Hi, if one thinks about processes - independent of runnning inside or outside ourselves - there always exists some possible "goal" connected to this process, i.e. what is a certain process aiming at ?
The concept of goal is tremendously important in our everyday thinking, it's closely linked to our desires, wantings, dislikes. Thinking about how to achieve a certain goal (i.e. planning) consumes a large amount of our mental ressources.
What are goals and why do I think they are connected to algorithms ? As Aristotle and Minsky denote, goals are closely connected to differences between an actual state and a desired state. And as Herbert Simon observes, goals define the functionality or purpose of a system, by describing the interface between the inner and outer environment of a system. This comes quite close to the meaning of "procedures" in computational language. So goals are instruments for specifying how procedures or processes ought to behave. When a system can not achieve its goal, the inner organisation of the subsystems must be changed.
The idea that goals are some form of summary for underlying smaller systems is interesting. For this, the systems must share some representation of its actual states and its desired states, which differences can again provide sub-goals for the smaller parts. The levels of hierarchy in our human thinking have been studied by Freud and Minsky recently, and in artifical systems by software architects. To enable brain processes to formulate goals, differences must be recognized by transducing the information of our enviroment by our sense organs to some internal representation.
Although today we can already design artificial minds that transduce temperature, air pressure, sunlight, sounds an\d odors, our genes provide means to transduce much more complex forms of enviroments, such as moods of our friends, danger of potential predators, and waste of ressources for example. After having some internal representation of actual state, mechanisms must work to reduce the difference to a desired state, for example dress clothes to maintai\n body temperature, use coffeine to stay awake, "work" to obtain ressources for achieving other goals, or decrease the level of importance of some goal. Often we have many different goals, and the conflict of goals might result in what we call pain. Achieving a goal usually triggers our emotion of pleasure, and makes a memory of what we did. It's one of the biggest contribution of Freud, that our mind eyes only have limited access to our goals and values, i.e. to our desired states. Maybe the reason for this is that our brains memory is too small to represent all running processes inside.
As goals may conflict, and often are connected to processes which do not understand each other, a currency for trad\ing different ressources is often needed. Most of our chemical processes require some energy, or sugar, or pleasure to distract other processes. In fact, food was one of the earliest currencies used for trading. Todays most widely used of trading ressources is money.
Furthermore I was reading a bit in some essays of Alfred North Whitehead on the aims of education. There are very intersting thoughts in it, e.g. the most important aims of going to school should be on learning to develop initiative and getting encouragement to learn about ideas. In my view todays educational system often results only in an ability to learn passing tests, and does not encourage initiative very much.
Sunday, November 06, 2005
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
Music and meaning
Friedrich Schlegel on meaning in music (1798) (English translation below)
Es pflegt manchem seltsam und laecherlich aufzufallen, wenn die Musiker von den Gedanken in ihren Kompositionen reden; und oft mag es auch so geschehen, dass man wahrnimmt, sie haben mehr Gedanken in ihrer Musik als ueber dieselbe. Wer aber Sinn fuer die wunderbaren Affinitaeten aller Kuenste und Wissenschaften hat, wird die Sache wenigstens nicht aus dem platten Gesichtspunkt der sogenannten Natuerlichkeit betrachten, nach welcher die Musik nur Sprache der Empfindung sein soll, und eine gewisse Tendenz aller reinen Instrumentalmusik zur Philosophie an sich nicht unmoeglich finden. Muss die reine Instrumentalmusik sich nicht selbst einen Text erschaffen ? Und wird das Thema in ihr nicht so entwickelt, bestaetigt, variiert und kontrastiert wie der Gegenstand der Meditation in einer philosophischen Ideenreihe ?
It generally strikes many people as strange and ridiculous if musicians talk about the thoughts (=themes) in their compositions; and often it may even happen that we perceive that they have more thought in their music than about it. Who has a feeling, however, for the wonderful affinity of all the arts and sciences will at least not consider the matter from the flat and so-called "natural" point of view, according to which music should be nothing more than the language of sentiment, and he will find a certain tendency of all pure music to philosophy not inherently impossible. Must not pure instrumental music itself create its own text? And is not the theme in it developed, confirmed, varied, and constrasted in the same way as the object of meditation in a philosophical series of ideas?
