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From: bill@boulder.Colorado.EDU
Newsgroups: comp.ai.neural-nets
Subject: Re: intrinsic vs. extrinsic rules (Was: the baby bootstrap)
Message-ID: <18699@boulder.Colorado.EDU>
Date: 22 Mar 90 05:08:27 GMT
References: <744@telesoft.com> <1990Mar8.125506.11913@newcastle.ac.uk> <725@berlioz.nsc.com> <7181@gelatinosa.ai.mit.edu> <5423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU>
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In article <5423@ccncsu.ColoState.EDU> ld231782@longs.LANCE.ColoState.EDU 
(Lawrence Detweiler) writes:
>
>What if curiosity is a natural consequence of the wiring?  It is hard to
>imagine any global overseeing mechanism that decides what is interesting
>and what isn't.  

  It's not so hard to imagine, at least in a general way.  All you really
need is a novelty detector:  a mechanism that compares the current input
with the contents of memory, and, if nothing like the current input has
ever been seen, generates an impulse to investigate it.  Kohonen has
described a simple sort of neural-network novelty detector, and there
is a good deal of evidence for novelty-detection mechanisms in the
brain.

>                 Because curiosity is arguably the most important aspect
>in learning, my suggestion that intelligence arises naturally from the
>interactions of electricity (stimulii) and wires (the brain) does not
>seem so radical.

  The more we learn about brains, the clearer it becomes that human
intelligence is the result of a complex and laboriously designed (by
evolution) architecture.  The brain, even the neocortex, is by no means
a homogeneous net in which everything is connected to everything
else.  The local details of connections may (and probably do) result
from experience, but the broad global organization of the net is
preprogrammed.
  I suppose it is theoretically possible that merely hooking up a 
sufficiently massive glob of wires will somehow give rise to intelligence,
but I see no reason to believe it.

	-- Bill Skaggs
>
>dar@telesoft.com (David Reisner) in <744@telesoft.com>:
>
>>It is an obviously self-serving view. If you WANT machine thought to be
>>possible or be able to replace human thought (becuase you like the idea,
>>it would be useful, its interesting, or you get along better with machines
>>than with people), then this viewpoint makes things easier.
>
>Humans think, humans are machines, therefore machines think.  My views
>naturally assume that the duplication of thought outside the brain is
>feasible (presumably that is the very reason for the existence of this
>forum!).  It the view that our intelligence is sacred that is literally
>the self-serving view!  To suppose that some other entity is capable of
>duplicating humankind's main claim to fame is as disheartening to think
>we descended from apes!  Then again, imitation is the sincerest form of
>flattery.