Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As we learn just how common exoplanets are, the possibility that aliens have visited earth seems increasingly scientifically believable I'm not sure that alien visitation logically follows from the discovery of exoplanets. There have, in fact, been many reportings of UFOs from sources that are hard to reject out of hand. Well I'm happy to report that I can dismiss all the reports which I've read about out of hand, since they don't really constitute good evidence in my opinion. Blurry photos or videos, and anecdotal claims wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny in a scientific journal. An astronaut that NASA respected enough to send to the moon, has publicly stated he has attended government briefings in which he was told there is substantial evidence aliens have repeatedly visited earth. Unfortunately if you read the biography of this guy it seems that he's held outspoken views on such things for a very long time. Astronauts are not supermen - they're just ordinary people with the same biases and superstitions as everyone else. They're just as likely to believe in conspiracy theories and other wacky stuff. I should say that I do think there is a good chance that the universe is populated with life, but that we have observed no direct evidence of this at present. Also, the existence of life does not necessarily imply human-like life with an advanced technological civilization. Having a large brain is only one minority strategy for reproducing your genes. But, all of the above is off topic, so you can safely ignore it. --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] who is going to build the wittgenstein-ian AI filter to spot all the intellectual nonsense
John, an impressive effort and wonderful direction, an analytical psychology of the Good in humans is sorely lacking and the focus on human sickness has had a monopoly for way too long and with untold negative consequences for society at large. assuming these meanings are correct (or will be fine tuned to be so at some point), cannot your coding include classes that would prohibit improper uses of such terms, kind of a system of rejecting attempts to mix value judgments and labels? On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 12:29 AM, John LaMuth [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mike The abstract nouns Honor. Justice. Truth can all be shown to be objectively based in science of Behaviorism http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/behaviorism.html as outlined in technically linked schematics http://www.angelfire.com/rnb/fairhaven/schematics.html and even granted US patent 6587846 www.ethicalvalues.com Just offering up the latest advances... Wittgenstein would be proud ^_^ Cordially John LaMuth www.charactervalues.org * GUILT * Previously, you (as reinforcer) have leniently acted in a reinforcing fashion towards me: overriding my (as procurer) submissive treatment of you. But now, I (as personal authority) will *guiltily* act in a submissive fashion towards you: overruling your lenient treatment of me. * BLAME * Previously, I (as personal authority) have guiltily acted in a submissive fashion towards you: overriding your (as reinforcer) lenient treatment of me. But now, you (as my personal fol-lower) will *blamefully* act in a lenient fashion towards me: overruling my (as PA) guilty treatment of you. * HONOR * Previously, you (as my personal follower) have blamefully acted in a lenient fashion towards me: overriding my (as PA) guilty treatment of you. But now, I (as group authority) will *honorably* act in a guilty fashion towards you: overruling your (as PF) blameful treatment of me. * JUSTICE * Previously, I (as group authority) have honorably acted in a guilty fashion towards you: overriding your (as PF) blameful treatment of me. But now, you (as group representative) will *justly*-blame me: overruling my (as GA) honorable sense of guilt. * LIBERTY * Previously, you (as group representative) have justly-blamed me: overriding my (as GA) honorable sense of guilt. * * But now, I (as spiritual authority) will honorably act in a *libertarian *fashion towards you: overruling your just-blaming of me. * HOPE * Previously, I (as spiritual authority) have honorably acted in a libertarian fashion towards you: overriding your (as GR) just-blaming of me. But now, you (as my spiritual disciple) will blamefully-*hope* for justice: overruling my (as SA) libertarian sense of honor. * FREE WILL * Previously, you (as my spiritual disciple) have blamefully-hoped for justice: overriding my (as SA) libertarian sense of honor. But now, I (as humanitarian authority) will honorably act in a *freely willed* fashion towards you: overruling your (as SD) blameful-hope for justice. * TRUTH * Previously, I (as humanitarian authority) have honorably acted in a freely-willed fashion towards you: overriding your (as SD) blameful hope for justice. But now, you (as representative member of humanity) will justly-hope for the *truth*: overruling my (as HA) libertarian sense of free will. * EQUALITY * Previously, you (as representative member of humanity) have justly-hoped for the truth: overriding my (as HA) libertarian sense of free will. But now, I (as transcendental authority) will freely-willed act in an* ** egalitarian* fashion towards you: overruling your (as RH) just-hope for the truth. * BLISS * Previously, I (as transcendental authority) have freely-willed acted in an egalitarian fashion towards you: overriding your (as RH) just-hope for the truth. But now, you (as my transcendental follower) will *blissfully* hope for the truth: overruling my (as TA) egalitarian treatment of you. . - Original Message - *From:* Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Tuesday, November 25, 2008 10:39 AM *Subject:* Re: [agi] who is going to build the wittgenstein-ian AI filter to spot all the intellectual nonsense Tudor: I agree that there are many better questions to elucidate the tricks/pitfalls of language. but lets list the biggest time wasters first, Er, it's a rather big job. I think you're talking about all abstract nouns. Time. Space. Honour. Justice. Truth. Realism Beauty. Science. Art. You're talking IOW about a dimension of language almost as fundamental as adverbs. It's worth pursuing the illusions created by the verbal abstractions of language and the ways we use them - but it's a huge task. -- *agi* | Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ |
