[agi] virtual credits again
Hi Ben and others, After some more thinking, I decide to try the virtual credit approach afterall. Last time Ben's argument was that the virtual credit method confuses for-profit and charity emotions in people. At that time it sounded convincing, but after some thinking I realized that it is actually completely untrue. My approach is actually more unequivocally for-profit, and Ben's accusation actually applies to OpenCog's stance more aptly. I'm afraid OpenCog has some ethical problems by straddling between for-profit and charity. For example: why do you need funding to do charity? If you want to do charity why not do it out of your own pockets? Why use a dual license if the final product is supposed to be free for all? etc. It is good for a company to be charitable, but you're forcing me to do charity when I am having financial problems myself. Your charity victimizes me and other people trying to make money in the AGI business. I can understand why you dislike my approach: you have contributed to AGI in many intangible ways, such as organizing conferences, increasing public awareness of AGI, etc. I respect you for these efforts. Under the virtual credit system it would be very difficult to assign credits to you -- not impossible -- but then if you try to claim too many credits you'd start to look like a Shylock, and that may be very embarassing. Secondly, there may be other people in the OpenCog devel team who dislike virtual credits for their own reasons, and you may want to placate them. So, either we confront the embarassing problem and try to assign ex post facto credits, or, another alternative is to keep our projects separate. The world may be able to accomodate two or more AGIs (it may actually be a healthy thing, from a complex-systems perspective). I don't suppose my virtual credit approach can universally satisfy all AGI developers. But neither can your approach (under which I cannot get any gaurantee of financial rewards). I'm open to other suggestions, but if there're aren't any, I'd proceed with virtual credit. I guess some people will like it, and some will hate it. This is just natural. At least I'm honest about my motives. PS. The argument that AGI should be free because it is such an important technology can equally apply to other many technologies such as medicine and (later) life extension or uploading. It can even apply to things like food, housing, citizenship, computer hardware, etc. In the end I think we need to admit that the good way lies somewhere between charity and for-profit. And my project aims to be charitable in its own way too. The only difference between my way and OpenCog is that I want to make the accounting of contributions transparent, and to reward contributors financially, while being charitable in some other ways, that depend on how much profits we'll make. (Making the software opensource is already very charitable and we may not be able to make that much money at all). YKY --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Cloud Intelligence
John G. Rose wrote: Has anyone done some analysis on cloud computing, in particular the recent trend and coming out of clouds with multiple startup efforts in this space? And their relationship to AGI type applications? Or is this phenomena just geared to web server farm resource grouping? I suppose that it is worth delving into... at least evaluating. But my first thoughts are that the hardware nodes have interrelationships that require compatibility layers for service offerings verses custom clusters hand tweaked for app specific - AGI in this case, optimizations and caterings. From playing around a little in the Amazon cloud you can do anything you can do on a standard TCP/IP network of off the shelf boxes. Granted you can't hook up a faster network as you certainly could in your own cluster. But it still seems pretty intriguing. What happens though over time is that the cloud generalization substrate made for software and competitive efficiencies eventually come close to or exceed the abilities of the hand developed and tweaked. That is the problem - determining whether to wait, pay, or to develop a custom solution. Well, most of us have no choice but do do whatever we can as soon as we can on top of free/cheap but relatively plentiful resources. Isn't software development annoying because of this? Big guys like MS have the umph to shrug off the little guys using their development resource power. Sometimes the only choice is to eat dust and like it. Suck up the dust, it's nutritional silicon value is there, feed off of it, the perpetuity of a naked quartz lunch. Actually I think software is very exciting and have for 30 years because the little guy can and often does come up with something on a relative shoestring that blows MS out of the water in some market that often didn't even see coming. - samantha --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Cloud Intelligence
2008/10/29 Samantha Atkins [EMAIL PROTECTED]: John G. Rose wrote: Has anyone done some analysis on cloud computing, in particular the recent trend and coming out of clouds with multiple startup efforts in this space? And their relationship to AGI type applications? Beware of putting too much stuff into the cloud. Especially in the current economic climate clouds could disappear without notice (i.e. unrecoverable data loss). Also, depending upon terms and conditions any data which you put into the cloud may not legally be owned by you, even if you created 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] virtual credits again
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Last time Ben's argument was that the virtual credit method confuses for-profit and charity emotions in people. At that time it sounded convincing, but after some thinking I realized that it is actually completely untrue. Don't forget my argument.. You're a gas bag and don't know what you're talking about.. so you'll never make any money and your virtual credits (hint: credit is already virtual) are just worthless stupidity. 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... Huh? Integers are a class (which I would argue is an entity) that is I would argue is well-defined and useful in science. What is meaning if not well-defined and useful? I need to go back to your paper because I didn't get that out of it at all. - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:41 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues well-defined is not well-defined in my view... However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... Oh. Ick! My bad phrasing. WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS should have been WITH RESPECT TO THE DEFINITION OF NUMBERS since I was responding to Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. Further, I should not have said information about numbers when I meant definition of numbers. two radically different thingsArgh! = = = = = = = = So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Does the statement that a formal system is incomplete with respect to statements about numbers mean that Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. = = = = = = = (Semi-)Retraction - maybe? (mostly for Abram). Ick again! I was assuming that we were talking about constructivism as in Constructivist epistemology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology). I have just had Constructivism (mathematics) pointed out to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematics)) All I can say is Ick! I emphatically do not believe When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence. = = = = = = = = I'm quitting and going home now to avoid digging myself a deeper hole :-) Mark PS. Ben, I read and, at first glance, liked and agreed with your argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science. I'm going to need to go back over it a few more times though.:-) - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:55 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete Yes, any formal system is doomed to be incomplete. Emphatically, NO! It is not true that any formal system is doomed to be incomplete WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS. It is entirely possible (nay, almost certain) that there is a larger system where the information about numbers is complete but that the other things that the system describes are incomplete. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Hmmm. From a larger reference framework, the former claimed-to-be-constructivist view isn't true/correct because it clearly *is* possible that numbers may be well-defined within a larger system (i.e. the can never be is incorrect). Does that mean that I'm a classicist or that you are mis-interpreting constructivism (because you're attributing a provably false statement to constructivists)? I'm leaning towards the latter currently. ;-) - Original Message - From: Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:02 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues Mark, That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
