HDTenEightyP/NetNews huggingface dataset:
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1993 05:01:55 GMT


In article <C052B5.95t@spss.com> ,
markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder) writes:

>Neither does Searle, and that's precisely the problem. Searle never seems
>to question the notion that you can determine whether understanding occurs
>in the Chinese Room by asking if the man in the room understands Chinese. 

I think the Turing test, and the whole Chinese room argument WITH responses
is a crock.

All who agree say aye.

If you take a Chinese room or the winner of a Turing contest and subject it
to the real world, the idea simply breaks down.  Could either one "pass" an
employment interview, or pick up girls at a bar.

My point here, is that we humans are constantly subjected to all kinds of
tests, and as likely or not we fail.  How is any machine using only symbols
and syntax going to beat us at our own game.

My opinion is that people who seriously think a word mongering machine can
duplicate any but the most superficial activities of the human mind
probably haven't taken a close look at the working of their own mind.

>The corollary of his position would be that if a Turing Test-passing AI 
>*were* intelligent, the intelligence must lie in the *CPU*. The Systems
>Reply more sensibly draws the entity boundary around the
>computer/algorithm combination (and emphasizes the need to think more
>carefully about what systems exhibit what cognitive properties). 

Did I read this right?  Are you saying there are people in responsible
positions that think a computer sans algorithm is intelligent?  I probably
read it wrong. 

I think you're still leaving out a vital component, the computer/algorithm
combination should read computer/algorithm/programmer combination.  At the
current state of technology, a programmed computer is simply an extension
of the programmer (admittedly a faster running, better remembering
extension).  

If computer technology ever gets to the point where Bill Gates can fire all
his programmers, then I might concede that computer/algorithm possesses
some degree of cognitive ability.  That won't be the point however, where
I'll agree that computers can pass for human.

Am I saying that programming a consciousness emulating computer is
impossible?  Not at all, but I do think any attempt to do so without taking
a good long subjective look at the human mind is bound to result in
failure.

That was refreshing, I feel much better now.

--
Ken Easlon                |  Hello! I'm a .SIC Virus. Copy me and spread 
ken@holonet.net           |  the fum.
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |
From: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Easlon Test
Date: 21 Dec 92 20:54:41 GMT
Reply-To: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Originator: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu


In article <BzJKxs.1L9@iat.holonet.net>, ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:

|> A first pass at digital modeling of emotions would involve the concept of
|> potential fields (see article <BzHnKs.8Bs@iat.holonet.net> subject: The
|> Complexity Required for intelligence).
|> 
|> Generally an emotional state will involve the potential for interaction
|> with another entity.  Thus we must consider not only the potential for
|> change of our own position, but the change of position of the other entity
|> as well.  ...

What you describe seems related to a paper which will appear sometime next
year in Biological Cybernetics.  It describes a "potential field" theory for
the operation of the striatum, specifically with regard to motor control, but
since the caudate nucleus and putamen have such similar structure, it is
probably applicable to things like saccades, sequencing tasks, and emotional
state changes:

Connolly CI, Burns JB, A model for the functioning of the striatum.

Your "go juice" could be inhibition of tonic cholinergic activity in the striatum.
The "stop juice" is a bit more complicated.  Not an exact fit to what you're saying,
but you might be interested (or at least amused) to flip through it.

						-CC
-- 
	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin)
Subject: Re: Searle's World and Computers
Organization: TRW Systems Division, Fairfax VA
Distribution: na
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 03:11:57 GMT

Pribram is of the opinion that neuron death is necessary for long-term
learning. As a mathematician and computer scientist, I lack the background
to assess the options.

Cheers,
-- 
Harry Erwin
Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Subject: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 21:18:14 GMT

Like turning on a lamp, my mind lit up at the mention of the HLT.

I hope there is no question in anyone's mind but that there exists
HLTs that will pass the Turing Test.  As I see it finding even one of
this huge class of Turing Machines is an intractable problem.  I think
there are steps which can reduce the problem space but not be very much.

Given the set of all exchanges of strings of finite length expressed as
HLTs, some will pass the Turing Test serendipitously.  I hope the set of
HLTs to be considered can be limited a bit.  In particular, there are
times the exchange:

Interogator:  What time is it in Seattle?
HLT:          Oh, about noon.  Why?

would be reasonable and times it would not.

While I have no mathmatics to back me up, it seems to me there are mixed
devices which produce the same output as a serendipitous HLT.  Such a device
might, upon being is some set of states and encountering the question, "What 
time is it in Seattle?" enter a procedure which would check its internal 
clock and generate the phrase, "Oh, about noon.  Why?"  Surely such an
enhanced HLT is going to have a much higher chance of serendipitiously passing
the Turing Test than the larger set of all HTLs.

