Date: Mon 15 Aug 1988 02:38-EDT From: AIList Moderator Nick Papadakis Reply-To: AIList@mc.lcs.mit.edu Us-Mail: MIT LCS, 545 Tech Square, Rm# NE43-504, Cambridge MA 02139 Phone: (617) 253-6524 Subject: AIList Digest V8 #50 To: AIList@mc.lcs.mit.edu Status: R 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? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Fri, 12 Aug 88 21:41:26 EDT From: Marvin Minsky 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 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: 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. ------------------------------ End of AIList Digest ********************