How Robots Will Steal Your Job
Arthur T. Murray
> performance will have been raised to at least human levels,
> at least not long before.
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/java.html AI Blog is a start :-)
>
> Hans-Georg
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>> [...] Human-level AI is unlikely to exist before single computer
>> performance will have been raised to at least human levels,
>> at least not long before.
It is very sneaky how AI sneaks up on you. Back in the 70s I wrote a
program called Optow that designed high voltage transmission lines.
The engineers used to come back each day to laugh at its designs it
plotted I had posted on the wall. Each day I polished its algorithms.
It got better and better. One day it was as smart as a human. A week
later it was 10% better (designed lines that met all safety criteria
and were 10% cheaper to build). ALL OF A SUDDEN ( as least from the
engineers' point of view) this thing suddenly flipped from being a
joke to a terrible threat that cost the jobs of 50 Phds and Masters
degree engineers.
The other thing that was spooky was the "style" it had in designing.
You could recognize an engineer's style, and my program had one too.
YET I DID NOT PUT IN ANY CODE FOR A STYLE. It just emerged from all
the trigonometric equations.
It used somewhat more sophisticated math than the engineers used to
check, simply because it was too much effort for the engineers to do
detailed checks by hand. They mostly eyeballed and checked only iffy
sections.
I suggested that the designs it came up with were Deacon's One Horse
Shays. Every constraint was pushed to the limit at every point. There
was no fat in the designs. The safety criteria devised over the years
were based on the fact that humans could not do that, and so perhaps
the safety criteria should be bumped up to compensate.
I suspect the same thing will happen for AI driving. We will have
automated busses and taxis without drivers that will rapidly take
over. In Vancouver we have had driverless subways since 1986.
That will cause a push for high speed lanes for driverless traffic,
which will eventually push human drivers off the freeways altogether.
We are a strange species. We create like mad to put ourselves out of
jobs and surround ourselves with abundance, then sit unemployed in
poverty refusing to eat of the fruits of our creativity. All the
benefits of new technology go to a tiny elite. Surely some of it
should go to the displaced. See http://mindprod.com/work.html
--
Canadian Mind Products, Roedy Green.
Coaching, problem solving, economical contract programming.
See http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html for The Java Glossary.
Eric Sosman
>
> On 20 Aug 2003 09:23:47 -0800, uj...@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray)
> wrote or quoted :
>
> >> [...] Human-level AI is unlikely to exist before single computer
> >> performance will have been raised to at least human levels,
> >> at least not long before.
>
> It is very sneaky how AI sneaks up on you. Back in the 70s I wrote a
> program called Optow that designed high voltage transmission lines.
> The engineers used to come back each day to laugh at its designs it
> plotted I had posted on the wall. Each day I polished its algorithms.
> It got better and better. One day it was as smart as a human. A week
> later it was 10% better (designed lines that met all safety criteria
> and were 10% cheaper to build). ALL OF A SUDDEN ( as least from the
> engineers' point of view) this thing suddenly flipped from being a
> joke to a terrible threat that cost the jobs of 50 Phds and Masters
> degree engineers.
Just how much of the now-infamous "Erie Loop" was
designed by Roedy's program?
(Sorry; couldn't resist ;-)
Alan Balmer
wrote:
>It used somewhat more sophisticated math than the engineers used to
>check, simply because it was too much effort for the engineers to do
>detailed checks by hand. They mostly eyeballed and checked only iffy
>sections.
A key point. Cooperation between the engineers and the computer can be
even more productive. Years ago, when I worked at Bausch & Lomb (in
electronics, not optical engineering) I was told that many of their
breakthrough products (Cinemascope, stay-in-focus zoom lenses, etc)
were the result of engineers being able to use the computer to develop
designs which would otherwise have taken inordinate amounts of time.
Engineers were suddenly free to explore ideas which would previously
not have been feasible to research.
--
Al Balmer
Balmer Consulting
removebalmerc...@att.net
Ian Woods
news:6jj7kvod5hvh63ovu...@4ax.com:
This is why I'm interested in more and more powerful computing platforms.
It's all very well being able to watch Lara's almost inhumanly larges
breasts rendered in realtime, but it's not exactly useful.
It's often trivial to describe the model for a problem such that it's
something along the lines of:
make something which meets these criteria, as well as is possible.
For most applications this is producing a function which tests how
'good' a given guess is with some optional contraints. The obvious
progression is to shove it into a computer which selects guesses which
'optimise' this function. There are of course piles of other
'optimisation' problems, and algorithms which attempt to solve them,
about selecting good or near optimal solutions for different kinds of
problems.
Such a function is often trivial to produce compared to solving the
problem containing it. The algorithms which solve these problems are
often expensive to compute without a large amount of mathematical
analysis to make it more computable.
One thing that is clear: the faster computers get and the faster the
algorithms, the number of problems which can be explored increases. The
faster, the more variables can be handle, better solutions found or even
(*gasp*) whole new problems which could never be solved well suddenly
become solvable.
It's a shame that most of the computing power in the world is actually
spent on almost useless triviality. We're not short of processing power,
but we're definately short on co-ordinating it effectively!
Ian Woods
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
> Just how much of the now-infamous "Erie Loop" was
>designed by Roedy's program?
My job was to make sure the lines did not fall down, or droop too low,
from ice loading or high winds. After I left the company I heard that
the program continued to be used to design most of the lines in
British Columbia and then the went on to use it to design lines in
Brazil as well. McDonnell Douglas bought a copy of the program for
$30,000, so it may have been used in the USA as well.
There was a Hungarian refugee Arpad Molnar who did the programs to
deal with protection faults -- a bit of a black art, figuring out how
to recover instantly from various failures.
I find it highly peculiar there has been so much finger pointing as to
who screwed up over the huge East Coast blackout. Even the technology
of the 70s should have made it clear what happened.
The basic problem is having a huge peak load from the heat wave and
not enough reserve to cover it. In that sense, the entire grid is
culpable.
Nobody seems willing to invest in the logical technology: devices the
electric utilities can automatically cut back in times of peak load.
Customers willing to spread their load or forgo peak load times,
should be rewarded.
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>Engineers were suddenly free to explore ideas which would previously
>not have been feasible to research.
The computer tools of the early 70 revolved around the punch card and
very specific applications. The word processor on the Apple ][ was
one of the first tools I saw that was designed to be a generic
open-ended tool. There was ICES (wire frame structural analysis) but
nothing like the delightful graphical tools of today that invite
exploration.
Python adds to java a way of rapidly pulling together canned bits for
experimentation. We may also need a more visual way, perhaps using a
plumbing metaphor where you plug outputs into inputs, and the "pipes"
are colour coded for compatibility, and automatically try to connect
themselves when there is no ambiguity.
Sudsy
<snip>
> Nobody seems willing to invest in the logical technology: devices the
> electric utilities can automatically cut back in times of peak load.
> Customers willing to spread their load or forgo peak load times,
> should be rewarded.
And they are! Companies able and willing to accept interruptions at
times of peak load pay less for their energy. These programs have
been around for years; they're even available in Ontario.
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>And they are! Companies able and willing to accept interruptions at
>times of peak load pay less for their energy. These programs have
>been around for years; they're even available in Ontario.
Quite right. Pulp mills, aluminum smelters and other big power users
have such agreements. However, I figure it should not be rocket
science to build that into all kinds of home appliances, particularly
hot water heaters, freezers and air conditioners,
David Zimmerman
Roedy Green wrote:
> On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:45:06 -0400, Sudsy <bitbu...@hotmail.com>
> wrote or quoted :
>
>
>>And they are! Companies able and willing to accept interruptions at
>>times of peak load pay less for their energy. These programs have
>>been around for years; they're even available in Ontario.
>
>
> Quite right. Pulp mills, aluminum smelters and other big power users
> have such agreements. However, I figure it should not be rocket
> science to build that into all kinds of home appliances, particularly
> hot water heaters, freezers and air conditioners,
Years ago I had an hot water heater that only heated at night when power
was cheaper. It was a big tank so it would last all day (most days)
Roedy Green
<dz...@hiddenmind.com> wrote or quoted :
>Years ago I had an hot water heater that only heated at night when power
>was cheaper. It was a big tank so it would last all day (most days)
you need something to monitor your usage to reward you for doing that.
You should be rewarded for any cutting back you do in peak loads.
You need some way for the electric company to broadcast a message over
the AC lines just how tight the situation is, and to have smart
billing that tracks your usage in different periods. People then will
WANT smart appliances that cut back all by themselves at peak times
that also listen to those ac broadcasts.
Thomas Weidenfeller
> We may also need a more visual way, perhaps using a
> plumbing metaphor where you plug outputs into inputs, and the "pipes"
> are colour coded for compatibility, and automatically try to connect
> themselves when there is no ambiguity.
Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together. AFAIK they canceled the
product for the same reason many of these products got canceled: They
don't sell. And IMHO they don't sell because
- "Real programmers" don't like them, because they are not "macho"
enough and smell like child's play
- Non-programmers still have to learn basic things like what is a
loop, a condition, branching, structuring your data, geting the
program's logic right. So the prommis of "no programming required"
does not hold. If you are lucky you get some "no typing required"
environment.
