[ExI] Augmentations to Science /was Re: Drugs and creativity

[Adrian Tymes]

On Mon, Dec 21, 2015 at 12:51 PM, Will Steinberg <steinberg.will at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Yes, but in your case, Adrian, I assume you used a program to create new
> data that *you* then had insight from.
>
Well, that's the trick.  If I created the code, which of us - the code or I
- is having the insight?

That said, the program did not create new data.  The one (technically, a
series of similar programs) I speak of performed a brute force analysis of
more combinations of existing data than I could go through in a reasonable
(relative to the task) time, and showed me the patterns that it found.  As
a result of using my creation, I possessed new insights about said existing
data, regardless of whether it was the code or I that actually created
those insights.  Said insights proved to be correct, and I employed them in
a way that resulted in a quantifiable benefit to me.

I then generalized this program and provided it to others who were
encountering similar problems, albeit with slightly different sets of data,
and they wound up with equivalent insights to my own (and equivalent
benefits to what I reaped) without my specific involvement for each
particular set of data.  Did I create each one of those insights, without
spending time (even one second) on each individual case?  Did the other
people create those insights, even though all they did was input data and
run the program, ignorant to the logic and processes in the code?  Or did
the program generate those insights?

> The problem with the insight program is that it has to be able to, from
> data, make conclusions whose form of statement is not provided for in the
> original code.  Does that make sense?
>
Given the example you cite, this seems to be a nonsense request.

> An insight program, in theory, could be given a set of geological data and
> derive the laws of calculus.
>
If it could derive said laws from geological data, it could derive said
laws from no data.  Calculus simply is not contained within observations of
geology.

> Or state the principal of natural selection in English.
>
That could perhaps be done given sufficient biological data...and, of
course, sufficient capability with the English language.  However, then the
insight is within the data.

> It needs to go "outside the box", which is the whole thing that's
> confusing about human insight.
>
Human insight does not work the way you have described either.  Humans did
not derive the laws of calculus from arbitrary geological data, and there
does not appear to be reason to suspect that an AI should be able to either.
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