[extropy-chat] SIAI: Donate Today and Tomorrow

[Adrian Tymes]

--- Mike Lorrey <mlorrey at yahoo.com> wrote:
> --- "J. Andrew Rogers" <andrew at ceruleansystems.com>
> wrote:
> > Rule of Thumb:  If you come up with a simple and
> obvious solution to
> > a problem space that has been thoroughly combed
> over for many years
> by 
> > people with a great deal of expertise in the
> field, you are almost 
> > certainly mistaken about your "solution".  Doubly
> so if you do not
> > have expertise in the theoretical foundations of
> the field.
> 
> Theoretical foundations of a field which has
> produced exactly zero AIs?
> You are saying that I need to first learn about all
> the ways that
> everybody else has been failing for decades before I
> can have any
> meaningful contribution? Perhaps you are right, at
> least so I'd know
> exactly all the ways to NOT create an AI.

That would seem to be an accurate restatement of that
rule of thumb as applied to the AI field.  "Those who
do not learn from history are doomed to repeat its
mistakes," and all - and as you've acknowledged, those
who have tried to make AIs have generally failed to do
so.  Which means they've shown many paths that don't
work.

Not that you need to study all of them.  Just those
efforts anywhere near your own route, so you can see
mistakes that they made and avoid them.  (The odds of
any new project - even yours - avoiding said mistakes
without this kind of deliberate study and guidance are
practically zero.  Of course, once the mistakes are
avoided, your success is all yours...)

BTW - the "mistakes" may very well include some of the
theoretical foundations.  This wouldn't be the first
field to which this has happened (witness common
theories about the aerodynamics of heavier-than-air
flying machines before the Wright brothers).  But even
then, they are likely to contain at least a grain of
truth that will be of use to you.