From: Samantha Atkins (samantha@objectent.com)
Date: Wed Feb 27 2002 - 18:24:35 MST
Ben Goertzel wrote:
>>>A human baby has no inbuilt knowledge base (at least no one has
>>>
>>shown that
>>
>>>it does), but it has inbuilt procedures such as grasping, wiggling and
>>>sucking... and many more such procedures that kick in during
>>>
>>development...
>>
>>>and these procedures are well-tuned to help it survive in the
>>>
>>environment
>>
>>>it's born into (an environment that includes responsive adult humans).
>>>
>>
>>More importantly, it has an efficient "learning machine" built
>>in. The simpler this "learning machine" is, the more likely we
>>humans will be able to build something at least as good.
>>
>
> The inbuilt learning machine is more sophisticated than the inbuilt
> reflexes, but in my view it is NOT more important. Neither can
> pragmatically succeed without the other. A general-purpose learning
> machine, if it had no inbuilt learning-friendly procedures built in, would
> take BY FAR unacceptably too long to learn anything about the world.
I wouldn't dream of excluding the learning-friendly procedures
from the learning machine. But I wouldn't call them "reflexes"
as that includes a lot (in the case of a human baby) not neeeded
for learning per se.
- samantha
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Wed Jul 17 2013 - 04:00:37 MDT