RE: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
Bob, I share much of your skepticism, and many of your reasons for doubting. I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. But I have a tremendous belief in the ability of people to misperceive things and for rational people to develop arguments for unjustified conspiracy-like theories --- so I still remain skeptical. But if one combines (a) the increasing evidence that habitable planet are probably plentiful in our solar system, (b) the evidence of how quickly life originated on earth, (c) the reasonable belief of what amazing advances in intelligence and technology AGI could give to a civilization that survived it and how such technology might reasonably be expected to enable galactic space travel and civilization, (d) that it would take only one civilization that achieved AGI say 10 to 100 million years ago to have distributed itself throughout much of our galaxy, and (d) if one accepts that it is at least possible that not all the people claiming to have seen or recorded aliens or UFO are lying or have experienced misperceptions or delusions or mis-interpretations of their recorded data --- then I think it is not unreasonable to assume that there is --- at least --- a non insignificant chance that aliens are visiting and monitoring us. In my own rather skeptical mind, if I were to make a wild guess I would currently put the probability of this at roughly at least one in ten, a large enough possibility that it should, at least, be considered in discussions of the future of AGI and the singularity. Ed Porter. -Original Message- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 3:27 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: As we learn just how common exoplanets are, the possibility that aliens have visited earth seems increasingly scientifically believable I'm not sure that alien visitation logically follows from the discovery of exoplanets. There have, in fact, been many reportings of UFOs from sources that are hard to reject out of hand. Well I'm happy to report that I can dismiss all the reports which I've read about out of hand, since they don't really constitute good evidence in my opinion. Blurry photos or videos, and anecdotal claims wouldn't stand up to serious scrutiny in a scientific journal. An astronaut that NASA respected enough to send to the moon, has publicly stated he has attended government briefings in which he was told there is substantial evidence aliens have repeatedly visited earth. Unfortunately if you read the biography of this guy it seems that he's held outspoken views on such things for a very long time. Astronauts are not supermen - they're just ordinary people with the same biases and superstitions as everyone else. They're just as likely to believe in conspiracy theories and other wacky stuff. I should say that I do think there is a good chance that the universe is populated with life, but that we have observed no direct evidence of this at present. Also, the existence of life does not necessarily imply human-like life with an advanced technological civilization. Having a large brain is only one minority strategy for reproducing your genes. But, all of the above is off topic, so you can safely ignore it. --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] The Future of AGI
You'll remember that I've been saying this for quite a while - now Kevin Kelly is saying it - and you'll be hearing a lot more of this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23wwln-future-t.html?_r=2sq=KEVIN%20KELLYst=csescp=1pagewanted=all Intelligence that is rationality without imagination, symbol manipulation without image manipulation, basically paper-based rather than screen-based (or consciousness-based), isn't intelligence at all. --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
Yes, but rationality without imagination and creativity is just a bogus straw man construct ... certainly, it is never what I mean when I talk about rationality ... Obsession with visual images is a whole other issue, though. It seems very obvious that an AI or alien organism with no visual perception could be massively intelligent and creative, potentially more so than humans. Vision is merely one particular way of sensing and internally modeling portions of the physical world. ben On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You'll remember that I've been saying this for quite a while - now Kevin Kelly is saying it - and you'll be hearing a lot more of this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23wwln-future-t.html?_r=2sq=KEVIN%20KELLYst=csescp=1pagewanted=all Intelligence that is rationality without imagination, symbol manipulation without image manipulation, basically paper-based rather than screen-based (or consciousness-based), isn't intelligence at all. --- 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] The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. -- Sir Winston Churchill --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] The Future of AGI
