Pei Wang's NARS

From: James Rogers (jamesr@best.com)
Date: Sun Nov 30 2003 - 16:01:20 MST


I read the entirety of Pei Wang's NARS 3.0 thesis this weekend (all 181
pages of it); I've glanced over small bits and pieces in the past, but never
taken time to understand it in detail. Ben (Goertzel) has stated more than
once that many of my ideas appear closely aligned with Pei's, something it I
can now state with certainty is more than just apparent, and many of the
theoretical similarities at that level explain why I've been in general
agreement with Pei on matters that almost no one else seemed to "get" (from
my perspective) in past discussions on the lists.

>From a formal theory standpoint, I find NARS to be very, very good, among
the best I've ever read. Most of my quibbles and questions occur for me at
the implementation and representation level, which is where my general
strengths are anyway. For example, I am not entirely sold on the "urgency"
model. It seems to me that such things can be dealt with implicitly in the
representation and implementation if the system is non-axiomatic. I would
argue similar minor points elsewhere, but since implementation and
representation is only covered obliquely this is not a criticism of the
underlying theory.

It is well worth the read (and quicker than the 181 pages implies) if you
haven't been exposed to this general model of AGI. I would still assert
that representation (and by extension, implementation) is the other half of
the problem, but NARS is a pretty fine description of the first half even
with my quibbles.

Cheers,

-James Rogers
 jamesr@best.com



This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:43 MDT