caasi@sdsu.UUCP (Richard Caasi) (04/23/89)
What is the Sound Made by a Mind? The goals of Artificial Intelligence are beyond the capabilities of Turing machines, i.e., conventional computers aren't going to solve AI's biggest problems. All isn't lost, however, since there is at least one class of machines more pwerful than Turing machines. Existence proof - the human brain. We've been trying to simulate the mind with the wrong models! For example, the mind can solve Turing non-computable functions. In fact there are classes of abstract machines more powerful then the human brain in computational power. Let us refer to the aggregate of these classes as Super-intelligence. The human brain continues to evolve making our attempts to assign constants to it absurd. Imagine an IQ test given to prehistoric man, present-day man, and 25th century man. What we define as intelligence today would be obsolete by future standards. So why should our models stop here? Scientists try to model the universe with simplistic models that have been designed to accommodate the limitations of present-day human minds. Funny thing is, we believe these models as reality itself! It's no wonder that these models come and go with the times. Old models become passe', new ones become chic, those on the fringe await their turn, all taxing the conservative wheels of scientific progress. What is computation but a transformation from one state to another. Such functions can be discrete, continuous, and non-linear but nature performs these transformations all the time. Energy is information. Its transformation from one state to another is computation. Entropy and evolution are computational processes. We can't even solve most of the non-linear differential equations we use to describe most processes in nature. In the most abstract sense, the universe IS a computational mechanism, a computer running itself (not a model of itself). It has no need for symbolic representations since everything in nature is its own representation. Its program is dynamically evolving according to its own rules and the computation will end, presumably, with the heat death of the universe (i.e., no more energy to transform or in other words, no more data to compute). Man and his feeble brain is part of the universe and plays a role in nature's program. (Yes man and his artifacts are also as much a part of the ecosystem as are plants and animals.) As Heisenberg imples, we have an effect on nature's process. And we are in turn affected by it in endless feedback loops. The interdependence of nature is apparent in its "sensitive dependence to initial conditions". Man's objectivity, like his free will, is merely an illusion but his actions do have consequences. |================================================================| |Richard Caasi || In art, as in everywhere else, the| |San Diego State University || the process of creating is more | |sdsu!caasi@ucsd.edu || important than the product of the | |============================= process.==========================| Disclaimer: Opinions are never independent of each other.