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How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

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Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#11

Post by koverstreet »

beat wrote: post #9
jasode wrote: post #3

It seems like the essays they want would be similar in spirit to Douglas Hofstadter's books: "Gödel, Escher, Bach" and "I Am a Strange Loop" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_Am_a_Strange_Loop

Just for kicks, I'd suggest that anyone with an understanding of software and an interest in how thought (or AI) works should set aside six months or so to read GEB carefully, and absorb the ideas in it. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but it will change how you view the world.

GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways.

The problem when you're trying to attack any problem like AI where we know practically nothing about what the actual solution is, is that anything you write about what you think the solution is is going to predispose people to not just work down that avenue but to think about the problem in abstractions that will ultimately turn out to be wrong.

GEB is an incredibly good book in that it picks out problems that are absolutely at the heart of solving AI (ambiguity in natural language is a huge one) and elucidates them incredibly well _without_ predisposing the reader as to what the solution might be.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#12

Post by visarga »

> How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

By the wonders of self replicating adaptive systems, tending for their existence by intelligent behavior and sexual reproduction. Meaning arises from the context of optimizing their own life (based on rewards and RL).

We, humans, have 3 levels of self reproduction - the cellular level, the organism level, and the mental (cultural/technologic/AI) level. Each of them operate their own game of survival and adaptation. There is a fundamental difference between "mindless mathematical laws" and self replicators - the second have agency, are embodied and participate into a larger world.

All of these conclusions are immediately visible from the paradigm of reinforcement learning, but are not so clear from the mainstream consciousness philosophy. They're still fighting zombies and muse about bats in Chinese rooms (armchair philosophy at its finest) while the RL guys beat the best human at Go.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#15

Post by arafa »

koverstreet wrote: post #11
beat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for kicks, I'd suggest that anyone with an understanding of software and an interest in how thought (or AI) works should set aside six months or so to read GEB carefully, and absorb the ideas in it. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but it will change how you view the world.

GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways. The problem when you're trying to attack any problem like AI where we know practically nothing about what the actual solution is, is that anything you write about what you think the solution is is going to predispose people to not just work down that avenue but to think about the problem in abstractions that will ultimately turn out to be wrong. GEB i…

I agree. When I read GEB, it was clear to me after awhile that it wasn't about G, E, or B, it was really about how intelligence emerges out of self-reference. One of the best books I've read (though challenging). Not often that books in this genre win the Pulitzer.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#16

Post by koverstreet »

koverstreet wrote: post #7

I just wrote something on this subject on facebook... suppose this would be a good place for it. TL;DR though - we aren't ready to try to answer such questions directly yet. --------- We are self programmable Turing machines: the core problems (and frustrations!) of both AI and understanding the human brain are encoded in that statement. Frustrations, because it's an infuriatingly simple statement that's obviously tr…

Man, there's still way to much dunning-kruger, even on hacker news.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#17

Post by bbctol »

koverstreet wrote: post #11
beat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for kicks, I'd suggest that anyone with an understanding of software and an interest in how thought (or AI) works should set aside six months or so to read GEB carefully, and absorb the ideas in it. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but it will change how you view the world.

GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways. The problem when you're trying to attack any problem like AI where we know practically nothing about what the actual solution is, is that anything you write about what you think the solution is is going to predispose people to not just work down that avenue but to think about the problem in abstractions that will ultimately turn out to be wrong. GEB i…

From what I've heard, Hofstadter wrote "I am a Strange Loop" because too many people were describing GEB as a "collection of essays" or musings on unrelated topics, when he wanted it to be a single exploration of the concept of intelligence. "Strange Loop" covers pretty much the exact same ground, just from a much more direct angle; they're both worth reading, depending on your mood.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#18

Post by koverstreet »

visarga wrote: post #12

> How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention? By the wonders of self replicating adaptive systems, tending for their existence by intelligent behavior and sexual reproduction. Meaning arises from the context of optimizing their own life (based on rewards and RL). We, humans, have 3 levels of self reproduction - the cellular level, the organism level, and the mental (cultural/technologic/AI) le…

That's like saying "How do computers compute?" "Well, because we built these giant fabs and factories to build them".

You're answering the wrong question.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#19

Post by mathgenius »

beat wrote: post #8

The theme seems weirdly phrased. It's like asking "How can a tree give rise to the color green?" Their attempt to clarify didn't really clarify. They're looking for a causal relationship between physical law and thought process (because "aims and intention" are thoughts ). Perhaps causality itself is the wrong tool to apply here. Thanks to various readings over the past year, I'm starting to believe causality as an a…

> various readings over the past year

Yes, what were these?

I tend to agree with you about causality. The attempts to understand how the classical world arises from quantum laws seem particularly boneheaded to me. I guess people (scientists) don't want to let go of causality because who knows what chaos and mayhem will befall the world if we give up on this. And the philosophers have a term "causal closure" which seems to be axiomatic in alot of their discussions. But they just don't want to talk about any kind of mystical stuff that might seep in through the gaps.

Re: How can mindless mathematical laws give rise to aims and intention?

#20

Post by squeaky-clean »

koverstreet wrote: post #11
beat wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just for kicks, I'd suggest that anyone with an understanding of software and an interest in how thought (or AI) works should set aside six months or so to read GEB carefully, and absorb the ideas in it. It's a lot to wrap your head around, but it will change how you view the world.

GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways. The problem when you're trying to attack any problem like AI where we know practically nothing about what the actual solution is, is that anything you write about what you think the solution is is going to predispose people to not just work down that avenue but to think about the problem in abstractions that will ultimately turn out to be wrong. GEB i…

> GEB is a textbook on AI that's just trying to come at it sideways.

That's because it's not a book on AI at all [0]. It talks about it a lot. And sets up a lot of fundamental ideas for it. But it's as much a book about AI as Moby Dick is a book about whaling.

It's great reading if you're interested in AI (edit: If you're on HN, you'll probably love the book /edit), but if you pick it up expecting an AI textbook, or a book about AI, you may be disappointed. Or at the very least, won't get the full message.

Another book I'd recommend is "The Minds I" by Douglas Hofstadter and Daniel C. Dennett. It's a collection of essays about AI and philosophy, relating to the idea of the "self", with several pages of reflection after each essay by Hofstadter and Dennett. I'm about halfway through so far, but it was worth it alone just for chapter 5, "The Turing Test: A Coffeehouse Conversation". Also the Ant Fugue from GEB is one of the featured essays.

[0] Though you can't really fault anyone for believing that. Hofstadter complains in the intro of the 20th anniversary edition (and several interviews) that everyone thinks the point of GEB is something different. And it's never what he intended the point of GEB to be.

Specifically, he says "GEB is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self, and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?"

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