(1) Simplicity (in conclusions, hypothesis, theories, etc.) is preferred. (2) The preference to simplicity does not need a reason or justification. (3) Simplicity is preferred because it is correlated with correctness. I agree with (1), but not (2) and (3). I concur but would add that (4) Simplicity is preferred because it is correlated with correctness *of implementation* (or ease of implementation correctly :-) - Original Message - From: Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 10:15 PM Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Eric, I highly respect your work, though we clearly have different opinions on what intelligence is, as well as on how to achieve it. For example, though learning and generalization play central roles in my theory about intelligence, I don't think PAC learning (or the other learning algorithms proposed so far) provides a proper conceptual framework for the typical situation of this process. Generally speaking, I'm not building some system that learns about the world, in the sense that there is a correct way to describe the world waiting to be discovered, which can be captured by some algorithm. Instead, learning to me is a non-algorithmic open-ended process by which the system summarizes its own experience, and uses it to predict the future. I fully understand that most people in this field probably consider this opinion wrong, though I haven't been convinced yet by the arguments I've seen so far. Instead of addressing all of the relevant issues, in this discussion I have a very limited goal. To rephrase what I said initially, I see that under the term Occam's Razor, currently there are three different statements: (1) Simplicity (in conclusions, hypothesis, theories, etc.) is preferred. (2) The preference to simplicity does not need a reason or justification. (3) Simplicity is preferred because it is correlated with correctness. I agree with (1), but not (2) and (3). I know many people have different opinions, and I don't attempt to argue with them here --- these problems are too complicated to be settled by email exchanges. However, I do hope to convince people in this discussion that the three statements are not logically equivalent, and (2) and (3) are not implied by (1), so to use Occam's Razor to refer to all of them is not a good idea, because it is going to mix different issues. Therefore, I suggest people to use Occam's Razor in its original and basic sense, that is (1), and to use other terms to refer to (2) and (3). Otherwise, when people talk about Occam's Razor, I just don't know what to say. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 8:09 PM, Eric Baum [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei Triggered by several recent discussions, I'd like to make the Pei following position statement, though won't commit myself to long Pei debate on it. ;-) Pei Occam's Razor, in its original form, goes like entities must not Pei be multiplied beyond necessity, and it is often stated as All Pei other things being equal, the simplest solution is the best or Pei when multiple competing theories are equal in other respects, Pei the principle recommends selecting the theory that introduces the Pei fewest assumptions and postulates the fewest entities --- all Pei from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occam's_razor Pei I fully agree with all of the above statements. Pei However, to me, there are two common misunderstandings associated Pei with it in the context of AGI and philosophy of science. Pei (1) To take this statement as self-evident or a stand-alone Pei postulate Pei To me, it is derived or implied by the insufficiency of Pei resources. If a system has sufficient resources, it has no good Pei reason to prefer a simpler theory. With all due respect, this is mistaken. Occam's Razor, in some form, is the heart of Generalization, which is the essence (and G) of GI. For example, if you study concept learning from examples, say in the PAC learning context (related theorems hold in some other contexts as well), there are theorems to the effect that if you find a hypothesis from a simple enough class of a hypotheses it will with very high probability accurately classify new examples chosen from the same distribution, and conversely theorems that state (roughly speaking) that any method that chooses a hypothesis from too expressive a class of hypotheses will have a probability that can be bounded below by some reasonable number like 1/7, of having large error in its predictions on new examples-- in other words it is impossible to PAC learn without respecting Occam's Razor. For discussion of the above paragraphs, I'd refer you to Chapter 4 of What is Thought? (MIT Press, 2004). In other words, if you are building some system that learns about the world, it had better respect Occam's razor if you want whatever it learns to apply to new experience. (I use the term Occam's razor loosely; using hypotheses that are highly constrained in
Re: [agi] virtual credits again
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 6:34 PM, Trent Waddington Don't forget my argument.. I don't recall hearing an argument from you. All your replies to me are rather rude one liners. YKY --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] virtual credits again
I don't recall hearing an argument from you. All your replies to me are rather rude one liners. As opposed to everyone else, who either doesn't reply to you or humors you. Get over yourself. Trent Hi Trent, Your last two emails to YKY were rude and unhelpful. If you felt a burning desire to express yourself rudely, you could have done so by emailing him privately. Even though I do not personally agree with YKY's approaches and theories, and he is one of the few regulars on this list that I make a point of reading. He actually uses this list to discuss genuine technical matters, to seek genuine feedback on draft papers of his ideas, to ask for technical clarification about current published research in the area, to discuss practical questions relating to the development of real AGI and to listen and respond to comments and criticism. YKY's contributions to this list generally appear to be closer in spirit to the lists' purpose (i.e., for more technical discussions about current AGI projects) than much of the talk here (which often devolves into repetitive and shallow philosophy, name-calling and rude one-liners). I think this list would be a better place if there were more people here like YKY. This is already off topic for this mailing list, so if you would like to discuss it further please feel free to email me directly. Sincerely, -Benjamin Johnston --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
META: ad hominem attacks WAS Re: [agi] virtual credits again
Trent, A comment in my role as list administrator: Let's keep the discussion on the level of ideas not people, please. No ad hominem attacks such as You're a gas bag, etc. thanks ben g On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 6:34 AM, Trent Waddington [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 4:04 PM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Last time Ben's argument was that the virtual credit method confuses for-profit and charity emotions in people. At that time it sounded convincing, but after some thinking I realized that it is actually completely untrue. Don't forget my argument.. You're a gas bag and don't know what you're talking about.. so you'll never make any money and your virtual credits (hint: credit is already virtual) are just worthless stupidity. Trent --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] virtual credits again
YKY, I'm certainly not opposed to you trying a virtual-credits system. My prediction is that it won't work out well, but my predictions are not always right. I just want to clarify two things: 1) There is *really* nothing unethical about OpenCog's setup. However, if we need to discuss that in detail we can do that in another thread. Nor do I think your proposed system has anything unethical about it, as long as it's clearly explained and those who participate in it understand the potential risks and rewards. 2) You say you're forcing me to do charity when I am having financial problems myself. -- but I don't see why you think anyone is forcing you to do anything! You're a free citizen of Hong Kong, you can do what you like ... and you can certainly announce and discuss your project on this list, regardless of its internal organizational, corporate or financial structure. There is no use of force involved! ... My earlier post about for-profit versus charitable motivations in humans was an aside, just an attempt on my part to formally articulate some reasoning underlying my basic intuition that the virtual-credit system might not work very well. Of course, this kind of armchair psychological theorizing can easily go astray; it would be a mistake to take it too seriously. But, if you didn't read Freakonomics when it was popular a while back, you might want to take a look at the chapters dealing with these themes. -- Ben G On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 2:04 AM, YKY (Yan King Yin) [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Ben and others, After some more thinking, I decide to try the virtual credit approach afterall. Last time Ben's argument was that the virtual credit method confuses for-profit and charity emotions in people. At that time it sounded convincing, but after some thinking I realized that it is actually completely untrue. My approach is actually more unequivocally for-profit, and Ben's accusation actually applies to OpenCog's stance more aptly. I'm afraid OpenCog has some ethical problems by straddling between for-profit and charity. For example: why do you need funding to do charity? If you want to do charity why not do it out of your own pockets? Why use a dual license if the final product is supposed to be free for all? etc. It is good for a company to be charitable, but you're forcing me to do charity when I am having financial problems myself. Your charity victimizes me and other people trying to make money in the AGI business. I can understand why you dislike my approach: you have contributed to AGI in many intangible ways, such as organizing conferences, increasing public awareness of AGI, etc. I respect you for these efforts. Under the virtual credit system it would be very difficult to assign credits to you -- not impossible -- but then if you try to claim too many credits you'd start to look like a Shylock, and that may be very embarassing. Secondly, there may be other people in the OpenCog devel team who dislike virtual credits for their own reasons, and you may want to placate them. So, either we confront the embarassing problem and try to assign ex post facto credits, or, another alternative is to keep our projects separate. The world may be able to accomodate two or more AGIs (it may actually be a healthy thing, from a complex-systems perspective). I don't suppose my virtual credit approach can universally satisfy all AGI developers. But neither can your approach (under which I cannot get any gaurantee of financial rewards). I'm open to other suggestions, but if there're aren't any, I'd proceed with virtual credit. I guess some people will like it, and some will hate it. This is just natural. At least I'm honest about my motives. PS. The argument that AGI should be free because it is such an important technology can equally apply to other many technologies such as medicine and (later) life extension or uploading. It can even apply to things like food, housing, citizenship, computer hardware, etc. In the end I think we need to admit that the good way lies somewhere between charity and for-profit. And my project aims to be charitable in its own way too. The only difference between my way and OpenCog is that I want to make the accounting of contributions transparent, and to reward contributors financially, while being charitable in some other ways, that depend on how much profits we'll make. (Making the software opensource is already very charitable and we may not be able to make that much money at all). YKY --- 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] A human being should be
