Re: Towards a theory of the semiotic mind-body link

lbrtchx@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
Why do you fill your posts with tilda characters? What's wrong with a
simple blank line?
~
simple blank lines get sometimes eaten, I used to use single periods,
but they are interpreted by the current mail protocol as an end of
message mark. that one bit me really hard once. Why? Are these tildes
that annoying? ;-)
~

It marks you as being very odd and it makes your posts harder to read.

The semantics of that language is defined by the hardware inside the
machine ...
~
There is absolutely nothing semantic inside any machine. They are
just purely sintactic beasts.

Yeah, if you go down that road you will find you and I don't agree in
the least. I don't believe in the soul.
~
Nor do I, how is it that believing in the soul makes a difference?
~

It all depends on what someone thinks the soul is.

But if you notice, some machines like the Google search engine actually
are designed to work that way. And it's far far more powerful (by many
orders of magnitude) than any human.
~
As our understanding of how to configure our current hardware into
associative memory learning machines, you will see how stupid and
insignificant the human brain is.
~
Do you -truly- believe what you are saying?
~

Yes, of course.

Those associative memory learning machines will need an algorithm ...
~

Oh, and you think you are have free will so therefor you are not controlled
by an algorithm? Is that where you are going with that comment?

Nobody has an issue with the fact that a computer can perform billions
of calculations a second when a human can only do 1.
~
Really?!? When has a computer created, discovered or invented
anything?

It's already happened.

TD-Gammon (a backgammon program) has discovered moves that have taught the
best human players new things about the game.

Here are some comments from backgammon masters about TD-Gammon.

http://www.research.ibm.com/massive/tdl.html

"On the plus side, he thinks that in at least a few cases,
the program has come up with some genuinely novel strategies
that actually improve on the way top humans usually play."

"TD-Gammon has definitely come into its own. There is no
question in my mind that its positional judgment is far better
than mine. Only on small technical areas can I claim a definite
advantage over it . . . ."

"I find a comparison of TD-Gammon and the high-level chess
computers fascinating. The chess computers are tremendous in
tactical positions where variations can be calculated out.
Their weakness is in vague positional games, where it is not
obvious what is going on . . . . TD-Gammon is just the opposite.
Its strength is in the vague positional battles where judgment,
not calculation, is the key. There, it has a definite edge over
humans. Its technique is less than perfect in such things as building up
a board with no opposing contact, and bearing in against an anchor. In
these sorts of positions the human can often come up with the better
play by calculating it out . . . . In the more complex positions, TD has
a definite edge. In particular, its judgment on bold vs. safe play
decisions, which is what backgammon really is all about, is nothing
short of phenomenal. I believe this is true evidence that you have
accomplished what you intended to achieve with the neural network
approach. Instead of a dumb machine which can calculate things
much faster than humans such as the chess playing computers, you
have built a smart machine which learns from experience pretty much
the same way humas do. It has the ability to play many more games
than a human can play and correlate the results of its experiences
much more accurately and with no emotional bias.

"Having done so, it can examine any position, add up all its
parameters, and come up with a proper evaluation. Humans cannot
do this with the same degree of perfection."

The interesting point here is that the algorithm TD-Gammon used is far more
like how the brain works than a typical game program. Instead of using a
typical brute force search algorithm, it's using a neural network that
gives the program intuition - which is just a large associative memory
function trained by experience. That is what the brain is, and that's how
it works. It's very slow (compared to our computers) associative memory
system, but it's very large - with billions of nodes and trillions of
synapses defining the associations in parallel. TD-Gammon, was able to
play as well as the best human players, and it used a "brain" which only
had a few hundred "synapses" to form associations with. That shows the
power of such systems. It can play as well as the best human in this one
limited domain, and only needed to use a few _hundred_ weights in the
network where as a human brain has trillions of weights. And that's why a
human brain can not only play backgammon, but also learn all the other
behaviors a typical human learns in a life time.

Most computer programs are not build like TD-Gammon or like the human
brain, which is why computers still seem to be nothing like humans in how
they act, or in what powers they have. The brain is a large associative
memory system trained by reinforcement learning. Most of our computers
don't even include learning - and when they do, it's not their prime
system, but only a small secondary function that effects some very limited
aspect of their behavior.