/Thomas
Tim Tyler
: Roedy Green <ro...@mindprod.com> writes:
:> We may also need a more visual way, perhaps using a
:> plumbing metaphor where you plug outputs into inputs, and the "pipes"
:> are colour coded for compatibility, and automatically try to connect
:> themselves when there is no ambiguity.
: Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
: for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
: programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
: demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together.
BEA got into the news recently with a tool along these lines:
``BEA says developers can now pick up existing J2EE-based business
programs and drop them as a "control" into their new IDE. This allows
Visual Basic-style programming of "composite applications", taking bits
of functionality out of systems such as SAP and PeopleSoft and mixing
them together using the one toolset. In doing so, the company claims it
has moved Java up to the next level, and within easy reach of Lotus
Notes developers.''
- http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/08/18/1061059764265.html
--
__________
|im |yler http://timtyler.org/ t...@tt1.org
Eray Ozkural exa
> Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
> for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
> programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
> demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together. AFAIK they canceled the
> product for the same reason many of these products got canceled: They
> don't sell. And IMHO they don't sell because
There are two reasons why such a thing wouldn't sell
1. Java sucks
2. It's not a visual programming language. Such a language would have
to be designed from ground up for visual syntax and semantics. I've
heard of a graphical LISP variant, but except a few academic project I
suspect there is no such thing.
Hans-Georg Michna
>It is very sneaky how AI sneaks up on you. Back in the 70s I wrote a
>program called Optow that designed high voltage transmission lines. ...
Roedy,
interesting, thanks!
Hans-Georg
--
No mail, please.
Joona I Palaste
on comp.lang.java.programmer:
> nob...@eed.ericsson.invalid (Thomas Weidenfeller) wrote in message news:<bi1pcv$kbe$1...@newstree.wise.edt.ericsson.se>...
>> Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
>> for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
>> programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
>> demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together. AFAIK they canceled the
>> product for the same reason many of these products got canceled: They
>> don't sell. And IMHO they don't sell because
> There are two reasons why such a thing wouldn't sell
> 1. Java sucks
Nice to hear such a well-presented argument with lots of insight.
Far be it from you to tell us WHY Java sucks?
--
/-- Joona Palaste (pal...@cc.helsinki.fi) ---------------------------\
| Kingpriest of "The Flying Lemon Tree" G++ FR FW+ M- #108 D+ ADA N+++|
| http://www.helsinki.fi/~palaste W++ B OP+ |
\----------------------------------------- Finland rules! ------------/
"When a man talks dirty to a woman, that's sexual harassment. When a woman talks
dirty to a man, that's 14.99 per minute + local telephone charges!"
- Ruben Stiller
Tom McGlynn
...
>
>
> you need something to monitor your usage to reward you for doing that.
>
> You should be rewarded for any cutting back you do in peak loads.
>
> You need some way for the electric company to broadcast a message over
> the AC lines just how tight the situation is, and to have smart
> billing that tracks your usage in different periods. People then will
> WANT smart appliances that cut back all by themselves at peak times
> that also listen to those ac broadcasts.
When we installed central air conditioning in our home about 8 years ago the
electric company put in a little box that allows them to limit
usage a bit when they are running at peak load. I think the
agreement is something like they'll not cut off more than 20 minutes
each hour.
We get a discount on our electric bill in exchange regardless of
whether they exercise the option.
No one is required to install these boxes but it seem pretty widespread around here.
(Baltimore MD area). We've never noticed if or when the company
has switched off the AC.
Regards,
Tom McGlynn
P.S., Presumably to keep this on topic we need to think about
a Java protocol for such devices... How about
JEEP... The Jave Electicity Extending Protocol
Evgenij Barsukov
There is very succsesful visual language based on dragging, dropping and pluging together graphical
elements representing different functions - it is LabView made by National Instruments.
It is widely used in research labs to set-up computer controlled experiments - very
comfortable to debug as the program flow is also visualized. Many companies creating
computer controlled instruments first use LabView to perfect the algorithm, and
only then move program to other language for efficiency.
Regards,
Evgenij
--
__________________________________________________
*science&fiction*free programs*fine art*phylosophy:
http://sudy_zhenja.tripod.com
----------remove hate_spam to answer--------------
Airy R Bean
training exercises, the program charts become rapidly
unreadable.
Evgenij Barsukov <e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote in message
news:3F44CF3A...@ti.com...
Alan Balmer
wrote:
>Eray Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> scribbled the following
>on comp.lang.java.programmer:
>> nob...@eed.ericsson.invalid (Thomas Weidenfeller) wrote in message news:<bi1pcv$kbe$1...@newstree.wise.edt.ericsson.se>...
>>> Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
>>> for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
>>> programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
>>> demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together. AFAIK they canceled the
>>> product for the same reason many of these products got canceled: They
>>> don't sell. And IMHO they don't sell because
>
>> There are two reasons why such a thing wouldn't sell
>
>> 1. Java sucks
>
>Nice to hear such a well-presented argument with lots of insight.
>Far be it from you to tell us WHY Java sucks?
It's not good for Microsoft. What's good for Microsoft is good for the
world. Just ask them.
Gerry Quinn
>Thomas Weidenfeller wrote:
>>
>> Roedy Green <ro...@mindprod.com> writes:
>> > We may also need a more visual way, perhaps using a
>> > plumbing metaphor where you plug outputs into inputs, and the "pipes"
>> > are colour coded for compatibility, and automatically try to connect
>> > themselves when there is no ambiguity.
>>
>> Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
>> for some time for Java and other languages. E.g. Sun had a "no
>> programming required" Java development environment (no, not the Beanbox
>> demo) where you plumbed Java Beans together. AFAIK they canceled the
>> product for the same reason many of these products got canceled: They
>> don't sell. And IMHO they don't sell because
As I posted on another newsgroup recently:
My theory is that there are two main modes of intellect, a visual
'gestalt' mode that deals with two-dimensional images and the
identification of structures in a large mass of data; and an analytical
mode that works on time-varying signals, and deals with logical and
predictive thought. The first can be associated with the sense of
sight, the second with hearing. Clearly programming, chess and music
require particular strength in the analytic mode. Someone strong in the
analytic sphere might - or might not - be strong in the gestalt sphere.
(Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to create
programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided and doomed to
failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of the brain.)
- Gerry Quinn
Programmer Dude
> Visual programming and visual programming tools have/had been around
> for some time for Java and other languages.
> [...]
> And IMHO they don't sell because
>
> - "Real programmers" don't like them, because they are not "macho"
> enough and smell like child's play
I wonder if it doesn't have more to do with "Real Programmers"
finding them too limiting and constrained. My take, and I'd like
to believe I'm a "Real Programmer", is that they're really, really
fun and cool...but that I can do what I need to do better using the
old fashioned way.
Similar to the command line verses GUI thing in a nearby thread.
GUI *is* easier to use, but is also limiting. You can only do
what the GUI provides for. The command line opens a much larger
world of possibilities to you.
> - Non-programmers still have to learn basic things like what is a
> loop, a condition, branching, structuring your data, geting the
> program's logic right. So the prommis of "no programming required"
> does not hold. If you are lucky you get some "no typing required"
> environment.
I agree. Programming is complex.
--
|_ CJSonnack <Ch...@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|
Arthur T. Murray
> [...] There is very succsesful visual language based on dragging,
> dropping and pluging together graphical elements representing
> different functions - it is LabView made by National Instruments.
http://mentifex.virtualentity.com/labview.html -- the Labview AI Blog.
Eray Ozkural exa
>
> > 1. Java sucks
>
> Nice to hear such a well-presented argument with lots of insight.
> Far be it from you to tell us WHY Java sucks?
Because it's a dumbed down version of the object oriented derivative
of a horribly designed imperative PL known as C? I wouldn't really
comment on that on a Java group. LOL. Suffice it to say that I
wouldn't use that language for any amount of serious CS research
(parallel, AI, etc.)
Thanks,
__
Eray Ozkural
Programmer Dude
> My theory is that there are two main modes of intellect, a visual
> 'gestalt' mode that deals with two-dimensional images and the
> identification of structures in a large mass of data; and an
> analytical mode that works on time-varying signals, and deals with
> logical and predictive thought.
Isn't that similar to the two-hemisphere theory of the brain?
The artistic side and the analytical side?
> (Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to
> create programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided
> and doomed to failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of
> the brain.)
THAT is a very interesting point of view! I think you might be
on to something, there!!
Roedy Green
<Thomas.A...@nasa.gov> wrote or quoted :
>
>When we installed central air conditioning in our home about 8 years ago the
>electric company put in a little box that allows them to limit
>usage a bit when they are running at peak load. I think the
>agreement is something like they'll not cut off more than 20 minutes
>each hour.
The protocols may already exist. Very low bandwidth is needed, and the
AC wiring is already in place to deliver the signal wherever it is
needed. I think now it would be feasible to have such boxes that
were addressable. Then the electric company could fine tune the
load. You could sign up for varying degrees of Spartan algorithms in
return for reduced rates. Your actual bill could depend both on what
you signed up for, and what hardship you actually endured.
It makes sense different people would be willing to go for differing
degrees of cutback.
Of course in a pinch, the electric company has the option to do a
massive cutback to save a blackout.
