Posted on 06/02/2003 1:46:54 PM PDT by Heartlander
I don't know that too many people look at the problem like this. For one intelligence to create another equal intelligence, one only has to do two things. First, one has to discover/invent a clever finite control function (which any reasonably good intelligence could theoretically do), that efficiently converts the Kolmogorov complexity of a state machine into intelligence. Second, one must be able to build such a state machine that is sufficiently large that it will exhibit the same effective KC as the intelligence that created it when applying the control function.
That control function is the part that requires real cleverness, but it is a small finite thing that does not vary with the amount of intelligence expressed with it. Increasing the KC of a state machine amounts to increasing the working memory of it, and things like Moore's law work inexorably towards that end. Therefore, once you've solved the problem of a tractable finite control function, you've solved the problem of intelligence of all types. For most of the history of computer science, the control functions that have been known in this space were so egregiously poor that they have only been tractable for nothing but toy problems no matter how much hardware we threw at them. This has been changing as a new class of control functions have been discovered in the last couple years that seem to be very reasonably tractable to high complexity. When these new algorithms make it into the commercial space, I think it will fundamentally change the view of the types of things computers can do because they break certain assumed limitations of computers.
As numerous studies have shown, people's "intuition" has a terrible track record, ranging from being statistically no better than a "wild-assed guess" to WORSE than statistical chance. When people use facts and reasoning, they get the answer right more often than not even in the absence of complete information. When they use intuition, a betting man will say they are wrong, a fact supported by actual statistical studies of "intuition". Intuition is highly over-rated and what liberals rely on absent their ability to reason.
One can assert intuition as a reason, but someone else could just as easily show that this fact alone indicates that they are wrong more likely than not. At best it makes for a highly unqualified argument. Like everyone else I have intuitive impulses as well, but I know better than to use them as a "reason" for anything.
Shucks, tp, you found me out. Yes, I am God. I've just been participating in FR in order to learn, especially from your feedback. But you were too wise for me. You've put me in my place.
</sarcasm drippings> ;-`
Whether one has accurate data or not, when people use facts and reasoning without intuition... well that just doesn't happen. ;-) Also, "here 'you' go again..." making the same error that we've been talking about over and over and over again. Your statement presumes we may attain to some deific epistemological state where we may gain some set called "complete information."
Seems to me that in your post you are positing as if one uses intuition only (and wrongly) in the realm that is rightly that of reason. Of course one doesn't use intuition to calculate. (Though you do use it in order to let you know something about what your calculations are good for and not.) Here again, it's a matter of definition and semantics.
I'm not speaking of intuition as if it were making up the answer (like picking a horse to bet on out of the blue). I'm referring to intuition in its place, without which we have no basis at all for reason. I am speaking of getting to know reality... getting to know what truths are, by their natures and the imagery of the inner man (may be an objectionable term, how about 'less sensorily specified') first, what reason may properly be applied to, and how, and why.
You won't find many scientists devising experiments (thought experiments or physical ones) without intuition.
You can tell me facts and calculations without applying much intuition, but try telling me about the nature and behavior of functions in a system without applying your intuition.
Why do you have intuition, as well as reason? What is a productive interplay? If reason has a specialty which may be called logic, does intuition have a specialty? What is that? (Presuming that you believe in evolution theory and that each of the aspects of your behavior are fit for survival/reproduction.)
The point at 947 was particularly interesting since I had just minutes before read this article by Karl Popper: Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification," 1963.
I agree with you that intuition is a very good thing for the troubleshooter, the soldier, the parent, the artist and a vast number of scenarios. In many instances the intuition is “informed” by training, qualia and past experience.
But intuition in science can be problematic, because charismatic theories are not true by popular intuitive vote. That’s where the Popper article comes in. You might be interested in this excerpt:
The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations." …
These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows.
1. It is easy to obtain confirmations, or verifications, for nearly every theory — if we look for confirmations.
2. Confirmations should count only if they are the result of risky predictions; that is to say, if, unenlightened by the theory in question, we should have expected an event which was incompatible with the theory — an event which would have refuted the theory.
3. Every "good" scientific theory is a prohibition: it forbids certain things to happen. The more a theory forbids, the better it is.
4. A theory which is not refutable by any conceivable event is non-scientific. Irrefutability is not a virtue of a theory (as people often think) but a vice.
5. Every genuine test of a theory is an attempt to falsify it, or to refute it. Testability is falsifiability; but there are degrees of testability: some theories are more testable, more exposed to refutation, than others; they take, as it were, greater risks.
6. Confirming evidence should not count except when it is the result of a genuine test of the theory; and this means that it can be presented as a serious but unsuccessful attempt to falsify the theory. (I now speak in such cases of "corroborating evidence.")
7. Some genuinely testable theories, when found to be false, are still upheld by their admirers — for example by introducing ad hoc some auxiliary assumption, or by reinterpreting the theory ad hoc in such a way that it escapes refutation. Such a procedure is always possible, but it rescues the theory from refutation only at the price of destroying, or at least lowering, its scientific status. (I later described such a rescuing operation as a "conventionalist twist" or a "conventionalist stratagem.")
One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.
The point at 947 was particularly interesting since I had just minutes before read this article by Karl Popper: Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification," 1963.
I agree with you that intuition is a very good thing for the troubleshooter, the soldier, the parent, the artist and a vast number of scenarios. In many instances the intuition is “informed” by training, qualia and past experience.
Well.... Thank you very much for your relating this, about falsification. Of course, intuition is necessary, in order to even come up with attempts to falsify, right. It is difficult I'd say, to come up with many experiments that aren't developed by a scientist's imagining of at least elements of it, in order to devise it.
To me, while Popper's discontent with confirmation is very valid, I think that at heart this is a matter of man's overconfidence and overextentions of his pet theories (especially in the theorist's heart). -- I suppose then, a a struggle with evidences is what it is at head. ;-) Pinging bb here, since I think she also has a pet theory of the overextension of theories by theorists!
And as it happens, djf was just telling me about Kurt Godel and A. S. Eddington.
What would Godel have to say about Popper's confidence that anything that can be falsified is untrue? (But then, not even mathematics provides "proof" in quite the way that objective physical evidence is scientific proof.)
(This particular tangent of mine came from my disagreement with way of dismissing Heartlander's little parable of the thinking machine and the programmer out of hand, based upon a kind of anecdotal use of scientific evidence. Heartlander was dealing with matters beyond physical sciences, in a very logical little fable about consciousness not being subsumptive of consciouslessness.)
This particular tangent of mine came from my disagreement with tortoise's way of dismissing Heartlander's little parable of the thinking machine and the programmer out of hand, based upon a kind of anecdotal use of scientific evidence. Heartlander was dealing with matters beyond physical sciences, in a very logical little fable about consciousness not being subsumptive of consciouslessness.
And in naming, I should ping.
But in case tp is reading this, "Enough about me...."
My point in bringing up Popper was to illustrate the tendency of some to "annoint" a scientific theory as true, without putting it to a rigorous test.
IOW, intuition would not be helpful in determining the truth of Einstein's theories and would be misleading with Marx.
I think you are really referring to learned heuristics, rules and patterns that we've learned and can apply them without conscious intent. The difference being that if you really think about why you intuited something, you can come up with a reasonable explanation. Intuition typically fails because the learned scope is much narrower than the attempted application.
The problem (and I've had this discussion about the definition of "intuition" before) is that there isn't a really clear definition of what that means. Some would say that it only applies to subconscious rational heuristics, while many people actually do define it to include a lot of irrational emotionally driven (lack of) reasoning. It is hard to know if I agree or disagree with a person on the issue of "intuition" because that term has particularly fuzzy definition in general usage.
I'm pondering on this and cannot visualize any form of intuition that would not have a basis in past experience, sense, thought symbol/language or preference. I don't know how they could be excluded, especially in the subconscious.
My dismissal was neither arbitrary nor capricious. Heartlanders construction, and even the very argument of subsumption, is essentially a false dichotomy or at the very least a strawman. I was (sort of) yanking things back on track.
Now, if you are asserting that this discussion has transcended into the metaphysical and thereby dismissing any requirements for grounding in rigor or mathematics, then I'm fine with that and I'll just shut up. But as far as I knew we weren't going there. Somewhere a couple towns back the discussion jumped its tracks or at least took a strange turn. Certainly some of the assumptions of the current discussion (re: subsumption) are very strange and don't seem particularly reasonable to me. It's all good though, and it isn't like this is my thread or anything.
That's my general take, but I've gotten into heated discussions about this very issue. Even among mathematicians there seems to be a desire to elevate intuition to the status of "sacred" or "mystical" despite what (to me) seems to be a complete lack of justification. People have a strong emotional attachment to their "intuition", probably because they'd have to explain themselves more often if they couldn't use that as an excuse. :-)
I generally avoid that argument as fruitless; it is usually a religious argument even for people that aren't religious. I don't go about tipping sacred cows without a good reason.
I'm not seeing a religious issue here. Where there is a spiritual revelation, it is sensed spiritually or mentally.
The same would be true for precognition, retrocognition, clairvoyance, telepathy, near death experiences. And from the other end - prayer, worship, spiritual discernment - come from the inner man as language, symbol or emotion.
I imagine we'd have to get "inside" the fetal mind to formulate a test to determine the point just before these emotions and thoughts arise, i.e. the clean slate, is there any intuition there? That may be beyond our technical capabilities.
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