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Re: Brainstorming about STEM (was About Functions)
Posted:
Dec 17, 2011 9:14 PM
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On Sat, Dec 17, 2011 at 9:59 AM, Joe Niederberger
<niederberger@comcast.net> wrote:
>>I understand that's your opinion and of course you know mine.
>
> No, I really don't quite understand what you believe or what points you are trying to make. "Modeling humans with computational processes" (your term) and doing "non-computable things" are wildly different things to consider.
>
Not wildly different.
If you have an hypothesis that human intelligence is at bottom
computational, then it would behoove you to get your Turing Machine to
pass your Turing Test, pronto.
That'd be a great way to win converts, not irrelevant at all.
In the meantime, it doesn't appear that computers have any hope of
being smart enough to take over the job of proving difficult (or even
easy) theorems, out of the blue as it were.
We can enlist their aid, and do so daily, but it's not a matter of
thinking we're in line for replacement, 'Terminator' movies not
withstanding. Fantasies of "turning it over to machines" are
irresponsible and immature.
You're talking about a branch of science fiction, a way of writing
about humans. Neither side here is more than that.
There's nothing established about "how humans think" really, in terms
of what's non-computable or what ain't.
Neuroscience doesn't have the corner on that discourse either, just
one more booth among many at the brainiac fair.
> You seem to constantly conflate the two.
> The only connection would be that were humans known to be essentially performing non-trivial tasks that drew on
> powers transcending computational processes, well, that
> would be something. (I'd say your examples all fall well short, and some just don't even make sense in that specific context.) Its really hard to even come up with meaningful examples of any performance task that is clearly in principle "non-computable". Violating complexity (factoring really fast, solving TSP really fast) I suppose would count.
>
I'm saying that would be nothing, as many see it, as in what did you expect?
What's remarkable are people expostulating how surprising it is, and
saying what a breakthrough it would be if the mundane were true.
Weird folks, seems to me.
> Statements like "not hardy to come up with problems no computer can solve" also completely muddy the discussion. That might be interesting if it were impossible to come up with a problem that some human couldn't solve. But its not and so what?
>
> Ramanujan certainly strikes me as Edgar Cayce of math, but what does it lead you to believe? Does the mysteriousness of it all make you believe that these "non-computational" processes must be at world? Evidently
> yes, but it seems a very illogical position to me.
"Non-computational processes" sounds oxymoronic, at least a little,
but I suppose "process" should be allowed.
Michelangelo had his process, as did Leonardo or whatever. Whether
these "processes" were "computational" cannot be asserted
categorically by any but a pretentious few who think they somehow
monopolize the language.
All I've been saying in this thread is I don't appreciate it when
screenwriters mislead too badly and make it look like humans have
superpowers they don't have, or machines either.
Pretending machines are on the brink of being our "prover bots" who
just go around proving everything that needs proving is of course
naive in the extreme and I assume you don't seriously think that.
> Why
> are we in this modern era not always walking around in profound amazement at the miracles of our own technology? I'd say its just the dulling caused by constant exposure. For people not so dulled, it might be just as easy to convince them that supernatural forces were necessarily involved.
>
I'm in profound amazement at technology period, but I include in that
word the non-humanly derived (such as humans themselves), the beehives
and spiderwebs (we collect spiders at my place, use them instead of
fly tape).
> I suspect Ramanujan had his own methods that unfortunately remained a trade secret. Riemann was similar. They may have had certain brain centers that developed in ways quite out along the long tail.
> But in general, highly developed and effective search techniques through vast spaces of possibilities will always appear miraculous if their workings are hidden. No "non-computable" powers are needed.
>
That's completely speculative and only shows how eager you are to
interpolate faux evidence and narratives where there is none.
In fact Ramanujan himself couldn't explain the derivations in so many cases.
To write him off as some kind of snake oil guy is just to show how
you've stacked the deck. If you do something non-computable, then
you're just a circus act, so why should we bother with you?
Kinda circular, as in circle-the-wagons over-protective.
Your position has the tell tale signs of having high bias coupled with
(consequent to) inherent double standards and inconsistencies.
> Which also leads to why you would bring up chess? Chess is showing that with continual development chess programs are now beating the very best humans - with more development I expect they will completely dominate (I'm being generous - many would say they completely dominate already. Statistically they certainly do - most PCs still in service can run a chess program that will beat most humans.)
>
Exactly. Within the confines of the game of chess, the brute force
algorithms have been fine tuned. The Jeopardy stuff is looking
amenable too. Search engines have come a long way.
So now the AI crowd musters all these ducks and puts them in a row
that supposedly proves their 'Terminator' scenario: the on-rush of
machine intelligence is soon to sweep you sorry humans aside.
That's the syndrome in a nutshell: some desire to assert that humans
are a subservient subset of intelligent being and those who have
mastered computers are mastering the secret of that intelligence.
It's all sleight of hand hooey of course. There's no reason to feel
inferior to your PC or grovel at the feet of your Mac (were your Mac
to have feet).
Your attitudes typify an ethnicity I would say. Thanks for reminding
me of these memes, as I don't encounter this type of thinking every
day.
Kirby
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