Some wag will say "But the Java boxes won't work when the power fails"
One thing concerns me is Thorsten Veblen's conspicuous consumption and
conspicuous waste as methods of attaining social status. Like the
gas-guzzling Humvee, wasting electricity could become even more of an
indicator of social status. Perhaps if the boxes cost more than they
saved ...
Roedy Green
<e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote or quoted :
>There is very succsesful visual language based on dragging, dropping and pluging together graphical
>elements representing different functions - it is LabView made by National Instruments.
I used one back in the 80s devised by Gould Modicon for process
control. You did everything with a colour touch screen.
It booted from floppy, thumping out a Hiawatha beat, taking forever.
Roedy Green
or quoted :
>(Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to create
>programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided and doomed to
>failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of the brain.)
The other problem is they are created by analytical types who present
the programs three symbols at a time on screen. The whole point of
visual thinking is to take in the big picture at a single sweep and to
see the problem as a whole. You need a GIANT screen to do this
properly, perhaps LCD "wallpaper" covering every surface of your desk
and partitions.
To make do with small screens, you have to have a topological approach
where you stretch the surface to see more detail rather than panning
over it.
Airy R Bean
ideas being expressed within a program; at least
for imperative languages; I cannot speak of
functional languages having no experience
therein.
Eray Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.03082...@posting.google.com...
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message
news:<bi2eav$l24$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>...
> > Eray Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> scribbled the following
> > on comp.lang.java.programmer:
> > > 1. Java sucks
> > Nice to hear such a well-presented argument with lots of insight.
> > Far be it from you to tell us WHY Java sucks?
> ..... Suffice it to say that I
rkm
> My theory is that there are two main modes of intellect, a visual
> 'gestalt' mode that deals with two-dimensional images and the
> identification of structures in a large mass of data; and an analytical
> mode that works on time-varying signals, and deals with logical and
> predictive thought.
> (Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to create
> programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided and doomed to
> failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of the brain.)
I think you are overlooking the capacity of the visual
system to narrow the focus to just small portions of a
diagram, scanning from one thing to the next, simulating
serial flow between ideas, and possibly emulating the
analytical model. But I'm no cognitive scientist.
rkm
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 16:09:36 GMT, ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote
> or quoted :
>
>
>>(Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to create
>>programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided and doomed to
>>failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of the brain.)
>
>
> The other problem is they are created by analytical types who present
> the programs three symbols at a time on screen. The whole point of
> visual thinking is to take in the big picture at a single sweep and to
> see the problem as a whole. You need a GIANT screen to do this
> properly, perhaps LCD "wallpaper" covering every surface of your desk
> and partitions.
>
I had a large database schema I had to analyze once, so I
printed all the diagrams out on 8x11 paper and taped them
all together to form a picnic table sized diagram. I don't
recall that having the big picture helped me with the
analysis, other than forming the thought of what a mess this
thing was. Do you think it was because they didn't draw it
out on a picnic table sized piece of paper in the first
place? Anyway, it did save me a lot of thumbing back and
forth trying to find the connecting page. :-)
Roedy Green
quoted :
>I had a large database schema I had to analyze once, so I
>printed all the diagrams out on 8x11 paper and taped them
>all together to form a picnic table sized diagram.
One of the very first programs I ever wrote was to print out conflict
matrices in high school scheduling. They were too big to fit on a page
,so had to be printed out in pieces then taped together.
PostScript has generic ability to print out large pictures in tiles.
In my own computer language Abundance, I arranged reports so you could
print or reprint any range of pages in a report. It would precalculate
how long the report would be, so that each page was labeled page 3 of
20.
It will be interesting to see what effect cheap giant flat screens
have on programming practice. Spaghetti gets more manageable.
Dale King
news:oc68kv0qj2gc5qdf2...@4ax.com...
> On Wed, 20 Aug 2003 19:45:06 -0400, Sudsy <bitbu...@hotmail.com>
> wrote or quoted :
>
> >And they are! Companies able and willing to accept interruptions at
> >times of peak load pay less for their energy. These programs have
> >been around for years; they're even available in Ontario.
>
> Quite right. Pulp mills, aluminum smelters and other big power users
> have such agreements. However, I figure it should not be rocket
> science to build that into all kinds of home appliances, particularly
> hot water heaters, freezers and air conditioners,
8 or 9 years ago I interviewed with a company that did that sort of thing.
It was a device that would shut off your water heater when commanded by the
power company or some such thing. Kind of off-topic for this group. It used
a 4-bit processor!
--
Dale King
Sudsy
> One thing concerns me is Thorsten Veblen's conspicuous consumption and
> conspicuous waste as methods of attaining social status. Like the
> gas-guzzling Humvee, wasting electricity could become even more of an
> indicator of social status. Perhaps if the boxes cost more than they
> saved ...
Roedy,
The boxes exist and the independents claim to want to install the
new meters. But at a cost of CDN$400 per, they want the province to
pay, which means we all pay.
But have you seen the numbers from http://www.theimo.com ? We've
been able to reduce demand from ~24GW to ~19.5GW in one week! A full
20% reduction.
Sudsy
> One thing concerns me is Thorsten Veblen's conspicuous consumption and
> conspicuous waste as methods of attaining social status. Like the
> gas-guzzling Humvee, wasting electricity could become even more of an
> indicator of social status. Perhaps if the boxes cost more than they
> saved ...
Roedy,
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
> The boxes exist and the independents claim to want to install the
>new meters. But at a cost of CDN$400 per, they want the province to
>pay, which means we all pay.
That price would drop considerably if the box were built into
appliances.
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>8 or 9 years ago I interviewed with a company that did that sort of thing.
>It was a device that would shut off your water heater when commanded by the
>power company or some such thing. Kind of off-topic for this group. It used
>a 4-bit processor!
I worked in the solar energy research labs at BC Hydro. I got the
bright idea of building Z80-based controllers for home units. It came
from on high I was not to think about such things. The solar energy
stuff was for show only, to prove to visiting dignitaries that Hydro
was "concerned".
Gerry Quinn
>Gerry Quinn wrote:
>
>> My theory is that there are two main modes of intellect, a visual
>> 'gestalt' mode that deals with two-dimensional images and the
>> identification of structures in a large mass of data; and an
>> analytical mode that works on time-varying signals, and deals with
>> logical and predictive thought.
>
>Isn't that similar to the two-hemisphere theory of the brain?
>The artistic side and the analytical side?
Yes, I imagine they all talk about the same thing. However there is a
tendency for people to blather about how the 'artistic' or
'creative' side is undervalued by society, when the truth is more likely
that it is overvalued by a lot of people who don't have much of a bump
on either side. The problem with the 'creative' side is that it's not
so good at evaluating the worth of its own efforts...
Gerry Quinn
--
http://bindweed.com
Screensavers and Games for Windows
Download free trial versions
New screensaver: "Hypercurve"
Gerry Quinn
>On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 16:09:36 GMT, ger...@indigo.ie (Gerry Quinn) wrote
>or quoted :
>
>>(Incidentally a prediction of this theory is that all attempts to create
>>programs 'visually' by joining little boxes are misguided and doomed to
>>failure. They are trying to use the wrong bits of the brain.)
>
>The other problem is they are created by analytical types who present
>the programs three symbols at a time on screen. The whole point of
>visual thinking is to take in the big picture at a single sweep and to
>see the problem as a whole. You need a GIANT screen to do this
>properly, perhaps LCD "wallpaper" covering every surface of your desk
>and partitions.
>
>To make do with small screens, you have to have a topological approach
>where you stretch the surface to see more detail rather than panning
>over it.
You're missing the second shoe of the argument - a big directed graph of
logical connections is NOT using the gestalt portions of the brain.
Topology is not geometry. Unless the two-dimensional Euclidean geometry
of the layout corresponds to some significant feature of the problem
space (as it does when you look at a map, for example) it doesn't mean
anything.
Directed graphs speak to the linear, logical thought processes.
Example: a class hierarchy (in object-oriented programming) is often
presented as a directed graph. But such a hierarchy actually represents
a separation of elements that might be aggregated and connected, pehaps
even visually, if a single final class were defined instead. Creating a
class hierarchy is a process of separating elements, of breaking
irrelevant connections - in other words, a process of analysis.
Usually the sorts of things that flowcharts are used for have no
coherent distance function that can be mapped onto the chart geometry.
When this is the case, you're not seeing anything extra when you see the
geometry of your flowchart. Of course, you do gain from not having to
turn the pages, as somebody has commented, but that's not usually a
killer feature, and you could get the same effect if the data were
presented in another form on a big enough sheet.
Gerry Quinn
Oh, the brain is all wired up so you can feed from one system to another
at any point (have you ever tried plugging one ear, then the other,
while listening to a radio broadcast - it's amazing that there is so
little difference, when the process of understanding speech is known to
be highly assymetric in the brain).
My point is that the high-level processing is taking place in systems
that probably evolved mostly to deal with audio input.
Programmer Dude
> It would precalculate how long the report would be, so that each
> page was labeled page 3 of 20.
