tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post1231623616304045364..comments2023-12-21T06:35:36.624-05:00Comments on Recursivity: Doug Hofstadter, Flight, and AIUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger15125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-44788858529526503822021-09-10T16:04:54.364-04:002021-09-10T16:04:54.364-04:00I think "intelligent means capable of making ...I think "intelligent means capable of making analogies, sensitive to patterns, and possessing fluid concepts" is much too vague to be worth doing anything with. Unless you can give me some testable criteria for "possessing fluid concepts". <br /><br />I suspect it's also much too narrow. Hawks seem pretty darn intelligent to me, but I don't know that they make analogies or possess fluid concepts. Intelligence is multi-faceted and those three aspects don't capture it very well.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-44910127376532203432021-09-06T22:56:40.122-04:002021-09-06T22:56:40.122-04:00Hope it’s OK to comment on something old.
I think...Hope it’s OK to comment on something old.<br /><br />I think this post really misunderstands Hofstadter’s point. You wrote “The telling question is, <i>Is the translation any good?</i> Not, <i>Did it translate using exactly the same methods and knowledge a human would?</i>” <br /><br />Both questions are wrong. The “telling question” for me, and I think Hofstadter too, is simply <i>How intelligent is the translator?</i> Of course that’s only answerable with a definition of <i>intelligent</i>. Fortunately Hofstadter’s been defending a pretty good one for decades: intelligent means capable of making analogies, sensitive to patterns, and possessing fluid concepts.<br /><br />So how intelligent is Google Translate on that definition? That’s just what the Atlantic article is about, and the conclusion is: not very, and moreover it’s doubtful that merely building out its net and tossing more data at it will change that.<br /><br />So to be clear: Hofstadter didn’t say an AI translator needs to think exactly like a human – and he definitely didn’t say that an AI translator needs to think exactly like Douglas Hofstadter. He just said an AI translator needs to live up to the name and think with intelligence. Your comparison to the claim that a flying machine needs to flap wings like a bird turns out to be, well, a bit of a canard.<br /><br />My impression is that you don’t think AI is about creating systems that satisfy Hofstadter or anyone else’s definition of intelligence. You seem more interested in creating systems that give the right outputs to certain problems. The sad thing about that view is it ignores the possibility that AI can illuminate what intelligence is and how it works.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08675634512336185338noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-45838747663478970722018-03-13T06:03:43.702-04:002018-03-13T06:03:43.702-04:00I wonder if the accuracy and precision of the &quo...I wonder if the accuracy and precision of the "translation" is a function of the relatedness of the languages involved.<br /><br />I am a keen photographer and post my pictures to Google+. People commenting on my pictures will often post in their native language (in which I rarely have any facility). However, Google+ uses Google Translate to provide a way to convert the person's comment into English.<br /><br />I've noticed that I can make sense of translations from many languages to which Google Translate provides a text, but there are some that are almost always mangled beyond English comprehension. I assume that this is because some languages use a similar grammar, syntax and referential structure to english, whole othere are vastly different.<br /><br />Google Translate seems to do a particularly bad job with Arabic, which is unfortunate as Arabic speakers seem to be particularly interested in my style of photography. Arabic speakers comment often, but Google Translate doesn't help me to understand what is being said to me.Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12077547082687746169noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-43637605509800794392018-02-08T10:00:26.448-05:002018-02-08T10:00:26.448-05:00Jeffery, I'm sorry I misinterpreted that, but ...Jeffery, I'm sorry I misinterpreted that, but thank you for the clarification! :-)F. Andy Seidlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16829365395980009178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-77218970985340778302018-02-08T05:33:20.985-05:002018-02-08T05:33:20.985-05:00Andy, the sentence you refer to at the end is not ...Andy, the sentence you refer to at the end is not mine, but the clueless commenter "Steve" I am quoting.<br /><br />It expresses just the opposite of what I believe.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-88732728697343489412018-02-07T19:10:19.519-05:002018-02-07T19:10:19.519-05:00Great post. I'm a huge Hofstadter fan, but I a...Great post. I'm a huge Hofstadter fan, but I agree very much with your critique. Still, I can't say I agree with your closing sentence: "Reductive materialism is fashionable today, but it is no less faith-based than Mormonism."<br /><br />At some level, I get it, there is nothing but faith in the sense that we can only "know" what we perceive and there is no way to objectively know that what we perceive is in any sense "real". But, reductive materialism has proven to be an effective way to model reality. Mormonism, no.<br /><br />Reductive materialism gives us essentially every technology that exists--modern medicine, air travel, electric power, computers, skyscrapers, fertilizer, radio... everything. Mormonism, on the other hand, is essentially worthless as a model of reality. Essentially nothing has come from Mormonism other than Mormon traditions that, unsurprisingly, server primarily to replicate the Mormon memes in the minds of Mormons.F. Andy Seidlhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16829365395980009178noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-32613981164800457542018-02-04T20:39:35.956-05:002018-02-04T20:39:35.956-05:00And let's not forget my all-time favourite: &q...And let's not forget my all-time favourite: "The question of whether machines can think is about as relevant as the question of whether submarines can swim." - Edsger Dijkstra<br /><br />This is something I've said in various forms elsewhere, but the real problem of consciousness is that we only have one example of consciousness to work with, and one example makes for a very poor definition.<br /><br />It's like asking what constitutes "life". All of our examples use DNA and RNA, etc etc. Other kinds of life should be possible, but without other non-theoretical examples, it's impossible to define "life" in an unbiassed way.Pseudonymhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04272326070593532463noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-41379259505617651722018-02-03T11:15:19.402-05:002018-02-03T11:15:19.402-05:00(Fascinating example, although it is hard for me t...