Es pflegt manchem seltsam und laecherlich aufzufallen, wenn die Musiker von den Gedanken in ihren Kompositionen reden; und oft mag es auch so geschehen, dass man wahrnimmt, sie haben mehr Gedanken in ihrer Musik als ueber dieselbe. Wer aber Sinn fuer die wunderbaren Affinitaeten aller Kuenste und Wissenschaften hat, wird die Sache wenigstens nicht aus dem platten Gesichtspunkt der sogenannten Natuerlichkeit betrachten, nach welcher die Musik nur Sprache der Empfindung sein soll, und eine gewisse Tendenz aller reinen Instrumentalmusik zur Philosophie an sich nicht unmoeglich finden. Muss die reine Instrumentalmusik sich nicht selbst einen Text erschaffen ? Und wird das Thema in ihr nicht so entwickelt, bestaetigt, variiert und kontrastiert wie der Gegenstand der Meditation in einer philosophischen Ideenreihe ?
It generally strikes many people as strange and ridiculous if musicians talk about the thoughts (=themes) in their compositions; and often it may even happen that we perceive that they have more thought in their music than about it. Who has a feeling, however, for the wonderful affinity of all the arts and sciences will at least not consider the matter from the flat and so-called "natural" point of view, according to which music should be nothing more than the language of sentiment, and he will find a certain tendency of all pure music to philosophy not inherently impossible. Must not pure instrumental music itself create its own text? And is not the theme in it developed, confirmed, varied, and constrasted in the same way as the object of meditation in a philosophical series of ideas?
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Pieces of knowledge
One central question about processes in the mind is: How is knowledge represented internally in the mind ? At the end there are many different kinds of objects and relationships between them in our universe, and we can use language for most cases to control those internal representations. So, what would be a good model to unify all these things, or how do mental data structures look like and how does knowledge access with language work ?
When I was reading the PhD thesis of Push Singh about an architecture for reflective common sense thinking lately, I came to understand better what the "frame-idea" of Marvin Minsky is about. It might be well possible that the smallest pieces of knowledge our mental agencies use during reasoning are "frames", i.e. structures that consist of a basic typical form and that can be tuned with a set of pre-defined knobs to specific instants. For example, the word "car" should arouse at each listener this frame: Some metallic structure with a certain color and 4 wheels at the bottom. All additional variables can be tuned by asking questions to the story-telling person or letting our memories do this job. And recursively, wheels, windows and cockpit are frames as well, and will arouse also certain agents in our cerbral cortex for vision and sound. (Also interesting, our physical models of light could be seen as a collection of frames: photons (i.e. particles), waves, rays.)
There are two interesting directions to walk from this frame-concept, the first is how are frames connected to our language and speech agencies and second, what kind of frames are there. For the first point, I got to understand better Minsky's polyneme concept. Language can be seen as interface system to transfer some meaning, knowledge or frame into another mind. For this at least two sub-systems are necessary: First some system for recognizing some concept and second a system to bring the short-term memories into certain states (maybe similar to compare this with zipping and unzipping some packets of information for transport). The polyneme does this recognizing (k-lines do the memorizing). For example we all have acquired a collection of basic structures in our minds for descriping circles, boxes, colors, substance, etc. A polyneme arouses agents in these different agents in different realms. This parallel processing of meaning is the underlying idea of Minsky's statement something has only a meaning when it has multiple meanings: If we have only one way to represent a thing, our agencies will fail to "turn" the object in the mind, when we want to apply some different way of thinking to this.
The second part that I just found interesting about frames, and by reading Push Singh's work, is, that stories can be seen as collection of frames as well. And even a full story can be seen as just some basic frame that can be used by other stories or ways to think. When we deliberate about how to solve a problem, we might just re-activate an old story with its main actors, with its protagonists and antagonists, the different objects in the scene, and then look carefully in our mind how the problem was solved the last time. A huge amount of knowledge is transferred by story-telling.
When I was reading the PhD thesis of Push Singh about an architecture for reflective common sense thinking lately, I came to understand better what the "frame-idea" of Marvin Minsky is about. It might be well possible that the smallest pieces of knowledge our mental agencies use during reasoning are "frames", i.e. structures that consist of a basic typical form and that can be tuned with a set of pre-defined knobs to specific instants. For example, the word "car" should arouse at each listener this frame: Some metallic structure with a certain color and 4 wheels at the bottom. All additional variables can be tuned by asking questions to the story-telling person or letting our memories do this job. And recursively, wheels, windows and cockpit are frames as well, and will arouse also certain agents in our cerbral cortex for vision and sound. (Also interesting, our physical models of light could be seen as a collection of frames: photons (i.e. particles), waves, rays.)
