Sure - the "ridiculously simple algorithm" is Darwinian evolution.
Brent
On Mon, Sep 22, 2008 at 9:00 PM, <marc.geddes.domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
>
>
> On Sep 23, 6:10 am, Brent Meeker <meeke....domain.name.hidden> wrote:
>
> >
> > I don't think it likely that one individual could have gone from B1 to B2
> > without being told anything about probability, preference ordering, logic
> and
> > mathematics. Just because there is a chain of maybe a few hundred
> individuals
> > who did it or contributed to it, it doesn't follow that one person could
> do it.
>
> Even if that's true, take all the individuals who contributed to the
> development of Bayesian math. Then the set of individuals can be
> redefined as functions in a single bigger algorithm, and the same
> argument applies.
>
> >
> > However, I recommend William S. Cooper's little book, "The Evolution of
> Reason"
> > which takes your idea of development of modern forms of reasoning from
> simpler
> > forms seriously and fills out details and also suggests further advances.
> >
>
> The question is, how much basic reasoning structure is built into the
> human mind? More than likely, not much, in which case the initial
> functionality could be duplicated by a ridicuously simple algorithm.
>
> I'd be willing to wager that all that's there intially (in the human
> brain) in terms of reasoning mechanisms are a few very simple high-
> level representations , a few very basic analogy-formation techniques,
> and a few very simple low-level perceptual 'prims'.
>
> >But they commonly violate the rationality standards of Bayesian inference,
> i.e.
> >they are inconsistent in their assignment of probabilities.
>
> Yes, but doesn't that support what I'm saying? A few vague fuzzy
> feeble human approximations to Bayesian inference were apparently
> enough to generate all our current scientific knowledge!
>
> Doesn't this suggest that some ridiculously simple initial algorithm
> is sufficient to capture intelligence?
> >
>
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Received on Tue Sep 23 2008 - 07:47:45 PDT