Although a lot of AI-type research focuses on natural language interfaces between computer systems and their human users, computers have the ability to create visual images (which people can't do in real-time beyond gestures and facial expressions). Building computer systems that generate pictures or videos as their way of communicating with us could be a very lucrative addition to computer applications that include cognitive models of their users (instead of focusing solely on generating natural language), because most of us do process visual information so well. This is really narrow AI I suppose, though it's kind of on the borderline. It does seem like one of the ways to commercialize incremental progress toward AGI. Derek Zahn supermodelling.net --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Re: JAGI submission
--- On Tue, 11/25/08, Eliezer Yudkowsky [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Shane Legg, I don't mean to be harsh, but your attempt to link Kolmogorov complexity to intelligence is causing brain damage among impressionable youths. ( Link debunked here: http://www.overcomingbias.com/2008/11/complexity-and.html ) Perhaps this is the wrong argument to support my intuition that knowing more makes you smarter, as in greater expected utility over a given time period. How do we explain that humans are smarter than calculators, and calculators are smarter than rocks? Obviously that is not true with unlimited computing power. With a very simple program I could answer any question that could be proven by enumerating all proofs. In that world, if a problem requires around 33 computation steps, then you would need log 33 bits to specify the number of steps, which is essentially the same number. With real computers, I think the difference between O(t) and O(log t) complexity is important. I realize that approximating real computers with Turing machines is not always justified. -- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Re: If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 5:07 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my own rather skeptical mind, if I were to make a wild guess I would currently put the probability of this at roughly at least one in ten, a large enough possibility that it should, at least, be considered in discussions of the future of AGI and the singularity. In case there are some on this list that would like a high-quality starting point for getting to know the ufo scene, the following seems like a good fit: http://www.ufoskeptic.org/ An information site on the UFO phenomenon by and for professional scientists. Personally, I don't know much about this topic, but that is the highest quality site on it that I've come across, and I recommend it to people who have more motivation than me to learn about UFOs. (Do not infer from the name of the site that it would be dismissing all UFO reports out of hand.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] The Future of AGI
Derek wrote: Building computer systems that generate pictures or videos as their way of communicating with us could be a very lucrative addition to computer applications that include cognitive models of their users (instead of focusing solely on generating natural language), because most of us do process visual information so well. --- 1. Derek, A simple movie, like a visual slide show or cartoon, would be a fairly straight forward implementation for certain symbolic/connectionist and other models. The architecture I work on is set to do that as a medium term goal. Any representation system (language) is learned within the contextual patterns its used, so a visual language (shapes), motion language (ultimately gestures), text, sound (un-implemented), etc. of all sensor type can be integrated with the core system as interchangeable patterns.* You can simply read off the state from any region to see what it's thinking within specific and multimodal sensors, as well as what it's attention is on and the focus level of that atttention; e.g. looking at the colorful red and blue car in the parking lot, but narrowly focus on the rust on the door handle or a wide defocus on the entire parking lot and the heat from the pavement - all in the same situation. When this situation is recalled or referenced, the scene is pulled-up and it will generate its version of what it was focused on (rust on the door handle or heat). It can then shift it's focus outward or to other regions in the scene, modify a feature (say change the red colors to blue on the car etc). A movie from its output would look like the jerky camera movements and quick focus change in a show like NYPD Blue or the new Battlestar Galactic space scenes or History Channel's Dogfight sky scenes. *pattens (for the model) have spatial and serial components to varying degrees for each sensor: e.g. bodyspace maps easy to vision, sound to change (motion sequence), force (touch) to vision,...for the sensors that don't map well, just force it and you get your less seemless metaphors : a sweet sound, but left the room with a bitter taste 2. Derek wrote: because most of us do process visual information so well. It makes it easier to program visually to see what the system is doingas a whole or by states --- On Wed, 11/26/08, Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Derek Zahn [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: RE: [agi] The Future of AGI To: agi@v2.listbox.com Date: Wednesday, November 26, 2008, 11:02 AM #yiv2133712726 .hmmessage P { margin:0px;padding:0px;} #yiv2133712726 { font-size:10pt;font-family:Verdana;} Although a lot of AI-type research focuses on natural language interfaces between computer systems and their human users, computers have the ability to create visual images (which people can't do in real-time beyond gestures and facial expressions). Building computer systems that generate pictures or videos as their way of communicating with us could be a very lucrative addition to computer applications that include cognitive models of their users (instead of focusing solely on generating natural language), because most of us do process visual information so well. This is really narrow AI I suppose, though it's kind of on the borderline. It does seem like one of the ways to commercialize incremental progress toward AGI. Derek Zahn supermodelling.net 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
Ben, I should explain rationality - I mean it technically to cover (principally formal) language, logic and maths, including geometry. These are all the sign systems (inherited from the Greeks) which convert the world into more or less hard-edged, more or less abstract boxes - words, numbers, and geometrical figures. Boxes which are ratio-nal - capable of precise, measured comparison or ratios. (Hence irrational numbers). These are also the systems of the book. Imagination here means all the image systems of the arts - such as movies,tv and all the dramatic arts, records, radio, painting sculpture tc - which reflect the world at a concrete level, before rationality converts it. (In terms of the economy, BTW, imaginative intelligence workers - designers, artists, admen etc. etc - may well be as significant/numerous as rational intelligence workers.In terms of our high culture, artists may also be as numerous as scientists and technologists). Actual general intelligence in humans and animals is indisputably continuously screen-based. You can have conscious intelligence without language, logic or maths. You can't have it without a screen - the continuous movie of consciousness. And that screen is not just vision but sound. (Evolution IOW knows something about intelligence that you don't). Of course, the screen in screen-based is strictly a limited, metaphoric model, if an extremely useful and now essential one. Actual human/animal consciousness is much more complex still, involving the other senses, and being, in a sense, solid and distributed over a large space, as opposed to concentrated on a flat surface. If you're smart, I suggest, you'll acknowledge the truth here, which is that you know next to nothing about imaginative intelligence, (as indeed does our culture) - hardly appropriate if you're claiming to be interested in general intelligence - and, as the Kelly article indicates, it's time to start learning, fast. Ben: Yes, but rationality without imagination and creativity is just a bogus straw man construct ... certainly, it is never what I mean when I talk about rationality ... Obsession with visual images is a whole other issue, though. It seems very obvious that an AI or alien organism with no visual perception could be massively intelligent and creative, potentially more so than humans. Vision is merely one particular way of sensing and internally modeling portions of the physical world. ben On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You'll remember that I've been saying this for quite a while - now Kevin Kelly is saying it - and you'll be hearing a lot more of this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23wwln-future-t.html?_r=2sq=KEVIN%20KELLYst=csescp=1pagewanted=all Intelligence that is rationality without imagination, symbol manipulation without image manipulation, basically paper-based rather than screen-based (or consciousness-based), isn't intelligence at all. --- 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] The empires of the future are the empires of the mind. -- Sir Winston Churchill --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
On Thu, Nov 27, 2008 at 1:43 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Intelligence that is rationality without imagination, symbol manipulation without image manipulation, basically paper-based rather than screen-based (or consciousness-based), isn't intelligence at all. Although this may appear completely obvious and self evident to you, there's plenty of people who consider children who can't sing to be retarded too. 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. belief (Y, foo) belief (X, credibility (Y) minimum credibility (X)) || dominance heirachy (Y) dominance heirachy (X) meme strength (X, Y) threshold = belief (X, foo) --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Re: If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
Aleksei Thanks for the link. It is interesting. Before I started hearing estimates for how common exoplanets were, I thought visits from aliens were a possibility, because I like to have an open mind, but an extremely small one. Now I believe it is a large enough probability that any honest, open-minded person, who is astronomically and technologically reasonably informed, has to consider it sufficiently probable that it deserves thought. The article your link pointed to reinforces that thinking. I disagree with the argument in The Speed-of-Light Limit Argument, in the left window of the web page, that if aliens could travel no faster than the speed of light, the chance and/or frequencies that they would visit us would be very small. That is because, alien civilizations might have achieved their respective singularity millions or billions of years ago, and with