Merged Cognitive Theory, ongoing progress

[theprestige]

I will not discuss important details of my theory until it is completed and set for publication which is the same standard that every practicing scientist in the country uses today. You already know this.

What will you discuss, then?

In your OP you say, "[m]y work can't be verified until the theory is complete since it isn't functional until it's complete. All I can say right now is that the theory is consistent with evidence."

Will you discuss the evidence that is consistent with your theory? Will you discuss your theory in enough detail for us to see the predictions that are consistent with evidence?

I assume, of course, that you are talking about evidence that has already been observed, not evidence from experiments that have not yet been run. Will you at least discuss that evidence?

No goalpost moves or sliding definitions here. Just your own words, taken at face value. Will you discuss them?

 

[barehl]

You started this thread to discuss your theory!

No, I've tried to discuss it before but I keep running into the double standards so this was only an update thread.

Are you willing to post anything about it at all?

Yes, I could post a number of things, but then someone will say, "You haven't proved that yet." Of course, these same people will enthusiastically post and discuss claims with far less support by other people such as Elon Musk's mars rocket and hyperloop. Oddly enough I see suggested theories in physics, cosmology, and cognition published and discussed all the time without proof. Apparently, I'm a special case.

So it will take hundreds of pages to explain your theory. Do you plan on publishing a book?

That is the idea.

Having it published in a prestigious journal?

It wouldn't fit in a journal article. Origin of Species didn't fit in a journal article. And, you already know this.

How do you see experimental confirmation coming about?

There is a large amount of supporting evidence. But I would imagine that grad students would be quite happy to conduct specific experiments once it is published. This would specifically prove or disprove it. I'm not sure what it is about this process that you aren't already familiar with.

Do you plan to do your own research

This depends on what you mean by research. There are mountains of evidence already available. I've been looking for evidence for over two years that would disprove the theory. So far, that hasn't happened.

Do you expect others to be so taken by your theory that they take it upon themselves to perform these experiments?

I think you misunderstand. IBM, Microsoft, Google, and many others are already working in this area. My theory would be just another item. If it was quickly disproved then it would be a footnote and nothing more. If it wasn't disproved then it would get more attention. But, again, you already know this.

(So far I see no reason for this thread to be in Science, Mathematics, Medicine, and Technology.

As a sampling, for cognitive evolution I used behavior in fiddler crabs, honeybees, territorial fish, alligators, beavers, chimpanzees, and humans around age 1-3. I used baseball batters for decision constraint. I used experiments like change and attention blindness. I used computational theory, information theory, and decision theory.

If you can suggest a better place for the thread, be my guest.

 

[Jodie]

What about a general idea of what the theory is about? My own personal opinion with no proof to base it on is that we confuse intelligence with self awareness/consciousness.

 

[barehl]

It's very strange. He seems to be complaining that we're not discussing his theory, whilst refusing to tell us anything about it to discuss.

I've mentioned a number of things about it and I could mention more. People here complain when I do. I'm not complaining. I went over that in the community thread and no one there could explain the double standard so I gave up on that idea.

The insistence that once it's published there will be nothing to discuss is even stranger. If it's borne out by experiment there will almost certainly be lots of implications to discuss, and even if it's disproved it might well provide insights and new possibilities to explore.

That isn't what I said. Once I publish the completed theory I won't be here to discuss it. In other words, no one here (you included) has come up with a scenario where I specifically would be discussing it here. From what you are saying, you won't value my ideas until I am no longer here to discuss them. That does seem very odd to me.

 

[wea]

<nitpick mode>

Are you familiar with the logical fallacy of argumentum absurdum?

No, but I know what a reductio ad absurdum is. On the other side

Once the theory is published there won't be any discussion here.

the sentence immediately above is a better example of "argumentum absurdum" i.e. "nonsensical justification"; not a logical fallacy, just a (possibly) wrong opinion.



</nitpick mode>

 

[barehl]

It's not just that: he also claims to have developed "knowledge theory", and used it to develop his other theory. So that's two theories, one of which is complete enough for him to use to develop the other.