Re: [agi] virtual credits again
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:11 PM, Benjamin Johnston [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Your last two emails to YKY were rude and unhelpful. If you felt a burning desire to express yourself rudely, you could have done so by emailing him privately. I'm publicly telling him to piss off. I *could* have done this privately, and have previously, but it does not have the desired effect. He actually uses this list to discuss genuine technical matters, to seek genuine feedback on draft papers of his ideas, to ask for technical clarification about current published research in the area, to discuss practical questions relating to the development of real AGI and to listen and respond to comments and criticism. And in this case he is using the list to repeat his tired bullshit about virtual credits for open source work, which we've all said is not only loony and stupid but also irrelevant to this list. So meh, if you want to go ahead with your virtual credit absurdity, you're free to do so, but I'm also free to call you an idiot. 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: META: ad hominem attacks WAS Re: [agi] virtual credits again
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:29 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Trent, A comment in my role as list administrator: Let's keep the discussion on the level of ideas not people, please. No ad hominem attacks such as You're a gas bag, etc. If he's free to talk about virtual credits I should be free to talk about how stupid his virtual credit idea is and, by extension, he is. If it was a passing idea he'd had which, after receiving everyone's feedback on the matter, he decided was not a good idea.. that'd be fine, if not completely off-topic for this list, but he's brought up the subject on this list and the opencog list and on irc a good half dozen times now. It's stupid.. and he isn't getting the message. 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] virtual credits again
So meh, if you want to go ahead with your virtual credit absurdity, you're free to do so, but I'm also free to call you an idiot. Trent Not on this list, please If you feel the need to tell him that, tell him by private email. You are free to tell him you think it's a foolish idea that's doomed to fail. But not to call him an idiot. Attack the ideas, if you wish; not the person. thanks Ben G List moderator --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... Huh? Integers are a class (which I would argue is an entity) that is I would argue is well-defined and useful in science. What is meaning if not well-defined and useful? I need to go back to your paper because I didn't get that out of it at all. - Original Message - *From:* Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:41 PM *Subject:* Re: [agi] constructivist issues well-defined is not well-defined in my view... However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... Oh. Ick! My bad phrasing. WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS should have been WITH RESPECT TO THE DEFINITION OF NUMBERS since I was responding to Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. Further, I should not have said information about numbers when I meant definition of numbers. two radically different thingsArgh! = = = = = = = = So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Does the statement that a formal system is incomplete with respect to statements about numbers mean that Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. = = = = = = = (Semi-)Retraction - maybe? (mostly for Abram). Ick again! I was assuming that we were talking about constructivism as in Constructivist epistemology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology). I have just had Constructivism (mathematics) pointed out to me ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28mathematics)) All I can say is Ick! I emphatically do not believe When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence. = = = = = = = = I'm quitting and going home now to avoid digging myself a deeper hole :-) Mark PS. Ben, I read and, at first glance, liked and agreed with your argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science. I'm going to need to go back over it a few more times though.:-) - Original Message - *From:* Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:55 PM *Subject:* Re: [agi] constructivist issues Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete Yes, any formal system is doomed to be incomplete. Emphatically, NO! It is not true that any formal system is doomed to be incomplete WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS. It is entirely possible (nay, almost certain) that there is a larger system where the information about numbers is complete but that the other things that the system describes are incomplete. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Hmmm. From a larger reference framework, the former claimed-to-be-constructivist view isn't true/correct because it clearly *is* possible that numbers may be well-defined within a larger system (i.e. the can never be is incorrect). Does that mean that I'm a classicist or that you are mis-interpreting constructivism (because you're attributing a provably false statement to constructivists)? I'm leaning towards the latter currently. ;-) - Original Message - From: Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:02
Re: META: ad hominem attacks WAS Re: [agi] virtual credits again
If he's free to talk about virtual credits I should be free to talk about how stupid his virtual credit idea Yes is and, by extension, he is. No ... Look, I am not any kind of expert on list management or social tact, I'm just applying extremely basic rules of human politeness here In fact I know YKY and he is actually *not* an idiot, he's a very bright guy, although he has plenty of ideas I disagree with. I think the virtual-credits thing probably won't work, but I'm not certain of it ... and I do note that it seemed obvious to many people, in advance, that the open-source methodology couldn't work at all (but then it did) Discussion of business and organizational models for AGI projects is sufficiently on-topic for this list, given how broadly the theme of the list is currently being interpreted... -- Ben G List moderator --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Ben, Thanks, that writeup did help me understand your viewpoint. However, I don't completely unserstand/agree with the argument (one of the two, not both!). My comments to that effect are posted on your blog. About the earlier question... (Mark) So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? (Ben) well-defined is not well-defined in my view... To rephrase. Do you think there is a truth of the matter concerning formally undecidable statements about numbers? --Abram On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, I took a couple hours on a red-eye flight last night to write up in more detail my argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/10/are-uncomputable-entities-useless-for.html Of course, I had to assume a specific formal model of science which may be controversial. But at any rate, I think I did succeed in writing down my argument in a more clear way than I'd been able to do in scattershot emails. The only real AGI relevance here is some comments on Penrose's nasty AI theories, e.g. in the last paragraph and near the intro... -- Ben G On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mark, That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete, meaning there will be statements that can be constructed purely by reference to numbers (no red cats!) that the system will fail to prove either true or false. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Hmm By the way, I might not be using the term constructivist in a way that all constructivists would agree with. I think intuitionist (a specific type of constructivist) would be a better term for the view I'm referring to. --Abram Demski On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Numbers can be fully defined in the classical sense, but not in the constructivist sense. So, when you say fully defined question, do you mean a question for which all answers are stipulated by logical necessity (classical), or logical deduction (constructivist)? How (or why) are numbers not fully defined in a constructionist sense? (I was about to ask you whether or not you had answered your own question until that caught my eye on the second or third read-through). --- 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] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