Wasn't that sorta confusing? :-|
Programmer Dude
> You're missing the second shoe of the argument - a big directed
> graph of logical connections is NOT using the gestalt portions of
> the brain. Topology is not geometry. Unless the two-dimensional
> Euclidean geometry of the layout corresponds to some significant
> feature of the problem space (as it does when you look at a map,
> for example) it doesn't mean anything.
But isn't a graph of logical connections indeed a map of the logical
part of the program? Maybe I'm missing the point.
I'm not sure how this applies, but recently I was working on an
existing piece of (my own) software where circumstances required
adding a large new section (it was taking over the job of some
backend software because that backend was obsolete). Requirements
of time prohibited careful design and analysis; it was a "jump in
and get the job done NOW" deal.
Anyway, it was tough going until I made a visual "map" of where
I wanted to go. I then made that map my desktop wallpaper, and
it really made the work easier. Helped me keep the big picture
at my mental "fingertips".
OTOH, I believe I am a very visual person. (In part, because I've
been half deaf all my life, so my eyes have had more work. :-)
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> But it isn't successful, for other than the most trivial
> training exercises, the program charts become rapidly
> unreadable.
I dont particulary like it either, but it is _very fast_ (way faster
then C if need for visual output and user input
is involved) for making chip and dirty program for about
any purpose.
However, it is capable also for using in complex
projects because it has ability to create user-defined "function boxes",
so hierarchial programing is as possible as in any other language.
I have worked with a project which had many hundreds of pages of
LabView charts, which was later converted in windows C++ program. I must say
that LabView project was more easy to read despite its size.
It is like with any other programing - if you do things right,
they stay readable with any size.
Regards,
Evgenij
>
> Evgenij Barsukov <e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote in message
> news:3F44CF3A...@ti.com...
> > There is very succsesful visual language based on dragging, dropping and
> pluging together graphical
> > elements representing different functions - it is LabView made by National
> Instruments.
> > It is widely used in research labs to set-up computer controlled
> experiments - very
> > comfortable to debug as the program flow is also visualized. Many
> companies creating
> > computer controlled instruments first use LabView to perfect the
> algorithm, and
> > only then move program to other language for efficiency.
Evgenij Barsukov
>
> On Thu, 21 Aug 2003 08:55:06 -0500, Evgenij Barsukov
> <e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote or quoted :
>
> >There is very succsesful visual language based on dragging, dropping and pluging together graphical
> >elements representing different functions - it is LabView made by National Instruments.
>
> I used one back in the 80s devised by Gould Modicon for process
> control. You did everything with a colour touch screen.
>
> It booted from floppy, thumping out a Hiawatha beat, taking forever.
Now its quite a mature program. You can even make a self-running exe file
with it and used it as commercial software. Still not very memory efficient,
but it might be because it makes it too easy for programer to waste resources for
debugging purposes (say throwing graphs everywhere) which are not realy needed in exe
but are not removed in time.
Regards,
Evgenij
Evgenij Barsukov
While your argument make sense, I think conclusion is jumping over several
steps. First of all, nobody is _creating_ program by looking at the computer
input (be it in perforated cards, lines of words, or in some graphical form). Program is
created inside your head. The process is not logical but rather intuitive,
and in any case it has nothing to do with the way program will be input in
the computer.
When you sit down and start inputing it, program is _ready_ in your head.
You are just making a mechanical work of translating your thoughts into
computer readable form. And the way how this "form" is realized is a matter
of convinience of dealing with it, not matter of improving thinking process.
Dealing includes "overviewing", "debuging", "searching", "accessing" etc.
Many of this things are not logical but instead directly related to pattern
recognition ability and therefore are better realized on visual level.
Roedy Green
<cjso...@mmm.com> wrote or quoted :
>Anyway, it was tough going until I made a visual "map" of where
>I wanted to go. I then made that map my desktop wallpaper, and
>it really made the work easier. Helped me keep the big picture
>at my mental "fingertips".
I talk about this is my essay on scids http://mindprod.com/scid.html.
Unfortunately I have not had a chance to play with them other than in
imagination.
My room mate explained that she files things by location. She finds
computers annoying because they don't work that way. Her solution is
to print out material, then lay in out by location to organise it.
I would imagine that a program might place classes in 3D space. so
that related classes were near each other. You could ask, "If I were
to change the definition of method X, what would be affected". Little
winking lights would go off all over showing you the extent of your
proposed change.
Roedy Green
<e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote or quoted :
>
>When you sit down and start inputing it, program is _ready_ in your head.
I think that is true for skilled programmers, and for simple tasks.
But for complex tasks it is more like a jigsaw puzzle, were you put
together bits of the solution by looking at the tools. Gradually as
you create classes, you have better tools to think about solving the
entire problem with. You let your mind stop fussing over details and
think more abstractly with your newly create though tools.
Airy R Bean
programs with which you deal are trivial?
An indented IF statement in a high level language, a FOR loop.
or a CASE statement in whatever syntax, indented and using
meaningful variable names is readable and understandable
with no more than a glance. The equivalent in Labview where
you have to follow traces to find the nested blocks is an
exercise in Maze solving and not conducive to commercial
pressures.
Evgenij Barsukov <e-barsoukov...@ti.com> wrote in message
news:3F464EF2...@ti.com...
Eray Ozkural exa
> The implementation language is irrelevant to the
> ideas being expressed within a program; at least
> for imperative languages; I cannot speak of
> functional languages having no experience
> therein.
Implementation language is *highly* relevant to which ideas can be
effectively represented. A poor imperative language like C++ will not
allow you to express ideas beyond a certain complexity in a manageable
way due to its imbecile type system, mockery of genericity, broken
object system, un-orthogonal syntax/semantics, etc. Likewise for Java.
I think the worst imperative language is C++, followed by C and Java
(and C# recently)
For the example of a purely imperative language that really is
designed: Algol 68, Eiffel, Oberon, etc... I'm not really interested
in purely imperative languages any more, but I think the success of C
is simple to explain. Because it's a very awkward and incoherent
language and most programmers are not people who can really think well
owing to their beind dumb as a screwdriver, they like all sorts of
quirks and stupidities like macro processors :> And maybe C has just
the right kind of semantics that a stupid person would like: a
language that is only ad hoc. A mechanism that does not lead to
mathematical elegance but consists of simple pieces that can be
understood independently although they do not work together neatly.
So, I guess that's the rosary path of uneducated intuition.
Agreed, Java is a "cleansed" design derived from C++, but it is still
not a realistic PL in my opinion. Although C++ is a worse design, it
is more capable. I don't know, speaking of these languages make me
want to throw up. Really.
Airy R Bean
effectively represented in C (A subset of C++ to
all intents and purposes) and I will return it to you
as an example of ideas which cannot be effectively
represented as a computer program.....
(Remember that C is a minimal high-level representation
of machine language.)
Once that you have the ability to represent information of
whatever source in some encoding of 32-bit integers and
arrays thereto, and once you have the high level structured
constructs of selection, sequence and iteration, and once
you have the nicety of long and meaningful variable names, I posit
that there is no essential difference between the capabilities of C,
Pascal, Basic, Algol, Fortran, PL/M, Coral, RTL/2, or
indeed any other HLL that you care to specify. The design
of a program is not in the language in which you choose to
code it. That coding is a tedious formality only; an interim
and ephemeral representation on the way to executable
code much as are the internal tokens generated by the
compiler.
Eray Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> wrote in message
news:fa69ae35.03082...@posting.google.com...
David Longley
Ozkural exa <er...@bilkent.edu.tr> writes
<snip>
>. I'm not really interested
>in purely imperative languages any more, but I think the success of C
>is simple to explain. Because it's a very awkward and incoherent
>language and most programmers are not people who can really think well
>owing to their beind dumb as a screwdriver, they like all sorts of
>quirks and stupidities like macro processors :> And maybe C has just
>the right kind of semantics that a stupid person would like: a
>language that is only ad hoc. A mechanism that does not lead to
>mathematical elegance but consists of simple pieces that can be
>understood independently although they do not work together neatly.
>So, I guess that's the rosary path of uneducated intuition.
>
Does this apply to folks' penchant for cognitivism perhaps? I suspect
that if one spends a long time with in the austere and extensional
environment of Computer Science and related disciplines, one must find
Cognitive Science and "all sorts of quirks and stupidities" promulgated
by its practitioners quite a relief. Alternatively, it *could* just be
an eccentric, mild psychopathology, something like pica (where women
start eating bits of coal etc when they're pregnant)..
>Agreed, Java is a "cleansed" design derived from C++, but it is still
>not a realistic PL in my opinion. Although C++ is a worse design, it
>is more capable. I don't know, speaking of these languages make me
>want to throw up. Really.
Hmmm... sounds like the holiday wasn't long enough or was otherwise
therapeutically interrupted. You didn't take any Quine or Skinner books
with you did you? Reading them (or that crackpot Longley's posts) would
have turned a much needed break into something of a busman's holiday!
You'd be much better off with something by Fodor - he even cracks the
odd joke or two, interspersed with little stories about his granny.
Now that's the sort of stuff that makes *me* want to throw up. Really.
(PS. Have you read the one about the handsome cognitivist and the wicked
behaviorist?)
--
David Longley
http://www.longley.demon.co.uk
dan michaels
> behaviorist?)
