Re: Reply to Wolf

On Jul 5, 11:00 am, Wolf <ElLoboVi...@xxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Wolf:
Cognitive talk can be translated into a program because the
programmer talks in the same metaphors as the cognitivist.
Eg, both think of memory as data storage. Both think of
symbol manipulation as a sign of intelligence. Both think
of thinking as symbols manipulation. Etc.

JC:
At a higher level perhaps symbol manipulation is a sign
of intelligence.


Wolf:
We don't have memories. We have a suite of behaviours in
the class "remembering." It happens to be remarkably easy
to change those behaviours. Which I suppose cognitivists
would call "erasing memories." Programming remembering is
a task that I don't think anyone has tried. But programming
the fetching (ie copying) of data from physical storage is
dead easy.

JC:
It is a bit hard to program anything that is vague.

Wolf:
Damn right.

JC:
That is why I have found those sorts of descriptions useless.

============
...


JC:
And what do you mean by "programming the fetching"?
It is all weird talk to me.

Wolf:
Good grief, John, do you really know what you're doing, or
are you just pretending? When you want the program to work
with any data, you have to store the first, in a buffer or
in "permanent memory". You have to call a routine that calls
(fetches) that data, don't you? It doesn't just appear
magically in the CPU's buffers and ALUs, you know. It has
to copied there. Of course, in high level languages, all
this fetching of data and storing of data and allocating
segments of RAM for data and all that boring stuff is
handled by the operating system and the underlying routines
("commands", "operators",...) in the programming language,
routines which you don't see. But you still set up arrays,
don't you? And store data in them, don't you? And change
the data stored in them, don't you? What do you think you're
doing when you're writing a program to handle data in an array?
And, to test your comprehension, why is it a metaphor to say
that the array is a memory, and that fetching data from it
is recall of facts?

JC:
I know exactly how a computer works all the way down to
the semiconductors within the integrated circuits. It is
your language that is confusing and unnecessarily so as
far as I can make out.

What sort of talk is "programming the fetching"? I have
never heard such a phrase before. You can talk computer
talk and I will understand you. Well at least if you
keep it low level :) Michael Olea programs using advanced
C++ programming techniques that are a bit beyond me.

If we have a device, be it a physical device, a real
black box with a set of input connections and an output
wire that can fan out to the input connections of other
black boxes, or the same functionally in software then
I can see what you are talking about. No convoluted
language or phrasing required. No bickering about what
the word "memory" means in this context.

So you have a set of black boxes, nodes, neurons whatever
each with a set of inputs and a single output that fans
out to other black boxes, nodes, neurons. Now in a previous
post you indicated that it was something happening inside
the neuron that determined what other neuron it would
connect to. Easy to understand. Easy to implement. All you
have to do is give me the rules for this reconfiguring you
talk about.



=================

JC:
Low battery power may be an input that is able to associate
other inputs and trial responses with itself whenever there
is a positive (rewarding) change (increased power). A simple
case might be a solar cell robot that moves toward light
whenever its cells are low on power because in the past that
increased the amount of power required.


Wolf:
Yes, that would be simple conditioning, but it would of course
be simpler to build in the move-towards-light-when-battery-low
behaviour. That's a choice that has to be made when designing
the machine.


OTOH, as an exercise in figuring out how to build a conditionable
machine, it would probably be as good place to start as any.


JC:
But not for Sizemore.


Wolf:
I don't think so. He's tending to agree with me that AI should start
with a simple machine, about the level of complexity of a bacterium
or
maybe a flat worm.

JC:
May I quote Sizemore,

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: "Glen M. Sizemore"
Date: Tue, 12 Jun 2007
Subject: Re: Against Behaviorism

"Again, it is not merely a matter of getting a machine to "make a
response it used to make to a different stimulus by 'pairing' the
two stimuli." You have to program a machine that demonstrates
conditioning IN ALL OF ITS COMPLEXITY."


And that is Glen's emphasis. Bit like when does life begin?
How complex does something have to be before "conditioning" begins?

what simple mechanisms did these "conditioning" mechanisms evolve
from?

Just how complex does a behavior have to be to be called
"conditioning"
and if Cora is not an example of such behavior what kind of behavior
does Cora and its descendents produce?

JC:
This IS where people started way back to Grey Walter's Cora, a
very simple type of conditioned reflex machine.

Wolf:
AFAICT, it was simulation, not an emulation. But I'll have to reread.

JC:
Ok I will let you have a reread. I would have thought the work Grey
Walter started, which didn't use symbolic logic or "representations",
would be right up your alley?

...

.

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