There are two interesting directions to walk from this frame-concept, the first is how are frames connected to our language and speech agencies and second, what kind of frames are there. For the first point, I got to understand better Minsky's polyneme concept. Language can be seen as interface system to transfer some meaning, knowledge or frame into another mind. For this at least two sub-systems are necessary: First some system for recognizing some concept and second a system to bring the short-term memories into certain states (maybe similar to compare this with zipping and unzipping some packets of information for transport). The polyneme does this recognizing (k-lines do the memorizing). For example we all have acquired a collection of basic structures in our minds for descriping circles, boxes, colors, substance, etc. A polyneme arouses agents in these different agents in different realms. This parallel processing of meaning is the underlying idea of Minsky's statement something has only a meaning when it has multiple meanings: If we have only one way to represent a thing, our agencies will fail to "turn" the object in the mind, when we want to apply some different way of thinking to this.
The second part that I just found interesting about frames, and by reading Push Singh's work, is, that stories can be seen as collection of frames as well. And even a full story can be seen as just some basic frame that can be used by other stories or ways to think. When we deliberate about how to solve a problem, we might just re-activate an old story with its main actors, with its protagonists and antagonists, the different objects in the scene, and then look carefully in our mind how the problem was solved the last time. A huge amount of knowledge is transferred by story-telling.
Monday, September 26, 2005
Computer and processes
One goal of these writings is to better understand the nature of computers. Maybe the common sense view on computers consists in a picture of some ugly box, which is making noise, connected with another box that contains mainly static, colorfull images and whose content can be slightly modified by pushing letters or moving around another small, round-shaped box. The common view furthermore is that these boxes are in general difficult to control and lack the most simplest cognitive mechanisms, i.e. fishes in an aquarium are more vital (whatever that means...)
But what exactly is the computer ? One option would be to use Descartes body-soul dualism. I mean to split the computer into two worlds, as we often do when we talk about ourselves, our bodies and souls. So, it's commonly suggested to divide the concept of computer into worlds of hardware and software, with only minor interacting forces in between. But the word software is funny somehow as well: Something soft, which we cannot touch with our hands. I prefer the French word "logiciel" which means "algorithms", processes that solve a problem.
By the way, it seems that the early use of the word algorithm was used always in relation to solving a well specified problem X. As problem get more complex and more difficult to grasp with our sequential human memories, we not often use algorithms to deal with a difficult problem, but rules of thumbs (heuristics), i.e. processes that mostly solves a problem.
In any case, the important thing of our concept of computer is maybe less the physical necessities of hardware, but the effects of many running processes that each can interact and be transformed into the vocabulary of other processes. The similarity between processes and language is very interesting. But also language can be seen as a process, a process that controls our short term memories. Funny, isn't "it" ? :-)
But what exactly is the computer ? One option would be to use Descartes body-soul dualism. I mean to split the computer into two worlds, as we often do when we talk about ourselves, our bodies and souls. So, it's commonly suggested to divide the concept of computer into worlds of hardware and software, with only minor interacting forces in between. But the word software is funny somehow as well: Something soft, which we cannot touch with our hands. I prefer the French word "logiciel" which means "algorithms", processes that solve a problem.
By the way, it seems that the early use of the word algorithm was used always in relation to solving a well specified problem X. As problem get more complex and more difficult to grasp with our sequential human memories, we not often use algorithms to deal with a difficult problem, but rules of thumbs (heuristics), i.e. processes that mostly solves a problem.
In any case, the important thing of our concept of computer is maybe less the physical necessities of hardware, but the effects of many running processes that each can interact and be transformed into the vocabulary of other processes. The similarity between processes and language is very interesting. But also language can be seen as a process, a process that controls our short term memories. Funny, isn't "it" ? :-)
Friday, September 02, 2005
Beethoven's 29th Piano Sonata (Op. 106)
Good evening,
I just have finished listening once again to this wonderfull piece of music. I find the 3rd movement "Adagio sostenuto, appassionata con molto sentimento" especially fascinating. It has such a wonderfull story ! It makes me remember many pictures and feelings, simple things like water, the play of photons mixing in different color, but also this maybe spiritual feeling of dignity. It conveys such quiet and peacefull emotions is at the same time full of insights and questions. Maybe similar to climbing a mountain, or enjoying the unlimited view or fantastic colors of a sunset, and at the same time always remembering the simple and common things.
