Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
2008/12/11 Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk: If you try and reduce those maps to any other form, e.g. some mathematical or program form, you *lose the object.* It's equivalent to taking a jigsaw puzzle to pieces - all you have are the pieces, and you've lost the picture - the whole. The brain isn't really a sausage machine in this sense. Rather, multiple representations are simultaneously maintained, and more advanced concepts are formed from cross modal association/transformation. You need the whole picture and the whole map to see and recognize the object - and to compare that object with other objects. (Similarly you need the whole cake and not just the recipe). It's possible to recognise people or objects from extremely sparse data - moving dots. However, this is only achieved due to prior experience and the sort of cross modal associations which I previously mentioned. P.S. As a roboticist, you especially should be able to understand that an agent moving through a world of objects, needs images/maps of those objects (and not just symbolic formulae) in order to keep minutely and precisely aligning itself with those objects. Yes, but visual imagery is only one component of the conceptual constellation. You can think of a concept as a high dimensional object - a metastable coalition of the willing within the dynamic core - with a proportion of those dimensions being visual/auditory/tactile, etc. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Visual images, in particular, uniquely provide *isomorphic maps of objects.* Well, no. The congenitally blind also create internal isomorphic maps of objects Vision is a rich source of information, but it is does not in itself provide isomorphic maps of object -- it provides messy, noisy data that the brain then uses to construct roughly isomorphic maps of objects ... but the brain can also do this from other forms of data Anyway, I guess you're aware that computer vision is a flourishing field of AI research, even though this list has only handful of computer vision researchers on it. So it's not as though the idea that vision is important to understanding human cognition is an original one I have strong doubts that it's important to understanding cognition-in-general, but agree that it plays an important role in the human brain... -- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
2008/12/11 Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED]: *Ben Goertzel is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. Based on some of the stuff which I've been doing with SLAM algorithms I'd agree with this sort of interpretation. You can only really tell what Ben was doing after the fact, and even then with uncertainty still attached. Ben is traversing a multiverse of possible paths, which collapse progressively over time as more data becomes available to the observer. If Ben were a poet or author of popular fiction it might be advantageous for him to use strategies which prevent the possible paths from collapsing too far, so that the observer may exercise a degree of fuzzy creative interpretation about him and his works. Novelists often seem to be amused by the numerous and occasionally unexpected possible interpretations of their stories by readers. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. True, but still a movie contains a high degree of uncertainty. Movie directors exploit uncertainty to convey a particular impression or mood within the storyline. When you back-project the rays of light from each pixel (aka picture element) within the movie, you'll find that what's actually being depicted is very fuzzy and uncertain, and it's only through integration over time together with dodgy heuristics (subject to errors illustrated by well know visual illusions) that this uncertainty is reduced. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Steve, I thought someone would come up with the kind of objection you have put forward. Your objection is misplaced. ( And here we have an example of what I meant by knowing [metacognitively about] imaginative intelligence - understanding metacognitively how imagination works). Consider what an image sequence/ movie of Ben talking to you would show. Ben talking to you, uttering certain words, making certain gestures; his face showing certain expressions. What you're bringing up here is not what the movie shows, but what went on in your mind - your reactions - as you, in a sense, watched and listened to that movie - and wondered about what was going on in Ben's mind *behind the scenes*. What does he really think and feel about this, that and the other (as distinct from the limited amount of information he is actually expressing)? We all react and think similarly to other people all the time and wonder about what's going on *invisibly* in their minds.. But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms of what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual, observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is what a movie records with high fidelity.. In terms of those actual actions, an image/ image sequence is *infinitely* superior to any verbal description. No verbal description could *begin* to convey to you his particular smile and the curl of his lips, the