No, that isn't what I said. I worked for nearly two years on awareness. I finally got a breakthrough on that. In other words, I finally had a hypothesis that fit with evidence. The problem was that my hypothesis wasn't grounded to anything else. It wasn't linked to any existing theory in physics, biology, or computation. So, I focused on information theory and I realized that there was a gap. So, I worked on this area until I had a formal theory for a restricted class of information, which for convenience I call 'knowledge'. That gave my cognitive work a proper foundation.

 

[barehl]

How about throwing us some small tidbits?

Put my hand in the hornets nest again? Why not?

When it comes to the idea of robots people seem to want a personal assistant with the loyalty of Lassie but smart enough to perform first aid or make suggestions about investments or fashion. So, I've worked on that and these are my conclusions:

• Machine cognition. This only gives you a personality like a human with no more loyalty or reliability. This seems completely possible but not what people want. Secondly, I couldn't get it to work with the personality in a box scenario like the movie, Her, or the book, The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress.
  
• Fractional theory. This is an attempt to use computational theory to constrain a cognitive agent. This would be similar to the Robocop scenario. I couldn't get it to work.
  
• General AI. If this worked then it would solve the constraint problem since you could just program in the limitations. This was the scenario with Asimov's Three Laws. However, I'm pretty sure that computational general intelligence is impossible.
  
• Multi-specialist or collected AI. Google is putting a lot of money into this. The idea is that an advanced AI is like a Swiss Army knife. In other words, you develop an AI that works well in one specialized area and then you combine these together into a collection. The AI would then switch to whichever one was applicable. The main problem with this is that it doesn't have any understanding so something external has to cause it to select the right AI.
  
• Restricted window cognitive analysis. Having failed to find any theoretical basis for what people would like to have I arrived at this. It might allow an AI to mimic understanding if you keep the decision space small enough.

I haven't yet been able to find a way to get human-level smarts without human-level free will.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

I will not discuss important details of my theory until it is completed and set for publication which is the same standard that every practicing scientist in the country uses today. You already know this.

That is the opposite of how pretty much every practicing scientist works. Generally before a big theory is published it's presented as posters, talks, innumerable bull sessions over beer to anyone who'll listen, and probably a bunch of predecessor papers with much weaker evidence that's used to assert the theory in the discussion anyway to try and test the waters. The problem is getting them to shut up about it.

Discussing important details of your theory is how it becomes a theory instead of a crazy rant half-divorced from reality. The only thing publication brings is the implication that you aren't pulling it completely out of your ass. And we're fine with crazy rants pulled completely out of our asses here, right? So there's no need to be shy.

 

[barehl]

What about a general idea of what the theory is about? My own personal opinion with no proof to base it on is that we confuse intelligence with self awareness/consciousness.

The definitions I use:

Intelligence: the ability to perform logical, mathematical, and set manipulations on information. Consciousness is not required.

Awareness: the ability to perceive the environment at an abstract level sufficient for navigation or manipulation. Consciousness is not required.

Cognition: the ability to generalize (or find the highest abstraction level of) sets, relationships, and action sequences. This does not seem to be possible without the ability to manipulate knowledge. Knowledge manipulation seems to require consciousness.

Problem solving is related to Awareness. Strictly speaking it doesn't require consciousness.

We don't tend to see higher level intelligence occurring naturally without consciousness since intelligence isn't of much value if you can't learn and learning above innate levels seems to require consciousness.

Consciousness seems to be the simplest solution to operating in an open environment with unbounded decision space. It's the only solution I've found that bypasses Goedel's Incompleteness problem. Computational theory tends to become intractable as the decision space becomes larger.

 

[barehl]

That is the opposite of how pretty much every practicing scientist works.

No. Andrew Wile worked on a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in complete secrecy from mid 1986 until it was published in May, 1995. In fact, when Wile submitted an incorrect proof in 1993 he was asked for permission to publish his work up to that point so that other mathematicians could also work on the problem. Wile refused and continued to work on the problem in secret until he solved it in September 1994.

Charles Darwin started working on natural selection in 1837 and had the concept worked out by 1838. His first publication was in 1858 and Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859.

Discussing important details of your theory is how it becomes a theory instead of a crazy rant half-divorced from reality. The only thing publication brings is the implication that you aren't pulling it completely out of your ass.

