Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
Hi Marc, */Eliezer/*'s hubris about a Bayesian approach to intelligence is nothing more than the usual 'metabelief' about a mathematics... or about computation... meant in the sense that cognition is computation, where computation is done BY the universe (with the material of the universe used to manipulate abstract symbols) /search?hl=ensa=Xoi=spellresnum=0ct=resultcd=1q=Eliezer+Yudkowskyspell=1. *You don't have to work so hard to walk away from that approach...* Computationalism is FALSE in the sense that it cannot be used to construct a scientist. A scientist deals with the UNKNOWN. If you could compute a scientist you would already know everything! Science would be impossible. So you *can* 'compute/simulate' a scientist, but if you could the science must already have been done... hence you wouldn't want to. Computationalism is FALSE in the sense of 'not useful', not false in the sense of 'wrong'. You cannot model a modeller of the intrinsically unknown. As a computationalist manipluator of abstract symbols you are required to deliver a model of how to learn - in which you must specify how all novelty shall be handled! In other words you can;t deal with the REAL unknown - where you have no such model! ie. a computationalist scientist is an oxymoron: a logical contradiction. If you say you can then you are question begging computationalism whilst failing to predict an a-priori unsupervised observer (a scientist). The Bayesian 'given' (the conditional) assumes knowledge of a given which is a-priori not available. It assumes observation of the kind we have.. otherwise how would you know any options to choose as givens?. furthermore it assumes that if somehow we were to experiment to resolve a choice of 'givens' (Bayesian conditionals) as being the 'truth' - then there are potentially an enormous collection of 'givens', all of which can be inserted in the same bayesian predictor... resulting in degenerate knowledge you know NOTHING because you fail to resolve anything useful about the world outside. You don't even know there's an 'outside'. The bayesian (all computationalist) approach fails to predict observation (in the sense of ANY observation/an observer, not a particular observation) and fails to predict the science that might result from an observer. This is the achilles heel of the computationalist argument. The computationalist delusion (dressed up in Bayesian or any other abstract symbol-manipulator's clothes) has to stop right here, right now and for good. BTW This does not mean that 'cognition is not computation' I hold that cognition is NATURAL symbol manipulation, not ABSTRACT symbol manipulation. But that's a whole other story... The natural symbols are the key. Please feel free to deliver the above to Eliezer. He'll remember me! Tell him the AGI he is so fearful of are a DOORSTOP and will be pathetically vulnerable to human intervention. The whole AGI fear-mongering realm needs to get over themselves and start being scientific about what they do. It's all based on assumptions which are false. cheers, colin --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
Hi! Assumptions assumption assumptionstake a look: You said: Why would you say that? Computer simulations can certainly produce results you didn't already know about, just look at genetic algorithms. OK. here's the rub... /You didn't already know about.../. Just exactly 'who' (the 'you') is 'knowing' in this statement? You automatically put an external observer outside my statement. *My observer is the knower.* *There is no other knower:* The scientist who gets to know is the person I am talking about! There's nobody else around who gets to decide what is known... you put that into my story where there is none. My story is of /unsupervised/ learning. Nobody else gets to choose Bayesian priors/givens. And nobody else is around to pass judgement... the result IS the knowledge. Tricky eh? A genetic algorithm (that is, a specific kind of computationalist manipulation of abstract symbols) cannot be a scientist. Even the 'no free lunch' theorem, proves that without me adding anything but just to seal the lid on itI would defy any computationalist artefact based on abstract symbol manipulation to come up with a law of nature ... ... by law of nature I mean an ABSTRACTION about the distal natural world derived from a set of experiences of the distal natural world (NOT merely IO signals... these are NOT experienced). The IO is degenerately related to the distal natural world by the laws of physics... a computationalist IO system is fundamentally degenerately related to the distal natural world...so it doesn't even know what is 'out there' at all, let alone that there's a generalisation operating BEHIND it. A law of nature, to a genetic algorithm or any other abstract/computationalist beast... would merely predict IO behaviour at its sensory boundary. It may be brilliantly accurate! But that *IS NOT SCIENCE* because there's no verifiable deliverable to pass on...and it has nothing else to work with. An artefact based on this may survive in a habitat... but that is NOT science. Sothere's no scientist here. (BTW IO = input/output). cheers, colin Jesse Mazer wrote: Colin Hales wrote: Computationalism is FALSE in the sense that it cannot be used to construct a scientist. A scientist deals with the UNKNOWN. If you could compute a scientist you would already know everything! Science would be impossible. So you can 'compute/simulate' a scientist, but if you could the science must already have been done... Why would you say that? Computer simulations can certainly produce results you didn't already know about, just look at genetic algorithms. --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
Re: The Super-Intelligence (SI) speaks: An imaginary dialogue
On Sep 2, 1:56 pm, Colin Hales [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Hi Marc, */Eliezer/*'s hubris about a Bayesian approach to intelligence is nothing more than the usual 'metabelief' about a mathematics... or about computation... meant in the sense that cognition is computation, where computation is done BY the universe (with the material of the universe used to manipulate abstract symbols) /search?hl=ensa=Xoi=spellresnum=0ct=resultcd=1q=Eliezer+Yudkowskyspell=1. *You don't have to work so hard to walk away from that approach...* Hi Colin, The chess computer 'Deep Blue' was computational, and could play chess better than the (then) chess world champion, Gary Kasparov. But that didn't mean that the programmers understood all the chess, or all the chess had already been played. So I don't think your argument is a good one. You can't rebut Yudkowsy's approach as easily as that ;) But I kind of understand your sentiment, and agree that science can't (and shouldn't be) reduced to mere Bayesian probability shuffling. There are aesthetic judgements involved in science, and I don't think any precise mathematical definition of these aesthetic notions is possible, as Bruno has already opined.Yudkowsky's excessive faith in Bayesian Induction is definitely his weakness. But that doesn't mean we can't make a computational super-intelligence. Cheers --~--~-~--~~~---~--~~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups Everything List group. To post to this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/everything-list?hl=en -~--~~~~--~~--~--~---