the resultant technology learned how to live and multiply themselves and their supporting technology exponentially in galactic space, so that they would have had more than enough time traveling at sub-C speeds to populate most of the habitable parts of our galaxy. Wikipedia says the Milky Way is 100,000 light years across, and on average 1000 light years thick (other source say it is about 10 times thicker). The would give a volume of roughly 2.5 Trillion cubic light years. I seems reasonable to assumes any advanced, million-years-post-singularity space civilization would be capable of building arrays of extremely large space-based telescopes, each many miles in diameter. If such an array could search for substantially all possibly habitable planets within a 750 light year radius, based first on very accurate measurements of the wobbles of stars, and then from spectrographic information from the light reflected off such planets, themselves --- then it would only take roughly 250,000 such telescope arrays spread throughout the galaxy to check out the entire galaxy for likely habitable planets, since each such telescope could check out one billion cubic light years, each having roughly 8 million stars to monitor in one assumes stars average being 5 million light years appart. As I said, the real interest of this discussion to this AGI list, is that human development of AGI might well affect the alien's attitude toward us --- if they exist and if they are monitoring us --- because it would mean we would be at the start of a rapid technological development that would mean we could become much more equal with them --- making us either more valuable --- or more threatening --- to them. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Aleksei Riikonen [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 12:22 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: [agi] Re: If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 5:07 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: In my own rather skeptical mind, if I were to make a wild guess I would currently put the probability of this at roughly at least one in ten, a large enough possibility that it should, at least, be considered in discussions of the future of AGI and the singularity. In case there are some on this list that would like a high-quality starting point for getting to know the ufo scene, the following seems like a good fit: http://www.ufoskeptic.org/ An information site on the UFO phenomenon by and for professional scientists. Personally, I don't know much about this topic, but that is the highest quality site on it that I've come across, and I recommend it to people who have more motivation than me to learn about UFOs. (Do not infer from the name of the site that it would be dismissing all UFO reports out of hand.) -- Aleksei Riikonen - http://www.iki.fi/aleksei --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
Translate into English, please. -Original Message- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:35 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. belief (Y, foo) belief (X, credibility (Y) minimum credibility (X)) || dominance heirachy (Y) dominance heirachy (X) meme strength (X, Y) threshold = belief (X, foo) --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] The Future of AGI
For decades I have always imagined that my dream machine would be able to not only talk to me in a conversational manner, but be able to generate real time video, like that in a coherent documentary or a movie, that is context appropriate to my discussion with it. I have always imagined that I would have the same, or better access, to its visual imagination as I do to my own. So, yes, you are right, sophisticated audio visual interfaces will be an important part of AGI, and they will not just involve narrow AI. This is because the generation of imagined visual scenes, and processes of selecting what is appropriate to communicate at which point and in what order in a given interaction with a human will involve many of the skills involved in naturally language understanding. I also believe that it is quite possible that, as we better understand the mind, we will understand how to better and more rapidly communicate visual information to humans. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Derek Zahn [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 11:03 AM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: RE: [agi] The Future of AGI Although a lot of AI-type research focuses on natural language interfaces between computer systems and their human users, computers have the ability to create visual images (which people can't do in real-time beyond gestures and facial expressions). Building computer systems that generate pictures or videos as their way of communicating with us could be a very lucrative addition to computer applications that include cognitive models of their users (instead of focusing solely on generating natural language), because most of us do process visual information so well. This is really narrow AI I suppose, though it's kind of on the borderline. It does seem like one of the ways to commercialize incremental progress toward AGI. Derek Zahn supermodelling.net _ agi | https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now Archives https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ | https://www.listbox.com/member/?; 0 Modify Your Subscription 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