drone of his voice, the precise music of his statements, the tangled state of his hair, the way he tosses his hair etc. etc. No words could tell or show you his state of body - his posture and attitude - at 10.05.01-to-10.05.02 pm. [Words (along with other symbols, like numbers and algebraic symbols) can only provide the *formulae* for objects - their constitutents. They can never provide you, as images do, with actual maps of the whole *forms* of objects - and therefore the layout of those constituents. They can never give us - and we can never get the picture. of those objects. Consider a verbal statement: The Alsatian suddenly bit the man on the face. What you have there is a complex action decomposed into a set of words - a verbal formula. How much do you now know about the action being referred to? Now try an image:of the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk9yHKQRE94feature=related Notice the difference? Now you've seen the whole dog engaging in the whole action - and you've got the picture - the whole form, not just the formula] And here's the reason I talk about understanding metacognitively about imaginative intelligence. (I don't mean to be disparaging - I understand comparably little re logic, say]. If you were a filmmaker, say, and had thought about the problems of filmmaking, you would probably be alive to the difference between what images show - people's actual faces and voices - and what they can't show - what lies behind - their hidden thoughts and emotions. And you wouldn't have posed your objection. Mike, MT:: *Even words for individuals are generalisations. *Ben Goertzel is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. *Any statement about an individual, like Ben Goertzel, is also vague and open-ended. *The only way to refer to and capture individuals with high (though not perfect) precision is with images. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. Even better than a movie, I had some opportunity to observe and interact with Ben during CONVERGENCE08, I dispute the above statement! I had sought to extract just a few specific bits of information from/about Ben. Using VERY specific examples: Bit#1: Did Ben understand that AI/AGI code and NN representation were interchangeable, at the prospective cost of some performance one way or the other. Bit#1=TRUE. Bit#2: Did Ben realize that there were prospectively ~3 orders of magnitude in speed available by running NN instead of AI/AGI representation on an array processor instead of a scalar (x86) processor. Bit#2 affected by question, now True, but utility disputed by the apparent unavailability of array processors. Bit#3: Did Ben realize that the prospective emergence of array processors (e.g. as I have been promoting) would obsolete much of his present work, because its structure isn't vectorizable, so he is in effect betting on continued stagnation in processor architecture, and may in fact be a small component in a large industry failure by denying market? Bit#3= probably FALSE. As always, I attempted to get the measure of the man, but as so often happens with leaders, there just isn't a bin to toss them in. Without an appropriate bin, I got lots of raw data (e.g., he has a LOT of hair), but not all that much usable data.
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
2008/12/11 Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk: But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms of what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual, observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is what a movie records with high fidelity.. But does the movie really record those things? What the movie actually records is a particular pattern of photons hitting a receptor over a period of time. Things such as gestures and expressions are concepts which you're superimposing into the pattern of photons that you're observing. To a large extent you're able to perform this superposition because you yourself have similar and familiar dynmaics. If you prefer you can consider the process of interpreting the movie as a sort of error correction, similar to the way that error correcting codes are able to fill in and restore missing or corrupted information. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Mike and Bob, There seems to be a massive confusion between data and information here. To illustrate: 1. A movie is just data until it is analyzed to extract some (if any) * useful* information. 2. A verbal description is typically somewhere in between, as it contains bits of ???, some of which may be useful, and some of which may NOT be useful. 3. A person interaction typically contains more *useful* information, because it can be directed to extract useful information. From Shannon's Information theory, we get the effect of the signal to noise ration (S/N) which determines just how much real information is in a bit of data. However, often missed is the fact that there are some commonly missed sources of noise. 1. A parameter cannot be accurately extracted, e.g. is the dog happy? Sure we can guess, but the result will probably contain substantially less than one bit of information. 