Likewise, the exchange:

Interogator:  How's the weather there?
HLT:          Not to bad for late December.

would be much more likely if the enhanced HLT had access to an automated
weather station.  I don't see how anyone could accept the computability of
a seredipitious HLT but not of an enhanced HLT producing the same exchange.

Even the exchange:

Interogator:  What do you think of Clinton?
HLT:          He seems to be getting himself into hot water with the women's
              groups.  I wonder how this will all play out.

is in there somewhere within the set of all finite exchanges of strings
of finite length.  An enhanced HLT having access to usenet would have a
much better chance of appropriately generating this response.

I know these moves haven't whittled down the problem very much but it seems
to me there are moves which guarantee equivalence with serendipitious HLTs
and increase the odds of a Turing Machines with the set being equivalent
to a seredipitious HLT.

--gary forbis@u.washington.edu
From: silbrmnd@acf3.nyu.edu (Darkmage)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Date: 27 Dec 92 19:02:38 GMT
Organization: New York University

orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:

>In article <Bzst9t.79B@cmcl2.nyu.edu> silbrmnd@acf3.nyu.edu (Darkmage) writes:

>>   Q: What time do you think it is in Seattle right now?
>>   A: Uh...  I think it's around {TIME_NOW - 5 HOUR /Hour Only} -ish.

>	It ceases to be a lookup table if such hooks into the contextual
>reality are permitted.

If the machine in question has a built-in clock, the entry in the table
would just be telling it to "insert time here"; all it's doing is 
looking something up somewhere else.
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Date: 26 Dec 1992 18:02:59 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

In article <erwin.725080496@trwacs> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>I must say I'm dubious, doctor. The problem with a look-up table is that
>it's a digital model. I can test it in its ability to follow a chaotic
>sequence and identify the level at which it discretizes the world. One
>thing I'm convinced of is that the human brain maintains an effectively
>continuous model of the world. Even the output of neurons is FM
>superimposed on a tagging carrier wave, and so is essentially continuous.



Not even spacetime is continuous, much less the things residing in it.
It only looks continuous because your powers of resolution are too limited
to see the planck-scale granularity underlying the supposed continuum.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Drawing the entity/environment boundary
From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Date: Thu, 31 Dec 1992 19:33:04 GMT
Organization: SPSS Inc.

In article <BzLCx1.JF5@iat.holonet.net> ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
>Oh, THAT "Systems Reply".  Searle discusses it briefly in the Scientific
>American article, but I don't see how that relates to the entity
>environment boundary.  

Neither does Searle, and that's precisely the problem.  Searle never seems
to question the notion that you can determine whether understanding occurs
in the Chinese Room by asking if the man in the room understands Chinese.
The corollary of his position would be that if a Turing Test-passing AI
*were* intelligent, the intelligence must lie in the *CPU*.  The Systems 
Reply more sensibly draws the entity boundary around the computer/algorithm
combination (and emphasizes the need to think more carefully about what 
systems exhibit what cognitive properties).

>I guess I'm going to have read Searle to keep up with this group :-(

Hmm, perhaps we should have a reading list... 
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 15:29:41 GMT


In article <1992Dec22.211814.5623@u.washington.edu> ,
forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:

>I hope there is no question in anyone's mind but that there exists 
>HLTs that will pass the Turing Test.  As I see it finding even one of 
>this huge class of Turing Machines is an intractable problem.  I think 
>there are steps which can reduce the problem space but not be very much. 

It all depends on what you mean by "exists".  I'd say the probability of
actual existence of such a beast either now or any time in the foreseeable
future, is something like the probability of all the atoms in my body
spontaneously disintegrating.

I don't think giving the HLT access to time, weather or usenet data would
increase the probability of existence.  The data stream would simply form
an additional field of changing data to be looked up, unless the TM had
some kind of actual intelligence to evaluate the data, in which case it
wouldn't be a pure HLT.  If you give the TM enough intelligence, it
wouldn't need a look-up table at all.


--
Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
ken@holonet.net           |    -Paul McCartney
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Kenneth Colby)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 92 23:07:27 GMT

In English there are ten to the twentieth sentences of 20 words or less.
Building an HLT would result in the heat death of the universe. So
please don't anyone try it.
						      ken colby
						      MAIW

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: colby@oahu.cs.ucla.edu (Kenneth Colby)
Subject: Re: Searle's World and Computers
Keywords: Searle Realism Computers
Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department
Date: Mon, 21 Dec 92 21:08:26 GMT


     Wayne Throop improves - "its all in the model one uses " - on my
     criticism of Searle's view of the world a view which itself
     is observer-relative.

     The world ("reality" ) is what a model says it is. A model is
     a conceptual tool consisting of rules that (1) confer
     intelligibility on the observational data relevant to the
     phenomena of interest and\or (2) aids humand intervention in
     the natural order to get us what we want and prevent what we
     don't want.