I suspect this would be Steven Pinker and J.B Watson. Pinker's just as
pretty as genetic endowment can make one, and a 41 YO Watson
impregnated his 19 YO lab assistant. The union got Watson kicked out
of academia [and into a career in advertising - ha!], and also
resulted in a kid named Albert, who Watson named after his favorite
lab rat.
[.. or did you really mean Chomsky and Skinner, in Fodor's Precis on
Modularity? My examples are much better than Fodor's, obviously]
CBFalconer
>
ignored due to persistent top-posting.
--
Chuck F (cbfal...@yahoo.com) (cbfal...@worldnet.att.net)
Available for consulting/temporary embedded and systems.
<http://cbfalconer.home.att.net> USE worldnet address!
David Longley
michaels <d...@oricomtech.com> writes
You'd just better keep reading your Fodor references.
And whilst you're at it - read up on the genetic fallacy.
--
David Longley
Airy R Bean
to your fellow men. Top posters do not have this infantile attitude
towards bottom posters, I note in passing.
CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
news:3F47938B...@yahoo.com...
Richard Heathfield
Airy R Bean wrote:
> CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> news:3F47938B...@yahoo.com...
>> Airy R Bean wrote:
>> ignored due to persistent top-posting.
>
> That is your prerogative. But it seems a strange way of being intolerant
> to your fellow men. Top posters do not have this infantile attitude
> towards bottom posters, I note in passing.
A. Of course!
Q. Do you start novels at the back page?
Sounds pretty infantile to me.
--
Richard Heathfield : bin...@eton.powernet.co.uk
"Usenet is a strange place." - Dennis M Ritchie, 29 July 1999.
C FAQ: http://www.eskimo.com/~scs/C-faq/top.html
K&R answers, C books, etc: http://users.powernet.co.uk/eton
Bent C Dalager
Richard Heathfield <bin...@eton.powernet.co.uk> wrote:
>[Top-posting fixed]
Wow. It's readable now. Magic!
>Airy R Bean wrote:
>>
>> That is your prerogative. But it seems a strange way of being intolerant
>> to your fellow men. Top posters do not have this infantile attitude
>> towards bottom posters, I note in passing.
That would be because while top posting is incredibly annoying, bottom
posting is not.
Cheers
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - b...@pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
powered by emacs
Roedy Green
exa) wrote or quoted :
>Agreed, Java is a "cleansed" design derived from C++, but it is still
>not a realistic PL in my opinion. Although C++ is a worse design, it
>is more capable
The more you experiment with different language, the more the errors
in design in any one language stand out. The programmers stranded on
a desert island with one woman, who have never seen another, are the
ones most likely to proclaim her as the most beautiful and virtuous in
the universe.
It gets even worse when you experiment designing your own languages
and writing compilers for them. Then you don't have to balance the
interests of a large community. Even if you are rough and ready, the
language fits you like a glove. Everything works the way you expect it
to, to the most minute detail.
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>That coding is a tedious formality only;
I suggest you expose yourself to Forth. It is not just Algol with the
semicolons rearranged. It is a totally different way of thinking
about computer problem solving.
Roedy Green
Dalager) wrote or quoted :
>
>That would be because while top posting is incredibly annoying, bottom
>posting is not.
I find the reverse. If the person top posts he gets to the point
immediately. If he bottom posts, I have to wade through stuff I have
already read many times before to get to the meat.
A post should pretty well stand on its own for coherence. You should
only rarely have to refer to the post it is commenting on.
I agree a top post of the form "I disagree" is almost as annoying as
one that bottom posts after quoting four pages."
Roedy Green
or quoted :
> Pinker's just as
>pretty as genetic endowment can make one
http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker/images/pinker200.jpg
I gather you are suffering from envious follicles.
ghl
news:b599kvcot93j8i2nh...@4ax.com...
> Roedy Green <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote:
>
> >It is very sneaky how AI sneaks up on you. Back in the 70s I wrote a
> >program called Optow that designed high voltage transmission lines. ...
>
> Roedy,
>
> interesting, thanks!
>
> Hans-Georg
And in response to Roedy:
In 1975-77 I worked at PTM Interconnection, that controls power distribution
in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Maryland. We were writing the drivers for
4-color touch screen monitors used to open and close switches, rev
generators, etc. and fail-safe systems for the power system control. Our
digital system was replacing an old analog system.
There was a large football field wall that had all the circuits and stations
on it in lights that showed the transmission flows, on/off line status of
generators, etc. The other wall had the 60 cycle meter. I was there during
the previous-to-this-one blackout of NY. WE cut away from the system and
Philly was not blacked out.
Anyway, I had a boss that used to say "Someday we will just talk to the
computer and tell it what we want and it will do it. And we are halfway
there! We can TELL it what we want."
As far as I can tell, we are STILL halfway there. I despair that we will
ever get all the way there. When I worked in language translation (1956-62)
I left that field because of a comment Dr. Victor Yngve (Yale) made in one
of his books (quoting a contention of Bar-Hillel in a paper in 1960).
Without developing an interpreting system with gestalt, a computer will
never be able to parse and understand the different meanings of an identical
semantic structure that is easy for a human to understand. He gave as an
example the two sentences "The pen is in the box." and "The box is in the
pen." Then contention was that the meaning of the word "pen" could not be
determined by computer without a vast encyclopedic store.
I wish (sometimes) that I had stayed with language translation, but I think
it still hasn't gotten anywhere, and probably for the same reason pointed
out by Yngve/Bar-Hillel. The formal syntax of languages like Java eliminate
the need for an "understanding" of what we want. Even the context sensitive
syntax of PL/I was a mess and a failure.
Because of this, I don't mind following strict program language syntax, and
I shiver a little every time I hear of some effort to make the language
"intuitive" and able to compile "what I mean" rather than exactly what I
say. Even optimizers scare me a little; but I usually trust them. Whenever I
had trouble with optimizers it was because I was trying to "bend" the system
a little and rely too much on a specific operating system or engineering
level of machine. I learned to stop doing that.
And now that I'm "perfect" I can't get a job. It's all fled to India via
internet, done by imported cheap labor, and evaporated with the dot-com
bubble. Good thing I'm about at that retirement age, even though I didn't
want to retire. In poverty.
--
Gary
Airy R Bean
Richard Heathfield <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:bi87fu$kmt$2...@hercules.btinternet.com...
Airy R Bean
Forth is an emulation of an assembly language, and very
closely matches the architecture of the English Electric KDF-9
whose design predated Forth by some years.
Forth is particularly bad because your coded version of a simple
arithmetical expression may contain numerous syntactical
and register-affecting errors and still pass compilation in a
manner that other HLL will reject at the compilation stage.
It _IS_ very much an assembly language because of the way
in which the programmer has direct program control of the
registers of the interpreted machine.
It is not, however, a totally different way of thinking about
computer problem solving. When you have designed your
program and come to code it, you have the same elemental
operations available to you as in other HLL, except in a more
primitive and error-prone way.
Roedy Green <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote in message
news:8rcfkv49k7mulsj6k...@4ax.com...
Airy R Bean
CEGB in Britland, controlling lines and protection on the
pylon lines emanating from the Walpole St Andrew Supergrid
substation in Eat Anglia.
ghl <glab...@comcast.net> wrote in message
news:iXGdnXzyysS...@comcast.com...
> "Hans-Georg Michna" <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote in message
> news:b599kvcot93j8i2nh...@4ax.com...
> > Roedy Green <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote:
> > >It is very sneaky how AI sneaks up on you. Back in the 70s I wrote a
> > >program called Optow that designed high voltage transmission lines. ...
Roedy Green
wrote or quoted :
>It is not, however, a totally different way of thinking about
>computer problem solving.
My little brother explained to me that sex could not possibly be
better than ice cream.
dan michaels
The grim specter of unintended consequences ... eg, your 19 YO lab
assistant getting preggers. Wicked, wicked.
Gotcha.
rkm
automatically scroll to the bottom, then I would agree with
you. As it is, I find it extremely annoying to have to
scroll past everyone's incessant pasting of previous posts
just so I can get to the next piece of the conversation.
We're having a conversation right? Or is this one of those
religious wars?
Rick
CBFalconer
>
... snip ...
>
> Because of this, I don't mind following strict program language
> syntax, and I shiver a little every time I hear of some effort to
> make the language "intuitive" and able to compile "what I mean"
> rather than exactly what I say. Even optimizers scare me a little;
> but I usually trust them. Whenever I had trouble with optimizers
> it was because I was trying to "bend" the system a little and rely
> too much on a specific operating system or engineering level of
> machine. I learned to stop doing that.
Which is why languages with standards, built-in redundancy, strict
typing, etc. such as Pascal and Ada should be universally used for
anything that requires reliability. They are certainly no
panacea, but even the most experienced can foul up very easily
using weaker languages, even though they don't "get in the way".
>
> And now that I'm "perfect" I can't get a job. It's all fled to
> India via internet, done by imported cheap labor, and evaporated
> with the dot-com bubble. Good thing I'm about at that retirement
> age, even though I didn't want to retire. In poverty.