2. Do we have any use for the information. If not, then it is just more noise to discard, like the news report on an adjacent channel to the one we are listening to. In this example, what decisions hinge on the dog's prospective happiness? This might be really important to know if I plan to stick my hand into his mouth, but uninteresting if I am just going to feed him some dog food,. Hence, while there is a LOT more data in a movie than in a verbal description, there may well be more useful information in a verbal description. Continuing with your postings... On 12/11/08, Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk wrote: I thought someone would come up with the kind of objection you have put forward. Your objection is misplaced. ( And here we have an example of what I meant by knowing [metacognitively about] imaginative intelligence - understanding metacognitively how imagination works). The important part here is the meta, namely, the information that would NOT appear even on a movie, e.g. the time, place, people's names, context, etc. Consider what an image sequence/ movie of Ben talking to you would show. Ben talking to you, uttering certain words, making certain gestures; his face showing certain expressions. Not very interesting unless Ben is talking about something that I am interested in. What you're bringing up here is not what the movie shows, but what went on in your mind - your reactions - as you, in a sense, watched and listened to that movie - and wondered about what was going on in Ben's mind *behind the scenes*. What does he really think and feel about this, that and the other (as distinct from the limited amount of information he is actually expressing)? We all react and think similarly to other people all the time and wonder about what's going on *invisibly* in their minds. I suspect that this process fails when applied to either Ben or myself. But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms of what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual, observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is what a movie records with high fidelity.. You are presuming that the verbal statementment is ONLY based on the movie. However, if I were to produce a report on Ben at Convergence08, it would include lots of things that I probably would NOT have captured if I had a video recorder, some of which would have been tested and refined in conversation with Ben. In terms of those actual actions, an image/ image sequence is *infinitely* superior to any verbal description. No verbal description could *begin* to convey to you his particular smile and the curl of his lips, the drone of his voice, the precise music of his statements, the tangled state of his hair, the way he tosses his hair etc. etc. No words could tell or show you his state of body - his posture and attitude - at 10.05.01-to-10.05.02 pm. Lots of refined data, but little useful information. The nice thing about verbal communication is that it typically only includes prospectively useful information. [Words (along with other symbols, like numbers and algebraic symbols) can only provide the *formulae* for objects - their constitutents. They can never provide you, as images do, with actual maps of the whole *forms* of objects - and therefore the layout of those constituents. They can never give us - and we can never get the picture. of those objects. There is a BIG difference between a surface image and a complete ontological understanding. Consider a verbal statement: The Alsatian suddenly bit the man on the face. What you have there is a complex action decomposed into a set of words - a verbal formula. How much do you now know about the action being referred to? Now try an image:of the same: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nk9yHKQRE94feature=related Notice the difference? Now you've seen the whole dog engaging in the whole action - and you've got the picture - the whole form, not just the formula] However, what USEFUL
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Bob, I think you've been blinded by science here :). You don't actually see - and science hasn't, in all its history, seen - photons hitting receptors. What you're talking about there is very sophisticated, and not at all immediately-obvious/evident inferences made from scientific experiments, about theoretical entities, i.e. photons. There is no problem though seeing the entities and movements in a movie - Ben, say, raising his hand, or shaking Steve's hand, or laughing or making some other facial expression. Sure, we can argue and/or be confused about the significance and classification of what exactly is going on. Is he really laughing, and is it spontaneous, or slightly sarcastic etc? But there can be little to no confusion about the exact movements Ben is making - how his hand is grasping Steve's, say, how his lips have moved. We can agree pretty scientifically there. By contrast, if you and I read a verbal description of Ben and Steve's exchange, we could form radically different pictures of what was going on, including the simplest movements - and both our pictures could be far off the truth visible in a movie. Note the consequences of this philosophical position - if we are really interested in understanding social exchanges like Ben and Steve's, (or indeed the science and scientific experiments re photons), we should, if possible, first look at movies, rather than verbal reports. (And clearly, in law, a video of a conversation will be vastly preferable to a verbal report/summary from a witness). But it's only possible to put this philosophy into practice now- now that the world is being flooded for the first time with personally editable movies, a la Youtube, (where you can also find scientific videos)... Bob: 2008/12/11 Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk: But an image/movie can only be compared with a verbal statement in terms of what it *actually shows* - the *surface, visible action.