Path: utzoo!utgpu!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!nrl-cmf!ames!pasteur!helios.ee.lbl.gov!nosc!humu!uhccux!lee
From: lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu (Greg Lee)
Newsgroups: comp.ai
Subject: Re: Sound and complete definitions of intelligence.
Message-ID: <2788@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu>
Date: 9 Dec 88 13:47:08 GMT
References: 
Organization: University of Hawaii
Lines: 52

From article , by josh@klaatu.rutgers.edu (J Storrs Hall):
" ...
"     We don't know what or how humans
"     compute in at least one crucial area, language, except functionally by
"     the gross results we can observe.
" 
" So what?  The parts we do know about, the retina for example, give
" us some guidelines for estimating an upper bound for whatever
" computation is being done.

That seems reasonable, in general terms at least.  But the reasoning in
the article I was commenting on required estimating a lower bound.
That's different.  Language might require much or little of the
maximum computational capacity one can impute to the human organism.
Without knowing the algorithms involved, or what data needs to be
stored, or how it is stored, there's no way of telling.  If it requires
much, one might agree that human intellectual abilities are
qualitatively different than those which could ever be exhibited
by machines of the sort that are familiar to us.  If it requires
little, one might disagree.  Without knowing, there is no means to
judge.

" And we can theorize and conjecture.
" Our estimates may be wrong, but they are not frivolous.

I'm all for theory and conjecture.  And so far as maximum capacity goes,
maybe the estimates make sense.  I should have qualified my charge of
frivolity more carefully.  Putting it better:  the conclusion that
computers cannot in principle match human intellectual abilities on the
grounds that human have much more computational capacity available
involves a frivolous interpretation of an estimate perhaps meaningful in
other applications.

"     Could you estimate the computational
"     resources consumed by an unknown program executing under an unknown
"     operating system given some small samples of its input and output
"     and fragmentary information about the device in use?  Not feasible,
"     without (re)constructing the program, at least, which we haven't
"     yet managed to do for humans.
" 
" Again, let me start vivisecting the computer with appropriate test
" instruments and I can begin to give you some believable upper and
" lower bounds.

I say you would have to reconstruct the program, at least in part, with
your test instruments.  For the lower bounds.  Perhaps its arguable, but
I think this has not been done for humans in the exercise of their
intellectual capacities, and there is no reasonable prospect of its
being done in the near future.

" ...
		Greg, lee@uhccux.uhcc.hawaii.edu