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From: rstevew@armory.com (Richard Steven Walz)
Subject: Re: Minsky's new article
Organization: The Armory
Date: Sat, 10 Dec 1994 14:31:35 GMT
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In article <3c8esu$jbe@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu>,
Marcus Daniels <marcus@ee.pdx.edu> wrote:
>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>In <3c78j8$b44@jetsam.ee.pdx.edu> marcus@ee.pdx.edu (Marcus Daniels) writes:
>>>rickert@cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>
>>>Because a determinstic machine doesn't have free will in
>>>the strongest objective sense.  There is one future, and one
>>>future only for certain inputs.
>
>>If a deterministic machine is in a non-deterministic universe, then
>>the same inputs may never repeat.  Thus determinism of the machine
>>loses some of its relevance.
>
>This machine is not free, nor is any process running on the machine.
>The inputs driving the machine, whatever their nature, are irrelevant.
>If anything, call the combination of inputs+machine free.
>For the machine to be free, it would have to be able initiate action
>nonrandomly in spite of its history of inputs.
>
>But I would ask, do you think humans act in spite of their
>experiences, values, misc. additional state, decision-making errors, and  
>intentional deference to chance?  All these things seem to
>have analogues on a computer, and I find this suspect.
>
>>>Or perhaps I take you too strongly:  learning could be implemented
>>>on a deterministic machine, but it wouldn't be `as good' as
>>>human `free' learning.
>
>>No, I am not saying that at all.  I agree that a deterministic
>>machine cannot learn, by definition of 'deterministic machine'.  But
>>a non-machine, such as a person or a computer, can learn by means of
>>a deterministic process taking place on that non-machine.
>
>I don't care to quibble over the word `machine' or `process'.  It
>isn't important.
>
>>>>>                                           What would be an operational
>>>>>definition of learning `working'?  Didn't we agree the only sensible
>>>>>measure was utility?
>[]
>>>In your view, isn't this machine, however programmed,
>>>still operating within the bounds of the programmers subjective
>>>perspective?
>[]
>>By analogy, what we need is a learning methodology for an AI or
>>robotic system which is orthogonal to the actual way the computer
>>will operate.  If we can achieve such a learning methodology, then
>>the system will not have any external subjective view imposed upon
>>it, but will develop its own subjective view.
>
>I agree completely with that.  My conclusion is somewhat different.
>
>For the machine^H^H^H^H^H^Hperson to be free, it would have to be
>able initiate action nonrandomly in spite of its history of inputs.
>Computer systems can't do this, and should hope and expect we
>wouldn't want it any other way.  Whether the brain, blah, Mind,
>can behave differently is an open question, which may or may not
>bend to scientific investigation.
>
>I deny free will because the language doesn't exist to talk
>about my definition objectively.  I don't entirely understand the direction
>Walz is going in.  He is making a stronger statement about 
>universal determinism, or perhaps the implausibility of the alternative.
>I'm sympathetic to that, but only because
>I can't conceive of anything else.  I, for instance,
>don't see why "nothing exists" if there can be multiple futures.
>..It does sound like gibberish to me.  Why not multiple pasts?
>Go the extra mile and have a time-travelling-object-moving brain.
>None of this consistent with introspection or experience.
-------------------------------
Ever had a friend say to you, "What if we hadn't gone to school to be
"whatevers"?". Well that is all people do when they talk about alternate
realities. It does not mean they must exist, however we define "exist",
because we certainly can't see them from here! Well, I don't grant the
"existence" of multiple universes either, rigorously, but it sure does shut
people up about QM when they start rattling about on the unrelated subjects
of "free will", a kind of western brain disease, and Heisenberg's
Uncertainty Principle. What I mean when I intimate that "nothing exists" is
that nothing exists or can be shown to exist lest we sense it. Thus,
automatically, there is no "common" REAL reality that such people imagine
there is, with a ridiculous mind-body duality, wherein we "see" "things"
that are actually not a part of us, but we see "ghosts" of them in
something called a "mind", which is like a little "picture" of reality
given us by the "cameras" of our senses. All of that is nonsensical, and
smacks more of the Manichaean Heresy of the "badness of the body" versus
the "sacredness of the 'soul'", and a pile of mumbo-jumbo from the
supposedly ended "Dark Ages" which seems not to have really ended lately,
(even more now that we find the president has something against teaching
better masturbation in schools, where it OUGHT to be taught, because it's a
cinch that nobody we know seems to have learned it at home!!;-> ).
Everything we see is nothing but an idea. Now that shouldn't scare us,
because it doesn't change anything fundamentally, like make the walls
disappear or the world evaporate, or anything drastic. It so happens that
these ideas, more precisely "percepts" (an idea that connects the seer and
seen, the thinker and the thought, since that separation is naught but
another percept as well) are the only "world" or "universe" that we
actually can be shown to live in, and that there is no way to prove that
some "real world" "out there" exists except as percepts. All existence
seems to be as real as anything gets in the form not of things we see, but
just what it seems to be with us, as percepts. If I look at my eye in a
mirror, I see not what I see "with it" but some meat machine thing, a
mistake the process makes when you try to make a percept perceive itself.
Likewise the brain. Open it up and you don't see thoughts, you see this
funny grey stuff. Actually, even the concept of "inside" is quite obtuse,
as we can never see the "inside" of something unless it "becomes the
outside". A knife seems to create more outside when placed against items,
for example, an orange. Is there anything "inside" the orange before it is
opened? I cannot prove that there is, because once I can see it, it is
outside. Present me with an xray of an orange or any other means of trying
to look at an imaginary "inside" and all I get to look at is not the orange
I eat and know so well, but some piece of film or some image on a monitor!
That wasn't what I wanted! Now the concept of predicting what we will find
when we "make the orange have some more "outside" than it came with is
sometimes useful and in fact even predictive, but it is NOT looking "into"
the "inside" of an orange, although by predictive theory we have come to
call it that! We have come to call things "not in view at the moment" the
"outside world", also, but it is still a theoretical predictive fiction,
however useful! Nothing wrong with fiction, but lets keep track of how many
assumptions we have to make when we have to make them, ok? Free will is one
of those fictions!! A choice that is not "caused" does not happen! People
lie a lot when it comes to the assumptions they make! They have agendas
which do not much effect the fundamental look of the world, but which play
havoc with the higher and more complex set of assumptions we had to make to
be "smart". That such a thing as "free (means what? random, whimsical,
how?) will" exists is a gigantic lie. It is based on a part of humans which
makes them aware of their own existence. In the process of making it their
"own" existence, some folks got confused about "ownership" of their
existence, and were trained in this culture of assumptions to conclude that
this "ownership" means that one can do anything one likes with "their"
"life", because it is "theirs", when in fact, we are so intricately bound
that it is debatable that there are any really clear boundaries between
people and that we may even be a common percept, mutually possessed by all,
and it simply "seems", by mutual convenience, to be that we "possess" our
acts and choices, and being an assumption, this "ownership" or "possession"
is a sort of meaningless word, a placeholder for assumptions, and that
"ownership" has nothing to do whatsoever with "causality" in this thing our
awarensss calls "ours" or "ourself". Thus "free" will is simply a mis-speak
and what we mean is in respect to the potential for coercion and control by
others, and not at all to do with arbitrarizing the process of "choice" or
"decision" in a person, "just to be cussed". It can happen in languages
like Forth, or in the language of human assumption, whose syntax and
extensibles library has NEVER been written down and agreed upon, that
people forget and re-use the same labels by accident or similarity, and
that they fuck up. The concept of free-will is such a fuck-up.
-Steve Walz   rstevew@armory.com