* His actual, observable dialogue and gestures and expressions - that and only that is what a movie records with high fidelity.. But does the movie really record those things? What the movie actually records is a particular pattern of photons hitting a receptor over a period of time. Things such as gestures and expressions are concepts which you're superimposing into the pattern of photons that you're observing. To a large extent you're able to perform this superposition because you yourself have similar and familiar dynmaics. If you prefer you can consider the process of interpreting the movie as a sort of error correction, similar to the way that error correcting codes are able to fill in and restore missing or corrupted information. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
2008/12/11 Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk: There is no problem though seeing the entities and movements in a movie - Ben, say, raising his hand, or shaking Steve's hand, or laughing or making some other facial expression. Sure, we can argue and/or be confused about the significance and classification of what exactly is going on. Is he really laughing, and is it spontaneous, or slightly sarcastic etc? But there can be little to no confusion about the exact movements Ben is making - how his hand is grasping Steve's, say, how his lips have moved. We can agree pretty scientifically there. This only comes courtesy of a long evolutionary history, such that the ability to interpret such things is for us nearly effortless and effectively built in as firmware. My main point is that the information doesn't really exist in any intrinsic sense within the movie, but that you contain a lot of information (of both a learned and inherited variety) which you're then using to interpret particular types of optical pattern. That video is a higher bandwidth communication channel than language is undoubtedly true. From an engineering point of view we have high bandwidth inputs (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste) but very low bandwidth outputs (movement, speech). The apparent unambiguousness of video evidence given within a court room is only really because of the shared embodiment of the protagonists, endowing them with similar electrochemical machinery dedicated to the analysis of optical patterns together with a similar developmental process. However, if the jury were to consist of different species (or AGI) the lack of ambiguity might break down. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Bob:That video is a higher bandwidth communication channel than language is undoubtedly true. Bob, Aaargh! You're repeating the primary fallacy of seemingly everyone here - i.e. all images and symbols are just different forms of data - bandwidth. (I should respond at length but I can't resist a brief response). No. Each sign system has its own unique properties. That's why we have so many, and don't just use one universal form. Visual images, in particular, uniquely provide *isomorphic maps of objects.* If you try and reduce those maps to any other form, e.g. some mathematical or program form, you *lose the object.* It's equivalent to taking a jigsaw puzzle to pieces - all you have are the pieces, and you've lost the picture - the whole. Produce a program for the Mona Lisa. Now show that program to someone else. Or another computer. By itself, it's meaningless. Like a recipe - Take two cups of flour, three spoonfuls of sugar, mix in a pan, add an egg, fry for two mins. etc... etc. Now, with just those instructions, tell me what the recipe is for. The recipe, like a program, by itself is meaningless. You need the whole picture and the whole map to see and recognize the object - and to compare that object with other objects. (Similarly you need the whole cake and not just the recipe). AI'ers can't distinguish - intellectually/metacognitively - between the parts and the whole, the jigsaw pieces and the puzzle picture as a whole (or the recipe and the cake).. Look at any analysis of left brain/right brain types. It's standard - rational (AI) types are analytic, take things to pieces, and have considerable difficulty looking at the big picture. Very crudely: Images - wholes. Symbols - words/logical symbols/numbers - parts (or features/ properties of wholes). P.S. As a roboticist, you especially should be able to understand that an agent moving through a world of objects, needs images/maps of those objects (and not just symbolic formulae) in order to keep minutely and precisely aligning itself with those objects. 2008/12/11 Mike Tintner tint...