RE: Infinity and the mind was: Infinite universe

From: Lee Corbin (lcorbin@tsoft.com)
Date: Sat May 03 2003 - 01:21:33 MDT


Ben writes

> In this sense, though, all Godel's Theorem says is that no finite system is
> ever gonna be infinitely intelligent -- every finite system has its limits
> in terms of the problems it can solve. And if you get rid of the finitude
> restriction, you get AIXI which can solve any finitely given problem -- it
> supersedes the Godel problem by being uncomputable!

Wouldn't it be more correct to say that every finite system has
limits at a given point in time in terms of the problems it can
solve? That is, do you see a reason that an extremely advanced
entity could not rapidly become more intelligent over time?
(Where "rapidly" means quickly by our time scale.)

For what it's worth, a friend of mine, Forrest Bennett, has
characterized intelligence as the ability to

  1. formulate conjectures
  2. criticize conjectures
  3. remember conjectures

(all in keeping with PCR, of course), which sounds pretty good
to me. If so, I'm not aware of any reason that would go against
"the more resources an entity has, the more intelligent it will be".

Lee



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