There are some, but it is almost impossible to find them,
especially the longer you are out of the 'fully employed' loop,
and one is also faced with hidden age bias. I too disapprove of
my forced retirement. I suspect that things will come back to
some extent at least, simply because face to face communication is
needed. It may well be too late for you and me.
Richard Heathfield
I didn't misquote you. In my reply, I moved your words underneath the words
to which they were replying. That is not a misquotation. It is mere
redaction, and intelligent redaction at that. You, however, misquoted me,
for you said "Richard Heathfield wrote", and then did not quote anything
that I had added to the discussion. Please get your attributions correct
and your articles in proper order in future, if you wish to be taken
seriously. If you don't wish to be taken seriously, that works for me. I
have a killfile around here somewhere.
Hans-Georg Michna
>Anyway, I had a boss that used to say "Someday we will just talk to the
>computer and tell it what we want and it will do it. And we are halfway
>there! We can TELL it what we want."
>
>As far as I can tell, we are STILL halfway there. I despair that we will
>ever get all the way there.
We'll be half way there for a little more time, then there will
suddenly be rapid progress. This will happen when computers
approach and likely supersede the performance and ultimately the
intelligence of the human brain. I guess it will happen around
2020, but I could be off by up to 10 years.
>He gave as an
>example the two sentences "The pen is in the box." and "The box is in the
>pen." Then contention was that the meaning of the word "pen" could not be
>determined by computer without a vast encyclopedic store.
a) Future computers will have that vast encyclopedic store.
Actually, in a way they have it even today. Entire libraries are
already stored in computers. As soon as they begin to make sense
of written human language, they can begin to make use of that
huge store.
b) For the purpose of programming, the computer could ask back
what was meant and offer the possibilities it has already
recognized.
Hans-Georg
--
No mail, please.
Airy R Bean
envelope of your quoting symbol, ">", a re-organised
version of what I had sent, and then tried to claim that that
was what I sent. You misquoted, in fact.
Richard Heathfield <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:bi9fv0$fkk$2...@titan.btinternet.com...
Airy R Bean
to what I was replying.
If you concentrate on what I quoted from you, which you have
also quoted back to me, rather than concentrating on rather silly
childish spates of ridiculousness, perhaps we can get back on
track to topics relevant to the NG?
Richard Heathfield <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:bi9fv0$fkk$2...@titan.btinternet.com...
> Airy R Bean wrote:
> > Misquoting corrected.....
> > Richard Heathfield <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
> > news:bi87fu$kmt$2...@hercules.btinternet.com...
> >> [Top-posting fixed]
> >> Airy R Bean wrote:
> >> > That is your prerogative. But it seems a strange way of being
> >> > intolerant to your fellow men. Top posters do not have this infantile
> >> > attitude towards bottom posters, I note in passing.
> >> > CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
> >> > news:3F47938B...@yahoo.com...
> >> >> Airy R Bean wrote:
> >> >> ignored due to persistent top-posting.
>....You, however, misquoted me,
ghl
> "ghl" <glab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
> >Anyway, I had a boss that used to say "Someday we will just talk to the
> >computer and tell it what we want and it will do it. And we are halfway
> >there! We can TELL it what we want."
> >
> >As far as I can tell, we are STILL halfway there. I despair that we will
> >ever get all the way there.
> a) Future computers will have that vast encyclopedic store.
> Actually, in a way they have it even today. Entire libraries are
> already stored in computers. As soon as they begin to make sense
> of written human language, they can begin to make use of that
> huge store.
But don't know what to do with it. An idiot savant can store a lot of
information but it's just gibberish that can be parrotted back.
>
> b) For the purpose of programming, the computer could ask back
> what was meant and offer the possibilities it has already
> recognized.
And that's why there is pre- and post-editing for much of the MT work being
done. It still takes a human to "adjust" the output of such programs. At the
time I dropped the field it was claimed that the money being spent would be
better spent training human translators (at $11,000 at that time) and having
actual translation getting done. It was largely in the Russian to English
technical abstracts area. Noam Chomsky disagreed and pushed for large
government programs of MT. He got it.
While they have made a lot of progress on natural language studies,
psychology, etc. I still think it's imperfect. And one general remarked that
a translation that was 95% correct was useless. Mark Twain cautioned us not
to read health books because one could die of a misprint. We could (and
appear to have) gone to war with a +/- 5% error rate.
--
Gary
Roedy Green
<hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote or quoted :
>This will happen when computers
>approach and likely supersede the performance and ultimately the
>intelligence of the human brain.
Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that was
just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think it
ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
bonobo.
Strangely, tasks like designing high voltage transmission lines which
required engineers with PhDs and Masters degrees cracked first.
Chess, the egghead game came next.
Driving trains is now done. Next will be driving buses and taxis.
Voice activated everything can't be that far off. That way you can
pack arbitrary complexity into a very tiny package. Toasters for the
deaf can be found in thrift stores.
Something I have thought would be interesting would be a composition
program that just noodled away and monitored your pleasure via various
brain or bodily sensors. It might somehow gradually learn to compose
music that you liked, or draw pornographic cartoons you found
irresistible.
ghl
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 10:50:40 +0200, Hans-Georg Michna
> <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote or quoted :
>
> >This will happen when computers
> >approach and likely supersede the performance and ultimately the
> >intelligence of the human brain.
>
> Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that was
> just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
>
> I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
> more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think it
> ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
> bonobo.
Maybe less than 5, Roedy. Maybe one -- recognition of patterns. Humor seems
to spring out of the sudden unexpected shift of pattern (Arthur Koestler).
Humans are just pattern recognizing machines.
--
Gary
rkm
> Something I have thought would be interesting would be a composition
> program that just noodled away and monitored your pleasure via various
> brain or bodily sensors. It might somehow gradually learn to compose
> music that you liked, or draw pornographic cartoons you found
> irresistible.
Are you equating that to intelligence? The computer would
be relying on the human's response to tell it which of it's
noodlings were good. So ultimately, it has no judgement of
its own, which is a serious deficit in any measure of
intelligence.
Roedy Green
quoted :
>
>Are you equating that to intelligence?
Intelligence is the ability to home in on a desirable solution
quickly. Evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection has IQ 1.
Perhaps what we mean by human intelligence in the ability to
generalise. Obviously other creatures do that too, but we think and
talk about generalisations. Look how few words in my sentences refer
to any specific objects or creatures.
Alfred Einstead
> Implementation language is *highly* relevant to which ideas can be
> effectively represented.
Actually, the opposite -- by a famous result in Kolomogorov complexity
theory. Implementaiton language is almost TOTALLY irrelevant in the
strict sense that anything of size sA in language A can be rendered
as of size sB in language B such that |sA-sB| < delta, where delta
is a fixed (and generally, fairly small) constant, independent of
the items in question.
This is true as long as both A and B are Turing complete languages.
An upper bound for delta is, for instance, the size of an interpreter
in language B for language A. But delta can be quite a lot smaller
than that.
Even for assembly language (which is not Turing complete, because of
its explicit address and word lengths), experience proves that the
size-equivalence in size still tends to hold. Most translations I
do in either direction, the assembly and C generally come out to
around the same size. (Not too much a concidence, considering my
assembly looks like C and I use assemblers that allow multiple
entries per line, etc.)
Richard Heathfield
> "Roedy Green" <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote in message
> news:ijvhkvolu9gg4so8v...@4ax.com...
>>
>> Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that was
>> just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
(This is certainly true, and consequently AI has an impossible marketing job
on its hands.)
>>
>> I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
>> more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think it
>> ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
>> bonobo.
>
> Maybe less than 5, Roedy. Maybe one -- recognition of patterns. Humor
> seems to spring out of the sudden unexpected shift of pattern (Arthur
> Koestler). Humans are just pattern recognizing machines.
Humans are very good at recognising patterns, but they are not /just/
pattern recognising machines, unless you define the concept of pattern
recognition so widely as to make it useless.
Richard Heathfield
> On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 17:38:06 -0600, rkm <r...@invalid.com> wrote or
> quoted :
>
>>
>>Are you equating that to intelligence?
>
> Intelligence is the ability to home in on a desirable solution
> quickly.
Therefore, if "gain mass" is a desirable solution, an astronomical body can
show intelligence merely by switching on gravity. Since all astronomical
bodies (modulo weird exceptions, of course) /have/ switched on their
gravity, we can deduce that they are all attempting to gain mass
intelligently.
> Evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection has IQ 1.
A nonsense statement if ever there was one. Even if the contribution of
evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection to IQ were measurable,
which it is not, IQ has little or nothing to do with intelligence.
> Perhaps what we mean by human intelligence in the ability to
> generalise.
Any squirrel can generalise. ("Hmmm, looks like a nut, cracks like a nut,
smells like a nut. Must be a nut.")
> Obviously other creatures do that too, but we think and
> talk about generalisations.
Ah, well-anticipated. But yes, there is a significant difference, in that we
think and talk about generalisations. You don't suppose "thinking" might be
a more significant part of intelligence than "generalising"? Hmmm?
goose
> "ghl" <glab...@comcast.net> wrote:
>
<snipped>
> >As far as I can tell, we are STILL halfway there. I despair that we will
> >ever get all the way there.
>
> We'll be half way there for a little more time, then there will
> suddenly be rapid progress. This will happen when computers
> approach and likely supersede the performance and ultimately the
> intelligence of the human brain.
