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Re: [ontolog-forum] TalaMind Child architecture

To: ontolog-forum@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
From: John Bottoms <john@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Date: Wed, 17 Dec 2014 20:58:38 -0500
Message-id: <549234CE.7090309@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
On 12/17/2014 12:39 PM, Rich Cooper wrote:

I am still uncomfortable with the Child design.  Here is an old (2011) from another list that specializes in practicing clinical psychologists:

 

“As some people on the list have already noted, knowledge is based on what

you have already learned or experienced. There is no pre-categorical

interpretation, as though one could just divorce what one sees from anything

ever interpreted, and just rationally perceive without any contamination by

something already thought, believed, experienced, taught, formulated,

etc.... Whenever you see something you use whatever faculties you have based

on prior learning to grasp the thing you are perceiving. The idea of pure

rational thought somehow uncontaminated by anything you have learned is

difficult to entertain. When one even puts one single word to it one is

already using language, metaphors, and concepts (among other things) --

things already known -- and internalized throughout life. It's a problem of

proactive interference, thought that concept is already way too simple.”

 

I try to imagine a way to create new knowledge from old building blocks, but the real problem of simplifying a complex experienced event is to somehow distill that event into a few simple words that evoke the past event, but only in naming it.  Yet the meaning of the event necessarily has to involve the complexity of the original remembered event. 

 

The clipping above implies that the construction of succinct naming of the experienced events is essential to continue to build on top of the stored experience, yet still fit the context into the seven plus or minus two chunks that we can evoke in one thought. 

 

Does anyone have a solution to this problem: how are new building blocks made from old ones and named succinctly?

Rich,
Unfortunately, onomasticists fail us. I monitored their discussions for a few years and the bulk of their work is historical analysis such as how did <some_river> get its name, or why is it called X here but Y there. Maybe the forward-looking onomastic work of technology is relegated to the technologists.

Naming generally falls into two approaches. We can name associatively from a known name which helps with the ease of communication. Or, we can assign an arbitrary name particularly if the names are used by different communities. Here are 3: "dead tree", "pollard" and "stump". They are not related phonologically. Interestingly, they also encode "size" as a property in the element name.

There is also an issue of encoding. We want our words to be sufficiently distinct so as to reduce confusion. This is the principle of assigning vectors and then using those vectors to recover data. I believe it is covered by Space Vector Analysis and is used in search engines. The trick is figuring out how it is done in the mind. We know about things like analogy. But analogies can be drawn across a number of facets.

To me it appears that the mind doesn't pay strict attention to the differences between elements and attributes, clearly, we "noun" verbs and "verb" nouns in English. A given culture may associate all fuzzy animals together while we may assign sets based on DNA analysis. So given these types of diverse groupings of entities, we must assume that naming from culture to culture is equally slippery.

While the concept may not be popular with linguists, I believe that "communities of interest" (cultures) live in ecological niches. And the words they use are those words that survive in that community as it deals with the environment. Among philosophers, they say, "There are no rice gods, where there is no rice." A recognition that words and concepts must have some application to have some meaning, another way to discuss grounding. To me the name is at the least a look-up handle and may or may not impart some meaning.

Do these observations cover or obviate your use of "[naming] succinctly"?


-John Bottoms
 Concord, MA USA

 

-Rich

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 3:02 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: [ontolog-forum] TalaMind Child architecture

 

I’ve changed the name of the thread to focus it on the specific contents below.

 

Philip you also will need an explanation system in TalaMind, IMHO.  An AIXItl system could also use one to explain its actions and perhaps to explain learned contexts.  But where will the rules come from in English text which will be stitched together to write (or speak) the explanation?

 

AIXItl, even with its opaque semantics, could still be explained by theories which the Child can form independently of AIXItl.  That seems to be what humans do; we justify our actions by stating our most fundamental beliefs – axioms in our theoretical model of the world.  Showing how those beliefs interconnect to form a theory that explains most known experiences is an adequate explanation, IMHO.  It isn’t necessary to correctly explain the Child’s actions, only to present to the User the Child’s current theories of why Baby acts like Baby does. 

 

In other words, communications with users can be completely independent of the actual control system that seeks positive rewards and avoids negative ones. 

 

How do you envision that in a TalaMind Child?

 

-Rich

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

From: ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:ontolog-forum-bounces@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Rich Cooper
Sent: Friday, December 12, 2014 12:52 PM
To: '[ontolog-forum] '
Subject: Re: [ontolog-forum] Report of Ontolog Board of Trustees Meeting

 

Phil

 

Looking at your overview slides, I came across this one, which seems to support Child machine semantic construction concepts:

 

In addition to the Tala conceptual language, the architecture contains two other principal elements at the linguistic level:

•Conceptual Framework. An information architecture for managing an extensible collection of concepts, expressed in Tala.

•Conceptual Processes. An extensible system of processes that operate on concepts in the conceptual framework, to produce intelligent behaviors and new concepts.

 

I am very interested in the AIXItl algorithm, which is theoretically sufficient as a Child machine, but the model is based on a discrete sampled system – the canonical linear system model equations used by all control engineers and electrical engineers who process negative feedback systems.  That makes it opaque how logic encodes knowledge and is fitted into the matrices of the linear system.  It would be nice to have more meaningful ways of generating new concepts for the Child every time a new meaningful experience is encountered by said child. 

 

But looking for building block concepts – those I can fit with others in wide varieties of ways – is pretty much without meaning unless linked in some way to experiences with said constructions.  Those building blocks would necessarily have no individual meaning, and would have to draw their meaning from the context of the experience and from the outcome-to-initial-situation results. 

 

Can you enlarge on the thesis ideas to cover how new concepts are created meaningfully in the Child machine version of TalaMind please?

 

Thanks,

-Rich

 

Sincerely,

Rich Cooper

EnglishLogicKernel.com

Rich AT EnglishLogicKernel DOT com

9 4 9 \ 5 2 5 - 5 7 1 2

 



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