Furthermore, Minsky's concept on k-lines, on generating memories from completely new or relating to older experiences is very, very interesting.
I just have finished listening once again to this wonderfull piece of music. I find the 3rd movement "Adagio sostenuto, appassionata con molto sentimento" especially fascinating. It has such a wonderfull story ! It makes me remember many pictures and feelings, simple things like water, the play of photons mixing in different color, but also this maybe spiritual feeling of dignity. It conveys such quiet and peacefull emotions is at the same time full of insights and questions. Maybe similar to climbing a mountain, or enjoying the unlimited view or fantastic colors of a sunset, and at the same time always remembering the simple and common things.
Furthermore, Minsky's concept on k-lines, on generating memories from completely new or relating to older experiences is very, very interesting.
Tuesday, August 23, 2005
Gilbert Ryle
Hi!
It has been a while since my last post. Unfortunately, time moves ever forward. I am currently reading "The concept of Mind" by Gilbert Ryle in my spare time, which is few these days. It deals with our misconceptions between states and processes. One among other interesting quote:
"It should be noticed that someone is not said to know how to play chess, if all that he can do is to recite the rules accurately. He must be able to make the required moves. But he is said to know how to play if, although he cannot cite the rules, he normally does make the permitted moves, avoid the forbidden moves and protest if his opponent makes forbidden moves. His knowledge how is exercised primarily in the moves that he makes, or concedes, and in the moves that he avoids or vetoes. ... The distinction between habits and intelligent capacities can be illustrated by reference to the parallel distinction between the methods used for inculcating the two sorts of second nature. We build up habits by drill, but we build up intelligent capacities by training. Drill (or conditioning) consists in the impositions of repititions. ... The practices are not learned until the pupil"s responses to his cues are automatic, until he can 'do them in his sleep'. Training on the other hand, though it embodies plenty of sheer drill, does not consist of drill. It involves the stimulation by criticism and example of the pupil's own judgement. He learns how to do things thinking what he is doing, so that every new operation performed is itself a new lesson to him how to perform better. ... Drill dispenses with intelligence, training develops it."
It has been a while since my last post. Unfortunately, time moves ever forward. I am currently reading "The concept of Mind" by Gilbert Ryle in my spare time, which is few these days. It deals with our misconceptions between states and processes. One among other interesting quote:
"It should be noticed that someone is not said to know how to play chess, if all that he can do is to recite the rules accurately. He must be able to make the required moves. But he is said to know how to play if, although he cannot cite the rules, he normally does make the permitted moves, avoid the forbidden moves and protest if his opponent makes forbidden moves. His knowledge how is exercised primarily in the moves that he makes, or concedes, and in the moves that he avoids or vetoes. ... The distinction between habits and intelligent capacities can be illustrated by reference to the parallel distinction between the methods used for inculcating the two sorts of second nature. We build up habits by drill, but we build up intelligent capacities by training. Drill (or conditioning) consists in the impositions of repititions. ... The practices are not learned until the pupil"s responses to his cues are automatic, until he can 'do them in his sleep'. Training on the other hand, though it embodies plenty of sheer drill, does not consist of drill. It involves the stimulation by criticism and example of the pupil's own judgement. He learns how to do things thinking what he is doing, so that every new operation performed is itself a new lesson to him how to perform better. ... Drill dispenses with intelligence, training develops it."
