More specifically, epistemology is a formal field of philosophy. Epistemologists study the interaction of knowledge with truth and belief. Basically, what we know and how we know it. They work to identify the source and scope of knowledge. An epistemological statement example goes something like this; I know I know how to program because professors who teach programming, authoritative figures, told me so by giving me passing grades in their classes.
Quite right about attachment. It may take quite a few exceptions before it is no longer an exception. Particularly if the original concept is regularly reinforced by peers or other sources. I would expect exceptions to get a bit more weight because they are novel, but no so much as to offset higher levels of reinforcement.
While the Freudian description is accurate relative to sources, I struggle to order them. I believe it is an accumulated weighting that makes one thought dominate another. We are indeed born with a great deal of innate behavioral weighting. As we learn, we strengthen some paths and create new paths for new concepts. The original behaviors (fight or flight, etc.) remain.
Based on this known process, I conjecture that experiences have an effect on the weighting of concepts. This weighting sub-utility is a determining factor in how much impact a concept has on our actions. When we discover fire burns our skin, we don't need to repeat the experience very often to weigh... (read 418 more words →)
Kaj,
Thank you. I had noticed that as well. It seems the LW group is focused on a much longer time horizon.
In every human endeavor, humans will shape their reality, either physically or mentally. They go to schools where their type of people go and live in neighborhoods where they feel comfortable based on a variety of commonalities. When their circumstances change, either for the better or the worse, they readjust their environment to fit with their new circumstances.
The human condition is inherently vulnerable to wireheading. A brief review of history is rich with examples of people attaining power and money who subsequently change their values to suit their own desires. The more influential and wealthy they become, enabling them to exist unfettered, the more they change their value system.
There... (read more)
Well, I'm a sailor and raising the waterline is a bad thing. You're underwater when the waterline gets too high.
Thanks for the feedback. I agree on the titling; I started with the title on the desired papers list, so wanted some connection with that. I wasn't sure if there was some distinction I was missing, so proceeded with this approach.
I know it is controversial to say super intelligence will appear quickly. Here again, I wanted some tie to the title. It is a very complex problem to predict AI. To theorize about anything beyond that would distract from the core of the paper.
While even more controversial, my belief is that the first AGI will be a super intelligence in its own right. An AGI will have not have one pair of... (read more)
I struggle with conceiving wanting to want, or decision making in general, as a tiered model. There are a great many factors that modify the ordering and intensity of utility functions. When human neurons fire they trigger multiple concurrent paths leading to a set of utility functions. Not all of the utilities are logic-related.
I posit that our ability to process and reason is due to this pattern ability and any model that will approximate human intelligence will need to be more complex than a simple linear layer model. The balance of numerous interactive utilities combine to inform decision making. A multiobjective optimization model, such as PIBEA, is required.
I'm new to LW, so I can't open threads just yet. I'm hoping to find some discussions around evolutionary models and solution sets relative to rational decision processing.
Granted. My point is the function needs to comprehend these factors to come to a more informed decision. Simply doing a compare of two values is inadequate. Some shading and weighting of the values is required, however subjective that may be. Devising a method to assess the amount of subjectivity would be an interesting discussion. Considering the composition of the value is the enlightening bit.
I also posit that a suite of algorithms should be comprehended with some trigger function in the overall algorithm. One of our skills is to change modes to suit a given situation. How sub-utilities impact the value(s) served up to the overall utility will vary with situational inputs.
The... (read more)
I think a semantic check is in order. Intuition can be defined as an immediate cognition of a thought that is not inferred by a previous cognition of the same thought. This definition allows for prior learning to impact intuition. Trained mathematicians will make intuitive inferences based on their training, these can be called breakthroughs when they are correct. It would be highly improbable for an untrained person to have the same intuition or accurate intuitive thoughts about advanced math.
Intuition can also be defined as untaught, non-inferential, pure knowledge. This would seem to invalidate the example above since the mathematician had a cognition that relied on inferences from prior teachings. Arriving at an agreement on which definition this thread is using will help clarify comments.