Your claim doesn't fit with the well documented examples of Wile and Darwin. Please stop being dishonest.

 

[Mojo]

<nitpick mode>



No, but I know what a reductio ad absurdum is. On the other side



the sentence immediately above is a better example of "argumentum absurdum" i.e. "nonsensical justification"; not a logical fallacy, just a (possibly) wrong opinion.



</nitpick mode>

He only asked if I was familiar with it. He didn't say that he was familiar with it.

 

[theprestige]

barehl, I've asked you several times to discuss the experimental consistency you refer to in your OP. Will you discuss it?

 

[Reality Check]

No. Andrew Wile worked on a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in complete secrecy from mid 1986 until it was published in May, 1995.

No. That is the opposite of how pretty much every practicing scientist works. Cherry-picking an irrelevant mathematician and Charles Darwin who did not publish until needed does not change the fact that millions of scientists publish their work as soon as practical.

Not totally right. Andrew Wiles did not announce his work on Fermat's Last Theorem before 1993. However he at least told his wife. From memory of Singh's book, he and a colleague created an advanced math lass that resulting in only the 2 attending and bouncing ideas of each other. Wikipedia describes this as "near-total secrecy".

This post is a very distant relative of the Galileo Gambit (Galileo was ridiculed in his time but was right). This is the irrelevant fallacy that smart people in the past did work in secret and were right and so I will work in secret (with the implication of being right). You list Wiles and Darwin. You missed out Newton and to a lesser extent Einstein.

It is a fallacy because there are millions of scientists who have not kept their work secret.
It is irrelevant because you have broken your secrecy with this thread .

 

[barehl]

barehl, I've asked you several times to discuss the experimental consistency you refer to in your OP. Will you discuss it?

Hypothesis: human cognition and intelligence evolved over time from non-cognitive and lower intelligence organisms. To avoid lots of random, lucky jumps in brain structure, elements that are used at each level must be present in previous generations. And more than likely these elements will still be found in modern organisms that have lower cognition/intelligence.

I studied fruit flies, fiddler crabs, and honeybees and was able to document many elements that are needed to build cognition. I used these non-cognitive organisms because I can infer brain ability from behavior. This isn't a perfect choice because arthropods are not ancestral to humans; fish actually descended from round worms. But, I would expect that people who are more expert in these areas can find similar elements in round worms.

I studied territorial fish. I've seen many documentaries on reef fish. However, I used to keep aquarium fish like Dempseys and Oscars, so part of that is from personal observation. This seems consistent because I did not see these characteristics in smaller fish like guppies, mollies, or tetras.

Up from fish would be amphibians. However, there don't seem to be any surviving species of amphibian with behavior more complex than fish. Presumably there were prior to reptiles.

I had a ball python and an iguana. However, nothing in their behavior came to mind as interesting so I studied alligators. I found additional complexity over fish. There are suggestions that monitor lizards are smarter.

The only remaining link we have between reptiles and mammals are the monotremes so there isn't much to study.

I studied beavers because they seem to have more complex behavior than other mammals except primates and a few mammals like honey badgers and raccoons. Beavers seemed to be a good choice because of the social organization which we don't see with raccoons or badgers and because beavers are in the same super-order, Euarchontoglires, as humans whereas raccoons and badgers are in the order Carnivora. I used some dog behavior.

I've seen a number of documentaries on chimpanzee behavior and that was an obvious choice.

And then you have the behavior of very young children and some experiments like change and attention blindness.

Then I compared behavior to brain size, for example mice versus rats, but particularly for animals larger than humans.

Then I did multiple surveys of information complexity, volume, and speed and neural length and speed, and sensory volume and complexity, and things like embryonic development. And I compared with computational theory, information theory, decision theory, and evolutionary theory.

My ideas about cognition are consistent with the evidence that I've studied and consistent with theories that are not related to consciousness. I'm not aware of any existing theory of consciousness that agrees with mine but I have been able to disprove everyone that I'm aware of.

 

[Beelzebuddy]

No. Andrew Wile worked on a solution to Fermat's Last Theorem in complete secrecy from mid 1986 until it was published in May, 1995. In fact, when Wile submitted an incorrect proof in 1993 he was asked for permission to publish his work up to that point so that other mathematicians could also work on the problem. Wile refused and continued to work on the problem in secret until he solved it in September 1994.