Monday, August 08, 2005
Complexity
One of the most important question for sciences today to answer are questions around the nature of complexity, i.e. systems with a large amount of different parts and the quality and quantity of their interactions. Some interesting links on this
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems
http://www.necsi.org/guide/DCSchapter0.pdf
Maybe all physical laws could be derived from more hidden forms of complex algorithms... As Richard Feynman is suggesting in "The Character of Physical Law": "Suppose that physics, or rather nature, is considered analogous to a great chess game with millions of pieces in it, and we are trying to discover the laws by which the pieces move. The great gods who play this chess play it very rapidly, and it is hard to watch and difficult to see. However, we are catching on to some of the rules, and there are some rules which we can work out which do not require that we watch every move."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complex_systems
http://www.necsi.org/guide/DCSchapter0.pdf
Maybe all physical laws could be derived from more hidden forms of complex algorithms... As Richard Feynman is suggesting in "The Character of Physical Law": "Suppose that physics, or rather nature, is considered analogous to a great chess game with millions of pieces in it, and we are trying to discover the laws by which the pieces move. The great gods who play this chess play it very rapidly, and it is hard to watch and difficult to see. However, we are catching on to some of the rules, and there are some rules which we can work out which do not require that we watch every move."
Saturday, June 11, 2005
Minds and algorithms
When minds are compared to computers, it is intuitively done by assuming that brains have much higher parallel processing power then computers have (indeed computers work highly sequential). But I must come back asking myself where does the power of minds come from ? How does that parallel processing work? Why does languages seem to hide this huge activity behind the scenes ? When we use words like, "me" or "room", we don't feel any multiple activity at all. We just know what we mean, we know what kinds of objects to take from our memories. I think one reason why scientific thinking has been so succesfull was to reverse that process: First trying to understand a proccess and then try to 'label' it. Maybe this is also why science education is difficult to understand for some children, as they use 'labels' for processes which they don't yet understand.
Another key idea in the theories of Minsky is the working of multiple representations and the switching among them. I also like that idea that the aim of education should mainly focus on learning to build more robust networks of representations and learn new ways to build those representations.
Another key idea in the theories of Minsky is the working of multiple representations and the switching among them. I also like that idea that the aim of education should mainly focus on learning to build more robust networks of representations and learn new ways to build those representations.
Sunday, May 08, 2005
Pleasure
I was just thinking on the quality of emotions, and was reminded by something written in the Artistotle's Ethics, that everyone is looking for pleasure or fun. How many different feelings of pleasure can we experience ? What are the mechanisms behind it ? And how are they decoded into our DNA sequence ? An interesting quote of the composer Mendelssohn in this context:
"Music can not be caught with words - not because, music is more vague and undetermined, but because it's more precise than words are."
"Music can not be caught with words - not because, music is more vague and undetermined, but because it's more precise than words are."
Thursday, May 05, 2005
A cloud of resources
Hi,
nice that you still are interested in my thoughts on thinking. I hope it is still entertaining somehow, also when I lack the time and routine to update my personal progress regularly.
I find it still a brilliant idea that what a brain does, a mind, can be seen as a cloud of resources, agencies or pieces of machinery. Isn't it fascinating how our activities relate to our minds ? Isn't it also fascinating to realize how little we think about our concepts of "mind" ? Somehow we understand that a mind controls one's or other people's actions. A mind does this in many, many different ways, and we often popularize this as 'showing emotions' or 'having thought on something'. But how does a mind discover something which seemingly not existed before... ?
In the case of emotions: M. Clynes is arguing that to understand what emotions are, what they do, why music spark them off, it is essential not to seperate the external expressions of emotions and the internal physical mechanisms, i.e. the quality of our emotions can very well be studied by studying the quality of their expression. Why is it that children or students never get some basic training in expression of emotions, yet it is one of the most important forms of communication we human being use ?
nice that you still are interested in my thoughts on thinking. I hope it is still entertaining somehow, also when I lack the time and routine to update my personal progress regularly.
I find it still a brilliant idea that what a brain does, a mind, can be seen as a cloud of resources, agencies or pieces of machinery. Isn't it fascinating how our activities relate to our minds ? Isn't it also fascinating to realize how little we think about our concepts of "mind" ? Somehow we understand that a mind controls one's or other people's actions. A mind does this in many, many different ways, and we often popularize this as 'showing emotions' or 'having thought on something'. But how does a mind discover something which seemingly not existed before... ?
In the case of emotions: M. Clynes is arguing that to understand what emotions are, what they do, why music spark them off, it is essential not to seperate the external expressions of emotions and the internal physical mechanisms, i.e. the quality of our emotions can very well be studied by studying the quality of their expression. Why is it that children or students never get some basic training in expression of emotions, yet it is one of the most important forms of communication we human being use ?
Thursday, April 14, 2005
Communication networks
Hi.