TD-Gammon on the other hand, was built in a general architecture that is
very close to how the brain works - it's an associative memory system
trained by reinforcement to pick "good" moves in the game of backgammon.
But it shows what is possible, and what's coming. It shows how computers
can be intuitive, instead of logical - it's just a matter of using the
right algorithms.

Another example I like to point out is the NASA project where a genetic
algorithms have been used to invent new antenna designs.

http://ti.arc.nasa.gov/projects/esg/research/antenna.htm

These programs are creating, and inventing things no human has every
invented.

If you Google and read a bit more on genetic algorithms you will find many
examples of these algorithms inventing new things. Sometimes they
ended up re-inventing something a human previously invented - like
electrical circuit designs.

Genetic algorithms are just another form of reinforcement learning -
another form of what makes evolution do the creative things it does - like
"invent" all of life including the humans and their brains.

That would be the 1 thing I want computers doing, to regard them as
"thinking"

They are already "thinking". But I doubt the above examples are going to
open your mind to the reality of what's going on because you most likely
have a very strong bias against the idea that humans are just mechanical
machines and you will use every excuse you can think up to cling to that
belief that we, as humans, are more special than that.

So your response to the above examples I suspect will be something like,
"they are just tools designed and built by man".

But since there are
some things we are still good at (learning, and high dimension
associative lookup), people still are fooled into this belief that they
have important magical powers that we don't even have the right type of
hardware to understand yet.
~
But once that technology is created, everything a human brain can do
will look as insignificant as our power of adding numbers is
insignificant compared to our current computers.
~
We will understand finally just how weak, and stupid, and insignificant
we are as humans. But we won't care any more than we care now that a
bulldozer is far stronger than we are. Because even though we are weak,
and stupid, we will still be in control of all those powerful machines.
~
Not reading my paper is still legal ;-), but you may benefit from
learning a bit more about the so-called "hard problem of
consciousness"

I probably know more than you think I know.

If you want to understand the true nature of the human mind, and the
meaning of meaning and semantics you should stop playing with words, and
try studying hard science and engineering.

and how I see this "still being in control" you
mentioned as our rich semiotic essence, something machines won't ever
have

Yes, you are delusional about what you think is your own consciousness.
It's a common error many people make (including many very smart and highly
educated people). It comes from a lack of understanding of what you are,
of what humans are. It's an illusion created by your very mechanical
brain which fools most people.

The control I was speaking of has nothing to do with the illusion of
dualism which is what you seem to be speaking of.

I was talking about who gets to control the resources of the earth, and the
future of mankind (real control). Before long, we will create machines
which are conscious, and which are far stronger, and far smarter than any
human. So what will happen? In the short run, we will remain in control
becuase we will create these machines as slaves to _our_ needs - just like
all the machines we have around us now our built as salves to our needs.
In the long run however, the forces of evolution control the future, not
man. Which path that takes us, and when, is hard to predict. Odds are
however, we won't be around for the long term - at least not as the same
biological machines we are now.

--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
curt@xxxxxxxx http://NewsReader.Com/
.

Relevant Pages

  • Re: Machine takeover?
    ... assisted by the machines that it's hard to argue the humans provided ... AI, and we can put a computation number on what a human brain is doing, ... we will have found that the computers passed the ... information processing power of the complex living cells ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Machine takeover?
    ... assisted by the machines that it's hard to argue the humans provided ... to the computers in his truck keeping the engine ... If you take conventional estimates of human brain ... processing power is to look at real information flow rates. ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: Machine takeover?
    ... they are so greatly assisted by the machines ... that it's hard to argue the humans provided more of the "thought". ... From the cell phones used by the UPS driver, to the computers in his truck ... If you look at the machine on your desk - it has a brain the size of a pea, ...
    (comp.ai.philosophy)
  • Re: The Hard Problem for Behaviorists
    ... correct low level abstractions to define the operation of the brain with - ... Do you not know how computers work? ... you can think of this type of network like you ... when you drop a marble in hole X1, ...
    (sci.cognitive)
  • Re: before Cantor there was Rantor
    ... > hitting the bulls eye, alas he is the only one who can see ... > could the apes one day learn what random genetic animal freaks ... they conduct rather sadistic experiments with human brain, ... that era were busy researching computers at some point), ...
    (sci.math)