The Taos
Discussion
Friday, September 09, 2005
Communication on behalf of the Director, BCNGroup
**John Sowa's note arrives in a timely fashion (I attach it below). His comments take part in the conversation on the evolution of the brain. This conversation is the WRONG conversation, in my humble opinion. **
The conversation stated with Dennis's communication
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/generativeMethodology/114.htm
and due to a mistake he made. He has acknowledged the mistake
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/generativeMethodology/115.htm
and provided his excellent explanation as to why this specific mistake was made.
My opinion: The world is in deep crisis because the IT community cannot let
go of its control over the production of a new type of human communication
based on a proper set of well founded principles. The current Venture Capital community, and government funding
communities (NSA, NSF, NIST, DARPA etc), 100% supports this control, because it
cannot "see" the economic values that a knowledge age would provide
to all of us.
The people in these
"gatekeeper" communities cannot see these values and still see how to
remain in control of all communication (in the TV media and with the
Internet). So the world's social
systems suffer needlessly, due to profound silliness, egotism and greed. The path forward is the development of a
K-12 curriculum in the knowledge sciences.
This curriculum would simply not allow the type of
discussion regarding the nature of the brain, that has just occurred, to have
any place within our circle of colleagues.
We would not waste our time talking about the claim that the human brain
has not evolved over the past 400,000 years.
We would know the literatures in evolutionary psychology - for
example. These literatures have been
pointed out by several in the communications the BCNGroup has received over the
past two days.
In : http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/generativeMethodology/115.htm
Dennis has pointed out that he made this claim by mistake; and pointed out that in his defense he was just creating the "necessary" non-sense required by the Venture Capitalists who control the future funding that the company "Knowledge Foundations Inc" , and thus his own living.
Our world needs Total Information Awareness (TIA) over things that are harmful (like the occurrence of a Hurricane during a time when the Department of Homeland Security is involved in War Profiteering rather than in taking care of the People's business). The world needs this TIA system to have Informational Transparency so that how and why information is placed into service can be immediately observed. See Walter Freeman's paper
At http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/32-1.htm
(specifically on action - perception cycles and the need of a non-linear model of learning and reification of knowledge in humans). Walter's paper is what we should be talking about rather then a claim that was constructed to appease the simple-minded rules of the capitalization mechanisms. (Then, of course we do not get to work and pay our bills - but at least we will not be pissing in the wind.)
The conversations over the past few days were initialized by Dennis's presentations regarding the advanced nature of the new Mark III software (now due to be available in 2006 - perhaps).
The Mark III is to be based, when it arrives, on an n-ary data encoding structure... thought to be superior to Orb encoding that uses the set of triples { <a,r,b> }
http://www.ontologystream.com/OS/CCM/reificationProcesses.htm
because the n-ary identifies those exact set of triples having the same relationship, ie in the form < r, a(1), . . . , a(n) > where n depends in the specific relationship r.
Ballard would say that a specific relationship "is" knowledge if there is some optimality defined by questions that are answered. This is brilliant, and correct in our opinion.
The Mark III methodology is focused on a written book, or set of books. The Orb technology is HIP (Human-centric Information Processing)
http://www.bcngroup.org/area2/KSF/HIP.htm
The encoding of knowledge, by the Mark III technology, is the same as the discovery by clerical means those answers that are available in the book or books. There is great insights in this approach, but also some limitations that were referred to in my questions:
http://www.bcngroup.org/beadgames/TaosDiscussion/28.htm
in particular, my questions about how the Mark III would handle inconsistencies between books or within books; or how the Mark III would treat a fictional book written to be purposefully incorrect.
This book oriented approach is foundational to Ballard's notion of "knowledge science".
The
BCNGroup has no point to defend.
We honor Ballard's work.
We only suggest that the Mark III's foundational structure loses its contact with objective sharing to other knowledge scientists, like myself, Amnon, John, Kent, Ken, Tom and others who are free to express reservations about a claim to exclusivity.
As Dennis so correctly pointed out, it loses its contact because of the influence of venture capitalist whose demands are well stated in Dennis's honesty in his response to the strong exceptions voices by Amnon and Ken. John's exceptions are soft and attempted to not break lines of affinity that exists due to many years of communication between the teacher John and the student Richard.
The marketing of the "Knowledge Foundations Inc" or Knowledge Foundations LLP" or what ever product line creates a distortion of what must be seen as the work of core knowledge scientists. We lose every time to interact with the capitalization mechanisms. It is hopeless.
The conversation about the "evolution of the brain" focuses on this distortion, and its defense; while the work of getting an alternative to the very poor W3C standards is set aside.
I agree with John Sowa's statement :
"In other words, it's interesting, but nobody knows what it means."
-----Original Message----- From: John F. Sowa [mailto:sowa@bestweb.net] Sent: Friday, September 09, 2005 7:45 AM To: Amnon Meyers Cc: Dennis L. Thomas; psp; Dr Jayanth Paraki; Amurray101@cs.com; ben@goertzel.org; Cameron Jones; rlballard@earthlink.net; Foundation CEA; Fiona Citkin; Ken Ewell; Bob Smith; Myers, Kent C.; Lev Lafayette; Mills Davis; Nan Gelhard; Nathan Einwechter Subject: Re: Glass Bead Games...and International Involvement
That article shows, as do most studies of the brain, that (a) neuroscience has learned an enormous amount and (b) what they've learned is still a tiny fraction of what would be needed to understand intelligence.
Ø Timely NYT article today, "Brain May Still Be Evolving, Studies Hint."
Ø > > http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/09/science/09brain.html
Note the word "hint" in the title, and note that everybody who is quoted says, in one way or another, "we don't know."
The date of 60,000 years ago is significant because there is a lot of archaeological evidence of an upsurge in innovation, including the beginnings of the migrations of modern humans out of Africa. Following is one comment on that point:
Ø Richard Klein, an archaeologist who has proposed that >
Ø modern human behavior first appeared in Africa because >
Ø of some genetic change that promoted innovativeness, said >
Ø the time of emergence of the microcephalin allele "sounds >
Ø like it could support my idea." If the allele did support >
Ø enhanced cognitive function, "it's hard to understand why >
Ø it didn't get fixed at 100 percent nearly everywhere," he said. >
Ø > Dr. Klein suggested the allele might have spread for a >
Ø different reason, that as people colonizing East Asia and >
Ø Europe pushed north, they adapted to colder climates.
In other words, it's interesting, but nobody knows what it means.
John Sowa