- Original Message - From: Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] I should explain rationality No Mike, you *really* shouldn't. Repurposing words like you do merely leads to confusion not clarity . . . . Actual general intelligence in humans and animals is indisputably continuously screen-based. You keep contending this with absolutely no evidence or proof. You can have conscious intelligence without language, logic or maths. You can't have it without a screen - the continuous movie of consciousness. And that screen is not just vision but sound. And how do you know this? If you're smart, I suggest, you'll acknowledge the truth here, which is that you know next to nothing about imaginative intelligence I see, so if Ben is smart he'll acknowledge that you, with far less knowledge and experience, have the correct answer (despite being unable to explain it coherently enough to convince *anyone*). --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
Hmmm... I don't think your conceptualization of rationality is particularly useful ... I do think formal reasoning is a useful category to distinguish, but this is much narrower than what you're somewhat arbitrarily lumping into the category of rationality I don't think it's sensible to say that language, logic and math are somehow detached from imagination in the general sense, just because they are not imagistic I don't think there is anything special about vision, nor do I find introspectively that all my thinking involves some sort of internal screen. No. Some of it does, some of it doesn't. The whole idea of a two cultures divide between the rationalists and the artists seems oddly obsolete, and not reflective of contemporary culture in which these things are rather intermixed. The distinction between -- formal thought, using explicit formal rules to manipulate structures -- simulative thought, which is based on internally manipulating and generating models, scenarios, etc. designed to resemble things in the physical world is interesting and worthwhile, IMO. It seems to me you talk too much about visual images, when what you really should be talking about is simulative thought more generally. Imagination -- in the general sense of creating wild new ideas and forms -- seems to me to involve both formal and simulative thought, in many cases. Certainly, there is a powerful formal aspect to visual arts (e.g. the rules of perspective, the projective rules used in cubism, etc.), as well as a powerful simulative aspect to many kinds of mathematical creation. I don't agree that I know next to nothing about imaginative intelligence. Actually, I've generally been considered a rather imaginative person throughout my life ... and I've read an awful lot of the literature on the topic of imagination, both in psychology, philosophy, literary and art criticism, and so forth. Whether my AI designs are capable to lead to artificial imagination is another question, but, your commentary certainly has not convinced me otherwise ;-) -- Ben G On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 1:20 PM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, I should explain rationality - I mean it technically to cover (principally formal) language, logic and maths, including geometry. These are all the sign systems (inherited from the Greeks) which convert the world into more or less hard-edged, more or less abstract boxes - words, numbers, and geometrical figures. Boxes which are ratio-nal - capable of precise, measured comparison or ratios. (Hence irrational numbers). These are also the systems of the book. Imagination here means all the image systems of the arts - such as movies,tv and all the dramatic arts, records, radio, painting sculpture tc - which reflect the world at a concrete level, before rationality converts it. (In terms of the economy, BTW, imaginative intelligence workers - designers, artists, admen etc. etc - may well be as significant/numerous as rational intelligence workers.In terms of our high culture, artists may also be as numerous as scientists and technologists). Actual general intelligence in humans and animals is indisputably continuously screen-based. You can have conscious intelligence without language, logic or maths. You can't have it without a screen - the continuous movie of consciousness. And that screen is not just vision but sound. (Evolution IOW knows something about intelligence that you don't). Of course, the screen in screen-based is strictly a limited, metaphoric model, if an extremely useful and now essential one. Actual human/animal consciousness is much more complex still, involving the other senses, and being, in a sense, solid and distributed over a large space, as opposed to concentrated on a flat surface. If you're smart, I suggest, you'll acknowledge the truth here, which is that you know next to nothing about imaginative intelligence, (as indeed does our culture) - hardly appropriate if you're claiming to be interested in general intelligence - and, as the Kelly article indicates, it's time to start learning, fast. Ben: Yes, but rationality without imagination and creativity is just a bogus straw man construct ... certainly, it is never what I mean when I talk about rationality ... Obsession with visual images is a whole other issue, though. It seems very obvious that an AI or alien organism with no visual perception could be massively intelligent and creative, potentially more so than humans. Vision is merely one particular way of sensing and internally modeling portions of the physical world. ben On Wed, Nov 26, 2008 at 10:43 AM, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: You'll remember that I've been saying this for quite a while - now Kevin Kelly is saying it - and you'll be hearing a lot more of this http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/23/magazine/23wwln-future-t.html?_r=2sq=KEVIN%20KELLYst=csescp=1pagewanted=all
