

The biological bases of mathematical competences - Willprice94
http://www.cs.bham.ac.uk/research/projects/cogaff/misc/agi-2011-talk-sloman.html

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iwwr
Do these conjectures point to a qualitative difference in the human species,
as compared to other animals? i.e. syntax-based vs. pattern-based processing

Can we equate it as the ability to conceptualize a Turing machine? This would
be the same as the ability to follow arbitrarily complex instructions, given
enough time and memory.

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gwern
> Can we equate it as the ability to conceptualize a Turing machine? This
> would be the same as the ability to follow arbitrarily complex instructions,
> given enough time and memory.

I don't quite follow (who is being compared to whom?), but FWIW, humans are
not always very good problem-solvers. There _is_ a very obscure vein of
research developing IQ tests which are basically just Turing machines; see
<http://www.vetta.org/2011/11/aiq/> \- one of whose developers says:

> There is an agent called Manual.py in there. It’s pretty primitive, but I
> did use it to see how well I could do. I seem to recall that I was around
> 70… but I didn’t manage enough samples to get a good statistic (I spent a
> few hours doing it before I started going crazy). Anyway, if you’re used to
> using Python I’m sure you can hack up something better…

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shocks
I will definitely attend this, looks very interesting!