@blueyonder.co.uk: There is no problem though seeing the entities and movements in a movie - Ben, say, raising his hand, or shaking Steve's hand, or laughing or making some other facial expression. Sure, we can argue and/or be confused about the significance and classification of what exactly is going on. Is he really laughing, and is it spontaneous, or slightly sarcastic etc? But there can be little to no confusion about the exact movements Ben is making - how his hand is grasping Steve's, say, how his lips have moved. We can agree pretty scientifically there. This only comes courtesy of a long evolutionary history, such that the ability to interpret such things is for us nearly effortless and effectively built in as firmware. My main point is that the information doesn't really exist in any intrinsic sense within the movie, but that you contain a lot of information (of both a learned and inherited variety) which you're then using to interpret particular types of optical pattern. That video is a higher bandwidth communication channel than language is undoubtedly true. From an engineering point of view we have high bandwidth inputs (vision, hearing, touch, smell, taste) but very low bandwidth outputs (movement, speech). The apparent unambiguousness of video evidence given within a court room is only really because of the shared embodiment of the protagonists, endowing them with similar electrochemical machinery dedicated to the analysis of optical patterns together with a similar developmental process. However, if the jury were to consist of different species (or AGI) the lack of ambiguity might break down. --- 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=123753653-47f84b Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
A further off-the-cuff thought re the vagueness/open-endedness of words. *All words are generalisations. *Generalisations cover open-ended groups of individuals. *Generalisations are, strictly, fictions. The only reality is individuals. There are no humans/human race,cats, dogs only individual humans, cats, dogs etc. - Fido, Rover etc. *Generalisations cover what individual members of a group have in common, but A) they never fully define those common features, and B) individuals have distinctive differences.. so there is always scope to redefine and extend the generalisations. *Even words for individuals are generalisations. *Ben Goertzel is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. *Any statement about an individual, like Ben Goertzel, is also vague and open-ended. *The only way to refer to and capture individuals with high (though not perfect) precision is with images. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
Re: [agi] Seeking CYC critiques PS
Mike, On 12/10/08, Mike Tintner [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: *Even words for individuals are generalisations. *Ben Goertzel is a continuously changing reality. At 10.05 pm he will be different from 10.00pm, and so on. He is in fact many individuals. *Any statement about an individual, like Ben Goertzel, is also vague and open-ended. *The only way to refer to and capture individuals with high (though not perfect) precision is with images. *A movie of Ben chatting from 10.00pm to 10.05pm will be subject to extremely few possible interpretations, compared with a verbal statement about him. Even better than a movie, I had some opportunity to observe and interact with Ben during CONVERGENCE08, I dispute the above statement! I had sought to extract just a few specific bits of information from/about Ben. Using VERY specific examples: Bit#1: Did Ben understand that AI/AGI code and NN representation were interchangeable, at the prospective cost of some performance one way or the other. Bit#1=TRUE. Bit#2: Did Ben realize that there were prospectively ~3 orders of magnitude in speed available by running NN instead of AI/AGI representation on an array processor instead of a scalar (x86) processor. Bit#2 affected by question, now True, but utility disputed by the apparent unavailability of array processors. Bit#3: Did Ben realize that the prospective emergence of array processors (e.g. as I have been promoting) would obsolete much of his present work, because its structure isn't vectorizable, so he is in effect betting on continued stagnation in processor architecture, and may in fact be a small component in a large industry failure by denying market? Bit#3= probably FALSE. As always, I attempted to get the measure of the man, but as so often happens with leaders, there just isn't a bin to toss them in. Without an appropriate bin, I got lots of raw data (e.g., he has a LOT of hair), but not all that much usable data. Alternatively, the Director of RD for Google had a bin waiting for him, as like SO many people who rise to the top of narrowly-focused organizations, he had completely bought into the myths at Google without allowing for usurping technologies. I saw the same thing at Microsoft when I examined their RD operations in 1995. It takes a particular sort of narrow mind to rise to the top of a narrowly-focused organization. Here, there aren't many bits of description about the individuals, but I could easily write a book about thebin that the purest of them rise to fill. Steve Richfield --- agi Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/303/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/303/ Modify Your Subscription: https://www.listbox.com/member/?member_id=8660244id_secret=120640061-aded06 Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
