Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!cs.utexas.edu!helios!bcm!dimacs.rutgers.edu!mips!wdl1.wdl.loral.com!wdl1!mikeb From: mikeb@wdl35.wdl.loral.com (Michael H Bender) Newsgroups: comp.ai.philosophy Subject: Re: AI - the real problem Message-ID: Date: 21 Feb 91 20:06:29 GMT References: <1434@ucl-cs.uucp> <5219@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU> Sender: news@wdl1.wdl.loral.com Organization: Ford Aerospace, Western Development Laboratories Lines: 32 In-Reply-To: minsky@media-lab.MEDIA.MIT.EDU's message of 14 Feb 91 14:35:47 GMT Marvin Minsky writes: > 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. I think there is an analogy between what you are suggesting and other reported limitations in human and animal thought. Example 1: It has been reported (I don't remember the source) that crows can reliably count up to 4 (?) but not past this number. Example 2: The studies associated with "The Magic Number 7". In both these examples there may be built in, structural, limitations on the amount of objects that can be perceived, conceptualized at any one time and these limitations appear to vary from species to species. Mike Bender