All Recent Thoughts on AI, Translation, Flexibility, Truth, Understanding
31 Aug. 2007
Agh, 50 things going on in mind at once, don't want to lose them. Sorry for incomprehensible shorthand:
Boundary objects & boundary spanners as tools for Understanding. Acts of Translation. Data v. information, meaning & importance & relevance v. facts.
Why are we so stuck on "truth" anyway? Notion of truth. Useful or not so much? Conversation at UChi, re permanence of truth, & Chang's Inventing Temperature - is a more reasonable and useful (and attainable) goal progress instead of truth? How is progress related to learning, understanding, or knowledge?
Flaws in western logical system.
Above ties in with other thoughts on why current AI will never work, see Picard, Affective Computing, but expand beyond merely being emotional to being flexible - computers, and humans, can't learn if they can't make free associations on existing/growing knowledge base, and if one can't learn, one can't be intelligent...learning also requires ability to make mistakes and be creative, and creativity requires ability to resolve (accept) contradiction
Above all, flexibility in understanding. Creativity, adaptability. Lose rigidity. Allow to be wrong, change mind, make new connections.
Rigidity result of lack of play. "Speaking of faith" NPR week of August 27.