Charles Darwin started working on natural selection in 1837 and had the concept worked out by 1838. His first publication was in 1858 and Origin of Species wasn't published until 1859.


Your claim doesn't fit with the well documented examples of Wile and Darwin. Please stop being dishonest.

Your examples of practicing scientists you aspire to are a hermit mathematician and a guy who's been dead for a century? I'm not the one being dishonest here. Remember that they also laughed at Bozo the Clown.

Look, you are talking to academics about this at least, right? At the very least I'd strongly recommend making friends with cognitive scientists at your local uni. Send them an email, buy them some coffee. You'll find them more receptive than you think.

Hypothesis: human cognition and intelligence evolved over time from non-cognitive and lower intelligence organisms. To avoid lots of random, lucky jumps in brain structure, elements that are used at each level must be present in previous generations. And more than likely these elements will still be found in modern organisms that have lower cognition/intelligence.

That's... not a hypothesis. That's literally just evolution. Maybe you want a neuroanatomy class? There has to be some free ones around the internets. Look up the structure of octopus brains, it'll blow your mind.

 

[barehl]

No. That is the opposite of how pretty much every practicing scientist works. Cherry-picking an irrelevant mathematician and Charles Darwin who did not publish until needed does not change the fact that millions of scientists publish their work as soon as practical.

Bandwagon fallacy. Thank you.

However he at least told his wife.

And I've mentioned it here. I can't tell my wife because I'm not married. I have told relatives and mentioned it online.

"near-total secrecy"

Yes, as I said.

This is the irrelevant fallacy that smart people in the past did work in secret and were right and so I will work in secret

This has nothing to do with me. I keep my ideas confidential because:

1. I want to get credit for my ideas.
2. If I publish an incomplete theory and others work on it they might solve it before I do and there goes my credit.
3. Under no circumstances would I publish the theory even if complete with the current political situation in the US.

If you can counter any of these reasons, have at it.

 

[barehl]

Your examples of practicing scientists you aspire to are a hermit mathematician and a guy who's been dead for a century?

No, I never mentioned aspiring to anyone.

Look, you are talking to academics about this at least, right?

No, I'm not.

At the very least I'd strongly recommend making friends with cognitive scientists at your local uni.

There aren't any.

Send them an email

I've probably sent out two dozen. I did get a reply from one who said that he would be afraid of a machine with human intelligence.

You'll find them more receptive than you think.

That hasn't happened yet.

 

[Reality Check]

Bandwagon fallacy...

And we get:

• Ignoring that you cherry picked an irrelevant mathematician and Charles Darwin.
• A "Bandwagon fallacy" lie.
  The real world fact is that pretty much every practicing scientist describes to other people, announces in conferences and publishes their work as soon as practical. Cherry picking 1 scientist who did not does not change the fact.
• Ignorance of what you wrote -"complete secrecy" is not "near-total secrecy".
• A couple of baseless fears that sound more like excuses to hide that you do not have a theory.

 

[barehl]

This post is a very distant relative of the Galileo Gambit (Galileo was ridiculed in his time but was right).

Okay, I did get a good laugh from this. From Wikipedia:

A form of the association fallacy often used by those denying a well-established scientific or historical proposition

Can you tell me what well established scientific or historical proposition I disagree with? This should be good.

 

[Reality Check]

Okay, I did get a good laugh from this. From Wikipedia:

From not underdamping Wikipedia: Galileo Gambit

Galileo Gambit[edit]
A form of the association fallacy often used by those denying a well-established scientific or historical proposition is the so-called "Galileo Gambit". The argument goes that since Galileo was ridiculed in his time but later acknowledged to be right, that since their non-mainstream views are provoking ridicule and rejection from other scientists, they will later be recognized as correct too.[2]

You refuse to describe your theory. It could be a pile of crank fantasy that denies well-established scientific propositions. It could be valid usage of well-established scientific propositions.
There is the trivial hypothesis: "human cognition and intelligence evolved over time from non-cognitive and lower intelligence organisms.".