To rephrase. Do you think there is a truth of the matter concerning formally undecidable statements about numbers? --Abram That all depends on what the meaning of is, is ... ;-) --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) But measured in which units? For any given integer, I can come up with (invent :-) a unit of measurement that requires a larger/greater number than that integer to describe the size of the universe. ;-) Nice try, but . . . . :-p - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:48 AM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... Huh? Integers are a class (which I would argue is an entity) that is I would argue is well-defined and useful in science. What is meaning if not well-defined and useful? I need to go back to your paper because I didn't get that out of it at all. - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:41 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues well-defined is not well-defined in my view... However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... Oh. Ick! My bad phrasing. WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS should have been WITH RESPECT TO THE DEFINITION OF NUMBERS since I was responding to Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. Further, I should not have said information about numbers when I meant definition of numbers. two radically different thingsArgh! = = = = = = = = So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Does the statement that a formal system is incomplete with respect to statements about numbers mean that Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. = = = = = = = (Semi-)Retraction - maybe? (mostly for Abram). Ick again! I was assuming that we were talking about constructivism as in Constructivist epistemology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology). I have just had Constructivism (mathematics) pointed out to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematics)) All I can say is Ick! I emphatically do not believe When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence. = = = = = = = = I'm quitting and going home now to avoid digging myself a deeper hole :-) Mark PS. Ben, I read and, at first glance, liked and agreed with your argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science. I'm going to need to go back over it a few more times though.:-) - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:55 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete Yes, any formal system is doomed to be incomplete. Emphatically, NO! It is not true that any formal system is doomed to be incomplete WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS. It is entirely possible (nay, almost certain) that there is a larger system where the information about numbers is complete but that the other things that the system describes are incomplete. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
sorry, I should have been more precise. There is some K so that we never need integers with algorithmic information exceeding K. On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) But measured in which units? For any given integer, I can come up with (invent :-) a unit of measurement that requires a larger/greater number than that integer to describe the size of the universe. ;-) Nice try, but . . . . :-p - Original Message - *From:* Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:48 AM *Subject:* Re: [agi] constructivist issues but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... Huh? Integers are a class (which I would argue is an entity) that is I would argue is well-defined and useful in science. What is meaning if not well-defined and useful? I need to go back to your paper because I didn't get that out of it at all. - Original Message - *From:* Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:41 PM *Subject:* Re: [agi] constructivist issues well-defined is not well-defined in my view... However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... Oh. Ick! My bad phrasing. WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS should have been WITH RESPECT TO THE DEFINITION OF NUMBERS since I was responding to Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. Further, I should not have said information about numbers when I meant definition of numbers. two radically different thingsArgh! = = = = = = = = So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Does the statement that a formal system is incomplete with respect to statements about numbers mean that Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. = = = = = = = (Semi-)Retraction - maybe? (mostly for Abram). Ick again! I was assuming that we were talking about constructivism as in Constructivist epistemology ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology). I have just had Constructivism (mathematics) pointed out to me ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematicshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_%28mathematics)) All I can say is Ick! I emphatically do not believe When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductio_ad_absurdum, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence. = = = = = = = = I'm quitting and going home now to avoid digging myself a deeper hole :-) Mark PS. Ben, I read and, at first glance, liked and agreed with your argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science. I'm going to need to go back over it a few more times though.:-) - Original Message - *From:* Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] *To:* agi@v2.listbox.com *Sent:* Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:55 PM *Subject:* Re: [agi] constructivist issues Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:50 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete Yes, any formal system is doomed to be incomplete. Emphatically, NO! It is not true that any formal system is doomed to be incomplete WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS. It is entirely possible (nay, almost certain) that there is a larger system where the information about numbers is complete but that the other things that the system describes are incomplete. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Here's another slant . . . . I really liked Pei's phrasing (which I consider to be the heart of Constructivism: The Epistemology :-) Generally speaking, I'm not building some system that learns about the world, in the sense that there is a correct way to describe the world waiting to be discovered, which can be captured by some algorithm. Instead, learning to me is a non-algorithmic open-ended process by which the system summarizes its own experience, and uses it to predict the future. Classicists (to me) seem to frequently want one and only one truth that must be accurate, complete, and not only provable but for proofs of all of it's implications to exist (which is obviously thwarted by Tarski and Gödel). So . . . . is true that light is a particle? is it true that light is a wave? That's why Ben and I are stuck answering many of your questions with requests for clarification -- Which question -- pi or cat? Which subset of what *might* be considered mathematics/arithmetic? Why are you asking the question? Certain statements appear obviously untrue (read inconsistent with the empirical world or our assumed extensions of it) in the vast majority of cases/contexts but many others are just/simply context-dependent. - Original Message - From: Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 10:08 AM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues Ben, Thanks, that writeup did help me understand your viewpoint. However, I don't completely unserstand/agree with the argument (one of the two, not both!). My comments to that effect are posted on your blog. About the earlier question... (Mark) So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? (Ben) well-defined is not well-defined in my view... To rephrase. Do you think there is a truth of the matter concerning formally undecidable statements about numbers? --Abram On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:26 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi guys, I took a couple hours on a red-eye flight last night to write up in more detail my argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science: http://multiverseaccordingtoben.blogspot.com/2008/10/are-uncomputable-entities-useless-for.html Of course, I had to assume a specific formal model of science which may be controversial. But at any rate, I think I did succeed in writing down my argument in a more clear way than I'd been able to do in scattershot emails. The only real AGI relevance here is some comments on Penrose's nasty AI theories, e.g. in the last paragraph and near the intro... -- Ben G On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:02 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Mark, That is thanks to Godel's incompleteness theorem. Any formal system that describes numbers is doomed to be incomplete, meaning there will be statements that can be constructed purely by reference to numbers (no red cats!) that the system will fail to prove either true or false. So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Hmm By the way, I might not be using the term constructivist in a way that all constructivists would agree with. I think intuitionist (a specific type of constructivist) would be a better term for the view I'm referring to. --Abram Demski On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 4:13 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Numbers can be fully defined in the classical sense, but not in the constructivist sense. So, when you say fully defined question, do you mean a question for which all answers are stipulated by logical necessity (classical), or logical deduction (constructivist)? How (or why) are numbers not fully defined in a constructionist sense? (I was about to ask you whether or not you had answered your own question until that caught my eye on the second or third read-through). --- 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] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly.
