Re: Guessing?

On Jul 12, 6:34 pm, Bob Badour <bbad..._at_pei.sympatico.ca> wrote:
> Roy Hann wrote:
> > Bob Badour wrote:
>
> >>All evidence from Da Vinci until 1900 suggested birds were somehow
> >>special as regards heavier than air flight.
>
> > Ignoring bats and bumblebees, birds *were* special. They were the only
> > ones that had structures that generate lift. So anyone claiming to fly
> > was obliged to demonstrate they could. The same goes for anyone
> > claiming to do anything else we suspect isn't possible.
>
> Roy, the point is: Even without demonstrating heavier than air flight,
> one could extrapolate from ability of birds to fly that heavier than air
> flight was an achievable engineering goal. To achieve that engineering
> goal, we first had to understand the physical properties of fluids
> flowing past rigid surfaces etc. but reasonably informed and intelligent
> people could predict it would happen. In fact, Da Vinci did predict it
> centuries before it happened.

I actually totally agree with what your saying bob. The point was not that AI isn't possible, but that the field went took the wrong approach thinking they could just write down statements of logic put them in a bag, shake it, and somehow robust intelligent behaviour would pop out (If anything surely that's the "mystical" approach).

The "intelligence = processing rules in FOL" old-fashioned AI is a bit similar to men trying to fly by jumping off cliffs flapping boards strapped to their arms. Its gonna end in fucking tears.

>
> At the same time, people for various reasons argued that birds were
> special and that their special nature was evidence of God's intention
> for birds to fly and for men not to fly. Current arguments to the effect
> that the human mind or the human brain is somehow special have similar
> scientific validity.
>
> How much does the typical CPU weigh? Compare that with a massively
> parallel 3lb CPU with internal liquid cooling. What might the latter
> achieve?
>
> The human brain is no more able to provide a general solution to the
> halting problem than any other computer.
Received on Sun Jul 13 2008 - 16:00:23 CEST