
Roger Penrose's Gravitonic Brains (1994) - pmoriarty
http://www.frc.ri.cmu.edu/~hpm/project.archive/general.articles/1994/941219.penrose.2.review.html
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deepnet
Worth noting this Socratic review of Sir Penrose's theory of quantum minds is
by Dr Hans Moravec, an important roboticist and AI theorist, widely known for
Moravec's Paradox :

"it is comparatively easy to make computers exhibit adult level performance on
intelligence tests or playing checkers, and difficult or impossible to give
them the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and
mobility."[1]

which began the shift in paradigms exemplified by the behaviour based &
embodied robotics movements.

    
    
      [1] Dr Hans Moravec, snipped from http://www.eugenewei.com/blog/2014/10/13/moravecs-paradox-and-self-driving-cars

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danielhooper
Playing checkers seems like a well-defined task to accomplish. A computer that
has "the skills of a one-year-old when it comes to perception and mobility."
is not defined at all. Mobility? Perceiving what?

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jack9
Im reminded of the multimillion dollar AI-based image recognition system the
military developed, in the 80s or 90s to analyze images looking for tanks.
When the system was tested on photos, that were not from their pool of stock
test photos used to train the systems, it got almost 100% wrong. Why? Because
they stock photos had well-composed shots on a sunny day with some clouds
(usually the spots tanks are hidden in are overcast or very cloudy). The
"real" shots were all cloudy (as expected) and the system had actually been
trained to recognize discrete clouds rather than Tanks.

Perception is about distinguishing, imagining physical properties (this can be
disassembled or just casually appears composite due to perspective), judging
and guessing at unseen properties. I figure an pool ball has a curved 3d
spherical shape, because I've seen one before and felt it. At the same time I
imagine that there is no "top" or differing feature anywhere on the ball,
based on the appearance of what portion I can see (it looks clear and flat
white? i expect the rest to be so).

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coolsdude2282
This is only tangentially related but I hope it provokes discussion. One thing
that I don't understand is why Platonism remains extremely popular throughout
Mathematics departments the world over and Finitism/Ultra-finitism is so
unpopular with them. Combinatorics and Discrete topics are often very
unpopular topics to work on in my experience.

Finitism in an analogous way to functional programming seems like the best way
to move the field forward, but it is rarely used by Mathematicians in
practice. Why on earth is this? (My understanding of mathematics is lacking,
so I hope this doesn't come off as a silly comment)

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teraflop
I'm having a hard time understanding this comment. Are you talking about
mathematics or philosophy?

I don't understand why finitism would ever be expected to lead to new
mathematical insights, since it basically amounts to closing off research
directions because they don't have some nebulous quality of "real-ness". I
also don't see how finitism has any connection to functional programming.

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xelxebar
Ultra-finitist logic is a perfectly rigorous field of study in its own right.
I think OP is making a point that this logic and us related branches are quite
understudied.

It's encouraging to note that with things like Homotopty Type Theory, we're
finally starting to come to grips with Fundamentals that aren't tied to the
ZFC implementation.

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eastWestMath
But ultrafinitism isn't actually interesting as a mathematical theory. As the
previous poster said, its appeal lies in its "realness". Intuitionistic and
linear logic are substantially more interesting.

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coolsdude2282
But this was why I posed it as a question, everyone says this is somehow 'more
interesting' but is that because it is actually qualitatively more interesting
or are more interesting things coming out of it simply due to the fact that it
is more popular quantitatively with researchers? If it is qualitatively more
interesting, what about it makes it so?

I likened it to functional programming because finitism makes things
interesting via its purity and restriction in an analogous way.

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eastWestMath
But it's not similarly interesting, linear and intuitionistic logic are.
Finitism is just kind of stupid.

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awinter-py
hmm -- most unrealistic piece of this conversation if it's really from the
future is the lack of interstitial product ads in the chat.