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
sorry, I should have been more precise. There is some K so that we never need integers with algorithmic information exceeding K. Ah . . . . but is K predictable? Or do we need all the integers above it as a safety margin? :-) (What is the meaning of need? :-) The inductive proof to show that all integers are necessary as a safety margin is pretty obvious . . . . - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 10:38 AM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues sorry, I should have been more precise. There is some K so that we never need integers with algorithmic information exceeding K. On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 10:32 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) But measured in which units? For any given integer, I can come up with (invent :-) a unit of measurement that requires a larger/greater number than that integer to describe the size of the universe. ;-) Nice try, but . . . . :-p - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 9:48 AM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues but we never need arbitrarily large integers in any particular case, we only need integers going up to the size of the universe ;-) On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 7:24 AM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... Huh? Integers are a class (which I would argue is an entity) that is I would argue is well-defined and useful in science. What is meaning if not well-defined and useful? I need to go back to your paper because I didn't get that out of it at all. - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 6:41 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues well-defined is not well-defined in my view... However, it does seem clear that the integers (for instance) is not an entity with *scientific* meaning, if you accept my formalization of science in the blog entry I recently posted... On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 3:34 PM, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed to be incomplete with respect to statements about numbers... that is what Godel originally showed... Oh. Ick! My bad phrasing. WITH RESPECT TO NUMBERS should have been WITH RESPECT TO THE DEFINITION OF NUMBERS since I was responding to Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. Further, I should not have said information about numbers when I meant definition of numbers. two radically different thingsArgh! = = = = = = = = So Ben, how would you answer Abram's question So my question is, do you interpret this as meaning Numbers are not well-defined and can never be (constructivist), or do you interpret this as It is impossible to pack all true information about numbers into an axiom system (classical)? Does the statement that a formal system is incomplete with respect to statements about numbers mean that Numbers are not well-defined and can never be. = = = = = = = (Semi-)Retraction - maybe? (mostly for Abram). Ick again! I was assuming that we were talking about constructivism as in Constructivist epistemology (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivist_epistemology). I have just had Constructivism (mathematics) pointed out to me (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Constructivism_(mathematics)) All I can say is Ick! I emphatically do not believe When one assumes that an object does not exist and derives a contradiction from that assumption, one still has not found the object and therefore not proved its existence. = = = = = = = = I'm quitting and going home now to avoid digging myself a deeper hole :-) Mark PS. Ben, I read and, at first glance, liked and agreed with your argument as to why uncomputable entities are useless for science. I'm going to need to go back over it a few more times though.:-) - Original Message - From: Ben Goertzel To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 5:55 PM Subject: Re: [agi] constructivist issues Any formal system that contains some basic arithmetic apparatus equivalent to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peano_axioms is doomed
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Ben, So, for example, if I describe a Turing machine whose halting I prove formally undecidable by the axioms of peano arithmetic (translating the Turing machine's operation into numerical terms, of course), and then I ask you, is this Turing machine non-halting, then would you answer, That depends on what the meaning of is, is? Or does the context provide enough additional information to provide a more full answer? --Abram On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 10:21 AM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: To rephrase. Do you think there is a truth of the matter concerning formally undecidable statements about numbers? --Abram That all depends on what the meaning of is, is ... ;-) 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:19 AM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED]wrote: Ben, So, for example, if I describe a Turing machine whose halting I prove formally undecidable by the axioms of peano arithmetic (translating the Turing machine's operation into numerical terms, of course), and then I ask you, is this Turing machine non-halting, then would you answer, That depends on what the meaning of is, is? Or does the context provide enough additional information to provide a more full answer? --Abram hmmm... you're saying the halting is provable in some more powerful axiom system but not in Peano arithmetic? The thing is, a Turing machine is not a real machine: it's a mathematical abstraction. A mathematical abstraction only has meaning inside a certain formal system. So, the Turing machine inside the Peano arithmetic system would neither provably halt nor not-halt ... the Turing machine inside some other formal system might potentially provably halt... But the question is what does this mean about any actual computer, or any actual physical object -- which we can only communicate about clearly insofar as it can be boiled down to a finite dataset. The use of the same term machine for an observable object and a mathematical abstraction seems to confuse the issue. -- Ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Cloud Intelligence
From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Beware of putting too much stuff into the cloud. Especially in the current economic climate clouds could disappear without notice (i.e. unrecoverable data loss). Also, depending upon terms and conditions any data which you put into the cloud may not legally be owned by you, even if you created it. For private commercial clouds this is true. But imagine a public self-healing cloud where it is somewhat self-regulated and self-organized. Though commercial clouds could have some sort of inter-cloud virtual backbone that they subscribe to. So Company A goes bankrupt but it's cloud is offloaded into the backbone and absorbed by another cloud. Micro payments migrate with the cloud. Ya right like that could ever happen. John --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
Hutter proved (3), although as a general principle it was already a well established practice in machine learning. Also, I agree with (4) but this is not the primary reason to prefer simplicity. Hutter *defined* the measure of correctness using simplicity as a component. Of course, they're correlated when you do such a thing. That's not a proof, that's an assumption. Regarding (4), I was deliberately ambiguous as to whether I meant implementation of thinking system or implementation of thought itself. - Original Message - From: Matt Mahoney [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: agi@v2.listbox.com Sent: Wednesday, October 29, 2008 11:11 AM Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse --- On Wed, 10/29/08, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: (1) Simplicity (in conclusions, hypothesis, theories, etc.) is preferred. (2) The preference to simplicity does not need a reason or justification. (3) Simplicity is preferred because it is correlated with correctness. I agree with (1), but not (2) and (3). I concur but would add that (4) Simplicity is preferred because it is correlated with correctness *of implementation* (or ease of implementation correctly :-) Occam said (1) but had no proof. Hutter proved (3), although as a general principle it was already a well established practice in machine learning. Also, I agree with (4) but this is not the primary reason to prefer simplicity. -- 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/?; 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
RE: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
Pei, My understanding is that when you reason from data, you often want the ability to extrapolate, which requires some sort of assumptions about the type of mathematical model to be used. How do you deal with that in NARS? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Pei Wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 9:40 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Ed, Since NARS doesn't follow the Bayesian approach, there is no initial priors to be assumed. If we use a more general term, such as initial knowledge or innate beliefs, then yes, you can add them into the system, will will improve the system's performance. However, they are optional. In NARS, all object-level (i.e., not meta-level) innate beliefs can be learned by the system afterward. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears to me that the assumptions about initial priors used by a self learning AGI or an evolutionary line of AGI's could be quite minimal. My understanding is that once a probability distribution starts receiving random samples from its distribution the effect of the original prior becomes rapidly lost, unless it is a rather rare one. Such rare problem priors would get selected against quickly by evolution. Evolution would tend to tune for the most appropriate priors for the success of subsequent generations (either or computing in the same system if it is capable of enough change or of descendant systems). Probably the best priors would generally be ones that could be trained moderately rapidly by data. So it seems an evolutionary system or line could initially learn priors without any assumptions for priors other than a random picking of priors. Over time and multiple generations it might develop hereditary priors, an perhaps even different hereditary priors for parts of its network connected to different inputs, outputs or internal controls. The use of priors in an AGI could be greatly improved by having a gen/comp hiearachy in which models for a given concept could be inherited from the priors of sets of models for similar concepts, and that the set of priors appropriate could change contextually. It would also seem that the notion of a prior could be improve by blending information from episodic and probabilistic models. It would appear than in almost any generally intelligent system, being able to approximate reality in a manner sufficient for evolutionary success with the most efficient representations would be a characteristic that would be greatly preferred by evolution, because it would allow systems to better model more of their environement sufficiently well for evolutionary success with whatever current modeling capacity they have. So, although a completely accurate description of virtually anything may not find much use for Occam's Razor, as a practically useful representation it often will. It seems to me that Occam's Razor is more oriented to deriving meaningful generalizations that it is exact descriptions of anything. Furthermore, it would seem to me that a more simple set of preconditions, is generally more probable than a more complex one, because it requires less coincidence. It would seem to me this would be true under most random sets of priors for the probabilities of the possible sets of components involved and Occam's Razor type selection. The are the musings of an untrained mind, since I have not spent much time studying philosophy, because such a high percent of it was so obviously stupid (such as what was commonly said when I was young, that you can't have intelligence without language) and my understanding of math is much less than that of many on this list. But none the less I think much of what I have said above is true. I think its gist is not totally dissimilar to what Abram has said. Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Pei Wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 3:05 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Abram, I agree with your basic idea in the following, though I usually put it in different form. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 2:52 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, You assert that Pei is forced to make an assumption about the regulatiry of the world to justify adaptation. Pei could also take a different argument. He could try to show that *if* a strategy exists that can be implemented given the finite resources, NARS will eventually find it. Thus, adaptation is justified on a sort of we might as well try basis. (The proof would involve showing that NARS searches the state of finite-state-machines that can be implemented with the resources at hand, and is more probable to stay for longer periods of time in configurations that give more reward, such that NARS would eventually
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
Ed, When NARS extrapolates its past experience to the current and the future, it is indeed based on the assumption that its future experience will be similar to its past experience (otherwise any prediction will be equally valid), however it does not assume the world can be captured by any specific mathematical model, such as a Turing Machine or a probability distribution defined on a propositional space. Concretely speaking, when a statement S has been tested N times, and in M times it is true, but in N-M times it is false, then NARS's expectation value for it to be true in the next testing is E(S) = (M+0.5)/(N+1) [if there is no other relevant knowledge], and the system will use this value to decide whether to accept a bet on S. However, neither the system nor its designer assumes that there is a true probability for S to occur for which the above expectation is an approximation. Also, it is not assumed that E(S) will converge when the testing on S continues. Pei On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei, My understanding is that when you reason from data, you often want the ability to extrapolate, which requires some sort of assumptions about the type of mathematical model to be used. How do you deal with that in NARS? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Pei Wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 9:40 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Ed, Since NARS doesn't follow the Bayesian approach, there is no initial priors to be assumed. If we use a more general term, such as initial knowledge or innate beliefs, then yes, you can add them into the system, will will improve the system's performance. However, they are optional. In NARS, all object-level (i.e., not meta-level) innate beliefs can be learned by the system afterward. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears to me that the assumptions about initial priors used by a self learning AGI or an evolutionary line of AGI's could be quite minimal. My understanding is that once a probability distribution starts receiving random samples from its distribution the effect of the original prior becomes rapidly lost, unless it is a rather rare one. Such rare problem priors would get selected against quickly by evolution. Evolution would tend to tune for the most appropriate priors for the success of subsequent generations (either or computing in the same system if it is capable of enough change or of descendant systems). Probably the best priors would generally be ones that could be trained moderately rapidly by data. So it seems an evolutionary system or line could initially learn priors without any assumptions for priors other than a random picking of priors. Over time and multiple generations it might develop hereditary priors, an perhaps even different hereditary priors for parts of its network connected to different inputs, outputs or internal controls. The use of priors in an AGI could be greatly improved by having a gen/comp hiearachy in which models for a given concept could be inherited from the priors of sets of models for similar concepts, and that the set of priors appropriate could change contextually. It would also seem that the notion of a prior could be improve by blending information from episodic and probabilistic models. It would appear than in almost any generally intelligent system, being able to approximate reality in a manner sufficient for evolutionary success with the most efficient representations would be a characteristic that would be greatly preferred by evolution, because it would allow systems to better model more of their environement sufficiently well for evolutionary success with whatever current modeling capacity they have. So, although a completely accurate description of virtually anything may not find much use for Occam's Razor, as a practically useful representation it often will. It seems to me that Occam's Razor is more oriented to deriving meaningful generalizations that it is exact descriptions of anything. Furthermore, it would seem to me that a more simple set of preconditions, is generally more probable than a more complex one, because it requires less coincidence. It would seem to me this would be true under most random sets of priors for the probabilities of the possible sets of components involved and Occam's Razor type selection. The are the musings of an untrained mind, since I have not spent much time studying philosophy, because such a high percent of it was so obviously stupid (such as what was commonly said when I was young, that you can't have intelligence without language) and my understanding of math is much less than that of many on this list. But none the less I think much of what I have said above is true. I think its gist is not totally dissimilar to what Abram has said.
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
But, NARS as an overall software system will perform more effectively (i.e., learn more rapidly) in some environments than in others, for a variety of reasons. There are many biases built into the NARS architecture in various ways ... it's just not obvious to spell out what they are, because the NARS system was not explicitly designed based on that sort of thinking... The same is true of every other complex AGI architecture... ben g On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ed, When NARS extrapolates its past experience to the current and the future, it is indeed based on the assumption that its future experience will be similar to its past experience (otherwise any prediction will be equally valid), however it does not assume the world can be captured by any specific mathematical model, such as a Turing Machine or a probability distribution defined on a propositional space. Concretely speaking, when a statement S has been tested N times, and in M times it is true, but in N-M times it is false, then NARS's expectation value for it to be true in the next testing is E(S) = (M+0.5)/(N+1) [if there is no other relevant knowledge], and the system will use this value to decide whether to accept a bet on S. However, neither the system nor its designer assumes that there is a true probability for S to occur for which the above expectation is an approximation. Also, it is not assumed that E(S) will converge when the testing on S continues. Pei On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei, My understanding is that when you reason from data, you often want the ability to extrapolate, which requires some sort of assumptions about the type of mathematical model to be used. How do you deal with that in NARS? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Pei Wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 9:40 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Ed, Since NARS doesn't follow the Bayesian approach, there is no initial priors to be assumed. If we use a more general term, such as initial knowledge or innate beliefs, then yes, you can add them into the system, will will improve the system's performance. However, they are optional. In NARS, all object-level (i.e., not meta-level) innate beliefs can be learned by the system afterward. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears to me that the assumptions about initial priors used by a self learning AGI or an evolutionary line of AGI's could be quite minimal. My understanding is that once a probability distribution starts receiving random samples from its distribution the effect of the original prior becomes rapidly lost, unless it is a rather rare one. Such rare problem priors would get selected against quickly by evolution. Evolution would tend to tune for the most appropriate priors for the success of subsequent generations (either or computing in the same system if it is capable of enough change or of descendant systems). Probably the best priors would generally be ones that could be trained moderately rapidly by data. So it seems an evolutionary system or line could initially learn priors without any assumptions for priors other than a random picking of priors. Over time and multiple generations it might develop hereditary priors, an perhaps even different hereditary priors for parts of its network connected to different inputs, outputs or internal controls. The use of priors in an AGI could be greatly improved by having a gen/comp hiearachy in which models for a given concept could be inherited from the priors of sets of models for similar concepts, and that the set of priors appropriate could change contextually. It would also seem that the notion of a prior could be improve by blending information from episodic and probabilistic models. It would appear than in almost any generally intelligent system, being able to approximate reality in a manner sufficient for evolutionary success with the most efficient representations would be a characteristic that would be greatly preferred by evolution, because it would allow systems to better model more of their environement sufficiently well for evolutionary success with whatever current modeling capacity they have. So, although a completely accurate description of virtually anything may not find much use for Occam's Razor, as a practically useful representation it often will. It seems to me that Occam's Razor is more oriented to deriving meaningful generalizations that it is exact descriptions of anything. Furthermore, it would seem to me that a more simple set of preconditions, is generally more probable than a more complex one, because it requires less coincidence. It would seem to me this would be true
