Path: utzoo!mnetor!tmsoft!torsqnt!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!wuarchive!mit-eddie!media-lab!minsky
From: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU (Marvin Minsky)
Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy
Subject: Re: AI - the real problem
Message-ID: <5219@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU>
Date: 14 Feb 91 14:35:47 GMT
References: <1434@ucl-cs.uucp>
Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.media.mit.edu (Marvin Minsky)
Organization: MIT Media Lab, Cambridge MA
Lines: 18

There has been considerable discussion under this subject of
differences between human and animal thought.  Has anyone considered
the conjecture that humans have 3.5 levels of STM, or large=-scale
temporary K-lines -- and procedures capable of earning to use them.
Maybe chimps have only 2.5 layers of recirsion abilities -- and
earlier mammals only 1.5.  This could account for many aspects of
human abilities in language, planning, problem-solving, etc.  And note
the positive feedback: with a larger (yet still small) such stack,
yiou also get more time to put more things into LTM to use as
"virtual" STM stack.

For example, Marcus grammars can do a lot of "natural language
grammar" with 3 stack-like registers, but not very much with only two.

By "2.5" levels of stack, I simply mean that the first register is
very competent and capacious, the second less so, etc., so the thing
trails off.  That's why, presumably, you can understand sentences with
2 levels of embedding, but have trouble with 3, etc.