The MIST Item Corpus Project is the largest (in terms of participants) Artificial Intelligence project in human history. This is due entirely to the WWW and people like you. The goal of this project is to make a high resolution conceptual map of human cognition. This map will be used in various research projects and might well become the basis of an artificially conscious computer system.
Please visit MISTIC and contribute your own items, such as these:
Beds can be used to sit on. :true When gardens are in bloom they attract more interest. :true All dimensions of a container must be considered to dermine its volume. :true At birth, human beings can walk on two feet. :false Orange juice tastes bad, for a short time, after brushing your teeth. :true Most people sleep with their eyes closed. :true Swimming with ski pants on is more difficult than swimming nude. :true In 1977, the Earth revolved around two suns. : false -- K. Christopher McKinstry Homepage: Http://www.clickable.com/employees/chris World's Largest AI Project: Http://www.clickable.com/mist_corpus.html World's Coolest Interactive Drama http://www.cr6.com
Jim Balter <j...@netcom.com> writes: >Christopher McKinstry wrote: >> MISTIC (Minimum Intelligent Signal Test Item Corpus) >> http://www.clickable.com/mist_corpus.html has passed 350,000 item pairs >> as of March 22, 1997. >> The MIST Item Corpus Project is the largest (in terms of participants) >> Artificial Intelligence project in human history. >And the least intelligent. >> Beds can be used to sit on. :true >> All dimensions of a container must be considered to dermine its volume. >> :true
Well, the "Cyc" database is rather like that, although better organized for machine processing.
Jim, MISTIC has a very simple purpose... build a test that can tell the difference between a human and a random system with a very high degree of accracy. Every single question that has a high between human stability is important.
This project has been set up to continue to collect data long after both you and I are dead. It's bigger than me, it's bigger than you, and more important than either of us.
History will not be kind to your attitude if it remembers you at all.
John Nagle wrote: > Well, the "Cyc" database is rather like that, although better > organized for machine processing.
> John Nagle
Cyc is private, and not available to the public. As well, Cyc is top down... it takes well trained knowledge engineers to enter data into Cyc.
MISTIC is made by the public, for the public(it will be released after we publish, of course). It is completely bottom up. Everything that requires a knowledge engineer on Cyc, will be discovered automatically with anaylsis of the MISTIC db.
MISTIC's primary purpose is to build a map of human consciousness. The only people that have ever seen an actual visual map (adaptive-subspace self-organizing map) of human consciousness are on the MISTIC team... it's lowres right now, but we know what it looks like (very fractal)... most everyone else will have to wait until after it makes the cover of Science.
In article <3337F1EC.1...@clickable.com>, Christopher McKinstry <ch...@clickable.com> wrote:
>Jim, MISTIC has a very simple purpose... build a test that can tell the >difference between a human and a random system with a very high degree >of accracy.
Please explain; - what you mean by a "random system", - why distinguishing humans from such a system is an interesting task, - what role your collection of "facts" has in performing this task.
Christopher McKinstry wrote: > This project has been set up to continue to collect data long after both > you and I are dead. It's bigger than me, it's bigger than you, and more > important than either of us.
What is big here is McKinstry's ego, like the ego of every crackpot who thinks they have discovered or invented something of significance.
> > Well, the "Cyc" database is rather like that, although better > > organized for machine processing.
> > John Nagle
Both Cyc and MISTIC follow a similar approach of assembling a large fact base as a route toward achieving human-level AI. This approach in itself cannot be sufficient to achieve human-level AI -- babies are not born knowing all the commonsense facts in Cyc, they acquire these facts as a result of a general-purpose innate intelligence that has yet to be emulated.
Beyond this surface level similarity, Cyc is quite different, and far more advanced, than the ramblings of MISTIC. Cyc provides an ontology for real-world knowledge within which one can state both commonsense facts and their exceptions. Cyc supports inference and natural language disambiguation. McKinstry has not yet posted any description of how MISTIC might provide these things. Cyc is a valid large-scale contribution to the field of AI. MISTIC is not.
> Cyc is private, and not available to the public.
Not exactly -- Cyc is commercially available, with limitations.
> As well, Cyc is top > down... it takes well trained knowledge engineers to enter data into > Cyc.
The entry of knowledge into Cyc by well-trained engineers has been both a bottom up and top down process.
> MISTIC is made by the public, for the public(it will be released after > we publish, of course).
Which means it is still private, though it has been created by public contributions. McKinstry is like an inverted Robin Hood, taking from the public to give to himself, though he has little chance of doing anything useful with the input he is gathering.
> It is completely bottom up. Everything that > requires a knowledge engineer on Cyc, will be discovered automatically > with anaylsis of the MISTIC db.
How? What kind of analysis? This is a very challenging research topic. McKinstry has not yet posted anything substantive about such things will be discovered automatically -- Rather he has stated vaguely:
"My assertion is that [properties of human intelligence such as creativity, reasoning, problem-solving, learning] are emergent properties of a sufficiently large MIST database. Statistical systems, such as neural nets can effectively cluster the raw MIST data and generalize responses to stimuli that have not been seen by the system before. Just as humans do."
This statement by him is completely ludicrous.
> MISTIC's primary purpose is to build a map of human consciousness.
Again, McKinstry tosses terms around loosely. To suggest that a collection of true/false pseudo-facts is a map of either consciousness or intelligence is ridiculous.
> The only people that have ever seen an actual visual map (adaptive-subspace > self-organizing map) of human consciousness are on the MISTIC team...
No, these may be the only people who have deluded themselves into thinking they are looking at a map of human consciousness.
> it's lowres right now, but we know what it looks like (very fractal)...
The reason McKinstry thinks it looks fractal is suggested by the following excerpt of a previous posting:
CM: "For example, MIST items cluster reasonable well when simply sorted alaphabetically."
PCJ: "No. For perhaps any two English sentences that you have sorted together alphabetically and claim cluster together well, one can probably easily construct other sentences that would fit between them and cluster differently. For example, suppose MIST contained the following two sentences which sort and cluster together:
Potatoes are good to eat. : true Potatoes are nutritious. : true
"Then one could easily add the following sentences between them:
Potatoes are gooey : false Potatoes are noisy : false"
Unlike the MISTIC pseudo-fact base, a truly fractal structure has a definite pattern (which repeats at different scales of observation), and which can be described mathematically and recreated exactly. In contrast the MISTIC pseudo-fact base has a completely arbitrary structure that can be manipulated ad nauseum to create any kind of pattern desired.
> most everyone else will have to wait until after it makes the cover of > Science.
Don't hold your breath.
Phil Jackson -------------------------------------------------------------------- "...for the word is the sole sign and the only certain mark of the presence of thought hidden and wrapt up in the body..." -- Descartes -------------------------------------------------------------------- Standard Disclaimers. <pjack...@ic.net>
David G. Mitchell wrote: > Please explain; > - what you mean by a "random system",
all current non-human systems would be classified as random systems. specifically a random system is a system that score .5 (half correct/half incorrect) on a MIST Test.
> - why distinguishing humans from such a system is an interesting task,
because and deviation from random can be amplified. for example a feedback system such as a neural net could be trained on MIST items. with a large enough number of items, any "chance correctness" can be amplified by that feedback system. thus, eventually in a MIST domain, it would become increasingly hard to distinguish human from machine.
> - what role your collection of "facts" has in performing this task.
i started the project and maintain the systems to collect the data.
jim, just ignore the whole thing. take a deep breath. the data collection can't possibly hurt you, so don't worry about it. take your destructive tendencies elsewhere.
Jim Balter wrote:
> Christopher McKinstry wrote:
> > This project has been set up to continue to collect data long after both > > you and I are dead. It's bigger than me, it's bigger than you, and more > > important than either of us.
> What is big here is McKinstry's ego, like the ego of every crackpot > who thinks they have discovered or invented something of significance.
>The MIST Item Corpus Project is the largest (in terms of participants) >Artificial Intelligence project in human history. This is due entirely >to the WWW and people like you. The goal of this project is to make a >high resolution conceptual map of human cognition.
Amazing that scientists would ever resist learning something new, eh?
I think you'll demonstrate a close mimic of human mentation and teach us all a lot besides.
Weighting is an issue, but if repeated inputs count repeatedly it should work out.
Somehow the core stuff, like desire to continue living and to replicate have to settle deep in the db. Intention makes choices count, seperates the impersonal man in the Chinese room from the vulnerable self. If your system self-organizes as though it had something to lose, it'll shock the naysayers.
Along those lines, how are you recognizing statements of organization? Many of our most important meanings are rules about organizing meanings. In other words, the hierarchy of meaning isn't democratic.
The only other thing is that your mind will be affected by the medium of collection. It will most resemble an adolescent boy. :-)
> "My assertion is that [properties of human intelligence such as > creativity, reasoning, problem-solving, learning] are emergent > properties of a sufficiently large MIST database. Statistical systems, > such as neural nets can effectively cluster the raw MIST data and > generalize responses to stimuli that have not been seen by the system > before. Just as humans do."
that's my assertion, and i'm sticking to it.
> CM: "For example, MIST items cluster reasonable well when simply sorted > alaphabetically."
this is quite out of context, but it happens to be true. however, MIST self organize much, much better. the MISTIC sampling captures what we are at very high resolution. everything we are can be derived from a sufficiently large MIST item database. such a database needs no exteranl references to the world, no knowledge engineers.
one could change every word in the database to something random, and looking at the self organized clusters, one could very easily translate it back to english, because it's a map of thought not language.
MISTIC makes the conceptual structures of our consciousness just as visible as a cat scan or mri makes visible the structures of our brains. the concept, process and the math are identical. the only difference is that human conscious is an object that exists in a much higher dimensionality, than the 3-d physical brain.
MISTIC is high dimensional tomography. CYC is an attempt to build a high dimensionality object from scratch, without ever seeing one.
When my best friend Naiden and I played the game of kings as teen- agers, Naiden laughed at my attempt to create a chess computer by listing on sheets of paper all best responses to his chess moves. He pointed out that I could never gather up a list of all gambits and likewise people are now rushing to critique the MIST Project.
Thus Philip Jackson comments on what Christopher McKinstry wrote:
>> MISTIC is made by the public, for the public (it will be released >> after we publish, of course). > Which means it is still private, though it has been created by > public contributions. McKinstry is like an inverted Robin Hood, > taking from the public to give to himself, though he has little > chance of doing anything useful with the input he is gathering.
Mr. McKinstry has the same chance that T. Edison had to invent an electric light, or that U.S. President Jimmy Carter had to create peace between Egypt and Israel. Philip Jackson has a clever wit, with his remark above about Robin Hood, but the world needs those who dream and fail, and then dream again as perhaps Mr. McKinstry does in his AI work. Naiden laughed at Murray in 1962, but 1997:
Footnote to history: Naiden's father, who taught at The Lakeside School in Seattle, caused Microsoft to come into existence by re- questing of the Lakeside Mothers Club that they give one thousand dollars for the purpose of buying computer timeshare for students with the result that Gates and Allen used up all the time and.... For photo of Naiden see NYT 25.MAR.1993 C-19, facing John Hersey.
Chris Hooley wrote: > The only other thing is that your mind will be affected by the medium > of collection. It will most resemble an adolescent boy. :-)
there's a whole pile of items in the db like the following:
do you feel lonely at time? true when peole laugh at you do you sometime feel bad? true the older you get the more mortal you feel. true
and so on... thus, the human emotional factor is also captured in MISTIC. there's some very advanced stuff in there. it is becomming very human. a complete adualt consciousness can be captured with enough MIST items... not just an adolescent boy. (why you specified a sex, i have no idea). -- K. Christopher McKinstry Homepage: Http://www.clickable.com/employees/chris World's Largest AI Project: Http://www.clickable.com/mist_corpus.html World's Coolest Interactive Drama http://www.cr6.com
> Philip Jackson wrote: > <snip> > > "My assertion is that [properties of human intelligence such as > > creativity, reasoning, problem-solving, learning] are emergent > > properties of a sufficiently large MIST database. Statistical systems, > > such as neural nets can effectively cluster the raw MIST data and > > generalize responses to stimuli that have not been seen by the system > > before. Just as humans do."
> that's my assertion, and i'm sticking to it.
Just to be clear for other readers, the statements in quotes above are McKinstry's, not mine. He is repeating above that these statements in quotes are his assertion. His <snip> elided my reference that he had made the quoted statements. In my view, McKinstry's statements are a very overblown, ludicrous claim and he has not yet provided any substantiation for his claim.
[...]
> everything we are can be derived from a > sufficiently large MIST item database. such a database needs no exteranl > references to the world, no knowledge engineers.
Yes, and pigs can fly.
> one could change every word in the database to something random, and > looking at the self organized clusters, one could very easily translate > it back to english, because it's a map of thought not language.
> MISTIC makes the conceptual structures of our consciousness just as > visible as a cat scan or mri makes visible the structures of our brains. > the concept, process and the math are identical. the only difference is > that human conscious is an object that exists in a much higher > dimensionality, than the 3-d physical brain. [...]
You have yet to prove or substantiate any of your claims. Put up or shut up. A claim that all this will happen eventually, without any substantive description of how, is just as vacuous and unsubstantiated as all your other claims.
Phil Jackson -------------------------------------------------------------------- "...for the word is the sole sign and the only certain mark of the presence of thought hidden and wrapt up in the body..." -- Descartes -------------------------------------------------------------------- Standard Disclaimers. <pjack...@ic.net>
> Chris Hooley wrote: > > The only other thing is that your mind will be affected by the medium > > of collection. It will most resemble an adolescent boy. :-)
> there's a whole pile of items in the db like the following:
> do you feel lonely at time? true > when peole laugh at you do you sometime feel bad? true > the older you get the more mortal you feel. true
Sounds like a Scientology questionnaire.
Actually I think MIST is an intelligence test of sorts. Intelligent people understand what's wrong with it.
Sometimes I feel lonely. True. Sometimes I don't feel lonely. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another dollar. True. Sometimes I dont't think I'd be happy with just another dollar. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 2 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 2 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 3 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 3 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 4 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 4 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 5 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 5 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 6 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 6 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 7 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 7 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 8 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 8 dollars. True. Sometimes I think I'd be happy with just another 9 dollars. True. Sometimes I don't think I'd be happy with just another 9 dollars. True. Sometimes I feel just like a monkey at a typewriteglumphghx. Yep.
> Chris Hooley wrote: > > The only other thing is that your mind will be affected by the medium > > of collection. It will most resemble an adolescent boy. :-)
> there's a whole pile of items in the db like the following:
> do you feel lonely at time? true > when peole laugh at you do you sometime feel bad? true > the older you get the more mortal you feel. true
> and so on... thus, the human emotional factor is also captured in > MISTIC. there's some very advanced stuff in there. it is becomming very > human. a complete adualt consciousness can be captured with enough MIST > items... not just an adolescent boy. (why you specified a sex, i have no > idea).
Here McKinstry forgets another element of human intelligence and consciousness that is context dependent. (Perhaps because he has no idea what sex is? Perhaps McKinstry is really a an 8 year old?) MISTIC could flunk the first Turing Test it gets when someone asks whether it's male or female, and then asks further questions specific to adult males and females.
Phil Jackson -------------------------------------------------------------------- "...for the word is the sole sign and the only certain mark of the presence of thought hidden and wrapt up in the body..." -- Descartes -------------------------------------------------------------------- Standard Disclaimers. <pjack...@ic.net>
Philip Jackson wrote: > You have yet to prove or substantiate any of your claims. Put up or shut > up. A claim that all this will happen eventually, without any > substantive description of how, is just as vacuous and unsubstantiated > as all your other claims.
what i claim is tangental to the project of data collection. don't worry about it. just bite your tounge, ignore my claims and put some data in the MISTIC database.
> what i claim is tangental to the project of data collection. don't worry > about it. just bite your tounge, ignore my claims and put some data in > the MISTIC database.
> it doesn't matter if my claims turn out to be true or not. the data is > important.
Chris- The "higher dimensionality" you refer to is associated with the square root of minus one ( i ) - the true symbol of consciousness. It has an unsolvable quality to it, which leads me to believe that project MYSTIC will come to a dead end. You are welcome to add this question to the database: Does the square root of minus one have an easy solution? : false See http://home.inreach.com/davhatch/Theory/index.html for more about the identity between consciousness and the square root of minus one ( i ). - Dave
Christopher McKinstry <ch...@clickable.com> wrote in article <333C597E.4...@clickable.com>...
> > You have yet to prove or substantiate any of your claims. Put up or shut > > up. A claim that all this will happen eventually, without any > > substantive description of how, is just as vacuous and unsubstantiated > > as all your other claims.
> what i claim is tangental to the project of data collection. don't worry > about it. just bite your tounge, ignore my claims and put some data in > the MISTIC database.
> Chris Hooley wrote: > > The only other thing is that your mind will be affected by the medium > > of collection. It will most resemble an adolescent boy. :-)
> there's a whole pile of items in the db like the following:
> do you feel lonely at time? true > when peole laugh at you do you sometime feel bad? true > the older you get the more mortal you feel. true
> and so on... thus, the human emotional factor is also captured in > MISTIC. there's some very advanced stuff in there. it is becomming very > human. a complete adualt consciousness can be captured with enough MIST > items... not just an adolescent boy. (why you specified a sex, i have no > idea). > -- > K. Christopher McKinstry > Homepage: Http://www.clickable.com/employees/chris > World's Largest AI Project: Http://www.clickable.com/mist_corpus.html > World's Coolest Interactive Drama http://www.cr6.com
