Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Bob Mottram
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.


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agi
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Re: [agi] who is going to build the wittgenstein-ian AI filter to spot all the intellectual nonsense

2008-11-26 Thread Tudor Boloni
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

2008-11-26 Thread Ed Porter
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

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[agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Mike Tintner
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. 





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Re: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Ben Goertzel
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:
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-- 
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
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RE: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Derek Zahn

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


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agi
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Re: [agi] Re: JAGI submission

2008-11-26 Thread Matt Mahoney
--- 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]



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[agi] Re: If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Aleksei Riikonen
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


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agi
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RE: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Robert Swaine
 
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



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Re: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Mike Tintner

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
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--
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
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Re: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Trent Waddington
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


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Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Bob Mottram
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)


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RE: [agi] Re: If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Ed Porter
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

 

 

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RE: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Ed Porter
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)


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agi
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RE: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Ed Porter
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



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Re: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Mark Waser
- 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*).






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Re: [agi] The Future of AGI

2008-11-26 Thread Ben Goertzel
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

2008-11-26 Thread Vladimir Nesov
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/


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Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Eric Burton
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
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RE: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Ed Porter
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/
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 agi
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Re: [agi] If aliens are monitoring us, our development of AGI might concern them

2008-11-26 Thread Eric Burton
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
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