Re: [agi] The Future of AGI
Formal reasoning can be thought of as medium, a canvas on which your imagination draws structures serving your goals best, that solve your problem or are simply aesthetically pleasing. There is an infinite number of possible formal derivations, theorems and proofs; limitations of formality of final product of expression are relatively loose. These are rules of the game, that enable the complexity of skill to emerge, not square bounds on imagination. Most of the work comes from creative process, not from formality. -- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
What I want to emphasize is that our world is bathed in signals from superintelligent civilizations every day. The way you can put an antenna into the ground and use the Earth to conduct radio frequencies, these things are using the organization of space and time. The laws of physics and the cosmological constants that inform them may arise from the content of communication and computation being performed at the psycho-atomic level, where mind manifests in quark form! What could possibly concern such a superior race! On 11/26/08, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Translate into English, please. -Original Message- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:35 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. belief (Y, foo) belief (X, credibility (Y) minimum credibility (X)) || dominance heirachy (Y) dominance heirachy (X) meme strength (X, Y) threshold = belief (X, foo) --- 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
What evidence, other than your thoughts when using drugs, do you have for such statements? -Original Message- From: Eric Burton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 5:22 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them What I want to emphasize is that our world is bathed in signals from superintelligent civilizations every day. The way you can put an antenna into the ground and use the Earth to conduct radio frequencies, these things are using the organization of space and time. The laws of physics and the cosmological constants that inform them may arise from the content of communication and computation being performed at the psycho-atomic level, where mind manifests in quark form! What could possibly concern such a superior race! On 11/26/08, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Translate into English, please. -Original Message- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:35 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. belief (Y, foo) belief (X, credibility (Y) minimum credibility (X)) || dominance heirachy (Y) dominance heirachy (X) meme strength (X, Y) threshold = belief (X, foo) --- 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/?; 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them
Thoughts are surely a subset of felt experience. The contact experiences reliably induced by committed doses of for instance psilocibin are objective, not subjective events! They are breaches in consensus reality, they mutate it. I don't know the source of the information I've received when bemushroomed. It could be aeons old and delivered by panspermia. Much of it is presented with great gravity. The experince could easily be a disorienting allergic response evolved on Earth to discourage predation. But that does not explain the intimate Other that appears in the head to take great glee in the interface! It does not explain the reams of art, the many and varied vistas and plateaus, and the challenges one encounters in the psilocibin trance. Either it is offering us all this or it is generated by the brain. Why then is this uniquely characteristic hallucinosis particular to the ingestion of this specific substance? You can read for yourself on the effects I'm describing. But none of this feeds into anyone's theory of mind until we can trap and trace the experiences in question. It is probably quantum. On 11/26/08, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: What evidence, other than your thoughts when using drugs, do you have for such statements? -Original Message- From: Eric Burton [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 5:22 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them What I want to emphasize is that our world is bathed in signals from superintelligent civilizations every day. The way you can put an antenna into the ground and use the Earth to conduct radio frequencies, these things are using the organization of space and time. The laws of physics and the cosmological constants that inform them may arise from the content of communication and computation being performed at the psycho-atomic level, where mind manifests in quark form! What could possibly concern such a superior race! On 11/26/08, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Translate into English, please. -Original Message- From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Wednesday, November 26, 2008 1:35 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them 2008/11/26 Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED]: I have never experienced a UFO, but several people I have known and generally trusted, and who are not drug users or wackos, have claimed to have seen them directly. belief (Y, foo) belief (X, credibility (Y) minimum credibility (X)) || dominance heirachy (Y) dominance heirachy (X) meme strength (X, Y) threshold = belief (X, foo) --- 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/?; 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=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com