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AIList Digest Volume 8 Issue 050
AIList Digest Monday, 15 Aug 1988 Volume 8 : Issue 50
Philosophy:
AIList Digest V8 #46
The Godless assumption
Symbolic Processing
Re: AI and the future of the society
Re: The Godless assumption
Can we human being think two different things in parallel?
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Date: Fri, 12 Aug 88 21:41:26 EDT
From: Marvin Minsky <MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: AIList Digest V8 #46
There is a splendid irony in the whole of AI Digest V8 #46. Consider the
table of contents:
Feigenbaum's citation
Sigmoid transfer function
There are several remarks on each topic The first set discuss a
controvery between "general methods" and methods that use specific
knowledge. No one mentions that it is not an either/or but an issue
that depends on the nature of the domain - in particular, that in
certain domains it is necessary to make controlled searches and that
knowledge helps but so do good general heuristics.
Next, in #46, we see the discussion of what smoothing functions to use
for making neural nets learn by estimating derivatives and using
hill-climbing. The irony lies in how that discussion ignores that
very same knowledge/generality issue. Specifically, hill-climbing is
a weak general method to use when there is little knowledge. But even
a little knowledge should then make a large difference. We ought
usually to be able to guess when a solution to an unknown pattern
recognition problem will require a neural net that has large numbers
of connections with small coefficients - or when the answer lies in
more localized solutions with fewer numbers of larger corefficients -
that is, in effect, the problem of finding tricky combinational
circuits. Let's see more sophisticated arguments and experiments to
see which problem domains benefit from which types of quasilinear
threshold functions, rather than proposing this or that function
without any analysis at all of when it will have an advantage. More
generally, let's see more learning from the past.
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 88 01:47:07 EDT
From: Marvin Minsky <MINSKY@AI.AI.MIT.EDU>
Subject: The Godless assumption
Andrew Basden warns us
> Why should 'religious' not also be 'practical'? Many people -
> especially ordinary people, not AI researchers - would claim their
> 'religion' is immensely 'practical'. I suggest the two things are not
> opposed. It may be that many correspondents *assume* that religion is
> a total falsity or irrelevance, but this assumption has not been
> proved correct, and many people find strong empirical evidence
> otherwise.
Yes, enough to justify what those who "knew" that they were right did
to Bruno, Galileo, Joan, and countless other such victims. There is
no question that people's beliefs have practical consequences; or did
you mean to assert that, in your philosophical opinion, they simply
may have been perfectly correct?
I hope this won't lead to an endless discussion but, since we have an
expert here on religious belief, I wonder, Andrew, if you could
briefly explain something I never grasped: namely, even if you were
convinced that God wanted you to burn Bruno, why that would lead you
to think that that makes it OK?
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 13 Aug 88 16:41:41 +0300
From: amirben%TAURUS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Reply-to: <amirben%TAURUS.BITNET@MITVMA.MIT.EDU>
Subject: Symbolic Processing
>
> I once heard an (excellent) talk by a person working with Symbolics.
> (His name is Jim Spoerl.)
>
> One line by him especially remained in my mind:
>
> "What we can do, and animals cannot, is to process symbols.
> (Efficiently.)"
>
"Symbolic processing" is usually contrasted with numerical or character
processing, the "common" use of computers. It has been pointed out that
it is this area where machines are superior to humans: no man can process
numbers in the rate of a computer. However, he can process symbolic
information much more successfully.
On the contrary, I see no reason to believe that animals think
numrically, or represent the scene they see as an array of numbers and
applying a computation to it decide which way to go...
So it seem to me that processing symbols (efficiently) is "what we can do,
and machines cannot" - not animals.
As for "intelligence" or "thinking" - I think a bird is still superior
to any computer.
Amir Ben-Amram
------------------------------
Date: 13 Aug 88 23:11:50 GMT
From: dmocsny@uceng.uc.edu (daniel mocsny)
Subject: Re: AI and the future of the society
In a previous article, John B. Nagle writes:
>
> Definitely, learning is not required. Horses are
> born with the systems for walking, obstacle avoidance, running, standing up,
> motion vision, foot placement, and small-obstacle jumping fully functional.
>
> John Nagle
If horses are born with these remarkable skills, and no information transfers
from mare to foal across the placenta, then the skills have only one source:
genes. This is quite encouraging, because the genetic code contains a
manageable amount of information (~750 MB for a human, I believe). If the
information content of the brain comes from life experiences, then it could
be inconveniently large. Here we have the machinery for a wonderfully
complex behavior, and the complete logical specification must be sitting
right there on one molecule, waiting for us to decode it. And it could all
fit on a 5.25'' hard disk...
Dan Mocsny, u. of cincinnati ** standard disclaimer **
------------------------------
Date: 14 Aug 88 09:04:23 GMT
From: proxftl!bill@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (T. William Wells)
Reply-to: proxftl!bill@bikini.cis.ufl.edu (T. William Wells)
Subject: Re: The Godless assumption
In a previous article, IT21@SYSB.SALFORD.AC.UK writes:
: Date: Thu, 11 Aug 88 07:58 EDT
: From: IT21%SYSB.SALFORD.AC.UK@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
: To: ailist@AI.AI.MIT.EDU
: Subject: The Godless assumption
:
: In going through my backlog of AI Mail I found two rather careless
: statements.
:
: In article <445@proxftl.UUCP>, bill@proxftl.UUCP (T. William Wells)
: writes: > that,.... This means
: > that I can test the validity of my definition of free will by
: > normal scientific means and thus takes the problem of free will
: > out of the religious and into the practical.
:
: Why should 'religious' not also be 'practical'? Many people - especially
: ordinary people, not AI researchers - would claim their 'religion' is
: immensely 'practical'. I suggest the two things are not opposed.
There was nothing careless about what I said there, nothing at
all. Whether you like it or not, the religious entails something
which ultimately is outside of reason. Arguments on religious
topics generate much heat but little light. These are the
characteristics of debates on free will which I had in mind when
I labeled certain beliefs and discussions about free will as
`religious'.
: It may
: be that many correspondents *assume* that religion is a total falsity or
: irrelevance,
Here, however, you have changed the subject; proposing not only
that religion is practical, but that it might be `true'.
However, the religious `true' is antithetical to any rational
`true': religion and reason entail diametrically opposed views of
reality: religion requires the unconstrained and unknowable as
its base, reason requires the contrained and knowable as its
base.
: Since the non-existence/irrelevance of God has not yet been proved, and many
: claim to have strong empirical evidence of God's existence and
: effectiveness in their lives, may I ask that correspondents think more
: carefully before making statements like the two above.
This is utter sillyness: religion rejects the ultimate validity
of reason; 700 and more years of attempting to reconcile the
differing metaphysics and epistemology of the two has utterly
failed to accomplish anything other than the gradual destruction
of religion.
Science, though not scientists (unfortunately), rejects the
validity of religion: it requires that reality is in some sense
utterly lawful, and that the unlawful, i.e. god, has no place.
Religious argument, and tolerance for religious argument, has
absolutely no place in scientific discussion, and that includes
AI discussion. You *may not* ask me to think carefully, if your
"reasons" for doing so are religious.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 14 Aug 88 15:54:08 CDT
From: ywlee@p.cs.uiuc.edu (Youngwhan Lee)
Subject: Can we human being think two different things in parallel?
Can we human being think two different things in parallel? Does anyone know
this? One of my friends said that there should be no problem in doing that. He
said we trained to think linear, but considering the structure of brains only
we must be able to think things in parallel if we can train ourselves to do
that. Is he correct?
Thanks. ywlee@p.cs.uiuc.edu.
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End of AIList Digest
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