     In computerdom "emulation" means one machine can imitate
     another. In the common parlance it can mean to equal or better.
     For example, our cognitive therapy program Overcoming Depression 2.0
     does NOT simulate a human therapist. It attempts to equal or
     better the performance of a human therapist in alleviating
     depression. (Ceci n'est pas un ad ).

				 Kenneth Mark Colby
			 Malibu Artifactual Intelligence Works

			  
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 17:46:04 GMT

In article <1992Dec22.211814.5623@u.washington.edu> forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
>I hope there is no question in anyone's mind but that there exists
>HLTs that will pass the Turing Test.

I still have doubts, perhaps because I did not participate in the
great HLT debate when it last swelled in this newsgroup.  In fact
your posting exposes serious flaws in the idea of a lookup table
passing the TT, if "passing the TT" is interpreted to mean, "can
pass repeatedly under a variety of circumstances": different times,
different locations, different interrogators.
	Can someone explain how table lookup can account for context?
I'm sure this was all hashed :-) over before...
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: doug@netcom.com (Doug Merritt)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: Netcom Online Communications Services (408-241-9760 login: guest)
Date: Fri, 1 Jan 1993 22:36:14 GMT

In article <1992Dec22.211814.5623@u.washington.edu> forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis) writes:
>I hope there is no question in anyone's mind but that there exists
>HLTs that will pass the Turing Test. [...]
>Interogator:  What time is it in Seattle?
>HLT:          Oh, about noon.  Why?

Several other people answered aspects of this definitively, but perhaps
not in a 100% clear way, so I thought I'd clarify...

The current time, info about weather, and other such state information
(call them sensory inputs) *necessarily* will be inputs to any mechanism
that hopes to pass the Turing Test.

In the case of the lookup table, the fields that represent this current
state of the world are merely appended to the input sentence, and the
whole conglomeration is used to index the lookup table. There are no
theoretical problems, no stepping away from the model of a lookup table,
no need to enhance the lookup table by allowing it to do field substitutions.

This approach makes the table bigger than fancier mechanisms, but that's
beside the point. It works in principle. A large enough lookup table can
compute anything that a finite Turing machine can compute...lookup tables
are Turing complete.

Nor is it an issue (mathematically) if the input sentences are allowed to be
of infinite length, nor if the world is continuous, therefore requiring input
state of infinite precision and therefore infinite length...One just makes
the lookup table of infinite length as well, and define a one to one mapping
between the set of inputs and the set of outputs. Mathematically this is
nearly as trivial as a finite map (lookup table).

Naturally it is dubious that an infinite lookup table could be constructed
in the physical world, but then it's dubious that a lookup table
with finite but humongous (e.g. 10^100000000) entries is constructible
either.

Whether the construction of such tables (finite or infinite) is computable
even in principle amounts to the question of whether strong AI is possible,
so there's no point in getting into that here.
	Doug
-- 
Doug Merritt				doug@netcom.com
Professional Wild-eyed Visionary	Member, Crusaders for a Better Tomorrow
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: Smith College, Northampton, MA, US
Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1992 13:29:16 GMT

In article <Bzst9t.79B@cmcl2.nyu.edu> silbrmnd@acf3.nyu.edu (Darkmage) writes:

>   Q: What time do you think it is in Seattle right now?
>   A: Uh...  I think it's around {TIME_NOW - 5 HOUR /Hour Only} -ish.

	It ceases to be a lookup table if such hooks into the contextual
reality are permitted.
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: forbis@stein.u.washington.edu (Gary Forbis)
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Organization: University of Washington, Seattle
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 21:06:59 GMT

In article <erwin.725080496@trwacs> erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com (Harry Erwin) writes:
>I must say I'm dubious, doctor. The problem with a look-up table is that
>it's a digital model. I can test it in its ability to follow a chaotic
>sequence and identify the level at which it discretizes the world. One
>thing I'm convinced of is that the human brain maintains an effectively
>continuous model of the world. Even the output of neurons is FM
>superimposed on a tagging carrier wave, and so is essentially continuous.

I'm not so sure one can tell the level at which the look-up table discretizes
the world from any output from a device using it.  It may be a limit of the
sensors rather than the table.  There's probably no point in having a table
more general than the sensor can recognize but that's another story, or maybe
not.

I think you are saying the Turing Test isn't sufficient to determine
equivalence to the brain.  By its design the Turing test limits behavior
to descrete units (characters).

I believe motion pictures are really descrete images flashed on a screen at
a rate too fast for the brain to process as descrete images.  I wonder if there
is a way to detect the limits of the brain separate from the limits of the body
in which it resides.