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
Ben, I never claimed that NARS is not based on assumptions (or call them biases), but only on truths. It surely is, and many of the assumptions are my beliefs and intuitions, which I cannot convince other people to accept very soon. However, it does not mean that all assumptions are equally acceptable, or as soon as something is called a assumption, the author will be released from the duty of justifying it. Going back to the original topic, since simplicity/complexity of a description is correlated with its prior probability is the core assumption of certain research paradigms, it should be justified. Call it Occam's Razor so as to suggest it is self-evident is not the proper way to do the job. This is all I want to argue in this discussion. Pei On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:10 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But, NARS as an overall software system will perform more effectively (i.e., learn more rapidly) in some environments than in others, for a variety of reasons. There are many biases built into the NARS architecture in various ways ... it's just not obvious to spell out what they are, because the NARS system was not explicitly designed based on that sort of thinking... The same is true of every other complex AGI architecture... ben g On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:07 PM, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ed, When NARS extrapolates its past experience to the current and the future, it is indeed based on the assumption that its future experience will be similar to its past experience (otherwise any prediction will be equally valid), however it does not assume the world can be captured by any specific mathematical model, such as a Turing Machine or a probability distribution defined on a propositional space. Concretely speaking, when a statement S has been tested N times, and in M times it is true, but in N-M times it is false, then NARS's expectation value for it to be true in the next testing is E(S) = (M+0.5)/(N+1) [if there is no other relevant knowledge], and the system will use this value to decide whether to accept a bet on S. However, neither the system nor its designer assumes that there is a true probability for S to occur for which the above expectation is an approximation. Also, it is not assumed that E(S) will converge when the testing on S continues. Pei On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 11:33 AM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Pei, My understanding is that when you reason from data, you often want the ability to extrapolate, which requires some sort of assumptions about the type of mathematical model to be used. How do you deal with that in NARS? Ed Porter -Original Message- From: Pei Wang [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Tuesday, October 28, 2008 9:40 PM To: agi@v2.listbox.com Subject: Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse Ed, Since NARS doesn't follow the Bayesian approach, there is no initial priors to be assumed. If we use a more general term, such as initial knowledge or innate beliefs, then yes, you can add them into the system, will will improve the system's performance. However, they are optional. In NARS, all object-level (i.e., not meta-level) innate beliefs can be learned by the system afterward. Pei On Tue, Oct 28, 2008 at 5:37 PM, Ed Porter [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: It appears to me that the assumptions about initial priors used by a self learning AGI or an evolutionary line of AGI's could be quite minimal. My understanding is that once a probability distribution starts receiving random samples from its distribution the effect of the original prior becomes rapidly lost, unless it is a rather rare one. Such rare problem priors would get selected against quickly by evolution. Evolution would tend to tune for the most appropriate priors for the success of subsequent generations (either or computing in the same system if it is capable of enough change or of descendant systems). Probably the best priors would generally be ones that could be trained moderately rapidly by data. So it seems an evolutionary system or line could initially learn priors without any assumptions for priors other than a random picking of priors. Over time and multiple generations it might develop hereditary priors, an perhaps even different hereditary priors for parts of its network connected to different inputs, outputs or internal controls. The use of priors in an AGI could be greatly improved by having a gen/comp hiearachy in which models for a given concept could be inherited from the priors of sets of models for similar concepts, and that the set of priors appropriate could change contextually. It would also seem that the notion of a prior could be improve by blending information from episodic and probabilistic models. It would appear than in almost any generally intelligent system, being able to approximate reality in a manner
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
However, it does not mean that all assumptions are equally acceptable, or as soon as something is called a assumption, the author will be released from the duty of justifying it. Hume argued that at the basis of any approach to induction, there will necessarily lie some assumption that is *not* inductively justified, but must in essence be taken on faith or as an unjustified assumption He claimed that humans make certain unjustified assumptions of this nature automatically due to human nature This is an argument that not all assumptions can be expected to be justified ... Comments? ben g --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
Ben, It goes back to what justification we are talking about. To prove it is a strong version, and to show supporting evidence is a weak version. Hume pointed out that induction cannot be justified in the sense that there is no way to guarantee that all inductive conclusions will be confirmed. I don't think Hume can be cited to support the assumption that complexity is correlated to probability, or that this assumption does not need justification, just because inductive conclusions can be wrong. There are much more reasons to accept induction than to accept the above assumption. Pei On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 12:31 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: However, it does not mean that all assumptions are equally acceptable, or as soon as something is called a assumption, the author will be released from the duty of justifying it. Hume argued that at the basis of any approach to induction, there will necessarily lie some assumption that is *not* inductively justified, but must in essence be taken on faith or as an unjustified assumption He claimed that humans make certain unjustified assumptions of this nature automatically due to human nature This is an argument that not all assumptions can be expected to be justified ... Comments? ben g agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Ben, OK, that is a pretty good answer. I don't think I have any questions left about your philosophy :). Some comments, though. hmmm... you're saying the halting is provable in some more powerful axiom system but not in Peano arithmetic? Yea, it would be provable in whatever formal system I used to prove the undecidability in the first place. (Probably PA plus an axiom asserting PA is consistent.) The thing is, a Turing machine is not a real machine: it's a mathematical abstraction. A mathematical abstraction only has meaning inside a certain formal system. So, the Turing machine inside the Peano arithmetic system would neither provably halt nor not-halt ... the Turing machine inside some other formal system might potentially provably halt... Basically, I see this this as a no to my original Do you think there is a truth of the matter question. After all, if we need more definitions to determine the truth of a statement, then surely the statement's truth without the additional context is undefined. Take-home message for me: Yes, Ben really is a constructivist. But the question is what does this mean about any actual computer, or any actual physical object -- which we can only communicate about clearly insofar as it can be boiled down to a finite dataset. What it means to me is that Any actual computer will not halt (with a correct output) for this program. An actual computer will keep crunching away until some event happens that breaks the metaphor between it and the abstract machine-- memory overload, power failure, et cetera. This does not seem to me to depend on the formal system that we choose. Argument: very basic axioms fill in all the positive facts, and will tell us that a Turing machine halts when such is the case. Any additional axioms are attempts to fill in the negative space, so that we can prove some Turing machines non-halting. It seems perfectly reasonable to think hypothetically about the formal system that has *all* the negative cases filled in properly, even though this is impossible to actually do. This system is the truth of the matter. So, when we choose a formal system to reason about Turing machines with, we are justified in choosing the strongest one available to us (more specifically, the strongest one we suspect to be consistent). The use of the same term machine for an observable object and a mathematical abstraction seems to confuse the issue. Sure. Do you have a preferred term? I can't think of any... -- Ben agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
