(soon)
3/8/2004 10:12 AM
Bill Benson sent the following note:
I've attached a paper by Eshel Ben Jacob, who's been studying bacteria
colonies:
"Meaning-Based Natural
Intelligence vs. Information-Based Artificial Intelligence"
He argues that bacteria colonies exhibit behavior that cannot be comprehended within the structures of standard AI.
And Peter Krieg sent a note that is converted to the tenth bead in this thread.
natural physical systems (NPS), engineered physical
systems (EPS) and theoretical systems (TS)
Bill,
The question really is what to do about the reductionist hegemony,
as Jacob calls this, that has become established.
The arguments parallel those made by Penrose and others, and the literature that Jacob cited is one that all of us are familiar with.
Peter Krieg’s contribution is this distinction between
natural physical system
engineered physical systems
theoretical systems
The distinction is in line with the new paradigm on complexity that my concept of mutual-induction depends. The key to understanding Krieg’s polylogic technology (which they have not exposed in the US as yet in deference to the hegemony held by old style monopoly as in what is funded in the venture capital community – see the In-Q-Tel evaluation ) is in looking carefully at what he proposes as a new class of theoretical systems – the polylogic technology that was conceived in the US but had to be moved to Germany in order to be developed.
The examination of the problem of disambiguation of meaning from a machine parsing of text will inform someone astute to exactly what polylogics are designed to address.
In this sense, polylogics and Russian quasi-axiomatic theory are addressing common theoretical investigation.
A new way of stating the problem came to me over the past week, when I found it useful to use the phrase “mutual induction”. I have to thank Lev Goldfarb, Peter Kugler, Robert Shaw and Nan Gelhard for the background directly leading to the occurrence of this new phrase. In a Goggle search one finds “mutual induction” used to refer to two electromagnetic machines. “Mental mutual induction” will retrieve work by Walter Freeman. “Semiotic mutual induction” brings the literature supporting my viewpoint regarding the founding of Anticipatory Web technology based on a mutual induction between human and computer. The distinction that I need to make is that which many of us regard to have been made by Charles Sanders Peirce, in that the act of interpretation of a set of symbols is where the actual induction occurs. In this viewpoint, the machine stays completely away form the notion of meaning. (Annotation of theories of meaning can be useful if available from metadata and well developed ontology/taxonomy.)
Our problem is that the concept of a computer interface that presents symbols to a human for the interpretation by the human is a concept that is close in the space of linguistic variation to a lot of true non-sense, but also to a lot of New Age thinking that is summarily dismissed by the hegemony of reductionism.
The solution to this problem has to be actual software systems that are so powerful and so fast, inexpensive and reliable that the market wakes up one day to see this and economic support begins to embrace it. The two parallels are the Apple II computer with an alternative to IBM’s DOS and Telsa’s alternating current electrical technology as an alternative to Edison’s direct current electrical technology.
OntologyStream’s history here is not unique. Krieg’s Polylogics Inc has a similar story. It is not enough to have the suggestion of a true competitor to artificial intelligence. One has to have the competitor fully born, mature and dressed.