Goals and algorithms

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.