[extropy-chat] Qualia Bet.

[gts]

On Fri, 25 Nov 2005 02:57:01 -0500, Rafal Smigrodzki  
<rafal.smigrodzki at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 11/24/05, gts <gts_2000 at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I tend to use this word [understanding] to denote the ability to predict  
> and control
> an aspect of the world. I can say I understand a bicycle when I can
> ride it, take it apart, and put back together. Prediction is the
> essence of intelligence (see Jeff Hawkins' book "On Intelligence"),
> and understanding is the job of an intelligence. I am completely
> satisfied with this form of understanding, as applied to anything that
> I want to understand. Give me the predictive capacity to let me master
> the future, and I will be as content as a yogi achieving nirvana.

Prediction and control may be the objective job of "intelligence", but I  
wonder it this definition fully encompasses the meaning of "understanding".

I was thinking about a related subject recently, concerning Newton's  
elucidation of the laws of gravity. Newton certainly did a great deal to  
help us predict how gravity works, but he was criticized (by Leibniz, as I  
recall) for not helping us *understand* gravity.

To say, "Things fall to earth because of the force of gravity" is really  
to ay nothing at all about the real nature of gravity. It's a bit like  
saying "Plants grow because of the force of water". His mathematical  
formalism did a great job of *prediction* but did little or nothing in the  
area of true understanding.

David Deutch makes a similar point in _The Fabric of Reality_ concerning  
the mathematical formalism of QM. The theory enables us to do a fantastic  
job of prediction and control (what you or Hawkins seem here to define as  
the sum of intelligence), but as we all know the proper understanding of  
QM is another thing entirely.

-gts