Re: How does this robot know it has arms?

RMDumse <rmd@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Sep 2, 1:32 pm, c...@xxxxxxxx (Curt Welch) wrote:
It's sure a shame that we don't have better tools to monitor what a
brain is doing so we could get a better understanding of what type of
thoughts develop in babies and when. There are just all sorts of
interesting questions we have no way to answer because of our lack of
ability to perform high resolution brain monitoring.

Actually, I would encourage you to research some child development
texts. Turns out there are real fears associated with height built
into human babies, even from visual clues with no experience
(therefore unlearned). One experiment I remember is the precipice
detection. They take an set a baby of crawling age on a surface of
glass, continuous everywhere, so it can't fall. Then underneath there
is a tile pattern, one up against the glass and another well below the
glass. The baby will not cross the threshold from the close pattern to
the distant pattern, even though there is no possibility of falling.

I like clever setups like that, which give us insight into the mind.

I would love to be able to create others of similar scientific test,
which speak to the unconscious, even in adults. Very fascinating.

Ah ha. Found something important to this discussion. Google on Moro
reflex.

From:http://www.babyslumber.com/articles/baby/what-is-the-moro-reflex/

"One of the more interesting observations in a newborn is the way they
seem to be scared of falling for no apparent reason. It seems there is
no justification for a baby to have such a fear, especially
considering that they've likely not experienced falling in the first
place. But Mother Nature equips human beings with an amazing set of
reflexes designed to protect us from all manner of possibilities.

"This odd fear of falling is known as the Moro reflex (also known as
the 'startle reflex'). It is present in newborns but usually
disappears within a few months. At birth, the pediatrician will test
the baby for this reflex by laying her down on her back and removing
contact with her. She is expected to throw her arms and legs out and
extend her head in fear."

See also:
http://www.umm.edu/ency/article/003292.htm
Which supports the idea of them having many reflexes built-in.

The Rooting Reflex is another interesting one, and it's goals toward
survival are essential. Again, I suggest this one is also
unconsciously expressed many different ways in adult life. Freud's
"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar" is easy decoded if one suggests
instead, sometimes a cigar is just an expression of rooting. (Original
idea of mine, btw.)

More see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primitive_reflexes

Yeah, I'm sure human babies have a lot more innate abilities than I don't
know about but which are well documented in the research.

But I'm not really interested in the fact that babies are born with
simplistic innate behaviors if they are not needed to understand our
general powers of intelligent behavior. For example, if we could remove or
disable the mechanism that creates the Moro reflex from a human baby, do
you suspect it would prevent them from developing normal human
intelligence? I don't believe it would. I think you could disable all
these innate behaviors, and still end up with an intelligent human. The
only thing you couldn't disable, is it's innate ability to learn, and you
would have to leave some innate motivations to guide the learning.

In other words, what do I have to build into a robot, to make it perform
any task we can train a human to perform? That's my real interest. I want
to build advanced machines, I don't really care about understanding humans
beyond the level of what I need to know to duplicate our high level powers
in machines.

I'm sure many of these innate behaviors do have a real effect on the
personality, and habits, we develop in life. But I don't believe they are
foundation of why we are intelligence (why we are able to do the things we
do that no machine has yet been able to do). That's why I mostly ignore
them.

If we figure out how to implement strong machine learning to duplicate
human learning skills, I think we will have machines that everyone will
agree are as intelligent as humans. But what we probably won't have, are
machines with human-like personalities. They will be more human like than
anything we have now, but still not close enough to be mistaken for a human
under testing. To make one of these learning systems develop a fairly
human-like personality, we may have to give it many of the same odd
motivational systems, and odd little innate behaviors, as well as a
learning brain with structure and powers very closely matched to the human
brain. I suspect getting that close enough to have human-like
personalities emerge from the machine will be quite hard. Though that is
work we will want to do, it's not work I care all that much about
personally because I'm a lot more interested in figuring out how to build
smart machines than I am in building things that act like humans.

I suspect the type of thoughts the baby is having is not even as
complex as visualizing himself walking. I suspect it's working at a
much simpler level at that point of his development.

I agree.

I suspect at that point he's developed
recognition circuits in his brain which is able to recognize legs, and
recognize simple walking actions because he's seen it in other humans.

I really disagree.