(Fascinating example, although it is hard for me to imagine how a nail could get driven between my toes without causing any tissue damage, if only due to friction - it would be minor tissue damage, though.)<br /><br />My explanation for the experience of pain probably won't be very helpful, but here it is:<br /><br />It seems to me to be the same sort of problem as "why does a rose smell like a rose" (instead of like an orange, and vice-versa)? We understand how our senses detect and react to its specific chemistry in great detail, but why that specific experience?<br /><br />Well, it had to smell like some specific, distinguishable thing to fulfill its evolved, biological function, and that is the way those chemicals smell to our sense organs in our universe. If they didn't, some other function would have evolved.<br /><br />The same is true for the experience of pain. There is a way for pain to occur in our universe, and evolution found it (or one of the ways). As with electricity, all we have to do is find a way to duplicate what nature has done to make use of it (presuming we want to). E.g., a computer could designed with the hardware to detect roses vs. oranges. It might not "feel" the same way it does to us, but why is that important?<br /><br />(This argument was not understood or appreciated by Tim Maudlin, noted philosopher.)<br /><br />The difference of course is that we don't understand pain neurologically yet in the same level of detail as scent-detection, but I don't think we can ever hope to understand why specific experiences (such as the scent of the rose) are as they are - just how they are caused chemically and neurologically.JimVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198704789965278981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-55570412570530351202018-02-03T08:29:43.490-05:002018-02-03T08:29:43.490-05:00Jeffrey
mmm, I was just trying to be helpful as yo...Jeffrey<br />mmm, I was just trying to be helpful as you mentioned “philosophical discussions”.<br />I was thinking it may not have included the findings for the neurological basis of the experience of pain without a physical etiology?<br />eg another is the phantom limbs work by VS Ramachandran, ie it is computational & not a response to afferent signals. Peter (Oz) Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07256838573707131101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-45764636558158267722018-02-03T06:37:41.278-05:002018-02-03T06:37:41.278-05:00I wasn't disputing that at all.
I am puzzle...I wasn't disputing that at all. <br /><br />I am puzzled by the <i>experience</i> of pain.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-79348483804383187902018-02-03T06:29:29.465-05:002018-02-03T06:29:29.465-05:00Hello Jeffrey
Pain is indeed needed to keep us fro...Hello Jeffrey<br />Pain is indeed needed to keep us from injuring ourselves, as shown in people without that mechanism (eg CIP gene disorder) or who have damage from a stoke etc.<br /><br />An interesting case, maybe an outlier:<br />https://www.omicsonline.org/open-access/trauma-and-pain-a-fragile-link-2167-1222-1000378.php?aid=89712<br /><br />A case report by Fisher et al. highlighted the possibility of experiencing severe pain in the absence of tissue damage [5]. A builder aged 29 presented at accident and emergency having accidently jumped onto a 15 cm nail that had penetrated his work boot. The smallest movement of the nail caused so much distress that fentanyl and midazolam had to be administered so that the boot could be removed. Interestingly the nail had not penetrated the foot but had lodged between the toes resulting in no tissue damage. The builder’s perception of threat of injury had activated ascending and descending pain facilitation systems within the central nervous system which had exaggerated cognitive, appraisal, expectation, fear, and catastrophizing processes and modulated the experience and expression of pain.Peter (Oz) Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07256838573707131101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-28388125256325299522018-02-03T05:41:48.812-05:002018-02-03T05:41:48.812-05:00Good points.
"Pain" is, for me, one of ...Good points.<br /><br />"Pain" is, for me, one of the currently most inexplicable things about human experience. I find it very mysterious. <br /><br />I agree with you entirely that "the biological purpose of pain, to discourage dangerous behavior, could be and is implemented in computer programs", but I am still left feeling that such an implementation might be missing something I can't put my finger on. And so far, the philosophical discussions of pain that I've read seem less than helpful.Jeffrey Shallithttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12763971505497961430noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-89731510961493132372018-02-02T21:49:08.141-05:002018-02-02T21:49:08.141-05:00I enjoyed "Godel, Escher, Bach", but not...I enjoyed "Godel, Escher, Bach", but not so much "I am a Strange Loop". It seemed to be an attempt to explain consciousness by analogy to things like multiple reflections between facing mirrors, but the analogy never became clear to me.<br /><br />I wonder if the people who state these inchoate objections to AI ever did much computer programming. It seems the obvious place to begin to study AI, but many of them state that a computer can't make the sort of decisions that in fact many programs make. (I'm thinking of an example from the philosopher Nagel.)<br /><br />The philosopher Tim Maudlin showed up in one of Scott Aaronson's ("Shetl-Optimized" blog) threads not long ago saying things like, computer programs can't feel pain so they will never be able to simulate human thinking. I tried to point out that the biological purpose of pain, to discourage dangerous behavior, could be and is implemented in computer programs - to no avail.<br /><br />The problem with drawing conclusions from analogies, I think, is that when you don't know much about a subject, you can't make useful analogies for it.JimVhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10198704789965278981noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-20320461525150168102018-02-02T21:13:20.487-05:002018-02-02T21:13:20.487-05:00Prof Shallit
Nicely skewered sir!
It is also hard...Prof Shallit<br />Nicely skewered sir!<br /><br />It is also hard to go past this one, and I had not realised said down here in Oz:<br /><br />1895, Lord Kelvin. (William Thomson, 1824-1907) had confidently said, “heavier-than- air flying machines are impossible”. (at the Australian Institute of Physics)Peter (Oz) Joneshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07256838573707131101noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-20067416.post-41001469396594810882018-02-02T14:00:57.376-05:002018-02-02T14:00:57.376-05:00Ha ha, I immediately thought of you as soon as I s...Ha ha, I immediately thought of you as soon as I saw this article. I had been formulating many of the same objections in my head.isohedralhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/03189502728580537224noreply@blogger.com