brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) (09/26/90)
gay but that's alright because her husband wants to be a girl and in the end none of it matters because the plane they're all traveling on is hijacked by terrorists and shot down over southern Libya where Terrie is captured and tortured by white slave traders and everyone lives happily ever after. Expires: References: <3797@se-sd.SanDiego.NCR.COM> <3543@gara.une.oz.au> <10072@goofy.Apple.COM> <5907@plains.NoDak.edu> <59525@bbn.BBN.COM> <147@tdatirv.UUCP> <59556@bbn.BBN.COM> Sender: Brat Wizard [aka John Whitten] Reply-To: brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) Followup-To: Distribution: Organization: C3 Incorporated, Herndon, VA Honorary Member: 'Homo Sapiens R Us' Keywords: Emotions, Intelligence, AI, Bullshit In article <59556@bbn.BBN.COM> BKort@bbn.com (Barry Kort) writes: >In article <147@tdatirv.UUCP> sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) writes: >> ... solving the problem of making a computer curious might well >> be a major breakthrough in AI. this I agree with. Curiosity is an asset in ANY freerunning (self-serving) knowledge aquisition system. (There, I tried to be as broad as possible but I'm certain SOMEONE will find a way to misunderstand it :-) ) >As I see it, emotions are an emergent property of any learning system. To >put it poetically, emotions are the expression of vanishing ignorance. Or >to put it more mathematically, if K(t) denotes accumulated knowledge over >time, then emotions correspond to the time derivative, dK(t)/dt. > >Thus any learning system, be it made of silicon or made of meat, will >exhibit emotions indicative of its progress or lack of progress in >acquiring significant new knowledge. This is the part I don't agree with.... Dunno 'bout you, but I don't agree that emotions are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY for intelligence nor do I think they are a natural BYPRODUCT of learning (neural or otherwise) but I *DO* agree with you that in HUMAN oriented systems (though not necessarily human), emotions play a large part in developing personalities. >Barry Kort Brat Wizard +----------------------------------------------------------------------------+ | First, get the facts, then you can distort them at your leisure. -TWAIN- | ++---------------[Brat Wizard - brat@c3pe.C3.COM - John Whitten]------------++ |C3 Inc. 460 Herndon Parkway, Herndon Va., 22070 [USA] (703) 471-6000 x2327| | Opinions expressed herein are my own and are in no way connected with C3 | | unless they like them, in which case, they'll claim full responsibility, | | unless no one ELSE likes them, at which point they'll become mine again. | +--------------------------------------------------------------------------+
sarima@tdatirv.UUCP (Stanley Friesen) (09/27/90)
In article <15@c3pe.C3.COM> brat@c3pe.C3.COM (John Whitten) writes: > >>As I see it, emotions are an emergent property of any learning system. To >>put it poetically, emotions are the expression of vanishing ignorance. >>... Thus any learning system, be it made of silicon or made of meat, will >>exhibit emotions indicative of its progress or lack of progress in >>acquiring significant new knowledge. >This is the part I don't agree with.... >Dunno 'bout you, but I don't agree that emotions are ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY >for intelligence nor do I think they are a natural BYPRODUCT of learning >(neural or otherwise) but I *DO* agree with you that in HUMAN oriented >systems (though not necessarily human), emotions play a large part in >developing personalities. Quite right, I was going to say something about this myself. From a biological perspective, emotions appear *far* earlier than any form of reasoning. Indeed they may be almost as old as primitive learning. The biological purpose of emotion appears to be a mechanism for prioritizing sets of survival needs, combined with an emergency alert system. That is it provides a framework within which alternate response strategies can be selected depending on current needs. In 'lower' animals the behavior seems to be entirely determined by the current emotional state and the current set of stimuli. We generally call this sort of behavior pattern "instinct". Thus emotion is a major component of what is usually called instinct. In humans the basic, primitive emotions are thus a remnant of the older instinct-based behavior pattern of our ancestors. They remain critical, since they remind us of our basic needs. In addition we have a complex set of meta-emotions based on high level abstraction from the basic emotions. These more complex emotions could be said to be emergent properties of a reasoning system, at least given the existance of primary emotions. (Note that it may be difficult to distinguish basic and derived emotions)