I don't think the baby consideres itself a human being yet. There is
it, and there is everything else in the world. This division starts as
soon as it discovers its toes. It figures out what it can wiggle and
what it cannot. What it can wiggle or feel is it. What it cannot, is
the world.

I agree. Creating a self-image model that separates himself from the rest
of the world I suspect starts even before birth because of the skin sensors
which create the prime separation between us, and not-us. If you bite your
thumb, you get a very different set of sensations than when you bite
something that is not part of your body. Those differences are all part of
what the brain starts to learn about the basic nature of the world being
divided into that prime distinction. Even before learning you can wiggle
your toes, this image of self vs not self is starting to form because of
the skin sensors. When the eyes start to develop I'm sure it only adds
more detail to the me vs not-me view of the world.

However, what I was talking about, was a huge step away from a baby
thinking it's a human. Developing a simple pattern recognition circuit to
recognize a leg and recognize a walking-like action is just the ability of
the baby to recognize that his own leg is similar to a leg of a human.
It's no different than developing the power to recognize that a finger
looks more like worm, than it looks like rock. It's just the first steps
of basic image classification developing in the brain.

In other words, I think this sort of behavior in babies is probably
best explained as simply mimicking behavior driving by secondary
reinforcers.

I would doubt that. I think walking is a much more personal act. I'd
suggest the mental process might be how do I keep this higher
viewpoint (visually rewarding) and "up", and not wind up smacking my
***/face/etc. on the floor?

Yeah, I think there is probably a reward in standing effect at work in
there as well which motivates the baby to keep standing and not fall down.

I don't think the baby would yet have any sort of concept that walking
will allow him to get something he wants.

Disagree as above. The visual effect is already something they want.
Effort has delivered, and they wish to keep their "up" status.

Yeah, that can explain the learning to stand. Most babies have already
learned to pull up to a standing position in a crib or with other objects
before they develop the ability to stand without holding. The experience
of standing after pulling up, and being able to see things, and reach
things, they could not get without standing has already created motivations
to want to be upright at times.

But I was talking about the idea of what type of thoughts the baby might
have when we see it trying to take steps.

Is the motivation to stay upright, while trying to use the leg motions that
worked for crawling which is causing it to make those first awkward
attempts at a step? But does the Baby look at it's leg while trying to do
this? If so, I think we need to add more complexity to the idea of what
might be happening to explain why it looks at it's leg while doing this.
If it's not normal for the baby to look at its leg as if it were trying to
make it take a step, then maybe the more simple ideas of trying to stay
upright combined with trying to craw forward is what leads to the awkward
attempts at the the first steps. ???

Above in the thread, the automatic bias against down has been
identified. I would suggest the there is an equivalent desire for up
built into us. You see this displayed when babies reach up both hands
and open and close their fists, the universal language for "Pick me
up".

So an elevated status is also something I think is a genetic
prediliction. I think this was manifest later as man's reaching toward
climbing mountains, taking the skies in planes, and to the stars in
spaceships.

Sounds like a stretch to me. You don't need to assume a genetic bias of
"upness" to explain why we like to be picked up. When babies are picked
up, they get rewards like being fed, and they get tactile sensations of
warmth. You don't often get to suck on a tit when you are laying on the
ground. I suspect there's all sorts of potential motivations being
satisfied when a baby is held and fed but I dont think there's any need for
some sort of "upness" sensor".

When babies learn to pull up, there are all sorts of potential rewards that
we can assume exist to explain why they would do this without the need for
height. A baby is probably more likely to be picked up when it's standing
in it's crib than when it's laying down. If the baby likes being held for
reasons other than height, this could condition in them a desire to be "up"
simply because he likes being held and he's always up higher when he is
being held.

As for why we like to climb mountains or get higher, I suspect there's
plenty of rewards associated with those actions that don't require a
genetic bias to explain. You can see further by being higher, which means
you can sense more about your environment - this allows us to quickly find
the things we want, and helps us to avoid the things we don't want. That
alone is a simple answer about why we have lots of interest in "getting
higher" without having to assume a special genetic motivational bias is at
work.

So I don't think he's having any sort
of thoughts that could be described as wanting to learn to walk so he
can move around the room faster.

Agreed. Speed is not the motivation. Neither is mimickery.

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