Sorry that I am not able to update my thoughts regularly at the moment. I don't have that good internet connection, and I am also thinking intensively on computer memories for the last weeks (very interesting, they really only store facts in form of let`s say "0" and "1") .
In the meanwhile I also got more curious on how our human minds deal with memory. Memory is some process that is very strongly connected to "consciousness".
I have been reading in Dennett's book on Darwin's Dangerous idea, that Biology can be seen as Engineering ! That`s a great idea ! He argues how much we neglect the idea's and concepts that engineers have discovered.
In Minsky's idea's one point of attention is the problem of "building something": As kids we learn building toy houses, train tracks, marvellous stories, ships, rockets, castles, simple relationships, networks. What "agencies" are necessary to handle these now simple tasks ? How did we represent our new discoveries inside our children minds ? What does language do with these representations and at this point as well, what does remembering do ?
Two concepts could help out of these kinds of questions: One is the concept of frame, a kind of standard application form where we just need to fill in the empty boxed with all kinds of properties and links, the other concept is the k-line, which links different agencies together, as in some Greek tragedy the red line that is used not to get lost in the labyrinth (need to update this and fill in the correct name, think it's Minotaure)
I am wondering if we would understand common sense thinking better one day, what impact could that have on society... ? Well, this is a nice question to close this small post :-)
Sorry that I am not able to update my thoughts regularly at the moment. I don't have that good internet connection, and I am also thinking intensively on computer memories for the last weeks (very interesting, they really only store facts in form of let`s say "0" and "1") .
In the meanwhile I also got more curious on how our human minds deal with memory. Memory is some process that is very strongly connected to "consciousness".
I have been reading in Dennett's book on Darwin's Dangerous idea, that Biology can be seen as Engineering ! That`s a great idea ! He argues how much we neglect the idea's and concepts that engineers have discovered.
In Minsky's idea's one point of attention is the problem of "building something": As kids we learn building toy houses, train tracks, marvellous stories, ships, rockets, castles, simple relationships, networks. What "agencies" are necessary to handle these now simple tasks ? How did we represent our new discoveries inside our children minds ? What does language do with these representations and at this point as well, what does remembering do ?
Two concepts could help out of these kinds of questions: One is the concept of frame, a kind of standard application form where we just need to fill in the empty boxed with all kinds of properties and links, the other concept is the k-line, which links different agencies together, as in some Greek tragedy the red line that is used not to get lost in the labyrinth (need to update this and fill in the correct name, think it's Minotaure)
I am wondering if we would understand common sense thinking better one day, what impact could that have on society... ? Well, this is a nice question to close this small post :-)
Sunday, April 03, 2005
Sunshine !
Hi. Has been a while since my last update on thinking. Unfortunately, moving location is not the perfect situation to keep thoughts straight, I'll try anyway to summarize a bit of the last items:
* Learning: I came across some ideas on learning in the Society of Mind. It is pointed out that generalizing, conditioning and other terms used in learning are too broad to understand what learning does. There are many forms of learning and some for example are uni-framing (connect frames with similar structure to an identical description/name), accumulation, reformulation, and ... hmmm need to add this later.
* Evolution theory: Darwin's Idea of natural selection can be seen as process without purpose ? Darwin discovered that live on planet earth can be seen as algorithmic process.... also need to add details later on this.... ("One of Darwins fundamental insights is that copying designs is cheap, whereas generating new designs is very expensive" from Dennett in Kind of Minds somewhere)
* Sentics: How do we deal with emotions exactly ? What is the relation that everyone can perceive the same quality of painting and music of ideas..
sorry have to leave.. internet time is already gone... talk to you later ! :-)
* Learning: I came across some ideas on learning in the Society of Mind. It is pointed out that generalizing, conditioning and other terms used in learning are too broad to understand what learning does. There are many forms of learning and some for example are uni-framing (connect frames with similar structure to an identical description/name), accumulation, reformulation, and ... hmmm need to add this later.