I dunno about that. How can we build a machine that can supercede the
human brain ?
If the human brain was simple enough to understand, we would be too
simple too understand it (this may already be the case). All we know
about the brain is its tissue composition.
> I guess it will happen around
> 2020, but I could be off by up to 10 years.
I think that your margin of error might be greater than you realise.
this problem can almost never be solved. We can build vast machinary
to *simulate* some aspects of the human brain (like the ability to
play chess), but unless someone hands us the blueprints and design
docs for the human brain, we are, by definition, not smart enough
to figure it out.
>
> >He gave as an
> >example the two sentences "The pen is in the box." and "The box is in the
> >pen." Then contention was that the meaning of the word "pen" could not be
> >determined by computer without a vast encyclopedic store.
>
> a) Future computers will have that vast encyclopedic store.
> Actually, in a way they have it even today. Entire libraries are
> already stored in computers. As soon as they begin to make sense
> of written human language, they can begin to make use of that
> huge store.
getting a computer to *think* is kinda like getting a submarine
to swim (or something like that :-).
computers can only make sense of something if *we* can make sense
of it, because *we* tell the computer what to do. in the game of chess
we try to think X moves ahead, so when we write the chess playing
proggy its much easier to merely depth/breadth search.
Even though the computer still does thinks *hundreds* of moves ahead
of a human player, a human player can still beat it.
its not just about the volume of information. its about how it is used.
hand,
goose,
Roedy Green
<dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote or quoted :
>A nonsense statement if ever there was one. Even if the contribution of
>evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection to IQ were measurable,
>which it is not, IQ has little or nothing to do with intelligence.
Genetic mutation is a problem solving mechanism that builds organisms
better suited to environments. It ponderously slow, hence the low IQ.
goose
<snipped>
>
> Something I have thought would be interesting would be a composition
> program that just noodled away and monitored your pleasure via various
> brain or bodily sensors. It might somehow gradually learn to compose
> music that you liked, or draw pornographic cartoons you found
> irresistible.
now *thats* technology at work !!!
goose,
usenet might be the best place to test such a 'bot' ...
if it passes the turing test and learns to flame, hell, then
we have a winner :-)
Corey Murtagh
> Airy R Bean wrote:
>
>>Misquoting corrected.....
>>
>>Richard Heathfield <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
>>news:bi87fu$kmt$2...@hercules.btinternet.com...
>>
>>>[Top-posting fixed]
>>>Airy R Bean wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>>That is your prerogative. But it seems a strange way of being
>>>>intolerant to your fellow men. Top posters do not have this infantile
>>>>attitude towards bottom posters, I note in passing.
>>>
>>>>CBFalconer <cbfal...@yahoo.com> wrote in message
>>>>news:3F47938B...@yahoo.com...
>>>>
>>>>>Airy R Bean wrote:
>>>>>ignored due to persistent top-posting.
>
> I didn't misquote you. In my reply, I moved your words underneath the words
<snip>
DFTT Richard. I know it's annoying, but just ignore him.
--
Corey Murtagh
The Electric Monk
"Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum viditur!"
gabor salai
> ghl wrote:
>
> > "Roedy Green" <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote in message
> > news:ijvhkvolu9gg4so8v...@4ax.com...
> >>
> >> Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that was
> >> just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
>
> (This is certainly true, and consequently AI has an impossible marketing
job
> on its hands.)
>
> >>
> >> I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
> >> more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think it
> >> ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
> >> bonobo.
> >
> > Maybe less than 5, Roedy. Maybe one -- recognition of patterns. Humor
> > seems to spring out of the sudden unexpected shift of pattern (Arthur
> > Koestler). Humans are just pattern recognizing machines.
>
> Humans are very good at recognising patterns, but they are not /just/
> pattern recognising machines, unless you define the concept of pattern
> recognition so widely as to make it useless.
>
just an opinion:
pattern (of any kind) recognition (matching with internal database)
is basicaly very simple task.
after recognition, whatever matched action may be started, etc ...
"patternisation" seems to be the problem
Bent C Dalager
goose <ru...@webmail.co.za> wrote:
>
>If the human brain was simple enough to understand, we would be too
>simple too understand it (this may already be the case). All we know
>about the brain is its tissue composition.
I am aware of no fundamental law that says a system must be incapable
of understanding itself. A system based on surprisingly simple
concepts can become mindboggingly complex once the number of
components starts growing large. And yet, all you need to understand
to be able to describe the system are those simple concepts and a very
powerful computer to simulate large scale integration.
>I think that your margin of error might be greater than you realise.
>this problem can almost never be solved. We can build vast machinary
>to *simulate* some aspects of the human brain (like the ability to
>play chess), but unless someone hands us the blueprints and design
>docs for the human brain, we are, by definition, not smart enough
>to figure it out.
Do you have a reference to a proof for that assertion?
Cheers
Bent D
--
Bent Dalager - b...@pvv.org - http://www.pvv.org/~bcd
powered by emacs
Bill Modlin
"Richard Heathfield" <dont...@address.co.uk.invalid> wrote in message
news:bic6ug$29o$4...@hercules.btinternet.com...
> "Roedy Green" <ro...@mindprod.com> wrote in message
> news:ijvhkvolu9gg4so8v...@4ax.com...
>>
>> Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that
was
>> just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
RH: (This is certainly true, and consequently AI has an impossible
marketing job
on its hands.)
>>
>> I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
>> more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think
it
>> ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
>> bonobo.
>
> Maybe less than 5, Roedy. Maybe one -- recognition of patterns. Humor
> seems to spring out of the sudden unexpected shift of pattern (Arthur
> Koestler). Humans are just pattern recognizing machines.
RH: Humans are very good at recognising patterns, but they are not
/just/
pattern recognising machines, unless you define the concept of pattern
recognition so widely as to make it useless.
Just shift your emphasis to "noticing" or "finding" patterns, and you
have the distinguishing characteristic of intelligence. Pattern
recognition is usually thought of as detecting an instance of some
pre-defined class of patterns, but the point here is that the
"pre-definition" is "anything previously experienced". What humans are
so good at is noticing that some aspect of their experience is
recurring, which is to say that there is a pattern to be found, that
there is something predictable about their experience. That's enough.
As GHL says, humans are just pattern recognition machines, in the sense
of recognizing or noticing that a pattern of any sort exists.
Pretty much all animals do this to some extent. We are just better at
finding patterns hidden more deeply in abstractions from the surface
structure of experience.
Once we get that general pattern-finding mechanism implemented in a
machine and functioning at human levels, it will no longer appear as a
"cheap trick". Our machine will be able to learn anything a human can
learn. It will no longer be limited to specialized pre-programmed
skills.
Bill Modlin
Hans-Georg Michna
>On Sun, 24 Aug 2003 10:50:40 +0200, Hans-Georg Michna
><hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote or quoted :
>>This will happen when computers
>>approach and likely supersede the performance and ultimately the
>>intelligence of the human brain.
>Every time we solve a problem, e.g. playing chess, we say "Oh that was
>just a cheap trick. That does not count as intelligence."
>
>I have a conjecture, that human intelligence is a collection of no
>more than 5 basic cheap tricks. It evolved so quickly I don't think it
>ran really be all that big a deal above the intelligence of the
>bonobo.
Roedy,
I think along the same lines. Anthropocentrism leads people to
assign mystical abilities to our poor brain. But a glance at a
normal IQ test already shows you the strict limits of what we
can achieve.
We do have some fairly powerful specialized abilities for
hearing and particularly for 3D vision though.
On the other hand, our brain is three or four times the size of
a chimpanzee brain, and this size increase happened in only
about 4 million years, which is astounding. There must be
something we can do that the chimps can't. We build cities and
spaceships.
But I still agree with what you wrote.
Hans-Georg Michna
>computers can only make sense of something if *we* can make sense
>of it, because *we* tell the computer what to do. in the game of chess
>we try to think X moves ahead, so when we write the chess playing
>proggy its much easier to merely depth/breadth search.
>
>Even though the computer still does thinks *hundreds* of moves ahead
>of a human player, a human player can still beat it.
Goose,
we may one day be able to scan the brain and use its structure,
but there are other ways. One example is accelerated Darwinistic
evolution in a computer simulation, augmented by large knowledge
databases and perhaps some human programming.
But your chess example will lead you nowhere, because you should
never underestimate the power of brute force algorithms when you
put a large and growing amount of data processor performance
underneath. It is quite obvious that the best chess players on
our planet are already or will soon be computers. And you forget
that only one person managed to beat the computer. 99%+ of
humanity can be beat in chess by a very cheap microprocessor.
Hans-Georg
http://www.michna.com/transition.htm
--
No mail, please.
Calum
> Joona I Palaste <pal...@cc.helsinki.fi> wrote in message news:<bi2eav$l24$1...@oravannahka.helsinki.fi>...
>>>1. Java sucks
>>
>>Nice to hear such a well-presented argument with lots of insight.
>>Far be it from you to tell us WHY Java sucks?
>
>
> Because it's a dumbed down version of the object oriented derivative
> of a horribly designed imperative PL known as C?
I can't believe I'm about to jump to the defense of C... but I am.
