From: Richard Loosemore (rpwl@lightlink.com)
Date: Mon Oct 17 2005 - 18:31:37 MDT
Eliezer S. Yudkowsky wrote:
> Richard Loosemore wrote:
>
>>
>> As far as I am concerned, the widespread (is it really widespread?)
>> SL4 assumption that "strictly humanoid intelligence would not likely
>> be Friendly ...[etc.]" is based on a puerile understanding of, and
>> contempt of, the mechanics of human intelligence.
>
>
> Untrue. I spent my first six years from 1996 to 2002 studying the
> mechanics of human intelligence, until I understood it well enough to
> see why it wouldn't work. I suppose that in your lexicon, "Complex
> Systems Theory" and "mechanics of human intelligence" are synonyms. In
> my vocabulary, they are not synonyms, and studying such mere matters as
> neuroscience and cognitive psychology counts as trying to understand the
> mechanics of human intelligence, whatever my regard for "Complex Systems
> Theory" as a source of useful, predictive, engineering-helpful
> hypotheses about human intelligence. Disdain for your private theory of
> human intelligence is not the same as disdain for understanding the
> mechanics of human intelligence.
>
Once again, you demonstrate my point for me....
1) You deliver irrelevant insults:
> I suppose that in your lexicon, "Complex
> Systems Theory" and "mechanics of human intelligence" are synonyms.
I don't need to respond to this.
2) You make assertions about things you know nothing about:
> Disdain for your private theory of
> human intelligence is not the same as disdain for understanding the
> mechanics of human intelligence.
I have never discussed my "private theory of human intelligence" on this
list, so how could you possibly disdain it? I have discussed one issue
only. You responded to that issue with personal insults, red herrings
and numerous comments that showed you did not know the difference
between complex systems theory and chaos theory (a confusion that
rendered most of your other statements worthless).
3) And you demonstrate the most amazing contempt for the subject and
all the other people who study it:
> I spent my first six years from 1996 to 2002 studying the
> mechanics of human intelligence, until I understood it well enough to
> see why it wouldn't work.
To be able to justify your assertion that "it" wouldn't work, you would
have to do experiments (simulations) and/or produce some theoretical
ideas, and *most important of all* you would also have to make coherent
replies to those who find fault with your position. I have read your
writings on the subject: I can find nothing but rambling,
stream-of-consciousness speculations. Where are your experiments?
Where are your coherent arguments in support of this claim? Where are
your coherent replies to your critics?
I was one of those critics. I produced arguments based on a vast body
of empirical data. You made no coherent response to those arguments,
never demonstrating that you even comprehended what the arguments
actually were about In fact, looking back over the sum total of words
you wrote against the position that I elaborated earlier, I can find
nothing that is not either irrelevant posturing, a dismissal of an
entire body of research on the grounds that you consider it worthless
(this being exactly the contempt that I referred to above), an ad
hominem attack on either my credentials or those of hundreds of other
researchers (whose work you confuse with work going on in another
field), or a blatant non-sequiteur.
The specific point I made in my post above was a small one: I was
referring to the way that some people here tend to assert that the
structure of the human mind is clearly sub-optimal, or clearly flawed,
or clearly not the best way to design an AGI, or clearly bad from the
point of view of guaranteeing Friendliness. This is an entirely
debatable point of view, but when challenged, a vocal subset of SL4
likes to respond not with arguments, but with the kind of invective that
you just delivered.
Richard Loosemore.
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