* Evolution theory: Darwin's Idea of natural selection can be seen as process without purpose ? Darwin discovered that live on planet earth can be seen as algorithmic process.... also need to add details later on this.... ("One of Darwins fundamental insights is that copying designs is cheap, whereas generating new designs is very expensive" from Dennett in Kind of Minds somewhere)
* Sentics: How do we deal with emotions exactly ? What is the relation that everyone can perceive the same quality of painting and music of ideas..
sorry have to leave.. internet time is already gone... talk to you later ! :-)
Sunday, March 27, 2005
Getting new ideas
Important transitions in society had often to do with revolutionary approaches to increase the production of goods, i.e. in agriculture, in mass-manufacturing and nowadays in the production of media and information. Outstanding work in all areas are attributed to "very intelligent" people. But what makes intelligence, creativity and genius ? One problem with these questions is that we assume to understand the mechanisms behind those words. In his book Society of Mind (SoM), Minsky discusses that it is dangerous to define something which is not yet understood. His attempt to define intelligence comes down to:
"Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. 'Intelligence' is our name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand."
Although this is a short post and maybe again too summarized, the idea of this post actually was triggered by the following sentences: "Why assume that what our greatest artists do is very different from what ordinary people do - when we know so little about what ordinary people do. Surely it is premature to ask how great composers write great symphonies before we know how ordinary people think of ordinary tunes. ... We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas."
(to explore further the importance of the generation of new ideas in the information society: http://www.tdctrade.com/econforum/hkcer/hkcer010701.htm)
"Our minds contain processes that enable us to solve problems we consider difficult. 'Intelligence' is our name for whichever of those processes we don't yet understand."
Although this is a short post and maybe again too summarized, the idea of this post actually was triggered by the following sentences: "Why assume that what our greatest artists do is very different from what ordinary people do - when we know so little about what ordinary people do. Surely it is premature to ask how great composers write great symphonies before we know how ordinary people think of ordinary tunes. ... We shouldn't let our envy of distinguished masters of the arts distract us from the wonder of how each of us gets new ideas."
(to explore further the importance of the generation of new ideas in the information society: http://www.tdctrade.com/econforum/hkcer/hkcer010701.htm)
Monday, March 21, 2005
Wholes and parts
Finally I have received the "Society of Minds" book by M. Minsky. It's a great pleasure to read. It offers the opportunity to understand non-formal, common-sense reasoning that makes our human thinking so manifold. Two idea's were striking my interest so far: The idea that parts and wholes can only be understood by considering them together (you can only understand a part if you understand its purpose) and that emotions help us to assign priority to goals. Especially the different emotional states of pain and pleasure help us to simplify actual situations, and reduce our interests in long range plans.
Friday, March 18, 2005
Understanding and learning
This week I made some progress in my understanding of "common sense". Also here, a key element is related to the interpretation of different representations in the mind. Minsky proposes that we are constantly processing many analogies in parallel. This is very much contradictory to our "single-self" views that we use to answer questions like who we are, where we are from and what we do. During these conversations or thoughts we reflect mainly on our actions, on what "we" did. Therefore, the "single-self" view must be constantly switching between different realms of actions, physical spaces, social and dominion relationships. In every realm we keep updating representations that respond to the same memory address, I would say. So, when one representation can not be used to solve a problem, we will try to switch to another model. The core of these idea's can also be used to explain why analogies are so usefull during "learning".
By the way, I also came across a statement on learning. It was pointed out that learning is another container word where we put a lot of different idea's. A very interesting remark on learning in relation to science:
"Students who don't feel they have exceptional mathematical aptitude ought to start with mathematics, anyway -- until they cannot tolerate any more. You might object that this would not be much fun. But for me, the most fun is learning to do something that "you're not good at", yet. So dialectically, the most fun is the least fun. Perhaps a person that hasn't learned that shouldn't do science at all." (Minsky in comp.ai somewhere)
It's a very difficult lesson to learn, as it has to do with chosing "suffering" above "pleasure", or as it is stated above, finding "pleasure" in "suffering". This is certainly somewhat contradictory in folk-psychology terms. One way of leaving this contradiction would be to use better representations of pain and pleasure. Both aspects also directly correlate with goal and purpose mechanisms inside the society of mind.
By the way, I also came across a statement on learning. It was pointed out that learning is another container word where we put a lot of different idea's. A very interesting remark on learning in relation to science:
"Students who don't feel they have exceptional mathematical aptitude ought to start with mathematics, anyway -- until they cannot tolerate any more. You might object that this would not be much fun. But for me, the most fun is learning to do something that "you're not good at", yet. So dialectically, the most fun is the least fun. Perhaps a person that hasn't learned that shouldn't do science at all." (Minsky in comp.ai somewhere)
It's a very difficult lesson to learn, as it has to do with chosing "suffering" above "pleasure", or as it is stated above, finding "pleasure" in "suffering". This is certainly somewhat contradictory in folk-psychology terms. One way of leaving this contradiction would be to use better representations of pain and pleasure. Both aspects also directly correlate with goal and purpose mechanisms inside the society of mind.