Remember it did (and still does) have a huge user community. Therefore,
there must be some redeeming features, which I believe is practicality.
Sure, theoretically, it's not nice, but it has been formalized. But
since when does formalization imply practicality or benefit?
> I wouldn't really
> comment on that on a Java group. LOL. Suffice it to say that I
> wouldn't use that language for any amount of serious CS research
> (parallel, AI, etc.)
Programming languages need to be practical as well as theoretically
nice. Perhaps you should ask why people don't use research languages?
There's a world of difference between the research and user communities.
Practical languages like C, Perl, Java, C++, do not bend nicely into
theoretical models. Research languages are small and neat, principally
because research is often done by individuals who can't take on too much
programming, and in practise develop just one facet of a language, not
all-round practicality.
As it happens, I have seen quite a few research projects on extensions
to Java, and compiling (say) functional languages to the JVM or the .NET
architecture, so obviously many people disagree with you.
Java is hampered by its run-time overheads. It's much much cleaner than
say C++. You're contradicting yourself: you say it's dumbed-down, which
you insinuate is bad, yet, as a result of "dumbing down", its semantics
are cleaner, which from a research perspective is much better.
Calum
rkm
> Intelligence is the ability to home in on a desirable solution
> quickly. Evolution by genetic mutation and natural selection has IQ 1.
>
Well then the computer will never be intelligent, because it
can't home in on the solution by itself, it has to have
another "species" in the loop, either so it can measure the
other species reaction (which is a result of judgement on
the other species part), or it needs the other species to
tell it what a desirable solution is. By itself, it's just
a dumb bunch of parts.
Bent C Dalager
Hans-Georg Michna <hans-georgN...@michna.com> wrote:
>
>On the other hand, our brain is three or four times the size of
>a chimpanzee brain, and this size increase happened in only
>about 4 million years, which is astounding. There must be
>something we can do that the chimps can't. We build cities and
>spaceships.
There's a theory that what made us develop our obscenely large brains
was the need to socialize with other humans. There were contenders to
the title, of course, but we killed them. Eradicate the humans and
give chimps another few mill years and perhaps their desire to make
friends has put them on the moon also :-)
rkm
> But your chess example will lead you nowhere, because you should
> never underestimate the power of brute force algorithms when you
> put a large and growing amount of data processor performance
> underneath. It is quite obvious that the best chess players on
> our planet are already or will soon be computers. And you forget
> that only one person managed to beat the computer. 99%+ of
> humanity can be beat in chess by a very cheap microprocessor.
>
Brute force searching is not intelligence. I would question
whether these computers have developed new unexpected
heuristics for playing the game? AFAIK, Deeper Blue (or
whatever it's name is) is just applying rules programmed
into it from the outset, not anything creative on its part.
Furthermore, could we tell it, now that it supposedly
understands chess, to design a new game for us? I'm pretty
sure the answer to that is no. Yet you could ask any human
who plays chess to invent a new game, and though it might be
awful, or have flaws of some sort, the human could invent
something pretty much on the spot, just by changing the way
pieces move, starting positions, shape of the board, number
of players,etc. I thought of those few things within
seconds, but the computer would be stopped cold by what the
goal is. They are not intelligent at all, just highly
specialized at brute force behavior.
Rick
Arthur J. O'Dwyer
On Mon, 25 Aug 2003, rkm wrote:
>
> Hans-Georg Michna wrote:
> > But your chess example will lead you nowhere, because you should
> > never underestimate the power of brute force algorithms when you
> > put a large and growing amount of data processor performance
> > underneath. It is quite obvious that the best chess players on
> > our planet are already or will soon be computers. And you forget
> > that only one person managed to beat the computer. 99%+ of
> > humanity can be beat in chess by a very cheap microprocessor.
> >
>
> Brute force searching is not intelligence.
I don't think Hans-Georg claimed it was. But it's perfectly true that
game-playing is a fundamentally flawed measure of "intelligence,"
because any sufficiently fast computer can always play any game
perfectly. (Speaking of board games and such, of course; I expect a
computer that played tiddlywinks perfectly, or duckpins, would be
much harder to find. :-)
> I would question
> whether these computers have developed new unexpected
> heuristics for playing the game? AFAIK, Deeper Blue (or
> whatever it's name is) is just applying rules programmed
> into it from the outset, not anything creative on its part.
That's correct. But those rules, for the most part, can be really
simple things. In theory, you only need one rule: "Capture the
opponent's king." Game trees and the minimax algorithm can do the
rest. (In real life, such a minimalist approach is not yet practical
for chess; but it may well be practical within the next 100 years.)
> Furthermore, could we tell it, now that it supposedly
> understands chess, to design a new game for us? I'm pretty
> sure the answer to that is no.
Depends on whether it's been programmed to do things like that,
doesn't it? I'm sure there exist "game-developing" programs that
can run off list after list of rules, and then sit down with themselves
and play 10000 iterations of each game, and keep the most "interesting"
ones. It wouldn't be that hard to do, in theory, as long as you could
precisely define the sorts of "games" you'd consider -- say, games about
moving pawns (Chess, Checkers, Hexapawn), or games about placing pawns
(Tic-Tac-Toe, Connect Four, Go), or games about taking tricks (Hearts,
Bridge), or whatever.
> Yet you could ask any human
> who plays chess to invent a new game, and though it might be
> awful, or have flaws of some sort, the human could invent
> something pretty much on the spot, just by changing the way
> pieces move, starting positions, shape of the board, number
> of players,etc. I thought of those few things within
> seconds, but the computer would be stopped cold by what the
> goal is.
On the other hand, a computer could easily tell you such a game if
it had been programmed to do so. The only difference here is that
most computers are *not* programmed to invent games; they're programmed
to track filesystems or assemble automobiles (two goals that would
probably stop a human cold, too).
> They are not intelligent at all, just highly
> specialized at brute force behavior.
That's true.
-Arthur
Bent C Dalager
Arthur J. O'Dwyer <a...@andrew.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
>I don't think Hans-Georg claimed it was. But it's perfectly true that
>game-playing is a fundamentally flawed measure of "intelligence,"
>because any sufficiently fast computer can always play any game
>perfectly. (Speaking of board games and such, of course; I expect a
>computer that played tiddlywinks perfectly, or duckpins, would be
>much harder to find. :-)
How about the board game "Diplomacy"? :-)
In any game with more than two players, evaluating the correct
strategy becomes much much more complicated than just understanding
the game rules. An AI that was really down on its luck would have to
be a master of human group behaviour and other fun subjects before it
would see much progress.
Hans-Georg Michna
>Brute force searching is not intelligence.
Arthur already gave some good answers. Let me just add that
brute force algorithms are indeed intelligent within certain
limits.
I'm not saying that brute force and extreme processing power is
all we need to create human-like machine intelligence. But brute
force fills a very large gap.
Let me give you an example. We humans have to learn how to pour
a cup of coffee by trial and error. The end result is that we
can do it, but only far from optimally. We take much more time
to pour a cup than a robot would, if it were doing it optimally.
Now imagine a robot that has a good physical model of the can,
the cup, and the coffee, and also a lot of raw data processing
performance. This robot could in an instant pour the coffee in
its mind a million times and try out which way works fastest
withough spilling a drop, with some margin of model error, etc.
Then the robot would pour the coffee in a fraction of the time a
human would need. See how brute force can be very useful not
only for playing chess?
Moreover, you are trying to water down the concept of
intelligence by defining it very widely. That makes it useless.
To invent a game you need intelligence and creativity and, of
course, some knowledge about what people like to play.
Hans-Georg
p.s. My favorite board game is Go, and I can still beat the best
Go playing computer program. It won't last long though.
--
No mail, please.
Programmer Dude
CBFalconer wrote:
>
> Airy R Bean wrote:
>
> ignored due to persistent top-posting.
--
|_ CJSonnack <Ch...@Sonnack.com> _____________| How's my programming? |
|_ http://www.Sonnack.com/ ___________________| Call: 1-800-DEV-NULL |
|_____________________________________________|_______________________|
Programmer Dude
>> Anyway, it was tough going until I made a visual "map" of where
>> I wanted to go. I then made that map my desktop wallpaper, and
>> it really made the work easier. Helped me keep the big picture
>> at my mental "fingertips".
>
> I talk about this is my essay on scids http://mindprod.com/scid.html.
Hmmm. To be honest, I stopped reading at, "The basic idea is your
pre-parse your code and put it in a database." I've worked with
systems that did that and didn't much care for them. I very much
prefer my source in those "quaint" files, because it gives me a
much larger toolset available for working with them.
> My room mate explained that she files things by location. She finds
> computers annoying because they don't work that way. Her solution is
> to print out material, then lay in out by location to organise it.
She is probably a very visual/spatial thinker. Artist by any chance?
> I would imagine that a program might place classes in 3D space. so
> that related classes were near each other. You could ask, "If I
> were to change the definition of method X, what would be affected".
> Little winking lights would go off all over showing you the extent
> of your proposed change.
I think I'd want it in 2D or viewable that way. 3D space is hard
to work with due the difficulty of showing 3D on a 2D display.
Complex wireframes, for instance, can be very hard to "see" without
a line-removal algorithm.