byrnema comments on Open Thread: December 2009 - Less Wrong

3 Post author: CannibalSmith 01 December 2009 04:25PM

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Comment author: byrnema 02 December 2009 06:59:37AM *  0 points [-]

A poem, not a post:

Intelligence is not computation.

As you know.

Yet the converse bears … contemplation, reputation. Only then refutation.

We are irritated by our fellows that observe that A mostly implies B, and B mostly implies C, but they will not, will not concede that A implies C, to any extent.

We consider this; an error in logic, an error in logic.

Even though! we know: intelligence is not computation.

Intelligence is finding the solution in the space of the impossible. I don’t mean luck At all. I mean: while mathematical proofs are formal, absolute, without question, convincing, final,

We have no Method, no method for their generation. As well we know:

No computation can possibly be found to generate, not possibly. Not systematically, not even with ingenuity. Yet, how and why do we know this -- this Impossibility?

Intelligence is leaping, guessing, placing the foot unexpectedly yet correctly. Which you find verified always afterwards, not before.

Of course that’s why humans don’t calculate correctly.

But we knew that.

You and I, being too logical about it, pretending that computation is intelligence.

But we know that; already, everything. That pretending is the part of intelligence not found in the Computating. Yet, so? We’ll pretend that intelligence is computing and we’ll see where the computation fails! Telling us what we already knew but a little better.

Than before, we’ll see afterwards. How ingenuous, us.

The computation will tell us, finally so, we'll pretend.

Comment author: gwern 12 December 2009 03:05:46AM *  2 points [-]

While reading a collection of Tom Wayman's poetry, suddenly a poem came to me about Hal Finney ("Dying Outside"); since we're contributing poems, I don't feel quite so self-conscious. Here goes:

He will die outside, he says.
Flawed flesh betrayed him,
it has divorced him -
for the brain was left him,
but not the silverware
nor the limbs nor the car.
So he will take up
a brazen hussy,
tomorrow's eve,
a breather-for-him,
a pisser-for-him.
He will be letters,
delivered slowly;
deliberation
his future watch-word.
He would not leave until he left this world.
I try not to see his mobile flesh,
how it will sag into eternal rest,
but what he will see:
symbol and symbol, in their endless braids,
and with them, spread over strange seas of thought
mind (not body), forever voyaging.

http://www.gwern.net/fiction/Dying%20Outside

Comment author: byrnema 02 December 2009 05:58:54PM *  2 points [-]

I wrote this poem yesterday in an unusual mood. I don't entirely agree with it today. Or at least, I would qualify it.

What is meant by computation? When I wrote that intelligence is not computation, I must have meant a certain sort of computation because of course all thought is some kind of computation.

To what extent has distinction been made between systematic/linear/deductive thought (which I am criticizing as obviously limited in the poem) and intelligent pattern-based thought? Has there been any progress in characterizing the latter?

For example, consider the canonical story about Gauss. To keep him busy with a computation, his math teacher told him to add all the numbers from 1 to 100. Instead, according to the story, Gauss added the first number and the last number, multiplied by 100 and divided by 2. Obviously, this is a computation. But yet a different sort. To what extent do you suppose he logically deduced the pattern of the lowest number and highest number combining always to single value or just guessed/observed it was a pattern that might work? And then found that it did work inductively?

I'm very interested in characterizing the difference between these kinds of computation. Intelligent thinking seems to really be guesses followed by verification, not steady linear deduction.

Comment author: JamesAndrix 03 December 2009 03:12:12AM *  1 point [-]

What is meant by computation? When I wrote that intelligence is not computation, I must have meant a certain sort of computation because of course all thought is some kind of computation.

Gah, Thank You. Saves me the trouble of a long reply. I'll upvote for a change-of-mind disclaimer in the original.

Intelligent thinking seems to really be guesses followed by verification, not steady linear deduction.

My recent thoughts have been along these lines, but this is also what evolution does. At some point, the general things learned by guessing have to be incorporated into the guess-generating process.

Comment author: rhollerith_dot_com 02 December 2009 07:19:13AM 0 points [-]

I do not like most poems, but I liked this one.

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