Saturday, March 12, 2005
Symbol processing
Although this week was very exhausting due to "normal life", I had some time to enjoy again the thought that minds can be seen as complex symbol processing machinery. There are mainly two questions associated with this idea: How do symbols look like and how do we deal with these symbols inside our nervous system ?
One class or categories of symbols are simply words themselves ! I am just thinking on how words might have evolved, and how amazing it must have been ... First, there were the basic words to describe food places, dangers and interests. "Here's the ham, there is the dinosaur, be carefull it will get cold, and I will protect you !" Might be one of the first idea's or symbols that we expressed by using words ! If we jump couple of ten-thousands years back to today, it is funny to think about how limiting words are to communicate complex modern-day emotions, such as expressing sympathy or disgust, and how our internal mechanisms might even try to take other words, to hide the actual cause, as has been discovered by Sigmund Freud.
But we need many other symbols as well, words are not very well suited if we want to communicate about dynamic events, for example to tell the football player how to shoot a ball, the pilot how to fly an airplane and the musician how to play piano. Then we use gestures, computer simulators or compact discs.
One class or categories of symbols are simply words themselves ! I am just thinking on how words might have evolved, and how amazing it must have been ... First, there were the basic words to describe food places, dangers and interests. "Here's the ham, there is the dinosaur, be carefull it will get cold, and I will protect you !" Might be one of the first idea's or symbols that we expressed by using words ! If we jump couple of ten-thousands years back to today, it is funny to think about how limiting words are to communicate complex modern-day emotions, such as expressing sympathy or disgust, and how our internal mechanisms might even try to take other words, to hide the actual cause, as has been discovered by Sigmund Freud.
But we need many other symbols as well, words are not very well suited if we want to communicate about dynamic events, for example to tell the football player how to shoot a ball, the pilot how to fly an airplane and the musician how to play piano. Then we use gestures, computer simulators or compact discs.
Sunday, March 06, 2005
Sunday evening
Sunday. Perfect time to spend some time on re-capturing thoughts. I have been reading about some philosophers lately and again I found it very interesting. Aristotle made many statements which I do not understand too much (yet). One thing is clear, he mainly wants to make statements which we would call "real" or "down-to-earth", opposing to his teacher Plato, who has a very speculative nature. According to Bertrand Russell, the ideas of Aristotle seem to have had a huge influence on modern ideas about ethics, physics (in a very broad context including biology and chemistry), logic and politics. I was mainly interested in the field of logic. Aristotle seems to have introduced the idea of "categories". A concept which can be quite broad. I was surprised that we have learned about a very similar concept in the German class of lower high-school without knowing it. So what are they, the categories ? Aristotle classifies different types statement or words (if I understand correctly). Those are substance, quantity, quality, relation, place, time, position, possession, action and passion. To demonstrate the use of the idea we could take an arbitrary sentence:
The musician plays an instrument.
Questions to this sentence could be: How ? Where ? When ? What instrument ? Or, changing the viewpoint: The instrument is played by the musician.
In any case, the next very important philosophers after Aristotle seem to be Descartes and Leibniz, almost 2000 years later ! Very interesting.... but sorry, I have to leave ;-) We'll see how the blog will continue....
The musician plays an instrument.
Questions to this sentence could be: How ? Where ? When ? What instrument ? Or, changing the viewpoint: The instrument is played by the musician.
In any case, the next very important philosophers after Aristotle seem to be Descartes and Leibniz, almost 2000 years later ! Very interesting.... but sorry, I have to leave ;-) We'll see how the blog will continue....
Thursday, March 03, 2005
Why ?
Hi. So, welcome, I guess, to this little conglomerate (from Latin conglomeratus, past participle of conglomerare to roll together) of my thinking. Today, I was thinking on thinking again, and thought it could be joyfull for others to share my progress with this. Thinking is something very complex and unknown. It still gives the opportunities for many adventures: There are so many questions that can be asked, and so many answers to discover ....
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