>Cheers,
>-- 
>Harry Erwin
>Internet: erwin@trwacs.fp.trw.com

--gary forbis@u.washington.edu

Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon)
Subject: Re: Searle's World and Computers
Organization: HoloNet National Internet Access BBS: 510-704-1058/modem
Date: Tue, 22 Dec 1992 13:01:34 GMT


In article <1gvonvINNil4@fbi-news.Informatik.Uni-Dortmund.DE> ,
heitkoet@lusty.informatik.uni-dortmund.de (Joerg Heitkoetter) writes:

>I thus would recommend all those who study AI shall take courses 
>in biology, psychology, philosophy and other "weired" sciences 
>to get a broader view, and a glimpse of other promising roads to take... 

Taking courses is OK, but not very cost effective.  I would recommend
reading a few highly technical articles in each field, and then spending a
lot of time thinking about it and figuring out what it really means.

For example, they don't teach you in school that the brain is the dumbest
organ in the body.

If you look at DNA as ROM (read only memory), there's nearly a gigabyte in
every human cell.  The machinery of the cell uses that ROM to carry out
biological processes just as a computer uses it's memory to carry out much
simpler tasks.  Saying that cells are computers is not an analogy or a
metaphor, cells ARE computers (and a lot more).

Of all the cells in the body, neurons have the smallest amount of DNA per
unit mass, because they just keep growing and growing without (re)producing
any new DNA (mitochondria excepted).

As we get older, brain mass stays relatively constant, but we keep loosing
neurons and DNA.  Surviving neurons just grow bigger.  This produces severe
bandwidth limitation problems in the cellular machinery.  One nucleus with
a limited capacity for transmitting instructions is asked to service a
larger and larger cell.

Almost all of the computing power in the human body is at the intra-
cellular lever.  A very small percentage is at the macro-cellular lever,
and some of that is carried out by neuron firings. 

--
Ken Easlon                | "...somebody spoke and I went into a dream..."
ken@holonet.net           |    -Paul McCartney
Pleasantly Unaffiliated   |


Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
From: markh@csd4.csd.uwm.edu (Mark)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: The Humongous Look-up Table revisited.
Date: 26 Dec 1992 18:08:25 GMT
Organization: Computing Services Division, University of Wisconsin - Milwaukee
NNTP-Posting-Host: 129.89.7.4

In article <Bzst9t.79B@cmcl2.nyu.edu> silbrmnd@acf3.nyu.edu (Darkmage) writes:
>   Q: What time do you think it is in Seattle right now?
>   A: Uh...  I think it's around {TIME_NOW - 5 HOUR /Hour Only} -ish.

In article <1992Dec26.132916.7342@sophia.smith.edu> orourke@sophia.smith.edu (Joseph O'Rourke) writes:
>	It ceases to be a lookup table if such hooks into the contextual
>reality are permitted.

The Lookup Table
Question Context Answer
Q0       C0      A0,0
         C1      A0,1
...
         Cn      A0,n
Q1       C0      A1,0
         C1      A1,1
...
         Cn      A1,n
...



Any finite function is a de facto lookup table.
From: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Searle's World and Computers
Date: 22 Dec 92 22:23:14 GMT
Reply-To: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu (Christopher Ian Connolly)
Distribution: na
Organization: University of Massachusetts, Amherst
Originator: connolly@piglet.cs.umass.edu


In article <Bznw6n.KJz@iat.holonet.net>, ken@iat.holonet.net (Ken Easlon) writes:
|> For example, they don't teach you in school that the brain is the dumbest
|> organ in the body.

I don't think they're likely to start, either.

|> As we get older, brain mass stays relatively constant, but we keep loosing
|> neurons and DNA. 

Some neuroscientists  (e.g., Calvin and Edelman) argue that this cell loss
actually represents an *accumulation* of information...the darwinian view
of brain development.

|> Surviving neurons just grow bigger.  This produces severe
|> bandwidth limitation problems in the cellular machinery.  One nucleus with
|> a limited capacity for transmitting instructions is asked to service a
|> larger and larger cell.

You're claiming that the increase in cell size limits the "bandwidth", and 
then somehow you link that with the nucleus.  It seems to me that the 
nucleus-ribosome "bandwidth" isn't affected at all here.  What *is* 
affected is the transport time for various important substances
such as ion channels, ion pumps, actin and neurotransmitters.  Even so, this 
appears not to matter in normal brains.

|> Almost all of the computing power in the human body is at the intra-
|> cellular lever.  A very small percentage is at the macro-cellular lever,
|> and some of that is carried out by neuron firings. 

You're pulling our levers, right?  What about gap junctions in liver, 
the immune system, hormones, etc...??
-- 
	-	-	-	-	-	-	-
Christopher Ian Connolly			connolly@cs.umass.edu
Laboratory for Perceptual Robotics		wa2ifi
University of Massachusetts at Amherst		Amherst, MA 01003
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy