some thoughts on intelligence, natural and artificial
rs...@nycap.rr.com
machine known that is capable of producing motor acts that we class as
intelligent. The notion was promulgated at the Dartmouth Summer
Conference that intelligence had been described by the predicate
calculus, and that all that was needed was to mechanize the
manipulative algebra; the platform being irrelevant. This was done,
but with unsatisfactory results.
The basis of the scientific approach is the removal of God from the
Machine. A soul with causal powers is rejected. This is easier said
than done when we deal with the brain. Man wants a thinker. As a first
step, we say that the nineteenth century dodge of postulating a mind
is just that, a dodge. We will try, always, to write soul (mind) to
remind ourselves that intelligence is a quality of the machine, not
the soul (mind). There is to be no thinker.
It is popular among neuroscientists to refer to the neuron as passing
messages, as passing information. Messages are only interpretable by a
soul (mind). A neuron passes pulses. A pulse contains only the
information, “I am here. I am active”.
We assert that any study on intelligence must be rooted in the brain.
It must concern itself with the chemistry and circuitry of the brain.
We reject Emergentism. When we explain the brain, or a computer
simulation of the brain, we are finished. There is no soul (mind) to
appear as resident in the machine.
The classical approach to the brain follows the Bell-Magendie law.
Sensory input leads to motor output. This is a passive view. I suggest
that we can take a more active view by emphasizing circuitry in the
middle, the central pattern generator (CPG). All motor output starts
in a CPG. Without a triggered CPG, an organism does nothing. Without a
triggered CPG, a human is just a lump of clay.
The central pattern generators are constructed by the genome. The
brain is a structure organized by the genome. It enters the world,
ready for action. Workers in Neural Nets could note this. The brain
does not self-organize. The genome does the organization. The brain
adapts itself to the universe that it encounters.
The rules by which the brain adapts are set up by the genome. The
rules are chemical. Axons grow, synapses form. Axons are retracted,
synapses sloughed off. Synapses are strengthened; synapses are
weakened. What else is needed?
Circuitry that motivates the brain is needed, and also circuitry that
halts a motor program en route to execution so that the brain may
think. This need not involve any soul (mind). Various nuclei in the
brain stem provide the gain control. The thalamic reticular nucleus
may halt motor output, and sensory input, except olfactory.
ray
Sir Frederick
But we have our folk lore pragmatic stories, otherwise, and
in the meanwhile. They may be fantasy, but our brain as built
by evolution demands fantasy for now. Just look at the folk lore
fantasy addicted posters around here. They wouldn't know what
to say if you took away their well practiced stories.
Perhaps it takes a touch of insanity for a finite intelligence to
manifest, like ours. Equating our personal brain based virtual
reality with "reality", is a touch of insanity, wouldn't you say?
Immortalist
Maybe we are really like this;
...Brooks's ideas gelled in a cockroachlike contraption the size of a
football called "Genghis." Brooks had pushed his downsizing to an
extreme. Genghis had six legs but no "brain" at all. All of its 12
motors and 21 sensors were distributed in a decomposable network
without a centralized controller. Yet the interaction of these 12
muscles and 21 sensors yielded an amazingly complex and lifelike
behavior.
Each of Genghis's six tiny legs worked on its own, independent of the
others. Each leg had its own ganglion of neural cells-a tiny
microprocessor-that controlled the leg's actions. Each leg thought for
itself! Walking for Genghis then became a group project with at least
six small minds at work. Other small semiminds within its body
coordinated communication between the legs. Entomologists say this is
how ants and real cockroaches cope-they have neurons in their legs
that do the leg's thinking.
In the mobot Genghis, walking emerges out of the collective behavior
of the 12 motors. Two motors at each leg lift, or not, depending on
what the other legs around them are doing. If they activate in the
right sequence-Okay, hup! One, three, six, two, five, four!-walking
"happens."
No one place in the contraption governs walking. Without a smart
central controller, control can trickle up from the bottom. Brooks
called it "bottom-up control." Bottom-up walking. Bottom-up smartness.
If you snip off one leg of a cockroach, it will shift gaits with the
other five without losing a stride. The shift is not learned; it is an
immediate self-reorganization. If you disable one leg of Genghis, the
other legs organize walking around the five that work. They find a new
gait as easily as the cockroach.
In one of his papers, Rod Brooks first laid out his instructions on
how to make a creature walk without knowing how:
There is no central controller which directs the body where to put
each foot or how high to lift a leg should there be an obstacle ahead.
Instead, each leg is granted a few simple behaviors and each
independently knows what to do under various circumstances. For
instance, two basic behaviors can be thought of as "If I'm a leg and
I'm up, put myself down, " or "If I'm a leg and I'm forward, put the
other five legs back a little." These processes exist independently,
run at all times, and fire whenever the sensory preconditions are
true. To create walking then, there just needs to be a sequencing of
lifting legs (this is the only instance where any central control is
evident). As soon as a leg is raised it automatically swings itself
forward, and also down. But the act of swinging forward triggers all
the other legs to move back a little. Since those legs happen to be
touching the ground, the body moves forward.
Once the beast can walk on a flat smooth floor without tripping, other
behaviors can be added to improve the walk. For Genghis to get up and
over a mound of phone books on the floor, it needs a pair of sensing
whiskers to send information from the floor to the first set of legs.
A signal from a whisker can suppress a motor's action. The rule might
be, "If you feel something, I'll stop; if you don't, I'll keep going."
While Genghis learns to climb over an obstacle, the foundational
walking routine is never fiddled with. This is a universal biological
principle that Brooks helped illuminate-a law of god: When something
works, don't mess with it; build on top of it. In natural systems,
improvements are "pasted" over an existing debugged system. The
original layer continues to operate without even being (or needing to
be) aware that it has another layer above it.
When friends give you directions on how to get to their house, they
don't tell you to "avoid hitting other cars" even though you must
absolutely follow this instruction. They don't need to communicate the
goals of lower operating levels because that work is done smoothly by
a well-practiced steering skill. Instead, the directions to their
house all pertain to high-level activities like navigating through a
town.
Animals learn (in evolutionary time) in a similar manner. As do
Brooks's mobots. His machines learn to move through a complicated
world by building up a hierarchy of behaviors, somewhat in this order:
Avoid contact with objects
Wander aimlessly
Explore the world
Build an internal map
Notice changes in the environment
Formulate travel plans
Anticipate and modify plans accordingly
The Wander-Aimlessly Department doesn't give a hoot about obstacles,
since the Avoidance Department takes such good care of that.
Wolf Kirchmeir
> The model for intelligence is the human brain. The brain is the only
> machine known that is capable of producing motor acts that we class as
> intelligent.
Incorrect, hence the rest of the argument is unsound.
[snip]
--
wolf k.
ZerkonX
> The model for intelligence is the human brain. The brain is the only
> machine known that is capable of producing motor acts that we class as
> intelligent.
Yes, agree with Wolf, your base position is weak.
Human intelligence is more than a model, it is the entire definition. A
matter of circular reasoning.
The (human) brain is certainly not the only machine (sic) known to
produce intelligence. Animals have intelligence if clinically observed
behaviors are to be used as criteria.
The word 'intelligence' itself encompasses such a broad conceptual range
of still ill defined attributes that to use it as a mechanical descriptor
( i would say: metaphor) eradicates the notion of 'a machine' altogether.
"All motor output starts in a CPG."
In the area you are discussing, no it does not. The CPG is a result of a
prior design process which takes place inside and is a subset to a
preexisting determining environment. What these determinants are and what
this environment consists of are still largely unknown to science. This
includes, in no uncertain terms, the human hue of the environment.
==============================
" It is true that neither the ancient wisdoms nor the modern sciences
are complete in themselves. They do not stand alone. They call for one
another. Wisdom without science is unable to penetrate the full sapiential
meaning of the created and material cosmos. Science without wisdom
leaves man enslaved to a world of unrelated objects in which there is no
way of discovering (or creating) order and deep significance in man's
own pointless existence. The vocation of modern man was to bring about
their union in preparation for a new age."
Thomas Merton, from the forward to "Gandhi on Non-Violence"
by Mahatma Gandhi
===============================
Religion and science are 'machines', both made by humans. One need not
negate the other.
rs...@nycap.rr.com
The Blank Slate
From Wikipedia—
Tabula rasa (Latin: blank slate) refers to the epistemological thesis
that individual human beings are born with no innate or built-in
mental content, in a word, "blank", and that their entire resource of
knowledge is built up gradually from their experiences and sensory
perceptions of the outside world.
Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favor the "nurture"
side of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of
one's personality, social and emotional behavior, and intelligence.
End Wikipedia
In today’s neurological thought, the brain is seen as fully and
precisely connected by the genome. The circuitry adapts itself to the
impinging universe. Randomness of connection is an erroneus concept
introduced by the neural net people.
Any argument over the relative relationship between the circuitry as
established by the genome, and the circiuitry as adapted to experience
is vacuus.
Of immediate importance to intelligence are the cantral patern
generators. We are born with a full panopoly of potential motor acts
programmed mostly in the brainstem, but we are aware that “born”
stretches over a number of years as the genome connects the neurons.
We cannot produce motor acts di novo. We can only alter the
explication of the central pattern generators. The ability to walk is
not learned. The walking CPG matures over the first two years. Then we
walk.
The ability to produce phonemes develops over the first year. We see
the infant enjoying himself as he babbles. The brain adapts itself to
its surroundings and we learn a languaage. The brain adapts itself to
sequence the phonemes.
The neural net people would do better to design a net with the
circuitry to produce phonemes and then study the adaptation of the net
to produce language.
ray
zzbu...@netscape.net
> The model for intelligence is the human brain. The brain is the only
> machine known that is capable of producing motor acts that we class as
> intelligent. The notion was promulgated at the Dartmouth Summer
> Conference that intelligence had been described by the predicate
> calculus, and that all that was needed was to mechanize the
> manipulative algebra; the platform being irrelevant. This was done,
> but with unsatisfactory results.
That is very simple to undestand why, since the predicate calculus
has more to with *summer* that it does with *intelligence*.
With is mostly why Adaptive Optics, Digital Communications,
Digital Terrain Mapping, Robots, Microcomputers, fiber optics,
lasers,
masers, satellites, GPS, Lunar Rockets, Cruise Missiles,
Laser-Guided Bombs, HDTV, CD, DVD, Holograms, Cell Phones,
and evolution were invented for the idiots in the Ivy league and
M.I.T.
ZerkonX
> The Blank Slate
>
> From Wikipedia—
> Generally proponents of the tabula rasa thesis favor the "nurture" side
> of the nature versus nurture debate, when it comes to aspects of one's
> personality, social and emotional behavior, and intelligence. End
> Wikipedia
this binary, either/or concept, while serving as basis for constructive
discussion, even study, is primitive. Drawing such absolute distinctions
about such unknowns is a matter justified only by utility, not by any
real understanding.
> In today’s neurological thought, the brain is seen as fully and
> precisely connected by the genome. The circuitry adapts itself to the
> impinging universe. Randomness of connection is an erroneus concept
> introduced by the neural net people.
"adapts itself" is leapfrogging over a vast uncertainty ( as in: HOW? and
WHY?) not really settled with the word 'circuitry'. If the brain is seen
as 'precisely connected', it would seem any evolutionary mutation, or
change, impossible.
> Any argument over the relative relationship between the circuitry as
> established by the genome, and the circiuitry as adapted to experience
> is vacuus.
>
> Of immediate importance to intelligence are the cantral patern
> generators. We are born with a full panopoly of potential motor acts
> programmed mostly in the brainstem, but we are aware that “born”
> stretches over a number of years as the genome connects the neurons.
>
> We cannot produce motor acts di novo. We can only alter the explication
> of the central pattern generators. The ability to walk is not learned.
> The walking CPG matures over the first two years. Then we walk.
No, first we must practice. Walking does necessarily happen with the
physical ability to do so. Walking needs additional circumstance.
What is "Programmed into something" must be "programmed by something
else". If the brain "adapts itself" then does it then program itself
also? Is this is so, the use of "machine", circuit's and central Pattern
generators becomes a matter of clever analogy than any exact description.
If the point of arrival in all of this is - if one knowns something about
how this is done then those knowledgeable can do it instead of the brain
itself, or, the individuals themselves, the question then is, on what
authority and to what end?
Entertained by my own EIMC
such as ZerkonX (and others left unmentioned) that bother to respond and put
their views forward in this and other NG-forums.