Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!samsung!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!math.lsa.umich.edu!jjewett
From: jjewett@math.lsa.umich.edu (Jim Jewett)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: Intelligence in Science?
Keywords: Sparseness_Theory
Message-ID: <1990Oct7.192212.24550@math.lsa.umich.edu>
Date: 7 Oct 90 19:22:12 GMT
References: <1990Sep29.213139.2876@watdragon.waterloo.edu> <3499@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct3.183522.17076@riacs.edu> <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> <1990Oct4.175806.7711@watdragon.waterloo.edu>
Sender: usenet@math.lsa.umich.edu
Reply-To: jjewett@math.lsa.umich.edu (Jim Jewett)
Organization: University of Michigan, Department of Mathematics
Lines: 69

In article <1990Oct4.175806.7711@watdragon.waterloo.edu>,
cpshelley@violet.uwaterloo.ca (cameron shelley) writes:
|> In article <3549@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky) writes:

|> > But there is another possibility
|> >explained in an essay of mine --- "Communication with Alien
|> >Intelligence," in @i[Extraterrestrial: Science and Alien
|> >Intelligence,] (E. Regis, ed.) Cambridge University Press, 1985.  This
|> >is a cute theory based on some experiments with very small Turing
|> >machines.  It turned out that many of them performed operations that
|> >could be interpreted as elementary addition -- while none of them did
|> >anything that was "similar" to addition but not exactly addition!

How do you define "similar" to?  Do you mean any associative property
with inverses and an identity?  Any accumlator?  It seems that there
will be no woman similar to Mom because we known Mom so well ... but
someone for whom she isn't the point of reference may very well see
her as similar to her sister.

And as addition is all that we know, and we know it so well, what precautions
did you take to prevent the conclusion from following directly from your
point of reference?

|> >What that seems to mean is that the most elementary mathematics -- or,
|> >rather, the kinds that humans have historically first imagined -- hold
|> >a peculiar position among "all possible mathematical systems".  In a
|> >sense, they might simply be the ones that are "easiest for a machine
|> >to think of".
|> 
|> Do you mean "easiest for a human to think of"?  If they're so simple,
|> why has it taken us so long to develop them?  It wasn't until the
|> renaissance (sp?) that anyone really thought of modelling the world
|> in mathematical terms alone.  People must be indoctrinated for years
|> before the conventions of math and physics seem 'natural'.

But these thousands of years still produced the first results.  It took
even *longer* to develop alternatives, and will take longer still to
develop alternatives that we haven't come up with yet.  Simplest doesn't
mean simple, and the Universe has had some time to work.

|> >  Why, then, might they help in making physics theories?
|> >Either because the universe, too, is peculiarly simple -- whatever
|> >that means -- or that the simplest theories are (at least, at first)
|> >the most useful ones -- simply because they are the first ones we can
|> >use to make any predictions at all...
|> 
|> This sounds somewhat too idealized to me.  The development of any kind
|> of theories historically have been largely done by adapting old ideas
|> and conventions, even where they are out of context (analogy).  This
|> implies more of a feedback mechanism of conception on conception than
|> a progression of theories corrected by regular reference to "the
|> universe" as you seem to be saying.  The former would be much more
|> haphazard and less 'logical' than than the second (and take much more
|> time and arguement), which seems to agree better with the actual 
|> history of the sciences. :>  In other words, the way we look at the
|> world is perhaps more arbitrary than you think - although I cannot
|> produce any evidence to support this, not having a sufficiently
|> non-human perspective to refer to!

But what does it take to find the original state that we use as the basis
of an analogy?  It is easier to understand the front wheel of a tricycle
than of a car, because more of it is exposed.  And perhaps mathematics
is more "exposed" than the alternatives.


-jJ 
jjewett@math.lsa.umich.edu       Take only memories.
Jewett@ub.cc.umich.edu           Leave not even footprints.