Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence • Hacker News Board

Re: Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence

#141

Post by SittingDuck » Mon, Apr 22, 2013, 10:23 PM UTC

thibauts wrote: post #58

dsowers wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I had to parse the article a couple times because the wording is wrong. It seems to me that entropica is trying to minimize the entropy of the system. Life is all about low entropy.

Indeed. I'd say intelligence tries to keep its environment in a state it can predict.

Good one: Ralf Der and colleagues proposed homeokinesis as such a principle in 1999. That turned out not to be enough, because the agent would then have an incentive to move into a corner and just hide. That renders the world very predictable, but clearly not a good strategy on the long run.

So, they generalized the method to find a predictable future, but in very unstable states. Later, Der and Ay generalized this towards maximization of predictive information - for that, it is not sufficient to predict to environment, but there also must be something nontrivial to predict. This gives rise to a number of highly interesting behaviours in many of their scenarios.

So, yes, your idea is a good one...

Re: Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence

#142

Post by SittingDuck » Mon, Apr 22, 2013, 10:37 PM UTC

Houshalter wrote: post #59

snowwrestler wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Reproducing captures more future states than not reproducing, since it allows some of your collected information to extend past your death.

You can explain almost any process with this theory, and that's why it's useless. Trying to "capture more future states" is not the reason certain traits evolve, they evolve simply because they are more likely to survive and reproduce.

Not exactly: there are things that work quite well with these ideas, and others don't. Check out my comments about "empowerment" further above for examples.

Thus, the authors' proposals are emphatically not vacuous - but they are probably not that new, either, if I have properly understood what they are doing.

Disclaimer: I am one of the authors of the empowerment papers.

Re: Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence

#143

Post by cscurmudgeon » Tue, Apr 23, 2013, 3:27 PM UTC

leot wrote: post #138

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Science requires constant criticism especially when people claim grand things. Don't assume people here are idiots and have not read the paper. Every year there are dozens of papers claiming a grand theory of AI.

I'm not assuming that. In fact, I assumed the opposite and it was after I read most of the comments that it became evident that most people here weren't engaging with the article in any kind of substantive or even remotely sympathetic way (and, believe it or not, good academic reading requires that one adopt the most charitable interpretation of the author's claims -- at least to begin with). And, please don't assume…

You should apply your criticism to yourself. The top ranked commenter now has direct comments about the paper. You are just saying that we should take the paper positively because of the author and venue and you are talking about credentials and not about the content of the paper :)

Re: Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence

#144

Post by leot » Thu, Apr 25, 2013, 7:18 PM UTC

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #143

leot wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not assuming that. In fact, I assumed the opposite and it was after I read most of the comments that it became evident that most people here weren't engaging with the article in any kind of substantive or even remotely sympathetic way (and, believe it or not, good academic reading requires that one adopt the most charitable interpretation of the author's claims -- at least to begin with). And, please don't assume…

You should apply your criticism to yourself. The top ranked commenter now has direct comments about the paper. You are just saying that we should take the paper positively because of the author and venue and you are talking about credentials and not about the content of the paper :)

Hardly. The words "nonsense" and "gibberish" are being bandied about -- anyone who uses those words for an article that's been reviewed and published in a good journal needs to have strong justification for such derision. No such justification was found. The criticisms sound not that different from politicians who condemn scientists for studying fruit flies and worms.

I never said to take the paper positively. Giving something a charitable reading is different from agreeing with it. If I stop on the road and say to you that I think there's gas nearby and ask you where it is, and you say "we're surrounded by nitrogen", then, yes, you have produced a correct parsing of the sentence. But you have not performed a good faith effort to understand what I'm trying to say on my terms.

The difference between a superficial reading of a text and a deep dive is obvious, at least to most academics. I had assumed it would also be obvious to the people who frequent this forum.

Re: Physicist proposes new way to think about intelligence

#145

Post by cscurmudgeon » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 2:36 AM UTC

leot wrote: post #144

cscurmudgeon wrote: post #143

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should apply your criticism to yourself. The top ranked commenter now has direct comments about the paper. You are just saying that we should take the paper positively because of the author and venue and you are talking about credentials and not about the content of the paper :)

Hardly. The words "nonsense" and "gibberish" are being bandied about -- anyone who uses those words for an article that's been reviewed and published in a good journal needs to have strong justification for such derision. No such justification was found. The criticisms sound not that different from politicians who condemn scientists for studying fruit flies and worms. I never said to take the paper positively. Giving…

AI has been and is always full of such papers. That explains the attitude. People are just tired of snake oil. Note: I am not saying that this is snake oil.

If a new theory comes up and it is being reported in the press before anything convincing has been built, it is more efficient to be negative and suspicious.

But wait a minute, people here have actually read the paper. Look at the top comments.