But the question is what does this mean about any actual computer, or any actual physical object -- which we can only communicate about clearly insofar as it can be boiled down to a finite dataset. What it means to me is that Any actual computer will not halt (with a correct output) for this program. An actual computer will keep crunching away until some event happens that breaks the metaphor between it and the abstract machine-- memory overload, power failure, et cetera. Yes ... this can be concluded **if** you can convince yourself that the formal model corresponds to the physical machine. And to do *this*, you need to use a finite set of finite data points ;-) ben --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Ben, The difference can I think be best illustrated with two hypothetical AGIs. Both are supposed to be learning that computers are approximately Turing machines. The first, made by you, interprets this constructively (let's say relative to PA). The second, made by me, interprets this classically (so it will always take the strongest set of axioms that it suspects to be consistent). The first AGI will be checking to see how well the computer's halting matches with the positive cases it can prove in PA, and the non-halting with the negative cases it can prove in PA. It will be ignoring the halting/nonhalting behavior when it can prove nothing. The second AGI will be checking to see how well the computer's halting matches with the positive cases it can prove in the axiom system of its choice, and the non-halting with the negative cases it can prove in PA, *plus* it will look to see if it is non-halting in the cases where it can prove nothing (after significant effort). Of course, both will conclude nearly the same thing: the computer is similar to the formal entity within specific restrictions. The second AGI will have slightly more data (extra axioms plus information in cases when it can't prove anything), but it will be learning a formally different statement too, so a direct comparison isn't quite fair. Anyway, I think this clarifies the difference. --Abram On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But the question is what does this mean about any actual computer, or any actual physical object -- which we can only communicate about clearly insofar as it can be boiled down to a finite dataset. What it means to me is that Any actual computer will not halt (with a correct output) for this program. An actual computer will keep crunching away until some event happens that breaks the metaphor between it and the abstract machine-- memory overload, power failure, et cetera. Yes ... this can be concluded **if** you can convince yourself that the formal model corresponds to the physical machine. And to do *this*, you need to use a finite set of finite data points ;-) ben agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Cloud Intelligence
I guess I don't see how cloud computing is materially different from open source in so much as we see the sharing of resources and also now increased availability, no need to buy so much hardware at the outset. But it seems more a case of convenience. So what does that have to do with AGI? I can see the advantage that if you wanted your executable code to remain hidden in a cloud so nobody can get a hold of it to decompile and figure it out, however. On 10/29/08, John G. Rose [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: From: Bob Mottram [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Beware of putting too much stuff into the cloud. Especially in the current economic climate clouds could disappear without notice (i.e. unrecoverable data loss). Also, depending upon terms and conditions any data which you put into the cloud may not legally be owned by you, even if you created it. For private commercial clouds this is true. But imagine a public self-healing cloud where it is somewhat self-regulated and self-organized. Though commercial clouds could have some sort of inter-cloud virtual backbone that they subscribe to. So Company A goes bankrupt but it's cloud is offloaded into the backbone and absorbed by another cloud. Micro payments migrate with the cloud. Ya right like that could ever happen. John --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
Ben, No, I wasn't intending any weird chips. For me, the most important way in which you are a constructivist is that you think AIXI is the ideal that finite intelligence should approach. --Abram On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 2:33 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: OK ... but are both of these hypothetical computer programs on standard contemporary chips, or do any of them use weird supposedly-uncomputability-supporting chips? ;-) Of course, a computer program can use any axiom set it wants to analyze its data ... just as we can now use automated theorem-provers to prove stuff about uncomputable entities, in a formal sense... By the way, I'm not sure the sense in which I'm a constructivist. I'm not willing to commit to the statement that the universe is finite, or that only finite math has meaning. But, it seems to me that, within the scope of *science* and *language*, as currently conceived, there is no *need* to posit anything non-finite. Science and language are not necessarily comprehensive of the universe Potentially (though I doubt it) mind is uncomputable in a way that makes it impossible for science and math to grasp it well enough to guide us in building an AGI ;-) ... and, interestingly, in this case we could still potentially build an AGI via copying a human brain ... and then randomly tinkering with it!! ben On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:45 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, The difference can I think be best illustrated with two hypothetical AGIs. Both are supposed to be learning that computers are approximately Turing machines. The first, made by you, interprets this constructively (let's say relative to PA). The second, made by me, interprets this classically (so it will always take the strongest set of axioms that it suspects to be consistent). The first AGI will be checking to see how well the computer's halting matches with the positive cases it can prove in PA, and the non-halting with the negative cases it can prove in PA. It will be ignoring the halting/nonhalting behavior when it can prove nothing. The second AGI will be checking to see how well the computer's halting matches with the positive cases it can prove in the axiom system of its choice, and the non-halting with the negative cases it can prove in PA, *plus* it will look to see if it is non-halting in the cases where it can prove nothing (after significant effort). Of course, both will conclude nearly the same thing: the computer is similar to the formal entity within specific restrictions. The second AGI will have slightly more data (extra axioms plus information in cases when it can't prove anything), but it will be learning a formally different statement too, so a direct comparison isn't quite fair. Anyway, I think this clarifies the difference. --Abram On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 1:13 PM, Ben Goertzel [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: But the question is what does this mean about any actual computer, or any actual physical object -- which we can only communicate about clearly insofar as it can be boiled down to a finite dataset. What it means to me is that Any actual computer will not halt (with a correct output) for this program. An actual computer will keep crunching away until some event happens that breaks the metaphor between it and the abstract machine-- memory overload, power failure, et cetera. Yes ... this can be concluded **if** you can convince yourself that the formal model corresponds to the physical machine. And to do *this*, you need to use a finite set of finite data points ;-) ben agi | Archives | Modify Your Subscription --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?; Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Re: Two Remarkable Computational Competencies of the SGA
OK it's just a Compact Genetic Algorithm -- genetic drift kind of stuff. Nice read, but very simple (subsumed by any serious EDA). It says you can do simple pattern mining by just looking at the distribution, without complex statistics. On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 8:13 PM, Lukasz Stafiniak [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Very relevant even if you don't agree. Too much rhetoric though (it's not really that earth-shaking). I haven't made up my mind yet. http://evoadaptation.wordpress.com/2008/10/18/new-manuscript-two-remarkable-computational-competencies-of-the-simple-genetic-algorithm/ --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] constructivist issues
On Wed, Oct 29, 2008 at 4:47 PM, Abram Demski [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Ben, No, I wasn't intending any weird chips. For me, the most important way in which you are a constructivist is that you think AIXI is the ideal that finite intelligence should approach. Hmmm... I'm not sure I think that. AIXI is ideal in terms of a certain formal definition of intelligence, which I don't necessarily accept as the end-all of intelligence... It may be that future science identifies conceptual shortcomings in the theoretical framework within which AIXI lives. But, I do think that AIXI is interesting as a source of inspiration for some aspects of the process of creating practical AGI systems. -- Ben G --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
[agi] Machine Consciousness Workshop, Hong Kong, June 2009
Hi all, I wanted to let you know that Gino Yu and I are co-organizing a Workshop on Machine Consciousness, which will be held in Hong Kong in June 2008: see http://novamente.net/machinecs/index.html for details. It is colocated with a larger, interdisciplinary conference on consciousness research, which has previously been announced: http://www.consciousness.arizona.edu/ As an aside, I also note that the date for submitting papers to AGI-09 has been extended, by popular demand, till November 12; see http://agi-09.org/ AGI-09 will welcome quality papers on any strong-AI related topics. thanks! ben -- Ben Goertzel, PhD CEO, Novamente LLC and Biomind LLC Director of Research, SIAI [EMAIL PROTECTED] A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects. -- Robert Heinlein --- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
--- On Tue, 10/28/08, Pei Wang [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Whenever someone prove something outside mathematics, it is always based on certain assumptions. If the assumptions are not well justified, there is no strong reason for people to accept the conclusion, even though the proof process is correct. My assumption is that the physics of the observable universe is computable (which is widely believed to be true). If it is true, then AIXI proves that Occam's Razor holds. -- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Occam's Razor and its abuse
--- On Wed, 10/29/08, Mark Waser [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hutter *defined* the measure of correctness using simplicity as a component. Of course, they're correlated when you do such a thing. That's not a proof, that's an assumption. Hutter defined the measure of correctness as the accumulated reward by the agent in AIXI. -- 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=117534816-b15a34 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
