Another person who, instead, indulges in personal abuse. This field will stand or die according to the number of people in it who can address issues, even when those issues are challenging and/or embarrassing. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
I didn't sign up to listen to you whine, but I certainly tried to cancel my subscription because you whine. Any ETA on when that'll actually go through, anyone? -Original Message- From: Richard Loosemore [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: May 6, 2008 12:28 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...] Stefan Pernar wrote: On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben Goertzel wrote: Feedback on AGI-06 overall was overwhelmingly positive; in fact Richard's is the only significantly negative report I've seen. Of course, if the conference was filled with low-quality presentations and low-quality comments from participants, then all of those people who gave presentations and who made comments would be BOUND to give an objective evaluation of the quality of the conference, wouldn't they? ;-) They wouldn't have any vested interest in saying What a success!, would they? And if one person gave a poor evaluation of the conference based on specific points of fact, rather than just feel-good opinion (if, for example, that person noted a complete inability of the participants to talk about the main theme of the conference in a technically accurate way), that empirically-based observation would count for nothing, compared with the great feeling that everyone had about the meeting? Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first Another person who cannot discuss the issues. Another person who, instead, indulges in personal abuse. This field will stand or die according to the number of people in it who can address issues, even when those issues are challenging and/or embarrassing. Richard Loosemore --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?; 7356 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Evaluating Conference Quality [WAS Re: Symbol Grounding ...]
On Wed, May 7, 2008 at 12:27 AM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Stefan Pernar wrote: On Tue, May 6, 2008 at 10:10 PM, Richard Loosemore [EMAIL PROTECTED]mailto: [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: DELETED Ben: I admire your patience. Richard: congrats - you just made my ignore list - and that's a first Another person who cannot discuss the issues. Richard - after having spent time looking through your stuff here is my conclusion: You postulate that Achieving AGI requires solving a complex problem and that you do not see this being properly incorporated in current AGI research. As pointed out by others this position puts you in the scruffies camp of AI research (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neats_vs._scruffies) What follows are wild speculations and grand pie-in-the-sky plans without substance with a letter to investors attached. Oh, come on! PS: obviously my ignore list sucks ;-) -- Stefan Pernar 3-E-101 Silver Maple Garden #6 Cai Hong Road, Da Shan Zi Chao Yang District 100015 Beijing P.R. CHINA Mobil: +86 1391 009 1931 Skype: Stefan.Pernar --- agi Archives: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: http://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: http://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=101455710-f059c4 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
